

Dark Places of the Soul

(Dark Soul Trilogy – Book 1)

Paul J Donaldson

## Dark Places of the Soul

by Paul J Donaldson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2005 Paul J Donaldson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

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# Chapter 1

February 1946

"Do ya hear any more of 'em awful screams?" The question reverberated into the silence of the dark February night.

The query went unanswered.

"Was horrid," another voice plainly stated with a cloud of breath being released into the cold air.

"Abner," a third voice spoke harshly, "do ya think it's dead?"

Abner Hollis, six foot three and so thin his sports coat hung from his shoulders as if it hung from a clothes hanger, stooped down to peer into the deep hole in the earth, his jet-black hair in disarray from the recent struggle. "It was an awful sound wasn't it?" The question didn't really need asking. All four of the men standing by the open wound in the earth heard the inhuman cry, the voice of something ungodly, an injured, crying animal, cast to the deep darkness looming at the bottom of the pit.

"I don't hear nothin' no more," Caleb Hawkins said. He'd been the first voice to speak once silence had re-conquered the moment of screams, as they would come to think of the instant prior to the quiet they now conversed in.

"The true nature of the dark soul has been shown to you," Abner said, standing up straight to let his tall frame tower over the other men. He ran a long fingered hand through his hair in an attempt to comb it back into place. "Had it been a man it would not have uttered such an unearthly cry."

"We should close the earth." The suggestion came from the youngest of the group, Randall Hawkins, Caleb's younger brother. Randall had recently returned from Europe with a Purple Heart for having taken a bullet in his right leg and being lucky enough not to lose the limb. He learned all about explosives during his tour overseas, thanks to the Federal Government, and this expertise was the main reason Abner suggested to Caleb they bring the war hero along.

Randall knew his task, closing the earthen tomb on something so hideous it couldn't be described.

A man, but not a man.

A demon, but not a demon.

"The earth was opened from below," Abner responded, "we must seal the way up from the world of the damned." Abner Hollis picked up what remained of the solid gold crucifix he'd stolen from Saint Augustine's Roman Catholic Church. It, the thing they'd last heard screaming in the depths of the pit, had broken it in half, laughing at the four men in audience with a voice possessing very little human quality. Abner used the upper half of the cross like a stake, driving the body of the murdered savior into the thing's heart. He nearly joined the demon in the pit, were it not for Caleb grabbing hold of him and keeping him in the world of the living.

"I sure hope we did the right thing." This voice belonged to Lonnie Wilkerson. At thirty-eight he was two years older than Abner, but Lonnie had never been much of a leader, just the follower who continually asked questions of those in authority. Lonnie Wilkerson was also the town's most infamous drunkard, beaten out of life by a bottle.

"You saw what it was capable of doin'. You all bore witness to its unholy crimes." Abner Hollis threw a large stone into the hole before him.

"Nothin' we do is gonna bring Lilly back," Caleb said quietly to the man who had become the groups leader.

"It wasn't human," Abner insisted, "it took not only the flesh that was Lilly Carpenter, but also her soul. The Lord has said it must be destroyed and only through its destruction can Lilly find peace. You, of all people must place some value on her eternal peace."

Caleb bowed his head, unable to look Abner Hollis in the eye. Lilly, sweet Lilly, only twenty the day the thing, which now lay dead in the earth, came for her. Her love belonged to Caleb and had for nearly two years. He had hoped to soon ask old man Carpenter for Lilly's hand in Holy Matrimony.

Abner Hollis had arrived in town three days after Lilly's body had been placed in the grave. The self-proclaimed minister drew Caleb (who still doubted Lilly's virtue), Randall (a reluctant hero) and Lonnie (a lost abusive soul) to him, like a messiah calling his apostles. He sought to make the town see the demon, not the man who had raped and murdered Lilly Carpenter, but the evil spirit drawn into their small village to steer its inhabitants from righteousness. The town-folk claimed Lilly had been quite willing to except the advances of the stranger. The same stranger Abner insisted was in league with Satan. The naïve community showed an eagerness to hear the tall tale of an accidental death after a willing moment of passionate lust.

Lonnie pulled a bottle from the side pocket of his pants and took a long swig of the addictive contents.

"Put that away," Abner demanded of a man struggling with his weakness.

Don't cha wanna take the second chance we bin offered?" Caleb said as he joined in confronting the man known as the town's lush. "We all bin given a new opportunity t' change what we are. Yours needs to begin here." Caleb grabbed the bottle from the startled hand of Lonnie Wilkerson and proceeded to pour the liquid contents on the ground.

"Don't you have any doubts about what we did?" A defeated alcoholic asked. "I know you doubted Lilly."

Caleb's fist squarely caught the jaw of Lonnie Wilkerson and if Randall hadn't moved quickly the older of the two Hawkins brothers would have pinned his fallen victim to the frozen earth.

"You have no idea 'bout what I feel when it comes t' Lilly," Caleb blurted out as he shook off his brother. "Don't cha dare judge me ya worthless drunk."

"None of this is important now." The voice of Abner Hollis sharply cut through the disagreement.

Randall kicked the empty bottle of whiskey to one side. He offered an extended arm to help the older man up from the ground as his brother turned away from the altercation. Accepting Randall's gesture, Lonnie got to his feet, brushing imaginary dirt from his clothing and attempted to restore his pitiful pride.

A sharp breath of the winter's night slipped through the somber group. Abner rubbed the palms of his hands together trying to generate warmth. He turned away from the yawning mouth of stone, now the tomb of a demon. "Now we must close this gateway to hell and make certain it is never opened again."

# Chapter 2

July 1984

Three days had passed since a razor last touched his face. A wrinkled sports shirt and a pair of faded jeans looked as if they might have been slept in the previous night. He leaned against the coarse brick on the alley side of the small town pharmacy. The establishment's name failed to register in his mind. It was ten minutes after seven and the morning offered barely any life on the main street. Those few who passed by the shadow he inhabited failed to glance upon his face.

Colonial Street, like a black river dancing in the heat of a new day, lying between his position and the tiny diner he'd been led to. A blue Ford Fairmont moved up the road, heading south, out of town. Two young girls occupied the auto's interior; the brunette in the passenger's seat looked toward the alley, into the mouth of ungodliness, seeing only what she believed to be a vagrant, a homeless soul. He watched the vehicle until three blocks of concrete and brick structures filled the void between him and them. He was inclined to leave, to go back to the life lost somewhere in the past, a time before the repetitious dream began to control his life.

Five feet, eight inches, he registered her approximate height. Shoulder length blond hair with a tight spiraling curl. Her mane framed a tired face, worn out by a life she struggled to survive. She was on time, just as she was in last night's dream and all the dreams before. The same garments adorned her willowy form; tight jeans with well worn holes on both knees and a light blue blouse unbuttoned one button below what might be considered conservative.

She entered the diner and he chose to wait a few moments before proceeding down the course he knew he must follow. He pushed his tired body from against the brick, stone which would soon be broken, but for now it had allowed him the luxury of leaning against its strength. He stepped into the street going unnoticed by a motorist in a white Toyota pickup. Another patron entered the tiny restaurant before him, a balding man in his sixties. This individual had never been a part of the dream and so he knew the balding man was unimportant.

She sat at the counter. He noticed that her jeans appeared to have been tumbled dried without previously finding their way into a washer. Her blouse was clean, as always. He took a seat on a stool, leaving a vacant seat between them. Quickly she glanced toward him and offered a smile, mass-produced for men. Her eyes were blue; a strange sort of paleness tinted them. He had been able to piece together a complete description of her from the repetitious dream, the shade of her eyes, the texture of her skin around her neck, the fact that she had chosen to ban her bra. All this he could never have gathered from one brief encounter, but this particular moment had been a dwelling of his many times in nightmares.

She ordered a glass of Orange Juice and an English muffin from a waitress who wore a name tag displaying her name as Joyce. The waitress was robust, in her forties with short black hair which resembled a curly mass of twisted barbed wire. Joyce poured the juice and set it in front of the girl before asking him what he would like to order. He would decide on two eggs scrambled with home fries, wheat toast, and of course a coffee. Why change a good thing since this had sat on his plate every night in his world of sleepless sleep.

A newspaper rested on the counter between him and the girl. A brown coffee ring decorated the front page, it was folded in quarters. When he reached for it, interested only in the sports section, he knew they'd make eye contact. This time the meeting between her blue eyes and his would be longer lasting. The smile would be more real. She would want the front section of the paper and he gladly shared.

He made his move in synch with his coffee being set in front of him. His fingers raked the newsprint as he looked away. Her fingers gently touched his. A moment of embarrassment hung lightly in the air between them and as in the dream his blues were drawn to hers.

"Cream and sugar," the waitress interrupted. He was expecting her intrusion, she never failed, but still he was startled by the effort to pull him away from that which he had chosen to cast his gaze upon.

"Both," he responded. "And thank you." He was always polite.

"I was going to just take a glance at the front section." The feminine voice touched the morning like a soft whispery veil.

He acted out the role of being embarrassed like a skilled performer on stage. "I'm sorry... go ahead... I don't mind."

She pulled the front section free from the other three sections of the paper. Two of the sections fell to the floor. They both reached for it and he braced for the collision of foreheads which always followed.

She sat back on the stool and rubbed the front of her head, laughing. He had taken the sports section of the daily news and left the balance of the paper on the seat dividing her realm from his.

"My name is James," he offered as she finished wiping a few tears of laughter away from her eyes.

"Keri," she stated in a voice with breezy edges.

"You do breakfast here often?"

"No... job huntin' t'day... gonna try an see what's up at the drug store across the street."

"Could apply t' work here."

"Never waited tables... but it would be a possibility... tips are normally pretty good."

"See there Joyce," he said to the waitress, "got you some counter help in training."

"Sorry, not lookin' t' bring in any new help right now hon, but ya leave yer name and number where ya c'n be reached and I'll put ya on th' list." Joyce placed a small saucer with a buttered English muffin in front of Keri. The plate with eggs, home fries and toast was for James.

He opened the section of paper he'd taken. Glancing over to Keri he caught her sneaking a quick look in his direction. She giggled, giving him the impression he was living through a sort of teen aged ritual performed by a girl in her early twenties. His vision turned back to the paper before him, Baseball standings. Detroit was holding their lead in the American League East. It didn't seem as if anyone could catch them after their 35-5 start. He neatly folded the paper back as he had found it, minus the section Keri was still buried in.

"It doesn't look like you're spendin' your time in the classifieds," he commented.

She took a bite of her muffin and wrinkled her nose at him. "Priorities... ya know... the worldly news 'n stuff like that."

"Me... I'm totally into sports and the funnies section. That stuff about the Middle East drives me absolutely nuts."

"Can I ask you somethin'?" She took another bite of muffin as she asked.

He simply nodded his approval at her efforts to pry into his personal life.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I teach," he offered as an answer to her query, "and nothing t' do with current events."

Her returned expression was laced with multiple layers of doubt.

"Seriously," he said over the rim of his coffee cup, "I teach a course in creative writing at a local high school and a couple plain old English courses just for good measure."

"I guess you could pass for an English teacher... although every male teacher I ever had was much older than you and either bald or completely gray."

"I'll take all that as a compliment... that I'm not bald or gray." He took another sip of his hot coffee before continuing. "Guess I could use a shave and a clean shirt. I'm kinda takin' the summer hiatus bit a little far."

"You also seem a little... youthful t' have me absolutely convinced."

"Four years at a state college... four more taking evening classes for my masters, mind you of course that is after spending the day trying to control some very unruly high schoolers and here I am, twenty-seven and half way t' tenure."

He took a final swallow of his coffee and nodded when the waitress offered a refill. Keri looked over her shoulder at the front door of the drug store, checking to see if the closed sign was flipped over to reveal the store's opening.

"When did you know what you wanted t' do with your life?" The question was tossed out into the bacon aroma air.

"Still not certain," he paused for a moment to think over his next few words. "I love what I do, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I wonder if it's what I'm suppose t' be doing... in the grand order of things."

"Told you ya don't look like a teacher... philosopher maybe... High School English... I don't think so."

"You still in school?"

"Not for me... barely made it through high school."

"Did you ever have anything that you really wanted to do? A dream... a special dream... the kind of thing you always knew was far fetched, but it still filled your mind?"

She looked over her shoulder again, through the front window of the restaurant, while finishing what remained of her Orange Juice. "When I was younger I was intrigued with painting. I wanted t' sit at my easel all day and paint beautiful mountains and sunsets. I use t' go and set up in a field and paint flowers, water color or oil, it didn't matter. I wasted a lot of time."

"Wasted?"

"My mother didn't see the value of any type of art. She was always tryin' to protect me from becoming just like her... lazy, a dreamer lookin' for a man to pull her through life. If I had danced she would have told me I was wasting my time. If I sang she'd have said the same. Lucky me, I liked t' paint and so she told me... right to my face that I was wasting my time."

"What about your father? Did he think your painting was worthwhile?"

"Don't know," she answered as she did the over her shoulder thing again. "Don't know who he is... never met him."

"Sorry... I didn't mean to pry into something that's obviously none of my business."

"It's alright. My mother use t' say I was better off not knowing him."

The waitress placed a check in front of both customers. He laid a twenty on top of the green and white slip.

"Charge hers to mine and keep the change," he said quickly as he got up from the stool.

"And what do I owe you if I let you pay for my breakfast?" The comment came across in a cynical manner.

"Nothing," he stated quite plainly.

She spun on her stool, one knee completely exposed through her torn jeans. Her skeptical expression softened and the edges of a smile touch the corners of her lips.

"Thank you," her appreciative response was barely audible.

They walked to the glass door together and like the gentleman he always sought to be, he held the exit opened as she passed. The displayed time outside the local bank down the street read three minutes after eight. Across the street at the drug store someone had flipped the sign in the door over to 'open'. Keri stood on the curb, preparing to take the first step onto the black river dissecting the two rows of brick and concrete buildings.

"Good luck," he said, following her into the street, "with the job hunting." He pointed to the drug store on the opposite shore as his long stride took him beside her.

"Are you following me?" She asked in a teasing manner she tried not to hide.

