In Darkness

a Black Acres novella

Volume 4

By Ambrose Ibsen

Copyright 2015 by Ambrose Ibsen. All rights reserved.

Synopsis:

It's Julian's turn to search for answers. Recent events have convinced him that there's something wrong with the Beacon estate after all, but is it too late for him to put his skepticism aside?

The horrific history of the Beacon estate is revealed in this final, chilling volume of Ambrose Ibsen's Black Acres serial.

Read the whole Black Acres serial for FREE in Kindle Unlimited!

Want to keep track of new releases? Subscribe to Ambrose Ibsen's newsletter here:

http://eepurl.com/bovafj

In Darkness

Black Acres Volume 4

Chapter 1

The air had soured.

Julian coughed up a bit of smoke and squeezed out his cigarette against the inside of the sink. He'd broken into his stash of smokes, the pack he kept hidden for occasions of stress. Sometimes, life just called for a cigarette. It wasn't a frequent thing for him, merely a vestige from those long-gone days of his youth spent drinking socially in campus bars.

Tonight, though, there weren't enough cigarettes in the world.

Julian peered around the kitchen quickly as he went to light another. His hands shook too hard to make simple work of it, and raising it to his quivering lips proved even harder. Taking a long, trembling drag, he loosed the smoke towards the ceiling and then engaged once more in a nervous perusal of the kitchen. It was dimly lit, the smells of renovation circling through the air and mingling with the tail of smoke emanating from his Lucky Strike. There was something else, too, or so he thought; he fancied there was a sourness to the air, reminiscent of the taste of spoilt milk. Death, maybe? He almost shook his head, nearly reprimanded himself for thinking it, but there it was all the same, lurking just beyond the veil of sawdust and smoke.

This was the first time the house had ever seemed unfamiliar to him. From the very start of their tenancy at the Beacon estate, Julian had felt right at home. Even as Kim had seemingly gone unhinged, growing paranoid and pointing out phantoms and coincidences that weren't really there, he'd enjoyed his time in the house. It had a certain warmth to it, a kind of charm. It had, once.

Standing in his kitchen, hunched beside the sink, his eyes shifting from one end of the room to the other, he felt like a stranger. Like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. All instincts told him to leave, to pack it up and never look back. It wasn't the kind of thing he could have described even if he'd wanted to; it was just plain fear that urged him on.

He wet his lips.

It wasn't so simple as all that.

Kim...

For a few hours, Julian had canvassed the house. He'd called out to his wife until his throat had grown hoarse, had worked through each room in search of her, to no avail. She was gone, completely. And except for those possessions of hers that still littered their living space like queer relics, it seemed doubtful, at that moment, that Kim had ever lived there at all; that he'd ever known or been married to such a woman.

He shuddered, mashing his furrowed brow with a few fingers. The skin gave like putty. It felt hot, flush beneath his fingertips. You're scared, so things seem out of sorts, he assured himself. A blast of nicotine steeled his nerves in the next instant. Slowly, he worked through the night's events.

He'd gone up to check on her, finding her crouched in the closet of the study, dead. She'd definitely been dead. There was no doubt in his mind of that. But in the time it'd taken him to run downstairs and fetch a phone, she'd vanished from that very spot, and no matter how hard he searched, he could turn up no trace of her. Moreover, there was no rational explanation he could furnish.

His wife had died in that closet. And then, apparently, she'd just decided to walk off.

If it hadn't just happened to him, he might've laughed about it.

Laughter, though, was the very last thing on his mind. He'd started by searching the other bedrooms upstairs. He'd gone through them one-by-one, revisiting the study multiple times and re-checking the closet on the off-chance that her body would be returned to its original resting place. No such luck. From there he'd gone into their bedroom. He searched the closet, the space under the bed, the upstairs bathroom, all with a good deal of thoroughness. With heart thundering, he'd ascended the attic stairs and searched for her there, amidst the coils of dust-soaked insulation.

Nothing.

The kitchen, the living room, the downstairs closets and bathroom; none featured anything of the wandering dead. Julian had stolen glimpses out of the windows, half-afraid of what he might see, but had, so far, seen nothing of her. More than once he'd grappled with the thought of dialing the police. He'd almost called a few times, but thought better of it when he realized there was nothing to be done. What could an emergency dispatcher or groggy sheriff hope to do for him under the circumstances? He wished to report the death of his wife, but had no body. The body, in fact, had disappeared. How exactly would that go over with the authorities? Then there was the fact that Kim had only been missing for some few hours. She would have to be missing at least twenty-four hours before a real search could be mounted. But then... could a corpse even be deemed a “missing person” to begin with?

His hands were tied. He'd have to keep looking for her, would have to make progress in some way. If he did, then he would move forward with the authorities and seek to establish some sort of rational explanation for the events. Otherwise...

He preferred not to think about any alternatives.

Something strange was afoot, but he did his best not to label it as “paranormal”. It was weird, definitely, but not so inexplicable as that. He felt sure that something would turn up, that he would make good progress, maybe when the sun was up. Or, maybe, Kim would come back to him. This latter notion, with all its attendant implications, stirred up something like real nausea in him, and only a quick drag beat it back. The thought of his dead wife coming back to him was too unreal to be believed.

The only part of the house he hadn't checked yet, owing to a lack of courage, was the cellar. It was possible she'd ended up down there, he thought, while working over the filter of his cigarette. Or, maybe, you hallucinated it all. Kim's been seeing things too, you know... could be a toxic mold problem, or...

No. That was sheer optimism on his part.

There was little else for him to do that night but check out the basement. If it yielded no trace, then the only alternative was some place outside, perhaps in the woods. And there was nothing in the world that could compel him to search for her in those dark, hideous woods by night. It would be a fool's errand, terribly dangerous. Not to mention frightening. But how can this be? A dead woman can't just up and walk off. How could she be anywhere but that closet? Maybe... maybe she isn't dead after all. He clenched his teeth. There are two things I'm sure of. The first is that she was dead. No pulse, no warmth. Nothing. He straightened himself with a shudder, his breath ragged. But then, the other, is that there is no damn body in that closet.

His head was starting to pound.

He put out his cigarette in the sink where the other had been laid to rest and then took a few steps across the unfinished kitchen towards the cellar door. His steps boomed throughout the quiet house. The stillness had been pierced with his every footfall, giving them a deep, ominous character. That was unusual; the house was often quiet, but it wasn't usually his tendency to take notice. That the silence of the place should so disturb him now was something that he wrote off to his agitated state.

Julian reached out and took the cool handle of the cellar door in hand. He palmed it for a time before finally yanking the thing open and standing at the dark threshold. He stared into the blackness for some time, comforted little by the dim light of the kitchen at his back. For reasons he couldn't pinpoint he took a hammer from his toolbox and carried it at the ready as he took his first step down the creaky stairs. Who it was intended for he was unsure; wasn't he looking for his wife? The wooden planks groaned beneath his feet; in the dark, echoing space the tones carried with them something more than mere inanimate emotiveness.

When he knew himself within reach of the light switch, he reached out and batted clumsily at the wall of cool, white bricks. The light came on with a subtle flash, the bulb nearest him flickering before finally stabilizing on a decidedly subdued glow. Julian took in a sharp breath of the damp air and quickly marched the rest of the way. He stepped out onto the concrete floor with all the confidence he could feign, but could scarcely stomach the thought of surveying the space in its entirety. Shuffling forward at first, eyes fixed to the ground, he stole a few glances about him to make sure the way was safe. His grip on the hammer tightened as the air shifted nearby. A draft, probably, but it felt like someone had just moved beside him.

From all around, prying eyes. What shape they took, if anyone actually watched him at all, he couldn't rightly say. For all appearances, the cellar was empty of anyone but him. Still, from some corner or another, he was being dissected, observed with malign interest. Julian grit his teeth and examined the corner nearest the stairs. That was when he noticed it.

“That... that can't be right,” he mumbled, ambling over to the concrete door that'd been hidden in the cellar wall. It was a stubborn thing, with its busted, rusty hinges and obscure handle. But inexplicably, it was closed. This thing, which weighed a great deal, should not have been able to open on its own, much less close. And yet, there it was, sealed tightly. Had Kim gone in there, sealed herself up? He shook his head, finding the thought incredibly distasteful. No, that was impossible. He'd seen her upstairs. Kim could not have closed that door, could not have made it budge had her life depended on it. He recalled that even he himself couldn't close it that night they'd first discovered it open.

Pacing carefully now, he rounded the room, studying the washer and dryer with great care. He stopped dead in his tracks, certain that he'd caught something of movement in the corner of his eye, only to find on further inspection that he'd been mistaken. He continued, looking up to the unfinished ceiling, at the wires that spread across its breadth like brittle veins.

It was in making his way back towards the stairs that he saw it. It came to him for only an instant, flickering away with the nigh choreographed dimming of the lights, but that was sufficient to make him double back against the wall, hammer raised with the intent to strike.

Under the stairs, crouching as a beast might crouch, he saw a thin human silhouette. Arms, legs, all bare. Face obscured by a mop of unruly black hair, except for in those spaces where the disturbingly manufactured characteristics of a white plaster mask showed through. From behind tiny eyeholes, black, smoldering eyes had stared at him.

And then, in the next moment, the space beneath the stairs was unoccupied by anything save for a dense shadow and knots of cobwebs. The staircase creaked a little as a draft came in from the upstairs, almost giving the impression that some unseen presence had just mounted the stairs.

When he'd caught his breath, Julian was more than happy to attribute the sighting to his exhaustion.

Chapter 2

Morning came with alarming swiftness. The sunlight made his eyes ache as he flopped over in bed. Sitting up, he cleared the last remnants of his uneasy sleep and listened, his gaze drifting to the sunlit window, to the bedroom door, sitting half-ajar. Maybe, he hoped, the events of the previous night had been a dream. He yearned to hear Kim's shufflings and hummings downstairs.

The spot on the bed beside his own was cold however, and no noises of the sort came to his waiting ears.

In fact, the longer he sat and listened, the more disturbed Julian became. The ordinarily noisy Beacon estate, whose floors, pipes and other components seemed always to clamor in their way, proved ponderously silent now. Not a floorboard could be heard to settle, not a creak to issue from anywhere, and instead a grave quietude flourished. The house's fixtures had seemingly gone on strike, instituting a ban on speech in the interest of drawing attention to its missing inhabitant.

He worked his jaw in his hand, tensing. He'd been grinding his teeth in his sleep; an old habit, one he'd thought he'd grown out of.

The day now upon him, Julian resolved to make progress. The grounds would need searched. A few more careful perusals of the house, in the daylight, would need carried out. Someone would need informed about this; whether he would reach out to the authorities or to someone else he couldn't say yet. The whole prospect and the emerging memories of the previous night hit him like a load of bricks, assaulting his senses and thrusting upon him a terrible nausea. He wanted nothing more than to return to bed, to bury himself beneath the covers and enter into a deep sleep from which he would not awaken till things were set right.

After he'd cried for a time in utter despair, Julian straightened out his T-shirt, made his way to the door and peeked out into the hallway. The way was sunlit, familiar enough, though it seemed to him profoundly alien all the same. The secret ingredient here, the one thing that had disturbed his usual equilibrium, was solitude. He was alone now, truly alone. It wasn't just an abstract concept to him, but a palpable truth. He and Kim would sometimes discuss their isolation, he recalled with equal parts fondness and pain, but the realization that he was likely the only living person for miles around was extremely unsettling.

He made his way from the room, crept down his stairs as though fearing the sudden entrance of an intruder, and then paused as he reached the lower level. He stared at the carved bannister, at the cherubs he'd slowly learned to ignore over the course of his tenancy, and grimaced. It was just the light probably, or else his state of mind was coloring things, however it seemed to him that those cherubs carried something more than mere joviality in their grins. In their clumsy, featureless eyes he thought he spied amusement. I'm going to have to replace this bannister, he thought.

