The Darkness in You (The Darkness Series Book 2)

by Diane Ashley Nortje

  “That would be my dead house plant. Which I was doing a fantastic job of looking after, until this mess happened.” I say to her and turn back to pour her some water.

  “It’s not dead yet.” Zaylee says to me. “But tell me what happened, what you remember.” She says as she plops down on the chair next to the plant.

  “How far back do you want me to go?”

  “Let’s start at the beginning and end off with now.” She smiles at me.

  “Okay, that day I left. We were on our way into the Manor house, when I felt something. It was strong, and I felt it deep inside my bones. It scared the living crap out of me. So, I ran away.”

  “But why did you run away?” Zaylee asks me.

  “I used to dream of this man, not often, but enough to know that he wanted me, he was after me. These dreams grew worse as I grew older. I felt the same fear when I entered that house as I felt in those dreams. I knew then something was wrong. I knew he had finally found me.” I say to Zaylee, she never takes her eyes off me and she doesn’t stop me to ask any questions. So, I continue on with my story.

  “Apparently, a link was formed between me and this monster. So, I ran away, just in case he ever found me, at least then my family and friends would still be safe, as they didn’t seem affected by this man.”

  “Okay then what made you come back here?” Zaylee asks me.

  She just had to ask. She never misses a beat.

  “The shadows.” I say and dare to look up at her.

  “You speak with shadows?” Zaylee asks me to clarify. Her eyes give her away though. She is slightly stunned, but other than that nothing. I thought she would be running for the hills, screaming at the tops of her lungs. Speaking with shadows is not normal. Definitely not normal for a supposed white witch.

  “I speak with the shadows; they are the ones that told me I had to return home.” I murmur out to her.

  “Okay, fair enough. You returned home, and Faith performed a spell, which seemed to have worked and then you woke up blank again?” Zaylee asks me.

  “Correct. Why don’t you seem bothered by the fact I talk with the shadows?”

  “I know what it means to talk to shadows, Natalie. Just because you are made of darkness doesn’t mean you are evil.” She simply states as if it is the most normal thing in the world to say.

  “Oh my god, I never said anything about being made of darkness, Zay.” I blurt out at her.

  “Then what do you think it means to talk with the shadows?” She asks me while raising her eyebrow at me. God, she is always right.

  “The coven can never know, Zay.” I say to her sheepishly.

  “I have never told the coven about you, Nay. And I’m sure now that you are older, that you discovered other things about yourself too.” Zaylee simply states.

  “How- How do you know that!”

  “I’m neither blind nor stupid. We have been friends since birth.”

  “Apparently when I thought I did a good job of hiding it, I didn’t.”

  “Oh, you did a great job, just not enough to fool me.” Zaylee says to me and winks. “Now continue. I’m sure we are getting to the juicy bits of your story.”

  “That’s all I know, the last few weeks for me, didn’t happen. And now I’m back here, and my parents are convinced that he came back for me to make me forget again. Who could be that strong to take away people’s memories?

  “Wow that was kind of anticlimactic.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to disappoint, my memories going, and all is so boring to you.” I say to her and roll my eyes dramatically.

  “I’m going to fix you for good, Natalie, and then you will tell me the juicy stories.”

  “Oh, and how do you know they are juicy?” I ask her. Zaylee and her wild imagination.

  “Whoever is taking your memories, is not doing it to hurt you or to make you permanently forget.” Zaylee says to me matter-of-factly.

  “And we know this, how?” I ask her and I feel my eyebrow arch in with the question.

  “There are much more effective ways to make people permanently forget. Now I need a pot, water and some salt.”

  “You starting now? My parents aren’t even back yet.” My voice comes out more shocked than I thought.

  “They won’t be back until I give them a call. This could get really weird, really quickly. Best not have your parents here to witness it.” Zaylee says to me and hops off the chair and moves around the kitchen like she owns the place. “Hand me my bag, will you. And be careful, its heavy. I came prepared for the worst!”