A woman in her thirties with red hair darted from a parked car and ran into the drug store. It was four minutes after eight and the temperature flashed seventy-nine on the clock out front of the bank. He heard the bell above the drug store's glass door ring as it closed behind the woman. The menacing time was about to announce itself and as Keri attempted to step up from the street onto the sidewalk he grabbed her arm, just above the elbow, and pulled her to him. He spun her back into the street and in one fluid motion pushed her beside the red haired woman's car, shielding her with his own form against what he knew would occur.

***

The first sound she became aware of was shattering glass. The explosion hadn't quite reached her eardrums, but when it did it was deafening. She was safe from the blast. A dark green Ford Thunderbird occupied a space between her and the destruction. The man from the restaurant was against her back and she heard a panicked scream of someone in pain.

"Are you alright?" His breath blew against her ear. It was not unpleasant, funny she should think that way at this moment.

"My God, what happened?" It wasn't like her to ask questions of the Almighty, especially since she was unsure of His existence and felt quite certain that she was despised by any and all Holy beings.

"Explosion... the drug store."

"I don't believe it... another couple seconds... Holy shit... I'da been in there when it blew."

She was on her knees beside the red haired woman's car. Her protector still had a firm grip on her shoulders. Initially an eerie silence floated over the broken glass of shattered windows and crumbled stone. The onlookers hadn't arrived yet and no emergency sirens announced their response to the disaster.

He stood up at the front of the car, gazing into the smoke filled hole of destruction. Keri gradually braved the sight, moving to his side. Cries of the victims, the woman with red hair and the clerk at the counter, diminished into the momentary silence. She saw a crumpled body, once belonging to the spirit of an unlucky individual.

A middle-aged man in a gray suit stepped over the rubble of the broken storefront. He turned back to the street, toward two associates and shook his head with doubt.

"Alive?" She didn't realize her lips had even asked the question.

"Don't believe so," her savior responded.

"You saved my life."

The English teacher named James didn't react to her admission. She watched him as his head turned up the street, toward the Northern end of town, as if waiting. The sirens announced the first response team. A red fire truck with its entourage of volunteers commandeered the street. Squad cars from the local police department could be heard a few blocks away.

"There's nothing we can do here," he commented without turning his gaze to the girl he'd just saved. He placed a hand to her back to lead her from the scene. "We should move on before two many questions are asked."

"I don't understand, what would they ask us?" Her question didn't stop her from allowing herself to be led away by the English teacher named James.

The first of what would be three police cars pulled up against the sidewalk. The two officers quickly move toward the chaotic aftermath of the explosion. Keri glanced at them, still following the lead of her knight in rumpled clothing.

"Where are you staying?" She asked, not certain why.

He turned back, looking at her with his intense pair of blue eyes before answering in an almost biblical manner. "Come and see."

***

Abner Hollis sat at an empty table, leaning the forearms of his bent frame on the scarred wooden top. He was nearly eighty and knew that an eighty-first birthday was probably not dealt in his deck of cards. Yesterday his doctors released him from St Vincent's hospital. He had a preference to die of old age at home.

He unfolded the morning's paper. The news of a large eastern city, distant from his Midwestern town in more ways than one, was notated in capital letters beneath the headline of an Associated Press article. 'Boston socialite murdered, fiancé held as suspect.' Abner Hollis felt a chill in his spine originating from a time before the existence of his ancient bones. Three times in the last month, murders on the east coast had caught his attention and caused his blood to freeze in his veins. Abner's failing heart wasn't going to take much more of this.

He got up from the table, slowly. His efforts to move were always stiff after prolonged periods of sitting. He took the wooden cane, from where he had hooked it, off the back of his chair and made his way from the kitchen to the living room. He sat in an oversized recliner. Beside the large chair a small round table took up space, ornamented by a simple black telephone. He spun the rotary dial with a crooked finger. Seven digits memorized by his still sharp mind. The voice answering on the other end of the wire met his expectation.

"Hello..."

"Abner," a female voice cut him off."

"I need to go east... Boston, Massachusetts."

"Do you think that's wise? You're not well."

"I am..." He coughed abruptly, something he'd grown used to. "I am in need of your help. Your father would have seen to it."

The other end of the phone became overcome by silence. Abner listened to the lack of sound as if a favorite recording was offering its most sensuous notes.

The female voice broke into the quiet. "When?"

# Chapter 3

The church wearing layers of white paint sat proudly on a hill just east of the New York border. The steeple overlooked Vermont's Green Mountains and the valleys between. The most recent coat of paint was faded and cracked having last been washed with a new layer more than ten years ago. The bell in the pointed tower, reaching toward heaven, occasionally chimed, but never at the appropriate time.

Once the denomination worshipping behind these walls labeled itself Baptist, later the structure spent a decade empty. The congregation gathering a short drive west of Arlington identified with no particular dogmatic faith, other than to say they were Christian. Their plan to revitalize the old timbers and cinder blocks flourished with the gift of abundant spirit.

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 18th, 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.

# Chapter 4

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.

"Candice, Candice, Candice," the voice made her cringe, "been too long darlin' since I last cast these ol' eyes on you."

In fact less than a month had passed since their last run in, but she knew the person interrupting her focus didn't really have much of a life. Indeed, to Conrad Kaminisky three weeks must seem like an eternity. "Conrad, it's good to see you," she lied and forced herself to give the old man a hug.

"What on earth have you done to my friend Zak?" Conrad asked, trying his best to perform a demure role. "Must be love," he answered himself, "the glaze over the old coot's eyes give it away. You got 'im... hook, line and sinker."

Across the room Zachary moved from the reporter to a place of momentary solitude. Their eyes met and it was enough for Candice to make an excuse to leave the tiny corner in the room Conrad occupied. She floated across the expanse to the man with the gray hair; the one she knew secretly concealed a ring with a diamond which would contrast nicely with her eyes.

"Zak... the party is wonderful... thank you."

He addressed her insincerity with an unemotional kiss on the cheek.

"Our flight is early," she reminded him.

"Why don't you go upstairs and get your beauty sleep and I'll see to getting our guests on their way."

She knew that type of suggestion from him meant he'd be to bed in about two or three hours. Zachary Wells was not one to end a party before two o'clock in the morning and it was now less than five minutes before midnight.

***

Keri woke with the sound of a distant alarm clock. The irritating intrusion on her sleep abruptly came to a halt once her eyes were opened to the gray dawn. She rolled onto her back and sat up on the firm mattress. Her jeans and blouse were crumpled on the floor. Her sneakers were nowhere in sight. All she wore were the same white panties she'd had on for days; such was the life a newly ordained homeless person. Surprisingly she didn't feel dirty; maybe she had become used to her own filth.

Across the foot of the bed she saw a shirt. It was one of his, James Lansing. She wouldn't forget that name or face, his actions had left a mark on her life. She reached for the shirt and found it had long sleeves with buttons up the front. The garment seemed familiar, like something she'd once worn in a similar situation. She sniffed it, burying her nose in the fabric, it smelled clean.

What do you owe someone for saving your life, and then gives you a place to sleep, in his bed, without questions asked? The question danced through her head while she threw his shirt over her shoulders. It had a checked pattern of blues and grays. Maybe he had the funds available to allow her to purchase new clothing, if nothing else fresh panties were becoming a necessity. A little change and a couple singles still lined the pockets of her jeans. It was all she had to her name. This morning's breakfast had drained most of her cash.

She left her jeans on the floor, deciding the oversized shirt hid enough, and stepped out of the bedroom. Her senses were immediately greeted by the aroma of morning coffee. Some pleasures bring joy to your senses despite poverty. Caffeine hadn't found its way into her system in three days, having decided on the cold glass of Orange Juice instead of the eye opener yesterday morning. The muffin, she tried to eat slowly, as if that would have made it last in her digestive tract, had been her only solid food in the past day and a half. Her stomach seemed beyond hunger pains.

He stood at the tiny excuse for a kitchen counter fixing a cup of coffee. He met her eyes which she figured had lost all their vitality.

"Coffee?" He asked.

She nodded, as if words weren't awake in her brain yet.

"Shirt looks nice on you," he commented as he walked back to the front of the camper. His vehicle sat on the side of the road. A sign she could read through the front window said something about a KOA campground. The front gate was closed.

"Got here a few hours ago," he said, when he noticed where her attention focused. "This place wasn't open yet. We still have a three and a half hour drive to Richfield Springs. It's not worth pullin' into a site."

"Did you get any sleep?" She asked.

"Few hours," he responded as he sat in the driver's side Captain's Chair.

Keri poured a cup of hot black liquid and took a satisfying gulp. She sat in the passenger's seat, folding her bare legs up beneath her. "It's a scar from a childhood accident," she said when she caught him looking at the ugly reminder running from the inside of her knee cap halfway down her calf. "Right down to the bone," she added in case he needed a more detailed description.

In silence he sampled his coffee while she cradled her warm mug between the palms of her hands.

"We goin' to Richfield Springs t' chase another dream?" She asked into a moment becoming too quiet for comfort.

He nodded his head. "There's a small restaurant on the main strip. I expect the meeting to take place there."

"I guess you got somethin' for dreaming about restaurants." She smiled with the comment. "I should hope this one doesn't involve another damsel in distress."

"Quite the little wise ass... aren't you?"

The comeback might have shocked her if it wasn't accompanied by a rather attractive smile on his part. She took no offence and quickly kidded back, "Been checkin' out my butt?"

His sly expression told her he had. She hoped he'd found the view enjoyable.

"How many times did you have the dream about me?" She asked.

"Often, kinda like a re-run of Gilligan's Island."

Her eyes might have doubled in size, if it were possible. She heard his response in her head as if it were an old recording. "I knew... you were going to say that," she spurted out. "Actually," she paused momentarily as she tried to decide how crazy her next statement was going to sound, "I've been feeling kinda... like I've been here before, sleepin' in the bed, walkin' down the hall back there." She turned in her seat, pointing out the direction she spoke of.

He made no comment to address the possible revelation she had just provided.

Her mind changed gears with relative ease. "Do you suppose there's a place around where I could wash my clothing?"

"We don't have time for that right now. We're three and a half hours from our next destination."

"I've been wearin' the same clothes for a couple days."

"When we reach Richfield Springs we should be able to find a store somewhere, after our task is finished."

"Can I at least shower?" She asked the question after finishing her coffee.

He held up his mug. "I'm going to have a refill. Think that'll give you enough time?"

***

Sleep hadn't come easy. Zak had come to bed sooner than expected, but Candice wrestled with an overactive mind. When she had finally given way to slumber she dreamed. Unsettling images floated through her brain. If Zak hadn't been so deep in his own realm of slumber he would have been aware of her increased breathing and restless movements. When she finally opened her eyes to break the spell, she felt her heart racing in her chest. Dawn graced the outside world, as it had three times past when she finally managed to escape from the reoccurring dream.

She watched Zak die, trapped in the flaming cockpit of a car, a vehicle different from any of the four sitting out in his garage, gray and boxy. Three nights recently this vision had interrupted her sleep. This latest segment added a shimmering black pin striped highway, viewed through the heat of the flames. A young couple approached. She could recall their faces clearly and realized they had starring roles in the other dreams on other nights. They beckoned to her, telling her to abandon efforts to save the future husband she didn't love. The girl with curly blond hair pleaded for her to move away from the wreckage.

The couple moved dangerously close to the fire. Their faces blurred like melting wax. The landscape was unfamiliar and for the first time she noticed another car, crushed hood to hood against the one she had been a passenger in.

The imagery seemed to have more clarity than any dream she'd ever had before and as she rolled out of bed she recalled the scene that shocked her back to reality, Zak bursting into flame, absorbed into hell.

# Chapter 5

The shower stopped just short of draining the fresh water storage tank. Keri performed as a closet singer, belting out a few tuneless pop songs while the water made an attempt to drown her out. James Lansing smiled with warmth he hadn't been able to cherish in the last few days.

The choruses of 'Fire and Rain' and a few other mellow favorites came to a halt with the water's flow. James continued working on his second cup of coffee as Keri made an exit from the bathroom. He resisted a temptation to turn in his seat and make a comment about her rock star status.

She flopped in the passenger seat, again folding her legs beneath her before drawing his attention. A drowned rat, her curly blond hair clung against her forehead as she dried the back of her head with a stolen motel towel.

"So was it a nice motel or a cockroach infested dive." She held the towel toward him to illustrate the reason for her question.

"Came with the camper," he responded, "and I see that you've commandeered another of my favorite shirts."

"Don't strain your eyes... it's all I have on," she shot back in a teasing manner. "No friggin' way I'm puttin' dirty clothing against clean skin... especially used panties."

James noticed the pile of clothing on the floor behind her seat. Her white panties were laid across the top.

"I'm keeping my eyes to myself."

"Too bad," she commented, her blue eyes looking through damp bangs.

There was a noticeable chemistry between them. James Lansing had always considered himself dense when it came to women and a few had chosen to remind him of the flaw. Doubts about his ability to interact with the fairer sex seemed to always end up plaguing his relationships. A heart filled with erotic lust kept him continually weaving though relationships with women out of his league.

His last romantic liaison had gone nowhere as far as he was concerned, and everywhere as far as his co-worker, a divorced English teacher, thought. His lustful desire for her brought them a couple intense evenings at her place. His jealousy about her continued relationship with the man she'd been married to reminded him of just how thick-headed he was.

He started the vehicle after placing his empty coffee mug in the recessed portion of the center console. His eyes took one more trail across the girl next to him. The scarred knee caught his attention again, she didn't seem to notice.

"So tell me about the accident," he said while glancing out the side of the Winnebago for any oncoming traffic.

"This one?" She stretched her leg out over the console and playing her toes against his arm. He looked, not certain if he should, especially since her panties topped the pile of dirty clothes destined for a Laundromat.

"Yeah," he said as he took inventory of five toes and nicely shaped leg. "Musta been a nasty accident." His shirt on her body was dangerously close to revealing things private.

She stroked the lingering reminder of a foolish venture from her high school years. "Motorcycle," she said, "playin' around with a boy friend's bike... dumped it in a field and received quite a few stitches from a broken piece of rusted metal."

"You got lucky."

"Sucks!"

Her comment drew his quick reaction.

"It's lookin' better now," she responded to his expression, "but when it first happened I wouldn't dream of wearin' a skirt."

"And would you wear one today?"