And then, as he started for the living room, he laughed aloud. The ludicrousness of it all struck him squarely just then. “Replace the bannister,” he muttered, leaning against the back of the sofa. “There won't be any more renovations... don't you get it?” He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes burdened for the second time in as many minutes with tears. It was clear he hadn't quite processed things yet. His mind was slow to catch on to the implications of Kim's death.

He gulped.

Your wife... is dead.

Somehow, he still couldn't wrap his head around it. He should have gone to pieces, been inconsolable. Instead, he was wandering through the house confusedly.

Why the grief didn't incapacitate him, why the urgency of the situation had been dampened, he couldn't really say. Maybe, though, the house had had something to do with it. This was what he told himself, that his time in isolation had unseated his mind, had tempered his reactions to things, made him slower and calmer in all matters. It frightened him, though. Should he have cried more? Should he have taken more immediate action upon finding Kim in the closet?

He was shaking by the time he made it into the kitchen. Fiddling with the coffee maker for a short while, he was placated by a weak brew and carried his mug with him to the back door. Julian took his coffee near the fire pit, his arms and legs exposed to the biting cold of late autumn. It was a sunny morning, early yet, and dew could be seen to glisten throughout the yard. And yet, as he gripped at his steaming mug for comfort and walked barefoot through the sprawling lawn, the usual dreariness about the scene prevailed. The woods; those awful, jagged, colorless woods, stared out at him, the bald trees like so many hateful strangers. He cursed them silently, wondered whether Kim had disappeared into them the night previous somehow. “No,” he said under his breath. “That's impossible. A dead woman can't walk. A dead woman couldn't have escaped to the woods. And it happened so quickly... I was only downstairs briefly...”

The stirrings of a fresh headache made themselves known. Taking a gulp from his mug, Julian studied the yard for signs of an intruder, for signs of any activity whatsoever. The grass, though, was immaculate and untrodden as far as the eye could see.

What happened last night? You go upstairs, you find her in the closet. He trembled at the remembrance. Then you run downstairs to grab a phone, call an ambulance. Couldn't have been more than thirty seconds or so. When you got back up there, she was gone. Gone... And then you spent the whole night looking for her till you fell asleep. Didn't call anyone because there wasn't anyone to call. Without a body, the police won't take you seriously, and it's still too soon for the missing person's thing...

He coughed, paced for a while, and tried to clear his head. If there was so much as a single kernel of reason to be grasped in all of this, he was keen to find it. Kim claimed to see people outside the house, people looking at her through the windows. I didn't believe her, but maybe there was something to it... it's possible that someone got into the house... that someone had a hand in this and moved her body. But why? Just to fuck with me?

The more he puzzled, the less things made sense. It was clear he'd need outside perspective to get his thoughts in order, but who could he call at such a time? Family? Friends? No, none of them could possibly understand what was going on. None of them knew much about the way the two of them had been living in this out-of-the-way estate. None of them knew the house and what its remoteness could do.

But Edwin did. Edwin Kelley, the man who'd sold them the house, was Julian's best bet. He resolved to call him after his search of the grounds was complete. “He's the only one,” he muttered, “that can help me here. If anyone knows what the hell is happening here, it would be a local like him.”

Coffee drained, he set the empty mug on the edge of the fire pit and began pacing around the yard. Julian went as far as the edge of the woods, and strayed well past the borders of the property on both sides, but a half-hour's search yielded nothing but a curious discovery some distance from the house. Where he could have sworn there'd been an unmarked grave in the tall grass, Julian found now only a deep aperture. The sunlight was strong enough to elucidate for him the inside of the thing, and in it he found what he recognized to be his shovel.

“What the hell?” he thought, shooting a quick glance to the surrounding woods and then to the hole. “Did she... did she dig this herself? No, there's no way. And what for?” Growing steadily uncomfortable on the cusp of this deep opening, Julian extended a hand feebly towards the handle of the shovel, which stood out awkwardly from a mound of fallen earth. He couldn't reach it.

The shovel was no great loss and he could always go back for it later. What troubled him most was the emergence of this great hole. Who had made it, and why? This had been, he felt quite sure now, the site of that curious unmarked grave they'd stumbled upon after a jaunt in the woods. And Kim had come home, he now remembered, covered in dirt...

His mind whirred like a machine well on its way to overheating. Had Kim or someone else dug up this unmarked grave and found something? Had the grave been left unmarked for a reason-- intended, perhaps, for Kim herself? No, this was foolishness, all of it. Kim had probably just been dirty because she'd fallen in. She'd said nothing of the grave since their discovery of it, hadn't talked at all about going for a dig. But there was his shovel just the same...

It was with no little difficulty and hesitance that Julian lowered himself into the pit. He wanted nothing more than to walk away from it, to put it out of his mind, but that it held some significance in the matter of his missing wife he couldn't deny. Dropping down some five or six feet into the earth, he landed softly. His hands trailed the rough sides of the hole, knocking loose a bit of dry soil. When he was sure of his footing, he looked upward, to the uneven ring of blue sky and natural light he'd left behind, and then to his immediate surroundings.

To his surprise, the hole was only the beginning of what appeared to be an underground tunnel. How far it spread or where it went he couldn't be sure, and his cautious forays into the earliest reaches of this newly-discovered passage did little to throw light on the matter. Perhaps with a flashlight he could see his way through, though the very notion sickened him. He wouldn't find his wife in there; if anything, the tunnel felt suddenly like a well-laid trap. He'd come down here, leaving the relative safety of the open field, and entered into the lair of something much unaccustomed to human company. To venture any farther, to dwell in the pit much longer, was to put himself at considerable risk. He backed out of the passage and immediately sought out the most expedient means of extricating himself, but not before stealing a glance upward at the ring of open sky above him, which was clouded over now with a dark silhouette.

There was a man standing over the opening of the pit, his features rendered darkly, uncertainly by the light at his back. He seemed old if his hunched posture was any indication, though the faint mutterings that reached Julian's ears served to further reinforce this impression. He was dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt

The old man spoke, raising a shovel and knocking a few piles of earth down into the pit. Julian was pelted in soil and pebbles. That the man meant to bury him was clear. “You damned thing,” he said, his voice simmering with hatred. “I told you to leave, to never come back. Ever since you entered into our lives you've brought nothing but madness, misery. But now you're done for. Now you're finished. I've set things right. You stumbled into this little pit of mine just as I wanted you to, and here you'll stay. Good riddance,” he finished, adding a heaping shovelful of dirt to the pit.

Julian exclaimed, shielding himself with his arms and staggering a few paces back. His heart pounding, he held onto the edge of the pit and thought to claw his way up onto the surface before the old man could continue. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, knocking soil from his face and hair. “You trying to kill me? Who the hell are you?”

The man did not reply.

In fact, as Julian soon learned after a careful upward glance, there was no one there at all.

White in the face, he clawed his way up, giving a weak jump that allowed him to grasp the edge of the aperture. In this way he hoisted himself out, half-expecting to find the man waiting for him with his shovel. As far as could be seen however, from the field to the nearby woods, there reigned only a pronounced silence. An autumn breeze ambled by, chilling him further and seeming to taunt him with its normalcy. Everything was as it should have been.

Was he hallucinating, then?

Covered in sweat for his struggles and made uncomfortably cool by the wind, Julian massaged his temples and reexamined his surroundings, sure that at any moment an old man with a shovel would make himself known. When the expected arrival did not occur however, he found himself laughing not a little hysterically, baffled and frightened at his recent proclivity for sighting phantoms. The previous night, in the cellar, he'd seen something under the stairs. Now this. “Jesus Christ... you need to get out of here,” he said, his voice carried off by the wind on the back of an unusually forceful gust. “This place is doing things to your head. The stress and...”

Reaching for the commonplace explanations gave him no solace.

Julian began a rapid march back to the house, Throwing open the back door, he stormed through the kitchen and picked up his phone. It was time to get some answers. That there was something going on in the house, something that he could not account for despite his rationalism, was undoubtable. Too many things had occurred within the space of a single night, too many things that he could not manage. And he felt, in some way, that things were coming to a head. He needed badly to figure out what had happened to his wife before he could inform the authorities, and decided he would reach out to the only person who knew about the peculiar little property.

After a brief search in his phone's history, he tracked down Edwin Kelley's number and dialed it.

Chapter 3

Julian was surprised when an answer came after only two rings. The jovial voice of the fellow sounded in his ear, brimming with its usual cheerfulness. “Morning, this is Edwin.”

Julian couldn't help himself. At the sound of a familiar voice, the words promptly spilled from his lips, and he didn't finish speaking until he'd said everything that plagued him. “Edwin, this is Julian. Julian Taylor.” He paused to clear his throat, cutting off Edwin as he stammered on. “L-listen, I'm awfully sorry to call you, awfully sorry, but I need your help. You're the only person, in fact, that I can trust on this matter. You see, it has to do with the house, with the property. Something's happened to Kim, my wife. You remember her, of course? You were in contact with her recently. She'd called you, wanted to know more about the house's history, and was, well, probably a l-little worked up over something, I take it? Right, well, I'm not saying that there was or wasn't cause for her concern, but something's happened to her, and... I'm not sure what, but I need help, I need answers, Edwin. Something happened to the people who lived here before, too... and now something is happening again, do you get it? My wife, she's missing, and when I last saw her, well...” his throat tensed and he found trouble in finishing the thought. “Please, if at all possible, come by. I need to speak to you, to get things straightened out. I'd have called the cops about it, believe me, but... things don't seem to work out here the way they do in the city and I'm not even sure I can trust my own mind. Things have been odd, Edwin, so odd.”

The line was silent for a time. Then, drawing in deep breath, Edwin replied. “I see...” He was obviously hesitant to accept the invitation, perhaps unwilling to be caught up in Julian's situation, but something, maybe the fright in the caller's voice, had roused some pity in him and saw him agree to a brief visit. “Mr. Taylor,” he began, “this isn't really a job for me, and I'm not sure what you think I can help you with, but if you need me, I'll be there. Don't hesitate to call the cops, though... I do understand what you mean, about things being different around these parts where that's concerned. The sheriff from the next town over might be of assistance, but maybe not under these specific circumstances, eh? I see, I see. Yes, you're right to say that the old Beacon place has its own way about it, and if the disappearance of the Reeds is to be taken into account then who's to say that something strange like that mightn't happen again? I'll be over, soon.” He finished with a sort of resignation. Stopping by still didn't sit well with him, it was clear.

Upon hanging up, Julian felt only relief. Whether anything would come of the visit he couldn't say, but he did know that another person's company might help him to get his head straight. Perspective; that was what was needed, and considering his knowledge about the property's history, Edwin seemed in as good a position as any to give it.

Julian paced around the kitchen, hands in pockets and eyes glued to the yet unfinished floors beneath his feet. They were dusty, and his shuffling steps left long passages in the dust like the trails of fat, writhing worms. The day was young. He was going to get to the bottom of this, was going to find Kim, set things right and, if necessary, get the authorities involved. He was still clinging to the hope, no matter how fervently he sought to deny it when forced to approach matters logically, that she was still alive.

It isn't possible, he told himself. But at the same time, it's the only sane answer to all of this. Rapidly, from a place of worry and anguish, he crafted a plausible scenario. She went upstairs last night, had a kind of nervous fit. Ended up hiding in the closet, maybe passing out or having a kind of health incident that made her seem dead. A spider bite... He shook his head, thumbnail between his teeth, as he cemented the details of his fantasy. Then, when I went to get the phone, she sprang up and ran off in a confused daze. Kim is sick, she's been sick for a while, and maybe she's out there somewhere, hanging around in the woods or wandering some lonely road in search of home. She could never handle living all the way out here, in this isolation, and now with all that's happened, I can see why. It's getting to me too, damn it. Taking me for a ride. But I'll find her. And I'll get her the help she needs. And we'll get ourselves the fuck out of this house the first chance we get.

