Limping across the kitchen, he leaned against the sink and craned his neck to peer through the window. Though it probably could have caught him had it so wished, the monstrosity had let him go. Why? Maybe, he thought, it could only exist in the forest, or could only leave the woods after dark.
This theory was crushed immediately as his tired eyes scanned the back yard through the window.
Standing near the fire pit, perfectly upright, was the long-haired abomination that'd pursued him. It stood completely still, black tendrils of hair draping its bare, androgynous body. And from this inky tangle could be seen two large, dead eyes, tinged with a putrescent yellow hue. The thing was staring, could see him through the window, no doubt.
Julian fell back onto the floor and scurried into the living room on hands and knees.
As he did so, he thought he heard something like a laugh issuing through the house on a gust of wind. It was soupy, wheezy.
Forty-One
No one knows you're out here. You're a sitting duck.
Julian sipped at his whiskey, but couldn't keep his hand from shaking long enough to get a decent taste. He'd paced about the house a while, first calling out to Kim, then palming the phone and debating on whether or not to call 911. The thing in the window had gone when finally he'd rummaged up the courage to check, but that it hadn't wandered far he felt somewhat sure.
Evening was descending now.
He'd chosen not to call the police; short of dragging him to an asylum, there was nothing any officer of the law could do for him. The things that followed and haunted him throughout the property, if they were real at all and not mere hallucinations brought on by worry, were not things that could be harmed by bullets nor restrained by laws. Julian knew it, and saw at once the futility in involving outsiders. Under the circumstances, with his wife missing and his sanity slipping away by the moment, he knew exactly how it would look to them upon their arrival. He'd be suspected of foul play, would end up in a prison cell without any hope of setting things straight.
Sitting on the sofa, huddled beneath a mass of blankets with his whiskey in hand, he realized his current predicament didn't exactly foster progress, either. He was frightened, almost to the point of paralysis. The wind outside had picked up, could be heard to howl across the land, and it rocked the old house violently. In the drafts, which sometimes carried about them traces of dust from his kitchen renovations, he half-fancied he caught glimpses of specters, and would instinctively brace himself against the sofa as though it were an impenetrable wall; grip his glass as though it were a whiskey-soaked talisman.
Within twenty-four hours, Julian had become a broken man. He'd been happy as a clam in the house up until the previous day; it'd only been his paranoid, anxious wife who'd had a problem with anything. He shook his head, stifling a sob as he ruminated. Kim hadn't been wrong at all; she'd only been too right about the house. Something was the matter with it, and he was getting perilously closer to learning just what. The visions in the house of hideous things, the chase through the woods, the cavernous opening in the ground... all of it pointed to a dread plot the likes of which the two of them could never have conceived of even in dreams. And they'd walked straight into the center of it, unknowingly. He raked himself over the coals for not believing her sooner. For not taking Kim's warnings and fears more seriously.
But now was not the time for sorrow.
Julian set down his glass and then furtively pulled his phone from his pocket. Though it hadn't served him in the woods, it was working perfectly now, strangely. The battery was more than half-charged and the screen functioned without delay. The internet, though, was still spotty. Spottier, even, than it had been earlier that day. Sitting up but still huddling beneath the blankets he and Kim had shared just the day before, he resolved to search for more answers. As of yet, the articles he'd found online had offered him the only tiny kernels of truth. Everything else, he believed, or had to believe out of necessity, was a fiction, fed to him solely to entangle him further in the nightmarish machinations that even then were afoot at the Beacon estate. With the last hints of the sun fast fading from the late autumn sky and the chill in the air becoming ever crisper, he involved himself in a number of searches.
Julian was thrilled when his search brought about a local folklorist's write-up of the cryptic Warlock that'd been hinted at in the previous article. That article, which he referenced again later, had made mention of a cabin that had once been situated where the Beacon estate now stood. The cabin in question had been built and lived in by a fellow dubbed “The Warlock”, but of him Julian had learned precious little in the other article. Now, in this professional, academic piece, he got more than he could've asked for.
The townsfolk in the area, which was scarcely populated and remote even in the days before the Revolution, spoke of a mysterious drifter, possibly a foreigner, who was known to make solitary treks into the woods after dark, when even soldiers and hunters did not dare follow. What he did there none were sure, though later, speculations bordering on the insane would be put forth. When next the subject of this vagrant entered the public consciousness, it was found that he had constructed a handsome cabin in a particularly remote stretch of land, bordering those same woods he was seen to frequent. The really remarkable thing to the locals, the folklorist sought to stress, was the fact that no cabin had been there previously, and that its whole construction had taken, if the anecdotal accounts were to be believed, a mere two days. That one man, whose habits included a curious tendency to wander in the pitch-black woods, should so rapidly and masterfully construct a handsome abode, raised no few eyebrows.
And so it began, that the man, known later as “The Warlock”, gained a reputation for peculiarity.
At this junction, the writer was quick to do away with the moniker of “Warlock”, and instead used what was historically taken to be the subject's proper name: John Kelley. Many details had been added about historical events in the region, about festivals and property disputes; all of which might have served to make a more colorful account for readers with only a superficial interest in the legend, but which, under the circumstances, warranted little but a hurried perusal from Julian.
