The Amber Light (Black Acres Book 3)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  From downstairs she could hear Julian whistling loudly. He was on cloud nine, removing things from the kitchen and excited at the prospect of continuing with his renovations. This work would keep him busy for the next several days, at least. And in her condition, with her finger bandaged up, she wouldn't be able to do much work at all.

  Good, she thought, looking at the journal on her nightstand. Maybe this way I'll have the time to figure out what you want. I'm all ears if you want to talk, Dakota. My days are free, so let's see what this is all about. Tell me what you need so that we can both move on from this.

  Not wanting Julian to find it again, she carefully tucked the journal underneath the bed. Then, sucking in a deep breath, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter 3

  “I'm a one-man demolition team.” Julian stretched, wiping off his sweaty brow and motioning to the kitchen. He'd drained the coffee maker and looked completely wired as he paced around. Wearing a tool belt and gathering up the materials he'd need to get started, he rambled on about his plans for the day, and claimed he might even try to work through the night. Kim watched as he shoved the last of their kitchen supplies into the living room. Stacks of boxed goods, cleaning supplies and more littered the space. Only the fridge remained intact.

  Not sharing his zeal, Kim shrugged and leaned against the back door. “OK, well, if you want some lunch, let me know and I'll throw together cold cut sandwiches.” She arched a brow. “Unless you plan on relocating the fridge, too.”

  “Nah,” he replied, tightening the tool belt another notch around his thin waist. “We'll hold off on that till the cabinets are out, at least. And when everything else is done, we'll order a new fridge. Stainless, yeah?”

  With phone in hand, Kim slipped out the back door and took in her first lungful of the cool breeze. It was a pleasant day out, at least on the surface. If she didn't look to the woods, whose depths were swollen over with a hazy darkness, she could almost pretend that theirs was a welcoming property. She walked around the back of the house, holding her phone up and searching for reception. The breeze played upon her black hair, knocking her bangs across her eyes. Finally, she found a few bars.

  It was time to call the other two contacts Edwin had given her.

  They wouldn't know anything. She knew that already. But she had a mental list of things to check off, of leads to follow, and calling these people for a chat about their old friends the Reeds was at the top. It was the lowest-hanging fruit; everything else on this list was comparatively sinister. She looked to the woods, to the large expanse of open field that led away from their property, unkempt. If this didn't pan out, her next stop would have to be that grave. Even in the daylight the prospect of visiting it bothered her.

  Looking through her contacts, she pulled up the next name. Edwin had given her three numbers to try. The first, Enid, hadn't given her much in the way of new information. Perhaps this man, Richard Brant, would have something meatier to share. She dialed the number and then waited nervously, a hand on her hip. The line began to ring. Composing herself and preparing an apology for the call, she looked to the ground and kicked a dandelion out of the grass, sending it spiraling a few feet ahead.

  Someone picked up.

  “H-hello?” came the voice. Withered, weak, just like Enid's had been. Kim tried to picture the owner of that voice, tried to draw up some caricature of what his face might look like, but even at the third utterance of a baffled and raspy “hello”, she could picture little else but a sun-bleached skeleton half-buried in sand. The man's tongue seemed to click against his upper palate as he spoke. He sounded parched, no longer in the habit of speaking.

  “Yes, hello,” began Kim. “Sorry to disturb you. My name is Kim Taylor. I was calling in the hopes of speaking to you about some old friends of yours? I understand you were acquainted with Dakota and Marshall Reed?” She paused to give him a minute to process the information.

  Instead, the man groaned. “W-what? I can't hear you.” He coughed a little, then continued. “You're gonna have to speak up.”

  Clearing her throat and growing suddenly annoyed, she raised her voice further, stepping away from the house and ambling in the general direction of the woods. “Yes, is this Richard? I'm calling because I'd like to speak to you about your old friends, Dakota and Marshall Reed?”

  “Oh,” said that old man, wheezing a bit. “Well, why didn't ya say so?”

  Kim frowned.