In waiting for Edwin to arrive, Julian decided to busy himself by searching through the house. His voice wavering, for he saw the futility in it, he called out to Kim. Only his own voice echoed in reply, the sharp tones ringing out against the pall of silence and hanging in the air for some moments after. The living room was checked, then the closets. He rose the stairs, searched the rooms there. The study, regrettably, was empty, as were the other quarters. On his way back downstairs he gave a half-hearted search through the bathroom before finally admitting defeat. He wouldn't find her. Not in the house. Somehow, he knew it. Even if his dreamed-of scenario proved true, and his wife was still alive but merely in a state of panicked, wandering confusion, there was no way she could still exist in the house without his knowing it. He'd been there the whole while, had searched numerous times since the incident, and hadn't seen hide nor hair of her.

Returning downstairs, he entered into the living room and sighed, leaning against the mantle and nearly falling once again into tears. He looked out at the room about him, the contents of their kitchen spilling out chaotically about the space, and lamented the lost opportunities. This was supposed to be their home, their castle. They'd intended to raise a family there, someday; to find the peace and happiness that'd eluded them in the city. All of that promise was for naught. The walls, despite the sunlight streaming in from the windows, were painted in dreary tones of shadow, and the room was altogether obscured by a kind of murk. Whether it was merely his mood projecting onto his surroundings or something real he couldn't rightly say. This, maybe, had been the “darkness” about the house that Kim had mentioned numerous times; a thing he'd never much appreciated until now.

The television sat coldly against the wall. The shelves that Kim herself had arranged, filled with her books, gathered only dust now. The coffee table near the sofa still featured evidences of their last meals together in the form of half-empty glasses and strewn paper napkins. It was such a silly thing, but to see it stirred in him great pain. She'd been there with him just the previous night. And then, just like that, she'd gone away, vanished. It was unfair, monstrously unfair. He was wreaked by guilt, felt sure that this was somehow his fault. Maybe, had he only taken more notice of her, listened to her fears and been more understanding, then things would not have come to this.

Julian's gaze was drawn then to the sofa, the long, comfortable thing that the two of them had used so many times. There were blankets there, cast about the plush cushions in a multi-colored heap, but curiously, they appeared to shift, breathe, as it were, in a subtle and unnatural fashion. He took a step forward, noting at once the appearance of something uncannily human-shaped beneath the mess of assorted blankets. His eyes widened, chest tightened. There was someone underneath them. The form was largely still, unmoving, except for the rare and nigh unnoticeable respirations. He took another step, his voice caught in his throat. Some furtive twitching or another in the form of the veiled personage gave the impression that it was aware of Julian's presence and was merely awaiting discovery.

Merely feet away from the sofa, he could have reached out and pulled the covers away. But what would doing so reveal? He wanted to call Kim's name, to find whether the form beneath the blankets was indeed hers. Finally, his chest rising and falling with hurried breaths, he chanced to speak. “K-kim... Kim, is that you there, on the sofa?” He staggered back a pace, afraid, perhaps, of getting an answer.

An answer indeed came, but it was not the one he anticipated. From the mound on the sofa there registered a violent shifting, and then an unfamiliar, feminine voice. It was dry and strained, as if from a thousand years of disuse. The figure could be seen to sit up, the taut borders of the covers only barely managing to keep its visage hidden, as it replied, “This isn't Kim's house.” Then, with more sharpness, “You shouldn't be here. We told you we'd come back. We told you--”

Julian couldn't breathe. He reeled back, towards the front door, and braced himself against a wall, staring with disbelief at the mound of covers upon his sofa, now ferociously animated. The figure was about to reveal itself, to cast the blankets away.

Then, there came a knock at the door to his back.

Julian loosed a yelp and forced his eyes shut. For a moment, the only thing that existed was the thundering of his heart. Opening his eyes just a touch, he found the sofa clear of any presence; the blankets, in fact, were arranged in their usual pell-mell fashion. The knock sounded again, and some moments later, when he'd found it in himself to calm down, a look through the peephole revealed the form of Edwin.

“Oh, thank God,” he muttered. Palming the lids of his eyes and doing his best not to appear frightened, he unlocked the door, stealing a glance as he did so to the living room sofa. It remained clear, empty. There was no one sitting there, no old woman screaming at him.

So, it looks like, he thought as he wrenched open the door, Maybe Kim was onto something. Maybe there's really something in this house. Something unnatural. And now I'm seeing it, just like she did.

Chapter 4

Edwin leaned forward, squinting in a peculiar way as Julian went on. “Wait a minute now,” he interrupted, cocking his head to the side and allowing a ghost of a smile to haunt the corner of his lips. “Seeing things?” He brushed away a bit of the dust on the table and palmed the cup of coffee Julian had offered. As of yet, he hadn't taken a single sip.

Julian pursed his lips, his hands clasped upon his sweatpant-clad knees. He wasn't good at this sort of thing. Admitting to an almost perfect stranger that he'd lost control of his life, of his home, and was now terribly frightened by things he could not explain was more than a little difficult. The chair squeaked beneath him as his foot took to tapping a nervous beat upon the floor. “I know how that's going to sound, and you're probably wondering how it's related to my call.” He paused, looked around the room pensively. “When Kim, my wife, called you, she was spooked about something too, I take it?” He continued without waiting for a reply from his guest. “You see, it's like I told you. Kim is missing, but the circumstances are, well... unnatural. I feel convinced that there's something going on about this house, this property. I didn't before. Kim would've told you that. I didn't... I didn't believe, not then.” His heart grew heavy as he finished. “But now things are different. I'm seeing things that have changed my mind.”

Edwin nodded slowly, lowering his bushy eyebrows to a relaxed, thoughtful state and appraising his cup of steaming black brew. He blew on it a little, then loosed a raspy chuckle. “Son, I don't know what to tell you about that.” He gave a toss of his hunched shoulders and smoothed out the front of his jacket. It was a stained-up navy-colored thing, and had seen better days. “You're in this house alone, under a great deal of stress after all that happened. I don't fault your eyes fer playin' tricks on ya.”

“No,” Julian was quick to counter. “No, it's not like that. I know why you'd think it so, but it isn't that sort of phenomenon. This... this isn't just my nerves.” He gulped and sat back in his chair, running his fingers through his matted blonde locks.

Edwin didn't really know how to reply to this, and instead shifted the topic slightly. “I feel like... like there's a piece missing to all of this.” Julian had given him the rundown, had described finding Kim in the upstairs closet, only to have her vanish mysteriously afterward. Edwin's gaze narrowed and his meaty knuckles were joined around the warm ceramic mug before him. Leaning forward once more, he shook his head. “You sure you're not leaving something outta this on purpose? I don't mean to insinuate nothin'... well, maybe I do, but you call a man over here to tell a pretty wild tale and it seems to me that maybe you're hoping to have me substantiate yer innocence.”

Julian groaned. “Christ, it isn't like that. I swear it. Something in the house, I think... something got her. Or, at least, her nerves finally got the better of her and she suffered some kind of breakdown. I don't... I don't know how better to explain it. She'd gone upstairs, and when I saw her next, she was...” Kim's face flashed into his mind for an instant, sending him into a fit of shivers.

“Well,” replied Edwin, “even if that is the case, the way I see it it's still your fault, bringin' a young, sensitive lady out to the middle of nowhere like that and letting her go to pieces.” His wrinkled face was contorted into an expression of marked disapproval, his brow furrowing til it seemed little more than a wide collection of pale creases.

“Maybe you're right,” Julian offered, sighing. “But the fact of the matter is, something strange is happening here, and I need to find my wife. I need to figure out what's happening, and you're the only person in the world I can count on, Edwin.”

The old man grit his teeth, appraising Julian narrowly for a time. “Maybe you aren't lying, sure. But what do you want me to do about it? How can I possibly help when I wasn't here? Hell, Marshall and Dakota, good friends of mine, disappeared from this house without a trace. Now your wife's done the same, but it ain't like I've made any headway in all these years in tracking down my friends, so what makes you think I can help ya?”

“I need someone who knows this house, this property.”

“You know it well enough yourself. Call the cops, they'll straighten things out as well as can be hoped under the circumstances. And if it's true that she's gone from here, well, then maybe she went off because she couldn't stand bein' here. It's happened before, fella. Wouldn't be the first time nor the last. You bring a city girl like her out to a place like this and there's no telling how she'll fare. You consider that maybe this whole thing was a kind of facade, a trick, to get you to think she was dead and gone? Maybe she bailed when you left the room, went running from the house, called a cab so that she could leave this isolated little place.”

“That's horseshit.” Julian balled his fists. “You want to talk like that, then get the fuck out. I don't need to listen to that.”

Edwin cleared his throat. “Fair enough. I didn't mean to take that tone, mind you, it's just that in a case like this you have to consider the possibilities, Jules. You've gotta rule out the ordinary before you begin to weigh the possibility of, well...”

Julian glanced about the surface of the cluttered table, his gaze fixing on something half-obscured beneath a mound of cookbooks. Shoving the books aside, he unearthed a pair of photos; the very same he and Kim had found in the upstairs bathroom and attic. One featured the Reeds in their younger days and bore, on its reverse side, a sort of threat. The other, rather worn out and warped, was the eerie photograph he himself had found in the attic amidst the insulation, featuring six masked persons. He shuddered at this one in particular before handing them to his guest. “Here's a good place to start, as a matter of fact. I found these pictures in the house. Who's the couple in that first one?”

Edwin's eyes grew wide with recognition. “I'll be damned.” He stroked the edge of the picture with a sort of tenderness before responding. “That's Marshall and Dakota. Old picture, that one. Must've been taken about the time they first built this place.”

“And the other? What's the story there?”

Edwin took to examining the second photograph. This time, his face hardened a little, his expression growing cryptic. He smoothed it out against the table, then gave an uncomfortable laugh, passing it over to Julian and returning to the first one. “Those are Halloween masks, if I remember correctly. Marshall, Dakota and I, along with a few other friends, got dressed up and had our picture taken. That's all.”

“Uh-huh.” Julian wet his lips. Somehow, that explanation didn't please him. “Any idea why it was sitting in the attic?”

Edwin shrugged.

“And that photo you've got there. Check out the back.”

Edwin turned it over, studying the reverse. “Yeah, what about it?”

Julian leaned in. Then, he mumbled a curse.

The reverse of the photo was blank.

“What am I looking for?” asked Edwin, arching a gray brow. He scratched at his ear.

Julian reached over and picked up the photograph, turning it this way and that in his hands. The back was clean, completely clear of any writing. The warning that had once been on it was nowhere to be found; in fact, there was exactly zero evidence that it'd ever been there at all. He remembered it, though. Something about the house being theirs, and about them planning to come back for it. It'd disturbed Kim greatly, he remembered, even though he'd managed to laugh it off.

He wasn't laughing now.

Knowing it would do no good to look crazier in front of Edwin, he shook his head and dropped it, returning to the other photograph. He tapped on it, his finger circling one of the masked individuals. “Kim told me that she saw people outside, people wearing white masks like these. You know anything about that? Did you and your friends come round to give her a scare, maybe?”

Edwin laughed heartily, waving a hand in the air as if warding off some foul smell. “That's crap. Total crap. Those masks were homemade, god knows where they are now. It was me, the Reeds, our friends Enid, Richard and Lilith. That's all there is to it, some revelry probably before you was even born, fella. I tell you, you look out into those woods at night and you might just see any old thing, but that doesn't mean it's actually there. You'd be wise to remember that, I think.”

Julian was growing agitated. This wasn't going anywhere. It was clear that Edwin knew nothing. And if he did, he wasn't going to share. The picture of the masked people had roused a peculiar reaction in him, but no line of questioning could pull from him anything in the least bit incriminating. Maybe he was telling the truth, he thought. After a bit more back and forth, Julian ushered Edwin out. He needed time to think, time to make sense of things on his own. The day was wearing on now. Mid-day was approaching and he still hadn't made any progress.

