Dead Souls (26 page)

HOW TO DESCRIBE IT?

A few years back, there had been a fierce discussion among the creative team at Sumpter when an exhibition rolled through town, the plasticized corpses of human beings and animals flayed alive. Sometimes they were cut in sections; sometimes they were holding their skin, or organs; sometimes they were sliced through so you could see the layers of flesh, fat, and muscle, like the rings of a tree trunk. All of them were posed artistically, whether they were staring at themselves in a mirror, cradling a baby, brushing their nonexistent hair, or riding a flayed horse into war. The eyes, and exposed orbital sockets, gave them all a fiercely determined gaze, and without their skin, they became strangely anonymous, interchangeable except for gender.

Was this art? Was it an abomination? Temperatures ran hot around the water cooler. But to me, without their skin, the bodies just seemed like the medical plastic models used in high schools—remove the exterior rib cage to reveal the plastic lungs, which could then be removed to reveal the plastic heart. I even pitched a campaign that would subtly point to the exhibit, with nude models instead of flayed ones, private parts covered by Sumpter packs, but the team thought we'd risk our staid market share in the Deep South, our bread and butter.

It's different, witnessing that degree of brutality and violence leveled at people you know, even if you don't know them
well, even if minutes before you would have sold each and every one out to score your double deal.

Would you have done
this
to them though?

The perceptive part of you answers
Maybe
. The honest part of you answers
Yes
.

Somehow I find my voice. “Is this your favor?” I ask Alejandro. “Is this what Scratch called in?”

But Alejandro doesn't answer.

From somewhere at the back of the church though, Scratch does.

“I would say that what we have here is more of a collaborative effort. Including you, Fiona. You might not realize it, but you've been quite the inspiration.”

I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. Renata's head shifts slightly to the left.

Jesus Christ. They're still alive.

RENATA'S HEART.
It's beating.

I stand in the aisle of the church, next to Alejandro's camera. I try not to look, to see her pulpy red heart clenching and unclenching, quivering in the cold, still air. Her flaccid lungs that fill, go limp like a deflated balloon, then fill with air again.

I try not to look but that's not possible, it's mesmerizing and horrifying in equal measure. All the compartments of my compartmentalized mind break apart, shatter in a hundred thousand pieces, and I
see
it, I see it all.

Wings
. Renata has wings, a Christmas angel. They radiate out from her back, her skin draped over a lightweight frame,
the structure a dark shadow visible through her translucent flesh, which glows from the light behind her. She hangs from metal cables that pierce her wrists, a puppet's strings. How is she still alive?
Her eyes twitch, land on me. Her eyes must feel so dry, naked, without lids to blink. Her jaw drops like she's about to speak, but she has no lips anymore, and no tongue. I see these realizations strike her and then watch as her heart starts to beat faster, panicking. Bloody saliva drips down her chin and onto the floor.

A Christmas angel for a Christmas nativity scene.

Beneath her, a straw-tufted wooden box, a manger. To the right stands Mike as Joseph, posed in supplication, the eternal, holy cuckold. His cables are connected to Renata's, so when he drops his arm slightly—ever so slightly—it pulls on the hooks in Renata's wrists, causing her to shudder.

Behind the holy family stand two shepherds, identical height, curved staffs nailed into their hands, Jeb and Dan. Jeb's eyes plead with me, for death probably. Death would be like winning the lottery at the moment. Clarissa, another angel, hangs just above the altar, her eyes and head forcibly raised up toward heaven by a metal hook in her forehead, her skin draped over another winglike structure. Her toes barely touch the altar's surface, caught in the moment before her ascension.

Ellen as Mary kneels next to the cradle, her flayed hands sewn together in prayer. Her body, with a drooping, postpartum belly, is also held upright with a series of cables and hooks. At least two in the muscles behind her shoulders.

Where's her baby?
She was pregnant the last time I saw her . . . unless . . .

