“OK,” he said. “I think that'll do it.”
She steadied herself against the table, looking at her bandaged finger stupidly. “D-do I need to go to the hospital?” she asked. “C-can they r-reattach it? Or give me stitches?”
Julian shook his head, toweling off his hands and scrubbing a bit of blood off of the floor. “No, babe. It's not as serious as all that. Trust me, if we drove you all the way out to the nearest ER they'd just have a look at it and wrap it up the same way. In fact, they'd charge us a few hundred bucks for it, too. No point.” Collecting up a number of bloody dish towels, he ventured to the counter, pulling open the drawer in search of some fresh ones. Grabbing up a large stack, he paused for a moment and seemed to stare into the open drawer with great intensity. Surprise, even.
He'd found Dakota's journal.
Julian said nothing, but shut the drawer and licked at his lips. He wasn't going to cause a scene right now that she'd just hurt herself, but that he was displeased to find the book in the house was all to clear in the way his face reddened and his jaw tensed into a grimace. He scrubbed up the remainder of the blood on the floor, counter and table, shut off the stove and sighed, throwing the bloodied rags onto the counter in a heap.
“Is... is my fingertip still there?” asked Kim, quivering. She couldn't stand the thought of seeing the severed piece. She retched as her eyes traveled over to the cutting board across the room. “Please, get rid of it... I... I don't want to see it.”
Julian nodded solemnly and looked through the mess of bloodied onion and pepper on the cutting board. Picking through it, he shook his head. “I don't see it. Could have fallen into the sink or whatever. I'll make sure to get rid of it if I find it. You just... just go read or relax or something, OK? I'll throw a pizza in the oven.”
Kim stood up, sniffling. “All right.” Stepping into the living room, she paused. “I'm gonna go upstairs and wash the blood off of my hands. Do you... do you think it'll be all right?”
Staring down at the cutting board, slowly ushering it into the sink, Julian snapped. “I'm sure it'll be fine. For Christ's sake, you cut your finger. You aren't an extra in Saving Private Ryan, so why don't you calm the fuck down and quit with the theatrics? Why does everything have to be an emergency for you? Why does everything have to be such a huge concern? You aren't dying. Get over it.”
“Gee, thanks. You've got great bedside manner,” she mumbled, pacing out of the kitchen and towards the stairs. He's just mad because he found the journal in the drawer, she thought. When accidents like this happened Julian was usually warmer, more understanding. As she departed she could hear him scrubbing angrily at the sink and spraying down the wooden board. Without even looking at him she knew he was struggling to keep his mouth shut. He wanted to criticize her, to dress her down for keeping the journal even after his earlier freakout. But he didn't. Silently fuming, he worked in the kitchen and didn't say a word.
A short while later the two split a frozen pizza and watched an old action movie. Julian, trying to smooth things over, joked about cutting her pizza for her and about how she wouldn't be able to help in renovating the kitchen. For her part, Kim was trying not to think about the injury. Any time she remembered the look of the wound, the sheer volume of blood that'd poured from it, the nausea that'd washed over her, she felt her heart race. To so much as glance at the bandage was to incite a dreadful throbbing in her hand. She could feel her pulse, could sense the blood rushing through her limbs, and it made her uneasy. Instead, she kept her attention on the TV, ate a few bites of food and reclined on the sofa, the day growing dimmer and dimmer with each passing hour. When the movie was over, she picked up a book and Julian started into another.
Later in the day, Julian complained of a headache and went up to bed. She stayed behind, reading by lamplight. The pain in her finger had subsided; so long as she didn't try and hold the book with that hand, it wasn't a great nuisance to her. He rose the stairs, clutching at his forehead and mumbling about a migraine. She heard him close the bedroom door and flop onto the bed. The floorboards above creaked as he did so.
Now, she was alone. She'd have the whole evening to herself, she felt sure. Setting down her book, Kim stood up and made her way into the kitchen. There was something she needed to do. Until she'd finished reading Dakota's journal, her mind would be unable to focus on anything else. Leaving the journal unfinished was just an unhealthy distraction. The sooner she got it out of the way, the better.
