Dead Souls (42 page)

Only I can see it,
Johnny thought.
Because I'm not really here. Or…am I?

Benjamin pulled the red-hot ankh out of the fire and with two hands held it up over baby Bryan. Withered feathers, laced with glowing embers and whirring flies, appeared out of thin air and floated down from the ankh onto Bryan's little body. The baby wailed, and Johnny glimpsed around again. The panic within him surged, and when he flinched from it, he recognized with unforeseeable alarm that he had gained control of the body whose eyes he looked out from: Benjamin Conroy's son—his very own brother—Daniel Conroy.

Johnny gazed down, through the swallowing smoke, and saw his hands—Daniel's hands—still gripping Bryan's arm. He could feel the baby's heat against his wet palms, amazingly real, amazingly solid. Despite the terrifying circumstances, it felt good and comforting finding something of substance in the smoke. And yet, with this physical reality, an anxious assault of sickness and terror ripped into him: the evil entity Henry spoke of…it was here, in control of Benjamin, guiding his actions, his mind. With a flood of indecisive worry, Johnny released his grasp—Daniel's grasp—on baby Bryan. Daniel's arms fell away like lifeless tree limbs, slow and stiff. He opened Daniel's mouth and managed to yell out, "No!", coughing thereafter in a series of lung-burning fits.
The smoke is killing them! Killing the baby!
he thought, then turned away and retched up a hunk of ashy-gray bile onto the floor, just beyond the perimeter of the magic circle he sat in.

My God, no!
he heard in his head. It was Benjamin's voice, in fear not of the consequences of Daniel's—Johnny's—interference, but of his sudden realization that an evil entity, and not the benevolent spirit Osiris, had possessed him. Johnny willed Daniel's body forward and attempted to tear the baby away from the other Conroy family members, but the coughing fit had left him lightheaded, with barely any strength to move.

No!
came Benjamin's voice in Johnny's mind again. Using the same hand that held the staff, Benjamin roared like a monster and shoved Daniel's body aside.

And again, he raised the fiery end of the wand over baby Bryan.

Moving Daniel's mouth and using Daniel's voice, Johnny cried, "No dad, d-don't hurt the baby…"
Dad,
he thought with insane, hard-to-swallow logic
. My father. If he only knew who this was talking to him.

Faith Conroy released her grip on the baby, as did Elizabeth. Johnny looked at them through the smokescreen. Their pale faces, doused with tears, were both drawn with worry. They stared at Benjamin blankly, unseeing of his altered body, now vacillating beneath the influence of the dark shadow. For a moment the minister appeared to loosen his grip on the staff, and Johnny could see the glowing ankh fading. The barn's walls seemed to close in on him, pressing against his lungs, closer and closer. He coughed again, then looked past the baby toward the mirror. Here he saw Benjamin's reflection staring at him, at Daniel.
I'm sorry son, but I've no choice,
Johnny heard in his head, as if somehow Benjamin knew that it was he, Bryan Conroy, witnessing the events from inside Daniel's body.
He has no choice,
Johnny thought
, not because he wants to complete the ritual, but because the evil influencing him won't allow him to stop.

And then, with horror, he watched as the dark entity controlling Benjamin forced him to bring the fiery hot wand down upon baby Bryan's exposed sternum.

"NOOOO!" Johnny screamed. He bolted awake, gasping, wheezing. His scar burned furiously, agonizingly, and he could smell the meaty stench of burning flesh in the air. Darkness enveloped him like a pool of water. In brutal pain, he perched up on his elbows and stared out in the gloom…

He was about to shout out when a large black bird landed on his bare chest, its
taloned
feet piercing his burning scar. He screamed and fell back, wincing in pain as the bird pecked him and a warm trickle of blood jeweled from his chest. The bird, beak smeared with Johnny's blood, contemplated Johnny with beady black eyes that brimmed with cunning and intelligence. It flapped its wings once, and took off, leaving behind a sole feather upon his scar.
Like a gift.

Johnny pressed his right palm down into the cool hard soil. With a groan passing his lips, he pushed himself up. He reached for the feather.