It was less than one year after the appearance of this new cabin that children in the town began to disappear. For all appearances no parallels were drawn between these infrequent disappearances and the introduction of John Kelley into the area at first; but gradually, when a few well-meaning townspeople went looking, their trails led them to that cabin in the woods. Nothing was found there, and the secretive John Kelley, a supposedly unpleasant man, had evaded suspicion in the matter for a time.
But then, the account of one village boy, detailing the grisly ritual sacrifice of a recently-missing infant in the woods outside the cabin by a man who matched Kelley's description, was adequate to draw him back into the spotlight. The grounds were searched despite the hermit's protestations and the bones of many children, some of them very young, were unearthed.
The story of John Kelley might have ended with the account given of his speedy death by hanging, if not for his spirit's apparent lingering.
“The people sought to kill John Kelley for his sins, however if the stories are to be believed, John Kelley, the Warlock, would not die,” the account read.
The cabin and the woods near it were shunned by the townspeople, had been tainted in the public mind and it would be some years before anyone would knowingly tread there. In the subsequent decade, it is said that one or two out-of-towners attempted to claim the cabin and its attendant plot of land, only to be run out in the night by the things they saw manifest there. Still others, daring children with an interest in disobeying their parents, claimed to have seen strange, yellowish lights coming from the woods near the cabin, and grotesque, disfigured faces looking out from the cabin's dusty windows at those who had the courage to look into them after dusk. Once, a group of locals had ventured thither to investigate reports of a commotion; an unnamed
source of apparent reputation had claimed to hear terrible shrieks and cries from the woods, accompanied by the beating of drums and a low hum as of many voices in song. Devilry was suspected and a search of the area mounted, though upon the arrival of some dozen armed men, it was found that none had the courage to enter the woods and seek out the source of this terrible revelry.
The glow emanating from the darkened woods was mentioned numerous times, and seemed to coincide with an increase in missing persons. Men, women and children from surrounding areas would vanish without warning, and loud, demoniacal celebrations would go on in the dense woods, with the identity of the celebrants never once coming to light.
A missionary passing through the area more than twenty years after the hanging of John Kelley, who did not know the cabin to be abandoned, swore an oath that he had spoken with the long-executed man at his door, and that their conversation had been pleasant. Upon a return to the spot by concerned townspeople, nothing but cobwebs were found therein. The door and windows, however, were boarded up in the name of prudence.
The writer discussed the woods in some detail, and said that, for a hundred years or more, they've been known to be largely dead, devoid of foliage and life. This, it was soon elaborated upon, was something that the locals attributed to a particularly macabre episode that was recorded just after the turn of the century. It was in 1802, when the wife of a prominent citizen went missing, that the cabin of John Kelley was next revisited. The searchers were rewarded this time in finding the body of the woman strung up against the trunks of two closely-growing trees, her throat and wrists slashed and the life very obviously gone from her. Upon the discovery of her body just a short distance from the cabin, the search party claimed that they noticed a change in the trees. The grass beneath the body was still damp with blood, and yet the blades had been singed as though by fire. Every tree in sight, too, was marked by this same character; a discoloration and baldness that was atypical. In subsequent years, this warping of the woods was seen to worsen and spread, until the whole of the forest, more than ten miles' worth, was declared dead, ruined. The writer claims that, as of their writing, sometime in the mid 1940's, the woods still carry this burnt-out, terrible appearance, and that animals are known to avoid it seemingly by instinct, though the writer is charitable and attributes its desolation not to the meddling of supernatural forces, but rather to some invasive or rare species of botanical agent which went unchecked for too long.
Beyond this, there was little else of interest in the article. Some few tidbits about the “stirrings” of things presumably conjured by the ghost of John Kelley were hinted at, but only in the final paragraphs and, presumably, for dramatic effect.
What struck Julian most about this piece was the surname Kelley; a surname which Edwin shared with the deceased “Warlock” of local myth. Could it have been a mere coincidence? No... the Kelley line lives on in Edwin, he thought, standing up to pace. He dropped his phone onto the sofa and massaged his eyelids, sighing. Not only had he moved into a remote old house where the previous owners had gone missing under mysterious circumstances, but he'd moved into a house with a centuries-old reputation for wickedness and unnatural happenings. Why stop here? You should have just kept looking till you landed in the Amityville Horror house, for God's sake.
It would take him some time to process all of this. Had he only known what he was getting into, if only he'd had the foresight to do an hour's worth of research, then he wouldn't have looked twice at the house. This felt like something out of one of his screenplays, too queer to be real. And yet, there he was, standing in the hell house all the same. He wanted out. It wouldn't be too late for him to leave; maybe he could beat it to a main road on foot and hitchhike to the nearest town. Though an inexperienced mechanic, he toyed with the idea of popping the hood of the sedan and tinkering with it. Anything, really, seemed better to him than inaction. But then, and with unbearable vividness, he recalled that thing he'd encountered in the woods. It'd chased him all the way to the door of the house, had leveled eyes with him through the kitchen window. His breath caught in his throat as he remembered it and it was all he could do not to whimper.
