Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher

by Joseph Kiel

  Jake surveyed the lounge of The Apex, a jazz bar in town that Vladimir had arranged as tonight’s meeting point. Across from them was a stage area, empty tonight. Maybe the band that was booked had been listening to their own depressing music so long that they couldn’t even be bothered to get out of bed this morning.

  The room was lit by small neutral blue lights that fought the cloying darkness. Contemplative looking individuals were dotted around the room like souls in a purgatorial waiting room, reviewing the trials of their lives inside their minds as they listened to the slow and melancholic jazz number that played over the speakers.

  No one was in earshot of the vigilantes, which was exactly why Vladimir had chosen this table at the back of the lounge, not that any of these people present could be bothered to pay them any interest. One of the blue lights shone from the ceiling directly onto the table, making Vladimir’s drink look like it was some sort of magical fuel.

  ‘Do you come here to drown your sorrows or something?’ Jake asked him.

  ‘Never stray from the Coke…’

  ‘Always got to keep your focus,’ Jake finished the stock answer for him. ‘And you think caffeine is good for you?’

  Vladimir looked at him blankly.

  Jake gazed towards the bar. ‘I haven’t been here in ages.’

  ‘I like the atmosphere.’

  He searched Jake’s troublesome eyes, the expression on his face appearing to show that he was trying to make sense of the random and spontaneous jazz music that slithered away in the background.

  The music was a little beyond Jake, but he was at least intrigued by it. Jake tried to understand things and at this moment he was curious to understand why this crawling beat and these bouncing notes resonated with Vladimir yet did not with himself.

  ‘Can’t tune into this music, huh?’ Vladimir asked him.

  ‘Your thing, I guess.’

  Vladimir nodded, sensing Jake was uncomfortable with his introspection. His thick eyebrows were beginning to arch into a pensive frown. They always seemed so heavy, a weight on his tired eyes. Jake had his usual two-day growth of stubble on his face. How did he always appear to have two days of growth? It suited him well though, added to his action-hero appearance. With his square jaw and tightly packed muscles, Vladimir could almost imagine Jake to be the inspiration behind the Action Man toy figure. There was a precision to his body, a perfection to his chiselled handsomeness. If any artist wanted a model to represent maleness or heroism or strength, then Jake would be perfect for them.

  Vladimir sometimes wondered whether the gods had created Jake as a physical masterpiece of creation, but that his inner defections had angered them and they’d discarded him into this lowly world as punishment. On Earth he could battle it out with himself and really come to understand the flaws in his character.

  Jake broke his attention away from the jazz music, and caught Vladimir’s gaze. ‘Anyway, so what’s with the change of plan tonight? I thought we had a job at the rec.’

  ‘We’ll have to leave that for another night. Henry said something came up.’

  Jake nodded, expecting that Vladimir would give him more information as to what they were going to be doing, but for some reason he was being unusually quiet.

  ‘And… what are we doing now?’ Jake asked.

  Vladimir explained Henry’s request, that they were now urgently searching out Tyler and taking him back for interrogation. Inevitably, Jake then asked: ‘So what does Henry want to talk to Tyler about?’

  Vladimir sat there thinking for a few moments, and Jake began to wonder if he’d even heard the question.

  ‘You know what this is all about, don’t you?’ Vladimir eventually said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the same with everything we do for Henry. It’s all about his search.’

  Jake squinted his eyes. ‘The uh… the Akasa Stone thing? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That thing that doesn’t exist?’

  ‘You’re so well trained, Jake.’

  Jake laughed. ‘I listen to you. About time we told Henry and the rest of them that they’re wasting their time ain’t it, Vlad?’ He glanced back to the bar, beginning to wonder if he had time to go and get himself a quick drink.

  ‘Jake, you don’t know how true that is. But trust me, with Henry I’ve tried.’

  ‘So why doesn’t he listen to you? What the hell is so damned important about that stupid thing anyway?’

