Soul Hostage Read Online Free Page A

we’ll let you outta the car. Otherwise, jus’ shut the hell up!”
    You would have thought Stoaffer had just been told that his puppy died.   All the energy left his body. His shoulders sagged and his lower lip pushed out.  For a minute, I honestly thought he was going to cry.
    When he made eye contact with me in the rearview mirror, he appeared to get some of his energy back.  “Louis Stoaffer,” he announced to me hopefully
    “Yeah, so I heard.”  I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, but the old guy gave me the creeps. 
    I kept driving north with no destination other than a place that was not here, but it was hard to keep my eyes on the road instead of looking at our strange passenger in the rearview mirror.  The world directly outside the car offered little in the way of distraction.  The dry foothills were covered with dead weeds and scrub oaks with a few bony horses and scrawny cows shuffling through the dust.
    The old man kept his eyes down for maybe thirty seconds before suddenly raising them and smiling energetically again. 
    “Oh, well, never mind.  We will have time to get to know each other later.”  His eyes darted around at Joey and me.  “The important thing is we’re off on a grand adventure now.”
    A grand adventure , the phrase nearly caused me to laugh out loud.  A grand adventure is definitely not what I would call this.
    While I repressed my laughter, Joey made no such attempt, and a roar burst from his chest.  “A grand adventure!” He had to catch his breath before continuing. “Yeah, that’s right!  Here we are startin’ a grand adventure!  Jus’ three guys on a road trip!”  Joey’s explosive laughter echoed throughout the car. 
    The sound did not have the calming, light effect of most laughter. I had seen Joey’s laughter turn to brutality in a heartbeat so many times that it now caused a  sense of dread to grow within me. 
    His body continued to shake with the ripples of giggles and chuckles for what seemed like a long time. 
    Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Whoa, okay now that we had a good laugh, it’s time tuh figger out what we’re gonna do next.” 
    He looked closely at the old man next to him for a moment before saying anything.
    “Well, Lou?” Joey grinned. “Where’re we headed on this grand adventure?”
    The old man didn’t respond instead he was perfectly still just staring straight ahead with a big smile on his face.
    “Hey!” Joey roughly prodded Louis Stoaffer’s shoulder.  “Where’re we gonna make this big score you were talkin’ ‘bout in the store?”
    There was still no response from him for a few seconds.  All of a sudden, the old guy took a huge gasp of air like he had just come from under water or something. He looked around with obvious confusion in his eyes. It was the same kind of look as a drunk waking up in a strange place with no memory of how he got there.  Considering the fact Louis Stoaffer was obviously no stranger to the bottle, such a reaction should not have seemed out of place.  But then again, somehow nothing about the strange old man seemed right.
    In a matter of seconds, he seemed to recover his senses and become comfortable once again.  The old man looked at Joey with a wide grin on his face but said nothing as he popped another peppermint Lifesaver in his mouth.
    Finally, after shaking his head in disbelief, Joey asked with a humorless chuckle, “Well, have you got any idea where we’re goin’, Lou?  Or was the whole story jus’ a buncha bull shit?”
    Stoaffer’s grin grew to the point where it seemed like his face would be torn in two.  His eyes shifted to the rearview mirror to make contact with my own before looking back at Joey. 
    “Don’t worry, my friends.”  Something about the way he said friends and smiled made the back of my neck tingle.  “You just need a little faith.”
    Like I said before, I had known Joey for a long time and seen him react to situations in some