I take a step forward to see what's in the manger. What I
find almost makes my knees give out.
Oh God . . . Oh dear God . . .

Click
goes Alejandro's camera. I hear him pick up the tripod, adjust it slightly.
Click
.

Aside from the occasional creak of one of the wires, the muffled wails of sirens outside, it feels remarkably peaceful inside the church. Still. The very stillness feels profane. If there are devils, then there must be angels, so where are they?
Where are they?!
I want to scream. Wouldn't this qualify for some kind of angelic intervention?

Maybe there are no more angels. Or maybe they gave up on us. Something that Scratch has taken full advantage of. Saint Patrick, pressed in glass, has no answers.

“Why . . . how are they still alive?” I manage to ask. It's hard work, standing upright. “You said after we completed, we'd be mortal again.”

“Fiona, are you implying my good friend Alejandro lied to you?” That familiar lilt. I hear his footsteps on the marble as he approaches, until he's standing just behind me. I can feel his soft breath tickling the back of my neck. “I can't imagine why he'd go and do a thing like that.
Lie
. Did you lie to her, Alejandro?”

Alejandro looks up from behind the viewfinder. “I might have . . . misdirected. Apologies. The truth is that Scratch has some discretion in the matter.”

“Oh, that's right,” says Scratch, not bothering to mask the pride in his voice. “I am the devil, after all.”

“You are,” says Alejandro.

To Ellen's left stands Gary, or who I assume is Gary, clutching a decanter of yellow oil. And behind him is Jasmine. Poor
Jasmine holds a box that looks like a treasure chest, a dark cape with a regal cowl draped over her shoulders.

Only it's not made of cloth. It's her skin.

Shit, oh shit, oh shit.
I can feel the edges of my mind start to disintegrate. Because even an atheist like me knows there's something missing.
We three kings of Orient are.
I see only two.

Me?
Am I the third king?

“So,” whispers Scratch. “Do you think we'll break the Internet?”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

Y
ES, TODAY'S EVENTS
will definitely break the Internet. I try to imagine it, the rush the reporters must already be experiencing, anchors hustling back to the studio, editors managing the flow of social media and trying to be the first with the whole story online. Careers would be made with just the bomb blast alone. But
this
full-on blasphemy too, on top of everything . . .

Blood pools on the cool flagstones, drips over the edge, forms a trickle that reaches out under the pew benches, like tentacles.

And yet I'm still standing, at least so far. There are two dead souls here, and one slot left in the nativity scene. I need to make sure it's Alejandro, not me, strung up behind Jasmine and holding the frankincense.
Only the cold survive
, he'd said. I'm going to show him just how cold cold can be. First, I take a cue from my ever-unfaithful assistant, Tracy, and begin the process of undermining.

I cock my head to the right. “It's a little . . . gauche, don't you think?”

“
Gauche?
” replies Alejandro hotly. “My work has been
called many things, but never that. I think it is your perspective that is gauche.”

Still, Scratch takes a step toward me, stands shoulder to shoulder. “How so?”

“Well . . . you're bludgeoning the message to death. If there is one, which isn't even clear. I mean . . . what's all this supposed to accomplish except some brief notoriety? It will freak people out, but then they'll just move on anyway.”

It's so strange—I can't see Scratch looking at me, but I feel it, a quiet, dark probe.

Click
. “Do you
mind
, Fiona?” Alejandro says. “You're in the way of my shot.”

I step aside—and a bit closer to Scratch. Barely a centimeter between our bodies.

“Well,” says Scratch. “We didn't actually sit down and create a marketing plan.”

“That's your first mistake. Everyone thinks marketing is easy, that a trained monkey can do it.”

Scratch barks out a laugh. “You continue to surprise me, Ms. Dunn. And you should know that it's rare that I'm surprised anymore.”

I detect the slightest dig at Alejandro. I add a wedge. “Then you're surrounding yourself with some boring company. So, what is the point to all . . . this?”