As he stood to leave, Edwin pulled on his waistband and straightened out his ratty jeans. “I'll just leave you with one bit of advice, young man. And that's to call the authorities and get this handled pronto. Ain't no sense in your hiding anything. If you did have something to do with this, and I sure ain't saying that you did, it'll come out soon enough. I hope you can find your wife, and that I'm right about her, and that nothing has happened. But on the off chance that she did disappear like the Reeds did...” He sucked his teeth. “You know, this place does have a way about it, and I can't say one way or another what happened to those friends of mine so many years ago. Been eight years since I seen 'em in the flesh, and looking at that picture there brought back some fond memories for me. Wherever they are, dead or alive, I hope they found peace. I hope they went happy. I wish 'em the best, those two. I really do. But I'll never find 'em, you'll never find 'em... no one will. I reckon they don't want to be found. Some people, maybe, they pass on and they want their stories told; they reach out, want to be found. Some, though, they aren't like that. Some just want to remain hidden, stashed away. And this place, I think, is a lot like that. This old estate holds secrets and it won't let them go, eats 'em for breakfast. If your wife really is missing, you can throw away your whole life wondering why, analyzing it. Let me tell you something good and true, and that's if your wife really did end up like the Reeds did, and I pray to heaven she didn't, then it's best to let it go now. Sounds crazy, heartless, doesn't it? But you can't win out against something like that. This place, it can and does swallow people whole. I pray it ain't done it again, but if it has, then you call the sheriff, you get this squared away and then you move on with your life.”

Julian nodded solemnly and led Edwin out. “Thanks for coming by,” he muttered half-heartedly as the old man stepped out and lit up a cigarette.

Edwin didn't respond. He took a long drag, walked to his truck, climbed in and, some few minutes later, drove off into the distance, leaving Julian no wiser for the trouble.

Once again, the silence reigned supreme.

Chapter 5

The internet proved spotty, but he managed reception enough on his phone to put a few questions to a search engine; questions that'd been simmering on the back burner of his mind all day. Never once had it occurred to him to search out information about the Beacon estate online. Up until this point, he hadn't had sufficient interest in the house's history to do so. But now, wanting to learn more and having nowhere else to turn, he cast his arrow and hoped it would land on something of substance.

And indeed it did.

Julian had fixed himself a glass of strong whiskey, and it was all he could do to keep from spitting it all over himself in disbelief as he began into the first of several hits that detailed the history of the Beacon estate. He searched for terms like “Beacon estate”, searched for the names of the previous owners, which he knew to be Marshall and Dakota Reed. He searched, too, for Edwin, and the names of those others he'd mentioned briefly during their talk. All of this pointed to something unbelievably strange.

Leaning forward in his chair, he squinted at the screen of his phone and read out a bit of the first article aloud. It was from a local newspaper, a small affair, and contained nothing in the way of pictures. “Residents of the Beacon Estate just west of Gibralter Road have been reported missing. This being merely the latest in a rash of mysterious disappearances which began last month with the vanishing of one Edwin Kelley, a known acquaintance of the Reeds.” Julian scrolled up a touch, noting the date of the article. It'd been published about eight years ago.

That can't be right, he thought, bringing the whiskey to his lips and taking a messy slurp. His lips were quivering as he did so, and the booze did little to fortify his nerves. Edwin isn't missing... He turned to the door behind him, the very door where he had accepted Edwin not an hour before. I just saw him, that can't be. Julian set down his glass and phone, gulping. “Unless,” he murmured, “that wasn't Edwin...”

A strong wind battered the side of the house, startling him. Since Edwin had gone, the property had been silent, though the passage of the wind was sufficient to rouse in it all the old stirrings and groanings he knew. They were made all the more disagreeable to him under the circumstances. To his harried mind, it seemed almost as though the house were laughing at him.

Before continuing his reading, Julian picked up the phone and hurriedly dialed Edwin. The line began to ring at once, and he prepared to demand an explanation from the man, but suddenly the call cut out. Whether the reception had petered out or the number had been disconnected he couldn't be sure, but repeated dialings yielded very much the same result so that Julian was left only to shudder with his thoughts, reaching now and again for his glass of whiskey.

He continued through the article, which revealed very little to him that he did not know; the Reeds were found to be missing, though in this version of the narrative, it seemed that the local tax authority had sent a representative to the house to inquire after the matter of back taxes, only to find it abandoned. These, then, were the facts; the narrative was here presented without the least bit bias. From that moment on, Julian resigned to believe only what he read. He could no longer be certain about the things he'd been told, and decided forthwith to treat everything he'd hitherto known of the house as a lie.

The weak reception made it so that subsequent articles loaded with irritating slowness, or not at all. There was a piece about the disappearance of Edwin Kelley; he was reportedly wanted, at the time of his disappearance, for the murder of his wife, Nora. Details on the nature of the crime were not given, but investigators had tracked him to the border of “a great wood” in the area. The dogs had lost the scent however, and for all appearances the trail had gone ice cold thenceforth. Julian worked over his thumbnail, shivering as he went on. Had he just hosted a murderer in his home? Hell, had he bought his home from a murderer? This couldn't possibly be the case. He told himself again and again that he was jumping to conclusions, but the facts said otherwise.

Here, some minutes after the previous had been completed, was loaded an article from the same minor publication detailing the declaration of the Reeds, Edwin Kelley and a few others from the area dead in absentia. The community had given up on them, by the looks of it, and the courts had declared them dead within the last year. He recognized a few of the other names. Lilith, Richard, Enid...

There was another article, which he stumbled upon through a link in the previous, stating that the occupant of a nearby house, a miss Lilith, had gone missing first, setting off a search. Her home was reported to be on the very same street as the Beacon estate, though Julian knew there to be no other houses for miles around.

His head was spinning. He reached for his drink and found it empty. Suddenly the world around him, the quaint setting he'd once known and cherished, rose up and transformed before his very eyes. No longer was this merely his home, the “Beacon estate”. It was something else now, nefarious, and marked with a deep history that ran counter to everything he'd been fed about it. It was like finding out about a partner's infidelity, learning about a friend's betrayal. For so long he'd been comfortable there, but all the while he'd been misled. He felt like he and his wife had been brought there under false pretenses, and he could no longer be sure of his footing. Perhaps the sale had been genuine, and there was simply some sort of misunderstanding or error in the articles he'd read. Or, perhaps, Julian and Kim had been led unknowingly into the center of some far-reaching web whose monstrous spider had not yet been revealed. This house of his was implicated in more than one disappearance. The entire area, the woods-- all of it was steeped in frightful mystery, and all of it, too, seemed fond of swallowing people up without remorse.

Kim was just the most recent.

But, then, he'd just seen Edwin. “Edwin didn't go missing. He was declared dead... the authorities couldn't find him, but he's still out there. Still lingering on.” This mental thread led him to interesting places for a short while, and Julian considered any number of metaphysical explanations for the disappearances. Maybe, too, he thought, Kim hadn't died or disappeared, but had simply entered into some other plane of existence that he himself hadn't yet stumbled onto.

Julian loosed a nervous laugh, the tail end of which was tremulous, unhinged. He refilled his glass till the amber liquid threatened to overcome the vessel and then drained it.

The light would soon be dying and he was none the wiser. In the end, the history of the Beacon estate, the mysterious disappearances of its former tenants and neighbors, was of no interest to him. Julian wanted only to find his wife, to find closure where that matter was concerned, and to return, unscathed, to a normal life.

Julian pondered for a time whether there were any hidden passages in the house. There'd been that door in the cellar, which had led to a mysterious chamber. Was it possible that there were others; other chambers in the house that he was unaware of or that Kim might have slipped into without his knowing? It was a possibility, though his searches throughout the house hadn't produced anything out of the ordinary. It was hard to say just where the house might hold such secrets, and that it did at all he was not exactly confident. Poking around in the attic, or in the cellar, he thought, might see him discover something.

Shaking, he stood up from his chair and paced about the room, his phone still in hand. Before putting it away, he decided to see whether there were any other articles to be found about the house. His search yielded one other before the search results descended into unrelated things.

This was an old news story, far older than any he'd come by so far, and it dealt with the house's construction. Julian recalled that the house had been built upon the site of another house, but what he had not anticipated was that the construction of the Beacon estate had led to some uproar amongst the locals at the time. Indeed, the article went on to describe the former abode as a shanty of some historical relevance; a simple cabin nearly two-hundred years old at the time. The cabin had been built by an early settler whose reputation Julian could only gather was not a little unsavory. The cabin had been colloquially dubbed “The Warlock's Place”, for the man who had built it before the days of the American Revolution. The article-writer went on to color the story with a bit more detail than was professional; there was discussion of local superstitions, of the “Warlock” being seen there in recent times despite his being a man of the eighteenth century, and of the things he reportedly endeavored to conjure there in isolation, thusly earning his nickname.

Locals were displeased with the Reeds' decision to tear it apart and build on that land. It had a reputation, and the oldest in the community-- those who recalled hearing stories about the cabin and its surroundings from their own parents and grandparents-- caused quite a stir when Marshall and Dakota Reed decided to grab up the land, knock down the cabin and build their house.

The article hinted, in its final paragraph, to the indifference of the married couple. They didn't seem to care about the community's outrage and continued building their new place despite having reached some curious, though not fully-articulated roadblocks. The first came in the drilling of their well, and the writer mentioned only that they'd had some difficulties due to the striking of something unexpected. In the clearing of the cabin, too, something had been discovered, though little was done to elaborate upon this and the article was drawn to an abrupt close.

Julian sighed, dropping his phone into his pocket. The Beacon estate had been built on something, alright. Just what, he couldn't say for certain, except that the mysterious chamber in the cellar was possibly a throwback to this previous abode, its only remaining vestige.

The Reeds, perhaps, had messed with something they didn't understand, had disturbed some centuries-old status-quo. And then, when the two of them had seen their end, Julian and Kim had moved in like idiots, completely unaware of what they were getting into.

He'd learned a good deal about the place's history, but Julian was not particularly happy for the knowledge. More and more he wished to return to a place of not knowing, to a pleasant, soothing ignorance.

Too late for that, he said, looking about the living room. The shadows seemed to deepen somewhat as he did so. Maybe it was just a trick of the sun as it peeked behind the clouds, but then... maybe it wasn't. The day will be over before you know it. You have to get looking if you want to find her.

He paced into the kitchen, his gaze drawn to the window. Through it, he saw the dense, black woods looking back at him. He grit his teeth and tugged on his waistband. “Do you really think she could have gotten off to the woods?” he mused, frowning.

There was only one way to know for sure.

Chapter 6

Julian stalled a considerable time in setting out, taking great care to dress warmly and to make certain that he'd procured everything necessary with which to make the trek through the uncharted black woods. When all was said and done and he found himself at the threshold of said woods however, he brought with him only an axe, a flashlight and the clothes on his back. The reasons were obvious; he'd much preferred to busy himself around the house, searching for things that might prove useful, but finding none that could assuage for him the frightening prospect of exploring the nigh-endless rows of leafless trees.

He held his breath as he entered the woods.

Why he'd thought it wise to carry an axe he couldn't really say; he was, after all, searching for his wife here. After a time he justified the choice, recalling what he'd just learnt of Edwin. Maybe, Edwin was planning something. That he was not on Julian's side there could no longer be any doubt. Then again, it seemed unlikely, with every uneasy step, that he should meet anyone in these woods. Everything seemed pristine in its grimness, the forest floor comprised of dull, untrodden soil and the dark trunks offering nothing of value to his search. Of these bleak surroundings Julian did his best not to ask himself too many questions. There was no accounting for the dearth of wildlife, for the darkness that seemed to hang about the acres perpetually and which, though he hadn't much voiced it in the past, had always unsettled him. To “live near the woods”, he thought, was considered an enviable thing. But these were not mere woods; no, the unnatural growths that flanked his property were as charming as an ancient graveyard and every bit as solemn.