Before heading upstairs, he'd cleaned things up thoroughly. The cutting board and knife were clean, spotless, and the first-aid kit was still sitting upon the counter. She looked around the counter, half-expecting to find her misplaced fingertip, and gave a sigh of relief when it didn't turn up. Julian had said that he couldn't find the severed fingertip, and figured that he'd simply thrown it out with the bits of onion and pepper. It was a good thing, that. If she'd seen it, she'd have gotten miserably woozy.
Kim paced before the counter. The journal. Would it still be there, where she'd left it? She wondered if she shouldn't check the garbage first, or if Julian had gone to the trouble of destroying it. Gritting her teeth, she peered down at the drawer.
Taking the aged knob between her fingers, she pulled the drawer open.
Inside, looking out at her with its familiar, water-damaged cover, was Dakota's journal.
It wasn't relief that washed over her in finding it, but another emotion, unnamable, that made her intestines writhe noisily against one another. She trembled, hesitated for a moment, and then picked it up.
Twenty-One
What remained of the journal was unreadable.
Kim spent the better part of an hour attempting to put the displaced pages into some kind of sequence, but even as she did so she recognized that the remainder of the journal was too damaged to read. The entry after the photograph, where Dakota had detailed the incident in the woods with the mangy wolf, was the last legible thing in the volume. Everything else was just a mess of smeared ink and spotted mildew. A few of the pages had crumbled, the words on them falling away into a kind of dust.
The journal was a lost cause.
She fell into despair. Without being able to read the rest of it, she wouldn't find the answers she was seeking. That journal had been her only hope; there was nowhere else she could turn for answers. The contacts she'd been given wouldn't know about this journal or the strange events described therein. Even Edwin, seemingly the Reeds' closest friend, didn't know about the child they'd taken up in the woods. She was at a dead end.
Closing the volume, Kim sighed and slid it across the kitchen table. She kneaded at her brow, piecing together the readable content in the journal and attempting to extrapolate upon it. Nothing came to her, however. By all accounts the Reeds were childless and there was no sign of the child they'd found in the woods remaining in the house, except, perhaps, in the hidden chamber down in the cellar. She thought about poking around in there again, about seeing whether she couldn't dig up more clues, but peered out at the darkening evening and thought better of it.
Defeated, Kim returned the journal to the drawer and shuffled out into the living room. She laid down and tried to finish the romance novel she'd started earlier in the day, but ultimately dozed off. There seemed little else to do. The mystery of the Reeds' disappearance was as captivating to her as ever, and with every dead lead her fascination only seemed to deepen. Nevertheless, she knew that, without the journal, she might never learn what'd happened to the couple, to the baby in that photograph. She reflected dreamily upon all of the strange things that'd occurred in the house; the photographs they'd found, the masked specters emerging from the woods, their coming home to find the lights on and the back door open without explanation. Something queer was certainly afoot in the old Beacon estate, but Kim would probably never be able to figure out the cause behind these seemingly unrelated incidents. If there was a thread tying all of these peculiar phenomena together, then she couldn't see it.
Maybe it was better that way. Maybe, if she couldn't progress in her research, she'd be forced to hang it up and she'd learn to live with the house.
Kim dozed, the paperback slipping out of her grasp and landing on the edge of the sofa.
She awoke with a start, bolting from a dream she couldn't fully recall. Kim sat up and blinked for a few moments, the light of the reading lamp overwhelming her eyes and blinding her. When she straightened herself and scanned the room, she was startled once more to find Julian standing nearby, beside the TV. He looked groggy, like he'd just crawled out of bed, but he'd pulled on a sweater and was wearing boots. The look on his face was grave. Perhaps it was merely the light, but Kim thought she spied in his visage hints of grey, as though the color had been washed out of him. Sweat dotted his forehead in fat beads and his hands shook a little as he went to speak. He didn't look at all well. “Babe,” he began, “I know that something's been going on around here. Something... something isn't right in this house.” He paused, surveyed the living room pensively for a time. “I believe you. I really do.”
