Darkness In The Soul

By U. R. Ekhoey

Matching my own coldness within, generated from my heart. I can feel her slipping from my mind. The memories of her so distant of what we had in that short time we knew each other. It was so powerful, and my soul felt so content. I cannot forget her! I will not forget her!! I want her back... I want us to be together... forever. But how can I find her again? She was a shadow. A dark thing that was cast away from this world by the cursed sun. My true love, please give me a sign and guide me. I swear I will not rest until I have found you again my sweet, dark and twisted shadow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: U. R. Ekhoey
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370883622

U. R. Ekhoey

Ulf R. Ekhoey was born in Akershus, Norway, in 1975. He is a horror, psychological thriller, suspense, science fiction writer, but also a dabbler in the fantasy genre. He is a philosopher and a thinker as well as a practical all-around man. Having held a number of physical active and practical jobs in the past he tends to blend this into his writing.

Book preview

Diary entry #1

One of the many doctors that had the duty of stitching me back together again suggested that it might be a good idea for me to begin writing a diary. The doctor said it would help me focus and gather my thoughts. Get things out of my system so to speak and get some kind of control about what is going on inside of me. It is ironic isn’t it my dear diary that one of the good doctors picked up that I have a dark side which I don’t share with anyone. I did share it though with someone very special to me. She is gone now though, and I feel so lost and alone without her. She was my little dark secret you see. She was my mistress of the dark, my goddess of the shadows. She was my one and true love. Since I woke up I have gone over it many times in my head trying to understand what led to that particular moment. The moment when I lost her. But there’s so many things that I really can’t remember as if the memories themselves seems shrouded in darkness like the very entity that I fell in love with. Maybe the doctor in the hospital was right? Maybe I should keep on writing this diary and keep on collecting my thoughts and memories inside of these pages. After all, I am not sure about anything these days. Did that shell that exploded right beside me and almost sent me to my grave make me create false memories of her? I don’t think so, but then again it feels so long ago when I felt her cold embrace. I think I need to go back to when I first meet her in order to remember it all correctly. So, when was that? When was the first time I started to listen to something in the shadows? What is really the first memory of my beautiful entity of the dark? I think it was when I was visiting a tavern while on some R&R from the war. Everyone was in high spirits that evening enjoying their time from the battle zone celebrating the very fact that they were still alive. Not me though. I was in a terrible mood. Those pointless R&R trips away from the front only made me restless to the point where I was sick of worry actually. Worrying that by the time I got back to the front the war would be over and I couldn’t keep on doing what I love to do. I imagine I have always been like this and I have always wanted to do it. To feel and see how it looks like and how it feels to kill another human being. The war made this all too easy for me and so I gladly enlisted when the opportunity presented itself. I’ll admit that it sharpened me and made me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before. So, you see my dear diary, I felt nothing but misery sitting there all alone in that tavern where these people were drinking and dancing being high on life itself. I on the other hand sat in a shadowed corner pretending to fit in. I’m sure everyone saw right through my charade and for that reason kept their distance from me.