  “Have they been found?” asked Richard, his voice dropping an octave.

  “N-no,” stammered Kim. “Me and my husband just moved into their old house, and I'd like to know more about them.”

  “Uh huh, uh huh,” he said with a grunt. “And what would you like to know? They were dear friends, the two of them. Godliest folk I ever knew.” Each of the man's respirations rang out clearly on the line. She thought she could hear the hiss of some device, perhaps an oxygen tank, in the background.

  Kim bit her lip. “They were godly, were they?” She maintained her volume, not wanting to have to repeat herself. “Very devout?”

  “Oh, yes,” he replied. “The two of them never missed church in all the years I knew them. They'd get there earlier than the rest of us, wait in the parking lot before the services would start.” He hacked for a moment, then calmed. “I remember it well. Marshall would sometimes do the readings when Father Metzger didn't feel up to it. Why, once, during one winter, they had to be sent home from the church. Father told 'em they had to beat it, that services were cancelled for the day because of a pending snow emergency. That's how dedicated those two were. I dunno what happened to 'em, but I pray every day that the two of 'em are at peace, wherever they went.” He then added, with a short burst of coughing. “And wherever they went, I'm sure they went with the Lord.”

  Kim's thoughts were scattered by this man's unexpected answer. It didn't make any sense. Enid had told her that the Reeds were somewhat averse to religion, not at all devout. But here this man made them out to be saints, never missing a day of mass. Which one of them was right? She palmed at her forehead and paced in a circle, trying to come to terms with Richard's reply. “OK,” she said after a moment of puzzled silence. “And this Father Metzger. Is he still alive?”

  “Oh, no,” replied Richard. “That old church up on the hill that we all used to go to closed up about ten years back when Father Metzger passed on. Bothered Dakota and Marshall a lot when the church got shuttered. Never was another one to replace it, either. Not out where they lived, in the boonies.” He cleared his throat loudly, gratingly.

  “Right.” She kicked up a clod of dirt and grass with her shoe. Who's right, then? Enid or this guy? I mean, there are a bunch of religious statues and things in the house, but Enid sounded so sure... “All right, and did the Reeds have any children?”

  To this question, at least, he provided the expected answer. “No, no children, those two. A shame. They'd have made fine, godly parents.”

  Kim nodded. OK, so that's three close acquaintances now that didn't know about this baby they found in the woods. What the hell? How could they have kept it a secret all these years? Maybe... maybe the two of them put up fronts and acted a different way depending on who they were around, but... who's right? Kim knew that likely none of them were. As before, she realized that none of these people knew what she knew, had seen Dakota and Marshall for who they really were. The former owners of the Beacon estate were certainly a mysterious pair, and they'd evidently been good at keeping their secrets.

  When she'd entertained a bit more chit-chat, she hung up on Richard and was quickly dialing the next number, which she'd been told belonged to a “Lilith.”

  This number, however, proved disconnected. Putting the phone to her ear, the annoying dial tone registered, followed by a pre-recorded message about how the number was no longer in service. Her anticipation died forthwith. It was all she could do not to throw her phone into the woods. There goes your last lead. Now what? She gri
maced, stuffing her phone into her pocket and ruminating on the talks she'd had with these strangers. From them she could only surmise that the secretive Reeds had been many-faced, wearing numerous masks around their acquaintances.

  Her gaze wandered listlessly about the yard. She watched the quivering grasses as they were caressed by the breeze, looked to the dense, black columns populating the woods. Then, she looked to the back of the house, where something caught her eye.

  Propped up against the stucco exterior, to the immediate right of the kitchen window, was a shovel. At the sight of it, she recalled the unmarked grave near the edge of the woods. In the night, she'd been chased off from that spot by the hideous, screaming specter of Dakota. But now, in the sunlight, with a pleasant breeze playing upon the land and her resolve strengthened by the lack of any other leads, she felt she could revisit it.

