The Amber Light

a Black Acres novella

Volume 3

By Ambrose Ibsen

Copyright 2015 by Ambrose Ibsen. All rights reserved.

Synopsis:

Some Things Are Better Left Buried...

Kim's curiosity reaches a fever pitch. Reaching out to the people who knew the Reeds, she ends up with conflicting accounts of their lives and habits. Nothing is making sense, and with every passing day she becomes less sure of what she knows.

An unmarked grave just outside the woods. A series of revelatory dreams. A large, mysterious light fixture hiding in amongst the trees.

When Kim switches on the Amber Light, she discovers the truth behind the disappearance of Marshall and Dakota Reed. Indeed, she learns far too much.

The Amber Light is the third novella in the Black Acres serial by Ambrose Ibsen. It is approximately 22,000 words and contains adult language, scenes of horror and a cliffhanger ending. Reader discretion is heavily advised.

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The Amber Light

Black Acres Volume 3

Chapter 1

Behind her, the shadows seemed to churn.

Looking up into the blackness, to the dim corner of the concrete chamber, something appeared to creep along the wall. A statue fell from the table, splintering at once. Like the beating of some shadowy heart, the writhing blackness along the walls began to expand and contract. Kim wasn't sure what she saw in it, if anything, but it was sufficient to make her scream. She struggled to her phone on all fours and then hopped to her feet, springing out across the room and exiting. She stomped her way up the cellar stairs, arriving in the kitchen where the first stirrings of dawn could be seen to peek in through the windows. She shut the cellar door behind her and slumped against it feebly. She was sweating profusely, shaking.

She needed to calm her nerves, to slow the racing of her heart. If she failed to do so, she felt somehow certain she would die. Hand on her chest, she paced for a moment in front of the basement door, her other palm pressed against it as if to ensure it was sealed and solid. Panting, she tried to make sense of what she'd seen down there. It was early morning, of course. Perhaps some lingering bit of sleep had blurred her vision, made things appear downstairs that weren't really there.

No.

There was no use in denying it.

A nervous wreck, Kim ambled to the sink and washed her face. Then, licking at her lips, she looked out the window at the new day, the sun breaking through the thin cover of clouds. The woods were still heavy with night, casting their usual shadows. Tendrils of black, like smoke, seemed to waft up from the inner depths of the woods. She turned away, pawing at her bandaged finger and milling around furtively. After starting the coffee maker, she took a seat at the table, sniffing at the cool air as it was scented by the fresh brew. The familiar scent was soothing, but it did little to efface the air of malevolence that'd settled over her. In that inky mass of shadows she'd sensed something intense, perhaps hatred.

She heard a thump from the upstairs. Then another. Fearfully, she looked to the doorway, tensing up. Someone was coming. Kim gripped the edge of the table till her knuckles grew white and her heart picked up once more, seizing rapidly as loud, clumsy footfalls issued from the nearby living room.

It was Julian.

Wiping sleep from his eyes, he coughed and looked over at Kim dully, his pajamas thoroughly wrinkled and a crust of drool along the corner of his mouth. “How long you been up?” he asked, apparently missing the terror in her expression by a mile. He switched on the kitchen light, blinked hard, and then walked over to the coffee maker. He set up two mugs and dumped a few teaspoons of sugar into his.

“Not long,” she said, her voice unsteady. Kim was kneading the sleeves of her sweatshirt, working them out of shape and stretching them. She thumbed the fabric pensively, her nail digging into the fibers. She glanced again out the window, then turned to the cellar door. “Can I... can I show you something?” she asked in a hushed tone of voice.

Sniffing groggily, he cracked his knuckles and sighed. “Uh, sure.” Giving his waistband a tug, he hiked up his sagging sweatpants and followed Kim to the basement stairs.

She led him quickly, marching down the stairs and waving him into the hidden room. She dug her phone out of her pocket and activated the flashlight once more, entering behind him and shining the light throughout. When she'd glanced over the corner where the shadows had come to life and had been satisfied in finding only a bare wall, free of shifting darkness, she took a few steps cautiously, her gaze then glued to the floor, and tried to find the severed fingertip.

She looked and looked, but it wasn't there.

Kim couldn't account for it. Even the smudge of blood she'd left behind on the concrete from stepping on it seemed to have disappeared. How this could possibly be so she was unsure, and the longer she looked, the more she began to doubt her own memory. Maybe, she thought, you imagined it. A shudder coursed through her. Then, raising the light, she wandered further, illuminating the mural. Sure enough, the awful, black trees still remained. “Have a look at this,” she said.

Julian stepped forward and leaned down at the painting, squinting. “Uh-huh?”

“Those trees?” began Kim. “I don't think those were there before.”

Julian fought back a little snort, shaking his head. “Nah, I'm pretty sure they were. I mean, they must've been. Because unless one of us has been down here painting, I mean, what?”

Kim reached out and touched them, drawing a bit of paint off of the wall on her fingertips. She wiped them off on her pants and frowned, her hands feeling profoundly soiled. “But the paint is still wet.”

He shrugged, taking a step back and looking to the narrowly opened door. “Probably just the humidity making the paint run. It gets humid back here, you know.”

Kim frowned. “I mean, I guess so...”

He chuckled, leading her out of the chamber and up the stairs. Arriving in the kitchen, he found the coffee maker had finished and busied himself by pouring them each a mug. “What do you think? If it wasn't one of us, then who could possibly come in to work on that painting?” He grinned. “Think it might've been the former owners coming by to touch up their masterwork?” He shook his head and stirred his coffee. “Fat chance.”

But that'd been precisely what Kim had seen in her dream. She'd seen Dakota herself standing at the mural, painting. Those trees had been a new addition, she was sure of it.

“Don't worry about it,” he said, handing her a piping hot mug. “It's not really a big deal. We'll go down there later, empty that room out. A fresh coat of paint and a ping-pong table and you won't recognize the place. Guarantee it. In fact, you might never want to leave there.”

Kim rolled her eyes and took a sip of coffee. It was too hot, and she drew back, her lips tingling. Maybe she had just imagined it all, had confused dreams with waking life. That was happening more and more these days. She felt like she couldn't sleep without being drawn into some nightmare scenario or waking to make a dreadful discovery. Something in the house-- Dakota, by the looks of it-- was reaching out to her through dreams. But then, what was the dream and what was real? Her head was spinning as she considered this. So much was happening in the house that it was getting hard to keep things straight. The severed fingertip in the cellar... maybe it'd been a hallucination, a part of the dream that she'd simply conflated with her trip to the basement. The sole of her foot itched for the remembrance. But those trees... surely they were new, weren't they? If they had been there before, then she felt quite sure she would have remembered them.

She was pulled from her thoughts by a loud knock at the door. She startled, almost spilled her coffee, and looked to Julian. It was coming from the front door.

“Now, who might that be? It's just past the butt-crack of dawn.” He set his mug down and ran a hand through his hair, matting down the sandy, unruly locks. “I'll go and see.”

As he left the room, he seemed to take all of the oxygen with him. Kim didn't much like the thought of being left alone and quickly ran off after him.

Chapter 2

“Well, I'll be damned,” said Julian, laughing as he handed back the clipboard. “About time!”

The deliverymen grunted as they brought in the first of several boxes. The cabinetry, countertops and flooring were ushered in at great speed by a pair of movers. They brought the boxes into the kitchen per Julian's instructions, quickly filling the space around their dinner table and spilling out into the living room. Julian was ecstatic, rubbing his hands together and handing the men a good tip as they walked out the door panting.

“Thanks, fellas,” he called after them, closing the door. He then turned back to Kim, who glanced about at the stacked boxes uneasily. “The kitchen stuff is here. I can finally get started!” He pointed to Kim's hand, her bandaged finger sticking out awkwardly. “Of course, you'll have to sit this one out. You can always hang back and make me some lemonade, though.”

She arched a brow. “Oh, yes, sir. I'll do just that.”