"Don't own one t'day... that pile of dirty laundry is all I have to my name."

"That," he said, taking notice of how many buttons were unfastened on the garment she wore, "and the shirt you stole from me."

***

Stephanie Hawkins came into the world in 1954; eight years after her father, uncle and two other men took a life on a cold February night. Abner Hollis came into her life not long before her father's death. The tall man had always been frail to her perception, bent and crooked, sitting on the doorstep of the next life. Her father and uncle never spoke about the night in '46, but Abner seemed to feel Stephanie needed to be apprized of the whole episode. She had no doubt that the four men eliminated an evil on the cold unforgiving night. Were they vigilantes? Stephanie never took time to rationalize the situation the four men had placed themselves in.

She took care of Abner, the old man her father seemed indebted to. At thirty years old she viewed her father as heroic, though this image of him came after his death. He achieved hero status not only for the actions having taken place that February night thirty-eight years ago, but for the entire life spent concealing secrets too dangerous for the world to grasp.

It wasn't a good idea, for Abner to go to Boston. The man, despite his age and nearness to death, couldn't be argued with. Maybe, Stephanie thought, living on death's doorstep made every action taken so much more urgent.

Abner stood waiting outside his place when she pulled up in her brand new Pontiac. The white Firebird caught her eye the moment she first saw it on the dealer's lot. Abner told her such an expensive vehicle

was a waste of hard earned money.

"I still don't think this is a good idea," she said as he buckled himself into the front seat.

"What isn't... my going to Boston or the fact that I'm a passenger in this death machine?"

"The doctors..."

"Doctors be damned," he curtly interrupted her voiced concern, "I have more important things to attend to then worryin' about whether or not I live a few more days past the medical profession's appointed doomsday."

'Just thought I'd let you know I'm concerned."

"He looked at her over the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "What we did in '46..."

"Removed something evil from this world."

"It wasn't human."

"I believe you," Stephanie said, "I always have."

***

Abner took a long look at the girl in the driver's seat. They were a half hour on the road and she'd said very little after he'd gotten in the car and rewarded her concerned words with a harsh comeback. She reminded him of Randall, her father. Stephanie Hawkins, a rather attractive woman who never married, although she did shack up with a guy for four years after college, much to her father's contempt.

There was an abundance of physical attraction in the seat next to him. Stephanie had short black hair and porcelain skin. Her blue eyes were mesmerizing. Abner figured a young man would be fortunate if he took the time to break down the barriers Stephanie Hawkins wore like armor.

He rested his head back against the seat. The ride was smooth, although comfort in a moving car escaped his ancient bones years ago. He prayed for success. The man who turned others toward the savior he believed in failed. He and his three chosen soldiers for good failed when they most needed to succeed.

"Stephanie," he said without opening his eyes, "there are things in the world we don't understand. Some think they do... they are only fools." He turned his head toward her and studied her fine complexion of youth. "Your father stood up proud, in a moment when life and death mattered, but I think we failed."

"How... how do you sense failure? Nothing has changed. The world is still pretty much the same as it always was."

"The evil thing breathes."

"Satan is not ours to defeat," she returned. "You've preached that from pulpits in the past. He is ours to reject... but we can not defeat him."

"The thing we fought is not Satan. If it were, I'd let God take me home as a loyal servant. This thing... some say it is nothing more than a man... but I know that it is spiritually evil."

"...And my father," Stephanie continued for Abner. "He and his brother both believed you."

"As did Lonnie Wilkerson," he responded.

Abner Hollis added nothing else to their conversation. He closed his eyes again and his gentle snoring announced to his driver his decision to seek sleep.

# Chapter 6

Noah knew the handwriting couldn't be the same. The previous author, of notes received during his college years, had taken his own life. After settling his nerves, Noah had re-read the entire letter carefully. A restaurant called the Iron Skillet was mentioned briefly in one paragraph, a taunt, the location of a meeting eighteen years ago. No one knew, or should have known about the deal made with the Albany businessman.

John Hamilton, an identity Noah discovered years later, was willing to pay for proof of his young wife's affair. A picture of the unfaithful wife had been supplied by the spurned husband. Noah desperately needed the funds. By hiring Noah Cote, John Hamilton was killing two birds with one stone. Noah attended the same school as the wife's boyfriend and Noah also took great human interest photographs for the college newspaper.

Noah wasn't a private investigator and that fact had pleased John Hamilton even more, someone who belonged on campus, a venomous snake waiting patiently in the tall grass. The blond thirty year old spouse, an employee of the college and her lover were going to become targets of Noah Cote's photo layout. Only this collection of snapshots would never be seen by the nosey public.

Last night Noah found sleep was not going to be forthcoming. Just after midnight he climbed behind the wheel '73 Ford Ranchero. He purchased the wannabe truck four years ago and had clocked half of the vehicles hundred and eight thousand miles since then. The interior had witnessed better days. A tear in the driver's seat had been covered with gray duct tape, an effort to keep the foam stuffing from bursting out of the wound. The exterior had a small dent in one quarter panel and the paint had lost the battle to retain its original color. The vehicle ran strong though, and Noah was confident it would be able to parade into Richfield Springs without too much black smoke.

The trip took four and a half hours. He had stopped along the way for a cup of coffee at around three in the morning, rehashing in his mind the single sentence with the mention of the Iron Skillet. 'Every morning, I sit in the Skillet and remember what you agreed to do.' The Skillet, the Iron Skillet, Noah had never once gone back to the tiny restaurant in the last eighteen years, until today.

He pulled his Ranchero up to the curb across the street from the restaurant. It hadn't opened yet. From where he sat he hoped to view every customer as they entered.

'Every morning I sit in the Skillet.'

Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Sit in the same hole-in-the-wall, probably eating eggs cooked the same way with bacon on the side. He wondered about the sanity of such a person just before he began to wonder about his own.

After a half hour of waiting, Noah watched a late model Chevy pull into the parking area along side the restaurant. An elderly couple got out of the vehicle. The woman eased out from behind the steering wheel and assisted a crooked man with a cane from the passenger's side. They were right on time. Someone in the restaurant had just turned the sign in the door from closed to opened. The old couple entered and Noah waited for another vehicle to enter his field of vision.

***

The Winnebago pulled sluggishly from the toll both at the foot of exit 30. The heavy vehicle seemed to take forever to get up to speed. James turned left, toward the town of Mohawk and onto route 28. His destination was only twelve miles away. At the junction of New York routes 28 and 20 he took another left. On his right there would be a small restaurant. The type the locals would frequent.

The town brought him back in time, to someplace simpler. To someplace where a man might like to start over. This was a place where he wouldn't have to be James Lansing. He could be just Jim, the guy living next door with the well kept garden and a nice wife who visited the neighbor's wife a couple times a week for coffee or tea.

James passed the Iron Skillet on his right. He decided to turn around on a side street and park across the street, heading west on route 20, rather than pull into the narrow parking lot just past the building. After maneuvering the vehicle down a maze of side streets James pulled over along the shoulder of the main road. The Winnebago barely got off the road far enough. He left about a half a car's length between his camper and one of those cars made to look like a pickup truck.

"This the place you dreamed about?" Keri asked, leaning across the center console."

His answer came with a quick nod of his head followed by a low rumble of acknowledgement which escaped from his throat.

"I liked the place where you picked me up more," she said into his moment of solemn concentration.

"I'm going to go in and take a seat by the side window," he commented.

"Not without me you don't." She got up from her seat and grabbed her rumbled jeans from the pile of clothing too dirty to wear. "Loan me a pair of your BVDs," she said while trying to shake a few wrinkles from her pants.

He turned in his seat, giving her a smile she didn't expect.

"Well," she said to his wordless smirk, "denim is a little rough against certain parts of the body and like I said..."

"You're not puttin' dirty panties on against clean skin," he mimicked her previous protestation.

She nodded, agreeing with his interruption, still holding the pair of worn jeans up in front of her.

"In the bedroom... under the bed," he said, "there's a couple suitcases with stuff. The black one's got some extra briefs."

"Knew you didn't look like a boxer man."

She turned to go down the hall, but before she was out of earshot he added, "This I gotta see."

She leaned against the wall, placing her head against the plastic jam. Slowly she inched the shirt she wore over a bare hip. "Maybe you'll get lucky," she purred.

***

Noah watched the young couple get out of the Winnebago behind him. The slender woman in the well worn jeans and oversized shirt caught his eye. The female portion of the couple looked unruly, still watching her brought him the sort of pleasure he usually denied himself. The young girl was not the type to stand beside a pastor. She could never dress conservatively, or sit quietly with a Bible in hand. That was the type of woman he chose for himself. The girl from the Winnebago had a sinful way of moving. Temptation filled his loins and he chastised himself. He was a minister, but he still possessed the desires of a man.

The man with the girl seemed to be a little older, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. Noah noticed the man take hold of the girls hand as they hurried across the street after allowing a lone vehicle to pass. He wondered about the status, if any, of the relationship between the two. His lonely lifestyle festered an avalanche of thoughts he wasn't proud of.

After the couple had entered the diner Noah got out of his vehicle and crossed the state route. At this time of the morning traffic was sparse. He didn't have to wait before making his journey across the black barrier.

When Noah entered the interior of the restaurant he noticed the couple sitting at a window seat along the far side of the dining area. The male looked at him and when Noah looked away his spine still felt the stranger's attention. The male portion of the couple was in no way familiar. Noah sat at the counter, making sure the couple by the window was visible in a strategically placed mirror.

The next face to pass through the door Noah would have recognized if a hundred years had passed between meetings. The dark, handsome features of John Carver gave way to little change over the last eighteen years. The man from the college years nodded to the minister and took a stool next to him.

"You've changed little," Noah said.

"The changes my life has taken on you would know little about... Noah."

# Chapter 7

The smell of bacon permeated the walls of the Iron Skillet. The character of the small community was plastered in every corner. John Carver felt at home here. He didn't feel that way in many other places.

The waitress placed a coffee down in front of John Carver, his usual, black with no sugar. She looked to be midway through her forties, short blond hair and piercing blue eyes took the attention away from a scar across her forehead. John Carver knew the disfigurement was from an auto accident five years ago, particulars beyond that fact he wasn't privy to.

"Coffee?" She asked the question at Noah.

"Yeah... coffee and... maybe a cinnamon roll... if you have any." His voice seemed to betray his nervousness.

The waitress answered with a simple nod, poured him a cup of his morning poison before dropping three creamers on the counter.

"I thought you..." Noah paused, leaving the statement undefined.

"Failed," John Carver responded, then quietly continued, "suicide is more difficult than most would imagine. Took me years to recover and even longer in the asylum... biding my time."

"You know... I wasn't responsible..."

"For her death," John Carver cut into Noah's claim of innocence.

"Yes... her death."

John Carver spun in his seat, looking first to the young couple by the window and taking note of the girl's curly blond hair. His vision shifted to the old couple at the opposite end of the room. The Johnson's were married fifty years last August. They had breakfast at the Skillet twice a week. They were good people.

"She was beautiful Noah," Carver said, "tortured by a man who possessed... but didn't love her. I loved her... the bird that she was... seeking flight and returning to me only when... she needed to be loved."

"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.

# Chapter 8

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.

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."

# Chapter 9

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.

Even though they obviously walked different roads in life, he was glad he'd been subjected to dreams about her. Glad he'd listened to some inner voice he had only just begun to hear clearly. Keri Jacobson, rebellious, radical, Baptist daughter of two average people who couldn't face the world without their chosen mask.

Ahead, red tail lights signaled brakes being applied. The squeal of vehicles forced to abrupt stops filled an otherwise silent void before the first sounds of crunching metal replaced it. Time froze in front of them as the early morning world they knew came to a screeching halt.

***

It wasn't until they were pulling out of the rental car terminal that Candice realized the vehicle they'd been given could easily have been Zak's flaming casket in her dream. She looked out over the hood of the Mercury Grand Marquis and made every effort to suppress the rising panic in her chest. This car, was it the same as the one in her dream, the one she witnessed engulfed by a ball of flame?

"Zak... I don't like this car," she blurted out. A part of her wanted to unleash the actual reason for her fear, but she held it inside, trapped along with the pulsing blood in her arteries.

"So... it's a rental," he responded.

"Let's bring it back. I want to bring it back... rent a red one."

"Don't be silly," he said with a tinge of irritation in his voice. It had been a long trip through the friendly skies. Zachary Wells wanted to simply reach their destination and achieve a vegetative state for a few hours.

"I insist." She childishly pouted, "I don't like gray cars. I think they're ugly."

"And you have a reputation to keep up," he stated sarcastically, "one that clearly states that Candice Goddard must only be seen in her red Porsche. Sometimes darlin' we must lower our standards in order to truly be happy."

"It's not that..."

"Then tell me," he interrupted.

"It's..." Pausing in her quest to explain, Candice sought the right words. "I've had a dream. One of those that returns... recurring, you know."

"Never had one," he shot back as he moved the vehicle into the left hand passing lane and accelerated.

"Maybe it's just stupid," she responded doubtfully.

"Maybe!"

His exclaimed agreement slapped her face like a cold hand. If Zachary Wells wasn't such a phenomenal personality in the movie making business she would have left him months ago. Candice needed him; in the same way a substance abuser needs the cash that buys him the drug of his addiction. Zachary Wells was her ticket to a level of stardom she knew deep down she didn't deserve.

***

Without thought James Lansing turned the Winnebago sharply to the left. In one slow motion moment the camper rocked on the fringe of disaster. The shoulder to the right side of the road would have embraced his vehicle with a summersault. As James decided against the fate of a gymnast, the left hand lane opened as if Moses had raised his staff. Screeching tires and a few angry blasts from horns announced to James that his lane change had not been perfectly safe. In his side view mirror he saw one car come to rest in the grassy median divider. James muttered a quick prayer of thanksgiving for the driver's safety.

Keri braced herself against the dashboard when she was finally able to grip reality. She wasn't buckled into her seat and having her legs folded under her, as the amusement park ride began, didn't add to her ability to keep balanced.

Brake lights in the left lane glowed momentarily as the traffic slowed but didn't come to a complete halt. James could see two vehicles on an off ramp, one having driven up the bumper of the other. The rushing traffic, late for all kinds of affairs, had taken time out to gawk.