Like a shot from a gun, they were on him, groping hands, putrescent and filth-slimed, pulling and squeezing his arms, his legs, his neck. He fought hard against them, as much as his fatigued body would permit. But they were too great and too strong, utterly determined to complete the ritual their patriarch had initiated seventeen years earlier. With a single, upright thrust, they hauled him to his feet, securing him in place as he slumped from madness, pain, and fatigue.

The barn doors creaked open.
"
Sssonnnnnn
…
crooned a voice. Cool blue moonlight and early-morning mist pooled in, igniting the chilling scene, and Johnny realized with a giddy sort of horror that the voice belonged to his mother, Mary Petrie. She entered the barn, a crooked, looming silhouette against the moon's splaying backlight.

She lurched toward him in stagger-steps, managing not to fall. In her right hand was a ball-peen hammer, its heavy-headed weightiness arcing to and fro, parting the mist at her side like a clock's pendulum.

Johnny bucked and thrashed against the dead and rotting hands seizing him: Ed Petrie on one arm, Mrs. D. on the other, Andrew Judson from behind with a cold, stinking, bloated arm wrapped tightly around his neck. In his minds-eye, Johnny envisioned the one-time lawyer's gutted midsection pressing up against his bare back, getting ready to gobble him up like a huge toothless mouth. He looked down at Judson's arm and saw little things crawling busily about the blended sores on his bicep. Some of them skittered up onto Johnny's chin and fled into his hair.

Mary came closer, the sound of her plodding footsteps like hammer strikes against the hard ground,
thump…thump…thump…

"
Sonnnnn
,"
she groaned, raising the hammer.

Johnny tried to scream. What came out was a mousy squeak. His lungs were bone-dry, petrified. He shook his head furiously, wondering if just giving in and dying would prove a better escape than fighting to live.
This isn't just about living or dying. This is about the afterlife, and about avoiding an eternity in Hell. No, despite the odds, dying cannot be made a choice right now. I have to save my soul before it is sent to Hell. And the only way to do that is to live.

His mother faced him, now a foot away and so damn terrifying to look at. He reminded himself that despite the horrible resemblances, this in fact was not his mother. It was Benjamin Conroy, not in the flesh, but in soul, and that was all that mattered right now.

"
Sonnnn
,
" she said with the remains of her mouth. Johnny tried to pull his eyes away, but Judson tightened his grip on Johnny's neck, forcing him to stare at the horrible thing that used to be Mary Petrie. The flesh of her left cheek had fallen away, revealing a scrap of white bone that was covered with brown,
mucusy
ooze. Her lower lip sagged like a kidney. Her upper lip was gone. Her teeth showed, yellow and leering.

She leaned close to him, pressed her cold, ruined mouth against his lips, and kissed him.

Gasping, panting, Johnny shuddered uncontrollably. He tried to hunch away, but the living-dead family held him firmly in place. He could hardly breathe, and he nearly puked right in her face.

She pulled back, leaving little pieces of flesh behind on his lips. She whispered
raspily
,
"My
baaaaby
boyyyy
,"
and squashed her cold, bloated hand against his exposed scar. Johnny whimpered at the icy cold touch of his mother. When she pulled it away, the blood seeping out from the bird's peck on his chest blemished the center of her palm with an image of stigmata. She stared at the blood, then poked a noxious black tongue out from between her exposed teeth, and licked it.
"Conroy,"
she cried triumphantly, voice deep and gravely.

"Benjamin," Johnny panted. It hurt his lungs just uttering the single word. "Please don't…it's evil's influence…
there is no Osiris…"

As if on cue, the three dead people holding him jerked him backwards. Johnny managed a weak scream. He felt his eyes bulge from his face. Judson released his rotting hold on Johnny, and Johnny made a weak attempt to flee, but Mary advanced on him rapidly, her fetid arms outstretched,
rictus
grin grinding, moaning.

He slammed into something hard at the center of the barn. Again Judson wrapped his arms around Johnny's waist, pulling him against what felt like a slab of wood against his bare back. He rolled his eyes to the left, and saw.