His grip on the axe relaxed as he pushed on. Now and then he would stop to listen, though for what he couldn't say. If Kim was out there, would she call out to him? Was she in a position to call out to him at all? He chuckled, his face crumpling into something of seasickness, and surveyed his immediate surroundings. It was important for him to keep his head on his shoulders, to remember what he was doing out there. Julian was looking for his wife.

His dead wife.

That Kim could have possibly fled into the woods, or that she would if she'd been of sane mind, was unthinkable. But other options were vanishingly scarce. Unless she'd been literally absorbed into the stuff of the house, then Julian had no choice but to search, far and wide. There was something strange, something terrible afoot; he felt it now, could point to certain distressing details in the framework that told him it was so, despite his usual reluctance to put stock into supernaturalism. Still, people didn't simply “disappear”; he knew that much. Missing persons always ended up somewhere, and it was ridiculous to suspect, no matter how much his unconscious mind seemed to dwell on the notion that she'd been sucked up into the sinews of the old property, that she'd been spirited away into nonexistence. She was here, somewhere, in the physical sense. And he was going to find her. Perhaps she was dead, perhaps she was alive; his memories of the previous night seemed to indicate the former with utter certainty, but he was open to any and every possibility.

“Kim,” he said under his breath, pushing on with heavy steps, “if you're out there, then give me a sign.”

No sign came. The silence waxed oppressive, with only the passage of the breeze against the myriad trunks offering anything in the way of distraction to his ears. He fancied himself held captive within an enormous woodwind instrument, could hear an almost imperceptible piping and fluting as the wind wormed its way between ebony trees. No birds dared to cry out, if in fact there were any in the area. Though he scanned the sky numerous times, he saw none fly over. Even the birds know to avoid this area. But not you, no. You had to go and buy this goddamned house, didn't you? Up above, the sky seemed smoky, dark. There wasn't a leaf to be seen, but still the light that reached him felt filtered somehow, as through an invisible canopy of great density.

Julian was more than an hour into his trek when his legs began to tire. He'd gone through the woods aimlessly, hadn't bothered to track his route and hadn't yet arrived at any border. It would not have been inaccurate to call him lost, though he put little thought into the matter at the time and simply went on, albeit more slowly. The scenery had seeped into him, had colored his thoughts with their moroseness. She's gone, he thought to himself, his ordinarily bright eyes dimming and narrowing at the idea. It felt foul to even consider it. You should get out of here while you still can. Shit happens out here in the middle of nowhere. Kim is gone. But you... you're still alive. Get out now, while there's still time.

Sighing, he set down his axe and leaned against one of the trees. Rifling through his pocket, he unearthed a crushed pack of smokes and lit one up, the first drag warming him throughout and lending him a little sense. “If I don't find anything today, I'll report her missing with the authorities. That's all there is to it. It'll have been twenty-four hours, then. I won't have any answers, but...” Another drag. He closed his eyes, shook his head.

He circled the nearest tree, eventually putting his cigarette out against its bulk and ambling on a bit further. The axe swayed in his hand, the blade bumping up against numerous trunks before he finally took to dragging it behind him. This, he noticed, created a thin but noticeable trail in the soil that he could trace back. He thought it a shame that he didn't do it from the very beginning; that way, it might've been easier for him to find his way out.

Tracing his route as he went, the thin line in the earth winding behind the blade of his axe, Julian sought out his wife. He craned his neck around every tree, looked up towards the sky to survey the bald treetops, squinted into every distance he could perceive.

Nothing.

There was simply nothing out there.

Trees erupted from the sandy ground as far as the eye could see, and between them there lingered only threads of shadow. Sometimes, when peering through the morass, he'd startle himself, thinking he'd seen a shifting black form behind one of the trunks in the distance. But, upon further inspection, it would prove to be just another tree, the next in an endless series. How many miles he'd walked, how many hours he'd been out, he couldn't guess. He peered down at his phone, but noticed that the screen wouldn't turn on. He tinkered with it, pushed all of the buttons multiple times, but could not get it to start to life. Perhaps the battery had died. Judging by the cold that enveloped him and marked his fair cheeks and nose with rosiness, he'd been out long enough. He could continue in this fashion for days, he knew, and never find anything. And as he turned to retrace his thin trail in the soil, he couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it. This had been a fool's errand, through and through, something he'd taken on in the vain hope that he might find Kim alive. Sentimentality, a sense of duty; it'd been these things that'd so compelled him to take action, any action. In the end, however, it'd been an enormous waste of time.

Julian followed the line he'd left behind with his axe, his pace quickening and the light overhead seeming to become dimmer and dimmer. He knew it couldn't possibly be so late that the sun was setting, and yet with every passing minute the woods seemed to spare for him less and less in the way of light. Not wanting to spend time in the woods after dark, or to be stuck there in the midst of a storm, he trudged on as quickly as his tired legs would allow, stamping alongside his trail and hoping that he might soon wander out. After having spent so much time in the barren woods, even the silent house was appealing to him.

Julian noticed the first mark some minutes into his return trek, but thought little of it. It wasn't until he'd discovered the second, and then, shortly thereafter, the third mark in the soil, that he stopped in his tracks and appraised his trail in earnest.

Glancing this way and that, he looked first to his trail, and then to the others, similar in design, that seemed to join with his own from other directions. He gulped, wiped a bit of cool sweat from his brow, and then dropped to one knee to further examine.

He'd traced a line in the soil with his axe in the hopes of following it back to his earlier position in the woods, but here, inexplicably, were a number of other such trails in the soil, which had been joined to his own. He'd seen three so far, almost as if others had come upon his trail from other positions in the woods. The other lines, which terminated in his own, had not been made by an axe; what had made them, or why, he couldn't muster a guess. He cocked his head to the side, pondering for a time what it meant. These other, unfamiliar lines, stretched on in other directions for a great distance, but both ceased upon joining with the line he'd carved. “It's... it's almost like someone came upon my trail and then decided to follow me.”

His breath was caught in his lungs as the notion crossed his mind, and he was immediately made aware of another presence in the vicinity. It was not so close that it could reach out and touch him. At least, not yet. But it was close enough to incite in him an almost overwhelming sense of dread. Eyes, foreign eyes, were upon him. Someone in this dense sea of black trees was watching him, he was certain. He hadn't come upon anyone in his journey and hadn't noticed any presence up until this point, but the awareness was now gaining momentum at an exponential rate. He looked over his shoulder, glanced frightfully about himself.

Maybe it was just a trick of the wind, like before. The occasional piping and whistling of the breeze had distracted him, covered up this other noise he now fancied he heard, perhaps.

Footsteps, a harsh shuffling against the earth as of bare, calloused feet. Subtle, and yet gaining in volume with each passing moment until there could no longer be any doubt.

Julian turned around and looked far into the woods at his back, at the distance he'd covered in the past few minutes. Creeping unsteadily upon the trail he himself had blazed only moments before, was a shadowed, vaguely humanoid form.

The longer he looked at it, the more certain he became that the shambling thing was not just another tree. His spine lit up with a series of icy shivers. His eyes had tracked movements, dark shapes, in amongst the trees for much of his hike, and his peripheral vision had betrayed him more than once. He'd told himself that they were merely trees, but perhaps they hadn't been trees at all.

He'd been pursued.

The thing that now met his gaze from a distance was undoubtedly human in shape, though it crept, or rather, crawled, on all fours like an animal might. It went slowly, pale white hands smacking at the earth and face completely obscured by a turbulent mane of sheer, black hair. Of its body Julian could deduce little, though as the thing began approaching in earnest, its speed tripling in a matter of moments, he could see more of it. The limbs were spindly, long. Unnaturally so. It wore not a scrap of clothing, appearing positively feral. The bone-white color of its flesh gave the impression that it had never before seen the light of day, and even from this distance it could be heard to loose wheezing, persistent grunts for its exertion. Scrambling towards Julian, the thing's limbs shot out to the sides, and its bulk was carried deftly forward by each lunging motion. It was shaped like a human, walked like some brand of legless centipede and snarled like a stray dog.

Julian had seen all he needed to see. Before even the first hideous cry sounded, filing up the quiet woods and stunning him, he'd taken off. The axe and flashlight were cast aside as he thrust himself forward through the woods. Just where he was headed was uncertain; at some point he lost sight of his makeshift trail. It didn't matter. All he wanted was to separate himself from the thing. Its cacophonous vocalizations, its scampering between the trees made the woods come alive all around him. His jarring pace made it so that his periphery was crowded with doubtful shapes, not all of them, he was quite sure, mere trees.

He'd heard these sounds before. Yes, emanating from the woods at night; this thing had once spooked them terribly. He'd written it off back then as an animal, as something natural. That this thing that now trampled up behind him was an abomination there was no longer any doubt. The sound of palms smacking against hollowed trunks as the creature propelled itself towards its prey resounded in those quiet moments when it was not engaged in its primal, monstrous cries.

There was no sense in looking behind him; that the thing was hot on his trail he knew instinctively. This thing had had a hand in Kim's disappearance. She'd been right to fear it the night they'd first heard it, had been right to fear the house and all of the things that had bothered her about it. She'd been right after all. About everything. He had precious little time to lament this, however; from close behind now he could hear the soupy, labored breathing of the thing and could smell something indescribably foul. The air was being sucked from his lungs as he sprinted, only to be replaced by spoilt, noxious gas. His chest burned, his heart skipped a beat.

To slow, even a bit, was to be caught within seconds.

But then, a change in the scenery.

The woods ahead were clearing; he was on the verge of breaking through.

The sight of open grass, of the paling blue sky gave him the energy he needed to plow through the remaining trees. His muscles, near the point of cramping, were rejuvenated by the sight, and he took off with yet greater speed than he'd hitherto mustered. Racing into the field, his heart fluttered.

The house.

He'd found his way back! He'd managed to go the right way, to return the way he'd come despite his frantic, unmapped flight out of the woods.

Julian thundered across the field, keeping his eye on the goal and not stopping to turn around. He could no longer hear his pursuer, was unsure whether the thing dared to leave the boundary of the woods. Heaving himself through the knee-high grass, Julian found himself treading familiar ground. He was at the fire pit now, the back door.

He was inside the house with the door locked behind him in the next instant.

Falling to his knees, panting, Julian stared down at the kitchen floor with wide eyes, his face red and dripping with sweat. His body shook and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stand again. It would have been easier, probably, to just lay down and wait for his strength to return. But, after a few moments, he braced himself against the wall and slowly inched his way up.

You made it, he thought. It was unbelievable. That thing... that's what killed Kim. And that's what was responsible for her disappearance. What... what did that damned thing do to her?

Limping across the kitchen, he leaned against the sink and craned his neck to peer through the window. Though it probably could have caught him had it so wished, the monstrosity had let him go. Why? Maybe, he thought, it could only exist in the forest, or could only leave the woods after dark.

This theory was crushed immediately as his tired eyes scanned the back yard through the window.

Standing near the fire pit, perfectly upright, was the long-haired abomination that'd pursued him. It stood completely still, black tendrils of hair draping its bare, androgynous body. And from this inky tangle could be seen two large, dead eyes, tinged with a putrescent yellow hue. The thing was staring, could see him through the window, no doubt.

Julian fell back onto the floor and scurried into the living room on hands and knees.

As he did so, he thought he heard something like a laugh issuing through the house on a gust of wind. It was soupy, wheezy.

Chapter 7

No one knows you're out here. You're a sitting duck.

Julian sipped at his whiskey, but couldn't keep his hand from shaking long enough to get a decent taste. He'd paced about the house a while, first calling out to Kim, then palming the phone and debating on whether or not to call 911. The thing in the window had gone when finally he'd rummaged up the courage to check, but that it hadn't wandered far he felt somewhat sure.

