Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 (3 page)

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 senses. 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 18
^th
, 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.

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.

Zak Wells, the director of her break-through
film, good friend and lover, had thrown the party to celebrate
Candice’s thirtieth birthday. The gathering also commemorated her
first leading role, one which came with the complimentary nude
scene, a sign that she had arrived among the elite. The road to
this plateau hadn’t been easy. Five years ago she divorced the love
of her life, after deciding her newfound career outweighed his. She
walked away squeaky clean, while her lawyers made her ex look like
an abusive tyrant. Her newly acquired single status made it
possible for her to sleep her way to the top without being an
unfaithful wife. Sixty-six year old Zachary Wells was the final
stop. The millionaire director, with a full head of gray hair,
became enraptured with her shapely legs and perfectly shaped bosom.
Despite any real acting experience on her part the top billing
landed in her lap.

She didn’t love Zak, not in the way where
she could envision spending her entire life with him. She loved
what he was able to do for her and even though she’d been sleeping
with him for the last four months she hadn’t strayed from the beds
of younger, more durable men.

Candice flowed through the room with a
cocktail in hand and a short, sheer dress, wrapped around her
supple form. Her necklines always sought to expose as much cleavage
as possible and this little pink number stretched her limited
modesty.

Zak was across the room with a few invited
members of the media, discussing the intricacies of certain
characters in her upcoming film. One of the reporters was a good
friend of Candice’s, someone who she once spent an intimate week
with. Of the questions she overheard, one involved the strong
female personality dominating the lead. She gave ownership of the
created role to no one other than herself. Zak named her character,
she gave the heroine life.

She and Zak had a flight scheduled for
tomorrow morning, from LA to the Big Apple with a quick stop in
Chicago. The trip was part of her grand birthday plan. She assumed
a huge diamond would be in store. The rock would burn a hole in
Zachary’s pocket, all the way from California to New York and up to
Lake Placid. He owned a cabin up in the North Country. They spent a
week there, in each other’s embrace, during the first month of
their romance.

At the present moment fatigue began to take
charge of her mood. She suppressed a couple yawns, lest she be
caught on camera and published in a gossip magazine. God knows they
had a field day with her as it was. She figured her weariness came
from knowing how early Zachary Wells liked to rise from sleep
before travel.