Ellen shudders. Something like bile pours out from a gash in her womb. I feel vomit rise at the back of my own throat, but I push it down and keep the tears back, hold very, very still. Reveal nothing.

Scratch sighs. “It's just been so hard to escalate the conflict
in the Middle East. Always brewing, never boiling over. Never raging across continents the way it could. But this . . . such a direct affront to Christianity, and right before Christmas. Now
that
could be the spark.”

“Huh.” It's noncommittal, the kind I trot out in meetings to passive-aggressively discount an idea.

“You don't agree?”

I see Alejandro's shoulders tense.

“It's an idea . . . but you're in the wrong town for that. You should have staged this somewhere in the Bible Belt.
That
would have people
really
losing their minds. And just how are you connecting us all to Islamic terrorism?”

“Oh, the digital trail has been set,” says Scratch. “You might be surprised at how much is in your bank account, and where it came from. Although in my narrative, you're just an agent of Saul. Time for that poor bastard to fall too. But . . . you're saying that we haven't chosen the right
place
.”

I lay into the hard shilling. “Christians are generally happy when something bad happens in a city they consider Sodom. But I would have assumed you thought that one out.”

Scratch lets his hand fall to the back of the pew, starts to rub at the wood grain. Finally he says, “Why didn't you think about that one, Alejandro?” His tone is deadly.

Alejandro turns, unsettled. “It is not so easy to start an inquisition in the twenty-first century. And I delivered everything you asked for.”

“Five hundred years ago.”

That's the number one problem with launching a successful campaign. The expectation that you can easily do it again. I am now in my element. A bull shark in shallow waters.

I ALWAYS HAVE TO
settle myself, my mind, before I make a pitch, but I've never had to do that before under this kind of duress.

There's a taught frisson now between Scratch and Alejandro. Five hundred years—a long time to build up disappointments, unspoken resentments. Shouldn't take much. I can sense Scratch's keen interest, his flickering curiosity.

It's quiet for some reason in the church. An expectant hush.

Alejandro stands back from his camera, stretches his arms up above him, and yawns. A typically male dismissive gesture—I've seen it hundreds of times during a hard negotiation.

Scratch leans in conspiratorially. “
He
used to be a shepherd. Then he wanted to be a great Christian. Then a great artist. Can never make up his mind, that one.”

He wants me to play. And there's no use blurting out a pitch—it always starts with this kind of banter, feigning an interest in things that aren't interesting. Every client likes to be courted. Wooed.

“Times have changed since then,” I say.

Alejandro grabs a small duffel bag, the same one I first saw him with in the cemetery, and digs around in it for a second or two. “My dear Fiona, I have a million following my Twitter feed, another five hundred thousand liking my Pinterest boards. I am well aware that times have changed.”

And here it is, my moment. I turn to Scratch. “Now that . . .
that
could be potentially interesting.”

“What?”

“Adding a celebrity to the tableau. Giving people a hero to
mourn. A face for the epic attack on our American way of life. The immigrant who worked his way up to such great heights, fulfilling the American dream, cut down by terrorists.”

Alejandro pauses his search. “Are you
serious
?”

“An unknown assailant who killed Ellen and Mike's children, forced them to pose in front of their dismembered bodies.”

Alejandro stands. “A
known
assailant. A woman with a troubled past, enamored with a violent, extreme terrorist group, seeking salvation.”

“Oh, please,” I say. “That's a tired trope.”

“
Tired trope
 . . .” says Alejandro in disbelief. He looks to Scratch, but the devil himself doesn't seem to be too interested in backing up his star protégé at the moment. “
Tired trope
?! Do you know you are not the first, fourth, or even fiftieth dead soul to come up with the idea of inserting a line in a website's terms and conditions?
We
even tried it once. It worked for a day, but then someone complained. Barely up twelve hours.”

