“And sometimes he brings others into our lives to accomplish his will.”
***
The first shot fired entered an empty hallway as James and the other man found refuge on the floor. A second bullet ripped plaster from the corner of the wall. Keri screamed, at least it felt like she did. Her voice seemed locked inside her throat. She fell to the floor as a third shot sought out its intended victim in the hall.
The older couple tried to take cover. Their movement drew the gunman’s attention. Keri watched the deliberate raising of the arm of death. A promised specter offering to take what no one is ever ready to give. The dark tunnel of the barrel gazed upon the elderly with its hot empty eye. A finger tightened on the trigger.
“They’re hit call the police,” Keri blurted out as a distraction.
The gunman pivoted, aiming the weapon in Keri’s direction. She knelt behind a table and chairs, watching the old couple seek safety in the same fashion. The gunman made a turn back toward the hallway. He moved in the direction of his three expelled bullets, abruptly turning to his right, away from Keri. Movement in the mirror behind the counter seemed to have caught his attention. His own confused expression stared back at him and he fired two slugs into his reflection.
Shards of a broken likeness, a partial image was revealed in the few triangular pieces left connected to the mirror’s frame. The man who had just finished the assault on his likeness stared into a shattered void.
“Stay down.” It was James giving the warning. He had moved from the hallway to the table next to the one she sought cover behind.
“Where’s the guy from the men’s room?”
“Face down in the hall… kissin’ the threshold of the women’s room.”
Keri looked over to the old couple, clinging to each other as if the world had reached Armageddon. The gunman still studied what was left of his reflected image.
“John Carver,” the English teacher whispered at random. “Lost someone special… years ago… blames… Noah Cote.”
“How do you know that?” She asked.
“Pieces of the dreams… now fitting into place.”
John Carver raised his right hand, the one holding the pistol, to his head. Instantly Keri knew the stakes, one life in return for seven, counting the cook and waitress. A moment lingered, where clocks all seem to stop and seconds freeze. The barrel of the gun touched his right temple and his finger tightened on the delicate trigger. Keri closed her eyes and heard the sound of a bullet passing through soft brain tissue.
Chapter 8
Keri sat bewildered at the counter, trying to absorb everything she’d witnessed in the past day. The waitress poured her a cup of coffee. Keri looked at the older woman’s forehead, grateful the scars in her life decorated her leg and not her face.
“He ate breakfast here almost every day,” the waitress said as she set three creamers on the counter. “John,” the name of the dead man tasted strange, “he was quiet… I never would have expected somethin’ like this. You never know… do ya?”
The shaking of her curly blond head was Keri’s only response. She turned on the stool to overlook the crime scene. Noah and James were involved in a conversation she had not been privy too. John Carver’s body was gone, taken by the paramedics to the morgue. Blood spray still remained at the far end of the counter and the jagged glass left in the mirror screamed back at her like a demonic void. The police and news crews were preparing to vacate the premises, taking with them a piece of innocence destroyed.
The elderly couple had left about twenty minutes ago, after having fed the newspaper reporter their view, from the floor, of the man’s suicide. “Frightening,” the woman kept saying. The husband just grunted and seemed ready to take a long morning nap as soon as they were home.
The police had directed most of their questioning at Noah Cote. He admitted knowing John Carver from his days in college. Claimed running into John had been by chance. The police considered the five shots fired prior to suicide. It’s difficult to give rationality to an unstable mind.
Noah lied to the officers, portraying himself as a baseball fan, taking a few days off from a busy schedule in his church to visit Cooperstown. Had the police decided to call his congregation they would have uncovered a fabricated story.
“I guess Noah Cote is not as gullible as you,” James said as he sat on the stool next to Keri.
“Gullible?” She questioned the term used for describing her.
“He doesn’t believe in dreams.”
“Even when a dream might have saved his life? Guess there’s somethin’ to be said for dumb, curly haired blonds.”
“He’s holdin’ on to that which he needs to wash away.”
“Sin?”
James nodded in agreement. “But he is the man of God,” he said this with an almost sarcastic tone. “Who am I to tell him of such things?”
“And what now… do we continue… chase another dream?”
“We let God work on Reverend Noah Cote. We let him dig into the minister’s guilt.”
“Can I ask you a serious question?” Keri stated quietly. His attention absorbed the blue eyes and lightly freckled nose of the girl next to him. The floor belonged to her. “What if all this is Satan’s will?”
***
Candice slept little on the flight. Zak snored with steady regularity. Time passed her by as one large empty space of existence, from the west coast to the east, she lost her entire morning. She feared dreaming. What little sleep the monotony on the plane bestowed upon her gave way to interruption, by fear rather than actual dreams. She knew the route they would take into the Adirondacks held in store for them a tragedy. Zachary Wells didn’t believe in such things as premonitions about the future. He didn’t believe in God, the devil or man’s ability to do any real good. Zachary Wells did however; believe in the ability of a plane to fly from Los Angeles to New York. He always slept soundly when she was frightened.