  I walk over to Zaylees’ bag, which she left by the front door. And I have to put my back into it to lift the damn thing up.

  “What the hell is in here.” I say to her as I hear glass clinking together inside her bag.

  “Everything we need to get that brain of yours working.” She says to me as she digs inside and whips out serval bottles of herbs, and objects.

  I eye out some of the weird looking objects, and Zaylee notices me watching.

  “It’s going to taste like shit, but it will work. You are in for a trip, Natalie. And I welcome you to my crazy.” Zaylee says and smiles at me. When she turns back to the pot on the stove that is now boiling. I start thinking that maybe I should run and hide.

  ~ ~ ~

  Several hours must have passed by the time that concoction Zaylee was working on was ready. And when it was, I wished it wasn’t. It tasted like shit. And that was putting it mildly. Now we are sitting together, Zaylee is holding onto my hands and I start to drift, in and out. My head starts to feel heavy and I can barely hold it up anymore. What is happening to me?

  “Natalie, how do you feel?” I hear Zaylee somewhere in the distance, but my mind can’t focus on her, it wants to stay here, it doesn’t want to return.

  I get up and move, my feet taking me in a direction of darkness, but I know I’m still sitting. I feel the cushion beneath my cheeks, so I go where my brain is taking me. Towards the darkness. I’m no longer afraid of what could lurk in the darkness. Why is my brain unafraid?

  The darkness morphs and I’m in a field of beautiful daffodils. They flutter and dance with the breeze, and I giggle. I must be high, poetry and dancing. I throw my hands above my head, and I move my body like the flowers. We dance, no music other than the rustle of leaves. But we dance, and I move my body to the natural beat. Until the breeze kicks up and with it brings this strange music.

  The daffodils start to morph with the strange music. The yellow daffodils start to glow and change into eyes that dance in the breeze. I giggle and I don’t know why. I’m safe I know that much. And I dance with the glowing eyes that lights up the field we are dancing in, enlightening our surroundings. The eerily glow is beautiful, and I move my body in between the glowing eyes as they dance with me.

  The song changes again and with it, the glowing eyes start to rise, until they morph into these beasts. I try stop, but my legs won’t stop moving. I continue to move to the beat as the eyes turn into giant beasts. I giggle again and I move towards the beasts. Why aren’t I afraid? I grind my hips to the music and the beasts start to growl as I move. They start to sway with the music, all of us are under some sort of spell as we move.

  More growling continues from behind me and I turn to look at the beasts that are behind me, but my eyes catch onto the trees instead. The trees behind us have started to move, they sway with the strange beat, their branches moving like arms, until they change completely. The trees morph into horses. Like the ones you would find on a carousel. They move up and down and start to spin around the field we are in. But the horses are not pretty with beautiful designs on them. They are dead, their eyes black and the skin on the horses are starting to peel from their bodies to reveal the bones and muscle beneath the rotting flesh.

  I continue to watch them go around and around while I move to the hypnotic beat, until riders start to appear on the backs of the dead horses. The riders grind on the horses while they watch me dance, as
they continue to move around the field. Their red and green hair is familiar, and I’m entrapped in their stares as they watch me move to the beat with them.

  More growling comes from behind me and I rip my gaze from the dead horses and turn to look at where the growling is coming from. The beasts before me now start to part, to allow whatever is coming through the crowd. The song changes yet again and the next song is as disturbing as the last, but somewhat comforting to my soul.

  The beasts continue to part, until the few that surrounds me, moves, and allow me to witness what is before me. Smoke, so much smoke that it clouds the air around us, it crawls towards me as if it was able to walk. Fire, it glows from within the smoke, heating the area around us. I look back over my shoulder and notice the horses have stopped and the red and green riders are watching me closely.

  Once the smoke finally reaches me, it stops and floats around me, encasing me in its hot embrace. I fall to my knees and the beasts once again start to growl. We are no longer dancing, no longer swaying to the beat that we were somehow joined in.

