Dead Souls (5 page)

The telephone
.

Should it not be real, should the letter turn out to be a sham, or a mistake, he would have to settle back down to the miserable earth, and move on with his measly existence. God forbid, as Mary liked to say.

Holding the letter in his left hand, he scooped up the telephone handset from its cradle, tucked it into the crook of his neck, and dialed the number. He could hear the beeps sounding out from the earpiece like little bells tolling…

…
bells tolling
…

…his eyes pinning a dusty web dangling from the corner of the ceiling like a tiny vine.

The phone rang.

It picked up on the first ring. Johnny's body shuddered at the millisecond of silence between the click of the phone and the husky voice of the woman who answered: "Andrew Judson's Office."

The first thing Johnny did was sit down at the small dinette table in the kitchen. His heart thudded in his chest like a soldier's stride, feet suddenly numb, tongue dry as parchment.
 
He went to speak, voice weak and uneasy: "Mr. Judson, please."

"May I tell him who's calling?" she inquired brusquely, seemingly unwilling to pull her boss from whatever lawyerly duties that had him buried.

"My name is…"

He stopped.

Why am I so afraid? I've never felt like this in my life. Is this how my mother feels? Is this why she is taking all those pills? Something about this isn't right. I can feel it.

…you, Mr. Thomas Petrie, are to receive the entire estate bequeathed to me as executor. The value of the inheritance is estimated at two million dollars…

"Sir?" the woman with the husky voice asked.

"My name is Johnny Petrie.
John
Petrie."

There was a slight hesitation on the line, followed by what sounded like a gasp of unanticipated surprise. "I'll tell him you're on, Mr. Petrie. Please hold."

Mr. Petrie? That's a new one. A title of respect for adults…especially those who have money.

The next instant he was listening to a canned version of "Angel" by
Jimi
Hendrix. He smiled, wondering,
What are the odds?
While the tinny music filtered into his head, he looked around at the painful familiarity of his home: the small two-bedroom upper east-side apartment that boasted a fine neighborhood, but pitiful walls adorned with a helter-skelter collection of religious motifs and statuary, needlepoint canvases depicting snow-covered farmhouses, and a few dust-coated art prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. All the furniture was old and beginning to wear, as were the appliances. An ancient roll top desk sat in the corner, opened to display an old office model typewriter. The Petrie apartment was a small and stingy confinement complete with cell-mates Johnny had nothing in common with. He pulled his sights away from the cross and rosary hanging above the doorway, and began reading the letter again, making every effort to understand its intentions, thinking that somehow he'd misunderstood the lingo and really wasn't the recipient of any two-million dollar estate.

Before he could make any further presumption, a man's voice broke into the line. There was no introduction, no formal pleasantry exchange. He cut right to the chase, perhaps making an attempt to capture his prey before it made an escape.

"Is this John Petrie?"

Johnny was caught off guard. He straightened up on the chair, not even realizing that he'd crouched down so low. "Y-yes."

"Of four-seventy-nine, East Eighty-Eighth Street, New York, New York?"

"Yes, that is where I live."

"My…", was the reply, followed by a gush a heavy breathing. "It is you."

How to respond to that? Johnny had no clue. He shook his head, his mind now a sudden blank, unplugged and devoid of words. He felt like a deer in the headlights of an unstoppable truck, unable to avoid the inevitable.

In search of something to say, he quickly looked out the window. At that instant, a large blackbird landed on the fire escape. Johnny watched it as it hopped around
patternlessly
on the rusted grates, then came to the window, cocked its head, and aimed its beady little eyes in at him.

The lawyer's voice broke the silence between them, and Johnny jolted upright. "I trust you've read the letter I sent to you, then?"

"I did," Johnny answered, pulling his gaze away from the bird. It had had him strangely distracted, almost to the point that, within seconds, he nearly forgot who he was on the phone with.

"And you understand everything?"

"Well, actually…this is Mr. Judson, right?" Dumb question, but the
surreality
of the phone call, along with the sudden distraction of the blackbird, had left him feeling confused, and he had to make certain that he had all his cards straight.

"Yes, Johnny."

"I…I'm not really sure what to make of this. Really, I mean, this is some kind of joke, right?" He looked back at the bird. It'd hopped up on the edge of the ladder, and was skittering across the step.

"No Johnny, it's not." Suddenly, Judson's voice sounded calm, reserved, the initial excitement of hearing from Johnny perhaps thinning out some. "Johnny, I know quite well that this sounds crazy, it's not every day this type of thing happens, to anyone. But…I've been waiting until you turned eighteen to contact you. If I'm not mistaken, you turned eighteen on August 24th, correct?"

He felt a prickle of gooseflesh at that, and he tore his eyes from the blackbird, now wholly focused on the conversation. "Yes," he uttered, his voice a weak whisper. So…his deduction of earlier
had
been correct. The letter had been intentionally typed and mailed the day after his eighteenth birthday.
Too complicated to be some sort of joke, or scam
, encouraged his mind.

"There are many legalities to discuss regarding this situation, but I assure you that the estate of Benjamin Conroy has been willed to you."

Benjamin Conroy
…

"Mr. Judson," Johnny said, gripping his cheeks with one hand and shaking his head. "I want to believe you, I mean, who wouldn't want to believe that they've just fallen into some big load of money…but really, there must be some kind of mistake here. I don't know anyone, or should I say knew anyone, named Benjamin Conroy."

Or, do I?
Again he looked back outside. The bird was gone. On the balcony was a single black feather flapping in the breeze, its root caught in the steel grates.

There was a brief silence on the phone, then a shuffle of papers. "In a few days John, you
will
know much about Benjamin Conroy." He paused, thin breaths seeping through the phone, then added, "And, in due time, you will learn much about yourself."

