Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 (6 page)

“
What do you want from
me?” Noah asked. “I don’t have money… I have very few
possessions…”

“
I want nothing from you!”
John Carver turned to face the minister. His eyes darkened with an
unquenched hatred. “Penance Noah… you need to offer penance for
your sins… and though they may not be many… they are
great.”

***

“
So what happens now?”
Keri asked.

“
We wait… and watch… the
dream will soon take shape.”

She nibbled on the corner of an English
muffin while staring down her breakfast partner. “Are you gonna
fill me in or am I gonna have t’ figure it out on my own?”

His attention was focused on the two men at
the counter and not the curly haired blond sharing his table. “The
two men at the counter… they are the subjects of the latest dream.
The second one to walk in holds a vendetta against the other.”

“
Go on,” she said after he
paused.

“
You have a role to play
here,” he continued, “You must remain safe when the time comes to
act.” He touched her hand on top of the table. “Careful of your
reaction to what I’m going to say next.” She nodded her head as if
she understood, she didn’t. “The second man is concealing a small
caliber weapon.”

She looked over her shoulder at the ongoing
conversation at the counter. “I’m good,” she commented.

“
Knew you would
be.”

She took another small bite from her muffin.
“What about them?” She tipped her head back toward the elderly
couple who were involved in two rather large omelets.

“
Don’t know. They’re in
the dreams peripheral. The one man who the dream has called me… us
to protect will be shot in the next few minutes… after leaving the
restroom. I have witnessed the second man committing suicide after
the shooting, but…”

“
I know,” she said, “like
the woman with the red hair. His life is not on the menu to be
saved.”

“
The one who followed us
in… he will go to the men’s room at the rear of the diner.” He
watched Keri’s eyes glance over his shoulder toward the hallway and
the small sign with ‘Restrooms’ printed in black on a faded white
background. “I will follow him… he needs to be warned. In the
dreams… he is shot in the doorway… every time.” James Lansing, the
high school English teacher, looked directly into her blue eyes.
There was no questioning the sincerity in his voice. “You need to
stay safe when the shots are fired.”

“
Do you care that deeply?”
She teased as her foot, minus a sneaker rubbed his leg beneath the
table.

***

It happened, just as he’d said it had in the
dreams. The man who had entered the diner behind the two of them
got up from the counter and headed toward the hall where both
restrooms were located. Keri took note of the patch of thinning
hair on the top of the man’s head and estimated his age to be just
past forty.

James followed just as he said he would and
suddenly she was very aware of the other man and his concealed gun.
She didn’t want to be noticed. Instead she wished to seep into the
background, to be a witness to the nightmare about to unfold and
not an active participant. She scratched the inner part of her leg,
where the scar branded her. The vile mark on her flesh always
itched when she felt nervous.

She looked toward the counter, wishing she
hadn’t. The guy concealing the gun caught her glance and like a
deer frozen in the beam of headlights she couldn’t look away. His
face was streaked with tormented wear. He wore a week’s stubble and
weary unseeing eyes. Her slender form was in his field of vision,
but not in his sight. His tortured mind lived in some realm beyond
the tiny Restaurant in New York State.

She watched him survey the empty tables and
booths. He studied the old couple and in a nostalgic manner smiled
almost knowingly. Finally he turned back to her and with eyes no
longer glossy he nodded his head in acknowledgement of her
presence.

When, and she still hoped if, the shooting
started would the elderly man and woman be able to find safety. For
some strange reason the thought of a stray or intentional bullet
finding one of the old people bothered her more than the thought of
her own peril. They were as oblivious to the present threat as they
were to most of the world’s evils.

She felt time slow itself to a labored
crawl. The man looked away from her and toward the hallway where
the restrooms loomed. His hand reached inside his sports coat and
for the moment Keri’s concentration centered on the tweed garment,
the way it bunched against his hip when pushed aside to make way
for the weapon. She caught a glimpse of the white handle sticking
out from the front of his waistband. His right hand embraced it,
sensuously, as if he were handling a lover’s supple breast.

The men’s room door opened and closed.

***

“
Reverend
Cote?”

The minister was washing his hands at the
sink when the stranger addressed him. He lathered his hands as if
with every cleansing a little more sin washed away.

“
You are… Noah Cote… are
you not?” The voice of the stranger asked again.

“
Have we met before?” Noah
tossed out a tentative question to the reflection in the
mirror.

“
In a way yes… but you
wouldn’t recall.”

Noah studied the man behind him through the
mirrored image. Confusion crept into his mind. He wondered if the
man he’d watched enter the restaurant with the curly haired blond
was in league with John Carver.

“
Do you know the man at
the counter?” James Lansing asked the minister. The thinning area
on the top of Noah Cote’s head seemed to lose even more hair
beneath the overhead lights of the men’s room.

“
College friend,” Noah
answered without taking his eyes off the mirror. “Why do you ask?”
It was time for the minister to offer his query. He felt a bead of
sweat build up on his forehead. In recent years he had become more
aware of his nervousness.

“
He is a man bent on
revenge.”

“
Revenge!” Noah burst out
after a pause which made his single word exclamation seem false.
“And how would you know such a thing?”

“
When you step through the
door,” The stranger in the mirror instructed, “make sure you
immediately make eye contact with your… friend at the counter.
Watch his every movement. Allowing yourself to focus anywhere else
will be fatal. When he draws his weapon you’ll be too startled to
react. Know this, John Carver is armed and intends to take your
life as payment for some past transgression.”

“
You’re nuts,” Noah
allowed the statement to flow across his lips before deciding if
this stranger behind him presented any degree of danger, an
emotional response, something he was often prone to.

“
I’ve been accused of
worse.”

James Lansing moved to the sink beside the
one Noah used. “My name is James,” the stranger commented while
offering his hand. Noah didn’t except the open palm of friendship.
The refused hand cupped beneath the soap dispenser. “Do you
sometimes wish sin could be washed away as easily as dirt can be
washed from your hands?” The stranger had no reason to wash his
hands and Noah wasn’t certain if he could answer the question.

“
Only God can do that,”
the minister responded.

“
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.

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.