Julian set about throwing open each door, searching every room along the stretch. First was the upstairs bathroom. He stepped inside, one eye on the hall he left behind him and the other focused on the newly-opened door. Holding his breath, he found the room and shower clear. He paced around, spooked at the sight of his own reflection in the mirror, and then hurriedly shuffled out.
Next, he ambled back into the hall and selected the first of several closed doors. This one led to his study. It was windowless, dark inside.
Shoving open the door to the study and hesitating a bit before entering, he got a look at the space. The light from the hall elucidated a series of moving boxes within. A desk, a chair. Nothing looked especially out of place. Slowly, he stepped through the threshold, glancing underneath the desk and making his way to the closet, which sat curiously ajar. “Babe?” he ventured, his mouth feeling suddenly dry. “You in there?” He almost backed out of the room right then, thinking it pointless to search. Surely she was in the cellar, or in the back yard. Instead, he reached out to the closet door and slowly shoved it open, the carved motif on the door feeling sharp against his fingers.
Then, his lungs filled nearly to bursting, Julian fell over himself and onto a few boxes.
Scrambling across the floor, eyes wide and face white, he caught sight of Kim within the closet, her limbs hanging loosely at her side, her forehead pressed to the wall.
Her eyes were blank; the only luster in them was that which was reflected from the dim hall light.
That the stirrings of life were gone from her was apparent from the very first glance, but still he dove forward and began to shake her, trembling as her form fell slack into his arms. Her flesh was cold, unnaturally so. It didn't seem possible that she could have grown so cold in such a short time. “Kim!” he called out in vain, caressing her face roughly and searching her limp wrists for a pulse. Her black hair spread across his arms in a sumptuous coil as he set her down on the floor, backing away.
She was gone.
Dead.
Julian could scarcely stay upright, his face falling into a series of twitches and his eyes stinging. Stumbling out of the room, banging his knees to bleeding against the nearby desk, he fell upon the floor and scrambled haphazardly to the top of the stairs. He needed to call someone, an ambulance. No... no, it's not too late. It can't be. She'll pull through. I'll get the paramedics out here... they'll save her yet, goddammit.
He all but fell down the stairs, his feet unwilling to work properly. By the time he reached the kitchen, his face was stained in tears and his hands were trembling too hard to easily dial the number. Sprinting from there, phone in hand, he pressed it to his ear and waited for the connection to stabilize. The receiver crackled in his ear as the phone slowly processed the call and he reentered the study, standing once again before the closet door. I'm coming, babe. I'm coming back for you. I'm going to get you some help.
Something was different, however.
Julian dropped the phone, the thing clattering into pieces just as an emergency dispatcher answered.
The closet was empty.
Stunned into silence, Julian couldn't even find it in himself to call out to her. He surveyed the dark room slowly, taking care not to overlook an inch. His lungs burned, his heart hiccoughed and seized.
Still, he found no sign of her within the room.
That she'd been dead only moments ago he was sure.
That she was now nowhere to be found he was equally certain.
Thirty-Five
The air had soured.
Julian coughed up a bit of smoke and squeezed out his cigarette against the inside of the sink. He'd broken into his stash of smokes, the pack he kept hidden for occasions of stress. Sometimes, life just called for a cigarette. It wasn't a frequent thing for him, merely a vestige from those long-gone days of his youth spent drinking socially in campus bars.
Tonight, though, there weren't enough cigarettes in the world.
Julian peered around the kitchen quickly as he went to light another. His hands shook too hard to make simple work of it, and raising it to his quivering lips proved even harder. Taking a long, trembling drag, he loosed the smoke towards the ceiling and then engaged once more in a nervous perusal of the kitchen. It was dimly lit, the smells of renovation circling through the air and mingling with the tail of smoke emanating from his Lucky Strike. There was something else, too, or so he thought; he fancied there was a sourness to the air, reminiscent of the taste of spoilt milk. Death, maybe? He almost shook his head, nearly reprimanded himself for thinking it, but there it was all the same, lurking just beyond the veil of sawdust and smoke.
This was the first time the house had ever seemed unfamiliar to him. From the very start of their tenancy at the Beacon estate, Julian had felt right at home. Even as Kim had seemingly gone unhinged, growing paranoid and pointing out phantoms and coincidences that weren't really there, he'd enjoyed his time in the house. It had a certain warmth to it, a kind of charm. It had, once.
Standing in his kitchen, hunched beside the sink, his eyes shifting from one end of the room to the other, he felt like a stranger. Like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. All instincts told him to leave, to pack it up and never look back. It wasn't the kind of thing he could have described even if he'd wanted to; it was just plain fear that urged him on.
He wet his lips.
It wasn't so simple as all that.
Kim...
For a few hours, Julian had canvassed the house. He'd called out to his wife until his throat had grown hoarse, had worked through each room in search of her, to no avail. She was gone, completely. And except for those possessions of hers that still littered their living space like queer relics, it seemed doubtful, at that moment, that Kim had ever lived there at all; that he'd ever known or been married to such a woman.