"Shit!" Keri exclaimed as she gained her equilibrium again. "Didn't think somethin' this big could maneuver like that."

"Neither did I," he commented back.

The Winnebago slowed to less than thirty miles an hour. Necks of commuters bent in synchronization to view the chaos to their right, never knowing how close they'd come to having an oversized camper enter through their trunks.

The blue Ford, beginning to speed up in front of them, had two back seat riders. James hadn't noticed them before, two children, most likely sister and brother, looking out the back window from a kneeling perch. James didn't believe an eyelash had been flicked by either of the two pre-teens.

"Guess you should keep your eyes on the road," Keri teased once the moment had gained stability, "If you weren't busy checkin' out this hot piece of woman flesh, you wouldn't have had to nearly break our necks to keep this thing on four wheels."

James checked out his passenger one last time and received a firmly pointed finger guiding his eyes back to the road. Keri was a 'hot piece of woman flesh'. James Lansing sensed her warm sexual passion at first touch, since then the heat had only increased in temperature.

Warnings to slow for tollbooths decorated the roadside like advertisements. The Adirondack Northway was coming up. James lifted his bottom off the seat to retrieve his wallet. One toll to cover the entire trek through New York state, it was a better option than stopping every few miles.

He handed his wallet to Keri. "Pick out enough t' cover our freight," he said.

He watched his passenger, through his peripheral vision; dig into the billfold of a High School English teacher's secrets. Nothing would take her by surprise, a well used credit card, a few crumpled bills, nothing larger than Alexander Hamilton graced twenties and a driver's license verifying his identification.

Keri thumbed through the currency and counted out enough to cover the cost of the toll. Wordlessly he accepted the fanned greenbacks from her.

"You're more prone to walking in God's path than you think," she stated.

James chose not to take his eyes off the road this time.

"Isn't this the same conversation that nearly got us involved in an accident?" He asked before adding, "Notice how I haven't taken my eyes off the road to check you out in the last thirty seconds."

"Told you I was brought up a church goin' Baptist... remember, just because I haven't walked the straight and narrow for a while doesn't mean I don't recognize someone who tries to. That minister... Noah Cote... he's got the outer shell of a man of God. There's a demon inside him though."

"We all have demons... little things about our lives we wish to shield others from, as for Noah Cote, the only person who saw the reverend as he clearly is now resides in the morgue."

"What if his demons aren't just little things?"

"Then I imagine there'd be an extra burden to bear... being a man of God and all."

"Not that all ministers... or priests for that matter, are men of God," she added as the Winnebago began to slow for the tollbooth ahead.

***

John Carver was gone from Noah Cote's life. The last being on earth who could link him to the photographs taken during his years in college. The attractive blond woman from the university's administration office and the handsome playboy Johnny Carver, as they called him then, subjects of photographs taken. Frozen images of lingering embraces, kisses given where no one should have seen. An unmoving pose still clear in Noah's mind after all these years, a single black and white glossy worth a jealous husband's reward, depicted Mister Carver with a full handed grip on the cheating wife's breast through her white sweater. An erotic creation captured on film.

There had been times when Noah harbored desires for this chain of events to unfold, but now that all was unfurled his guilt seemed intensified. Fear of his past being discovered was replaced with guilt for his sins.

"Three deaths are your responsibility," he said out loud to himself, making an effort to portray the role of God in his confession. "Three people who were not ready to leave the world... taken by your actions."

"Forgive me Jesus. I am worse in your sight than Judas... worse than Pilate... worse than the Roman guard who pressed the crown of thorns onto your head."

He merged onto the Northern route as he bypassed Albany. Traffic seemed to thin out for a moment as he backed off his gas pedal and slowed to the Fifty-five miles an hour speed limit.

A gray car pulled into the right lane in front of him and slowed to a speed matching his own. Noah had noticed the car hugging the left side of the hi-way. A non-descript vehicle, typically the oversized and boxy method of travel used by upper middle classed senior citizens. Noah signaled for the left lane and accelerated to pass. He possessed no desire to follow grandma and grandpa vacationer on their trip through northern New York.

As his vehicle pulled parallel to the gray car, Noah sought a quick peek into the world of those he passed. The man behind the wheel wore more years on his frame than the minister, but he wasn't what Noah would have considered elderly. The passenger was young, maybe the daughter of the driver. Noah took note of the passenger's bleached blond hair and Hollywood features. He wondered how much of the woman in the neighboring car was real.

He turned his eyes back to the road. His inattentive moment had consisted of nothing more than a glance. An instant too long when a vehicle is moving at hi-way speed. Before his eyes unglued from the interior of the gray car the passenger sat upright and pointed a finger of recognition from her world to his.

# Chapter 10

Out in front of their rented vehicle Candice witnessed pure chaos, a poorly choreographed dance on blacktop. A pick-up truck with a blown tire inflicted at highway speed, the loss of control by a driver on the verge of boredom. All this led to the crunching metal and screaming rubber of a collision. Zachary did his best to avoid the four-wheeled catastrophe, as did the vehicle passing them in the left hand lane. Candice had recognized the male driver of the vehicle moving past them. She'd witnessed his face in the many nightmares of Zachary's death.

Their gray rental car spun. Candice was forced to watch the panoramic view spin through the passenger side window. Her body whipped. Her momentum stopped abruptly due to the collision of her head with the window on her side of the vehicle. Zachary held the steering wheel in a white knuckled grip. Candice realized her consciousness was vacating her mind. She floated on a cloud, her body giving way to the centrifugal motion of the surrounding world.

No sound, no squealing tires, no angry cries of steel chewing steel. Candice's world became silent. She caught Zachary's expression, a grimace, pain and ecstasy mixed in one moment of awareness. Zachary Wells, the old man who could take her to new heights of popularity, wore the combined look of struggle and gratification, similar to the expression gracing his face when they made love. She often thought he could die of a heart attack in her arms after sowing his oats inside her.

He grabbed at his chest and all that had once been Zachary Wells, the wealthy man of enviable power, vanished from his face. As Candice faded into darkness, she knew her future was going to change drastically.

***

The front wheels of Noah Cote's Ranchero caught the median as he tried in vain to turn away the whipping tail of the Chevy pick-up. The passenger side of the vehicle had lifted off the ground before Noah was aware of the impending roll. His equilibrium merged into a world without a central point of gravity. Once onto his car's roof, he slid to a complete stop while the windshield imploded, leaving tiny fragments of glass through-out his vehicle's interior. He feared being struck from behind by another out-of-control vehicle, an eighteen wheeler barreling along on the grassy divider, crunching the same pastor who had just been given reprieve from his sins.

When his inverted car remained un-victimized by another vehicle he struggled with the latch of his seat belt and lowered himself onto the interior of the roof. The passenger window was shattered, but remained within its frame. A contorted spider web offered a warped view of the outside world. He pushed out the broken fragments of glass with his feet and crawled through the empty frame. Noah caught sight of his haggard appearance in the cracked side view mirror and paused to inspect a bruise on the left side of his forehead. During the roll he must have hit his head against the window on the driver's side. Keeping his grip on consciousness had been a fortunate outcome of the disaster.

He stood, surveying the damage on the northbound lane of the highway. The small truck, which seemed to have caused the whole bout with tragedy, was parked a few hundred feet further down the highway. The large gray car Noah had been in the process of passing, at the worse possible time, set in the breakdown lane, parallel to his position on the median divider. There was obvious damage to the gray car's front fender. A woman in hysterics came out to the road from the passenger's side of the vehicle. He'd seen her in the passenger seat when passing, an attractive woman in the company of an older man. In Noah's mind he began to seek reasons why she couldn't possibly be the driver's daughter.

Two other vehicles had remained on the roadway after colliding. The tangled mass of metal smoked and would be heroes where desperately trying to free those trapped behind twisted steel.

"He's dead."

Noah heard the shout from the highway. The woman slammed the top of the gray sedan with an angry fist. He moved around the rear of his wreckage, amazed that he didn't feel any pain in his body. The woman looked at him and again repeated her chorus.

"He's dead... damn him."

An unfeeling eulogy by a poor actress, she disgusted the part of him which was still clinging to his role as a man of God.

Excited shouts from the two vehicles to his south took hold of his attention, stealing his interest from the woman who cursed the dead. Three people, one limping badly ran from the wreckage of their vehicles. A spark, a flame, and for an instant Noah saw the faces of the heroes along with the face of the victim saved. The brief moment evaporated when the flame kindled a world-deafening explosion.

***

"Shit, that doesn't look good," Keri's reaction came in response to the flaming wreckage ahead.

James applied the breaks to the lumbering Winnebago. The war zone viewed through the windshield captured the attention of all northbound traffic. Passage ahead was blocked by two late model cars engulfed in flames. James brought the camper to rest on the wide gravel shoulder of the highway. Keri opened the door on her side of the vehicle and beat him to the ground before the idling engine ceased. She ran on ahead, like an emergency worker at the scene of her expertise. James followed.

Amid the chaos three actors in a script gone off course sat a safe distance from the blaze. One of the three was a woman in her forties, a cut across the right side of her forehead. The other two were teenaged boys. They both seemed to be uninjured and more than willing to help the woman out.

Further down the highway Keri saw two men walking back up the black top from a pick-up truck which had pulled over. On the median a car rested upside down, its driver was presently on a course across the highway to a car where a distraught woman waited.

James moved ahead of her as a proclamation of someone being deceased carried through the still morning air. She recognized the man crossing the interstate from the median as Noah Cote, the minister from the restaurant who had been given another opportunity to amend his life.

"Didn't think we'd run into him again... this soon," she said to James.

"He is responding to the woman at the gray sedan ahead," he commented. "Someone is either injured... severely, or dead."

Keri knelt down to the woman being attended to by the teenaged boys. She estimated that one of the teenagers was old enough to have recently got his license. This was a hell of a way to be introduced to the realities of the highway.

"You okay?" She asked.

The woman nodded her head in response. One of the boys wore a terrified look on his face. The other seemed calmer and in control of the situation.

"They've got this under control," James insisted, "let's go see if we can help up there." He pointed to Noah Cote, the woman and the gray car.

Noah was trying to free the driver's side door on the vehicle. As they moved closer the damage from impact with the pick-up truck became obvious. Noah called out for help without recognizing those he beckoned to. The woman at the gray sedan turned toward James and Keri, a couple approaching from the backdrop of hell. Keri sensed that she and her new friend were recognized by the woman and somewhere in the background of her thoughts the instant's familiarity crept into the foreground.

***

Lights of the emergency vehicles flashed into the horizon of the approaching midday, heading south in direction of New York's capital city. Zachary's body occupied the back of one ambulance; Candice decided another chapter of life had passed along with the shell of the man she didn't really love. Her bruises had been treated by a young and good looking paramedic. The option was taken on her part not to submit to treatment at the hospital. Zachary's next of kin would be notified. She missed joining the horde, making up his family, by a matter of months.

Noah Cote had tried to be a comfort where no comfort was needed. Any grief she possessed had little to do with the loss of one man. What mattered most in the present spectrum of things was the crumbling career Zachary had begun to raise from the ashes.

"You know those two?" Candice asked Noah, in reference to James and Keri.

"Met them this morning at breakfast," Noah answered.

"And that whole story about coming together by fate... about dreams?"

Noah had no response for her this time. He had listened to the story she told about her own recurring nightmares. This event had been visualized in her sleep often over the last few months. James and Keri filled the roles of the two apparitions walking from the world of damnation, emerging from the fires of a hell she might deserve.

"I dreamt about this," she said, giving indication to the five vehicle accident, "and them. On the flight out here I thought I was actually seeing a prophecy unfold before my eyes. I witnessed Zachary's death... so vividly... but I had no power to change it. Then from the flames came two people... I saw both of them coming to me."

As a minister, Noah knew grief took many forms. It was obvious to him that Candice hid from the ruins of reality in denial.

"Then you're buying into the story?" Noah asked.

"Is there an option?"

The young woman with curly blond hair, who had introduced herself as Keri Jacobson, came over to Noah and Candice. "They'll be here soon t' tow these vehicles away," she began, "James says we can head out in the camper."

Candice looked directly into the Keri's eyes; there was no doubt in any of the young woman's actions.

"I believe you were sent to me through providence." Candice said with earnest. "I can only hope it is a positive destiny you're about to lead me... us to." Candice looked at Noah, seeking agreement through his expression. "Zachary and I were heading up north to a lakeside side cabin he owned. We should go there first. I have a Jeep... there. It would be better transportation than a Winnebago."

# Chapter 11

The lakeside property owned by the late Zachary Wells consisted of a twelve acre parcel with at least five hundred feet of water frontage. Keri knew little about tax assessments, but she knew this piece of land with the ten room contemporary house had to be in one of the upper brackets of the taxed elite.

The others were gathered inside. She had a compelling urge to listen to the night settling on the lake, a silent sound, a soul soothing peace. They had prepped the Jeep for the morning, deciding to stay at the lake overnight. James told them of their destination, Boston. No one questioned his authority, or asked what made him so sure of the calling. Keri figured Noah would bark out a protest against the visions of the school teacher who seemed touched by spirituality, but not denomination. She was surprised when the minister maintained his silence.

Keri would follow James wherever he dictated. Her only apprehension came from concern of a coming moment when he would deny her his company, the moment when he would make clear to her his lack of the desire she overflowed with. She knew if he found out about her past, his friendship, would never blossom into the ardor she felt.

Following James Lansing into this onslaught of destruction should have filled her with fear. Instead it calmed her. She had been privy to her own dreams. Somewhere in a future time, after whatever mission they were being called to reached completion, she would stand in his embrace, warmed and comforted. She had walked through this vision in past nights without ever feeling its prophetic value. The Jeep, unveiled familiarity, it was James who held her in the dreams while some brunette woman looked on, a dark haired member of their quest she had not yet met. The Jeep, she had seen its red hood through the embrace. Will James be aware of her darkest secrets during the interlude, or will that heartbreak still be to come?

"I think James was wonderin' where you were." Candice strolled up beside Keri, without being heard until she spoke.

Keri noticed the school teacher standing out on the deck off the front of the house. She waved, wishing he had been the one to come to the water looking for a lost sheep.

"I think he's got a thing for you," Candice teased.

