Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 Read Online Free

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