Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 (7 page)

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
covering 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.”

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?”

“
Religion was on the
outside,” Keri answered, “not on the inside. My mother and… her
husband spent years demanding that I follow the straight and narrow
path. The same path I always believed they walked. Then… I find out
that Mister and Mrs. Jacobson, upright members of the tiny white
church on a hill, lived nothing but a lie.”

“
I think it’s possible for
people to change,” he stated in a calm manner she’d become
comfortable with. “The Christian thing is all about change… the
change we take on after accepting forgiveness and maybe they really
thought withholding the truth from you was the right thing to
do.”

“
Sometimes that might be
the case,” she responded, “but at other times our sins are too
great… and we don’t deserve being forgiven.”

His head turned to look at his passenger,
taking his eyes off the busy road. The taste of her bitterness over
not being fed accurate facts of her conception clung to the air.
She heard his soliloquy on sin, but listened to nothing about
truth. Her anger, although immature, had a certain sensual appeal
to it.