Echoes Down a Dark Well
Have you ever wondered if you’ve lived before?
Imagine then if you could remember every moment of every life you have lived for the past two thousand years!
That is the continuing fate and curse of a soldier of fortune named Cody. Not only is he cursed to recall each life, but he knows that each succeeding one will end the same – in violence, tragedy and death.
He has only one slim ray of hope that keeps him clinging to sanity – The Girl.
She, like him, is on a never ending cycle of rebirth. The only difference is that she has the power to heal his tortured soul and give him peace. But first he must find her. And that’s not easy because just like him in each incarnation she is born into a different family of a different race or culture, and the only way that Cody can recognize her is by her eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul and her ageless soul always shines through.
So Cody continues his quest, but this time he has company – and a problem, in the form of a cute, sassy but tough and cynical little blond by the name of Clarisse. Unfortunately she is not "the girl". But somehow they wind up as traveling companions on the run from mob vengeance. As they crisscross the country from coast to coast, Cody finds himself in possession of a strange wooden box that kings, tyrants and even churchmen have been willing to kill for down through the ages.
The good news is that the mysterious box might be his path to salvation. The bad news is that if it falls into the wrong hands the entire world could suffer an eternity of misery, terror and death.
Echoes Down A Dark Well - Excerpts
I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, droplets of cold sweat dampening my fingertips.
I got up and walked over to the window. The streetlight was still making that sputtering sound that reminded me of bugs frying in the bug zapper my dad had hung over the back porch the summer I turned thirteen.
The summer the dreams started.
Back then they had scared the hell out of me—they still did sometimes, but by now at least I was used to them. You’d be scared too if you had them every night of your life. Every damn night.
I went into the bathroom, filled the sink and pushed my face into the cold water. It felt good—washing away the night sweat. But it couldn’t wash away the dreams. Nothing could do that. Hell, I’d been trying to do that for thirty years, and nothing even made a dent. Not drugs or booze or women or music or—blood. And I liked all of those—though not necessarily in that order.
I sat down on the bed, propped up a pillow against the wall and reached for a cigarette. My hand hesitated a moment. I was vaguely considering getting into one of my quitting phases, maybe the tenth or twentieth—hell who was keeping count, not me. I put the pack down on the nightstand, then said, “Screw it,” out loud to the empty room. If I checked out of this incarnation early, no one was gonna shed a tear, least of all me.
My name is Cody this time around and that’s about all anyone knows about me. Yeah I’ve got a last name too but I don’t give it out. Besides it’s changes so many times over the centuries that sometimes even I forget it.
I lit the cancer stick and leaned back against the wall. Finally I sighed and crushed out the cigarette on the nightstand. No ashtrays ’cause the roach motel I’d been staying in for the past two weeks didn’t allow smoking. I glanced around the grimy room made seedier still by my dozens of cigarette butts burned into various pieces of cheap furniture. Hell, what did I care? When I left this time, I wouldn't be coming back.
I got up, pulled on my jeans and grabbed a black tee-shirt from the half dozen in my nylon gym bag. I slipped my feet into a pair of black Reeboks, shoved one arm into my black leather jacket and with my other hand grabbed the gym bag. I was all packed and ready to go to work.
I risked a brief check of my watch and pushed the button that lit up the face. Three thirty-seven AM. he’d be coming home soon from whatever club he’d been snorting coke and lapping up the ‘Dom’ in. Maybe he’d have a woman with him—maybe not. It didn’t really matter, though I always tried my damndest not to kill a woman.
I had my code, too. I always sort of had it in the back of my mind, but when I saw that movie The Professional with Natalie Portman and that French actor—I can never remember his name—I liked his line and adopted it as my own. It kinda’ gives me a kick when I say it to my employers, “No women—no kids.”