"Like a shepherd and a lost sheep," Keri verbalized her thought.

"I think that's Noah Cote's department," Candice answered. "The minister always leads the sheep down the path to righteousness, while those like James Lansing try very hard to seduce the innocent."

"That would be true only if I were among the innocent."

"Why do you suppose God saved you from that explosion?"

Candice took Keri by surprise. After the accident on the highway Candice and Noah had become willing participants in this destination-less journey. They hadn't spoken of the initial meeting between school teacher and the curly haired, unemployed blond.

"He shared how you two met." Candice offered an answer to her confusion. "While you were down here playin' footsie with the water."

Candice walked closer to the water's edge. Keri looked back up to the deck, hoping to see James heading their way. He had returned to the well lit interior of the house.

"I'm sorry... for your loss," Keri said after leaving her romantic desires where they belonged, for the moment.

Candice turned toward Keri. In the moonlight Keri was aware of the callous expression on the older female's face.

"I took it you were... lovers," Keri tired to clarify her intentions.

"Sexual partners... yes, lovers... no," Candice responded with a coolness of attitude. "My loss is for the possibilities Zak opened up for me. My only hope is that I've made enough connections during our time sharing a bed to keep my career on the rise."

Keri felt shocked by the response Candice gave. Her own boldness took control of a tongue which was capable of getting her into trouble. "Then... you used him."

"We used each other," Candice offered without taking offense to the accusation. "Isn't that the way of the world? We all use each other. If you haven't used our visionary school teacher yet for some gain, I'm sure you will... and I'm also certain he'll use you." Candice appraised the young girl in front of her before adding, "If you don't mind my saying so... you are the type to get used."

"How so?" Keri felt the tingling rise of emotion on the back of her neck. She wanted to walk away from the insulting tone of Candice Goddard, but chose instead to let the question escape from her tongue.

"You wear it on your sleeve."

"What?" Keri asked with confusion.

"You want him to use you. Deep down you're a submissive. I'll bet if a man strikes you... you think you deserve it."

"No." Keri's response was softly spoken and not convincing in the least.

"You need to listen to yourself love," Candice said, "that is the most submissive denial I've ever heard."

***

The girl with the short black hair walked out of room 205. He watched the daughter of Randall Hawkins through the eyes of an ageless Lonnie Wilkerson. She aroused his desire. The time was right for him to walk through this world with such passion. A short black skirt and a revealing blouse, he cursed Randall for raising such a shameless tart. The ageless form in Lonnie Wilkerson's flesh knew Stephanie's suppressed desires. His existence in the world would give her the strength to act on them.

Many bore no indignity today. Modesty was a thing left behind long ago. This race of thinking multi-celled creatures progressed through this world immersed in a giant orgy of sensual pleasure. He loved every minute of torrid promiscuity, especially when it was this easy to offer temptation.

"Come to me," he whispered into the conditioned air, his breath taking form.

He overflowed with a need the daughter of Randall Hawkins could definitely fill. A hunger for her lewd secrets coursed through his bowels. He had planned on the four, who were due to arrive soon. Randall's daughter was an unexpected treat. A tentacle of his thought stretched out to Stephanie in a barely visible mist. A vapor, probing the empty space along the ceiling, seeking the mind it was sent to infect. He touched her and blinded her to his presence.

"You my child," the ageless Lonnie Wilkerson breathed, "will guide them to me... my chosen... and you shall bring... with you... my old friend."

His thought surrounded her, a cloud she could not see. His induced trance had purchased her soul. His form would remain invisible to her until he chose to reveal himself.

As the elevator announced its arrival from the lower floors his essence gathered form, solidifying into matter from beyond the grave. He was a hunter stalking his prey, smelling the perfume of her lust, tasting the sin of her flesh. The doors slid open and the haggard shape of a decaying Lonnie Wilkerson followed her.

***

Stephanie had left Abner while he rested in his room. She hadn't dressed in the most conservative manner. She wasn't one to normally flaunt her sexuality. The mini-skirt and thin blouse had been packed away for purpose of a fantasy she hadn't the courage to act upon. She felt naked without a bra and when she looked downward she noticed the dark outline of her nipples exposed to public view. This wasn't like her at all, then again, as a strange voice in her head reminded, if she had been more like this all along she might not be so lonely.

She walked down the hall toward the elevator. Off the first floor lobby she had noticed a lounge when she arrived this afternoon. She couldn't believe how randy she felt. The movement of her blouse against her bare nipples caused them to harden. The arousal traveled instantly to her thighs.

She reached the elevator and pressed the button marked with a downward arrow. She waited for the tone to announce the car's arrival. The door opened to reveal an empty elevator car waiting to serve. She felt a draft, as if someone moved behind her in an attempt to share her ride to the first floor, a cold breath, leaving her with an uneasy feeling. The elevator was empty, as was the hallway behind her. She pressed the button marked for the lowest level assessable to the hotel's patrons. Without reservation she pressed a hand to her breasts and felt her erect nipples.

The ride was short from the third floor. No one joined in her journey to the watering hole. She crossed the lobby, paying little attention to the other customers, and entered the lounge. A tall black man behind the bar took immediate notice of her. He fit well with the jazz tune being blown out of a saxophone by a stout musician on the tiny stage. She took a stool at the bar and the bartender immediately moved to take her order.

"Scotch on the rocks," she said before he had a chance to ask.

Again she felt the cool draft of someone behind her. No one stood where she would have expected an interloper when she turned. The bartender set the drink she ordered in front of her.

"Quiet night doll," he said, as if crowd size was important to her. The bartender removed an empty glass from the bar. "Not a good night for business," he added turning away to rinse out the used glass.

"He thinks you're a hooker," a soft-spoken voice said from behind her. "Are you?"

For a brief moment she assessed her choice of attire, the short skirt, riding up to expose most of her thigh, the blouse leaving little to anyone's imagination. A girl alone, dressed as revealing, the assumption could easily be made that she had a price. She wondered how many crisp twenties it would take for the bartender to be correct.

"So are you... open for business."

How bold could a prospective john be? Prostitution was illegal in the state of Massachusetts. It was sinful in her mind. She turned on the stool to look at the face of the soft-spoken voice. A young man, maybe a few years her junior smiled, familiarity touched the peripheral edges of her memory.

"No," she answered his question. She should have been angry at the accusation. Another time and her tongue would be sharp. Tonight, she realized, she nearly answered 'yes' to his question, 'a hundred dollars for one hour'.

"Didn't think so," the young man said as he took a stool next to her. "Let me buy you a drink... a way to say sorry for the mistaken identity thing."

"You don't have t' do that," she responded.

"No big deal, I want to."

Familiarity, the face of the man beside her pulled at an ancient memory.

"Have we met... somewhere... before?" She asked.

"I would have definitely remembered if we had."

Something about his voice sparked a memory from a long time ago. She felt a yearning for childhood, as if a sequence of musical notes reminded her of a special song made popular during a special summer. Like the flutter of wings, something she couldn't grasp, the feeling of having been in the company of the individual in the distant past faded. She decided he simply looked like someone from long ago.

***

The others had all settled in for the night. James, sleepless as had been his routine, occupied the living room, sometimes pacing before the large picture window facing the water, sometimes sitting in one of the two white wicker chairs. He had made an attempt to settle his tired flesh in one of the bedrooms upstairs, but moment by moment this night was becoming another sleepless one.

One light glowed softly in the corner. A low wattage bulb left the room full of shadows. He was attracted to the water once again, through a window that reflected his fatigued features. This dream following quest was wearing him down.

He saw a face along the water's surface, superimposed by a memory, a teenager, a past student with tracks of spent tears garnishing her cheeks. She called out to him from the moon blemished darkness. He had made a decision not to listen then, not to hear or see the obvious, now all he could do was listen to a haunting memory.

"Still awake?" The voice came from the foot of the stairwell across the room.

James turned from the window wondering if the mirrored image was a beacon of the past or present. Keri entered the room, wrapped in a thin white sheet from the bed she'd nested in.

"Couldn't sleep," she added when her question went unanswered, "figured you might still be down here... rehashing the crazy sort of day we've all had."

She stood beside him at the window. James knew she wore nothing beneath the garment which once adorned a bed.

"This has become a routine," he commented.

"Not sleeping?"

"Restlessness... since the very first of the dreams."

"What happens to us... after this is seen through?" She asked looking at his distorted reflection in the window.

He gazed at the girl who failed to meet his eyes with the question. A part of him wanted to stroke her cheek and run sweaty fingers through her curls. He wondered about holding her, in a time different from the other morning, a moment where passion, not protection, was the immediate concern. "I think we're going to be alright," he answered, misinterpreting her question.

"Us," she said simply, turning her face to meet the unshaven expression of the high school English teacher. After allowing a silent moment to pass between them she continued, "I'm drawn to you... and I wonder where we'll stand after we've succeeded in the task God has given us."

She turned back to the window and watched his reaction to her vulnerable thoughts on the glass. He continued to study the surface of the reflected world.

"It is God's task, isn't it?" She asked.

"I hope so," he responded with a shallow voice.

"I have dreamt about us... when this is over. The Jeep... I had never before seen it, but it was in the dream. You and I were both in the dream. I would go anywhere with you. I am certain of that... and I can't explain why. I'm not an innocent girl fluttering my eyes at my hero... I am far from that."

"Innocent?"

She turned to face him and found his expression locked on hers. She wondered if the man who saw her present life was in jeopardy of knowing other things about her as well.

"I will stay with you... for however long you'd like." It was her turn not to answer a question directly. "It's how things always are for me," she added, "take me or send me back where you found me."

Lost in the moment, he touched her hair, interlocking his fingers with the unruly strands. "And if I... take you, how long do you stay?"

"I have nowhere else to go."

To James Lansing, a kiss would have seemed the proper way to seal the moment. When the sheet, she wrapped herself in, fell into a puddle around her feet, he knew their meeting of wet lips would only be a precursor to a deeper intimacy.

Without hesitation her naked body came to his arms. Her breath sought a haven against his neck. His fingers discovered the texture of her soft back, failing to cease their progress when encountering the gentle curve of her buttocks. The palms of his hands encased her firm mounds of flesh and he pulled her tightly to him. Tonight he would make love to her without intention of ever having her leave his life. Tomorrow morning he would wake beside her and her presence would confirm their future.

***

He carried the sheet for the bed they would share. He wouldn't let her cover her nudity. He said he liked what he saw. She hoped Noah was asleep, but cared little. In a way she wanted the other two travelers to know she had claimed her prize. Twice they stopped to taste each other's deep kisses. She unbuttoned his shirt at the first pause, unfastened the front of his pants on the second.

When they reached the room she found what she sought. His arousal would fill her nicely. She wrapped her fingers around the part of him she needed most. She wanted this be love, not just a sexual release. He pushed her onto the bed and removed all that might come between their flesh. She needed him desperately.

He was on top of her and inside her. They were one. If she could keep him this way she would. No Boston, no chasing dreams, just lovers forever connected by an unquenchable passion.

She was going to tell him everything she felt. She didn't understand love, but wanted it and if this was a moment, of the deepest possible intimacy, she wanted to share it verbally.

He whispered in her ear. Soft words of passion which kept her own words poised in her throat. He wanted her, he craved her. He wanted to be deep inside her like none before.

And then he said it. "I love you."

# Chapter 12

She went with him, the stranger from the bar, as if some sexual trance forced her hormones to lose control. For one night this man would own her, and for one night she would allow it. This stranger aroused her desire in a way reminiscent of pubescent fantasies. The kind she imagined on nights when sleep came with difficulty and her fingers explored the most sensitive crevices of her body. The kind she would have never taken part in.

The elevator doors opened. Through a dazed interlude she entered. She faced the rear wall without turning to ensure he had joined her. She felt the strange sensation release its grip on her and the world became what she always knew it should be. She looked down to her bare legs, exposed beneath the black skirt. Her modesty had taken leave. Her chest felt a chill, the lack of an undergarment and the thin white blouse explained why.

Stephanie turned toward an occupant within the elevator. She recalled a vague familiarity in the face. He smiled at her, a lust filled grin.

"You're lookin' incredibly hot... Stephanie," he sneered as he pressed the red button, to the right of the doors, labeled stop.

She'd come here with him. She remembered leaving the bar like a prostitute with a paying customer in tow.

"You look like a high class call girl, Stef. Let's say one with a price range of a hundred bucks for one hour of lying on your back and takin' every thrust a man has to give."

She thought exactly what her client said. She knew the words was plucked from her mind. A vile thought she would have never acted upon.

Changes, subtle at first, began to contort the man's face. She first noticed the aging eyes, wrinkling gradually at the corners.

"Tell me Stef," the man continued, "are you a high priced bitch or just some slut who crawled in from the alley?"

She tried to respond, to deny any and all accusations against her, but she possessed no voice, no sound. It was as if her throat had been amputated from her body. She backed against the wall as the face before her continued to age.

"I see it all Stef," he continued with the monologue she couldn't respond to, "all the demons in your soul that you keep hidden. Those things you think about... often, but are soooo afraid to act upon. Remember those younger years Stef... wouldn't you have loved to flaunt yourself in a garment like that." An aging, crooked finger pointed at her short skirt. "Not allowed, that old man of your's wouldn't have allowed such a vile display of indecency."

With each second the face gained familiarity. He moved closer, to touch her, to rape the barely dressed frozen statue.

"You're going to bring them to me," he said with stale breath.

The wall behind her felt cold against her back. The man radiated heat. The man who began to look an awful lot like Lonnie Wilkerson.

"They are coming, four of them. They follow a dream... to me... and you will be my herald. Make straight the way for those who pilgrimage to my abode. I see their sins, the ones they deny most. One has lived your most intense fantasy, one devours those she loves, one preaches death rather than life and one has closed his eyes when they should have been opened. They will come to your doorstep... to you and the old man... and you will bring them so I might taste their sins."

He pressed against her, one hand groping her breast through the thin fabric of her blouse. His crushing weight pinned her. His ancient lips found hers, sealing a sickness within the depths of her throat. His fist gripped her blouse, between her breasts, filling the palm of his hand with frail cloth and the buttons holding it in place. He tore at her garment and it yielded no resistance.

