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  "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."

  Chapter 7

  August 24th, 1988

  5:58 AM

  He 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.

  But now, all that was beginning to change. He could see it, feel it. His parents had trusted him, were wholly confident that their thirteen-year-old son had seen no other means of existence other than the Conroy way. They entrusted him enough to allow him out of the house for short walks to D'Agostino's Drug Store on Main Street to buy diapers for Bryan, or Menthol rub for mother's arthritis.

  Go directly to the store. Buy only the things on this list. Do not speak to anyone on the way there, or on the way back.

  As always, his mother and father were always busy with the crucial undertaking of something, whether it be preparing Father's weekly sermon, or deciding which tea to brew for dinner. There were the fields of corn and wheat than ran east of the house for a quarter mile, and the barn out back where bales of hay were prepared for sale to the locals. They worked endlessly, running crops back and forth, handing out chores to Daniel and Elizabeth who toiled together under Benjamin's strict guidance.

  Just recently, Daniel had seen some of the other children from town, on the playground at the public school on King Street. His mother had taken him into town to purchase spices for a new recipe of corn chowder (the Conroy's were committed vegetarians, and Faith Conroy experimented with a variety of newfangled herbs in an effort to 'spice up' their dinners; Daniel thought the chowder she made had tasted much like mud despite its yellow appearance). They'd walked past the Wellfield Public School, and he'd asked his mother about all the other children who were racing about playing kickball and jumping rope and climbing on jungle gyms, and he was told that these were the Devil's children, saturated with immorality and foul influence, and should be ignored at all costs.

  "This is why your father and I tutor you every night at home, so that you won't be influenced by such evils."

  "But mother, I recognize some of these children from Church. They attend father's masses."

  "It is because they seek salvation from their sins. We must remain sin free, for we…we have a special purpose, one more divine than the birth of Jesus Christ himself."

  "What is it, mother? What is our purpose?"

  "In due time, my son, you shall find out."

  He'd continually wondered about the special purpose of the Conroy Family, wondering as to what could possibly be more divine that the birth of Jesus Christ. His father had told him that the most sacred event in all of mankind was Jesus' rise from the dead. The prayers father had taught him referred to ancestral afterlife. Did their purpose have something to do with either of these things?

  There was a noise outside his room, something other than the incessant bells that were starting to cause Daniel quite the headache. He immediately felt an odd disquiet, a sensation he hadn't once felt during their dry-runs, and the sharp reality of the moment came into sudden play: this was no dress rehearsal. Whatever his father's intentions were…well, the ritual would either happen to his satisfaction, or it wouldn't. And regardless of the outcome, Daniel had a dreadful notion that something terrible would occur in the end.

  The floors in the hallway creaked, and then there came a clicking sound: the doorknob to his room being turned. A sudden disquiet festered in him, not unlike the time he'd gone swimming at Capson's Lake and the bottom fell out from beneath his feet. The warm water had swallowed him up and dragged him down where it was as cold as ice. When he finally made it back to the surface, and then to dry land, he vomited lake water and shivered uncontrollably, gripping his pained chest as though he'd been stabbed through the heart. This was how he felt now: terrified, with no control of the situation, feeling as though he'd been slashed with an icy-cold knife.

  There came a muted padding of footsteps. He closed his eyes, not allowing his family to see that he had not kept to the ritual. He placed his hands upon his knees and fluttered his lips, feigning prayer. Like a blanket of hot air, he felt the heat of his family—father, mother, and Elizabeth—encircle him.

  His heart rose in his chest. It now beat in his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He heard the bells toll, and then his father's voice as he commenced with the sigil of Osiris. As the ritual resumed at the tolling of the next bell, Daniel adhered to every last complexity as he'd been taught, imagining that he were running the entire performance himself.

  Chapter 8

  September 6th, 2005

  5:11 PM

  Johnny Petrie's bitter-sweet feelings of jubilation upon speaking to Andrew Judson, and coming to the sobering conclusion that this inheritance was indeed for real, now faded into dull thin air as he considered his next move. His mind waned in circles, thoughts running amok and making no logical judgments other than to supersede his jubilant feelings with worry and ill-defined fear.

  After hanging up the phone, he marched into the bathroom and again gazed at himself in the mirror. His face, although still pale and zitty and drawn, bore an unfamiliar expression he'd never observed before; an expression that was focused and alert and wholly prepared for the earth-trembling events that lay ahead.

  The conversation between Judson and Johnny went on to detail the initial course of action he would need to take. Judson had explained that Johnny's silence would be of the utmost importance, and he strongly requested that Johnny not mention the letter or their conversation with anyone, including his parents. When Johnny had asked why, Judson informed him that everything would be made clear upon his arrival in Wellfield. Johnny had argued that he couldn't just pull some sort of vanishing act, that his parents would have his face broadcasted on the five o'clock news if he didn't show up for dinner. But he did promise that in a few days he'd travel up to Maine to meet with the lawyer, once he was able to gather some things, and perhaps a bit of cash.

  My God, am I really going to do this?

  Johnny returned into the kitchen, folding and unfolding the letter, reading it again and again in his mind, sometimes in Judson's voice, and then in his own voice. Despite Judson's reassurances, the whole scenario still seemed too good to be true, and Johnny burrowed through his common sense for some skeptical insight. But he also told himself that the regrets of not investigating the circumstances would fill a list a mile long, would never reveal any tr
uths as to who Benjamin Conroy was, and why this so-called relative that he'd never heard of had left him a fortune.

  Maybe I do know someone named Benjamin Conroy. Somehow, I feel as though I do now. Think, think…

  So for the next half hour he paced about the apartment like a caged tiger, sweating away his tentativeness and building up a life's worth of courage to confront his parents and gather the truth of the situation. His skin rolled with goosebumps, his watery eyes swelled from their reddened sockets. He could feel his heart jack-hammering against his ribs. He clutched at his chest, feeling the clawing need to get this all out into the open, with no delay, and with no beating around the bush. He would have to catch his mother off-guard, as soon as she walked through the door, and before his father came home so she couldn't beseech his spineless support.

  Eventually, after wearing out a path between the kitchen and his bedroom, Johnny sat at the kitchen table and stared at the St. Luke calendar on the door, restlessly waiting for his mother to return home.

  Any minute now, Johnny thought, heart pounding with anticipatory anxiety.

  Jesus, this is going to be one helluva confrontation.

  He remained quiet, listening to the ticking of the clock in the kitchen as it drove itself like a nail, deep into his head. He continually thought of the faceless man named Benjamin Conroy, wondering inquisitively as to who he was, what he might have looked like, how he died, why he left his fortune to Johnny. Then it occurred to him: Judson waited until I turned eighteen to contact me. Is it possible that Benjamin Conroy died some time ago and had left instructions in his will to wait until I turned eighteen?

  Or, did he just drop dead last week?

  He clutched at the growing tightness in his chest again, mind drifting in endless streams only to return to drummed-up images of his newfound haunt Benjamin Conroy. And then, in between these meandering reflections, another haunt filtered back to him in blinding detail: the faraway childhood remembrance of what he called 'the golden pain'. He'd somehow retained this odd recollection as if it were a vivid vision from a nightmare, one that had remained with him for as long as his lifelong memories went back. And it all may have very well been a nightmare, but its lasting images were still so clear and so real, that somewhere deep in his subconscious (and conscious) mind, part of him believed that everything had actually occurred.