As Julian busied himself upturning the whole kitchen, Kim made her way upstairs, eager to separate herself from the bustle. Renovations were the last thing on her mind, and Julian's exuberance in the face of her terrible dream was immensely irritating. Hiking up the stairs, she walked to Julian's study and entered, shutting the door behind her. As she shuffled in, she found the boxes of his things much in the same positions she'd left them. He hadn't even been in since she'd begun unpacking. Kim plopped down into his office chair and spun around, appraising the bare walls and wondering how she would fill her day. The finger injury seemed like an almost lucky occurrence to her now. She didn't care for the idea of tearing out the old, nasty cabinets or bringing up the linoleum. Digging into the house, coming face-to-face with its bones, with its past, made her stomach churn. She'd been doing more than enough of that on her own.

Maybe, like they'd found in the bathroom or attic, there'd be some eerie memento left behind by the Reeds in the kitchen, too. Something creepy deposited behind the old cabinetry or under some molding. She wanted nothing to do with it. The weight of her thoughts was sufficient to make her head pound. To add anything more to her mental load, to strain her nerves any further, would have been too much.

Nibbling at her thumbnail, Kim leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. The smell of dust seemed to fill the air. She wished there was a window to open in the room.

You're not going crazy, she thought to herself. Those trees really were freshly painted. And you did see your fingertip down there, on the floor. And... you were chased away from that grave by something awful. That same something, Dakota, or whatever it is, pretended to be Julian, led you out of here and set you up. Her chewing intensified, her front teeth locking onto her nail and her eyes suddenly widening. What would've happened if you'd slowed down back there? What would've happened if you'd let yourself get caught that night, near the grave site?

Somehow, she didn't really want to know.

While initially the energy about the Beacon estate had seemed impotent enough, a bothersome, if not frightening distraction, things had changed. She'd learned more about the house's past, about the Reeds, and had gone to great lengths to uncover yet more secrets. And so, when those secrets became manifest and lashed out at her, she couldn't really be surprised. Things were growing, changing within the house. She thought back to the shadows in the basement, the way the mass of blackness on the wall had undulated and spasmed. Just what was gestating in the house she couldn't say, but that she wouldn't like it she felt somehow sure. Every day now she seemed to be picking up on a new piece of the puzzle and every day she was drawing closer to some inevitable ending. Her participation wasn't even necessary; the answers were coming to her now. At first gradually, but now with mounting speed. She needed only to close her eyes, to dream, and things were made clear to her. She was too far along the track now to turn back. The ride wouldn't stop until she reached the bottom of the hill.

Why her? Why was the energy surrounding this property interested solely in her? Julian was not bothered by it. He wasn't having awful dreams or stumbling upon terrible revelations like she was. Something in the house, in the woods, had taken an interest in her, specifically, for reasons she couldn't name. What did this force, this entity, wish to do with her? Was it seeking to kill her? To gain her attention? Her trust? It wasn't time for her to find that out yet. She was still in the car, the largest hill of the roller coaster rising up before her. And there was no harness to speak of.

She cringed, imagining herself climbing some enormous hill. The sheer drop, yet unseen; would she survive it?

She swiveled in the chair, appraising the tacky leaf motif on the closet door. And then, curiously, she noticed that the door itself had been left partially open. She reached out to edge it closed, but stopped short as she caught sight of something within the closet.

A pair of wide, bloodshot eyes stared out at her.

Kim reared back, almost overturning the chair, and stood up. Panting, she felt the stranger's steely gaze dissecting her. She trembled, kept the chair as a barrier between herself and the closet, and picked up on a sound like hushed murmuring issuing from within. It was a frail voice, weak, but not completely unfamiliar to her. She gulped and listened more closely.

The words still didn't come through. She could make no sense of what was being said.

That it was Dakota's voice she felt sure, however.

Pursing her lips, Kim reached out and gave the closet door a shove. It slid open, squealing on its track. She held out her hands as if to block anything that might emerge, but then paused and lowered her guard.

There was nothing in the closet.

Nothing, that is, except for a small, familiar, leather-bound book sitting on the floor.

Dakota's journal.

Wetting her lips and glancing about the room, she appraised the book narrowly. Then, slowly, she approached the closet, knelt down, and picked it up. What are you doing here? She turned it in her hands, wondering how it'd ended up in the closet. She certainly hadn't left it there. Kim couldn't remember moving it. Did Julian put it in there? But why? The more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Julian had relocated it. It had made it into the closet somehow, maybe of its own accord. And it'd moved there for a reason.

Clearing her throat and attempting to instill some calm, she thumbed through the book. It's just an old book, remember. There's no reason to get spooked. You've read the whole thing, seen all it has to offer. Her eyes landed upon the inside of the front cover as she did so, and she spied something odd. Something she couldn't remember from her previous perusals of the book.

Penned in the inside cover in the rough, chaotic characters that Kim had come to recognize as Dakota's hasty writing, was a single phrase. Bring back my baby, it read.

She fought back a shiver and closed the thing at once. “You must've overlooked it,” she assured herself aloud, combing a hand through her black hair and wincing as her fingers grew entangled. “She was obsessed with having a baby, so she probably scribbled that all throughout the book. Nothing weird about it.” Kim paced before Julian's desk a moment, looking down at the book in her hands with a shaky facade of cool disinterest. She was trying to play Julian's game, trying to write it off as a coincidence, as something unimpressive.

It didn't work. Unlike her husband, she didn't believe the lie. Kim had seen too much to simply ignore it. Dakota was trying to reach her, this time through the journal. There could be no other explanation.

Exiting the study, she closed the door softly behind her and walked to their bedroom. There, she set down the book on her nightstand and took a seat upon the bed, looking at it reservedly in the light that came in through the half-opened blinds. What did Dakota want her to do? All of this communication through dreams, all of these hints and frightening visitations; what did they mean? “Maybe,” she mumbled, “she can't move on from this house because something happened to her baby. Maybe she needs you to help her leave this place. She wants to know what happened to her baby, and you need to do something before she can leave this world and go to the next.” She paused. “But what?”

Weighing the book in her sights, she crossed her legs and sighed. Kim was at a loss. Dakota claimed to want her baby back. Where had her baby gone? And, for that matter, why hadn't anyone known about it? Dakota had always wanted a child, so it was hard to believe that she'd simply keep news of a new baby to herself. She could have lied about how they'd found the child. Could have said they adopted it, something like that. But, so far as she could tell, they'd never told anyone about this baby they'd found in the woods. Recalling the journal entry describing their first encounter with the infant incited her stomach to churn. The baby had been delivered to them in the black, dead woods by a dying, mangy wolf. This was still too surreal to believe. Growing nervous, Kim chuckled to herself, breaking up the silence. Perhaps the Reeds just had a really wicked sense of humor and had left behind this journal as a cryptic joke. The child had certainly come from an orphanage or someplace similar.

No, she thought. Everything in that journal is true. I don't know how, but it's all true.

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 grimaced, 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 sort. 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.

More than that, she wondered if whatever had made the thing would be back.

She focused her attentions on climbing out. Using the shovel as a crutch, she buried it in the floor of the hole and reached upward, clawing at the smooth edges and trying to make her way up. There was precious little to keep hold of however, and her injured finger made it so that she had to try it one-handed, lest she rip her wound open afresh. Carefully, she dug her shoes into the wall and tried to climb. Then, with a jump, she grabbed onto a large stone that jutted out from the soil above. She held onto it, clambering up the side of the hole and hoping all the while that it wouldn't give way. The stone remained firm, and with some difficulty, Kim managed to claw her way out of the hole some minutes later.

As she flopped onto the grass and crawled away from the entrance, her limbs burning for the exertion, she looked around. The dead woods greeted her, the sun still burned in the sky. Little had changed since she'd fallen into the hole, but superadded to the cool breeze was the sensation that she was being watched. A surveyance of the woods yielded nothing. Perhaps, then, something was watching her from the pit. She imagined some nightmarish thing ambling through that darkened tunnel, its eyes rising over the lip of the aperture to meet her in the field. Not so long ago the day had been pleasant. Now, the mood was spoiled, ruined utterly by the discovery of this mysterious underground tunnel and the attendant presence. Something sinister had her in its sights and, without bothering to retrieve her shovel from the inside of the pit, she returned home as precipitously as possible, jogging through the field and not daring to glance back.