  Is that really a good idea? she asked herself. I mean, what could you possibly find there without defiling the grave? That's a crime... and, anyway, it's a terrible thing to do. She gulped, digging her heel into the grass. What if someone found out about it? That you'd messed with this old, unmarked grave? She shook her head, as if to convince herself. Nah, no one could possibly find out. It's out in the middle of nowhere. It's abandoned, unmarked. If you mess with it, no one will ever know. You could even cover it back up. Poking around in that grave is the only way forward. It's distasteful, sure, but you stand to solve this mystery by digging into it. If you find the skeleton of their baby, then perhaps you'll know why it is that Dakota still haunts this place. Maybe there will be some clue in there... something that'll tie everything together...

  It was wrong. She didn't really want to do it. But in that moment, she could think of no alternative.

  This was the perfect lead, and it was in plain view, staring her right in the face.

  She would be stupid not to dig it up.

  Then again, it was really messed up. Digging up a stranger's grave... was that really what this had come to?

  She went for the shove, then paused.

  Kim nibbled on her lip, then reached for it again.

  No... no, just leave this be. It's not right... it's not your place to mess with this. Maybe... maybe the police should know about the grave and carry out an investigation to see who's buried there.

  She twitched a little, a light breeze swaying her in the other direction.

  The cops don't know the half of it, though. They'd never believe the things I've seen, the things I've gone through. This is my challenge and mine alone. If I'm going to get to the bottom of this, then I have to go it solo. Dakota has revealed herself to me. She'd want me to do it alone, I think.

  Unable to completely dismiss her hesitance, Kim grabbed the shovel, pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and hiked up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She took off across the yard and towards the woods.

  Chapter 4

  Kim stabbed the tip of the shovel into the ground, letting it stand upright as she took a cautious step forward.

  There, sitting dully in a nest of grass, was the blank headstone.

  I can't believe I'm doing this.

  The walk to the grave had been quick, pleasant. In the daylight it was no trouble at all, and the sight of the small grave wasn't eerie in the least. It almost looked as though it belonged there, a proper piece of the scenery. But as she considered digging it up, her heart began to thrash all the same. Kim glanced around, knowing as she did so that she was far from the prying eyes of earthly onlookers. Julian was busy in the kitchen, hammering away at the old cabinets. There was no one else around for miles. She was far from the road, from any settlement. And, for that matter, no one could possibly care about her digging into this abandoned, unmarked space. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn't even a grave.

  Vanquishing her doubts, she reclaimed her shovel. With a few quick swipes she yanked away a good portion of the grass that grew about the headstone's perimeter and then wedged the tip of the shovel beneath one corner. Carefully, she pressed down on the wooden handle, loosening it from the soil and lifting it very slightly. With no little apprehension, Kim reached down and picked up the piece of stone. It was in fine shape and surprisingly light. Examining both sides, she found it completely plain, a flat slab of rock, and then cast it aside into the tall grass.

  It was time to do some digging.

  How far she'd have to go to find whatever was hidden in the plot she couldn't say. Four, five, perhaps even six feet. She wasn't even sure she could manage to dig that deep; she'd never been much for this kind of physical work. Nevertheless, fueled by her intense curiosity, she used her heel to bury the shovel in the soil where the headstone had been and began to dig. One shovelful after another she tossed the moist, grassy earth to one side. She panted as she did so, less due to fatigue and more because she felt positively terrible for doing it. Desecrating a grave; she couldn't have imagined herself ever doing this until just then.

  Still, she didn't pause. She didn't even slow down. Kim wanted to know what was buried there, and recalled the fright she'd had in that very spot when she'd been led away from the house in the night. There was something important buried here, it was a certainty. And it was now time for her to figure out what it was.

  Grunting, Kim grew sweaty, her sweatshirt becoming damp and clinging uncomfortably to her chest. She wiped the moisture from her brow and continued on, thrusting the sharp tip of the implement deeper and deeper into the soil. The sky didn't seem to change much; how long she'd been digging when she finally hit upon something of interest was lost on her. She'd gone about the digging in a disorganized fashion, striking first into a deep hole of small dimensions, before adding to its radius and then burrowing down till she was knee-deep. She was standing more than a foot and a half in the moist soil, which had been undisturbed for years and ran thick with the roots of wild grasses, when the shovel rattled against something. The sound hurt her ears all the more because she could feel the vibrations in her arms .The sharp tip had scratched against something solid.