The back of a strong hand connected with her face and Stephanie met the floor of the elevator car instantly. She scrambled back to a sitting position against the wall. The shredded cloth which had once been her blouse was thrown back to her by a man who appeared to be only a few years younger than Abner.

"My herald," he said with a laugh which crawled through her spine like a disease, "bring them to me... serve me, or that which lies deep the bile of your soul will come to life."

From flesh to mist, the form of the long dead Lonnie Wilkerson faded from her view. She was alone, sitting on the elevator floor, her white blouse torn into shapeless pieces of fabric. She picked up the cloth from the floor to cover herself, now that modesty had returned to her person, and released the red stop button.

***

James had climbed out of bed while she was still groggy. Keri felt no desire to move just yet, sleep had been a wonderful escape. His arms comforted her though the night, now she felt cool and naked without his embrace. They loved, but most important he stayed beside her throughout the night, holding tight to the emotion of love and not just physical act of sex. Too often she had known the feeling of being left empty, a used shell lacking innocence.

Once he was clear of the room she rolled over, just a thin sheet covered her naked flesh, shielding her from the encroaching sunlight. Her clothing laid on a chair across the room. She chose to daydream for a moment before getting up to change.

In her private thoughts, she was a young girl who had just wakened in the arms of her only lover. The one man she would have spent her life and desires on. She wished there had never been anyone else.

One slender leg emerged from beneath a rumpled sheet. She felt for the wooden floor with toes more eager to remain sheltered. She rose from slumber seeking her clothing. The previous night she had accepted Candice's offer for a change of garments. She unfolded the fresh pair of jeans and a pale blue short-sleeved blouse. A pair of pink panties fell to the floor, along with a matching bra. She figured on dressing a little more conservatively than usual.

She heard James and Noah outside at the Jeep through the room's only window. She buttoned and tucked her blouse in while watching the two men from behind the curtains. If James Lansing offered her a life with him she'd take it, partly because he saved her life and partly because of last night's passion. They shared verbal confirmations of love when the act neared its peak. Only once before had a male, who wasn't a relative, recited the phrase to her, that relationship left her no longer a virgin and sour on most men.

A knock on the door, she knew to be Candice, was followed by the other woman's voice. "The boys seem eager to be on the road."

"I'm decent," Keri responded, "you can open the door."

Candice stepped through the door with the morning brightness of one celebrating a new lease on life. Her demeanor caught Keri by surprise; Zachary's death wasn't even a day past. Miss Goddard show no signs of loss.

"Guess they want to get an early start," Candice said, "I'm a morning person so all that's fine with me."

"How'd you sleep last night?"

"Good... very good actually," Candice responded, "told you there was nothing there... just two people using each other for all they could."

Keri frowned, "Just doesn't seem..."

"Proper," Candice finished Keri's thought, "I'm a shallow bitch. Zachary was well aware of that fact. He was an impotent old man who my career could benefit from greatly. Some of us sell our souls and some sell our bodies... What do you sell... hon?"

***

"Why Boston... how can you be certain we're to head toward Boston?" Noah asked as James checked the fluid levels of the Jeep.

"There's a man there... never met him... Abner Hollis." The school teacher slipped the vehicle's dip stick back into the proper place. "In these dreams, I've not only seen... meetings with individuals... actual future events... I've also seen places. There is an old man named Abner Hollis we must meet in Boston. He's with a young woman," James looked up from beneath the hood to make certain neither of their female counterparts were around. "It's not one of those... Candice and he old movie director she... used, this is more like... great uncle and favorite niece."

"And you see all this from your dreams?"

James nodded as he dropped the hood down. "I'm hoping that once we've seen this through the man upstairs will stop the game, give all of us a rest and let us go back to a... normal life."

"What if none of this comes from... the man upstairs?"

"If it doesn't we're in trouble."

***

"Lonnie's alive!" She knew no other way of describing her experience in the elevator. "Or maybe it was something that looked like him."

"Some thing," Abner insisted, "a thing which has taken a piece of Lonnie and molded a monstrosity from it. Lonnie Wilkerson is long dead. You know that."

"I know what this thing tried to make me do."

"It... this thing is not a man or a woman. It is neither. It was in the body of a man... that's all. It is nothing but evil and pure evil has no sexuality."

"Rape... he... it would have raped me... evil and sexual, male or female. It wanted to rape me."

"Evil... and evil only," Abner said as he moved to set his weary body on the bed in her room.

"He... it told me they were coming. Four, it wants to devour their sinfulness. It's a hunger... isn't it? A hunger for the essence of sin, hatred, lust, envy... all this feeds the evil... doesn't it?"

Abner nodded agreement with her assessment.

"What happened the first time that led to failure?" Stephanie pulled a chair out from beneath the wooden desk and sat on it. She had dressed after a shower, in sweat pants and an oversized tee shirt. She did not want to feel sensual in any way.

"It thrives off that which we can't admit to," Abner answered. "It knows what we are... at our deepest and most secretive..." He paused to collect a thought held in an abstract memory. "It knows... deny it... that which is deepest in the hidden recesses of your soul and you fill its hunger. Admit your sinfulness... seek forgiveness and it will starve."

"It bore into my depths, took a fantasy I would have never acted upon, then it threw it back at me."

Abner rose from the bed and walked to the window overlooking the parking lot behind the hotel. "When they come you will greet them," he intoned, through an evil trance. The thing living in Lonnie Wilkerson's dead flesh touched him, as it had thirty-eight years ago.

"Two men... two women. It has made me see what is to come. You will bring them to me. The evil one... the dark soul will show you the way. You will bring them; bring them to the place where I will die."

# Chapter 13

It was four in the afternoon when the red Jeep pulled into the parking lot behind the hotel. An ominous gray sky seemed to guide them as a beacon of depression. Stephanie watched the vehicle pull in and by some premonition of the evil one knew the vehicle contained the four. Two men and two women stepped from the vehicle. The older of the two females stepped into the aura of the building's exterior lighting, as light sensors brought the bulbs to life, expecting nightfall. The woman looked up to the third floor window. Stephanie felt with certainty she'd been seen.

"They are here... Abner," Stephanie relayed her message across the room.

The old man got up from the bed where he rested. "They should be warned to leave before it is too late."

Stephanie greeted his eyes with surprise.

"I understand now... what called me to this place was evil itself. What calls them is no different," Abner confessed. "I thought I understood what was at work here, but I am nothing but an old fool who understands little."

"It has to be brought to an end."

"The end this... thing deserves, can not be given in this lifetime."

Stephanie moved from the window to the door. As she stepped into the hallway she turned back to Abner. "If I don't bring them, it will come for me... take what lies deep in my soul and make me live it."

Abner moved the curtain at the window with a claw-like hand and looked down into the parking lot. "Do not give credence to anything offered by evil. Its soul thrives in complete darkness; its promises have no fruit to bear."

Slowly Stephanie stepped back into the room and faced Abner. She prepared her argument against his change of heart. She wasn't going to let the old man back away from the task. No one knew what lied in the depths of her soul, only she did, and the thing in Lonnie Wilkerson's body.

"Any fear planted in you," Abner continued, "any promise to sin... any attraction to a particular sin... is its design. It is not a part of you. It plants the seed of evil in you; your soil need not welcome it.

Stephanie hesitated for a brief moment, between the room and the hallway, before leaving.

***

"You should not have followed the dreams," Abner said in greeting to four who entered the hotel room with Stephanie. "It calls you for its purpose to regenerate... much as I allowed myself to be called to it nearly fifty years ago."

"We were called to save each other from certain catastrophes," Noah said.

"From what," Abner responded cynically, "from what earth shattering calamity did you save each other from?"

"He saved my life," Keri said in reference to James.

Abner turned and changed the direction of his comments to James. "So you're the one chosen to bring them all together. That was the role I played. I didn't save anyone from a fate other than ignorance, but I received the insight to bring sin to him."

"Why sin?" Noah asked, drawing Abner's attention back in his direction.

"It knows the worst that you are. It feeds on your denial of the dark corners in your heart. It can take nothing from one who is blatantly unmasked, one who celebrates the evil he or she performs. It needs those who hide from the world, what they truly are. Those who wear masks to cover up the vile essence of the souls."

"So we've been brought together by evil," Noah tried to simplify Abner's statement, "brought here by something totally absent of God."

"It is the absence of God. It doesn't just lack God. It is the void through which God chooses not to pass."

"No man can be this evil," James said.

"After all you've witnessed in the last few days, you still think of this thing as human?" Abner turned to the window. For a moment he shut out the rest of his company in the room. In his mind he sought the presence of truth.

"It knew I would intervene," Abner continued, "so it has dug into Stephanie's soul and found a vice... one bound in submission by her years of virtue. It brought this suppressed desire to the surface and has made her witness that which lies inside of one of you. Now... if you were to all leave... it would take her... force her to wallow in a sinfulness born of lust."

Abner noticed Keri's reaction to the brunette who still stood by the door. For a moment Stephanie's eyes met those of the curly haired blond, then she quickly looked away and sought the solace of a windowless wall.

"How can this... thing be defeated," Noah asked.

"You will stay... fight something which will force you to strip your soul naked?" Abner moved close to Noah and peered into the depths of the minister's eyes. "You are one who struggles... but wishes to find inner peace. It will break you... this thing of evil. It will rip from you all that you hold secret inside... leave you vulnerable to everything you believe. Do not deny your sin... it thrives on your denial."

"How do we beat it?" James asked the question this time.

"Leave... and do not try."

"Old man... this is ridiculous," James allowed the comment to burst out with an uncontrolled degree of emotion. "You say this... thing draws us. Who's to say that if we all just walk away now... it won't continue to try and reach us? It brought us together..."

"...And it won't let you go." Stephanie's voice interrupted the schoolteacher. "It drew you this far. How many times did you try to ignore the calling?"

Abner sat on the bed, tired, worn and sick. His gaze met each of the four as the individuals they were. "Each of you holds onto a sin. It needs to draw from any harbored indulgence. Yet, at the same time, it knows you intend harm; you intend to rid the world of its vile existence. It gains strength from defeating those who would curse it... those who come to it with a purpose contrary to its own."

Thirty-eight years, Abner had hoped for more. He had even hoped for death to free him from the bond to this thing. Abner saw everything as if it were his own memory, the rape of Lilly Carpenter, taking not only what her body offered, but her soul as well. It had called Abner and the others, seeking new flesh, new bones to replace the decaying essence bearing upon it. Abner had dreamt, Lonnie with a bottle, Caleb full of hatred and Randall, a frightened child who had taken part in murders he did not see as justified.

"To defeat it," Abner said, "you must first acknowledge what it seeks. It needs what you hold secret inside yourselves. It will tear it from you.

"When I first confronted it, I brought the small army it... had chosen. What did I bring? I brought abuse, I brought hate and I brought fear. I stood immersed in the sin of pride. I was proud of my knowledge of God, though I know now he held no pride for me. It broke me; it tried to break us all. There is no weapon patented to defeat this thing. A broken cross, one driven by my own hand, it was not enough to remove this evil from the world.

"My folly is that we sought to defeat what cannot be defeated, hold in bonds that which cannot be bound. I am also guilty of not confessing my pride, of not standing before this entity and my God and begging for forgiveness. I gave it strength... just as Lonnie gave it flesh.

"I could not convince myself that I had been called by this... dark soul... and not by my God. Do you understand... how I celebrated the fact of being chosen... being called to glory by my creator? I saw myself worthy and one thing is certain... as we stand here today... we are not worthy of any honor from our God."

"Abner," Stephanie called from across the room, "It waits for us."

# Chapter 14

"James... wait," Keri pulled on the back of his arm. He was driven to face the demon. The others were with Stephanie, in the hotel lobby. They watched the world outside where darkness battled a thick fog off the Atlantic Ocean. The weather forecasters would develop some explanation for the abrupt change in condition, but these six individuals knew the actual cause.

Keri's blue eyes couldn't mask her fear. "Maybe we shouldn't do this," she said as James turn toward her. "I want to go back to last night. I have never felt so much security... and now I'm frightened. Why can't we just leave, not face this thing... start a life..."

The last phrase slipped across her lips without completion. His hand reached up and stroked her cheek with the same gentleness she felt in his embrace last night.

"Start a life... together?" He finished her statement as a question, giving her the opportunity to agree to future terms.

She nodded and whispered, "Yes."

"How could we build a relationship, knowing we were brought together by something evil, knowing the evil strives because we turned away? Keri... last night," she heard the words and felt the pause, she prepared herself for a some form of sentimental rejection, "I want last night... to be a part of our lives... present, future... and not simply one night buried in the past, but I cannot be tormented by these dreams while living in passion with you. If we are to be, we will stand together after this thing is defeated... I promise."

'I love you,' the words were inside her heart, but she didn't speak them. She had uttered their sound last night, in answer to him, when they were together, naked, one body swimming in ecstasy. In reality he might have taken her proclamation of love as an expression of sheer lust. He probably gave little credence to her uttered emotion, three words, spoken to a lover by her lips at the peak of mutual orgasm, three words she wanted her heart to speak with clarity.

A whisper slipped over her lips, tiny and unheard as Abner burst out of the room into the hallway. In his fist he held a broken crucifix; his aged grip squeezed the cross at the intersection of the two beams. "I almost forgot... a weapon," he announced.

***

The Jeep pulled beside an abandoned warehouse along the docks, a home for rodents, dust and the forgotten freight of some long bankrupt company. Stephanie's white Firebird stopped alongside the vehicle once belonging to Zachary Wells.

"Well I guess we're not taking the scenic route," Candice offered her opinion of their surroundings from the Jeep's back seat.

Noah, riding shotgun, turned to face the actress and the sullen young blond. "I think its kinda fitting after all... don't you... James?" The driver didn't respond. "The impending storm, the thick fog moving in across the water... if we've come here to be slaughtered I can't think of a better setting."

"Stop that," Keri said, breaking her self imposed silence.

"Darlin' we're here," Noah commented, turning back around in his seat, "and I don't think there is anything we could've done t' change it."

James opened his door and got out. Keri sat in the seat behind him and he held her door open as she stepped out into the thickening fog.

"You okay?" He asked quietly.

"Ask me again tomorrow morning," she answered, forcing a small smile to spread across her lips.