Kim leaned forward, reaching out to take his hands in hers. His skin was ice cold, and she gave a little jerk at the sensation. “Honey, you're freezing. Whats the matter?” She tried to warm his hands, rubbing at them with her own, her bandaged finger sticking out awkwardly as she did so. “Are you feeling OK? You don't look too good.” He'd gone to bed complaining of a headache not too long ago. She wasn't sure what time it was, but a glance out the window told her it was dark, and that the moon was out in full force. Perhaps he'd come down with something?
Julian shook his head. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I know I'm asking a lot, but...” His gaze drifted listlessly to the nearby window. “I'd like for us to go out there again, to the woods.”
Kim exhaled sharply, arching a brow. “W-what? You want to go out there again?” She gulped. “Right now? Hell no.”
“Hear me out,” continued Julian, kneeling beside the sofa. “Something is going on here and... I think I know what it is. We need to go out there. I want to show you something. Something that might tie this all together and give us some answers.”
Kim shuddered at the thought, tugging on the collar of her sweatshirt as if to keep out a nonexistent cold. “I dunno, babe... it's late, and dark...” She laughed nervously. “What's come over you? Do you really want to go out there again after the last time?”
Julian stood up and gave a weak shrug. “Of course not. But I have to go. I have to check something out. I'll go it alone, if I have to.”
She stiffened. “No, I'll... I'll come, too.” Wiping the last of the sleep from her eyes, Kim ventured to the kitchen and sought out a flashlight. “Let's hurry, though. And we'll make sure we lock up really well this time.” What was this change in him? What had he found that'd left him looking so unsettled and compelled him to wake her in the night? What could be so urgent that it required their attention at this late hour? Whatever it was, she knew it would be important. And without anything left in the journal to guide her, Kim knew she didn't have a choice. If Julian had found something, then it was the only lead she'd have into the mystery surrounding the property. When she'd put on her shoes, she walked to the back door and waved Julian on. “Lead the way.”
He stepped through the door, looked out to the woods with a wince, and nodded. “OK, follow me.”
Twenty-Two
The woods towered blackly, obscuring the full moon as they walked along the treeline. The tall grass was chill, and the individual blades seemed to reach up and touch her as she passed. In some spots, the grass was at her knees, and the blades would brush up against her ankles with vigor at each step. Kim recoiled, keeping the flashlight as steady as she could on the figure of Julian a few paces ahead. The night was silent, cool. The only sound she could register was that of the breeze ambling through the woods. It may have been mere fancy, but it sounded to her like a soft, breathy flute, especially in those moments when the wind picked up.
Scanning the sky, Kim tried to break up the silence. “Look at that moon,” she said. “It's enormous.”
Julian said nothing. He marched through the grass, never once looking back at her. He trudged on determinedly, stuck in his own head. She knew this look; he was focused on something. It was bothering him deeply, whatever it was, giving him the look of a stoic statue. He'd claimed to want to go into the woods, but so far they'd avoided them by a slight margin. They were edging along the woods, keeping just outside the tree-line. Whatever he sought seemed to be just out of the woods, rather than in them.
Kim turned back and saw that the house was now out of view. They'd turned slightly, rounding the border of trees and starting up that stretch of open field she recalled from their flight during the last hike. This was where they'd found that grave.
She slowed down, nearly stumbling, as she remembered it. The tiny, blank headstone. The crucifix made of twigs and twine. Who or what was buried there she couldn't guess, but she did know that she didn't want to be anywhere near the site this late at night. She scurried ahead, keeping pace with Julian only because she didn't want to be left behind.
The wind picked up once more, whipping the tall grass into a frenzy and sending up a cloud of earthy dust that made her cough. How much further would they go? “Where are we headed, exactly?” she asked. “What is it you wanted to show me?”