Where did the tunnel terminate? Did it really lead back towards the house? As Kim galloped along the field, she wondered if she wasn't walking directly above that accursed underground passage. What dread aberration had carved that path through the underground, and for what purpose?

Digging up that grave, she decided, was an awful idea. Whatever was down there... it was better off buried and forgotten.

Chapter 5

Julian took one look at her and began to laugh. “Where the heck have you been?”

Her clothing was marked in soil, her arms, face and hair were covered in it, and the bandage on her finger had come mostly unwound. More than that, the grime was held fast to her body by a layer of glistening sweat. Standing in the kitchen, panting and kicking off her shoes, Kim paused just long enough to give her husband the daggers. From there, she quickly made her way up to the bath.

“You look like a tramp, but I love you anyhow,” he said as she went, laughing all the while.

Throwing her clothes into the hamper, she turned the water on as hot as it would go and let the tap in the bath run for a long while before she even stepped in. She would start with a piping hot shower and then unwind with a warm bath. Carefully she undid her bandage and threw it into the waste bin. The sight of the wound, barely scabbed over, made her ill. Knocking a few pieces of grass from her hair, she glanced herself over in the foggy mirror before stepping into the shower.

The hot water felt amazing against her skin, the best thing she'd felt in ages. She looked downward as trails of brownish muck ran from her body and down the drain. Going to have to clean the tub after this, she thought with a grimace. Dampening her hair, she kneaded at her scalp, dissolved the clumps of dirt that'd clung to her locks and then reached for her shampoo.

The sound of the tap incited feelings of great calm in her. Kim lathered up her hair and let the shampoo sit a while. Then, while her mane was still sudsy, she applied a generous dollop of body wash to her scrubber and went to town on the remaining patches of dirt. All the while, she thought back to the grave, to the massive tunnel she'd discovered. It felt absolutely surreal. Had she told Julian about it-- something she had zero interest in doing-- he wouldn't have believed her. Hell, until she'd fallen straight into it, she wouldn't have believed it, either. But it was real, that yawning, pitch black tunnel. It'd been carved, no, clawed out by something she couldn't put a name or face to. What had been buried there, she wondered, and who had done the burying? And, for that matter, what could possibly possess the strength to create such a subterranean passage? No animal she could think of, even animals known for their burrowing habits, could possibly have created something so impressive.

Impressive wasn't the right word.

The tunnel was massive, mysterious, frightening.

There was simply no way an animal had been responsible for it.

She shuddered as she thought back to the almost tangible darkness that reigned there, to the rough appearance of the earthen walls. What sort of creature would dare traverse such a space? What could possibly feel comfortable so far underground, in a shadow-choked passage of its own making? The whole thing defied imagination.

When she felt reasonably clean, she took to filling up the tub. Then, submerging herself in the warm water, she dumped some bath beads in and watched listlessly as they fizzed up, her mind occupied with other things.

She was getting nowhere fast.

With each passing day, her fears only mounted. Where the house had made her uneasy early on, the frights it provided her with now were of a far more serious sort. There was no delusion she could cling to to allay her fear; something was after her. What it wanted, what it wished to impart, was a mystery. And she was keen to solve it. No matter what she did, all of her leads seemed to dry up however, leaving her hopelessly stranded till something reached out and touched her. She considered the acquaintances of the Reeds, the three individuals Edwin had put her into touch with. She'd spoken to two of them, and they'd each given a different account of the couple. It was tremendously unsettling. And the more things didn't add up, the more lost she felt.

Each time she hit a dead end, the feelings of vulnerability in the back of her mind would resurface, take a bow. They were back now, churning beneath the surface of every thought. She had no one she could depend on; Julian wasn't interested in pursuing any of this. She loved him, dearly, but she knew she was in this alone, and that whatever was reaching out to her was interested principally in her. The house had shown precious little interest in Julian. He hadn't suffered from the nightmares, hadn't faced the horrors she'd been faced with. Why was she more receptive to it? Why was it that Dakota reached out to her in dreams?

She knocked apart a mound of bubbles.

There you go again, asking your questions.

Knowing that there would be no rest until she'd advanced in her investigations, Kim exited the bath, took her time in toweling off, and then walked to the bedroom. She put on fresh clothes and stretched out on the bed, the sound of a power drill echoing from the downstairs. She couldn't help but roll her eyes at it. Here Julian was, concerning himself with renovations, while she'd just gone out and discovered a winding tunnel beneath their property. For all she knew, it probably led all the way to their house, its terminus located somewhere nearby.

She tried not to think of that. For, if she did, thoughts of some dread, nebulous something, emerging in the night to enter the house, naturally followed.

Rolling onto her side, she perused the nightstand. There, she caught sight of Dakota's journal, its leather-bound form basking in the darkness of the room. A thin film of whitish light drifted in through the breaks in the curtains. Save for this, the room was largely dark. It was hard to know what time it was; that it was late in the afternoon she felt somewhat sure.

Picking up the book, Kim turned it over in her hands and examined it. The journal had been the key. If only she'd been able to read it from beginning to end she'd have ended up with the answers she wanted. There were many entries, perhaps across several years, that could've elucidated the mysteries surrounding Dakota and Marshall Reed if not for the damage to their pages. Instead, she was left with a book whose overwhelming bulk was useless, frayed paper and splattered ink.

Maybe that was the point; maybe Dakota was trying to make contact with her because she wanted someone to know about what'd really happened to her and her husband more than seven years ago. The journal had been left behind as a clue, but when it became too damaged to read, Dakota's spirit had been forced to intercede. This was a pleasant spin on the situation, one that Kim was eager to cling to. Something bad happened to the two of them, and they're trying to let someone know about it from the other side. They want people to know what really happened to them, why they disappeared without a trace. And it looks like I'm the only person they want to talk to. The job falls to me.

Kim considered cracking the cover to re-read the legible tidbits, but found herself lulled into a light sleep instead. Her head firmly on the pillow and her limbs growing slack, she dropped the book softly onto her belly and began to breathe deeply.

She was asleep before she knew it.

***

Numbness. An all-encompassing darkness.

And then, slowly, Kim passed into the dream.

She knew herself to be dreaming from the onset, her lucidity creeping in before even she'd had a chance to appraise the dreamscape.

She was in her room, still on the bed, the space lit in a flickering orange glow as if illuminated by candles. She looked up from her pillow, found the journal still sitting close-by, and picked it up.

Then, for reasons she couldn't altogether articulate, she rolled over, opened it, and began to read.

Somehow, though the discovery did not excite her quite so much in the moment as it would upon waking, the writing was all legible. The journal was pristine, undamaged, the way it must've looked before Dakota had abandoned it to the humid chamber in the cellar so many years ago.

Licking her finger, she leafed through the book, sitting up in the dimness and examining each page. The paper was crisp now, the words neat and almost jumping out at her as the pages turned. Reacquainting herself with Dakota's doubts and anguish, Kim felt a profound stirring of pity in her heart where previously there'd been mainly shock and apprehension. She felt somehow close to Dakota, and knew better than ever before the depth of the sorrows that'd plagued her on her quest to become a mother.

Then, just past the midway point of the book, after a stretch of anguished, repeated passages, Kim felt also the surging triumph that had been Dakota's at finally achieving her dream of motherhood. She felt it like she herself had found the child, like her own dreams and prayers had been answered in the woods that day in decades passed. It was like reading an emotional novel. She was growing invested in the characters, could see them coming to life in a way. The character had been so effectively written in this particular tale that Dakota's happiness and sadness were virtually Kim's own.

She pushed past the familiar parts, skimmed quickly to the entries she'd most wanted to read, eager to find them in a similar state of legibility. The photograph was in the same spot she'd originally found it, sandwiched between two pages. Turning it over, she found something written on the reverse. She hadn't been able to read it before, but could see it plainly now. She mulled it over for a time, puzzling, before ultimately setting it down and moving on through the journal.