Both doors of the Firebird closed. Stephanie walked around to the passenger's side as Abner willed his muscles to stretch back into recognizable form. Given the choice a Pontiac Firebird would not be his intended mode of transportation, but his discomfort mattered little given the circumstances. He needed a last moment alone with Stephanie to ensure her understanding of the situation they faced. She would be the crux on which possible success balanced.

"Are we ready?" Abner asked the other five.

"Question," Keri stated, "why is it so... impossible for us to just turn away?"

"Cause you know," Abner answered, "the evil has touched you... touched your depths. You can never escape the vile essence of it as long as it lives. Each time it seeks strength and steals life from an unfortunate soul... you will taste it. We are all sinners, but death... murder is not something our own hands are capable of. That's why you're called by... it. You do not have the capacity to murder... not as individuals, but as a group... you must pray for that strength."

***

Stephanie felt the caress of cold fingers against her flesh. She shivered and attempted to hide her discomfort from the others. The sensation spread over her body, lingering within her private areas, arousing her despite the cold.

Dozens of windows along the face of the warehouse were shattered. Shards of glass grabbed onto what little light the night offered through the fog. Stephanie noticed one broken window in particular, vapor danced at the open wound, the evil essence waited for them.

She heard Abner speaking to the group about sin and prayer. She murmured an 'Our Father' to herself, but didn't feel the words with any depth.

'I have you,' she felt the words tingling through her head, 'and he does not.'

"Stephanie," Abner's voice broke her trance, "are you alright?"

The one she knew to be a minister supported the old man's weight against him as they moved toward the building. Stephanie realized she had lagged behind.

"You okay?" One of the women asked.

"It's here... waiting for us." The words slipped from her mouth reluctantly.

"Come," Abner stepped away from Noah's support, finding strength on his own, "none of the lambs will die tonight."

A strange statement, from a man she'd know all her life. No lambs would die tonight, but did the shepherd plan to sacrifice his ancient existence in their place?

'Why would I want an old man?' The thing in her head whispered, 'I can have so much more.'

***

A heavy steel door opened with more ease than expected. James found his way into the dusty dark chamber before the others. Keri pulled at the back of his shirt again, enticing him to slow his pace.

Long shadows stole substance from the darkness. The fog off the Atlantic coast transgressed through the shattered windows, entering the belly of the beast with caution. The group gathered inside the opened door, pawns in a game they didn't control.

A jolt from behind startled James, Stephanie walked past, her form barely visible among the darkness in the short black dress she wore. James noticed the vapor before her, a beckoning vine of indulgence, calling them to be one with its master, to seek pleasure in the bosom of sin. She followed, and without hesitation James pursued her. The others took stride behind him, Keri close, as if in the umbrella of his protection, Noah, Candice and Abner a few feet back.

Ahead, another door, another room, this guardian of some inner cavity yawned as they neared. Stephanie hadn't touched the cold steel; the hinges were independent of any action on her part. James felt Keri behind him; she gripped his arm, just above the elbow, in a firm vice of frightened fingers.

"It's here," she whispered beside him, "isn't it?"

"It will show itself when it's ready," Stephanie said, turning back to those who followed. "Your fear is an appetizer."

James knew the voice flowing from Stephanie's lips did not belong to the young woman. The demon staked out its warning. The thing that had brought them here filled Stephanie's mouth with its venom.

"I know who you are," Abner spoke from behind James and Keri. "Leave the girl and be bold enough to show yourself."

"Old friend, when I bid you the honor, you will wish to have remained innocent of all your curious endeavors."

Abruptly, shadows sucking the final embers of light from the room. James lost sight. Keri fell against him with a startled cry.

"I come to form in absolute darkness," the voice, which had spoken through Stephanie, said. James knew the words no longer flowed from the girl. "For I am the darkness." It bellowed.

A scream, Keri's screech of horror came from beside him. James reached for the girl, whose life he had saved, in his blindness. He felt her trembling hand against him at the moment her scream formed solid words. "It's touching me... don't let it touch me."

# Chapter 15

Abner's heart skipped a few required beats. The pain escalading through his chest intensified. He slumped against the cold concrete wall. Around him the others had either lost consciousness or were being held in check by some unseen force of darkness.

"This place," the voice of Lonnie Wilkerson said to the old man, "has been a place of worship. Those who idolize darkness gathered here in secret. They drank the blood of animals... did you know that Abner? They would have been tormented by the likes of you... by your holy sickness, if they gathered in public... if they were to share their sacred drink before the open eye. Satan called them in his weakness. He needs constant worship... I only need to take your flesh and its sinfulness. Still my ego will be well satisfied by the adoration of these in the moments before I quench my hunger."

Abner tried to move, but as he shifted his weight the pain in his chest dug deeper. Death was coming. He wanted a few more minutes. He became aware of light beginning to sift through the darkness again. The adversary wished to be seen.

Stephanie stirred, slowly beginning to come back into the present world. The one named James sat up against the wall to his right. The younger man had regained consciousness, but at the moment his concern was with Keri's well-being, rather than the evil entity before them. Abner wondered about their attachment.

"I offer... myself," Abner said between short breaths, "release these... for the sake of God... let these... go."

"And you will thus be able to recite to God, 'I have not lost any of your sheep.' These are mine. I am the closest thing they will ever know to god. You will return to your maker as a failure."

To Abner's left, the minister named Noah moved for the first time since being knocked unconscious by a force unseen. Abner felt for the broken piece of crucifix in his pocket. His heart raced, the hammer pounding in his chest reminded him that death neared with vengeance. He did not want to fail in his last hour.

"You are old. You are the remains of flesh having no purpose. What good would your puny carcass be to me, Abner? You have not tainted your soul with sin in years. What a boring web you weaved."

"Do not..." A coughing seizure raged through Abner's body. He spit phlegm on the floor and noticed traces of blood in the substance.

"Death will not be easy on you Abner. It will most definitely not come with any haste. You will witness these give their lives for my purpose, then I will allow you to go to your maker, on his terms, not mine."

Stephanie began to slowly crawl toward a dark void in the room's center. Her short black dress clung to her thighs with electricity.

"Stef..." Abner called with what little voice remained, "get back... do not... go near him... the thing. It will make you..." Abner grabbed at his chest in a futile effort to squeeze another beat from the ancient pump beneath his rib cage. He laid his head against the floor, watching, as the girl entrusted to his care slowly positioned herself to pay homage before pure evil.

***

Stephanie knelt in submission. The evil force in Lonnie Wilkerson's dead body absorbed the shadows unto itself and allowed the time worn flesh of its host to become visible. The stench of decay filled the room. Then, as if the dark soul controlled even smell, the perverse odor of death flowed back into his shape. He moved toward Stephanie, to touch her, to defile her with probing fingers of dead sin.

"What is it that you want of me?" It asked in a voice once belonging to her father's friend.

"To be like the other," Stephanie answered in a trance.

"The other?"

"The prostitute."

"You seek the vile ways of another," the stolen voice of Lonnie Wilkerson deepened, "but your sins are not based in reality. They are nothing more than simplistic fantasies; thoughts filling your mind while your fingers probe your moist vagina. I need sin, which has already manifested itself in this world. The prostitute has such sin."

Stephanie began to sob without control. "Don't do... this... to me," she pleaded.

Evil raised a right hand laced with torn flesh to Stephanie's face. She stood, enraptured by a trance of sinful desire, beckoned by a force from within. "Tell them who you are... demon." Stephanie's fingers unfastened the top two buttons at the front of the dress. "Demon I command you to give voice to your identity."

"I am she," Stephanie said with a voice that wasn't her own, "I am the prostitute... the whore."

"Are you not also Pride... Greed and Apathy?"

"Yes," the demon called forth through Stephanie spoke, "but I yearn for the carnal desires of the one who has given her flesh for a price."

Stephanie's fingers complete the task of unbuttoning the front of her dress. The garment fell to the floor, leaving her white bra and panties exposed to those who wished to gaze into the young woman's fantasy.

Lonnie Wilkerson's eyes turned from the underwear clad brunette to the others in the room. "I do not desire the sin of a whore. I seek more, pride... greed and apathy, then I will absorb the sexual pleasure of one who has prostituted herself."

Stephanie began weeping again.

"There is one sin of the many that I have permitted this one to feel. She longs to immerse herself in that sinfulness, to be baptized with the seed of a lover who has purchased her flesh."

***

The decaying flesh covering a dead hand reached out for Stephanie's throat. She stood frozen in the breathless grip, unable to yield to the choking grasp around her neck.

James tried to stand, but the muscles in his body offered no stability. He watched the withering hand lift Stephanie off the ground by her neck. One shoe fell from her foot as she struggled to gain a breath.

"Let her go," James Lansing found a semblance of his voice.

"Apathy speaks." Lonnie's form turned quickly, keeping a firm grip on Stephanie's throat. "I so long to hear from the others."

James tried to rise again and this time his legs supported him. He braced himself against the wall. Candice and Keri were helping each other to their feet.

A flesh-decaying arm tossed the limp body of its victim onto the floor as if the girl were weightless. Stephanie coughed, announcing to the world that she was still among the living.

"I did not wish to kill her. If I had I would own her flesh now. I have not based this on your desire to speak up for her, Apathy. Everything I do is ordained... by me."

Abner wasn't moving. James, choosing to ignore the boasting essence of evil, looked toward Noah Cote who sat beside the old man. "Is he?" The schoolteacher asked the minister.

"Still breathing... barely," came a worn and exhausted response from the reverend.

"Even the old man lives because I wish it so."

Stephanie pushed back against the nearest wall, attempting to cover herself with her arms. James met her gaze and knew she had been freed from the mental and physical grip of evil.

"Speak to me... Greed, I the darkest of all souls demand that you speak." Lonnie's body twirled toward Noah, seeming to forget James for the moment. A long finger pointed condemnation. "Minister of the Christ, tell me your greatest sin. Keep it from me and I will pry it from your soul."

"This is nothing but a game to you," James shouted. His arms held onto Keri, who moved close, seeking protection where there was none.

"Isn't that sweet, such displays of affection, first for fellow man and then for your cherished." It turned back to Noah, rage shifting across its facial features. "Now tell me about your greatest sin, enlighten the one who commands you."

***

Tears streaked down Noah's face. Abner shifted beside him, moving an arm free, offering comfort to the trembling hand of the minister.

"She is dead because of me," Noah said between sobs.

"Murdered... because of your actions," Lonnie's voice persisted.

"I had no way of knowing..."

"You condemned her because of her sin. You judged her. What right do you have to pass judgment?"

"None."

"Then seek forgiveness of the Christ you preach."

Noah knelt, obtaining the position through obvious pain. "Forgive me Lord," he prayed, "forgive this servant who has carried the weight of this transgression for too long. Because of my greed father death has gained a stronghold." He prostrated himself on the concrete floor.

"Such a disgusting display," Lonnie's voice cackled. "Who's next... Pride... Apathy or you?" A finger without flesh pointed toward Keri, one long, slender bone of accusation, "Stephanie was given one sin to wallow in. She is not a child of greed or pride... and apathy sickens her, but deep inside she has fantasies... sexual dreams, which make her wild with lust. Fulfill my curiosity... Blondie, and share with us your sins.

"Leave her alone," James spoke above the increasing volume of Noah's prayers.

"Ahhh, Apathy you call out for your turn. You are so right, Blondie's transgressions are so much more interesting, let's save them until last... shall we. Share with us your unfeeling attitude toward those students who cry out for compassion."

"I had no idea... she would take her life," James said in a low voice meant for no one else to hear.

"But she did... and she told you she had made suicide a consideration. Did she not?"

James fell silent. Keri's face burrowed against his chest.

"Answer me," Lonnie's voice shouted with a volume the room couldn't possibly contain. Keri cupped her hands over her ears and fell to her knees. The others cowered to the floor, trembling with the walls. "Convince me of your innocence and I might allow you a chance to seek forgiveness like Greed."

"I am not innocent," James said as he stood to face the accuser, "and I grieve for her loss and know that it was possible for me to have prevented her from taking her life." James looked toward Candice to one side, kneeling by a frightened Keri, and to the other side where the tear streaked face of the minister looked back. "She came to me after class and shared her depression. So many her age fall into the same struggles... I didn't know. She needed to be held... she said so... to feel a sense of warmth, separate from a cruel world. I could have made her feel... but the repercussions."

"And deep down... you had a physical attraction for the girl, didn't you? You were afraid of your own weaknesses... your own inability to stay clear of a teacher-student love in." It laughed, and the evil resonance vibrated off the walls.

"Seek forgiveness," Noah Cote whispered from his public confessional, "God will forgive you, and it will not be able gain strength from your separation from the Almighty." Noah gripped the unmoving leg of the unconscious old man on the floor beside him. "Abner understood all along... we need only act in a right manner."

James knelt as tears began to well in his eyes. Keri embraced him from behind as a spasm escaped his body.

"You males are so putrid and weak. No inner strength like that of Lonnie Wilkerson. It doesn't matter though... I'm seriously thinking about letting my feminine side come out from the closet." It moved forward. Flesh from the left side of its face pealed. Long boney fingers pulled the shreds away, exposing dead muscle and white bone.

"You Pride... will I take you or will you crumble and make me turn my attentions to the other whore?"

Candice rose to her feet, back to the wall.

"Pride... you are without talent... you are pathetic, convinced that you are what you could never be. You use and abuse... for your own gain. How many have you sworn undying love for... only to sleep your way to fame?"

"Go to hell," Candice screamed.

"I've been there... it's not a bad place... really... much nicer than this dump."

"Candice," Noah called out, moving toward her, "do not deny it your sin."

The expression the actress offered the minister made the entity in Lonnie's body howl with joy. "She has more or less told you to 'fuck off'," it bellowed. "Now go ahead Candice Goddard tell this decaying chunk of flesh how great an actress you really are."

***

Noah felt Abner touch his arm as he went to move away. The old man's chest barely rose with each intake of air. From inside his coat the old man brought forth the broken crucifix, the one Abner had busted into two sacrilegious pieces back in the hotel room. He offered it to the minister, sliding the wooden icon across the floor.