  ‘A lot of people in this town hear about this mysterious treasure, hear that it’s lost, and because everyone else is looking for it, they want to look for it too,’ Vladimir explained. ‘They see that it’s valuable, and they know what glory awaits the person who finds it.’

  ‘Glory? How do you mean?’ Jake asked.

  Vladimir leaned across the table a little more, bringing his enigmatic eyes closer to Jake’s. ‘There’s something about the Akasa Stone that not many people know. They’re not really aware of what this stone is able to do for the person who holds it,’ he said to the now captivated Jake.

  ‘Does Henry know about this?’

  ‘He knows about its magic powers.’

  ‘Magic powers? What kind of magic are we talking about?’

  Vladimir breathed in deeply. ‘Do you believe everyone has a soul, Jake?’

  ‘I… I don’t know. What do you mean by a soul anyway?’

  ‘Well, that everyone has a higher part to themselves, in some unseen dimension? The seat of their guiding emotions and their true essence that they hide behind their surface.’

  ‘I don’t know. I never thought about it. Come on, why are you asking me anyway?’

  ‘What about if you could look inside, if you could perceive someone’s soul? What about if you could look into the force that makes up that person’s true being, by looking right into this realm?’

  Vladimir’s eyes suddenly became so alive, a glint of empyreal light seemingly dancing around in them, like the aurora flickering in the night sky above the frozen wilderness. ‘What about,’ he went on, ‘if you could open up your senses and perceptions and connect with this invisible realm? With your own soul? And everyone else’s, and all the souls that have ever walked this Earth.’

  ‘Is that what Henry wants?’

  ‘That’s the secret with the Akasa Stone, that it has these powers.’

  ‘I can see why you don’t believe in it.’

  ‘But you’re right, Jake. That’s what Henry wants. That’s how he thinks he’s going to heal himself,’ Vladimir said thoughtfully, his eyes now on the glass of Coke that sat in front of him on the table.

  Suddenly Vladimir connected his eyes with Jake’s again. ‘Maybe you could do with some soul-searching, Jake.’

  ‘Too late for that I think.’

  The jazz piece slithered to a stop and died. The Apex fell quiet for a moment, the melancholic clientele looking around hopefully as though the world had thankfully now come to an end, but the next number eventually pounced on the silence. This one was a cacophonous and jarring dirge, and completely transformed the atmosphere, evoking the eternally painful emotion felt by souls who part from other souls. If ever a piece of music could ooze with tears, this was it.

  Vladimir looked at his watch again, remembering that Clint was still to arrive; every problem was an opportunity.

  Seeing him do this, Jake said: ‘He should be here any second now.’

  A silence came between them for a few moments, both of them feeling as though they were undergoing a process of discovery in their knotted thoughts.

  ‘Anyway, you never said. What’s Tyler done?’ Jake eventually asked. ‘What’s it got to do with the Akasa Stone?’

  ‘We’ll find out. Don’t get excited. This night is only going to turn out to be an anti-climax.’

  Vladimir was not very often wrong about things, but on this occasion he had never been so wrong in his entire life. Then again, he always was so confident in himself.
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  Chapter 4.3

  Once Clint had finally arrived, only twelve minutes late in the end, the three vigilantes made their way down White Horse Passage, an alleyway that led into the town centre.

  This pathway was a popular hangout for the local hoodie brigade, as was evidenced by the graffiti that adorned the walls. ‘Dark Harbore’ was one piece of graffiti that stood out in particular, obviously the work of one of the more literate of these socially disillusioned vandals.

  Vladimir wished they could get their hands on these punks. They were most probably young teenagers and, like all other delinquents these days, they would know they were too young for the law to touch them. But no one was beyond the laws of karma; Vladimir would spray some of their paint into their eyes.

