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 cou
ld 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.
Dark Places of the Soul: Dark Soul Trilogy - Book 1 Page 8