Immortal Soul

It was cold, dark and angry.  Wind howled vehemently through the trees making them bend and sway obediently to its  ill tempered authority. Thunder cracked, like a bullwhip, against the earth, rumbling the entire universe with its fury, lightning zigzagged down from its celestial dwelling and lit up the dark with electrifying brilliance, and rain was spat down upon the ground in defiance.  It was an awesome and terrifying storm.  Never before had I seen or heard a storm as fierce and violent as this storm.  Never before had I been afraid of a storm like I was afraid of this storm.  It put a fear in me, the likes of which I had never felt before.  It disturbed me in a way I never want to be disturbed again. 
For many moments I stood at the living room window watching the storm bring its wrath down upon the earth, and listening to the rain as it splat violently against the glass.  Then I jumped back away from the window in surprise as some sort of entity, some sort of being, some sort of dreadful spirit seemed to manifest itself right out of the storm.  Whatever it was standing there outside my window stared in at me through evil eyes, and the blood nearly ran cold in my veins.  fearing this thing, this apparition, whatever it was might reach out through the darkness and the storm, through the thick glass of the window and grab me, I slowly backed away, not taking my eyes away from it for a moment.  Then I turned and ran upstairs to my bedroom skipping two and three steps at a time.  I slammed the bedroom door behind me and leaned back against it breathing heavily. It seemed for the moment that I had separated myself from the darkness and the storm and eluded the fear and anxiety that grabbed hold of me.  But the darkness was still there.  The storm was still there and so was the anxiety and fear. It was everywhere, it surrounded me. It filled the room like a thick fog.  I could feel the walls closing in on me.  I could feel their cold hands reaching out towards me.  There was no escape.  Every part of me was being devoured by this fear, this contamination that fed upon my mind.  It nagged at my nerves like an old crone.  And the longer I stood there with my back against the door the worse it got.  I wanted to make the darkness go away.  I wanted to rid my mind of this hell that had taken hold of it so I reached out to turn on the bedroom light, but through the darkness I could see my wife lying in bed asleep so I did not turn on the light, instead I got undressed and crawled into bed with her.  The warmth of her bare skin next to mine seemed to calm my frazzled nerves somewhat, but it did not allow me to sleep, neither did the storm.  It kept me wide awake.  I tossed and turned and even covered my head with my pillow in a feeble attempt to drown out the sound of the storm but it seeped right through and acosted my ears with a fury.  Nothing I did, no position I found, no amount of struggle would appease my fatigued body.  It seemed like an impossible goal, to fall asleep. One I would never attain no matter how hard I pushed myself.  The closer to it I came the further from me it seemed to be.  so I just laid there staring up at the ceiling listening to the storm as it raged on hour after merciless hour never ceasing for a single moment.  Then, to my amazement, there was a moment of silence and my eye closed.  I fell into a deep sleep. One that I wanted.  One that I needed.  One that I wished had not come upon me, for as I slept I dreamt and my dreams turned into nightmares encumbered with garish visions of mutilation and death.  And once again I was strugging, but this time to wake up.  Lucky me, I did not have to struggle long.  A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning brought me back to my senses.  I sat up in bed with a start.  Sweat covered my whole body.  It dripped from me in great swells.  I wiped it from my face and pushed back my tangled hair.  I looked around the dark room wondering what had just happened, then I looked down at my wife and shook my head in puzzlement, in disbelief.  She still slept.  With all my tossing and turning and hemming and hawing and moaning and groaning and twitching and bouncing the mattress with every move that I made I hadn't wakened her.  Not even the chaos of the storm, the thunder rattling the entire house with its barbaric cacophany, or the raindrops that exploded on the roof of the house like millions of tiny little water bombs had moved her to wake.  She just laid there undisturbed by it all as if she was dead or in a coma or something dreadful like that, and it unnerved me more than I already was.  I reached out to nudge her, to see if she was still alive or if she had gone into the abyss and she moved.  I jerked my hand back in startled surprise and let out a gasp, I nearly soiled myself.  It was as if something dead had suddenly come back to life, but she did not wake, she just let out some sort of nasaly snort and rolled over onto her side.  It was all quite funny now that I think about it, that snort. It almost made my heart stop.
I knew I would never be able to get back to sleep so I got back out of bed and got dressed.  I stood for many moments and watched my wife sleep and I shook my head again in puzzlement and disbelief, and I wondered how she could do it, how she could sleep so calmly and undisturbed when outside a storm bashed and thrashed and beat against our house like an angry giant.  It was perplexing until another crack of thunder and another flash of lightning and some other noise above the sound of the storm sent my heart fleeing into my throat.  I swallowed violently as if trying to push it back down where it belonged.  Fear once again took hold of me, but curiosity had also taken hold of me and I rushed downstairs.  I grabbed my jacket off the coat rack and went to the front door.  I hesitated for a moment before opening it for fear of what I might find on the other side of it.  I did not want to set one foot outside but my dauntless curiosity pulled me against my will out into it.  The rain had stopped for the moment but its fresh fragrance still lingered heavy in the air, and the wind still blew implacably through the trees.  I had to pull my jacket tight around myself to ward off the winds biting chill.  I stepped down off the porch and into the darkness.  I searched the whole perimeter around my house.  I searched in my garage.  I search in and around my shed but I found no trace of anything or anyone that could have made the loud noise that I had heard. I decided that it was just the wind and the rain that had been playing tricks on my ears and eyes and other senses but then I decided different when I looked up at my house and let a gasp jump out of me. In the pale moonlight with the mist rising up around it like it was my house looked like a haunted mansion, but more sinister than the vision of my house in the pale moonlight was the vision of a silhouetted figure staring down at me from my bedroom window and it wasn't my wife.  My heart jumped back into my throat, the hairs on the nape of my neck stood up at rigid attention and a chill as cold as death clawed its way down my spine.  I ran back to the front door as fast as I could but I found it shut and locked and I didn't have the key.  I stomped my foot and cursed outloud for being so stupid, then I started pounding on the door and calling out to my wife, but the only answer I received was silence, loud obnoxious silence, the kind of silence that bounces off the walls of your skull and drives you mad with its quietude.  My heart began pounding so hard within my chest it felt as if it might burst right out of me.  I pounded harder on the door and yelling louder for my wife, but still only silence met my ears.  I was getting frantic.  I needed to get into the house to save her from whomever this stranger was, but what was I supposed to do, I didn't have the key and I had no access to any windows.  Only one thing came to mind and I sighed, but not in relief, in disgust.  I had to break down the door and there was only one way to do that, with my body.  I took a deep breath and gathered every ounce of strength I could muster then I threw myself into the door as hard as I possibly could and to my surprise the door gave.  It broke from its hinges and fell inwards to the carpeted floor sending a plume of dust into the air.  I rushed in nearly tripping over the fallen door and ran back  upstairs to my bedroom.