  Another interesting painted message came to them further on. This time on the actual path itself, an arrow pointed the way they were coming with the word ‘Life’ written beneath it. Another arrow pointed the other way, towards the town centre. ‘Death’ was written beneath this arrow. The irony was failed on Vladimir however as he plodded along like a charging bull. Consumed by his thoughts, he was trying to anticipate what they would run into when they caught up with David Tyler.

  The Fires had visited the scoundrel three times before and were well aware of his troublemaking, and of his rather strange manner. He was a foreigner to England’s shores and had apparently come to live here only two years ago. He had a deep olive skin tone that maybe indicated he was from any side of the Mediterranean. Tyler would randomly slip into his native tongue and mutter his language to himself under his breath, but no one could ever hear him clearly enough to place what language he was actually speaking.

  No one knew why he’d decided to come and live here either. It wasn’t long after his arrival when he got in with a gang and began causing trouble, often stealing underground cabling and copper piping. As his fame started to spread like a nasty disease, a rumour circulated that he’d escaped from prison in his home country where he was being held as a thief. Presumably, he’d opened up a map of England and looked for the place that best sounded like where he needed to go.

  The first time Vladimir and the guys had visited him was only for a ‘verbal’, or a quiet heart-to-heart as Vladimir liked to describe such jobs. For a fair few people, having such a chat with Vladimir and his two colleagues was as effective as a Jedi mind trick in making them go home and rethink their life. It had not worked on Tyler, however.

  The second time they’d visited him, Tyler had come out of the experience minus the index finger on his right hand. That still wasn’t enough.

  The third visit had resulted in him spending a month in a hospital bed. It seemed that after that particular visit Tyler was now going to behave himself.

  And so that’s how things had appeared to be for the next three months, to the point that Vladimir had almost forgotten about him. But now on this particular evening things were somewhat unclear. It could even be that Tyler was going to lose a lot more than just a finger.

  Vladimir could sense that Henry was keeping him in the dark over all the details. Just what had this loser thief done? What did he think he was going to get his hands on?

  They walked on into town and eventually ended up on the other side of the road from Tyler’s favourite haunt. Sparks was a nightclub of the roughest kind, which made the Mos Eisley Cantina look like a sophisticated dinner party.

  ‘We going in?’ Clint asked Vladimir who continued to gaze intently at the nightclub entrance.

  ‘Yeah. He’s in there,’ Vladimir replied.

  ‘We’re just going to go in there and drag Tyler out?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we have a couple more of us? I mean, you do know who else hangs out there, right?’

  Vladimir began crossing the road.

  ‘Come on, scaredy-cat,’ Jake said as he walked after him. ‘Down on numbers these days, aren’t we?’

  ‘So we have to learn our lesson!’ Clint shouted, following reluctantly.

  Vladimir appeared to have abandoned the conversation but then he suddenly stopped and turned round. ‘I’ve learnt, Clint. Trust me, I have. Nobody else is going to go like Quade. Now start acting like a Power.’

  He carried on bypassing the line of people queuing to get in the nightclub and walked straight inside as though he owned the place. The two bouncers on the door looked them over, but it was almost as though Vladimir had a force field before himself that prevented them from intervening.

  As Vladimir cut through the crowd inside the club, he saw what a destitute dredge of humanity this place sucked in. Misguided, resourceless, and faded. Basket cases, the lot of them. The place was a black hole, and any light shone within would just be completely drowned out.

  The entire building seemed to vibrate at such a low level that the energies within were almost dead. Here was a place for the hopeless casualties of life to come and bathe in the gloom, to wallow in their self-pity and nurture their victim mentalities. The world had done them all wrong and so they felt no need for themselves to do right.

  The wild clothing they all wore, the ripped jeans and the grunge materials, piercings through their eyebrows and their lips, black make-up on their eyes, it all screamed out how ‘mis-fitting’ of society they were. Life had kicked them hard and pushed them in the gutter and that’s where they’d chosen to stay. None of them had the insight to drag themselves out.