He shuddered, mashing his furrowed brow with a few fingers. The skin gave like putty. It felt hot, flush beneath his fingertips. You're scared, so things seem out of sorts, he assured himself. A blast of nicotine steeled his nerves in the next instant. Slowly, he worked through the night's events.
He'd gone up to check on her, finding her crouched in the closet of the study, dead. She'd definitely been dead. There was no doubt in his mind of that. But in the time it'd taken him to run downstairs and fetch a phone, she'd vanished from that very spot, and no matter how hard he searched, he could turn up no trace of her. Moreover, there was no rational explanation he could furnish.
His wife had died in that closet. And then, apparently, she'd just decided to walk off.
If it hadn't just happened to him, he might've laughed about it.
Laughter, though, was the very last thing on his mind. He'd started by searching the other bedrooms upstairs. He'd gone through them one-by-one, revisiting the study multiple times and re-checking the closet on the off-chance that her body would be returned to its original resting place. No such luck. From there he'd gone into their bedroom. He searched the closet, the space under the bed, the upstairs bathroom, all with a good deal of thoroughness. With heart thundering, he'd ascended the attic stairs and searched for her there, amidst the coils of dust-soaked insulation.
Nothing.
The kitchen, the living room, the downstairs closets and bathroom; none featured anything of the wandering dead. Julian had stolen glimpses out of the windows, half-afraid of what he might see, but had, so far, seen nothing of her. More than once he'd grappled with the thought of dialing the police. He'd almost called a few times, but thought better of it when he realized there was nothing to be done. What could an emergency dispatcher or groggy sheriff hope to do for him under the circumstances? He wished to report the death of his wife, but had no body. The body, in fact, had disappeared. How exactly would that go over with the authorities? Then there was the fact that Kim had only been missing for some few hours. She would have to be missing at least twenty-four hours before a real search could be mounted. But then... could a corpse even
be deemed a “missing person” to begin with?
His hands were tied. He'd have to keep looking for her, would have to make progress in some way. If he did, then he would move forward with the authorities and seek to establish some sort of rational explanation for the events. Otherwise...
He preferred not to think about any alternatives.
Something strange was afoot, but he did his best not to label it as “paranormal”. It was weird, definitely, but not so inexplicable as that. He felt sure that something would turn up, that he would make good progress, maybe when the sun was up. Or, maybe, Kim would come back to him. This latter notion, with all its attendant implications, stirred up something like real nausea in him, and only a quick drag beat it back. The thought of his dead wife coming back to him was too unreal to be believed.
The only part of the house he hadn't checked yet, owing to a lack of courage, was the cellar. It was possible she'd ended up down there, he thought, while working over the filter of his cigarette. Or, maybe, you hallucinated it all. Kim's been seeing things too, you know... could be a toxic mold problem, or...
No. That was sheer optimism on his part.
There was little else for him to do that night but check out the basement. If it yielded no trace, then the only alternative was some place outside, perhaps in the woods. And there was nothing in the world that could compel him to search for her in those dark, hideous woods by night. It would be a fool's errand, terribly dangerous. Not to mention frightening. But how can this be? A dead woman can't just up and walk off. How could she be anywhere but that closet? Maybe... maybe she isn't dead after all. He clenched his teeth. There are two things I'm sure of. The first is that she was dead. No pulse, no warmth. Nothing. He straightened himself with a shudder, his breath ragged. But then, the other, is that there is no damn body in that closet.
His head was starting to pound.
He put out his cigarette in the sink where the other had been laid to rest and then took a few steps across the unfinished kitchen towards the cellar door. His steps boomed throughout the quiet house. The stillness had been pierced with his every footfall, giving them a deep, ominous character. That was unusual; the house was often quiet, but it wasn't usually his tendency to take notice. That the silence of the place should so disturb him now was something that he wrote off to his agitated state.
Julian reached out and took the cool handle of the cellar door in hand. He palmed it for a time before finally yanking the thing open and standing at the dark threshold. He stared into the blackness for some time, comforted little by the dim light of the kitchen at his back. For reasons he couldn't pinpoint he took a hammer from his toolbox and carried it at the ready as he took his first step down the creaky stairs. Who it was intended for he was unsure; wasn't he looking for his wife? The wooden planks groaned beneath his feet; in the dark, echoing space the tones carried with them something more than mere inanimate emotiveness.
When he knew himself within reach of the light switch, he reached out and batted clumsily at the wall of cool, white bricks. The light came on with a subtle flash, the bulb nearest him flickering before finally stabilizing on a decidedly subdued glow. Julian took in a sharp breath of the damp air and quickly marched the rest of the way. He stepped out onto the concrete floor with all the confidence he could feign, but could scarcely stomach the thought of surveying the space in its entirety. Shuffling forward at first, eyes fixed to the ground, he stole a few glances about him to make sure the way was safe. His grip on the hammer tightened as the air shifted nearby. A draft, probably, but it felt like someone had just moved beside him.
From all around, prying eyes. What shape they took, if anyone actually watched him at all, he couldn't rightly say. For all appearances, the cellar was empty of anyone but him. Still, from some corner or another, he was being dissected, observed with malign interest. Julian grit his teeth and examined the corner nearest the stairs. That was when he noticed it.
