Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1

by Paul Donaldson

  “Charge hers to mine and keep the change,” he said quickly as he got up from the stool.

  “And what do I owe you if I let you pay for my breakfast?” The comment came across in a cynical manner.

  “Nothing,” he stated quite plainly.

  She spun on her stool, one knee completely exposed through her torn jeans. Her skeptical expression softened and the edges of a smile touch the corners of her lips.

  “Thank you,” her appreciative response was barely audible.

  They walked to the glass door together and like the gentleman he always sought to be, he held the exit opened as she passed. The displayed time outside the local bank down the street read three minutes after eight. Across the street at the drug store someone had flipped the sign in the door over to ‘open’. Keri stood on the curb, preparing to take the first step onto the black river dissecting the two rows of brick and concrete buildings.

  “Good luck,” he said, following her into the street, “with the job hunting.” He pointed to the drug store on the opposite shore as his long stride took him beside her.

  “Are you following me?” She asked in a teasing manner she tried not to hide.

  A woman in her thirties with red hair darted from a parked car and ran into the drug store. It was four minutes after eight and the temperature flashed seventy-nine on the clock out front of the bank. He heard the bell above the drug store’s glass door ring as it closed behind the woman. The menacing time was about to announce itself and as Keri attempted to step up from the street onto the sidewalk he grabbed her arm, just above the elbow, and pulled her to him. He spun her back into the street and in one fluid motion pushed her beside the red haired woman’s car, shielding her with his own form against what he knew would occur.

  ***

  The first sound she became aware of was shattering glass. The explosion hadn’t quite reached her eardrums, but when it did it was deafening. She was safe from the blast. A dark green Ford Thunderbird occupied a space between her and the destruction. The man from the restaurant was against her back and she heard a panicked scream of someone in pain.

  “Are you alright?” His breath blew against her ear. It was not unpleasant, funny she should think that way at this moment.

  “My God, what happened?” It wasn’t like her to ask questions of the Almighty, especially since she was unsure of His existence and felt quite certain that she was despised by any and all Holy beings.

  “Explosion… the drug store.”

  “I don’t believe it… another couple seconds… Holy shit… I’da been in there when it blew.”

  She was on her knees beside the red haired woman’s car. Her protector still had a firm grip on her shoulders. Initially an eerie silence floated over the broken glass of shattered windows and crumbled stone. The onlookers hadn’t arrived yet and no emergency sirens announced their response to the disaster.

  He stood up at the front of the car, gazing into the smoke filled hole of destruction. Keri gradually braved the sight, moving to his side. Cries of the victims, the woman with red hair and the clerk at the counter, diminished into the momentary silence. She saw a crumpled body, once belonging to the spirit of an unlucky individual.

  A middle-aged man in a gray suit stepped over the rubble of the broken storefront. He turned back to the street, toward two associates and shook his head with doubt.

  “Alive?” She didn’t realize her lips had even asked the question.

  “Don’t believe so,” her savior responded.

  “You saved my life.”

  The English teacher named James didn’t react to her admission. She watched him as his head turned up the street, toward the Northern end of town, as if waiting. The sirens announced the first response team. A red fire truck with its entourage of volunteers commandeered the street. Squad cars from the local police department could be heard a few blocks away.

  “There’s nothing we can do here,” he commented without turning his gaze to the girl he’d just saved. He placed a hand to her back to lead her from the scene. “We should move on before two many questions are asked.”

  “I don’t understand, what would they ask us?” Her question didn’t stop her from allowing herself to be led away by the English teacher named James.

  The first of what would be three police cars pulled up against the sidewalk. The two officers quickly move toward the chaotic aftermath of the explosion. Keri glanced at them, still following the lead of her knight in rumpled clothing.

  “Where are you staying?” She asked, not certain why.

  He turned back, looking at her with his intense pair of blue eyes before answering in an almost biblical manner. “Come and see.”

  ***

  Abner Hollis sat at an empty table, leaning the forearms of his bent frame on the scarred wooden top. He was nearly eighty and knew that an eighty-first birthday was probably not dealt in his deck of cards. Yesterday his doctors released him from St Vincent’s hospital. He had a preference to die of old age at home.

  He unfolded the morning’s paper. The news of a large eastern city, distant from his Midwestern town in more ways than one, was notated in capital letters beneath the headline of an Associated Press article. ‘Boston socialite murdered, fiancé held as suspect.’ Abner Hollis felt a chill in his spine originating from a time before the existence of his ancient bones. Three times in the last month, murders on the east coast had caught his attention and caused his blood to freeze in his veins. Abner’s failing heart wasn’t going to take much more of this.

  He got up from the table, slowly. His efforts to move were always stiff after prolonged periods of sitting. He took the wooden cane, from where he had hooked it, off the back of his chair and made his way from the kitchen to the living room. He sat in an oversized recliner. Beside the large chair a small round table took up space, ornamented by a simple black telephone. He spun the rotary dial with a crooked finger. Seven digits memorized by his still sharp mind. The voice answering on the other end of the wire met his expectation.