Julian's pace had slowed. He was parting the tall grass with his hands, looking for something on the ground.
Oh, God. He's looking for that grave... Why? Why does he want to find that damn thing again? What could he have possibly learned to make him want to come out here in the dark? She exhaled, brought the flashlight forward and tried to light his way.
Then, Julian stopped. Even from a few steps away she could hear the way he gulped when the headstone came into view. “There,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. The towering trunks cast black, ominous shadows against the grass and the grave before him. Though the trees lacked leaves and limbs, the shadows still managed to squirm somehow with the passage of the breeze, as though they were fat snakes. Try as she might to raise up the flashlight, she found its beam a trifle when compared to the darkness. Even the moonlight could not fully penetrate the shadows thrown up by the woods. She crept forward on tiptoes, glancing at the headstone. It was awash in a mixture of shadow and moonlight, glowing in places with an eerie phosphorescence. Long, diaphanous threads clung to its far left corner and disappeared somewhere into the grass.
A sound like the snapping of a twig came from the nearby woods, followed by a low murmur. Kim felt her heart surge into her throat and quickly turned around, throwing light all about the black curtain of the woods. “W-what was that?” she stammered to Julian.
But as she looked over at the grave, she found Julian was gone.
“J-Julian?” she said, her legs shaking now. “Honey... where...” She turned this way and that, casting light all over the immediate vicinity. The woods, the grave plot where he'd been standing not a moment before; none of them featured any sign of him.
Kim was alone.
Trembling, she tugged on the sleeves of her sweatshirt and glanced around, sensing movement in the nigh impenetrable veil of black trees. Something had moved in there, had shifted soundlessly. Had he gone into the woods? Hidden in a tall thicket of grass for some reason? “Julian?” she repeated, this time at greater volume.
Kim canvassed the woods for a time and paused as her light revealed a wan, vein-ridden hand against the ebony trunk of a wide tree. Red pits seemed to take the place of fingernails on the long, bony fingers and the joints stuck out stubbornly.
She knew that hand. She'd seen it in the basement that night when the hidden chamber had been opened. Kim loosed a gasp and fell a few paces back. “Julian!” she shrieked, her light wavering, shaking. She tried to keep it fixed on the trunk in question, on the pale hand and on the stranger it belonged to, who was now slowly emerging from behind the tree.
Her stomach churned and her mouth went bone dry. She took a step back, then another, allowing the light to fall upon the half-hidden visage of the figure who lurked just inside the boundary of those moon-starved woods.
A single, incomplete glance was sufficient.
Kim took off running, a scream bursting from her lips as she went. The flashlight dropped from her hand and died out as it hit the ground.
It didn't matter. All she wanted was to make it back to the house. She sprinted as hard as her quivering legs would allow, rushing through the sea of tall grass and gasping all the way.
The thing was beyond horrific, beyond her most fevered imaginings. She felt in some innate way that she'd seen the figure before, had been met with its visage previously, perhaps in a dream, but could not be sure. It didn't matter to her then, whether the hideous wraith-like thing were in some way familiar to her; her heart broke into a gallop at the sight of it and her muscles tensed in anticipation of an escape. At her most fundamental level, base, animal instinct had impelled her to run from it. No explanations were necessary, no time was needed to evaluate the figure past a single narrow glimpse. It was a threat. There was zero doubt of that.
It was a woman. Or, it had once been a woman. But where its humanity ended and its monstrosity began was clear. It wore a scarce assortment of silver hairs upon its head and boasted nothing in the way of clothing. Sagging breasts and stomach could be seen to droop as it took a shambling step forward. The depthless sockets that once answered for eyes were swollen with the same shadowy stuff that seeped across the ground from the woods. A jagged, hideous maw of a mouth hung wide open, and from its gullet there rang after her a damnably familiar cacophony. The roar, like a stifled, gasping scream, came loud as the thing began to give chase. This was the sound she and Julian had heard issuing from the woods, the sound she'd heard in the cellar before the door to the hidden chamber had been opened.
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 13
