Dead Souls (40 page)

"It's…
them
."

Johnny eyed the barn nervously. It sat beneath the moonlit gloom amidst the tall grasses like a huge spider priming to leap across its web. The lone window frame beneath its peak stared down at them like a reproachful, cyclopean eye.
I can smell it
, Johnny thought.
And it reeks of death.
His hand cramped terribly beneath the trunk's worn leather handle, a result of having to lug it from the front of the property all the way to the back porch.

Henry squinted, seemingly trying to discern some movement amidst the dark shadows. "I can't see them, but I know they're back there. I can
feel
them." He stood stiff and motionless, staring, listening.

A few tense moments passed and Johnny saw something in Henry's face that triggered a flood of discomfort in him. Perhaps it was the man's eyes, all wide and glassy and glued unwaveringly to the darkness—a darkness that revealed nothing to Johnny's jaded gaze. Or, maybe it was his lips, flat and wet, grinning slightly as though he were unsoundly amused. Finally, Johnny whispered, "Henry?"

Henry remained still, oblivious to Johnny's voice, and the urgency of the task at hand.

"Henry…" Johnny uttered again, now using his free hand to nudge Henry's arm.
  

The former sheriff shook his head, then, after blinking his eyes in a rapid-fire manner, stared blankly at Johnny.

"We need to get the trunk into the house, and then you have to tell me what to do."

Henry nodded indifferently, clearly disoriented and confused. He took a deep labored breath, then replied, "Okay, let's go."

They went into the house, Henry sluggishly tailing the flashlight's beam. A dusty and bitter odor struck Johnny immediately, and he wrinkled his nose with disgust.
It didn't smell like this earlier today. It smells like dead things now
, he thought.
Ancient dead things.

After Johnny locked the door behind them, he followed Henry's lead through the kitchen, moving down the hall into the living room. When they reached the bottom of the steps, Johnny peered up into the pitch-darkness of the second floor and wondered with dismay what kind of evils lurked up there.

Henry continued into the dining room, and Johnny followed, shuddering as he crossed the threshold.

"Haven't been here since the day it all happened," Henry whispered, eyeballing the moldy mattress leaning up against the wall. "I remember it like it was yesterday."

Johnny had heard Henry's words, but his understanding of them was hindered by the sheer mental force of seeing Andrew Judson's blood on the floor. Feeling suddenly panicked (and in a wealth of hand-cramping pain), he stopped and released his end of the trunk. It thumped loudly on the floor, rattling the windows and shaking the dusty light fixture. Here he remained, unmoving, staring at the dimly-lit puddle, still damp and tacky and glistening, peppered with mosquitoes and moths that had met their fates in the mess like birds in a prehistoric tar pit.

Dying souls…

Johnny gasped. His hand went to his mouth and his eyes widened with horror. Had he just heard a voice come from the blood? No, it couldn't be. He was instantly aware of the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, as though a charge of static electricity filled the air. He tore his gaze away from the black pool, thinking for a split moment that he had seen a slight ripple of movement in its reflection.

No, no, no, I didn't see it move. I couldn't have. It was just the light of the moon seeping in through the filthy window, reflecting off the wrinkled surface. And I didn't hear any voices coming from it either! I didn't hear them!

Dying souls
, the words whispered in his head again. His hand moved from his mouth to his left cheek, eyes widening even further with terror.

Henry, seemingly ignorant of Johnny's visible state of fear, hunkered down on one knee and opened the trunk, grimacing painfully as he did so. "They will be here soon. We must get started. Help me with the wood." He began removing the slabs, placing them in a neat row on the floor beside him. As he worked, he spoke, "There are three crucial factors that must be present when conducting a séance: a purpose, the quality of the sitters, and the location. We, Johnny, have a perfect combination of all three."