I wasn’t sure at first, but I kept getting this feeling of someone whispering beside me. It was like a gentle draft tickling me in my ears wanting to get my attention. The whispering voice was a woman’s. When I closed my eyes, it was like I could see an elegant lady hovering over my right shoulder. Darkness shadowed her mystically enticing me towards her form and face. Once I began to listen to the whispers I could hear her more clearly. All my senses seemed to be heightened by this meeting and I felt once again alive and alert as if I was back on the battlefield. She made me look and scan through the tavern. It was like I could feel her around me caressing my neck with her cold lips as I singled out a young waitress in the crowd. The darkness kept whispering to me. She wanted me to do things to satisfy her. She didn’t have to tell me though. I knew what she wanted and so did I. So, there I sat in the corner of this filthy house of cheap pleasures engulfed in her darkness that was owned by this sensual dark being. I sat there until almost closing time. I left with the last crowd pretending to have drunk to much beer. They hardly knew that I separated myself from them and those that did most likely thought I had to free myself from too much beverage. I found a good place to wait for our pray shrouded in the shadows as we were. It wasn’t a long wait, but all the time I stood there my female companion’s voice kept whispering to me. I remember it as soft and sweet nothings that seemed to caress my very soul. I felt her so close and a strange feeling had been filling me for the first time in my life at that very night. I felt so drawn to this voice that kept on following me almost as if I didn’t have a choice but to listen and obey. She got all exited when the young waitress left her workplace for the night and began on her journey which we could only guess would end at her home. We began to tail her not too far behind while I listened closely to the instructions from the female voice. She told me to strike fear into this woman’s heart so that she could feed the most out of it and somehow, I already knew I had to do this. I too got high on the emotion of following this young waitress. The thrill of the hunt, it always cleared my head and sharpened my senses. It didn’t take long before she detected me, and she quickened her pace to get some distance between us. That is when the fun really started. The female voice in the darkness also became thrilled as we both detected fear from the prey we were stalking. My dark companion almost became excited as she was clearly feeding of the situation. The streets were empty, and snow was falling from the darkness above. Our muffled footsteps kept moving forward while getting dampened in the snow underneath us under poorly illuminated streetlamps. Then our pray started to run, but she didn’t get too far as she slipped in the slippery wet snow and fell on its surface. She screamed out in terror as my companion screamed out in pleasure. The woman on the ground turned around only to see my dark figure looming closely and it was at that moment I decided to pull out my army knife. I always kept one underneath my coat and I do so to this day. The woman’s eyes became mad with fear as I kept coming closer. She tried to crawl around and get to her feet. As she did so I caught her by her hair and pulled the thin frail body of hers into mine. Another short scream escaped her lips before it went out into a guttural sound, air mingling with blood in her throat before I let her go again. She sank to her hands and knees trying desperately to hold in her precious blood that kept her alive. But I dare write in you my dear diary that most of it flowed through her hands rather quickly and stained the pure snow red as she stumbled about and fell. My female companion was ecstatic and screaming of joy in my ears. For the first time I felt something glide out from underneath my clothes and a dark shadow figure floated over to the dying woman as she was desperately fighting for her life. She seemed to glide around the dying body as the woman laid there bleeding out and suffocating in her own blood. Diving down and around her the darkness seemed to feed on something coming out of the woman’s battle with death. Then our victim’s life force ebbed away, and she lay there still in the bloody snow. The shadow figure then turned towards me. Her eyes lighting up like small red rubies in narrow slits pointing slightly upwards. I tried to back away as my hunger for the kill was suddenly gone. A fear of the unknown that came now in a physical form against me filled me with such force I had never felt before. Without hesitation the shadow figure flew into me. I could feel how she wrapped herself around my body while caressing it like it was for the first time. Her whispering voice now stronger reached me with soothing comments about us and what we had just done. I walked the streets the rest of that night listening and feeling what seemed to be my new-found love. It was like finding a piece of myself I never thought I had been missing. When we talked it was like my mind and thoughts became crystal clear. She brought clarity to my very purpose being alive and I wanted nothing more than to feel and talk to her forever. Then, as morning came dangerously close she told me she had to seek refuge somewhere safe where the light and especially the sun never reached. She would love nothing more than to be with me, but she was still too weak and did not dare to stray too far from her sanctuary. I promised we would see each other the next night and so we did. We got bolder then and killed two women before midnight in new and inventive ways with knifes I had never thought of before she whispered them to me. Ways that kept them alive longer while ripping and tearing the most fear we could out of each individual. As a side dish that night we found a very drunk man at closing time at another tavern. My mistress of the dark could practically taste the fear from him before we had even begun our hunt. Being drunk as he was he didn’t know what hit him before it was too late, although he sobered up plenty as I began to cut into him. His dying screams rang through the snow laid town square where we surprised him after many streets of playing cat and mouse with him. From that night my dark mistress and I were inseparable. She told me she now felt safe enough that I would never harm her, and she wanted nothing more than to come with me and protect me as I had taken care of her these past few nights. I couldn’t agree more, and I wanted nothing else then to feel her on my skin beneath my clothes all the time. It was something special about that feeling. Like something I cannot explain. It