On the back of the photo was written: I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE. I AM THE WAY TO A FORESAKEN PEOPLE. I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

What this meant, if anything, she could not say. She didn't care to ponder its significance, either, for the untarnished entries in the latter half of the journal beckoned. Excitedly, she lapped them up, one after another. So much of what she read in it would end up a blurry mess of half-forgotten nonsense by the time she awoke, but in the moment she felt her mind enriched, her curiosities satisfied. Fear melted away in the face of the knowledge she'd so fervently sought.

And as she read, she could almost sense someone's breath upon her ear, could make out the words, as she read them, relayed to her in someone else's voice. Someone, maybe, was hovering at her bedside, whispering the entries into her ear as she lazily stretched out and her eyes passed across each page.

There was mention, now and again, of “The Amber Light”. Dakota explained in hushed tones that they'd installed it in the woods because their baby had run away from them. The light was to serve as a beacon to draw it back to the property. Kim laughed to herself as she read; a big, stupid laugh. How could a baby possibly escape its parents? How could a baby leave the house at all without help? It seemed crazy, silly, that such a thing should happen. And yet, that was precisely what she was reading, and Dakota was relaying to her, in an entry dated just ten months from the day the photo was taken.

Of course there was more, and in Dakota's gripes about Marshall, Kim could only sympathize. Dakota talked about how Marshall didn't understand, that he did not love their baby the way she loved it. He had said to her, once, with great emphasis and apparent fear, that what they'd come upon in the woods was not a baby at all, though what he meant by that Dakota declined to say. Dakota dismissed his concerns as rubbish, chalked everything up to his nervousness over the prospect of fatherhood. “He is willing to say anything, to come up with whatever outlandish tales he must, in order to evade his responsibilities as a father. That is why the baby does not care for him.”

Never once did Dakota mention the baby by name and she said nothing of its sex. Kim flipped back several pages, trying to find the spot where Dakota had mentioned picking out a name for the child, but failed to find it. She continued onward instead.

Entries spanned across the next twenty years, detailing Dakota's great sadness at the baby's absence. She mentions seeing the baby from time to time in the woods, but that the child only ever returns briefly. Oh, how my child has grown, she would often write. During these years she mentions great reticence at leaving the house, in case the child should return to her. She waits long into the night, looking out to the woods, but often sees no sign of it. More and more, with every year that passes, she describes the alienation she feels from her husband and their former friends. Why doesn't Marshall want me to be a mother? This was our dream. Why doesn't he care for our only child? They see few people, scarcely leave the property. This, then, was around the time that they began drifting away from friends, like Edwin and Enid had said. Though, they weren't doing so because they were antisocial or obsessed with the house like so many had thought.

They were doing it because they were waiting for this mysterious child to return to them after having run away. The child no one knew about. This, and not the house, had been Dakota's obsession.

We've outfitted the spare room in the cellar in case the child should decide to return. A nursery for my baby! Kim pictured the dim, moist room in the basement and found herself smiling warmly. She could see in her mind's eye the figure of Dakota toiling in that room, painting a scene on the walls, arranging the baby furniture within.

The journal continued, the last few entries from about eight years ago.

Once, when the child had returned to them in the night, Marshall had taken it badly and punished it. He'd allegedly buried it in a field near the woods.

Dakota delighted in this, and described how ineffectual it'd been in separating mother and child. I raised a strong baby, and Marshall was a fool. The child has broken free of that little trap and has come back to me. My child is now in the nursery. Finally home, after all this time. The door is solid there, and I can visit whenever I like...

From across the room, Kim heard a whistle. Looking up from her book, she saw the squat, naked form of a white-haired old woman in the doorway, looking out into the hall. The woman started from the bedroom, whistling cheerfully as she went. Kim could hear her going down the stairs, could hear her heading for the living room. Kim stood and followed her, her own footfalls silent as she went. The whistling continued, high-pitched and melodious. What would Julian say now? Dakota was headed downstairs; he was bound to see her.

But, to Kim's surprise, the downstairs was profoundly dark.

Forced to follow the sound of the whistling and to navigate by touch, Kim ambled carefully through the living room, into the kitchen, and then joined Dakota in descending the basement stairs. There was a light coming from something nearby, some transient, flickering source of orange-yellow light she couldn't account for in their surroundings. When they'd made it into the cellar, Kim then followed Dakota's small, shriveled form into the hidden chamber. That is, the nursery. The pair stepped inside, and after a few moments, the whistling came to an abrupt stop.

The chamber was inundated in darkness, but the dim, intermittent glow continued, giving Kim just enough light to see by. She didn't feel like she was properly seeing her surroundings, rather, she couldn't but imagine she was sensing them through other means. Physically, she wasn't there; only her mind seemed to drift through the house. Her eyes were closed, she was actually in bed. She knew and understood this. Still, this knowledge did nothing to rob this dream of its realism. She was in both places at once; two halves of her had separated, writhing off in different directions like the two halves of a severed bait worm.

Dakota had paused before the strange panel in the wall of the room, the set of switches and controls that Julian had been hopeless to decipher. He'd deemed them obsolete, left in the room for some long-defunct appliance from a bygone era. But Dakota's interest in the thing seemed to prove otherwise. She reached out with a bony, white hand and slowly pawed at the switches. She did it feebly, her voice quivering in the back of her throat like some sort of moan. Without turning to face her companion, Dakota gave a frail plea. “Bring back my baby,” she asked, her voice sounding like so much dust.

Dakota's long finger was extended, pointing to the panel.

And then, with a sudden dampening of the orange flicker, there was darkness again.

***

Kim was climbing out of bed before she even fully realized it.

She went downstairs, surprised to find it darker out. She had no idea how long she'd been asleep. Deep, hammering noises issuing from the kitchen quickly reminded her of Julian's renovation work, the sounds of a sledge breaking through the old wooden cabinets meeting her ears and inciting a grimace. The racket rang through the house with her husband's every grunt. How she'd managed to sleep through it was anyone's guess.

Groggily, wiping her eyes, she stepped into the kitchen and was partially blinded by the lights. She yawned and headed for the cellar door. That was when Julian first noticed her.

“Oh, hey, what've you been up to?” he asked, setting down his sledge and wiping at his brow. A thin haze of dust drifted about the room. His clothing was matted down in debris and sweat and his face was red for the exertion. “Napping all this time?”

She nodded, opening the cellar door and peering down into the darkened depths. She drew out her phone and switched on the flashlight, making her way down the stairs.

“Where you going?” he asked, scratching at his dusty, golden hair. “I was thinking maybe it'd be a good time for dinner. Think you could start some pizzas while I knock out this last panel?”

“Uh-huh,” she replied vacantly. She was focused exclusively on the way ahead, on the heavy door that sat ajar at the foot of the stairs. She hadn't come down to make chit-chat or to prepare his dinner. Julian didn't understand. He simply never understood these things. He was so unsupportive of her. Rather than explain to him what she was doing, she flipped on the cellar light and called up to him with a lie. “Just going to throw a little laundry in the washer. I'll start the food when I'm done.”

This seemed to please him, and he wandered off into the kitchen again, taking a swig from a water bottle and resuming his noisy work.

Kim didn't care. From down here everything was muffled. Slipping through the doorway, she entered the nursery and raised her light, seeking out the control panel on the wall. It was strange; every prior visit to this space had filled her with fear. But not this time. On this occasion she felt comfortable. Perhaps it was because she'd been down there so much in recent days. Maybe she was used to it. It now seemed the most unthreatening place in the world; a bunch of old, dusty furniture, an endearing painting. As she reached out to the panel and flipped the first switch, she couldn't understand what she'd ever found frightening about the space.

Did the Amber Light still work? What would happen if she used these controls, flipped both of the switches? It was what Dakota had asked of her, and Kim had to know. She simply had to know. The fixture was old. She remembered seeing it in the woods, amongst the trees, its body flecked in rust for the years of weathering. But, she thought, maybe it would work. There could be no telling what it would do when it was on, but this seemed to her a necessary action. It was an itch that needed badly scratched.