  I look up to the fire in the cloud of smoke, as a monster starts to step forward from within the smoke. Four large black wings emerge from the fiery smoke, then steps out the most beautiful monster possible. His black eyes remind me of the night sky, his face is more sin than beautiful, but still, none the less masculine. His full lips twitch as if he is suppressing a smile at me as he takes in my position before him.

  “Oh, Little One. It’s not time for you to remember.” His otherworldly voice penetrates the silence.

  “Who are you?” I ask him, my voice still holding surprisingly strong.

  “I am yours and you are mine, that’s all that matters.” The monster before me simply states.

  “How, I’ve never seen you before?” I whisper out. My eyes never leave his. I’m too afraid to look away.

  “How is not important, and the why’s aren’t either.” The monster says to me and I’m at peace with him oddly. “You will have to forgive me, Little One. What I did was for the best. Hopefully one day you will understand.”

  “What are you talking about, I don’t know what is going on!” I say to him.

  “Soon, too soon, you will know everything.” The beast says to me and snaps his head to look back. He watches the darkness for a few second before he starts shouting at the beasts in another language.

  A noise starts to penetrate the woods, it continues and starts to vibrate through me. Tap, tap, tap. I still. I know that sound.

  “Time for you to go.” The monster says to me. He nods to the beasts that have crowded behind me. “Take her back.” And turns and barks out more orders at the rest of the beasts which now start to morph into wolves, giant fucking wolves.

  I’m picked up by both of my arms and thrown across the field, where the darkness has yet to lift and I start to crash down into the darkness, until I’m swallowed whole from it.

  Chapter Six

  “I’m insane, but what are you?”- Jacin

  ~Jacin~

  “I’m not a fan of using toys.” I say to the man in front of me, his continuous sobbing is really not going to deter me. “I simply just remove hearts and then it’s over for you. I can imagine there is no pain, only an end.” I crouch down in front of the sobbing man.

  He doesn’t say anything to me, only continues to cry, the spit running out of his bloody mouth is making a fucking mess on my tiled floors. Fucking pathetic. The whole fucking lot of them. All the men that survived, cowering in front of me, like it’s going to save their souls.

  I look to the back of the room. I’ve lined them up there, I want them all to watch what I’m going to do with them. Instilling fear into the ones I haven’t got to yet. I look down to my hands where blood has covered them. Blood spots my shirt where I didn’t roll the sleeves up quite enough. I flip the knife in my hand and the man watches it. It’s clean and shiny. The metal has yet to be tarnished by blood. Yet.

  “I’ll let you on a little secret. When I remove hearts, I also remove your souls as well.” I say and stand again. I slam the knife through his hand that has been tied down to the chair making him unable to move. Like they did to Natalie. His screams echo in the cell we are in and he passes out from the pain.

  Weak.

  Pathetic.

  “Weyland, bring me the next one.”

  Weyland pushes up off the wall and moves to the back of the room where the rest of the snivelling fuckers are waiting their fate. I watch as their eyes grow wide in horror as Weyland paces in front of them. Stopping every few steps to face a man but then continues on. He is enjoying himself, the sick fucker.

  “Eenie meenie miney mo, which mother fucker gets to go?” Weyland taunts them and stops next to a man that just pissed himself. “You.” Weyland says and points at him.

  He unhooks the man that was hanging from the roof and he crumbles to the floor. Weyland picks him up by his hair and drags him to the empty chair I’m standing next to.

  “Please, please. I have a family. Please don’t do this.” He begs. But I didn’t ask him to beg for his life yet.

  “The funny thing about taking a soul.” I say to the room. Silencing the man’s pleas. “Is that I have you, for all eternity. And let’s just say, I’m not a very good host. I like pain, and I fucking love blood.” I turn to the table with another clean knife on it and I pick it up. “But you mother fuckers, you lot decided to mess with the one thing I loved more than all that. And you will all pay.”

