The Amber Light (Black Acres Book 3)

  The Amber Light

  a Black Acres novella

  Volume 3

  By Ambrose Ibsen

  Copyright 2015 by Ambrose Ibsen. All rights reserved.

  Synopsis:

  Some Things Are Better Left Buried...

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

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

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

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

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  The Amber Light

  Black Acres Volume 3

  Chapter 1

  Behind her, the shadows seemed to churn.

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

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

  No.

  There was no use in denying it.

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

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

  It was Julian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Kim frowned. “I mean, I guess so...”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Somehow, she didn't really want to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  There was nothing in the closet.

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

  Dakota's journal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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