I wasn’t that way in the early days. Hell, when you rode with Attila or Genghis Kahn, you pretty much just killed everything that moved. But now . . . Well, at least I’m trying. Though it’s pretty friggin’ obvious that it hasn’t been good enough, I keep coming back. But trust me, I’m doing my best. And yeah I know the punch line—“Compared to what?”
OK, it’s not much but it’s something. “No women—no kids.”
Besides, every time I have a woman in my sights the thought always runs through my mind, What if it’s her?
It’s made me hesitate and has almost gotten me killed a few times. No, make that has gotten me killed a few times. For instance, that Hungarian Countess bitch in the Fifteenth Century . . . Elizabeth something? Elizabeth Bathery, that was it. The whack job who thought she was a vampire and was quite literally bleeding the countryside dry with her obsession for bathing in the blood of young peasant girls. I was a mercenary then, a landless knight with a sword for hire, and a frantic farmer gave me everything he had to find out what had become of his daughter after she went to serve the countess.
I found out all right. She and a dozen or so local girls had been hung up like hogs and bled dry to fill the countess' bathtub, and while I was deciding if the farmer would be satisfied with the head of the woman who’d murdered his daughter, that bitch countess had her maid sneak up behind me and stick a dagger between my ribs. A split second after that first stroke, I had my sword out and was about to plunge it between a pair of very attractive breasts before she could take a second swipe at me, but I hesitated. I thought I saw something in her eyes. And while I was realizing that the only thing I saw there was someone who was crazier than a rabid bat, the bitch pushed the dagger through my doublet and straight into my heart.
So much for compassion, huh?
But still . . . I just can’t afford to take that chance. Any one of them could be the girl.
Down through the centuries she’s been tall, short, petite, heavy, every nationality, every ethnic group and every age—from a child to an old lady. In 1909 she was even a precocious four-year-old who sat on my bony old knee as I rocked out my last heartbeats at the Old Soldiers Home for Confederate War Veterans in Mobile, Alabama. And I remember what she said as I closed my eyes on that incarnation. She whispered, “Don’t worry, Lucas (my name in that lifetime). We’ll be together soon.”
That’s what I’m waiting for.
“Cody. Hey Cody, the train has stopped.”
Clarisse was right. It had.
I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs of a memory I wasn’t quite finished with yet. But castles and swords would have to wait. It was the here and now I had to deal with. Glancing over at Clarisse, I noticed the bruises had turned purple, but the swelling around her eye had gone down. The doc back in Kentucky had wiped off her smeared makeup and lipstick when he treated her, and somehow she actually looked better without it. Or maybe I was still thinking about the girl in the tower Keep. She had worn no makeup but, then again, what could modern cosmetics have done to improve pale white skin, blood-red lips and eyes as large and golden as some mythological cat’s?
Clarisse’s hand on my arm snapped me out of my reverie. Damn, these lapses were getting serious. For the first time in almost two thousand years I began to wonder if all the memories of all the lives were finally beginning to push me over the edge.
“Concentrate, Cody–fuckin’ concentrate.” I mumbled.
“What?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud. “Nothing, just talking to myself.”
“Well that’s fine as long as you include me in your soliloquy.”
“Soliloquy? My, my, two weeks of college, and you’re talking like an intellectual.”
She did something I’d never seen her do. She blushed. “I’m not completely dim, you know. I told you I got good grades in high school, and I still read a lot.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Stuff you probably never even picked up, tough guy, ’cause there’s no guns or bimbo’s in ’em.”
“Enlighten me then. Such as . . . ?”
“Marcel Proust, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen and Shakespeare. So there.” She ended by triumphantly sticking her tongue out at me.
“I’m impressed—although I feel compelled to remind you that there’s more blood, murder and bimbos in one of ol’ Willy S’s plays than in the average car chase, shoot ’em up at your local movie theatre.”
“That’s probably why I prefer Jane Austen.” She sighed. “I especially like Pride and Prejudice, ’cause it’s about some head-up-his-ass rich dude who learns that a girl doesn’t have to be rich and put on stuck-up airs to be a good person.”