They were going to crucify him.

Oh Jesus, oh god, they're going to kill me now, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's what their souls have waited for all these years. They will kill me under the assumption that a one-way ticket into heaven, or the goddamned astral plane, or wherever this spirit god Osiris resides, awaits them…when in fact Osiris, if he truly exists at all, doesn't even know what the hell's going on. It's an evil spirit that controls them! It's going to gather up its Conroy family prize, and escort them into Hell.

With surprising might, Ed and Mrs. D lifted him up off the ground. Mary shrieked at him, the sound of her unforeseen war cry a million buzzing horseflies in his head. A flapping shape flew out of the shadows overhead and landed on the loft, right in Johnny's line of sight. The bird. Mary grabbed Johnny's left wrist, and slammed it against the wood. With no delay, Ed thrust one of the six-inch nails against his exposed palm.

Johnny gasped, his breath short in his throat. Pure terror washed through, edged with a type of tragic irrationality that nearly made him laugh out loud: had Ed ever hammered a nail while he was alive? Johnny felt himself slipping hard. The strength went out of his body. His eyes fluttered, and when he gazed up, he saw the bird still looking down at him from its perch on the loft, fluttering its shiny wings and pointing its bloody beak at him accusingly.

For a brief and utterly definitive moment, in the time it took him to suck in a breath and blink his eyes, the bird changed—not in a shifting, meandering way like the moving shadow he saw consuming Benjamin, but in a quick, camera's-flash kind of way. It was instant, and absolute. The evil running the whole menacing show revealed itself to Johnny, ensuring him that its image would be imprinted on his mind, once and forever.

Oh…my…God
, Johnny thought, struggling to comprehend the hideous thing he saw perched on the loft. It was a giant, nightmare thing that existed far beyond the reaches of space and time—that could exist only within the wicked visualizations of its brothers in hell. It was eight feet across and four feet high with diaphanous wings as black as an unlit cellar at midnight. Its appendages were thin and wiry, parting the air like razors. Its eyes, as large as basketballs, were cruel emeralds bulging from sockets rimmed with silver fluid. It swayed in shadows against the dark backdrop of the loft. Its serrated maw widened. A sucker-like proboscis rolled out and lapped against its bristly skin.

Is this its true shape, or is it just playing with me? Distracting me? Does it really matter anyway? This hideous display is evil's surefire way of preventing me from interrupting the task at hand.

Then, as quickly as it revealed itself to Johnny, it was gone. Here one second, gone the next, back to being an ordinary looking blackbird. It squawked once, mission accomplished.

Johnny tried to buck against the holding hands, but before he could even budge, Mary swung the hammer over her shoulder and drove the nail Ed held right through his palm, securing it to the wood crucifix.

It felt as if a charge of dynamite went off in his hand. Bright flashes of light fired and whirled in his brain. He slumped down, pure dead weight now, treading in a pool of semi-consciousness as the hot seep of his blood pooled against the brutal, unbearable cold of his hand.

The dead people fixed his right hand against the wood of the crucifix. Johnny managed to come back around, engulfed in yet another wave of hysterical panic.

Through distorted vision, he shot a gaze back up at the loft. The bird was gone. In its place was another apparition now: that of a young man wearing a football jersey. He was holding what appeared to be a gallon-can of paint in his hands. His skull had a large gaping hole in it. A jellyfish-like swell of brains welled from the jagged crevice.

Eddie Carlson
, Johnny thought, and the apparition nodded slightly. Seemingly, the dead people holding the souls of the Conroy family didn't sense Eddie's ghostly presence—they continued to carry on unknowingly with the deadly task at hand.
 

Johnny, despite his agony and looming demise, remembered what Henry had said back in his office:
Eddie Carlson saved your life once before, and I'm afraid we'll need him to save it again.

Has Eddie come back to save me?

He gazed up at Eddie's ghost. It immediately vanished, winking out of existence, just like that. Johnny heard a whooshing sound and felt a rush of cold wind.