  That was the difference between these sorts of people and Vladimir. The karmic angel knew that action was power. Delivering retribution and ensuring people got what they deserved was power. That had to be the difference between he and them. Sure, Vladimir had been a ‘victim of life’ himself. Certainly he had tasted the bitterest and most soul-destroying experiences this world had to offer, but defeat and inaction were not where it ended.

  Vladimir delved deeper into the crowds, as the shadows danced around him and the heavy music seemed to smother him. He felt the bass of the music beating in his chest, a death metal song of fear and angst that seemed to engulf his body.

  There was Tyler, at the back of the club in the VIP area, surrounded by a posse of thugs. He was the same scrawny vagabond, a patchy beard covering his rat-like face that was seemingly etched into a permanently devious grin, allowing people to see the slimy tongue that wriggled in his mouth past his missing teeth.

  Vladimir looked him over. His grin would soon be erased when he saw who was coming after him tonight. In that special way of how Vladimir was able to assess people, he could see how much of a miscreant he was. He could see the laden of wrongdoing that cancerated his soul.

  Vladimir barged into the VIP area and stood above Tyler at his table. Tyler immediately recognised him and shot up out of his seat, pointing his phantom finger at him.

  He began muttering something but whether he was talking English or his mother tongue, no one knew, for under this music it was drowned completely. He knew what Vladimir represented, could tell by the look of menace in his eye that he was here to deliver even more suffering.

  But this time Tyler was not going to go down without a fight. The Fires had visited him at exactly the wrong time. This time he was prepared.

  As Clint and Jake edged closer, Tyler’s hand thrust behind his back and pulled out a gun. He aimed it at Clint and pulled the trigger with his middle finger.

  Clint clutched his arm more out of surprise than pain as the bullet lodged into his flesh. Before Jake was able to grab Tyler, one of the thugs set upon him. Clint put his wounded arm to the back of his mind as a couple of thugs swarmed over him.

  Jake lifted his thug into the air and sent him crashing onto a table. Clint smashed his fist into his first thug, while he flipped the other one over his back and twisted his arm until it snapped.

  Watching the commotion, Vladimir turned to face Tyler. He still clutched the gun tightly in his hand and now he brought it up to Vladimir.

  An intense look of concentration came over the vig
ilante as he focussed every ounce of his attention at the gun that pointed directly at him.

  Anger erupted on Tyler’s snarling face. ‘I knew you bastards would come for me again!’

  Vladimir shook his head. ‘You need to come with us, Tyler,’ he tried to roar back at him. ‘You’re in danger.’

  Tyler could not hear him and so continued with the conversation he was having. ‘I have a message for you and your band, Vladimir. You may think you’re the most powerful in this town, but you’re wrong.’

  He pulled the trigger. Again and again and again. Six times in all. Six bullets, spinning through the air at over three hundred metres per second towards their target: Vladimir.

  Bullets would cut through his clothes, penetrate his flesh, slice open blood vessels, fracture bone, and lodge within his internal organs. Six pieces of lead compound that within this infinitesimal fraction of time could spell nothing but doom for the person that stood in their way.

  But they were only bullets. They were only deadly because of their physical properties, densely ordered material vibrating at a tightly packed level. Beyond an atomic level, they were composed of nothing different from anything else within Vladimir’s existence. The clothes on his back, the floor beneath his feet, the air between he and Tyler. It was all energy, just of varying vibrations within the light continuum.

  The fact that these bullets were hurtling through the air towards him was only a problem because one particular vibration of energy was about to collide with a significantly different vibration of energy. If only one of those vibrations could briefly change into a different level, a higher level…

  The DJ killed the music and the club was filled with the sound of screaming as people tried to escape.

  One person who was not running, however, was Tyler. He was anchored to the spot, staring at the person in front of him who should now be lying on the ground in a pool of blood. But Vladimir was still standing as composed and as strong as he was before.

  He calmly stepped up to Tyler and removed the gun from his hand.

  ‘Tyler, it is you who are wrong,’ he said to him as he threw the gun aside.