“Humm, I’m not sure Jane would have put it that way, but I’ll concede you the concept.”
She looked at me funny. “And there’s another thing I don’t get. Most of the time you talk like you never finished third grade, or just grunt a word or two. But then all of a sudden you’ll start using all these two-dollar words like you're some sort of professor or something. What gives? Or is it just another one of those secrets from the past you’re never gonna let me in on?”
“We’ve all got our little secrets, Clarisse. Now we’ve got to . . .”
An Excerpt
From Chapter 1...
From Chapter 1...
I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, droplets of cold sweat dampening my fingertips.
I got up and walked over to the window. The streetlight was still making that sputtering sound that reminded me of bugs frying in the bug zapper my dad had hung over the back porch the summer I turned thirteen.
The summer the dreams started.
Back then they had scared the hell out of me—they still did sometimes, but by now at least I was used to them. You’d be scared too if you had them every night of your life. Every damn night.
I went into the bathroom, filled the sink and pushed my face into the cold water. It felt good—washing away the night sweat. But it couldn’t wash away the dreams. Nothing could do that. Hell, I’d been trying to do that for thirty years, and nothing even made a dent. Not drugs or booze or women or music or—blood. And I liked all of those—though not necessarily in that order.
I sat down on the bed, propped up a pillow against the wall and reached for a cigarette. My hand hesitated a moment. I was vaguely considering getting into one of my quitting phases, maybe the tenth or twentieth—hell who was keeping count, not me. I put the pack down on the nightstand, then said, “Screw it,” out loud to the empty room. If I checked out of this incarnation early, no one was gonna shed a tear, least of all me.
My name is Cody this time around and that’s about all anyone knows about me. Yeah I’ve got a last name too but I don’t give it out. Besides it’s changes so many times over the centuries that sometimes even I forget it.
I lit the cancer stick and leaned back against the wall. Finally I sighed and crushed out the cigarette on the nightstand. No ashtrays ’cause the roach motel I’d been staying in for the past two weeks didn’t allow smoking. I glanced around the grimy room made seedier still by my dozens of cigarette butts burned into various pieces of cheap furniture. Hell, what did I care? When I left this time, I wouldn't be coming back.
I got up, pulled on my jeans and grabbed a black tee-shirt from the half dozen in my nylon gym bag. I slipped my feet into a pair of black Reeboks, shoved one arm into my black leather jacket and with my other hand grabbed the gym bag. I was all packed and ready to go to work.
***
A half hour later I was sitting in a rented Buick—grey, non-descript. The look I always strived for. I risked a brief check of my watch and pushed the button that lit up the face. Three thirty-seven AM. he’d be coming home soon from whatever club he’d been snorting coke and lapping up the ‘Dom’ in. Maybe he’d have a woman with him—maybe not. It didn’t really matter, though I always tried my damndest not to kill a woman.
I had my code, too. I always sort of had it in the back of my mind, but when I saw that movie The Professional with Natalie Portman and that French actor—I can never remember his name—I liked his line and adopted it as my own. It kinda’ gives me a kick when I say it to my employers, “No women—no kids.”
I wasn’t that way in the early days. Hell, when you rode with Attila or Genghis Kahn, you pretty much just killed everything that moved. But now . . . Well, at least I’m trying. Though it’s pretty friggin’ obvious that it hasn’t been good enough, I keep coming back. But trust me, I’m doing my best. And yeah I know the punch line—“Compared to what?”
OK, it’s not much but it’s something. “No women—no kids.”
Besides, every time I have a woman in my sights the thought always runs through my mind, What if it’s her?
