As she edged towards the door that would lead her back into the house, Kim caught sight of someone in the corner. Her heart jumped into her throat. “J-julian, what are you doing out here? I thought you were still in the kitchen, working on the floors. I didn't even hear you come out,” she managed with a small laugh. He had his back turned to her, and was facing the wall. He seemed to rifle through something furtively, his shoulders slumped and his shape mostly obscured by shadow. Though the garage door was open, the daylight seemed too timid to venture far. The very furthest reaches of the room, the corners, the greatest heights of the ceiling, were all blacked out with shadow.
The voice that came in reply was not Julian's.
Kim backed away, her legs going weak at the sound of a stranger's voice.
“I buried it, but it found its way back here like the savage thing it is.” The figure turned a little, giving Kim a view of its slate-grey face. A narrowed, yellow eye appraised her from the corner. The man bent forward, supporting himself on the wall of the garage as he continued in a deep wheeze. “And now you've gone and invited it back. It could've wandered lost for ages, but you had to invite it back...”
The man vanished from sight, was rapidly eaten up by the surrounding shadow. The sun moved behind the clouds, further depriving the dark garage of light. Whether the figure still lurked there within the veil of shadow Kim was uncertain. Without hesitation, she reached behind her and forced open the door, stumbling into the house just as Julian started once more into his loud hammering. She locked the door to the garage and pawed away a handful of sweat from her face.
She couldn't be entirely certain, having gotten only a brief, shadowy glance of him, however it occurred to her that the specter in the garage might have been Marshall Reed.
Thirty-One
Kim sat at the foot of her bed, knees tucked up into her chest and eyes wide. She needed to talk to someone about this, anyone. Julian wouldn't listen, however. She already knew how it would go. She'd end up causing another fight. He was far too absorbed in his renovation work to care about her hallucinations.
Chewing on her lower lip till it grew sore, she thumbed at her phone. Perhaps she could speak to Edwin. The contacts he'd given her hadn't done much except muddy the waters, but maybe he would be willing to drop by for a visit. She'd been hesitant before to tell him what she'd experienced in the house, but this time, she'd spill her guts. She'd tell him everything, and she had a hard time imagining him refusing to help her with the mystery of the property. Dakota had reached out to her, and Marshall, too. Edwin would want to know about this, would probably want to help her fulfill his late friends' wishes.
She dialed his number and drew her voice up into something presentable. She didn't want to sound like a nervous, blubbering mess and have him dismiss her outright as a paranoid city girl. She recalled the way he'd driven off after their last meeting, made nervous when pressed about the woods. Maybe, if she shared all she knew with him, he'd explain to her why he'd reacted that way.
Her gut dropped through the floor just then. A loud tone sounded, and then a pre-recorded message played, informing her that the number had been disconnected.
Kim held her breath, looking down at the blinking phone screen with tears stinging the corners of her eyes. “Disconnected?” she mumbled, sniffing back a sob. She redialed it, but the result was much the same.
She went through her contacts. She'd try anyone who would listen, anyone who'd known the Reeds and could assist her. She dialed Enid's number.
Disconnected.
Richard's number.
Disconnected.
Lilith's number.
Disconnected.
Kim trembled as she set aside her phone. How was it possible that all of the numbers were disconnected? Though the number she'd been given for this acquaintance, Lilith, had never worked, she'd spoken to the rest of them recently. It made no sense whatsoever, and she wondered if she hadn't been made the target of some conspiracy. Had they changed their numbers? Had something happened to all of them since she'd last spoken to them? She clawed at the bedclothes and tried not to cry. She needed to stay strong, to figure all of this out. The appearance of Marshall in the garage had put a fright in her. She was unsure whether she'd done the right thing in listening to Dakota. Perhaps turning on the Amber Light had been unwise. Maybe it'd been off, and left behind that hidden door in the cellar, for a reason.