was like a part of me that I never knew I had been missing was suddenly there and together we became more than just a man and a shadow. When together we became a force that I felt couldn’t be stopped. In the beginning she kept herself hidden at daytime in my canteen flask. Then as she got bolder and seemed to have grown larger she took refuge in my helmet feeling very confident that I never would let sunlight reach her shadow figure. I soon learned that having her with me saved my life more than once. She seemed to keep getting stronger while feeding of all the horror and anguish the war unleashed. My brothers in arms or the enemies, it didn’t matter it seemed and I felt her becoming larger and more solid now and taking refuge under my clothes next to my body. Her voice had grown from a mere faint whisper, a plea in the wind to a strong and snaring female voice in my ears when she felt confident no one was listening. I should have been dead like so many of my brothers in arms as they kept falling victim to the enemy bullets. For some reason my dark companion that now surrounded my body completely absorbed the bullets like a shield. It did hurt her though as the bullets tore the fabric of my clothes and daylight hit her more powerful than any bullet or projectile ever could. I still remember her screams when that happened, and it was like I felt her pain as if it was my own. Likewise was the fact that upon many death thrills she would reward me with pleasures which I have never felt before or after. Upon reflecting on this now as I write in you my strange friend I guess we would have been discovered by my fellow troopers in my unit if it wasn’t for the fact that they kept on dying as flies and I kept on mysteriously surviving as long as I didn’t take a direct hit in my head. I must have been transferred to several different companies throughout the war and that’s probably why my dark secret never got out. How I miss her and the endless killings of our oncoming enemies and the unexpected civilians when we were on occasional R&R’s. It didn’t matter where I was and who I was killing, as long as I had her with me. The outside world was a blur and our own little world was so very crystal clear. Our ways of satisfying and playing with each other I do dare to write was unparalleled in this world. I knew when I think back about it that I loved her like she loved me unconditionally since we both shared a bond that stretched between worlds. These words that I write down in these pages don’t do it justice how strongly I feel my heartache now and how miserable I really am. You see, she got so brutally ripped away from me. It wasn’t because she wanted to it was because of the damn war. We had been given orders to rush forward when we got hit heavily by mortar suppression fire. One of those exploded right beside me and shredded everyone around me including her. I really blame myself for it too. I should have been more careful. My clothes got ripped and shredded in so many ways as I got thrown away like a ragdoll when an angry child wants to show emotions. Dear God in heaven. I can’t get her screams out of my head. It was screams of pure pain and terror as I lay there on the muddy ground seeing how she pulled herself away from my body and tried to fit into my helmet. She had outgrown that hiding place and had become more solid since she had last used that place as a sanctuary, so she couldn’t fit anymore. The sun kept on burning away on her as black vapor seemed to trail upwards into the air. My vision faded from the pain that I felt and the last thing I heard was her pleading for me to save her and find a place she could hide. My damned body was too weak though and in too much pain that I seemed to get both from my own body and from her. So, my mind did the only thing it could, blacking out, her pleads dying and fading away with the rest of the war-torn world. I remember I woke up slowly like the earth pulling my very soul back to this place I no longer wanted to be. I found myself in a military hospital in England. The doctors and the nurses who took care of me told me I had been in a coma for months. I had suffered a blow to the head from a fragment of the mortar shell that graced my left temple and made a fracture on my skull. Because of it I had slipped into a coma. I knew there was another reason for blacking out, but naturally I couldn’t tell them about my dark companion. The doctors and the nurses kept on monitoring my health and noticed my psychological trauma wrongly concluding it was because of the war and the battle I had been injured in. My depression and state of mind otherwise was because of two facts. One and foremost that I no longer could feel or hear or sense my love any longer. The second thing was that the war was over. The allied forces had won, and Germany lay in ruins. I felt a numbness and detachment from the world. I wanted her back and I still do because without her I don’t see any reason why I should keep on living. Rather than letting the truth getting out I felt the need to get as quickly as I could out of that hospital and get back home. Here I thought I could gather my thoughts, be alone and find some way to forget what I have lived through and whom I have shared that existence with. I have quickly found that I can’t. I must find a way to get her back or to contact her again. My mind keeps on telling me that she somehow survived. That there was someplace she could crawl to and shy away from the cursed sun’s deadly rays. That she found a way to miraculously escape and that she is still there, wherever that might be, and she is waiting for me to come and save her. At nights my nightmares are not filled by the horrors of the war, but I’m plagued by the scenes from that day when we got ripped apart. My deepest fear is that she is dead and gone from this world, never to be able to reach her or see her again. Never feel her wrapped around my body as she whispers so softly and emotionally into my ears. The worst of it is that I keep on missing the bond that we shared. A bond that went beyond anything on this earth. A bond that I feel no longer. I miss it so. When I can’t sleep I lay awake and fantasies about her entering my open window so that I can feel her again. We touch each other as long separated lovers do before we go out for a night of fun hunting and preying again. But those are just silly dreams and the thoughts of her are just weak substitutes for how she really was. I often wonder why I came back home. What am I really doing here? What am I doing in this big old house where no one dwells anymore? My family is long gone, and I have no roots or purpose in life anymore. Why must I carry on when she is gone, and my very soul is dying without her?