It’s made me hesitate and has almost gotten me killed a few times. No, make that has gotten me killed a few times. For instance, that Hungarian Countess bitch in the Fifteenth Century . . . Elizabeth something? Elizabeth Bathery, that was it. The whack job who thought she was a vampire and was quite literally bleeding the countryside dry with her obsession for bathing in the blood of young peasant girls. I was a mercenary then, a landless knight with a sword for hire, and a frantic farmer gave me everything he had to find out what had become of his daughter after she went to serve the countess.
I found out all right. She and a dozen or so local girls had been hung up like hogs and bled dry to fill the countess' bathtub, and while I was deciding if the farmer would be satisfied with the head of the woman who’d murdered his daughter, that bitch countess had her maid sneak up behind me and stick a dagger between my ribs. A split second after that first stroke, I had my sword out and was about to plunge it between a pair of very attractive breasts before she could take a second swipe at me, but I hesitated. I thought I saw something in her eyes. And while I was realizing that the only thing I saw there was someone who was crazier than a rabid bat, the bitch pushed the dagger through my doublet and straight into my heart.
So much for compassion, huh?
But still . . . I just can’t afford to take that chance. Any one of them could be the girl.
Down through the centuries she’s been tall, short, petite, heavy, every nationality, every ethnic group and every age—from a child to an old lady. In 1909 she was even a precocious four-year-old who sat on my bony old knee as I rocked out my last heartbeats at the Old Soldiers Home for Confederate War Veterans in Mobile, Alabama. And I remember what she said as I closed my eyes on that incarnation. She whispered, “Don’t worry, Lucas (my name in that lifetime). We’ll be together soon.”
That’s what I’m waiting for.
***
An Excerpt
From Chapter 15…
“Cody. Hey Cody, the train has stopped.”
Clarisse was right. It had.
I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs of a memory I wasn’t quite finished with yet. But castles and swords would have to wait. It was the here and now I had to deal with. Glancing over at Clarisse, I noticed the bruises had turned purple, but the swelling around her eye had gone down. The doc back in Kentucky had wiped off her smeared makeup and lipstick when he treated her, and somehow she actually looked better without it. Or maybe I was still thinking about the girl in the tower Keep. She had worn no makeup but, then again, what could modern cosmetics have done to improve pale white skin, blood-red lips and eyes as large and golden as some mythological cat’s?
Clarisse’s hand on my arm snapped me out of my reverie. Damn, these lapses were getting serious. For the first time in almost two thousand years I began to wonder if all the memories of all the lives were finally beginning to push me over the edge.
“Concentrate, Cody–fuckin’ concentrate.” I mumbled.
“What?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud. “Nothing, just talking to myself.”
“Well that’s fine as long as you include me in your soliloquy.”
“Soliloquy? My, my, two weeks of college, and you’re talking like an intellectual.”
She did something I’d never seen her do. She blushed. “I’m not completely dim, you know. I told you I got good grades in high school, and I still read a lot.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Stuff you probably never even picked up, tough guy, ’cause there’s no guns or bimbo’s in ’em.”
“Enlighten me then. Such as . . . ?”
“Marcel Proust, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen and Shakespeare. So there.” She ended by triumphantly sticking her tongue out at me.
“I’m impressed—although I feel compelled to remind you that there’s more blood, murder and bimbos in one of ol’ Willy S’s plays than in the average car chase, shoot ’em up at your local movie theatre.”
“That’s probably why I prefer Jane Austen.” She sighed. “I especially like Pride and Prejudice, ’cause it’s about some head-up-his-ass rich dude who learns that a girl doesn’t have to be rich and put on stuck-up airs to be a good person.”
“Humm, I’m not sure Jane would have put it that way, but I’ll concede you the concept.”
She looked at me funny. “And there’s another thing I don’t get. Most of the time you talk like you never finished third grade, or just grunt a word or two. But then all of a sudden you’ll start using all these two-dollar words like you're some sort of professor or something. What gives? Or is it just another one of those secrets from the past you’re never gonna let me in on?”
“We’ve all got our little secrets, Clarisse. Now we’ve got to . . .”