She flipped the second switch and then stepped back. Sighing with satisfaction, Kim turned off the light on her phone and stood in the nursery, basking for a moment in the almost perfect darkness of the space. She was pleased with herself. She'd done something good here, had done what Dakota had asked, and maybe something would happen because of it. Kim wanted to make Dakota happy, to make peace with this force about the property that'd hitherto left her shaken.

As she left the room and started back up the stairs, Kim whistled a brief tune. It was drowned out by the beat of Julian's hammer from the kitchen. She cocked her head to the side as she finished. The tune felt familiar to her somehow, but where she'd heard it she was unsure. She laughed nervously to herself. It felt out of place on her lips.

Chapter 6

For the first time in a long while, Kim felt happy.

The two of them sat in the living room, the contents of the kitchen spilling out all around them, enjoying a meal of beer and pizza. They'd turned on a movie. It was an old drama, some award-winner from the past year. She didn't really pay it much mind, reveling instead in the new knowledge she'd gained. Ordinarily she would have been one to question the veracity of information gained through dreams. Not so with this cache of knowledge, however. The forces about the property had reached out to her and bridged the gaps in her understanding. She'd more or less solved the riddle of the previous owners; the reasons they'd stopped leaving the house as the years wore on, the purpose of the room in the cellar. And of those things she didn't have answers for, she could make educated guesses.

The story, as far as she could tell it, was that the Reeds had built this house when they were young, had lived in it for some years before coming upon a baby in the woods. They'd kept the child a secret from everyone they knew, probably because they feared some stigma, and then took to caring for the child. Then, when the child, seemingly rambunctious, was old enough, it ran away from home and they spent the bulk of their time in the house waiting for its return.

There were details, though, which she couldn't account for in this neat little narrative, details which she found herself pushing out of her mind. These details; the masked onlookers in the woods, the religious paraphernalia in the cellar, the fact that Marshall had, supposedly, buried their child in that makeshift grave near the woods, were things she could not place in the chronology for fear that they might suggest other, more ominous events. She took to dismissing them each as she nibbled on a crust of pizza, legs crossed.

She'd seen the photograph of the masked subjects, probably taken some Halloween many years ago, and in her earlier, worried state, she'd glimpsed things out in the yard that weren't really there. Then there was the matter of the visitation outside, the night she'd been led out of the house by a phantasm masquerading as her husband. Dakota had wished to make contact with her, that was all. And the religious items were commonplace enough. Perhaps they'd been gifts, or intended as gifts, and simply left behind in the chamber by the couple. Dakota's assertion that Marshall had buried the child near the woods, well, that was frankly impossible. It would have constituted murder. And then, there was the fact that she herself had investigated that grave and found a tunnel issuing from the pit. No human being, much less a child, could possibly dig through so much earth to free itself. There was no way Dakota had actually meant that. Kim had misremembered, or her dreaming mind had taken liberties with that specific bit of information.

Everything was falling together nicely. With a little effort she could easily explain the events that'd left her ill at ease during their time at the house. It all seemed so ordinary to her now, so comfortable by comparison. She had her answers and was pleased. Virtually everything, except for what'd happened to the Reeds, was known to her, but she now found her curiosity ebbing away. Her hunger over that specific tidbit had waned. It might have sounded strange, but Kim felt a kind of sisterhood with Dakota. Dakota's life had been one with no shortage of frustrations, and having to deal with an unsupportive husband was something that Kim had grown to know well since moving into the Beacon estate. Reading the journal, having her series of fevered dreams, Kim felt she knew Dakota better than any of her friends had known her in life. She was no longer frightened, holding only pity in her heart for the old pair who'd likely gone on waiting till the end of their days for their runaway child. Maybe, she thought, the elderly pair had gone looking for the child in the woods and had gotten lost, possibly hurt, never to emerge again. That was probably what'd happened.

Kim had spent her first weeks in the house running away. She'd reacted with fright and outrage whenever Dakota made herself known, whenever the forces about the property revealed something new to her. That'd been the wrong attitude entirely. Had she only done the opposite, acted warm and open to the mourning spirits of the Beacon estate, then perhaps she'd have saved herself a good deal of grief. Following Dakota's lead, listening to her whims, would have been the smarter thing to do.

It occurred to her, too, that in listening to what Dakota had to say, Kim could help her spirit move on. Kim had seen the tortured soul of Dakota with her own eyes; some aspect of the woman still lingered here, wandering the halls late at night, communicating through dreams. If Kim could stay the course and listen, then she could help Dakota move into the next life after eight years of isolation and suffering. From that point on, she resolved to keep her wits about her, to remain understanding to the spirit's plight and to do her best to assist. There was no telling what Dakota might ask for, but if Kim kept an open mind, then perhaps she wouldn't see it fit to resort to fright tactics like she'd been doing.

Julian was exhausted from the day's work. Having guzzled a few beers and eaten some pizza, he laid back on the sofa and began nodding off, eventually settling against the armrest and snoring lightly. She smiled, throwing a knit blanket over the top of him and shutting off the television. Stretching out herself, she placed her heels up on the edge of a nearby coffee table and picked up one of her books.

This, she thought, is what it felt like to truly live in a home. More and more she was becoming excited about their future there, about the possibilities that awaited them. Her finger still ailed her, but as soon as it'd fully healed, she'd be able to help Julian with the renovations. She shared his vision now, looked forward to fixing up the house and making it theirs. With nothing left to fear, she possessed only the warmth of happiness in her breast.

For about an hour Kim sat and read by lamplight. She'd set her book aside and patted Julian on the arm with the intention of going to bed, when her gaze was drawn towards the kitchen. She perked up a little, incredulous.

There'd been three, firm knocks at the back door.

Kim wondered if she wasn't imagining things, but the fact that Julian himself had sit up and taken notice, along with the utter solidity of the noises, reassured her. Someone was knocking at their back door. It was well after dark, so that she couldn't imagine having company of any kind. She felt the familiar stirrings of dread well up inside her but did her best to subdue them. Relax, she thought. It's probably nothing pressing; someone's gotten lost out here and is asking for directions. Or, if it is something... supernatural, well, Dakota knows you're on her side.

It was at that moment that she remembered the Amber Light. She'd gone into the basement to flip the switches some hours ago, just as Dakota had asked. She tensed. Had the light actually worked? Had it subsequently drawn someone... or something... from the woods? She cracked a nervous smile and looked to her husband, who was standing up.

“I'll check it out,” said Julian, his grogginess banished at once. He approached the door firmly, straightening his clothes and narrowing his gaze. “It was this door back here, wasn't it?” he asked as he crossed into the kitchen.

“Yeah, I think so,” replied Kim. She was up and following him in the next moment, keeping just a few feet behind.

Pausing before the back door, Julian reached over and plucked a crowbar from the floor where he'd earlier been doing work with it. Grasping it firmly in one hand, he hovered by the door with obvious hesitance until a second sequence of firm knocks, three in all, started him and he moved to open it. “Stay back,” he said to her as he unlocked the deadbolt and gripped the handle.

Julian opened the door, his other hand twitching as he did so and the crowbar ready to fly into action at any moment.

Then, a few seconds and a few curious glances later, Julian took a couple of steps outside. “Hello?” he said quietly.

Kim walked up to the door, looking out into the cool, dark night. There was no one there. “What in the world?” she muttered. “Was anyone there?”

He shook his head. “Nah, doesn't look like it.” He looked this way and that, first out to the woods, then to his right and left. There was no one. Julian scratched at his head and sighed, loosing a nervous chuckle. “You know, that's really damn weird.” He cleared his throat, taking a step back and looking up to the moonlit sky. “I opened the door just as the knocking was going on; if someone did knock, then there's just no way they'd be able to disappear that quickly. I'd have caught a glimpse of them running towards the woods, or walking around the house or something.”