  “Please, please, don’t do this.” The man begs again, and I’ve just about had it. I walk over to him, and grip his jaw, and I feel bone breaking beneath my hold.

  “Weyland, if you will.” I say out and crush the man’s jaw in my hold. I watch Weyland shove his fingers into the man’s mouth and pulls out his tongue.

  “I never asked you to beg for your life. But since you have already, you have no use for this.” I say to the man and slice off his tongue that Weylands claws are holding in place. The man screams and thrashes, but he can’t escape my hold, and I watch as blood fills up and starts to pour out of his mouth and flows down his neck.

  I take the tongue that Weyland caught before it could land on the floor, and shove it back into his mouth, and I close his broken jaw and hold it closed.

  “You will choke on those words. As hers were unheard, yours will be too.” I whisper into his ear and I watch as he starts to jerk about, his blood is slowly filling up his lungs, slowly killing him from the inside. His life finally leaves his eyes and his body stills. I release my hold on his mouth and the excess blood escapes his mouth and pours all over his body.

  “Get me another one, before I wake this fucker up.” I say to Weyland and I go to the man that had passed out earlier and rip the knife out that was still embedded into his hand.

  Weyland paces in front of the men, most have now thrown up over themselves, making the room smell of vomit. Good thing nothing will deter me.

  “I was once bored, so I took a trip, many, many years ago. Before you fuckers came by and made my life a bit more interesting. I once stumbled upon a school. The children’s cries of joy as they would play with one another, chasing each other all over the place, was a complete opposite to what I would usually hear.” Weyland says to them, and I fucking love it when he tells stories. It gives our prisoners some sort of hope that beneath our fucked-up façade we possess some humanity.

  We fucking don’t.

  “So, I sat one day, and just watched these kids chasing one another in a circle. Never fucking understood what they were playing, but the kids would all sit, and the one they would refer to as “it” would walk around this circle. Saying duck, duck, goose.” Weyland says to the men that are chained up. I see their fucking hope die in their eyes.

  “But I’m sorry to say, I just don’t have the means at the moment to put you fuckers in a circle, but I’m what I like to call accommodating to our guests, so I’m sure we can work with what we have.” He says with a sick smi
le on his face.

  “But.” Weyland says while clapping his hands. “Instead of duck, duck, goose. It will go as, fucker, fucker, mother fucker.” He says walking up and down the line of men. “And I will be motherfucking it. Shall we begin?”

  The men start to struggle and cry, because they are a bunch of pussies and can’t take it like a man. Did they honestly think this wasn’t going to be their fate?

  “Fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker.” I hear Weyland list off, pausing every so often, just to add to the dramatics of it all. “Fucker, fucker, fucker.” He continues to say. When he stops and says “Motherfucker.” I smile. Because my fun begins again.

  “Bring him here, Weyland.” I say indicating to the cross that hangs from the wall. Chains hang at the two points, and there is a head cage, which will hold him still.

  Weyland brings the man over and throws him to the floor at my feet. I look down at the pathetic excuse for a powerful enchanter.

  “You are having too much fun.” I say to Weyland.

  “I do enjoy the bloodshed. But my depravity doesn’t even come close to yours.”

  “I haven’t even started yet.” I say to Weyland and smile down at the pathetic man at my feet.

  “Why are you doing this to us! We never harmed her! We never even touched her!” He cries out.

  “No or you wouldn’t have your hands still. But you knew what was happening.”

  “We couldn’t do anything to stop it.” He cries to me.

  “To me, that sounds like you were an accomplice. And you will feel pain beyond measure.” I say to him and I pull him up to his feet by his hair. “You will walk yourself to your death.” And I indicate to the cross.

  “Plea- Please don’t do- do this. I beg you.”

  “It’s too late for you, and all the others in here.” I say to him and shove him into the cross. “Turn around.” I say to him.

  Once the man is turned. I lock his wrists into the chains, and his head into the cage. He starts to thrash and fight now. But it’s too late for him and the rest of them. My patience is running out.