Evening was descending now.

He'd chosen not to call the police; short of dragging him to an asylum, there was nothing any officer of the law could do for him. The things that followed and haunted him throughout the property, if they were real at all and not mere hallucinations brought on by worry, were not things that could be harmed by bullets nor restrained by laws. Julian knew it, and saw at once the futility in involving outsiders. Under the circumstances, with his wife missing and his sanity slipping away by the moment, he knew exactly how it would look to them upon their arrival. He'd be suspected of foul play, would end up in a prison cell without any hope of setting things straight.

Sitting on the sofa, huddled beneath a mass of blankets with his whiskey in hand, he realized his current predicament didn't exactly foster progress, either. He was frightened, almost to the point of paralysis. The wind outside had picked up, could be heard to howl across the land, and it rocked the old house violently. In the drafts, which sometimes carried about them traces of dust from his kitchen renovations, he half-fancied he caught glimpses of specters, and would instinctively brace himself against the sofa as though it were an impenetrable wall; grip his glass as though it were a whiskey-soaked talisman.

Within twenty-four hours, Julian had become a broken man. He'd been happy as a clam in the house up until the previous day; it'd only been his paranoid, anxious wife who'd had a problem with anything. He shook his head, stifling a sob as he ruminated. Kim hadn't been wrong at all; she'd only been too right about the house. Something was the matter with it, and he was getting perilously closer to learning just what. The visions in the house of hideous things, the chase through the woods, the cavernous opening in the ground... all of it pointed to a dread plot the likes of which the two of them could never have conceived of even in dreams. And they'd walked straight into the center of it, unknowingly. He raked himself over the coals for not believing her sooner. For not taking Kim's warnings and fears more seriously.

But now was not the time for sorrow.

Julian set down his glass and then furtively pulled his phone from his pocket. Though it hadn't served him in the woods, it was working perfectly now, strangely. The battery was more than half-charged and the screen functioned without delay. The internet, though, was still spotty. Spottier, even, than it had been earlier that day. Sitting up but still huddling beneath the blankets he and Kim had shared just the day before, he resolved to search for more answers. As of yet, the articles he'd found online had offered him the only tiny kernels of truth. Everything else, he believed, or had to believe out of necessity, was a fiction, fed to him solely to entangle him further in the nightmarish machinations that even then were afoot at the Beacon estate. With the last hints of the sun fast fading from the late autumn sky and the chill in the air becoming ever crisper, he involved himself in a number of searches.

Julian was thrilled when his search brought about a local folklorist's write-up of the cryptic Warlock that'd been hinted at in the previous article. That article, which he referenced again later, had made mention of a cabin that had once been situated where the Beacon estate now stood. The cabin in question had been built and lived in by a fellow dubbed “The Warlock”, but of him Julian had learned precious little in the other article. Now, in this professional, academic piece, he got more than he could've asked for.

The townsfolk in the area, which was scarcely populated and remote even in the days before the Revolution, spoke of a mysterious drifter, possibly a foreigner, who was known to make solitary treks into the woods after dark, when even soldiers and hunters did not dare follow. What he did there none were sure, though later, speculations bordering on the insane would be put forth. When next the subject of this vagrant entered the public consciousness, it was found that he had constructed a handsome cabin in a particularly remote stretch of land, bordering those same woods he was seen to frequent. The really remarkable thing to the locals, the folklorist sought to stress, was the fact that no cabin had been there previously, and that its whole construction had taken, if the anecdotal accounts were to be believed, a mere two days. That one man, whose habits included a curious tendency to wander in the pitch-black woods, should so rapidly and masterfully construct a handsome abode, raised no few eyebrows.

And so it began, that the man, known later as “The Warlock”, gained a reputation for peculiarity.

At this junction, the writer was quick to do away with the moniker of “Warlock”, and instead used what was historically taken to be the subject's proper name: John Kelley. Many details had been added about historical events in the region, about festivals and property disputes; all of which might have served to make a more colorful account for readers with only a superficial interest in the legend, but which, under the circumstances, warranted little but a hurried perusal from Julian.

It was less than one year after the appearance of this new cabin that children in the town began to disappear. For all appearances no parallels were drawn between these infrequent disappearances and the introduction of John Kelley into the area at first; but gradually, when a few well-meaning townspeople went looking, their trails led them to that cabin in the woods. Nothing was found there, and the secretive John Kelley, a supposedly unpleasant man, had evaded suspicion in the matter for a time.

But then, the account of one village boy, detailing the grisly ritual sacrifice of a recently-missing infant in the woods outside the cabin by a man who matched Kelley's description, was adequate to draw him back into the spotlight. The grounds were searched despite the hermit's protestations and the bones of many children, some of them very young, were unearthed.

The story of John Kelley might have ended with the account given of his speedy death by hanging, if not for his spirit's apparent lingering.

“The people sought to kill John Kelley for his sins, however if the stories are to be believed, John Kelley, the Warlock, would not die,” the account read.

The cabin and the woods near it were shunned by the townspeople, had been tainted in the public mind and it would be some years before anyone would knowingly tread there. In the subsequent decade, it is said that one or two out-of-towners attempted to claim the cabin and its attendant plot of land, only to be run out in the night by the things they saw manifest there. Still others, daring children with an interest in disobeying their parents, claimed to have seen strange, yellowish lights coming from the woods near the cabin, and grotesque, disfigured faces looking out from the cabin's dusty windows at those who had the courage to look into them after dusk. Once, a group of locals had ventured thither to investigate reports of a commotion; an unnamed source of apparent reputation had claimed to hear terrible shrieks and cries from the woods, accompanied by the beating of drums and a low hum as of many voices in song. Devilry was suspected and a search of the area mounted, though upon the arrival of some dozen armed men, it was found that none had the courage to enter the woods and seek out the source of this terrible revelry.

The glow emanating from the darkened woods was mentioned numerous times, and seemed to coincide with an increase in missing persons. Men, women and children from surrounding areas would vanish without warning, and loud, demoniacal celebrations would go on in the dense woods, with the identity of the celebrants never once coming to light.

A missionary passing through the area more than twenty years after the hanging of John Kelley, who did not know the cabin to be abandoned, swore an oath that he had spoken with the long-executed man at his door, and that their conversation had been pleasant. Upon a return to the spot by concerned townspeople, nothing but cobwebs were found therein. The door and windows, however, were boarded up in the name of prudence.

The writer discussed the woods in some detail, and said that, for a hundred years or more, they've been known to be largely dead, devoid of foliage and life. This, it was soon elaborated upon, was something that the locals attributed to a particularly macabre episode that was recorded just after the turn of the century. It was in 1802, when the wife of a prominent citizen went missing, that the cabin of John Kelley was next revisited. The searchers were rewarded this time in finding the body of the woman strung up against the trunks of two closely-growing trees, her throat and wrists slashed and the life very obviously gone from her. Upon the discovery of her body just a short distance from the cabin, the search party claimed that they noticed a change in the trees. The grass beneath the body was still damp with blood, and yet the blades had been singed as though by fire. Every tree in sight, too, was marked by this same character; a discoloration and baldness that was atypical. In subsequent years, this warping of the woods was seen to worsen and spread, until the whole of the forest, more than ten miles' worth, was declared dead, ruined. The writer claims that, as of their writing, sometime in the mid 1940's, the woods still carry this burnt-out, terrible appearance, and that animals are known to avoid it seemingly by instinct, though the writer is charitable and attributes its desolation not to the meddling of supernatural forces, but rather to some invasive or rare species of botanical agent which went unchecked for too long.

Beyond this, there was little else of interest in the article. Some few tidbits about the “stirrings” of things presumably conjured by the ghost of John Kelley were hinted at, but only in the final paragraphs and, presumably, for dramatic effect.

What struck Julian most about this piece was the surname Kelley; a surname which Edwin shared with the deceased “Warlock” of local myth. Could it have been a mere coincidence? No... the Kelley line lives on in Edwin, he thought, standing up to pace. He dropped his phone onto the sofa and massaged his eyelids, sighing. Not only had he moved into a remote old house where the previous owners had gone missing under mysterious circumstances, but he'd moved into a house with a centuries-old reputation for wickedness and unnatural happenings. Why stop here? You should have just kept looking till you landed in the Amityville Horror house, for God's sake.

It would take him some time to process all of this. Had he only known what he was getting into, if only he'd had the foresight to do an hour's worth of research, then he wouldn't have looked twice at the house. This felt like something out of one of his screenplays, too queer to be real. And yet, there he was, standing in the hell house all the same. He wanted out. It wouldn't be too late for him to leave; maybe he could beat it to a main road on foot and hitchhike to the nearest town. Though an inexperienced mechanic, he toyed with the idea of popping the hood of the sedan and tinkering with it. Anything, really, seemed better to him than inaction. But then, and with unbearable vividness, he recalled that thing he'd encountered in the woods. It'd chased him all the way to the door of the house, had leveled eyes with him through the kitchen window. His breath caught in his throat as he remembered it and it was all he could do not to whimper.

He began the first of many nighttime strolls through the house. As silently as could be done on the creaky floors, he ambled up the stairs and took to slowly opening the doors of every room, surveying each and every space. In doing so, the house seemed to voice a reply to his efforts, its groans and out-of-place thuds ringing out to punctuate what he was beginning to feel was utterly futile.

The study, where she'd last been seen, was perfectly empty. Julian rearranged the contents of the room for better access but found nothing of note therein. Further down the hall he explored the other bedrooms, vacant, save for a few boxes of their belongings. Here, too, he saw no trace of her.

The bathroom, master bedroom, attic; all unpeopled.

By the time he returned downstairs, he found himself practically in tears. Tugging on a sweater to beat back the chill in the air, he paced to the kitchen and poured some water into the kettle for tea. His hands shook every step of the way; from the portioning out of tea leaves, to the selection of a clean mug from a box in the living room. When the water was brought to a boil he let his brew steep and paced around the kitchen in circles till the liquid within looked dark enough. It was a foreign tea, something exotic that Kim had rather enjoyed. He didn't know its name, and thought little of its earthy flavor, but was struck by its deep, red color. He didn't recall it looking quite so rich and red as that. When the infusion was complete, he picked up his mug and blew carefully at the strands of steam that rose from the surface.

The kitchen curtains were shut tightly. They'd been that way since earlier, when he'd returned from his walk. He knew it necessary to continue his search into the outdoors, however. What if she's really out there? He continued to think as he appraised the curtains. Carefully, from one side of the half-effaced sink, Julian tugged them open. Stealing a furtive glance into the back yard, he could make out only dim shapes in the twilight. Commonplace things, no doubt, but lent a touch of mystery and doubtfulness in the scant moonlight. He gulped, the mug nearly tumbling from his shaky grasp. Sipping at his brew, he continued perusing the grounds. Here and there, shifting in the darkness, he thought he saw movement.

No, it's just the clouds passing across the sky. The moonlight plays tricks on your eyes that way.

However rational, the thought did not bring him comfort. His gaze rose to the woods, and through them, filtered a thousand times by the ebony trunks, he noticed the amber glow emanating from within. It was faint, fainter maybe than it'd been during the previous sighting, but it was plain to him all the same. And though it might have been mere fancy, or an effect of the shifting clouds as he'd earlier theorized, he noticed something of slow, careful movement near the border of trees.

His heart began to pound. His face grew hot and he slowly set his mug down in the sink, still half-full. What's out there? He asked himself the question without really wanting to know the answer. His imagination was more than capable of filling in the gaps. It might've been Kim out there. Or maybe that thing that had chased him through the woods. Then again, he thought, returning to the piece he'd just read, it might've been some other horror left behind by the Warlock John Kelley.