  “Hello…”

  “Abner,” a female voice cut him off.”

  “I need to go east… Boston, Massachusetts.”

  “Do you think that’s wise? You’re not well.”

  “I am…” He coughed abruptly, something he’d grown used to. “I am in need of your help. Your father would have seen to it.”

  The other end of the phone became overcome by silence. Abner listened to the lack of sound as if a favorite recording was offering its most sensuous notes.

  The female voice broke into the quiet. “When?”

  Chapter 3

  The church wearing layers of white paint sat proudly on a hill just east of the New York border. The steeple overlooked Vermont’s Green Mountains and the valleys between. The most recent coat of paint was faded and cracked having last been washed with a new layer more than ten years ago. The bell in the pointed tower, reaching toward heaven, occasionally chimed, but never at the appropriate time.

  Once the denomination worshipping behind these walls labeled itself Baptist, later the structure spent a decade empty. The congregation gathering a short drive west of Arlington identified with no particular dogmatic faith, other than to say they were Christian. Their plan to revitalize the old timbers and cinder blocks flourished with the gift of abundant spirit.

  Reverend Noah Cote had made the rounds of various denominations during his years of ministry. Raised Catholic and having tried out the Episcopal Church during his college days, Noah chose a less traditional church when called to service. A recent stint as a pastor for a Congregational church in southern New Hampshire left him bitter. The changing of the guard, as the church elders referred to it, letting go the relatively young man who guided them toward heavenly things for four years. He hadn’t rubbed off well on some of the elderly parishioners, and the New Hampshire church was predominately made up of the older generation.

  This white church on a Vermont hill appealed to Noah Cote’s sens
es. Last Sunday they’d had a church cook-out. Noah, a widower of thirty-eight who had never been a father, played softball ball with the children. He was a treasure for these young Christians and he constantly prayed for their protection from a world, which had worn him out.

  He had received a minimal amount of mail today, mostly bills the church was unable to pay. A new furnace would be needed badly come this winter. Noah would have liked the luxury of saving a few dollars toward the necessity, but the church’s savings account was empty. Sometimes the strongest spirit is built during times of struggle. He always reminded his parishioners of that. A letter caught his attention. The envelope didn’t have the open cellophane window showing the churches address, which would have destined the envelope for the bill pile immediately. The correspondence was addressed to him and not ‘The Church of Jesus’. The writer omitted his title of Reverend. The postmark was from a small college town outside of Albany and the white envelope offered no return address.

  The handwriting seemed familiar, reminding him of an eighteen-year-old sin. His hands developed a slight shake while breaking the seal. Contents were two sheets of lined paper, ripped from a spiral notebook. The script was the same as that decorating the front of the mailing envelope. He read the first line of pen scratched taunts. Words mocking him and everything he had strived to become. The body of the two page letter became a blur. In the end, the very last line said, “I found you… again”.

  ***

  Keri remembered a story from her mother’s Bible. Once, in her early teens, before all her present vices, she tried her best to understand the word of her mother’s God. A few Disciples of Jesus asked where their newest teacher lived. She remembered the response given by the Son of God. “Come and see.”

  That’s what she’d done, she came and she saw. She hadn’t admitted to her homelessness, but somehow he knew. Her bed slept in last night didn’t fit the description of a bed at all, just a corner on the floor of an abandoned house on the edge of town.

  James Lansing, the High school English teacher, lived (at least for the summer) in an old Winnebago. His last name was printed on an envelope left on the tiny counter in an area used as a kitchen. The piece of mail was postmarked June 18th, 1984 and had been delivered to an address in Schenectady, New York. The oversized camper appeared orderly and clean on the surface, Keri wondered about its soul. It contained two bedrooms, one quite small and obviously used for nothing more than storage; the other had a neatly made double bed and a small built-in desk.

  The fact that the man with a face in need of a shave and shaggy brown hair had saved her life hadn’t completely registered. The moment immediately after the adrenaline surge she could acknowledge as a real occurrence, but her mind had yet to accept her closeness to death. At least two people died in the drug store. Had James Lansing not followed her across the street she and the red headed woman would have something in common.

  The English teacher had fixed himself a cup of coffee. She passed on the offer for a caffeine boost. It wasn’t unusual for her to follow a man to his place, though her purpose today possessed an apparent difference. He did not want what she once had sold.

  “How long have you owned this huge toy?” She asked while he nursed his cup of coffee.

  “Three months,” he answered, “bought it second hand… needed a little engine work, but everything else is in perfect condition.”

  The vehicle was parked in the rear of a supermarket’s parking lot. She watched a middle-aged woman push a shopping cart to a gray sedan a few spaces away. She yawned; last night’s sleep had not been good.

  “Don’t suppose you’re parking this here for the long haul.” She followed her comment with another yawn.

  “It’s where I live at the moment, wandering on the edge of a dream… finding it and waiting for the next to call. This dream brought me here… to the parking lot outside a Super Val U.”

