Dead Souls (37 page)

Here she remained, panting, shivering with shock. She counted out the seconds in silence, noticing something gripped in her sweating hand: a feather. Unknowing as to how it got there, she shook it away with disgust and revulsion, as though it were a large spider, or a cockroach.

Her harried mind prayed for this to be some kind of wild nightmare, one she would soon wake up from, shivering in sweat. But the incessant song of
Wellfield's
crickets seeping deep into her wounded consciousness kept the prospect of such a possibility unthinkable.
Where am I, and how did I get here?

A thump in the back of the van shocked her into a low level of awareness. She heard a loud wheezing gasp, the sound a person might make while caught in the throes of a heart-attack. She shot a glance into the rearview mirror.

A set of hands—bloated, black, and bloody—reached up over the back of the seat.

She broke her inaction and clawed at the door handle. It popped, but the door wouldn't budge against the confining wall of wheat. She peered over her shoulder, saw the horribly mottled death-hands, their groping fingers creaking like soil-caked hinges as they attempted to grip the headrest of the seat behind her.

She screamed again, her heart thumping not just with anxiety, but for the first time in her life, authentic
fear
. She sprawled across the seat toward the passenger door, again peering up at the hands which were advancing over the seat, now visible to the forearms. They too were spongy and black with death, covered with dense brown hair that stood out like bristles.

Mary looked up at the passenger-side window. Here the swaying wheat was partially crushed, affording her some room to open the door. She seized the door's handle, yanked it, but it was locked. She shot an arm up and latched two fingers onto the release. Pulled it.

The demented wheeze behind her grew, and for a moment it seemed as if there was an attempt to speak in it. She gazed up at the gripping, flexing death-hands, the words
save my dying soul
filling her head. Something shifted, and then a head surfaced over the back of the seat.

My-dear-Mary-Jesus-mother-of-God!

It was Ed. More mysterious than waking up in the driver's seat of some van amidst an alien field of wheat, was being confronted by this death-mockery of her husband. His face was a bloated mess, as bloodlessly white as his hands were black. His cheeks were hollow and gaunt, caked with blood and mold. His eyes, a clouded gray-blue, were loaded with dreadful intellect, dreadful consciousness. His lips split open and produced a Velcro-like tearing sound. Black blood oozed from the corners of his mouth in twin rivulets. A pair of plastic sunglasses dangled from his right ear like a wind-torn branch.

Mary yanked on the door's handle, terribly aware now of Ed's black and spongy, rotting-squash stench. Levering her feet on the steering wheel, she drove her weight against the door. It swung outward into the wheat, granting her perhaps twelve inches of fleeing space. She wriggled forward, grabbed onto the edge of the door and pulled her body forward, wondering if it would be worth all the effort just to live the rest of her life out in some cold insane asylum. The bitter smell of wheat and soil swam over her.

Ed wheezed again, and when Mary glanced around, she saw a thick gouge in his neck widening like a mouth. With alarming speed, he clambered over the seat, laid hold of her legs, and yanked her backwards. Mary fought vainly against him, hands grasping blindly at the glove compartment which flipped open and vomited its papery contents on the floor. He yanked her again. Her lean body rolled over the seat, slammed against the ceiling, then, down against the hard flooring. There was a loud cracking sound somewhere inside her. White hot pain lanced across her torso.

Through blurred vision, Mary gazed up at her monster of a husband, his coated milky-white eyes rolling obscenely toward her. The horrible gouge in his throat flapped open and wheezed again. Spatters of coagulated blood flew out from it and sprayed Mary's face. Black clots of snot exploded from his nose as he regarded Mary with no prior familiarity, only purposeful anger and intent.

Mary sputtered, " E-Ed…what…is…this…?"

Ed wheezed. Again it sounded as if he were trying to speak. Mary heard,
"Dying souls…"

He then sprung at Mary, incredibly fast, and incredibly powerful.

September 9
^th
, 2005

2:48 AM

J
ohnny held a bible in his hands. It had seen better days, tattered and torn and frayed at every corner. On nearly every page, a vast array of fanatical lines crisscrossed back and forth between circles of letters and words.

"If you'll notice," Henry said instructively, "In the spaces made between the bisecting lines are bold black letters, which, if written down alongside one another, spell out a phrase. It's in the same pattern on every page. It's a code."

"A code…" A sense of wonder washed over Johnny, and despite feeling tired and achy and scared, he wanted to hear more of Benjamin Conroy's—his father's—mysterious past.

Appearing fidgety and nervous, Henry leaned forward and began telling Johnny about the rituals that Benjamin had performed on himself, and his family. "It was Benjamin's assumption, based on the code he found in the bible, that
Jesus's
rise from the dead had occurred because Jesus himself had explored the magical rituals as demonstrated in the Egyptian Book of the Dead." Henry reached over and retrieved a notebook on his desk. He opened it and showed it to Johnny; it was filled with scrawled text. "This phrase repeats itself in the same pattern in seventeen different places in the New Testament:

I Jesus Christ, son of God, beseech thee, O Spirit Osiris from the underworld, by the supreme majesty of God, so that I may benefit from your empowering gift.

Henry turned the page. "And then here, this phrase is present in fifteen places:

Grant thyself with everlasting afterlife by sacrificing thy skin with life's symbol.

At once, upon hearing the second phrase, Johnny's scar began to itch and burn. He unbuttoned his shirt and displayed it to Henry. "An ankh," Johnny said. "Life's symbol."

Henry stared at the gnarled piece of skin, and Johnny could see him shuddering with even more apprehension. "I saw it, when I came out to get you from Carl's car. You were out cold and twitching, having a bad dream perhaps…

…five makeshift crucifixes jutting crookedly from the hard ground. Nailed upon them were the bodies of a man, a woman, a young girl, a boy…

…and your shirt was torn, it was rolled up around your neck, and I saw the scar, and I knew it was you."