Trying to discount the voice he heard in his head, Johnny grabbed a cut plank of wood. His hand came in contact with a faded bloodstain on the rough surface, and in his head, the ancient voice returned, louder and clearer than before:
Bryan…save our dying souls…

His body froze and his hands flew up in the air as if he'd just touched a burning hot stove. The plank dropped and banged on the floor, producing a dead echo in the vacant house. Dust sprung up in a gray cloud around him. His eyes bulged. His chest crawled with fear and loathing and icy coldness. His eyes shifted to the pool of blood and this time he
did
see a shadowy ripple in it, as though a ghostly finger were painting out a line in its surface.

"What's wrong?" Henry asked worriedly, brows drawing together, wet lips still grinning oddly.
Crazily.

"They're here," he uttered, softly but hysterically. His throat felt as if it had been coated with tar. His heart hurtled in his chest.

"Then we must begin now." Henry lassoed the tie-top from the pouch of nails around his left wrist, then squatted down on the floor alongside the row of wood. He looked somehow
different
, pale and sickly, cheeks and lips trembling like a man in mid heart-attack. "The wood and the nails and the house will all serve as a symbolic connection to our purpose." He set the flashlight down between them, facing across the room, so that its beam provided enough light for both of them to see one another. He then removed the gun from his belt and placed it between his legs.

Johnny, paralyzed with fear and uncertainty, remained standing. He kept looking back at the moving blood puddle; at the filth-encrusted window; then, at the sitting room doors which were still opened from when the psycho leaped out and stabbed Andrew Judson with the garden spade.

"Johnny, please," Henry said urgently. "Come sit before me and take my hands." Henry held his hands out, palms facing up, the pouch of nails hanging from his wrist like a carcass from a tree limb. In the dim light, Johnny could see a queue of thick bleeding calluses just below his flexing fingers. Johnny shook his head and drew back, afraid to come any closer. Tears ran from his eyes, cutting across the thin layer of dust that had settled on his cheeks.

From the kitchen came a rattling sound at the back door.

Henry pinned Johnny with a severe glance, lips and eyes now drawn with anxiety and fear. "Now, Johnny! Come here now!"

Outside, the breeze picked up and shook the cloudy panes of the room's only window. Johnny bulleted a glance toward the window and glimpsed a pallid shadow stirring just beyond the grimy surface. Interchanging swells of coldness and warmth swept through him. He ran his hands through his hair, suddenly sick to his stomach. He tried to step away, but his legs and feet were numb with fear.

Without notice, Henry leaped up and grabbed hold of Johnny's wrists. The man's fierce, abrupt hold startled Johnny. They locked gazes for a split moment, and then Henry, face strained and pale, collapsed back down, pulling Johnny down with him…right on top of the wooden crucifix planks.

Bryan Conroy, save our dying souls…

Johnny whimpered in pain, in shock. He made a weak attempt to pull away, but Henry had him good and tight. The sick feeling in Johnny's stomach turned to nausea, and there was a thought in his mind that he might throw up right in Henry's lap.

The door in the kitchen rattled louder. The moving shadow at the window began clawing against the panes. Somewhere outside, Johnny heard a muffled banging, like an incessant fist against an impassable door.

Thump…thump…thump…

Henry closed his eyes, and in near-silence, began to pray. He was still gripping Johnny's wrists with both hands, pulling them now into his chest. All the noises just beyond the walls of the house grew louder, closer, setting a violent fear into Johnny more potent than the fear he'd experienced upon confronting the living-dead men.
The living-dead
men, he thought madly.
They're coming after me again
! And it came to him suddenly that there'd be four of them now, and that if all four of the Conroy souls had finally tracked down recently deceased bodies
 
to inhabit, then two more people he knew—had had some association with—had been killed.

Johnny made another attempt to pull away from Henry, but the man had him fettered in an unforgiving grasp. At that moment, Henry began to utter a wheezing sound—it carried in it some odd foreign language, one Johnny didn't recognize at all. Henry's eyelids shot open, divulging wet, bloodshot whites. His mouth dropped, and a white-coated tongue perched out. Urine stained the front of his pants in a sudden, dark patch. His grip tightened painfully upon Johnny's wrists.

Somewhere in the house, glass shattered.

Johnny startled. In a panic, he whispered, "Henry! They're here!"