August 24th, 1988

5:58 AM

H
e hadn't slept much at all, mostly fitful naps and sheet-twisting twitches. There were a few jaunts into the world of his dreams, but even they were short and aggressive and menacing; of things coming to get him in the night: dead things, with their arms outstretched and mouths gaping, toothless and rotting, awaking him the very moment they pounced. After each dream, he would lay awake, dry-eyed and cotton-mouthed, hands on his heaving stomach, sheathed in cold sweat.

After what'd seemed an eternity, the first of the bells eventually tolled, and he'd performed exactly what had been instructed of him, what had been rehearsed time and time again until he—his whole family, excepting the baby of course—got it right. It had been scrawled—a thick loopy script in black ink—in the 'preparation handbook' his father had inscribed: the odd pacing at the tolling of the thirteenth bell, the lighting of the candles and incense at the thirtieth. The prayers, the sigils, the odd symbols and pentagrams and triangles meticulously painted on the ground. It had all been committed to memory, ingrained into his mind like a brand on a cow's rump.

His thirteen year-old mind had never really been able to grasp the entire premise behind what his father attempted to accomplish. It was, in some odd way, all about 'seeking a closer bond with Jesus Christ', that much he knew—it was always about coming into contact with the messages in the bible. When your father was a minister and governed the household with such an impassioned spiritualism, it was always best to follow his guiding principles, lest you find yourself on the receiving end of his God-driven admonishment.

So, he'd concurred to his father's most recent set of rules, following the stages of the ritual with flawless precision until he found himself naked and sweating in the center of the candlelit circle he himself had prepared two weeks prior. He repeated the prayer to the God Osiris,

(
I beseech thee, O Spirit Osiris from the vast astral plane, by the supreme majesty of God, to allow the child Bryan Conroy an association to our purpose, so that he too may benefit from your empowering gift
…)
 

again speculating between the tolling of the bells as to who this God Osiris was, and whether or not he was written about in the New Testament. One time, he'd questioned his father as to Osiris's role in the bible, and immediately found himself bruised and fat-lipped with a lengthy list of chores…

"
Listen to me, Daniel, and you shall be saved from the wrath of evil. We have summoned Osiris to save us from the ambiguity of the afterlife and keep us together as a family so that we may walk together for eternity. Jesus Christ once rose from the dead as a savior of the people of Jerusalem. It was the holiest of all occurrences in the history of mankind, an event even more sacred than the creation of Adam and Eve. We, as a family, will work together as saviors in the afterlife, just as Jesus Christ did nearly two-thousand years ago. But…beware my son, evil aims to stop us. You must be strong, and follow my lead, so we can be eternally saved by God
."

"
But father, which God do we worship? Is it Jesus, or this god you refer to as Osiris?
"

"
Jesus and Osiris shall work together to bring us everlasting life
."

"
Father—is this written about in the bible?
"

And that was when the strong hand of Benjamin Conroy came down on Daniel Conroy over and over again, the minister's greasy hair hanging in strings over his fiercely blue eyes, voice shouting piously, "
Though
shalt
not question the will of God! Evil is working its way into your soul. Do not let it, my son. Shout at the Devil!
"

It had been too much to handle for the thirteen year-old. He'd seen no choice but to abide by the stringent rules his father had set in place, just as his mother and sister had done. But then what of the baby Bryan, celebrating his first birthday today? Twelve years ago, upon his spiritual union with the Lord Osiris, Daniel had once been in the same helpless predicament. Obviously, he didn't remember any of it. But now, he would be forced to witness the baby—his brother—suffering the pain and agony of the event that was going to leave him scarred for the remainder of his life.

Daniel remained in place, the bells continuing to toll throughout the house. His father had instructed him to repeat the prayer to Osiris over and over again to himself, to clear his mind of extraneous thought, and seek out the golden light that would open the doorway to the astral plane. Instead, his mind wandered toward the bells—the bells that at five this morning had awakened the entire family, and would continue to toll for a total of one hour and thirty-three minutes, until they exited the house. So, where were they hidden? And how did father rig them about the house?

Suddenly, he was peripherally aware of something moving. He raised his gaze quickly and found himself drawn toward the window, where he saw a single black feather on the windowsill, its quill buried deep into the split wood, its soft trimmings wavering gently beneath the mild wind.

He stared at the feather until his attention was drawn away by the toll of another bell, then scrutinized his nakedness with bitter distaste: his plump midsection, white thighs and stomach pressed together in a mass of dips and rolls. His skin, sallow and afire with raised patches of prickly-heat. His feet cramped beneath his weight, ankle bones buried beneath a smooth layer of fat, rubbing painfully against the wood floor.

He made every effort to keep his wandering gaze (
Important—you must keep your eyes closed until we arrive
) away from his stomach that sweated and pinched and begged to be itched. His hands wandered down, somewhere in the nether-regions below his girth. He adjusted his aching genitals up and down and back and forth, spreading his legs and alternating between kneeling and sitting cross-legged in an effort to relieve the pain.

He knew that he was going to have to wait the longest (except for the baby, who still slept soundly) for his father to arrive. He'd been instructed to count the bells and perform the exercises and prayers, and had given it quite a stab but ended up losing track about twenty dongs ago. So, he squirmed and moved and fingered the scar upon his sternum, saying prayers for his baby brother who would be punished for the rest of his life because of his father's far-out convictions.

Growing up, he'd been told that accepting the faith of his parents would be the only way to gain protection, the only way to grow up self-confident with food on the table and a home to sleep in.
It's the same reason little Orthodox children wear
yamacas
, and the Amish wear capes and aprons and drive horses and buggies. They know no other way, no other lifestyle. It is quite simply the way of their people. We, the Conroy family, have our very own principles as well, and have learned to respect them
.