Chapter 2

There once stood a large house on a gentle slope overlooking a small town. Three stories high with an attic and a cellar it had been built on the edge of the town deliberately for the view. A rich family had built it sparing no expenses. Its outer and inner exterior meant to impress. The typical style of those days was the high arched windows with many smaller window frames within them. A massive looking and richly decorated oak double set door had been set in the middle of the house below a triangular shaped overbuild shielding from the rain, wind and snow. Above the door was a round tainted glass window depicting a strange circular object in different colors. The black paneling the house wore as an outer coating was broad and massive looking underneath the steep slate stone roof that went almost straight up at first, but then halfway up its angle got easier. The rich family decided to fence themselves in and built a high iron spear tipped fence around their property. In order to get in or out one had to pass the two massive black iron gates that guarded the entrance. This made them feel safe as the years kept stretching on. The town expanded together with other places around it. A city was steadily expanding nearby and swallowing up all the other areas together with the large house that once overlooked a small town. Vegetation began to grow unruly around the house, moss attacking its corners. Wild ivy began to climb on the west side of the house while trees and thick underbrush expanded up into the air. Some new residents came and went with big dreams and high hopes of making the place great again, but none of them stayed for very long. The paneling cracked and withered, making the color fade away its once dark color while a shade of green began to attack the slates up above. The once effective gutters alongside the four edges of the roof had seen its best days many years ago by now. They were leaking water or overflowing at their drains because of the heavy leaf fall that the overgrown garden had kept spreading unattained. Massive half dead trees rose from the thick underbrush and had stretched out their long branches close to the building and even some places over the steep roof. The garden itself had grown to the point where it was leaning on and through the fence. In front of it stood three young men in construction work overalls taking it all in each in their own way.

My God. David said as he looked through the half open gate where the thick and yellowed grass that probably was over a meter long leaned out to greet them as his voice trailed away.

He looked past the grass and thick underbrush as his eyes landed yet again upon the large monstrosity his two friends had purchased. What have you two done?

David looked first at John, the short trimmed brown hair and clean-shaven carpenter of the bunch. Because of his background the two others leaned heavily on him when it came to check out the buildings structural integrity and other things the two others knew little about. David’s questioningly brown eyes under his black thick and bristly hair landed on Matt the painter. Mr. happy go lucky himself with his positive attitude that had made David’s temper erupt like a volcano more than once throughout the years. His golden locks and blue eyes together with his easy-going personality had the power to seduce. David looked back at John again.

What? John smirked as he exchanged glances with Matt and then they both turned their attention to John’s Toyota Hiace filled to the brim with equipment. Matt walked over to the trailer behind the car and started to loosen up the straps that held even more equipment in place.

What?? David flared, his short temper always an annoyance, but also a great place for much amusement to the other guys. What do you mean by what? David barked going after John. Just look at that right there. David gesticulated towards the house. Why on earth did you buy this… this… freaky, chills running up and down my spine, haunted looking, run down peace of crap house?

Oh, come on David. Matt smiled as he picked up a couple of suitcases. This house will look much better when we are done with it.

Yeah, there’s that and it will house more students than we originally planned. John picked up as he grabbed some equipment from the car and started to walk towards the gate. And that, in turn, will get us out of our debt and make us profit more quickly.

David picked up some equipment and his sleeping bag.

Okay, I can see the logic in that. I just wish I’d been with you when you two got gullied by Mr. Burns at that meeting where you bought this house. David followed his two friends and partners into the thick grass towards the house. "It just sounds to me, now that I have seen this monstrosity, that Mr. Burns had you fooled. How much did