Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 (11 page)

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.”

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.