Johnny buttoned his shirt back up, thinking of his mother and how she'd always told him that the scar on his chest was a birthmark, a will of God.
And I believed her
, he thought incredulously. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Henry…are these code phrases for real?"

Henry nodded methodically, his gaze seemingly trying to penetrate Johnny's scar through his shirt. He leaned back in his chair and hurriedly returned the notebook to his desk. "Benjamin Conroy was wholly convinced that Jesus had known all along he would be crucified, and had performed a spell from the Book of the Dead prior to his death, with the intention of returning as a savior..." Henry grabbed another tattered notebook, opened it, and flipped to a page somewhere in the middle. In a tone deeper than his own, he read Benjamin's words: "I have proof of this…I have cracked a code in the bible that reveals
Jesus's
use of Osiris's name in the New Testament. It is proof that Jesus himself had studied portions of the Egyptian Book of the Dead prior to his fall! Jesus rose from the dead because he evoked the spirit of Osiris! It is my opinion that these rituals can be utilized to allow me to repent for my sins in life, and allow me to bring my family with me into the afterlife, where we may remain together for an eternity, in peace."

Johnny swallowed nervously; all this talk of Jesus and dead men and Benjamin Conroy overwhelming him. He started to feel a little lightheaded again. "So…was he right? Do you think the codes are for real?"

"Yes. The codes are there. According to their interpretations, Jesus did indeed evoke a spirit to assist him in his quest to return from the dead as a savior. But…it may not have been Osiris."

Johnny's head thudded and whirled. His breathing turned shallow. "Who was it, then?"

Henry grimaced and shrugged his shoulders. He pulled his gaze away from Johnny toward some non-descript place on his desk. "That is exactly what we need to find out."

Abruptly, Henry stood and from his desk. He picked up Ed's suicide note and stared at the single word intently as if
it
might contain some secret code. "According to the Book of the Dead, Osiris was a benevolent god, and upon being summoned from the underworld, or astral plane, would grant the deserving conjurer his wish. If there'd been any disruption in the ritual, then the spirit would depart, leaving the conjurer with nothing more than soaring memories and the will to try again. Benjamin had written in his journal that during his end-all ritual, his son Daniel had instigated a disturbance that'd subsequently caused everything to go wrong."

Johnny remembered…

I dreamed of the golden pain, of lying prone to the elements as the hooded witnesses crowded around me, grabbing me…one of the shrouded figures let go of me and made a vain attempt to free me of the pain soon to be delivered: a sharp, burning agony seared upon my chest…

"He'd blamed this single instance, Daniel's non-compliance, upon all the evils that had taken over the family that fateful afternoon. But his final written ramblings show otherwise. He'd had numerous affairs with local women, and had sought for a way to repent for his sins. He felt God would never forgive him for what he'd done, and that he and his family would burn in Hell for his transgressions. So, he turned to another God in a quest for forgiveness. Ultimately, he'd come to fear that it was something else that had ruined his life-long efforts, something…
foul
. That in his occultist
conjuring's
, had unwittingly become a demonologist of some nature, had summoned not Osiris, but a demon."

Henry paused and peered out the room's only window, then added, "Later that night, Benjamin Conroy murdered his family, a local woman by the name of Helen Mackey, and Eddie Carlson."

Johnny gazed at Henry, fearful and intensely curious at the same time. After a moment of silence, Johnny said, "You were expecting me to come here, weren't you?"

Henry fixed Johnny with a powerful stare, and nodded. "As you know, I've kept close tabs on you over the years—I had your pictures taken so I'd know what you looked like when you eventually arrived."

"And I'm assuming you did this, not only because you
knew
I would return to
Wellfield
, but because I'm an integral part of the puzzle, and that you needed my help."

Henry nodded.

Johnny took a deep breath, feeling no choice but to resign himself to Henry's still undisclosed master plan. "So then, what's going to happen to me, Henry?"

"Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm the only person in
Wellfield
who knows what's happening, and that it's my job—my destiny—to put an end to it all before someone else gets killed."

And comes back from the dead
, Johnny thought.
Just like Jesus Christ. But, these living-dead men aren't here as saviors. They're here to complete what Benjamin Conroy started seventeen years ago. And to do that, they need me, the last of the Conroy's.

Dead men, coming after me…

Brother…

Johnny, shuddering at the thought, looked into Henry's eyes.
 
"Well…
I
know now. And I believe."

Henry smiled thinly, and Johnny could see a measure of gratitude in his tired eyes. Still, that gratitude did nothing to assuage Johnny's fear, his fear of the recent past, his fear of the what lay in the dark road ahead. Henry was planning to use him, risk his very life to settle a score with Benjamin Conroy, the minister who had ruined his life, both personally and mentally. Johnny wondered:
could revenge be exacted against a man who's been dead for seventeen years?

"What was it, Henry?" Johnny asked.

"Pardon?"

"The spirit Benjamin conjured up. If it wasn't Osiris, then…what was it? And I know you know, so please don't avoid the question."

Henry looked toward the window again, blew out a deep breath, then confessed, "A malevolent spirit. It is my opinion that it had appeared to Benjamin that fateful day as the spirit Osiris. But…it was in disguise." Looking suddenly nervous, Henry stood and paced back and forth, tossing his gaze about the room as if the evil spirit he spoke of might suddenly appear. "Once the spirit was evoked, it began to work its evils upon those present—upon the Conroy family."

I was there,
Johnny thought.
What evils did it impart upon me?

"It used Benjamin to kill his family. As soon as they were dead, it corralled all their souls and sealed them in its domain: the place where it was evoked."