I ignore him and focus on Scratch, who listens with a preternatural stillness. “What you need is a creative mind . . . someone who could access the data and come up with subtle ways to manipulate people, like through their social media streams, the stories that appear in their feeds, gradually ratcheting up their discontent until they take action. There's a reason the Egyptians are calling their children Facebook.”

I see a line of worry now flit across Alejandro's brow. “Oh, come on. You are not seriously—”

“
Your
whole issue is about concealment. Not all this, what you've just done here. You're all about manipulating the masses without being seen. Edward Bernays could leverage stunts be
cause there were limited outlets for dissemination. Those days are over. Too much noise.”

I hear the creak of a cable, and a guttural moan.

“But this,” says Scratch.
“This
will get heard
above
the noise.”

He's caught on the line, and I slowly reel him in. “Uh-huh. And before you know it, it'll be old news soon as Miley Cyrus sticks her tongue out and shaves what's left of her hair. People move on to the next outrage, always. Wars are unpopular because every economy is tied together. Sure, random violence is up, spots of terrorism, some targeted military strikes . . . but most of that is done with drones now. So you're forced to go door-to-door, which you do enjoy, the actual one-on-one
trade
, but I'm sure you strike out sometimes, and eventually there will be a tipping point when more souls go to heaven than to you because there's no way you can keep up with a population of nine billion people. Your second biggest problem is scalability.”

He raises his hand to his chin, which I can't see. Rubs it. This blurs the tips of his fingers. “I thought you were an atheist.”

Now it's time for the hook. “As you said, many are until they meet you.”

Here Alejandro's worry turns to real concern. I am enjoying every second of his discomfiture. “But this is
art
, this is—”

“What you want is to target the people with a penchant for evil,” I say, ignoring the devil's wingman. “And then subtly encourage them into acts that will damn them to hell. Blow on the embers digitally.”

Scratch turns his head ever so slightly in my direction. “How do I target these people?”

“Simple,” I say. “The same way every company is manipulating people. Big data and paranoia.”

THERE IS A STRANGE MOMENT
that follows—it's heavy, pressing, charged, electric. It reminds me of the tropical depressions back East, when there could be no mistaking a storm on the horizon.

Finally Scratch speaks. “You can do this? I thought your specialty was desire.”

“Desire and paranoia are sides of the same coin. Fear is always easier to implement.”

Scratch nods, apparently thinking.

I say nothing else. Hold my breath.

And Alejandro, the ever calm, mysteriously unshakable Alejandro, is, for the first time I've ever seen, overcome with emotion. His eyes well with tears and they fall, one after the other, which at first causes a thrill of triumph to course through my body—
who's triste now, motherfucker
—but then there's something not quite right about his expression, which is exultant, ecstatic. He lets his hands fall, drops to his knees in supplication to our chosen god Scratch.

Did I misread Scratch? Did I blow it?

Some kind of wordless ask passes between them, the kind of nonverbal communication that happens with long-married couples, which makes me feel cheated in some way, left out. I feel the petulance of a child watching adults conferring about a topic only spoken about behind closed doors. But I don't dare say a word.

“
Please
,” says Alejandro, barely more than a whisper.

Scratch holds out his hands, palms up.

Alejandro gasps and then falls forward, pressing his face in Scratch's palms. He sobs fiercely.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.” His voice breaks with emotion.

Fuck
. He's sobbing with joy, with relief, which makes my stomach clench with fear. I know who's going to be the third Wise Man now, and it's me. My skin tingles, anticipating its imminent removal. The vomit rises at the back of my throat again. I wonder how long it takes, being flayed alive. How long Scratch will keep us alive for the display.

Scratch drops his hands and Alejandro lifts his head up, reaches into his back pocket, retrieving his card. Holds his palm out flat, and places the card on top of it.

Scratch lifts his index finger, writes a word in the naked air, a word which then burns into the card.

Completed
.

The card then bursts into flame and disappears entirely, leaving only a pile of black ash.

Alejandro stares at his empty palm with something like wonder, and awe. “Thank you.”