“Maybe it was someone looking for directions,” she ventured. “Maybe a car broke down on the main road, or...” She trailed off, her limbs growing tense at the passage of an unnaturally chill breeze. It wafted in through the door, hanging about her frame for a rather long while before dissipating into the kitchen. She felt her hair standing on end, as though something had just shifted in the space immediately before her. She knew the space between her and the door to be empty, but had felt the new presence nonetheless. Julian was pacing about the lawn, looking around for the source of the knocking and apparently oblivious to the chill. Kim shuddered, looking behind her, towards the cellar door, and then the living room, wondering if some unseen trespasser hadn't just walked by.

The house had fallen still. Completely. Not a floorboard creaked, not a pipe rattled. It was a sepulchral quiet, unlike anything she'd ever known in the house. Even in the dead of night, when both of them were asleep, she couldn't remember it ever being this quiet. Tonguing her molars pensively, she found she didn't care for it one bit. She crossed her arms and waited for Julian to come back inside.

Pointing out into the distance, Julian came back towards the door, stealing a glance her way and stepping aside to let her through. “Say, what is that out there?” He paused, squinting. “Maybe it's just me, but the woods look a lot brighter than normal. Don't they? Could be that the moon is hitting them just right. I dunno what to make of it.”

Taking a step forward, Kim looked out towards the woods, studying the treeline for a time. That was when she realized it, her heart fluttering. The Amber Light... it worked. It really worked. She shook her head and denied it, saying that they looked the same way they always did. Julian dropped it, unconcerned, and reentered the house. But Kim hesitated at the threshold for a brief time, her eyes glued to the faint amber glow that dwelt between the trunks of the dense trees like the flickering candlelight of a jack-o-lantern. It was unmistakable.

When lit up in this way, the woods seemed to take on a new characteristic. They were given a kind of life, their solid trunks subtly animated. She closed the door behind her and suggested they go to bed.

Even as she changed into pajamas and made her way across the bedroom, she caught hints of the ethereal amber glow issuing from the woods through the closed curtains. Burning like a beacon out there, its rusted shape casting an eerie light in those woods where light was such an oddity, was the fixture the Reeds had installed in the hopes of drawing their runaway child back to the house.

It was when she laid her head upon her pillow and fought to get to sleep that Kim recalled a detail out of her dream. She remembered Dakota's complaint that Marshall was unsupportive; unsupportive because he claimed their child was not a child at all, but something else.

She sighed deeply. Of course it'd been a child. Kim had seen the photograph herself.

And, if the Reeds hadn't installed that light in the dark woods to lead their child back home, then... what, she wondered, could they have hoped to guide to the property?

It was unwise to dwell on such a thing considering the hour. Kim forced it from her mind, but still her wandering thoughts returned to that territory, until sleep overcame her.

Chapter 7

The night passed without incident. There'd been no other disturbances, no dreams. The pair had slept soundly into the early afternoon and risen refreshed.

Still, as she considered her mug of coffee, Kim felt that something was awry.

Having felt comfortable around the house the previous day, and pleased with having learned more about its previous owners, she'd been confident that she could now put the property's “bad vibes” behind her. And yet, here they were, all the same, and with renewed gusto. Something was different in the air, and it wasn't solely the clouds of dust that Julian's noisy, constant work on the kitchen floors was producing. The air, even from her spot in the living room, felt heavy, unsuitable for breathing. She stirred her coffee for a minute, let more steam pour off of the top before chancing a careful sip.

It tasted awful to her, the bitterness nigh overwhelming. She'd made it the same way she always did, had used the same beans and water in the same proportions. Glancing around at the crowded living room, the piles of dishes upon the relocated dinner table, stacks of boxed foods filling a nearby chair, she wondered at the source of this new unease. It wasn't new, exactly, but it was different. She'd thought herself through with all of this dread, but its newest incarnation hit her from somewhere far closer than ever before. There'd been a sea change in the house overnight, ever since the queer knocking at the back door the previous evening. She recalled the way she'd felt a profound cold wash over her, the way her senses had tracked movement where her eyes could find none.

Kim was jumpier this morning than she had been for quite some time. Julian's pounding and grunting in the kitchen did little to calm her nerves. More than once she'd startled, staining the bandage on her finger with fresh coffee. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, fidgeting, she tried to remember what she'd done the previous day, or the day before. Each day in her memory ran into the last, however, and in searching through her thoughts she could suss out only the highlights, usually curious or frightening. Anything that didn't deal with the house or the Reeds became blotted out and obscured. Dinners with Julian, books she'd read; none of that could enter her focus.

Palming at her forehead, Kim continued to fidget, her toes tapping against the rug in a nervous dance. She felt like her head was elsewhere, as if she'd somehow become disembodied and the act of rejoining her body and mind was too difficult. Something was in the way, scrambling her thoughts and making her feel sapped of intelligence. Maybe she'd eaten something off, or gotten too drunk the previous night. No, you hardly drank then, didn't you? She doubted her memories of the previous night's dinner, counted, then recounted her memory of the beers she'd consumed.

It didn't matter.

Setting her coffee down amidst the clutter of a side table, Kim rose in a huff and ascended the stairs. Entering the master bath, she switched on the light and pulled out the first-aid kit. It was time to change her bandage, the white gauze still damp with lukewarm coffee. Tugging away the old bandage, she threw it in the waste bin before applying an antiseptic spray and tugging open a new patch of gauze. The digit was healing well, and had clotted evenly, but it was still hot and red around the wound. She carefully applied the gauze, wrapping it around the tip of her finger, and then finished it up with some paper tape as before.

Looking up at herself in the mirror, Kim noticed two, wide eyes surveying her in the reflection from nearby. Standing just behind her, leaning over her right shoulder, Kim saw Dakota's bright, wild eyes and toothy smile. She said nothing, and their eyes didn't meet; in fact, by the time Kim took notice, the image of Dakota had vanished, making her wonder if she hadn't just imagined it. Kim shook her head, ran a brush through her black hair and pursed her lips. What do you want now, Dakota? Just tell me what you want.

She'd been letting her hair go as of late. The ends were tangled, knotty. With a wince, she went about untangling the strands, brushing at them vigorously. She started from the ends, tugging hard on the tangles with her boar's hair brush. When they wouldn't come easily, she went even harder. Harder.

Running the brush through her hair, she found she was panting, the bristles clawing large, black clumps of hair from her scalp. She continued on, tearing fresh hairs out and gripping at the side of the sink, her knuckles going as white as the porcelain. Her eyes teary, she stopped what she was doing and removed the brush from her hair, finding it ridden with black knots. A large clump of hair stuck to it, far more than she'd intended to come away with. Her scalp tingled where hairs had been yanked out, and suddenly she threw the brush into the sink, taking a step back and bumping into the door at her back. Kim looked at herself in the mirror, her face seeming altogether more gaunt and white than usual. Perhaps her eyes were simply bothering her, but the shape of her chin looked different than she remembered it; longer, elongated, unfamiliar. Her eyes were a bit sunken; she'd slept well the night before, but evidently not well enough. She pawed feebly at her cheeks. The reflection is just off because of this mirror. It's new, you're not used to the way you look in it yet.

Smoothing out her hair, Kim licked the corner of her lips and took an unsteady step out into the hall. She wasn't feeling at all well. A powerful lethargy had claimed her, and she seemed hopeless to shake it off. Shambling down the stairs, she bypassed the kitchen where Julian was still noisily tearing up the flooring and exited through the front door. Closing it behind her quietly, she looked up into the blue sky and paced around near the garage for a time. A cool breeze worked its way over her, bringing her the closest thing to invigoration she could find.

She'd been living out here in the middle of nowhere for weeks. She couldn't remember the last time she'd left the property, the last time she'd seen other people. Oh, she'd visited with Edwin that one time, she knew, but other than that her only companion had been Julian.

She wasn't sure whether Dakota counted in this case.

Spending so much time out here can probably warp your perception... and maybe that's what living here did to Dakota...