She nibbled on a fingernail, shuddering. He said I invited 'it' back. Well, what the hell have I invited back to the house, then? A baby? No, it couldn't possibly be a baby any longer. It would be grown. But, then... Kim moistened her lips. Marshall said it wasn't a baby at all. He said that what he and Dakota had found in the woods that day was something else entirely... so, what was it, then?
Kim leered at the journal, sitting upon her nightstand. The photograph was still sticking out of it, but she couldn't stomach the thought of looking at it again. To study it once more might reveal a grotesque or frightening detail better left unseen. The longer she sat in the room, doubting her actions, the more she berated herself for having trusted Dakota's spirit. She'd been such a fool, had blindly obeyed the apparition's orders. Maybe it wasn't too late, though. Maybe, if she went downstairs now and flipped the switches back, she could stop things from progressing.
The room was dark, and the shadows hovering about her felt absolutely dense. The mood in the house had changed all right. Her heart skipped a beat. She'd flipped the switches, turned on the beacon. Something in those woods would be coming back. Or, maybe, when they'd opened the door after that series of knocks, it did come back. Kim canvassed the room slowly, looking for any trace of aberrancy. Everything was as she expected it, and this lack of anomalies almost frightened her more than the manifestation of a hideous phantom. The air felt so off, the mood so wretched, that she was made uneasy. How could the house possibly look so normal? Was there something wrong with her? Was her perception really so off? Maybe, she thought shiveringly, she truly was losing her head.
She cemented what she knew, piecing events together so that she could convince herself that she understood what was going on. The Reeds found a baby... or, they found something in the woods and brought it to this home. They lived here for years, caring for it. And then it ran off on them. That was why they never left the house; they stayed indoors in the hopes that it would come back. And when it did, they stuck it in that awful nursery in the basement. After that... things are fuzzy. Marshall claims he buried it. Maybe it escaped again, from that room down there, and he killed it. The Reeds kept all of this secret. And they stopped seeing their friends. The thing, baby, whatever, managed to break out of the grave, though. And it came back. I don't know what happened after that. All I know is that, around this time, eight years ago, the Reeds went missing.
The incessant ringing of her phone knocked her from her thoughts. Kim gulped and plucked it up off of the bed, answering at once. It was Edwin's number. “H-hello?”
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?” The connection was marred by static, so that Kim had to listen hard.
“Edwin, I'm so glad it's you. I was trying to call earlier but I couldn't get through. Anyway, I was hoping that maybe you'd be able to come by today. It's urgent, please,” she blurted.
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?” came the reply.
Kim stiffened. “C-can you not hear me, Edwin?” She grit her teeth, holding the phone away from her ear.
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?”
“Edwin?”
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?”
She stared down at her phone. In the space of a minute, the reply continued.
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?”
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?”
“Hi, this is Edwin. How's it going?”
Each time, there was absolutely no change in the way of delivery. It was almost like a recording was being repeated at regular intervals. After the tenth repe
tition, Kim hung up and cast her phone down onto the bed. Shaking terribly, she burst out of the room and made her way downstairs, where Julian was taking a bathroom break. The kitchen was in a state of utter disarray, so that she could barely make it to the basement door. Julian took to humming noisily as she began to descend the cellar stairs. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe she'd be able to shut off the Amber Light and put an end to this. Dakota wouldn't like it, maybe, but it didn't matter.
Kim was scared now. Really, truly scared. She wasn't sure what was happening to her, whether she was going crazy or the world was falling to pieces all around her.
But she did know that she wanted it to stop.
She needed all of this to stop.
And as soon as she'd seen to shutting off the Amber Light, she'd take Julian by the arm, lead him out of the house, and the two of them would go on a nice, long trip together. There'd be no more of this sitting around the house in isolation. They'd get out, have a nice, relaxing time somewhere. And maybe they'd never come back. Julian could always write another screenplay. They could always find another house or apartment to live in. She didn't mind the thought of a downgrade. Cutting their losses and moving on from the Beacon estate was all she could think of doing.