But Henry didn't hear him—the man was buried in some type of powerful trance. His face was ashy-gray, lips trembling, eyes twisted up into their sockets. Huge beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. There was a banging sound in the room and Johnny twisted his head toward the window, where the looming shadow was striking against the grimy panes. One of the panes shattered, and a bloody, wasted hand clawed through, the fingers swollen and creaky, flexing blindly in the air.

In a heightened panic now, Johnny struggled to pull and jerk away from Henry's powerful grasp. Henry, responding with a tighter grip that rattled the nails in the pouch, continued producing incoherent mumbling sounds.

Until, suddenly, one intelligible word whispered out amid all the
garblings
:
"Eddie…"

Somewhere in the house, another window shattered. The clawing hand at the dining room window hacked away at the rotted frame, causing the paned glass to collapse inward. It dangled over the sill, scraping against the water-stained wall like a wind-torn branch. Strangled moans leached in from outside and assaulted Johnny's ears like a fatal virus. A second deadly, festering hand bludgeoned its way inside. Henry yanked hard on Johnny's wrists, digging them into his torso. Johnny tore his horrified gaze away from the thing in the window, looking not at the convulsing Henry, nor the doorway to the room where the sounds of dragging footsteps approached, but to the pool of blood on the floor…Andrew Judson's blood that now bubbled and rippled as though something was surfacing from its depths.

"
What the hell…
" Johnny uttered, but his words were cut off by Henry's sudden, violent choking fit, his convulsing body. Johnny attempted to stand, and managed to climb to his knees, but Henry wouldn't allow him to withdraw any further. Johnny shot a gaze back to the blood on the floor and watched with gross fascination as the undulations began to branch out from the jagged periphery like meandering trickles of water along the surface of a windshield.

They seemed to be forming letters.

"Henry!" Johnny shouted, pinging his gaze back to the window. The bloated hands were gripping the sill. There was a moist, squashing sound. Rivulets of congealed blood and yellow matter trickled down the wall and dangling glass. Then, Andrew Judson's dead face appeared from the pool of darkness beyond the frame. It was white and swollen and streaked with blood. The hair was a muddy and matted mess. His eyes, although coated milky-white, sparkled with wicked intelligence and consciousness.

Johnny's chest hitched, and finally he screamed. It broke the trance Henry was in, at least partially—just enough for Johnny to break away from the man's strapping grasp. He climbed to his feet and backpedaled toward the entrance of the room, gazing at Henry who in his half-stupor was fumbling for the gun in his lap.

Johnny gazed back at the blood, at the twisting,
veiny
streaks that were indeed forming letters along the edge of the puddle. He couldn't make them out in the darkness. "Henry! The blood! Look!"

Henry looked quickly. He narrowed his eyes, but his shrugging shoulders and shaking head told Johnny that he didn't see anything other than blood on the floor.

In his peripheral vision, Johnny saw a flicker of movement to his left.

He
whirled
, and saw them, standing in the entrance to the room. His parents. His
dead
parents. Ed and Mary Petrie.

Stunned into a new level of fear and disbelief, Johnny staggered back. He tripped over his own feet and thudded down on his rear. An explosive jolt of pain burst across his lower back, and his breath corkscrewed in his lungs. The familiar invading grayness that had assaulted him earlier seeped back into his sights, reacquainting him with semi-consciousness. Yet, in spite of everything, he was still able to clamber back against the moldy mattress, all the while gawking incredulously across the blurring vista toward the two monsters that had once been his parents. He wondered with shock and dismay as to how they managed to get to
Wellfield
—and what had happened to them in the process.

Ed killed himself. But Mary?

Mary. As she stepped into the flashlight's beam, Johnny could tell that she hadn't died that long ago. Unlike Ed and Judson, she still retained most of her facial features, despite having turned a pale blue color. Her hair was Einstein wild, infused with bits of hay and dead grass. Her mud-spattered dress was torn open and her pale-flattened breasts
pendulated
as she shuffled into the room. Both she and Ed carried with them an unbearable stench (Ed more so, Johnny thought absurdly), like a heap of dead fish turned to chum-sludge beneath a hot summer sun.