Kim banished the thought, shaking her head as if trying to force it to tumble out of her ears. Dakota and Marshall had had a great social life, by the sounds of it. They'd gone to church. Or, maybe they hadn't. Their surviving acquaintances couldn't seem to agree on that. But, of course, they'd had many friends in their day, despite the isolation of this property. Good friends like Edwin, Enid, and--

Kim sighed, stretching. She'd spent far too long in the house, away from other people and other sights. It would do her some good, she thought, to take a day-trip somewhere. A trip to a shopping mall, to see a movie, to visit a park. Perhaps even visiting family, or friends back in the city. All of it sounded lovely. It's time the two of you go for a trip. It isn't healthy to be here all the time, focusing on what happened. Maybe Julian's right... I've been obsessed and it's unhealthy of me. We could both use some time out, some time around other people, doing new things.

She stepped into the garage, its large door sitting open. Scattered all across the floor were tools, boxes of cabinetry and relocated kitchen fixtures that Julian hadn't found space for throughout the house. Kim sighed, walking carefully around a mass of plastic pipes, and looking through the space. She hadn't spent much time in the garage yet. In time they'd go shopping for another car; they could probably fit two full-size vehicles in it with room to spare for the lawn mower and a few boxes of tools. The ceiling was made up of knotted wooden rafters, the space between them thick with spider's silk. The walls, which seemed made of thin sheets of wood, were covered in pockmarks where tools had once been hung. Rusty nails stuck out of virtually ever wooden surface in sight. The floors, smooth concrete, were stained with old paint and oil.

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.

Chapter 8

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 repetition, 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.

Chapter 9

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.”

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.

An hour passed before Kim stopped crying. When pressed, she still couldn't bring herself to share with Julian the specific reasons for her freak-out. She mentioned that she'd been having dreams, that she'd seen and heard things that'd convinced her of a threat, but when Julian gave a piteous look she dropped it at once. It's just like I said it would be. He doesn't care. He doesn't believe. He thinks I've gone crazy. Her tea grew cold and she spent a good while in the kitchen, shivering beneath her knitted throw.

Wanting to support her and evidently feeling guilty for her episode, Julian tried to act jovial. He joked constantly, prepared a nice dinner and sought to comfort her at every opening. Despite this facade, Kim could see in him a great discomfort any time he looked upon her. He didn't know what was going on, had no idea about the thing that the Amber Light would court. But he was frightened all the same.

Kim frightened him.

Julian looked at her the same way he might look upon a fevered stranger. His concern and sweetness was tainted by apprehension and revulsion. It was clear that he thought her insane, and was probably praying that a trip out to the mall would set her straight. Of course, it wasn't so simple as that. The isolation was disorienting, it was true, but it was only because Kim now understood their remote plot of land to harbor other, malevolent things that she had gone to pieces. If only she could have attributed her outburst to a case of cabin fever, she thought.

Julian guided her to the couch as though she were an unsteady patient in a nursing home and brought her food to her. Then, he switched on a movie, sat beside her and, when she showed no interest in food or drink, took her into his arms and caressed her head as she began once more to sob.

These were the only comforts he could afford her.

But it was pointless.

Nothing he could do would stymy the emergence of this yet unseen thing from the woods. It was all she could think about. The sun had begun to set. And then, in seemingly the next moment, the fading oranges and yellows were torn from the sky and the Earth was plunged into darkness. Outside, she knew, without even looking, the Amber Light was glowing. Would this be the night? The night she'd meet, face-to-face, with the cause behind Marshall and Dakota's disappearance?

The evening wore on. Minutes turned to hours. Julian began to doze off, the warm blanket draped over the two of them.

Sitting up in the house, looking around the dim living room as the credits began to roll on the television, she thought she spied queer shapes in amongst the fixtures of the room. Unfamiliar things, things that didn't belong. An odd shadow sandwiched between two pieces of furniture, a bit of movement in the corner of her eye.

Holding tightly onto Julian, she buried her face against his neck and heaved a sigh.

Yes. Tonight would be the night. She knew it. And, in the way the wind crashed against it and forced it to utter a groan, she realized that the house knew it, too. The house was preparing for this new visitor.

She trembled. No, the visitor was already there with her. It was in the house, had been since the night before when they'd foolishly opened the door. Now she had only to stumble upon it.

It was a landmine, a booby-trap lying in wait.

Sooner or later, she was going to trip the wire.

Still as a statue, Kim sat with Julian on the sofa, closing her eyes and pretending that the room around her had dissolved into nothingness. If she couldn't see her surroundings, then they didn't exist.

That was what she told herself.

Chapter 10

She awoke with a start.

A sleep-heavy glance at her surroundings revealed nothing had changed in the space since she'd dozed off. The television had transitioned to a power-saving mode; the scene outside looked a little darker, if it was possible. She squinted, trying to decide whether the glow given off by the scattered lamps had been dulled or she was simply imagining it. Looking hard to the lamp beside her, she sensed that the light had been diluted, weakened somehow.

A creak sounded from the upstairs.

Tensing immediately, Kim groped through her mind, still powering up after her nap, for an explanation. The house is settling. The floor boards always do that. It was the wind.

This was the same script she'd been reading from for ages now. Somehow, it helped. It made her feel like she could reach out and regain her power in a situation that felt otherwise hopeless. You don't have to be scared, she told herself. Even if something does happen, it's ultimately up to you how you choose to approach it. You can confront it in another way, if you really want to. Fear is unnecessary. This is your house, after all.

When she'd waited for several minutes and nothing happened, she loosed a sigh of relief. Maybe she'd overreacted earlier, she thought. Given Julian a scare for no good reason. She felt his weight against her body, his soft breaths stirring the hairs on her arm. Slowly she unearthed herself from the blanket and stretched, pausing only to smile down at Julian as she did so. He was peaceful, his ankles propped up on the armrest and his belly rising and falling. He looked like a child, completely tuckered out.

Kim felt a little guilty. She'd caused a lot of trouble for him that day, had stressed him out unnecessarily with her outburst. Her nerves somewhat relaxed, she reflected on the day, on her fear, and let it all go with a sigh. Mood swings and terrors had been the order of the day for her as of late. She'd grown sick of it. Her fear had won her nothing. Instead, it'd put a considerable strain on her marriage.

When she'd collected their plates and thrown them into the sink, which was still stationed within the only remaining piece of cabinetry to be found in the kitchen, she paced upon the half-finished floors and took in his handiwork for the first time. Things were taking shape. He'd laid about a third of the new flooring and had removed all of the old, baring decades-old grime on the solid layer beneath. The old cabinets were all out, and he'd already begun to assemble some of the new ones. She could picture it now, the finished product. They'd cook so many meals there, would probably entertain someday. It was a pleasant thought.

Wandering through the house, she felt a great sense of ease. They were some hours into the night and nothing had happened. Though it might've been premature for her to throw out her apprehensions, Kim felt good. In the morning she would apologize to Julian, though she still planned to take him up on the offer of a trip. Passing through the living room and heading towards the stairs, she hiked to the second story, pausing in the bathroom. In the sink she found her brush, the tangles of dark hair still clinging to it. Clearing them away, she returned the brush to its proper place and then removed her sweatshirt. Looking herself over in the mirror, she found she looked far more refreshed than she had before. Maybe she'd just been tired, in need of a brief sleep.

She was preparing to cross the hall towards the bedroom in search of pajamas when something made her suddenly take pause.

From the direction of one of their unused bedrooms came a curious sound, a vocalization. A wheeze. Thinking she'd misheard, Kim paused in the hall, her ears perking up to listen. It sounded once, twice, a definite pattern of labored breathing issuing from the doorway of the room at the hall's end. She hadn't hardly set foot in that room since moving in; it was empty, except for a couple of odds and ends they couldn't find space for elsewhere. Was it Dakota? What might Dakota be doing in that room, left completely unused? She took a step forward, placing one hand against the cool wall, and attempted to investigate.

She did not make it much farther, however.

The door had been left ajar; by whom she could scarcely guess. She surely hadn't left that door open, and she had a hard time imagining that Julian had done so, since he hardly spent any time in the upstairs. The only remaining possibility then, which was presently borne out in plain view, was that some agency on its other side was slowly pulling it ajar. But it was not solely the sight of the open door that gave her pause. It was the emergence of something unexpected, hideously frightening under the circumstances, that stole her attention and demanded the whole of her focus.

A long, slithering tendril of black hair escaped through the crevice between the door and its frame.