“That... that can't be right,” he mumbled, ambling over to the concrete door that'd been hidden in the cellar wall. It was a stubborn thing, with its busted, rusty hinges and obscure handle. But inexplicably, it was closed. This thing, which weighed a great deal, should not have been able to open on its own, much less close. And yet, there it was, sealed tightly. Had Kim gone in there, sealed herself up? He shook his head, finding the thought incredibly distasteful. No, that was impossible. He'd seen her upstairs. Kim could not have closed that door, could not have made it budge had her life depended on it. He recalled that even he himself couldn't close it that night they'd first discovered it open.
Pacing carefully now, he rounded the room, studying the washer and dryer with great care. He stopped dead in his tracks, certain that he'd caught something of movement in the corner of his eye, only to find on further inspection that he'd been mistaken. He continued, looking up to the unfinished ceiling, at the wires that spread across its breadth like brittle veins.
It was in making his way back towards the stairs that he saw it. It came to him for only an instant, flickering away with the nigh choreographed dimming of the lights, but that was sufficient to make him double back against the wall, hammer raised with the intent to strike.
Under the stairs, crouching as a beast might crouch, he saw a thin human silhouette. Arms, legs, all bare. Face obscured by a mop of unruly black hair, except for in those spaces where the disturbingly manufactured characteristics of a white plaster mask showed through. From behind tiny eyeholes, black, smoldering eyes had stared at him.
And then, in the next moment, the space beneath the stairs was unoccupied by anything save for a dense shadow and knots of cobwebs. The staircase creaked a little as a draft came in from the upstairs, almost giving the impression that some unseen presence had just mounted the stairs.
When he'd caught his breath, Julian was more than happy to attribute the sighting to his exhaustion.
Thirty-Six
Morning came with alarming swiftness. The sunlight made his eyes ache as he flopped over in bed. Sitting up, he cleared the last remnants of his uneasy sleep and listened, his gaze drifting to the sunlit window, to the bedroom door, sitting half-ajar. Maybe, he hoped, the events of the previous night had been a dream. He yearned to hear Kim's shufflings and hummings downstairs.
The spot on the bed beside his own was cold however, and no noises of the sort came to his waiting ears.
In fact, the longer he sat and listened, the more disturbed Julian became. The ordinarily noisy Beacon estate, whose floors, pipes and other components seemed always to clamor in their way, proved ponderously silent now. Not a floorboard could be heard to settle, not a creak to issue from anywhere, and instead a grave quietude flourished. The house's fixtures had seemingly gone on strike, instituting a ban on speech in the interest of drawing attention to its missing inhabitant.
He worked his jaw in his hand, tensing. He'd been grinding his teeth in his sleep; an old habit, one he'd thought he'd grown out of.
The day now upon him, Julian resolved to make progress. The grounds would need searched. A few more careful perusals of the house, in the daylight, would need carried out. Someone would need informed about this; whether he would reach out to the authorities or to someone else he couldn't say yet. The whole prospect and the emerging memories of the previous night hit him like a load of bricks, assaulting his senses and thrusting upon him a terrible nausea. He wanted nothing more than to return to bed, to bury himself beneath the covers and enter into a deep sleep from which he would not awaken till things were set right.
After he'd cried for a time in utter despair, Julian straightened out his T-shirt, made his way to the door and peeked out into the hallway. The way was sunlit, familiar enough, though it seemed to him profoundly alien all the same. The secret ingredient here, the one thing that had disturbed his usual equilibrium, was solitude. He was alone now, truly alone. It wasn't just an abstract concept to him, but a palpable truth. He and Kim would sometimes discuss their isolation, he
recalled with equal parts fondness and pain, but the realization that he was likely the only living person for miles around was extremely unsettling.
He made his way from the room, crept down his stairs as though fearing the sudden entrance of an intruder, and then paused as he reached the lower level. He stared at the carved bannister, at the cherubs he'd slowly learned to ignore over the course of his tenancy, and grimaced. It was just the light probably, or else his state of mind was coloring things, however it seemed to him that those cherubs carried something more than mere joviality in their grins. In their clumsy, featureless eyes he thought he spied amusement. I'm going to have to replace this bannister, he thought.
And then, as he started for the living room, he laughed aloud. The ludicrousness of it all struck him squarely just then. “Replace the bannister,” he muttered, leaning against the back of the sofa. “There won't be any more renovations... don't you get it?” He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes burdened for the second time in as many minutes with tears. It was clear he hadn't quite processed things yet. His mind was slow to catch on to the implications of Kim's death.
He gulped.
Your wife... is dead.
Somehow, he still couldn't wrap his head around it. He should have gone to pieces, been inconsolable. Instead, he was wandering through the house confusedly.
Why the grief didn't incapacitate him, why the urgency of the situation had been dampened, he couldn't really say. Maybe, though, the house had had something to do with it. This was what he told himself, that his time in isolation had unseated his mind, had tempered his reactions to things, made him slower and calmer in all matters. It frightened him, though. Should he have cried more? Should he have taken more immediate action upon finding Kim in the closet?
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 21