Half-way down the basement stairs, upon flicking the lights on, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Kim brought a hand to her mouth, stifling a series of sobs riding off the back of an enormous groan.
The door to the cellar chamber, the nursery, was shut.
It'd been open last she'd seen it; stuck, in fact. Julian himself had said there'd be no closing it once it'd been opened. The hinges had been damaged. It shouldn't have been able to close without considerable trouble. Kim could see now that this wasn't the case. She rushed down the stairs, tugged with all her strength at the awkward little handle, but could not make the thing budge. She pounded on it tearfully, pressed and pulled, but the concrete door was immovable.
It was sealed, and she was as sure as she was of anything that it would remain that way.
Dakota had done this. There could be no doubt.
She'd made sure to do it before Kim could reconsider her actions and fix her mistakes.
The Amber Light was on, and there would be no turning it off.
Whatever it served to signal, whatever it'd been constructed to draw back to the estate, would come soon enough.
Thirty-Two
She was upon Julian the moment he set foot outside the bathroom. Still zipping his fly, he was startled as Kim rushed up to his side, took him by the arm, and led him tearfully out into the kitchen. She was a mess, sobbing and shaking, while she took to gathering up their things. Her purse was in hand, she'd sought out his wallet, had plucked their keys from the hook on the wall and was starting for the door. “We're leaving,” she said between gasping sobs. “We need to go. Now.”
Julian arched a brow. “Babe... what's the matter now?” He had to work hard to hide the incredulity in his gaze.
Kim caught it nonetheless. “I know you don't believe me,” she began, red in the face, her cheeks streaked in hot tears, “but something is after us. Something... something is coming. And we need to get out of here. Now. We absolutely...” She took hold of his wrist and gave it a tug. Every moment that they waited there, every second spent discussing matters in the kitchen was a tiny defeat for her. “Please, Julian, let's go somewhere. Somewhere else, far away from here.”
Julian gulped. He pulled away and dusted off his hands, pacing squarely before the kitchen sink for a few moments. “What's going on with you?” he demanded. “What has you spooked?”
There was too much to tell. Aside from the fact that he wouldn't believe any of it, it seemed a precious waste of time to stand around and discuss it. Every passing second was a valuable thing; each moment they hesitated allowed the thing more time to reach the house. She didn't know what it was, or where it was coming from. But when the sun set, as it would do in a few hours' time, the Amber Light would lead it back to their property. Perhaps it wouldn't make it there within the space of one night. The woods were vast. But she wasn't willing to bank on it. The more space they put between themselves and the Beacon estate, the better. “Something is after us,” she continued to repeat, motioning to the door and clutching at her purse.
“What's after us?” he asked, shaking his head. “I don't understand what's gotten into you all of a sudden.” He placed a hand to her forehead. “Are you feeling well? Did your finger get infected? What's happened to make you freak like this, babe? Did you see someone, or...” It was clear from the way his eyes widened and his face began to glisten with sweat that her behaviors were making him nervous. He'd seen her worked up several times over the past few weeks, but this was an entirely new level of terror on her part. She actually wanted to leave the house, seemed convinced that something was going to come after them if they didn't. And, though he didn't want to entertain her paranoia or egg it on, he seemed to find some merit in her pleas because he sought out his jacket and put it on. “I don't know what's going on, but if someone is after us, then you need to tell me about it.” He picked up the phone. “Before we go, do we need to call the cops?”
Tearfully she knocked the phone from his grasp and tugged on the ends of his jacket. “No, please... let's... let's just go, please.” Her bangs were matted to her face by sweat and tears, the black strands standing out harshly against her porcelain-colored skin. Her eyes were swimming in their sockets, red and wide. She would pause now and then to glance around the room, or out the kitchen window, as if she expected doom to fall upon them at any moment.