Then another.

Another.

Like pitch-black snakes the lengths of hair struggled from some unseen point in the dark bedroom. They explored the walls, the molding around the door and clung there like invasive vines while still more of the stuff began to burst from the opening. The door gave an unnatural shake and was opened further.

Frozen in place and positively sick to her stomach, Kim could only think to run when the owner of those ebony locks began to exit the bedroom and enter the hallway in earnest. The thing that emerged did so with a shambling, reaching motion, as if it were struggling against some unseen barrier. Clawing at the air, white hands bereft of fingernails feeling out the walls, the thing loosed a wheezy precursor to the nightmarish wail she knew so well. This was the thing that had made the terrible sound in the woods so many nights ago.

And it wasn't Dakota.

She was racing across the hall before she even realized it, ducking into the nearest room and slamming the door shut behind her. It was the study, Julian's room, still filled with unpacked boxes and boasting no light of its own. There was no window there, either, from which she could gain even the slightest hint of moonlight. It was beyond dark. Her heart convulsed, ready to give up on her at any moment, while she tried to find a place to hide within the dark space. Even as she did so she knew it to be futile. This thing had been here long before she and Julian had arrived. It knew the house well, knew it better, and could not be so easily fooled. This encounter, this brief hunt that would go on within the walls of her home, had been fated. She'd poked and prodded incessantly, dredging up things she had no business with. This, then, was the sum total of what her curiosity had won her.

As she threw open the sliding door of the closet and dove inside, it was clear that she was only prolonging the inevitable. Had she been wise she might've cast herself at the creature forthwith, accepted her fate and embraced it, rather than increasing the suspense. The thing, which could now be heard to amble through the hall, to fill the walls with a dull banging, was almost certainly savoring her terror, basking in it. It had laid in wait for so long in anticipation of this moment, and she, through her own foolishness, had given it the means necessary to stage its return. Throwing the closet door closed and crouching against the wall in the perfect darkness, she pawed at her knees and lowered her face in a wince. It was all she could do to hope that the clumsily-carved leaf motif on the outside of the door would act as a totem to ward the thing off.

It was coming.

The door to the study opened slowly. She could hear the coarse, searching hairs as they slivered about the walls, as they eased the door open. The hinges creaked loudly, sending pulse after pulse of terror through her. And then the wheezing, the gasping breaths, coming in clearer than ever before. Bare, white palms searched the walls and floors blindly. She'd seen those hands, once, in the cellar. It had been on the night when the door to the hidden nursery had first been opened. She'd thought them Dakota's hands, but now she knew she'd been mistaken. The thing that stalked the study was the child the Reeds had picked up in the woods, the monstrosity that Marshall had tried to bury. This was the thing that had escaped its tomb through the underground, its fingernails missing for the tremendous effort.

Trembling, Kim tried to keep her voice down, to stop herself from whimpering. Tears spilled from her eyes like they'd never spilled before, in hot torrents. Her heart was beyond the point of racing, but instead hopped unsteadily about her chest like a rabbit staring down the barrel of a hunter's gun. Her fingertips dug into the tops of her knees and she felt a stinging in her injured finger as the wound was opened afresh.

Then, in the pitch darkness, the only reprieve from which was a thin band of light that came in from underneath the closet door by way of the hallway, Kim thought she glanced something in the closet before her, squatting in a similarly frightened position. Had the thing gotten in? She shook, gasped at the discovery, but then leaned forward to investigate when it did not move to strike.

It was entirely too dark to know for certain, but a brief, frightened pass of her palm against the figure in the closet before her revealed hands fraught with deep ridges.

Dakota. It could be no one else.

Her suspicion was confirmed as the closet door was thrown open and the dull light from the hallway penetrated the study. It was indeed Dakota, her body squeezed into a stiff, tight configuration as of the greatest fear imaginable. It was vaguely fetal, and if not for the obvious age of her body, she would have seemed like little more than a scared toddler. In the brief flash of light before Kim met her pursuer, she noticed Dakota's cloudy eyes were thrust wide open, her mouth drooping into what amounted to an eternal expression of fearfulness. A master sculptor could not have improved upon the intensity of her twisted visage and its conception of sheer terror. The woman was still, a corpse, the paper-thin skin settled close to the porous bones.

This was where Dakota had met her end.

Like Kim, she had gone running from her precious baby. She'd taken refuge in the closet of this room and had, as Kim would soon do, met face-to-face with the thing.

The closet door had been pulled open from above, and as Kim's eyes were inadvertently distracted from the corpse, she noticed the pale, bare figure of the abomination clinging to the ceiling as if by some supernatural magnetism. Its hands searched the ceiling, the figure defying gravity, as its tendrils of long, black hair drifted downward to probe the ground and search for prey. It gave the impression of a spider, of an enormous pest, but operated in thick lengths of hair rather than webs to trap its victims. And the two, large, dead eyes that festooned its stunted visage were every bit as nauseating to her as the eyes of a massive insect.

She sank further against the corner, pressed her body into the wall like she could somehow disappear into it altogether.

But it didn't work.

The hair slithered into the closet where she crouched, taking firm hold of her like the grasping tentacles of an abyssal titan. Then the thing dropped down onto the ground, secure in the knowledge that its prey was held fast.

Unnaturally, slowly, the monstrosity leaned down towards her, its dead eyes seeing nothing but the fleshy nubs answering for nostrils flaring up wildly as it did so.

It leaned further.

Further.

It was face-to-face with her now, and the thin line of a mouth, delineated only by a streak of flabby, white flesh, could be seen to part. From behind it there rang a series of discordant wheezes and hushed vocalizations. And then, full-force, came the screaming, gasping cry she'd heard in those night-sainted woods so many nights previous. The sound hit her like a train, sending a shudder through her body like a seizure. Her limbs were splayed out, slapping stupidly against the inside of the closet door. She felt suddenly drunk with fear, incapable of controlling her body.

Kim couldn't pull her eyes away. Her mind, scrambled and rapidly racing away from her, conjured a final thought before she was ushered into peaceful oblivion.

What they found in the woods... it wasn't a baby. Marshall was right.

With her last breath, Kim gave a scream that shook the walls of the small room.

Then, in the next moment, silence.

Perfect silence.

Chapter 11

At the sound of the scream, Julian bolted up from the sofa. “W-what the hell?” He exhaled sharply, struggling to stand and nearly toppling over a coffee table. “B-babe?” he called, pawing at his eyes and searching the room.

There was no trace of her.

Feeling a wave of panic strike him head-on, he worked a hand through his hair and tossed the blankets aside. Her spot on the sofa was cool; she'd been gone from there a while. “Fuck,” he muttered, kneading at his brow and glancing into the kitchen. “What has she gotten into now?” He cleared his throat and jogged to the foot of the stairs. “Babe? Are you up there? What's wrong?”

Silence.

Julian gripped the bannister, appraising the stare of the carved cherubs with disdain. “Honey?” He screamed it more than anything, sure in some innate way that she was too far away from him to hear. She didn't go outside, did she? If she got into trouble out in the woods, then there's no way I'll find her at this hour. He hesitated on the first step for a time, wondering if he'd even heard a scream to begin with. Had it been a dream, maybe? The sound of some bird or animal?

No. He gulped, knowing fell well that it'd been Kim screaming. It'd been too real to be a dream, too raw. And it'd come from somewhere in the house. The basement, maybe? Slowly climbing the stairs, he resolved to have a look around the upper story first.

“Kim, babe? Are you up here? What's the matter?” His voice wavered, catching in his throat as he rounded the top of the stairs and peered down the hall. Everything was still, quiet.

Too quiet, maybe.

Licking his lips, he did his best to keep his head on straight. Don't go to pieces, acting paranoid like her. She probably got hurt. Maybe fell, or cut herself again. Saw something through the window that spooked her. Carefully, as if expecting someone to jump out at him at any moment, he started down the hall, fists balled.

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.

To be continued...

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed this volume of Black Acres. Look for the final volume, coming soon. And remember that you can read the series for free in Kindle Unlimited!

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