For a while longer he stood to the side of the window, gazing cautiously through it into the dark night. Then, fifty or sixty yards out from the house and staggering slowly towards an indeterminate point in the distance, he saw something he could put a name to. It was a human body, wan and petite, and the long, black hair that hung just past the shoulders teased familiarity. His face was nearly pressed to the glass in examination of this shambling form, and the longer he looked, the more he became sure that it was Kim. Gripping the edge of the window, his breath fogging the pane, he watched as the being walked into the distance, across the moonlit field, skirting the woods. Now and then the figure would pause as though it could feel his gaze. Its slight shoulders would stiffen as if in invitation, before it would invariably start once more to its unseen destination.

There was no time to lose.

Steeling his nerves, Julian sought out the largest kitchen knife he could find and a flashlight. Then, stepping into his shoes, he wrenched open the back door and looked out across the field.

There she was, ambling farther and farther away.

“Kim?” he murmured, squinting into the distance.

The figure paused as though she'd heard, only to continue her shambling advance.

It was her. It had to be. Gripping the knife in his hand, Julian took a moment to scan the woods before giving chase. The amber glow continued to come in through the trees, washing over the borders of the woods like melted gold. Shutting the door behind him, Julian recalled a detail from the article on John Kelley, and paused for a moment before continuing on. On nights when the glow is witnessed, people are said to go missing.

Chapter 8

The wind cut through him. Already a thin film of frost was clinging to the blades of grass, which crunched underfoot as he advanced. He could see his breath in the air. Chasing the pale silhouette into the distance he quickened his pace but found it difficult to keep up. Though the figure in the distance made no great strain, she moved with surprising quickness. His legs were still sore from his earlier jaunt through the woods, but he pressed on, adrenaline ordering him forth.

The light bobbed in his hand, its beam unsteady. Flashes of light were reflected off of the commonest things; divots in the field, inordinately tall growths, and were transformed for that instant into terrifying oddities for him. And each time that some minor detail in the landscape stole his attention, the figure in the distance seemed only to gain more ground. Julian broke into a jog, his breath coming so forcefully now that it would temporarily obscure his vision.

The figure had gone around a bend, seemed to be headed to that spot where he'd earlier discovered the open grave. This knocked the pep from his step and he approached with a good deal more caution, quickly losing sight of the pale, shambling form. He was close to the woods now, could smell the crisp earthiness that radiated from them always. He could see, too, the evidences of amber light coming in through breaks in the trees. What purpose it served, if any, was a mystery to him, though he couldn't shake off thoughts of the Warlock John Kelley and his supposed treacheries in these same woods. Recalling the details of that tale, his toes curled against the soles of his shoes. It was almost as though his body knew on a subconscious level that these were desecrated lands never meant to be tread.

But he went on.

After all he'd been through that day, how could he not go on? This was his sole lead. Kim, possibly delirious, had wandered out of the house the night previous and was now stumbling through the field in a dazed stupor. He'd been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of her before she disappeared again, and now had his chance to gain on her. She's OK after all, he assured himself half-heartedly, his lungs burning for the chill night air.

Coming to a stop, Julian decided to call out to her. He was some time in summoning his voice, but when her name finally left his lips, the effect was muffled by the woods. Something about those ominous black trunks ate up his voice and regurgitated it into the morass, where it lived on in small, disparate echoes. A bolus of dread sealed off his throat and kept him from repeating what he now felt had been a mistake. Vocalizing, raising his voice out here, in the open, was surely unwise. Glancing back at the ground he'd covered, at the house which sat in the distance with some few dim-burning windows, he felt every bit as naked and vulnerable as the mark he pursued.

For a time he was cemented in place, hesitant to move forward and even more nervous that his call should elicit a reply.

There was only silence, however. Silence, and the curious piping of windblown song as the breeze worked its way about the nearby trees. He gripped the handle of the knife, a serrated one, and squeezed it until his nerves were sufficiently ratcheted. Then, licking his lips, he continued.

Rounding the corner, he saw the field shoot on into the twilight, but there was no sign of the figure. Of course, he knew himself to be on the threshold now of that yawning open grave, could have taken fifteen, thirty steps and fallen straight in had he only the inclination to move. The woods to his side fell pestilentially quiet once again, and the gnarled bark of each individual tree seemed to furrow in a leer. He broke away from them a few paces and caught his breath, teeth chattering.

Reaching out with his light he canvassed the way ahead, catching a glimpse at once of something that did not belong. The aberrancy stood out amidst the scenery of tall grass, of moonlit spaces, of stillness. The first indication that something was awry came to him as the blades of grass ahead began to twitch and rise. They'd been trampled on only moments ago, it was clear. The object of his pursuit had blazed this trail that he now studied. But then, some ten or fifteen feet away, emerging furtively from the edge of that chasm he knew to exist there, Julian glimpsed the edges of a pale countenance, covered up by a mask of white plaster, and crowned by a wild nest of black hair. Though the shifting of the shadows could only give him so much detail, his brief surveyance was sufficient to reveal to him the pair of tiny eyeholes, from whence there came a dark and poisonous stare.

His heart crashed into his ribcage and he nearly fell back, ending up instead on one knee. His entire body convulsed as his leg met the chill grass, and he raised the knife before him as though it were a cross to ward off a vampire. Had the thing raced at him just then however, the knife would have been an impotent thing. He was held fast by the figure's veiled stare.

For some time the two parties remained in this position, staring at each other and not daring to speak. Julian thought once or twice to call out to his wife, but the longer he lingered there the less sure he became that this was, in fact, Kim. From what little he had gathered up to this point, he'd noticed a few familiar characteristics; the dark hair, the general shape of the body. But now he was less certain, the grotesque mask adding no shortage of doubt where surety had already been scarce.

Then, suddenly, the figure disappeared into the chasm. The sound, as if of a thousand legs scurrying hurriedly against bare earth, accompanied its precipitous flight from view. Even some moments later he could hear the quick, fleshy smacks of wild limbs in locomotion beneath his feet. Julian staggered back, disgusted with the knowledge that the figure now dwelt beneath him, in the dark bowels of the earth, like vermin. Not to be dissuaded however, he slowly made his way forward, shuffling so as not to telegraph his approach by way of vibrations in the ground, and brought his light to the edge of the aperture.

What he found within was not at all what he'd expected, and in that moment he loosed a full-on scream.

The light was sluggish in reaching the bottom of the pit, where, nestled in amidst the mounds of disturbed earth, could be seen a pale, naked body. The mask-wearing figure was squeezed into a tight fetal position, her cartoonish visage pulled up and away towards the sky. But it was not this alone that unsettled him. From within the adjoining passage that ran directly beneath his feet, Julian heard the hurried scurrying of a thousand legs once more, issuing from deep underground. Something was moving, at great speed, and was clearly headed for the exit of the tunnel. Whatever he'd heard just moments ago was returning.

It had heard him.

The figure he'd given chase to was, so far as he could tell, Kim. The shape of the body was right, even if the cold had sapped all color from it and given it an unearthly paleness. That she was dead, too, was all too clear. He couldn't be sure how her body had gotten there, or where she'd come upon the mask, but that her form had been tugged along the field like a dumb marionette by this conniving thing that now clamored through the underground for him was all too apparent. He'd been baited like a trophy fish, had gone straight for the lure just as planned. And he knew it.

Julian wanted to run, to escape to the house, but couldn't find it in himself to turn around. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as though he'd been electrocuted and his eyes settled on the still, bone-white form of his dead wife until something else emerged from the floor of the den and captured his attention.

A hand. And then another. They burst out into the open from the mouth of the yawning tunnel, basking in the moonlight with spectral whiteness. The fingers were bereft of nails and each digit squirmed seemingly of its own accord, was commanded by its own bundle of nerves. As the fingers twitched along the lip of the passage they gave the impression of an insect's feelers. The air was being tested and he was being presently appraised without his even knowing it.

He was unprepared for the third, fourth and fifth hands, of precisely the same appearance, which emerged quickly thereafter in similar fashion. As he staggered back, he thought that numerous captors must dwell in the passage beneath his feet, but he soon realized each of the limbs belonged to a singular entity, and his horror was all the more compounded by this fact. Julian lost his breath, fell onto the grass before turning and scrambling absentmindedly. He had no direction in mind, had completely lost his bearing. But that didn't matter. He needed to put as much space between himself and the thing which now rushed noisily from its subterranean hold as possible.

He didn't get far, however.

His right ankle went slack beneath the grip of an unseen pursuer. He yelped, lost his footing and slammed into the ground face-first. The moist grass was frigid, blasting his nervous system with another rude shock while the grip on his foot tightened and he was slowly pulled back towards the site of the open grave. At first he thought to dig his hands and elbows in, but no matter the nature of his resistance, he was steadily drawn in. Turning as best he could, he looked down at his foot, at the edge of the aperture, looming ever closer.

It was no hand that'd taken hold of his ankle, though he could see, to his unutterable horror, at least a dozen of those grasping, porcelain white hands, with their pitted, empty nailbeds, erupting from the chasm. What now snaked its way up his leg and yanked him across the field with great force, was a black tendril. It was tough, coarse against his skin, and his feeble tuggings did not phase it in the least.

Julian was only feet from tumbling into the grave, from the sea of white, searching hands, when the moonlight revealed to him the nature of the appendage that dragged him through the grass.

It was a length of jet-black hair.

Chapter 9

That his brain had betrayed him, sent him forthwith into unconsciousness, he was certain. His system couldn't handle the shock of falling into the pit, could not sustain the grotesque sensation of those cold, lifeless hands groping about his body and ushering him into the bowels of the earth. That was the last thing he remembered; the hands. His limbs had been seized from all corners and his body transported deftly through the underground. He felt himself in the clutches of a great and terrible insect, and knew himself bound for its nest. At the last glimmer of moonlight, as he was pulled into the tunnel and away from Kim's limp body, his constitution failed him.

But he awoke.

The stirrings of consciousness brought with them a hint of that tempestuous fear that'd taken him under, and before even he could open his eyes a scream welled up in his throat. It was trapped there, the air scarce and moist. He slowly regained control of his hands and reached out all about him. Above there was something like wood, but it was soggy, knotted. Beneath him only soil. Shuddering, he sucked up what little oxygen he could and was simply thankful to be unmolested. As though it were a debris he could shake off, he patted at his arms and chest, hoping to exorcise the chill that those hideous paws had left behind.

Upon opening his eyes, he found he could see nothing. Or, at least, close to nothing. The very borders of his vision featured something of light, but it was dim and distant. It existed only in thin bands, like the light which is seen through the seams of a tightly-sealed door. He blinked, turned his head, and ran his palms against the grooved wood above him. Rolling over onto his stomach and attempting to further explore the space, he calmed his mind and tried to visualize his surroundings. It took little time for him to realize where he was.

You're underneath the house.

He moistened his lips, feeling out a bit of the space that was large enough for him to sit up in. Though his study was brief, there appeared to be sections here, beneath the floors of the house, that allowed him room to sit more or less comfortably, and others still, like the one he'd woke up in, which were far tighter. Here and there he could feel dense wooden posts in the ground. These were supports of some kind for the whole structure, and they went into the foundation below. Searching through the darkness, Julian knew that the tunnel entrance was close-by. The tunnel served to connect the house to the grave. Something inhuman, infernal, had made the passage and linked the two. He tensed. Something that John Kelley conjured up... that thing, from the woods... it brought me here.

Movement. He heard something shift nearby, and immediately his body went stiff. He clutched at his knees, waiting for something to lash out at him, to finish the job. In time however, the noise faded and he was left to gather his scattered thoughts. It's still here with me, somewhere. His breath retreated for a time and he found it hard to breathe in the musty air. Somehow, he'd have to find his way through the space, to break through some flimsy barrier and crawl out onto the lawn. That was his only chance. It was possible, too, that he could find the tunnel and go out that way, though it was a long way for him to wander in perfect darkness. There was no telling what awaited him there, either.