He began the first of many nighttime strolls through the house. As silently as could be done on the creaky floors, he ambled up the stairs and took to slowly opening the doors of every room, surveying each and every space. In doing so, the house seemed to voice a reply to his efforts, its groans and out-of-place thuds ringing out to punctuate what he was beginning to feel was utterly futile.
The study, where she'd last been seen, was perfectly empty. Julian rearranged the contents of the room for better access but found nothing of note therein. Further down the hall he explored the other bedrooms, vacant, save for a few boxes of their belongings. Here, too, he saw no trace of her.
The bathroom, master bedroom, attic; all unpeopled.
By the time he returned downstairs, he found himself practically in tears. Tugging on a sweater to beat back the chill in the air, he paced to the kitchen and poured some water into the kettle for tea. His hands shook every step of the way; from the portioning out of tea leaves, to the selection of a clean mug from a box in the living room. When the water was brought to a boil he let his brew steep and paced around the kitchen in circles till the liquid within looked dark enough. It was a foreign tea, something exotic that Kim had rather enjoyed. He didn't know its name, and thought little of its earthy flavor, but was struck by its deep, red color. He didn't recall it looking quite so rich and red as that. When the infusion was complete, he picked up his mug and blew carefully at the strands of steam that rose from the surface.
The kitchen curtains were shut tightly. They'd been that way since earlier, when he'd returned from his walk. He knew it necessary to continue his search into the outdoors, however. What if she's really out there? He continued to think as he appraised the curtains. Carefully, from one side of the half-effaced sink, Julian tugged them open. Stealing a furtive glance into the back yard, he could make out only dim shapes in the twilight. Commonplace things, no doubt, but lent a touch of mystery and doubtfulness in the scant moonlight. He gulped, the mug nearly tumbling from his shaky grasp. Sipping at his brew, he continued perusing the grounds. Here and there, shifting in the darkness, he thought he saw movement.
No, it's just the clouds passing across the sky. The moonlight plays tricks on your eyes that way.
However rational, the thought did not bring him comfort. His gaze rose to the woods, and through them, filtered a thousand times by the ebony trunks, he noticed the amber glow emanating from within. It was faint, fainter maybe than it'd been during the previous sighting, but it was plain to him all the same. And though it might have been mere fancy, or an effect of the shifting clouds as he'd earlier theorized, he noticed something of slow, careful movement near the border of trees.
His heart began to pound. His face grew hot and he slowly set his mug down in the sink, still half-full. What's out there? He asked himself the question without really wanting to know the answer. His imagination was more than capable of filling in the gaps. It might've been Kim out there. Or maybe that thing that had chased him through the woods. Then again, he thought, returning to the piece he'd just read, it might've been some other horror left behind by the Warlock John Kelley.
For a while longer he stood to the side of the window, gazing cautiously through it into the dark night. Then, fifty or sixty yards out from the house and staggering slowly towards an indeterminate point in the distance, he saw something he could put a name to. It was a human body, wan and petite, and the long, black hair that hung just past the shoulders teased familiarity. His face was nearly pressed to the glass in examination of this shambling form, and the longer he looked, the more he became sure that it was Kim. Gripping the edge of the window, his breath fogging the pane, he watched as the being walked into the distance, across the moonlit field, skirting the woods. Now and then the figure would pause as though it could feel his gaze. Its slight shoul
ders would stiffen as if in invitation, before it would invariably start once more to its unseen destination.
There was no time to lose.
Steeling his nerves, Julian sought out the largest kitchen knife he could find and a flashlight. Then, stepping into his shoes, he wrenched open the back door and looked out across the field.
There she was, ambling farther and farther away.
“Kim?” he murmured, squinting into the distance.
The figure paused as though she'd heard, only to continue her shambling advance.
It was her. It had to be. Gripping the knife in his hand, Julian took a moment to scan the woods before giving chase. The amber glow continued to come in through the trees, washing over the borders of the woods like melted gold. Shutting the door behind him, Julian recalled a detail from the article on John Kelley, and paused for a moment before continuing on. On nights when the glow is witnessed, people are said to go missing.
Forty-Two
The wind cut through him. Already a thin film of frost was clinging to the blades of grass, which crunched underfoot as he advanced. He could see his breath in the air. Chasing the pale silhouette into the distance he quickened his pace but found it difficult to keep up. Though the figure in the distance made no great strain, she moved with surprising quickness. His legs were still sore from his earlier jaunt through the woods, but he pressed on, adrenaline ordering him forth.
The light bobbed in his hand, its beam unsteady. Flashes of light were reflected off of the commonest things; divots in the field, inordinately tall growths, and were transformed for that instant into terrifying oddities for him. And each time that some minor detail in the landscape stole his attention, the figure in the distance seemed only to gain more ground. Julian broke into a jog, his breath coming so forcefully now that it would temporarily obscure his vision.
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 25