  Kim leaned down and fought to loose it with bare hands, brushing away soil and attempting to get a good look.

  Prodding it harder, she tried to clear it away, to examine it in the light. Teeth clenched, she was prepared to find a skull, a casket, something macabre.

  Instead, she came upon a smooth stone.

  Thinking little of it, she reached down, felt around its edges and pulled it up out of the ground, hoisting it with two hands onto the edge of the new aperture.

  But then, to her horror, the ground beneath her began to shift. Soil fell away under her feet and she felt herself in free-fall. Clutching at the shovel, Kim stabbed at the surrounding ground, attempting to anchor herself, only to come to a stop a few feet down. She'd fallen into something, a chasm of sorts, and a good deal of the earth around her had crumbled away so that she was up to her calves in it. Coughing, shaking herself off, Kim looked up at the sunlit sky, now more distant, alarmingly out of her reach. She'd probably fallen about seven feet into the ground. She reached upward but couldn't quite reach the top of the messy hole she now found herself in. “That's not good,” she muttered, knocking a few clods from her hair.

  Though much of it was obscured by detritus and darkness, Kim found the dimensions of the space to be cramped. She had space enough to move, once she'd unearthed her feet and chanced to step about the pit. And a pit, indeed, it appeared to be. Stones like the one she'd previously unearthed could be found along the top. She shuddered as she appraised them, many still buried in the earth. They'd been placed there to act as a barrier, a thin layer of stones arranged as a sort of roof for this subterranean hold. Unwittingly she'd pulled one of them loose and the thing had collapsed, trapping her down below.

  Where was she? Though she kicked away the dirt here and there, she saw no trace of a coffin. The little cross forged of twigs protruded from the dirt at her feet, but there was nothing here indicative of its being a grave. No skeletons, no bodies... nothing of the so
rt. Kim reached out and felt the sides of the pit. They were smooth, had probably been shaped some years ago. Surely this hollow space in the earth wasn't a natural occurrence?

  Then, Kim chanced to looked forward for the first time since dropping in, and upon clearing a small mound of dirt and stones, noticed the utter vastness of the space she now occupied. It wasn't as cramped as it'd initially seemed.

  She hadn't fallen into a hole at all.

  No, if the expanse of pitch black before her was any indication, she'd happened upon the entrance to an underground tunnel. Gulping, Kim felt her way forward. She picked her phone out of her pocket and switched on the light, examining the way ahead. It was hideously dark, and the way forward seemed to extend for an immeasurable distance. There was another difference, too, between this newly-discovered tunnel and the pit she'd fallen into. The tunnel, she found, was not so neatly-made as the pit had been. Where the edges of the pit had been smoothed out purposefully, and by a skilled hand, the way forward carried all the bestial characteristics of an animal's work. It was like a tunnel left by some underground pest, roughly hewn, uneven in places, not at all smooth. Something large and powerful had lumbered through the underground, had carved its way through the earth to an indeterminate point in the unseen distance. If her guess was right, then it led in the direction of her house.

  She tried not to think of that, however.

  Kim thought of nothing except how she might escape.

  Her taste for adventure and investigation was gone. She wanted nothing more than to climb out of the earth, to walk along the sunlit field back to her house, to Julian. Dwelling now, at the entry to this massive, shadow-blocked tunnel, she felt terribly vulnerable. There was no telling what'd made it or why. Something, it seemed, had been buried here at one time. And then, remarkably, it'd fought its way out of its grave, burrowing far and maybe exiting elsewhere.

  Kim shivered, appraising the rough edges of the tunnel before her. It didn't look very sturdy; even if she'd wanted to start down its length there was no telling whether it'd collapse on her and leave her hopelessly buried.