She checked her wrist watch. Zak had given it to her as a surprise gift a month ago. For no reason other than a memento from one lover to another. She liked its thin golden band. Their flight had left California an hour behind schedule. It neared eleven o’clock and JFK was less than an hour away.
Her mind seemed to have magnetized itself to her dream of the auto accident. She tried directing her thoughts toward the film she presently worked on and a couple future prospects Zak said were in the waiting, but the dream dominated her psyche.
The couple walked toward her, among the flames. She could see them clearly when she closed her eyes. For a moment she visualized the scene of impending death, Zak’s death, taking place in the aisle of the plane, the couple moving toward her, a blond woman untouched by the flames and an image of a distorted male, a dominating, purposeful man who seemed to lord over the event. She closed her eyes tightly and shook the cobwebs away as a stewardess leaned down toward her from behind.
“Is everything okay?” The young woman asked.
“Just startled by a dream,” Candice answered.
The stewardess had long black hair and a figure which probably required no maintenance. Candice met the young woman’s face, eye to eye, beauty to beauty.
“But mam, your eyes…” the stewardess decided not to continue with her observation that the passenger’s eyes where open during the supposed dream. “We’re almost to your destination and the pilot feels everything should be smooth the rest of the way.”
“No turbulence?” Zachary woke, first and foremost to check out the young woman’s well endowed bosom, secondly to comment on the quality of the flight. “What good is allowing a pilot to take your life in his hands if you can’t get a good few hours of sleep. The know-it-all in the cabin said no turbulence just after take off, seems to me like this excuse for a jet bounced around quite a bit.”
Candice touched his hand, stroking it in an effort to calm him. Zachary Wells had always been a grumpy customer, no matter what the service. She knew it was his way of coverin
g up his desire to control every aspect of his life.
“My fiancé is just tired from the long flight… that’s all,” Candice made the excuse for the man who had already turned away to face the window and the passing clouds.
“It’s perfectly normal,” the young woman said as she moved on to other passengers.
It was perfectly normal, for Zak, a cantankerous old man waken from a deep sleep. But soaring through the sky, with your life in someone else’s hands, normally made her nervous. This time she cradled no uneasiness in her belly. Touching down, renting a car and traveling north on Interstate 87, that’s where fear kicked in, filling her with a dread she couldn’t grasp.
***
“Did you ever read a newspaper article and feel as if you’d lived the moment?” Abner was sitting on the edge of the double bed in his room at the Sheraton Hotel. Stephanie had an adjoining room and the door had been left open.
“What’s that?” She called back from her side of the dividing door.
“I’ve been reading these stories about three recent murders… the last taking place here… in Boston, all similar… young women… wealthy and probably very lonely. Three murders which stick out in my mind. Murders affecting this tainted corner of the world with an evil I feel fused to.”
“Abner… there are violent crimes committed in a city such as this on a daily basis.” Stephanie moved to the doorway between their rooms and spoke. “Why are these three murders different?”
“Because they feel like before and Lonnie Wilkerson…”
“Lonnie died,” Stephanie said, “a long time ago. My father was there… at the sight of the accident. Lonnie didn’t survive.”
“No body was ever found.”
“And you still cling to that fact. Abner, if he were still alive he’d be seventy-six years old. It’s not likely that a man of his age would travel the east coast killing young women.”
“The explosion Lonnie supposedly died in took place at the old mill. I had argued against construction of the facility since it was being built near the ancient caves. I knew what was buried there. I had been one of the four men who took that life. Lonnie, your father and uncle, we all knew the stakes.”
“An oil tank exploded,” Stephanie said, “Lonnie was in the room… probably drunk as usual. Hell, he might have even caused the explosion. One investigator thought so. My father even hinted at the fact once when we were discussing it.”
“Lonnie never recovered from his fears of that February day. He drank more often after… than he had before.”
Stephanie moved into room and took a seat beside the old man. He showed wear from the long trip in the car. “If this is what you think it is Abner, you can’t do it alone. You’re no longer a young man… no longer healthy… and you’ve always told me that this… thing thrives on fear.”
“It thrives on what we suppress,” the old man responded, “and believe me… my soul was bared thirty-eight years ago. I have nothing left to confess, not to God, not to some creature of the devil.”
“But you are alone, Abner… very alone.”
No… it has called others… like it once called me. Somehow I sense it. Those have been called who will struggle to deny their sinfulness… suppress their humanity and give strength to the evil one. I told you once… it’s how it feeds. Deny what lurks deep in your soul… deny that which separates you from holiness and it gains strength. Accept what we are… admit our darkness and this entity can gain no footing in this world.”
“Abner, it has never left.”
***
“I thought those old people were going to die,” Keri said on her way back to the Winnebago. “I wish your dreams were a little more inclusive.”