In Noah's church the wall of the sanctuary displayed an empty cross, one without the beaten body of their savior. He had told Catholic friends that his congregation had moved beyond the crucifixion and embraced the salvation the resurrection offered. He lifted the broken relic of a recent assembly line quota from the floor. On the back were printed the words 'Made in China', so much for Christianity, a Hindu probably labored over the carving. The body of Christ dismembered at the knees, the wood splintered and jagged, a weapon Abner had claimed use of once before. Noah would seek an opportunity to witness the work of this Chinese made Jesus on the cross.

The minister listened as the decaying monstrosity taunted Candice. Her denial bit deep into the fabric of their scheme; tearing apart the foundation they laid.

"Tell me Pride," the dark soul shouted, "what role have you ever had that you didn't screw your way into? You are a pathetic whore... Pride, giving what little you possess for nothing but fame."

"No," Candice screamed, "you're wrong... you don't know... you couldn't know."

Noah reached her side as tears of frustration began to fill her eyes. Had they been tears of remorse Noah would have been relieved.

"Do not give it what it needs," Noah whispered, hoping to keep his voice from the decomposing ears.

"What do you know?" Candice shouted back with overwhelming anger.

"What do you know about anything, Noah Cote?" The voice of Lonnie Wilkerson sang into the room. "I already own her. You are too late, my man of God. Too late to save Pride from what she deserves... to late to save Pride from feeding my hunger."

# Chapter 16

For a moment Keri thought her time to be placed on trial had been forgotten by the thing that knew all evil. She held onto James for her own sense of security while he recovered from the onslaught of his unleashed emotion.

"It's alright," she whispered with soothing tenderness against the back of his neck. Her lips feathered against his fine neck hairs. In a moment when her life was most threatened she found peace in physical contact with last night's lover.

"I never touched her... I kept my distance," he offered, still looking down at the floor where his knees rested.

"I believe you." She spoke with sincere honesty.

"It's right though... I had feelings... I never would have acted on them, but still they were there... interfering with my responsibilities to her as a teacher... an adult."

The hollered voices of Noah Cote and Candice, the verbal blasts of the dead entity infected her ears like a foreign language, Satan's tongue, an unholy dialect spoken in the realms of hell.

James stood, strengthened by her embrace and she found herself standing with him. They moved away from confrontation, taking inventory of their comrades. Stephanie was against the wall, wavering like an autumn leave, broken and withered. She no longer cared to shield her lack of clothing from the others in the room. She had found her dress and held the garment like a used rag at her side. Abner lay frozen on the bare concrete floor, a slight rhythm of breath rising from his chest.

Lonnie Wilkerson's voice shouted something about its hunger. Suddenly Keri understood the verbal condemnations of the beast. It turned to face her and distance did nothing to offer protection.

"I tremble with excitement in your presence blondie," Lonnie's voice taunted. "If this body wasn't a decayed piece of meat I'd drag you in the corner and fill your womb with my warm seed."

Keri tried to bury herself within her lover's embrace. Her action enticed a burst of laughter from the decayed form in the room's center.

"Can't rape the willing... can you?" Lonnie's voice asked.

"Leave her alone..."

"And the harlot's boy friend speaks. If I wasn't so entertained by your feeble responses I'd rip your larynx right out of your throat."

Keri pressed her slender form against James, trembling. "Please don't respond to it," she pleaded, "don't give it cause to act on its threat."

She felt his hand caress the curls hanging from her head. "You know what it wants... don't deny what it already knows."

"Are you going to listen to Apathy, or are you going to join Pride in my loving embrace?"

Keri watched the withered hand beckon Candice. A trance engulfed the actress, causing her to move without inhibition toward the horror before her. Noah made one effort to interfere. The force of rejection propelled him with ease to the floor.

"Sometimes," Lonnie's voice continued, "she is referred to as the prostitute in Revelations. Is she not? She may not have committed fornication with kings, but she would not be one to decline the offer... if the price was right.

"Interesting paradox we have, you... blondie... have given your heart and your love, have you not? Such an endearing emotion, love... will he still wish to hold you tightly in his arms when he knows what you are? Love... Blondie when it comes right down to the naked facts... it is simply hardcore sex after all... nothing more, sex, purchased by kings and paupers... and in your case the latter has taken its pleasure inside you."

"Stop... please stop," She cried out. Heavy tears began to streak down her face. She turned to look deeply into the spirit of Apathy and saw the love she desired.

"This would be so much less interesting," the voice of Lonnie Wilkerson cackled, "if you hadn't allowed her to seduce you last night, if you hadn't... honestly fallen for her vile seduction, the same talent used in the past to bring men into her web."

"I love you," Keri shouted over the bantering, "you saved my life in more ways than one. Last night... we made love... please tell me we... made love."

Her eyes were completely filled with uncontrollable emotion.

"And we will again." His answer felt truthful and he sealed it by kissing her tenderly on her tear-stained cheek.

She stepped back, leaving an arm's length between them. She'd never confessed any of her past. In Texas she'd been arrested and charged, the enforcers of the law had been her saving grace. Keri gathered herself and made an attempt to wipe her eyes of their salty fluid.

"I ran away when I was sixteen," she began. "I had issues at home... my issues." She placed the blame on her own shoulders. True confession does not pass the responsibility to others. "I was rebellious... still am... felt I could take care of myself, but I couldn't."

"Get on with it girlie, I'm bored already."

Keri turned to stare at the hideous creature who'd just spoken. Its body oozed yellowish fluid, a sea of mucus. Human flesh melted away to fibrous muscle. White shards of bone glistened through the red meat.

James touched her face with his hands. He turned her toward him and Keri did not resist. Before he could form a statement of encouragement she asked, "Do you believe God forgives our worst sins... the one's we see as most vile?"

The man who had held her naked body last night nodded confirmation.

"I could have gone back home... I didn't have to do what I did, drugs... alcohol... sex." She turned her face from his, not wanting to see his disgust. "I ended up at a truck stop in Oklahoma, not far from the Texas border. I sold myself... convinced myself that I did it to eat, but I could have gone home anytime I wanted to. Sometimes," she paused to seek the words she needed, "I took drugs and drank... and willingly went to bed with strangers for enough money to buy more drugs... more alcohol.

"I was arrested for prostitution in Texas. I cleaned up my life, went home and put everything in the past. Only," Keri shook her head, wanting to desperately wake in another time and place, "yesterday... when we met... you not only saved me from the explosion... I was considering... selling myself again."

"My dreams showed me only the explosion... nothing else."

She felt his hand reach out for hers and she offered a weak grip in return. Never had she opened up to anyone about her past. Even the police who arrested her in Texas knew little about Keri Jacobson. Her parents knew even less when it came to the life of the truck stop prostitute.

She felt relieved, even if James Lansing were to curse her and move away in disgust. A weight lifted itself off her shoulders, a repulsive blanket of shame. "He does... forgive us... I feel it right here." Keri sniffed as she placed a hand over her breasts. "Do you?" Another tear broke loose from confinement and made its way down her cheek. "Can we go on from this point, feeling what we felt last night?"

His answer crept gently into her heart, without the use of words. He pulled her back into his embrace. She wanted to be absorbed into his being without ever needing to face the world again. His heart beat against her ear, a soft rhythm she listened to in the quiet of their previous night together. Still, she doubted if he would embrace her for much longer.

***

Candice's scream brought reality back to any who had escaped its hold. The mucus covered thing held her forearm in a grotesque grip. She fought against the strength pulling her closer. The placid eyeballs, Lonnie Wilkerson had once visualized the world through, focused anger on Keri Jacobson and pleasure on Candice Goddard. The actress belonged to its hunger, frightened by the horrible fate she faced, still unable to accept her shallow existence.

"Feed me Pride," the foaming voice of a decaying larynx commanded.

Candice's only defense came forth from her lips as a spine-shattering scream. James moved and his reward was to be thrown back with rib cracking force against the rear wall. Keri felt hatred reach for her flesh. She shivered and pulled away. The master of denied sins brought her to her knees.

"You are no good to me whore," Lonnie Wilkerson bellowed. "Forgiveness and love defile the core of my being."

Keri moved, but it took only a thought, from the horror refusing her, to send her sprawling toward her lover.

Candice reached for her nightmare, screaming unintelligible fears. Twice Candice Goddard had starred in roles where she depicted a damsel in distress, a woman forced by her fear into a weakness foreign to her personality. If she could have packaged this fear and used it on film the critics would have drooled over her. At this moment she didn't act, at this moment her career meant nothing. Her ability to accomplish anything other than to escape the grip of Lonnie Wilkerson's decomposing hand no longer bore any importance.

It received her with both arms, accepting the gift of its new life, coating her flesh with the sticky substance of its own decay.

# Chapter 17

"You can't save her," Abner's voice croaked as he tried to get Noah's attention. "Listen... to me, it has taken her already... there's nothing you can do."

"Nothing any of us can do," Stephanie added, moving over to check on the fallen old man, "not to save Candice Goddard. She gave herself... willingly, to avoid facing the truth about her life."

Noah turned to face Abner. "Then what good is this?" He held the broken crucifix in the old man's face. "What good did any of us do by coming here? We have no chance to take down something of this nature."

"It is at its weakest now," Stephanie said, "I feel no effect from it."

"As it absorbs new energy... a new life... force, its resources become limited," Abner's breath came in shallow spasms after forcing out his words. Stephanie touched the dying old man with hands caring deeply for his spirit.

"You knew," Noah accused, "you knew this is what it would take... a sacrifice. That's why so many of us came, so one could be a sacrificial lamb while the others attacked."

"That isn't true," Stephanie intoned.

"Then tell me what is?" Noah turned away from the young girl at Abner's side. He intended to eradicate fear from his perception of himself and strike the mass, which had once been two separate forms.

"He intended himself as the sacrifice," Stephanie said. "You would have all denied your darkness to it, leaving it no choice but to take him. He offered himself."

Noah saw James Lansing out of the corner of his eye, the schoolteacher held the attention of the monstrosity at the room's center. It could hold off an attack from Apathy, leaving Greed with an opportunity to strike. Noah possessed the weapon Abner had fashioned. Candice was dead, she no longer screamed, she no longer felt pain, or had form reminiscent of humankind.

He moved with speed, a minister who tasted violence as a bitter fruit, regretting his own involvement in a selfish act of his youth. The broken icon made in China poised in his fist for a strike, to stab, to imbed the crucified form of his God on a Roman cross into the thing of darkness.

He beat James to the target, driving his sacred spear into soft mucus coated tissue. The form, which had once appeared as Lonnie Wilkerson, absorbed the broken cross without resistance. The molded body of Christ filled an open chasm.

Noah expected a cry of pain, instead laughter permeated forth from a mouth without shape. Candice Goddard fell free from her union, her female remains separating from the shapeless mass. Not a single breath escaped her melted lungs. Noah felt death was better for her, than life without beauty.

"I have reborn myself... have I not... preacher... one known to me as Greed?"

"It's over," Noah said. "You've taken your last life."

"Ahhh, but so many swim within my being. I wanted one more and you have taken from me what was within my grasp."

Neither Lonnie's form nor Candice's took complete control of its features. If it cried out in pain and agony, it did so without sound. In a brief instant Noah saw the face of the prideful actress, followed by images of each previous victim, each horrified expression gaining a stage to view the world through.

"No more... lesser demon... leave us," Noah commanded with faith strengthened by the heroic act.

"The old one is dead... his spirit has passed through me. His soul directed your weapon to the un-beating heart... of this carcass. I praise your victory and look forward to being with you all... in hell."

The voice silenced and gradually the form, which had pulled Candice Goddard into its embrace, took shape. A decayed human body fell to its grave, beside its final victim. Noah figured the carcass to be as Lonnie Wilkerson would appear in the grave, minus the icon made in China. He rose to his feet and met the eyes of James Lansing. Candice Goddard embraced death, as did Abner Hollis, yet today so many more lived.

***

The fog dispersed. On the horizon a new morning began to gently filter into the dark sky. Stars and the moon, shielded by the night's murkiness, battled for one last moment's dominance. A new day would soon be offered. The survivors would accept the morning's light as a sign of victory.

In the vision Keri remembered last night, when standing at the water's edge, James held her while the brunette named Stephanie stood nearby. She hadn't seen Noah, but now she realized he was at the Jeep's rear. Her dreams focused on the two people who were touched by her past, deep in the core of their being. Stephanie forced to feel a prostitute's arousal and shame. James, embracing a harlot with an emotion she hadn't felt worthy of, until now.

"I would have told you... before our relationship went much deeper," Keri said. She backed up against James as he wrapped her in his arms. She felt his desire for her and knew they'd be making love again tonight.

"Doesn't really matter."

She felt his breath against her head when he spoke.

"It pried at the sins we wanted most to hide," she reasoned. "I might have strived to never fall in love... completely, and taken my secret to my grave... especially if love meant the risk."

"Risk?"

"The risk of loosing love... once gained. I always imagined being desperately in love with the man of my dreams, having him find out about my past and having him leave me... ashamed... vulnerable. You have no idea what you've saved me from."

"The evil thing didn't necessarily bring bad things," Noah interjected his opinion as he passed.

"How so?" Stephanie asked, deciding to involve herself in the conversation. "Abner is dead."

"So is Candice," Keri added.

"Abner... rest his soul was an old man. He was more than ready to go to his maker. We have all emptied the darkest portions of our souls, that which kept us from doing what our creator calls us to. Candice would not have ever changed. Death couldn't make her cry out to God for forgiveness... I'm sure life wouldn't have forced her to... either."

"And what of me?" Stephanie asked the minister and anyone else who might possess an answer. "What have I possibly gained by my union with this evil?" Stephanie's gaze bore into the girl whose sin she witnessed. Keri felt her gaze and chose not to look away. She held nothing within her that needed to be hidden in private places anymore.

"Insight... into others... maybe... understanding of the darkness inside you that your morals and situation in life help you to defeat. All this will pass and we will move on into a new day... with new friends," Noah looked over his shoulder to the couple leaning against the Jeep's front, "and new lovers."

Keri leaned her head back against James' shoulder and watched Noah hold out an inviting hand to Stephanie. Hesitantly the walls protecting Stephanie Hawkins from the outside world collapsed and fragile fingers united.

The End

#

Other Books by Paul Donaldson

Crossroads

The Bridge Over Miller's Creek