  “I hope your next dream takes you someplace more interesting.” Her voice was laced with sarcasm and a definite overtired feel.

  He sat in one of the captain’s chairs in the front cockpit and turned his back to the windshield. Keri moved toward the passenger’s seat.

  “The disciples asked Christ where it was that he lived... you remember the story?” He knew she did, a byproduct of his dream, but he requested confirmation from where there was doubt.

  “Yes,” she said, taking the co-pilot’s seat and considering it odd that the same passage had slipped through her mind a few moments ago. “Come and see… he responded to them kinda like that.”

  James nodded approval.

  “Where did he live?” She tossed a biblical question his way.

  “Not in an old Winnebago, that’s for sure,” he laughed.

  ***

  In 1966 Noah Cote sinned. When the money was counted out into his opened hand that night in the alley, he wished for his indiscretion to vaporize like a bad dream. He could still see the teary eyed face of the thirty year old woman who had just been awakened to his revelation. He had her on film.

  The hand laying out the cash on his palm wore a large oval Tiger’s Eye ring. The jewelry had already left its mark on the woman’s face while she begged for forgiveness from her irate husband. The ugliness of a bloody stain etched into the cheek of infidelity. Noah supplied the evidence. The fist and the Tiger’s Eye ring delivered the punishment.

  The photographs were extraordinary; twenty-four black and white prints of the thirty year old woman and her lover. The other man was no more than a boy, twenty-two at the most. The woman’s lover was a student at the same college Noah attended and he wondered if the husband planned to seek him out too.

  ‘The things you do for love,’ 10CC would address that issue in song during the nineteen seventies. Noah Cote wondered about love, as well as the things you do for money, but that would be an O’Jay’s song and Noah didn’t care for soul music.

  “Do you know his name?” The husband asked with a voice that remained calm despite the smudge of blood on his white shirt.

  The guy had totally flipped out. Noah estimated him to be at least forty and big, football linebacker big and Noah hoped to God his frail form was going to leave in one piece.

  “Carver,” Noah nervously answered. “I don’t know what his first name is… I know him only as Carver.”

  Noah didn’t know the woman’s name, nor did he know her spouse. Later, from a newspaper article, he would learn the family name was Hamilton and the husband’s first name was John. He hadn’t read enough of the story to discover the wife’s name.

  He watched the pleading, weeping female, half broken on the floor.

  He watched as he took the payment for a deed well done, fulfilling a chance meeting with the man wearing the Tiger’s Eye ring.

  He watched, while placing the handful of bills in his pants pocket, hoping the count was close enough to being right.

  And he continued watching even when more blood than he had ever seen painted the woman’s face with a mask of death.

  Tiger’s Eye flaunted a gun and Noah ran with a heart pumping gallons of blood each second. A fired shot, its sound tearing through the old warehouse. He witnessed the sound of murder.

  A second shot, muffled and followed by a silence much too long. He knew the second bullet of death had been one of suicide.

  ***

  Oncoming headlights danced on the windshield between swipes of the wiper blades. James Lansing pursued another dream. The dashboard clock read twelve-o-five, it was ten minutes slow. Keri slept in the bedroom. He had checked on her at the last service station, dead to the world, stretched out on her stomach. He hadn’t meant to spy on her sleeping habits, but in the illumination provided near the gas pumps, he could see the sheets kicked onto the floor along with her jeans. The light reflected off the thin white panties covering her small rump and James traced her backside with lonely eyes.

  She had decided to come along for the ride, since there seemed to be nothing better to do. He
told her he was heading east, toward the Boston area. Persuading her to come with him seemed easier than expected. The dreams had convinced him of the importance of her company, as well as that of the other two he had yet to seek out.

  The direction he traveled took him back toward his home, from where this summertime journey began. He merged onto Interstate 90, south of Erie. His destination before he would give in to sleep was about thirty miles east of Buffalo, a small KOA campground just off the Interstate.

  The Winnebago slipped through the night like a phantom, witnessed by none on the desolate stretch highway. Soon the traffic would rise up from where it had slept off the previous day and the road would no longer belong to him.

  His stomach rumbled. He ignored it. The clock had moved ahead four minutes. He knew he wouldn’t get to close his eyes until about three o’clock, by then his waking hours would have totaled twenty-two straight. A part of his subconscious didn’t want to sleep. Slumber, no matter how brief, brought dreams, and dreams directed him to realities he’d rather not pass through. A dream is what brought him to the small town south of Washington Pennsylvania. In the dream he witnessed the red haired woman’s death, the glass and brick spread out across the sidewalk and the willowy blond who he protected in his arms, embraced somewhere between life and hell.

  Chapter 4

  It wasn’t right. She knew it. The dinner was given all for her glory and not for those who worked so hard to get her into the public eye. Among her peers, Candice Goddard had finally achieved the top tier. The road through stardom was being paved for her, all falling into place as she’d hoped. After seven years of nothing more than bit parts and commercials, Candice had landed her second role in an upcoming movie, a thriller where she portrayed a heroine rather than a victimized mouse.