Gritting his teeth, Julian followed her to the door. “We can talk about this on our way out, I guess,” he said. “If you're right and someone is coming here, then there's no use in us wasting time. Come on.” He let her out of the house first into the cool day and hurriedly set to locking the door. From there, they started across the lawn to the gravel driveway where their sedan was parked. Unlocking it, Julian did a quick walk around its perimeter to make sure no one was hiding there and then opened the passenger-side door. Kim jumped in. As he lingered outside the vehicle, scanning the woods and surrounding areas for signs of the promised threat, Julian was baffled. He scratched at his head and frowned. There was no sign of anyone, anything. It looked like a pleasant, ordinary day out. He considered calling the whole thing off, coaxing her back out of the car and into the house, but knew her terror could not be assuaged. Dropping his hands to his sides, he resigned to placate her and hopped into the driver's seat.
Kim was shuddering, putting on her seatbelt and fidgeting terribly. Her sandals clicked against the floor mat and she divided her worried glances between the windshield and the passenger-side window. Clutching her seatbelt, she watched as Julian put the key in the ignition. “Please, hurry,” she whispered breathlessly.
He gave the key a turn.
The two of them startled at the discordant grinding that issued from the engine. Julian gulped, looking out across the hood with a furrowed brow. “What the hell?” He turned the key again, but the result was the same. A grinding and clicking sound that was anything but a proper ignition.
Something was wrong.
Digging her nails into her knees, Kim looked over, face white and lips trembling. “What are you doing? Why aren't you starting it?”
He shook his head, grimacing. “It's not me. There's... there's something wrong with the engine.”
Kim slumped back, her limbs going slack like wet noodles. “What do you mean?” Suddenly reaching out to him, she gave him a hard shake and screamed. “Start it! Start the damn thing, Julian! Get us out of here, now! Please, do it!”
He shook her off. “Jesus, just calm down, will you?” He tried a third time to start the car. This time, the engine made even less noise. Julian threw up his hands. “Engine is shot. I don't know what's going on.” He shook his head, gave her a solemn look. “Sorry, babe. We aren't going anywhere in this thing.”
&nbs
p; Looking positively defeated, Kim didn't even cry. She sat back, breathing heavily and trying to keep herself upright. Julian shuffled out of the car and popped the hood. He did it mostly to please her, and she knew it. He'd never been much of a mechanic. After some time, he slammed the thing down and shrugged to her through the windshield. He didn't know what was wrong and there was probably no way for him to fix it out here. They were effectively stranded.
After several minutes of coaxing, Julian finally managed to lure Kim out of the vehicle. She sobbed, deflated, and crumpled in his arms. Despite his reassurances that he'd stop his renovation work for the day and remain vigilant, relief was not forthcoming. He offered to call the police, but each time she refused. The police could offer no protection from this. “Tell me what's wrong, who's coming?” he asked again and again. “I can't help you if I don't know what to expect!” But every time, she evaded. Kim herself didn't know what to expect, or when. What form this thing would take, what time it would make its move, if ever, was a mystery to her. Before long, her refusal to discuss the matter had Julian well-convinced that this entire episode had merely been a nervous breakdown, not at all rooted in reality.
He all but dragged her into the house, sitting her down at the kitchen table and starting up some tea. From the couch he fetched a blanket, which he draped over her shoulders. Drying her tears and wrapping her in a warm embrace, he assured her constantly that everything was fine, and he accepted the blame for her condition. “I'm sorry,” said Julian, “it's all my fault, this. I should've made an effort to get out more. I can see that this isolation has been hard on you. It's been hard on me, too, but as soon as we're able, I promise we'll go out. I'll call a mechanic out here first thing tomorrow morning, have someone drop off a rental car, OK? A nice trip, a few days, even. How does that sound?” He poured these and other assurances into her ear like a sweet syrup, but she was left only with bitterness in the end. It was too late for such talk. Night was coming, and she had an awful feeling about what laid in store.
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 19