Noah Cote had already reached his vehicle. James followed the minister with a stare reserved for an enemy. He hadn’t listened to much of Keri’s comment.
“You’re not listening to anything I say,” Keri nagged.
“I’m such a typical guy… aren’t I?” His returned comment brought a smile to her lips. Her tightly clenched fist made gentle contact with his upper arm, ‘a love tap’, the remark nearly passed through his mouth into their shared space. He kept his distance, opting not to flirt, well aware that feelings could easily become blurred by circumstances such as these.
Without explanation James walked away from Keri, leaving her leaning against the driver’s side of the camper. Noah had gotten into his car and started the engine before realizing the man who’d warned him of John Carver’s intent stood along side his vehicle. James tapped on the window and the nervous minister jumped. The window rolled down slowly. Noah had listened to the younger man’s fantasy, of dreams and life saving moments. He needed to get back to his peaceful congregation before delusions took control of his mind as well.
“Who was she?” James asked the reverend once the window stopped its descent.
“Who are you referring to?”
“The blond… the crying woman with the bruised face… the one Carver knew.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Noah said. “John Carver and I knew… of each other during our college years, nothing more.”
“Don’t fool yourself reverend, Carver came here to shoot you because of images I’ve seen from your past. Soon I will put the pieces together… and I will understand. There was no chance involved in your meeting. It was conspired, as was the possibility of your death. Carver had only one real way of finding peace… and he chose it.”
“Are you though?” The angered minister stated to his accuser.
“For now reverend,” James acknowledged, “but I believe we’ll be seeing each other again… soon.”
Chapter 9
Pavement slipped quickly under the wheels of the Winnebago. Keri watched the guard rails pass by as a solid blur through the passenger window. James hadn’t said much since returning from his last conversation with Noah Cote. They would see the minister again, somewhere along this road into hell, she was certain of it.
A little more than twenty-four hours ago this teacher of high school students stepped into the realm of her existence. Everything in her life had changed, like the exploding glass of the drug store’s front window. The protective barrier between her vices and the condemning world shattered. When this task they were compelled to follow through came to completion, where would James Lansing go? Would he return to the life he’d been lured from? Would he leave her standing in some dirty motel room, naked, just as the world had left her so many times?
Where would she go? A new question popped into her mind as she rationalized the necessary end to this adventure. She had not been home since running away at sixteen. Her mother knew she was alive, courtesy of a half dozen phone calls made for the price of a thin dime. Her father, the one whose sperm fertilized the egg she was to become, didn’t deserve knowledge of her life.
“Somewhere between Lake Gorge and Glens Falls,” she stated an almost random thought.
She drew his attention momentarily from the road.
“That’s where we’re headin’… isn’t it?” She asked a question she already knew the answer to. “Her name is Candice Goddard. She’s an actress or somethin’. I’ve seen her in People Magazine. She’s the woman who walks out of the flames. You won’t save her like you did me… but she won’t need saving… not physical anyway. It’s her soul… isn’t it? Candice Goddard is a soul lost.”
“I don’t have any knowledge of lost… souls,” he answered. “I’m simply led… and all I have to do is release myself from my own… self imposed prisons… and follow. A woman walking out of the flames of a nightmare is one more piece to a puzzle I need to solve. You… myself… Noah Cote and this… Candice… and the rest of us… all possess pieces of the same… nightmare. I don’t think any of us can simply turn around and go back to the way things were… ever again.”
“I don’t want to go back to the way things were.” She folded her arms across her chest and turned to look out the windshield
. “The last twenty-four hours have been an adrenaline rush… and I kinda like that.”
They both allowed silence to take seed between them. The lumbering vehicle neared Schenectady and signs for Interstate 87 where beginning to emerge on the road side. They were a little more than an hour from Glens Falls. Sixty minutes from a flaming wreckage of death and a meeting with Candice Goddard. Keri had read a piece recently about the actress. In concluding the article the writer hinted at the shallowness of a good number of celebrities. In a few comments between quotation marks, Candice admitted to her own uncontrollable pride, something she accepted about her personality with a sort of righteousness.
The proud actress would survive a brush with high-way mortality. If Keri closed her eyes she could almost see the flames and feel their heat. The face of pride screamed into the empty void of a world Keri would soon visit.
“She’s an attractive woman,” she said into the silence between them.
“What one is, lies under the skin,” James responded without taking his eyes off the morning traffic heading east to Albany.
“Are you a religious man?” The question seemed to randomly enter her head. She didn’t shun the mental suggestion.
“Somewhat,” he responded.
“I was raised by very religious parents,” she offered, “Baptists. The man who raised me with a firm Christian hand wasn’t my real father. I found that out about five years ago, kinda throws you for a loop. Never met my real old man… might be dead for all I know… might not even know he spawned a daughter. My mother said she didn’t know much about him. My existence comes down to nothing more than a drunken night in a motel room. Hypocrites… ya know.”
“Why hypocritical?”
Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 Page 5