Attempting to compose himself, Julian rifled through his pockets and almost gave a yelp of joy in discovering his cell phone. This, he knew, might give him light enough to explore. Running his palm against the cool screen, he felt out the home button. Before pressing it however, he hesitated. It'll help you see, but then, it could make you an easier target, too. Could the creature that'd brought him down there, the creature with a hundred grasping hands, see him in the dark? He wagered that it probably could. He was the only one at a disadvantage here, the only one out of his element. Using the light could only improve his odds. Slowly, he raised up his phone and hit the button, flinching as it came on.

The light was bright, making his eyes hurt. Blinking hard, he moved it this way and that, the glow hanging in the air for a moment as though the rays were suspended in the murk. When his eyes had become more accustomed to the whitish light, he carefully pushed himself onto his haunches and took a good look at his immediate surroundings. He was indeed beneath the house, could see the bottoms of what he presumed to be the floors of the lower level. Every corner he could glimpse featured something of slime-like mold or cobwebs. Steadying himself against one of the meaty support beams, he moved forward. The way was narrower, forcing him down onto his stomach to crawl. All the while Julian held the light out before him. The sounds of his locomotion seemed amplified a thousand times, and when coupled with the light of his phone, he felt sure he was an easy target. The thing was going to see him. There was no way it could miss him down here.

But nothing came.

He lifted himself up, pausing in the next section, his vision zeroing in on something curious just beyond the edge of his light. Julian leaned further still, reaching through the shadows to elucidate the thing before him. In order to see it up close he would have to navigate the next section, crawl on his belly again. He hesitated to do so, but ultimately had no choice. From where he stooped, it seemed large and bound in cloth. The cloth was probably a reddish flannel pattern, but he couldn't be certain. When the thing failed to move, his boldness grew and he dropped onto his stomach, pulling himself forward with his elbows until he was close by.

Raising the light, Julian examined it from less than a foot away.

He dropped the phone. His nostrils were filled to bursting with a smell like dust and his heart thumped hard against his sternum as though it were throwing in the towel.

It was a man.

Long dead, the body was bunched up and leaning against the nearest support column in something of a crouch. The skin, or what blackened swaths of it remained, had settled closely to the bones, lending it a mummified appearance. Dressed in a flannel shirt and torn blue jeans, the figure clutched at something with its gnarled hands.

A statue of the Virgin Mary, not unlike the ones he and Kim had found in the cellar chamber.

A study of the face yielded a visceral reaction in him; the eyes had long decomposed, leaving only shadowed sockets. Yellowed teeth were bared in what could only be called an expression of dread terror. This, coupled with the posture of the body in death, pointed to only one thing. Like himself, this man had been cornered down here. He'd probably been dragged through the underground himself, had taken refuge near this support beam, only to meet his end. Though the light now shook in his hand, Julian could see long tangles of black hair affixed to the body's wrists and neck.

This, probably, was the body of Marshall Reed.

A large, hairy spider emerged from one of the empty eye sockets, its thick legs playing odiously against the warped cheek, before disappearing once more into the cavity. Julian staggered back, nailing the back of his head against a low-lying piece of wood. Cursing, he looked about him, his heart thundering at the prospect of arousing attention.

Still, nothing came.

Separating himself from the corpse, he raised his light and shot off in the opposite direction; a direction which, if his instinct was correct, might lead him to the edge of the house. When he got there, he hoped he'd be able to pry a board loose or kick through it. The sides of the house were done up in stucco, but the bits of moonlight he'd seen peeking through the edges from a distance told him that the seal to the foundation was not so strong that he'd be unable to break through it. If he worked fast enough he could kick through the wooden support, through the exterior of the house, and scramble out onto the lawn. From there, he'd run as hard and fast as was necessary to reach civilization.

Rushing forward, Julian did his best to keep the light steady. Now and then he would pause, listen, to make sure that the sounds of movement that filled his ears were solely his own. Feeling emboldened by the seeming lack of pursuit, he hurried onward, crouching and crawling as was necessary.

He'd gone a long way however, and still hadn't managed to reach the edge of the house.

Every breath brought with it a bit of dust. He could feel it in his forehead, in the stinging ache it incited behind his eyes and in his sinuses. Sitting up, he held out his phone and canvassed the space afresh.

Something had changed. The layout here was different. There were no more wooden support beams to be seen. In fact, there was nothing but wide, open space. The soil was damp, as though it'd been soaked by a chill autumn rain. But save for pervasive darkness, there was precious little else. Julian grit his teeth, unnerved by the way that this new darkness seemed to eat up the light from his phone. He glanced at the screen. It was still on, still shining. The darkness here, though, was of a completely different sort. It was primordial, so dense that it could scarcely be parted by his feeble light.

Something suddenly rose up in him. It was primal fear, the fear of an animal walking headlong into the slaughter. You should turn around. Turn around and find another way out. This... this isn't it. No one... no one is supposed to come this way.

He knew there was a way out of this dark labyrinth, but this wasn't it. He'd wandered somewhere else, to a place he shouldn't have gone. A place where no living person had any reason to go.

Memory called up the article he'd read that night, about the warlock John Kelley, about the things he'd done and the things he'd allegedly summoned from the Pit.

Julian leaned forward, then took a few awkward paces before stopping abruptly.

The way forward had disappeared.

There was only a yawning, endless abyss before him.

Falling backward and almost dropping his phone into the chasm, he heard for the first time in a while the stirrings of movement. And this time, he felt sure, the sounds were not of his making. In his moments-long perusal of the pit, something had seen him. Something in that pitch-black chasm had looked up at him and was now clambering out after him. His heart flopped sluggishly and he reared back, crawling off on hands and knees.

This was the spot where John Kelley's cabin had been. There could be no doubt. The small structure, which had been demolished to make way for the Beacon estate, had dwelt here. It was from this chasm of nightmares that the warlock had conjured the terrible things that now plagued this house and the surrounding woods. And it was from here, too, that the monstrosity that'd brought him underground had first emerged from.

Julian wanted to scream, wanted to sob, but there was no time for it. His body was overwhelmed by a desire for flight and he abandoned all else. Scrambling through the dark, scarcely keeping ahold of his phone, he pawed his way in the opposite direction.

In his retreat however, the flashing of his screen brought yet more of his surroundings to light.

Above him, in the boards and joists that made up the lower story of the Beacon estate, he caught sight of what appeared to be black tentacles. They were fixed to the boards, to the columns, wrapped so tightly to the wood that they appeared as fully integrated as veins, and throbbed in much the same fashion. How it was that he'd overlooked these pitch-black tendrils previously he couldn't say; they were denser the closer one went to the chasm he'd left behind.

And then the sounds of movement. The animalistic cry of his pursuer from the dark recesses to his back. What began as a labored wheeze grew into a great and terrible scream. Stunned and deafened, Julian clawed his way forward, bumping head-first into a wooden panel as he did so. A sharp pain came over him and almost immediately he felt a wave of warmth washing over his forehead. There'd been something sticking out of that panel, a nail, perhaps. Hot blood dripped onto the soil beneath him, onto the backs of his hands as he crawled. The hot flow blurred vision in his right eye, and tears were sufficient to fill the other.

A familiar force grasped his ankle, pulling him to a stop and dragging him backward. Julian reached for the nearest support column, but lacked the strength to resist. One, two, three tendrils of coarse, black hair took hold of his limbs and dragged him back towards the pit. As he went, kicking and shouting all the while, he lost his grip on his phone. It tumbled some few feet away from him and gave only the briefest glimpse of the fate that awaited him.

Leashed to the bottom of the house by way of those same black, writhing tendrils, was a pale, bare figure. It crawled against the bottoms of the floorboards as an animal might crawl, defying gravity. White hands bereft of fingernails reached out and pulled the thing forward, while crooked, feral-looking feet scrambled awkwardly behind. This was the thing that had dragged him through the underground to begin with, and he could now see that it was joined to the house by way of hundreds of the black tentacles. It was a parasite, bonded to the very stuff of the house and coursing through it always.

Every time he'd heard the house settle, the pipes rattle, he'd written it off as an ordinary phenomenon. Now, he knew better. It had been this thing settling in the house's sinews, scaling the insides of the walls, the underside of the floors, further incorporating itself. It had been there the whole time, just under their noses. It had been there since the house was built, since before the Reeds had built the Beacon estate. And in those days not so long ago, when he and Kim had been happy in their new house, it'd been there, too. Biding its time. Eavesdropping on their happiness.

The light was growing distant now, but before he lost sight of it for good, Julian caught in its dim glow the face of his captor. Two large, blind eyes greeted him and a hideous maw of a mouth separated in an audible wheeze.

He was at the cusp of the aperture, brought back to that site he'd fought so hard to flee. Here, the white monstrosity stopped, lowering him into the opening slowly. Julian was suspended by black tendrils, brought down into the pit gradually. He could no longer see in the overwhelming darkness, but could feel those dead eyes focused upon him from above. And then, from below, in the dark depths, he felt hands. Dozens of hands upon him. One by one the hands latched onto his body and yanked him downward, their owners gasping and screaming terribly till his ears began to ache.

The screams were feminine and masculine; still others were harder to place. These were the screams of those who'd been claimed by the property before him. Though he couldn't parse out her voice in the cacophony, he felt sure Kim was among them. His mind, wrecked by terror, was calmed a little by this realization, at least.

It's OK, he thought. It's OK. You're going to join Kim now. You'll be going to the same place she did. Resigning himself to the pull of the hands from below, he allowed his body to go limp and no longer fought. In a matter of seconds he was yanked deeper down.

And then he went into a free fall through the limitless depths.

***

Snow.

The field ahead was covered in a thin layer and still more was caught up in the icy breeze. The flakes were fat, dense. The trunks of the trees nearby were flecked in white, a stark contrast against their ebony bark.

He thought it strange that he couldn't feel the cold.

Julian stared out from between the trees, at the house which sat quietly. Its roof was dressed in snow, its windows dotted in dabs of white. It looked so quaint and peaceful, just like he remembered it. Then, from around one corner, he saw two forms emerge from the driveway.

A man and a woman.

The man was tall, heavy-set, with graying hair. The woman, slimmer, was dressed in a red jacket and black boots. They were holding hands and pointing up at the house, talking amongst themselves.

He cocked his head to the side.

“What are they doing?” Julian turned. There, beside him, was Kim. Her long hair was draped over her bare shoulders, her flesh was nearly the same color as the snow. From behind the mask of white plaster, she gave a breathy laugh.

Across the driveway there came a third person. This one, he recognized.

“Sorry to have kept ya waiting,” said Edwin, flagging down the couple. “Roads were harsh.” He rifled through his jacket for the keys to the house. “We'll start the tour right away. Don't wanna keep you two here all day.”

Julian watched as Edwin opened the back door and led the new couple inside. The old guide stopped as he did so, looking to the woods and narrowing his gaze. Though it might've been mere fancy, there seemed to be a crooked little smile on his lips.

“What are they doing in our house?” asked Julian, turning once again to his wife.

“Get out of our house,” said Kim quietly, staring out at the property, one of her wan hands on the nearest tree.

From behind, Julian heard someone else speak. An old, croaking voice. “Get out of our house.” It was an old woman, with a shock of white hair. She, too, wore a mask. In the pinholes that answered for eyes, he spied only darkness.

The woods became alive with speech. “Get out of our house. Get out of our house.” Voices were carried in on the breeze from all around. Everywhere he looked, Julian found yet more people standing around him, all of them in nothing but white masks and focused on the house.

Turning once more to Kim, Julian continued. “What are they doing in our house?”

She gave another breathy laugh.

He smiled, though it was unlikely she could see it from behind his mask.

THE END

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed this final volume of Black Acres.

Please consider leaving a review for this book. Your reviews are invaluable to me; they help me to hone my craft and help new readers find my books.

Want to keep track of new releases? Subscribe to Ambrose Ibsen's newsletter here:

http://eepurl.com/bovafj