The Borderland (Black Acres Book 2)

  The Borderland

  a Black Acres novella

  Volume 2

  By Ambrose Ibsen

  Copyright 2015 by Ambrose Ibsen. All rights reserved.

  Synopsis:

  Something is wrong with the Beacon estate.

  Kim and Julian try to adjust to their new home, but reminders of the previous owners are many. For Kim, it's difficult not to fixate on the mysterious disappearance of the house's last tenants and she quickly grows obsessed with learning more about them. All the while, the house's quirks and flaws become more than just an annoyance. They becoming frightening.

  The strange door in the basement, which had been wallpapered over so as to keep it hidden, has opened of its own accord. The dead woods outside, though barren of animal life, seem to come alive at night with curious, masked onlookers. Kim feels like she's losing her mind and Julian is unsympathetic. What is it that ails her? Is the house or the stress of the move merely wreaking havoc on her mind, or is she being plagued by something more sinister?

  Kim begins to gather clues, digs deep to find answers to the questions that keep her up at night. The more she pieces things together however, the less she wishes she knew.

  The Borderland is the second novella in the Black Acres serial by Ambrose Ibsen. It is approximately 23,000 words and contains adult language, scenes of horror and a cliffhanger ending. Reader discretion is heavily advised.

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  The Borderland

  Black Acres Volume 2

  Chapter 1

  Julian took a step into the newly-opened doorway, squinting. He licked a bit of saltiness from his upper lip and stole a glance behind him at Kim, who waited with bated breath. “It's too dark to see in there,” he said. “Give me a flashlight.”

  Shaking, Kim rummaged around in the kitchen drawers for a flashlight. When she found one, she switched it on and carried it down to him cautiously, staying close to the wall so that unseen lurkers would not be able to grasp at her legs from the edge of the stairs. Her heart quaked, her face was white. She knew she'd seen something dart across the floor. Julian may not have seen it, but that it'd been there all the same she felt sure. It'd probably come from that room, newly-opened and clotted over with darkness.

  The shadows that poured from the open doorway into the already dim cellar appeared unnaturally dark. Like the queer shadows of the trees outside, it was an inky darkness, possessed of a unique hardiness that made it difficult to banish. How long the darkness had accumulated in this locked space, how many years it'd been distilled, was beyond guessing, but as Julian shoved the door open further and brought the light through the threshold, they found that the yellowish beam could not fully penetrate. The air was opaque, the darkness lending it substance like a haze. Picking up on some overwhelming, dusty smell, Julian placed a hand to his nose and held his breath.

  In scanning the chamber slowly, the darkness parted and gave way to a few sights. The corner nearest the door was dressed up in gossamer threads, their owners nowhere to be seen. The space did not appear large; subsequent studies into its dimensions proved it roughly the size of their master bedroom, and it terminated in a concrete wall covered by a dust-encrusted painting. A mural. It featured trees, the shadow-darkened hues of a summer sky drawn in splotchy blues, a yellow sun with a mane of golden rays and an eerily-rendered smile. It looked as though it'd been intended for a child. It hadn't been completed; some of it had gone uncolored, and there were vague outlines left behind where the artist had probably planned for more.

  Scattered across the room pell-mell were a number of abandoned fixtures; furniture, mainly. A crib, painted red, sat in two pieces against the far left corner, beside the edge of the unfinished mural. When he'd taken a thorough scan of the room, Julian lowered the flashlight and turned to Kim, offering up a relieved smile. “Doesn't look like there's anyone in here,” he said. Behind his eyes she noticed the turning of those rational gears; he was preparing to give an explanation for everything that'd transpired. “You were tired, probably saw some things. What were you doing down here, anyway?”

  She couldn't really say. She wasn't a sleepwalker, historically, but that seemed to be the only explanation that made any sense. Kim hadn't made a conscious effort to get out of bed and march down into the darkened basement. Still shuddering, she gave a little shrug and slumped against the white bricks at her side.

  Julian continued. “This door probably gave way on its own. The hinges broke down due to the humidity. The lock probably wasn't even engaged, but merely stuck. Maybe a change in temperature loosened it and it opened. The door is heavy as hell. I don't doubt that it could build some momentum and swing open under the right circumstances.” He ran a few fingers along the lock on the outside, tracing the keyhole. “Somehow I don't think there'll be closing this thing again, though. The hinges are a loss. Now that it's been opened, it'll probably have to stay that way.”

  Kim didn't like the sound of those words. Taking an unsteady step down the stairs and glancing around her, she reached out and grasped Julian's shoulder, lowering her face against his chest. Now that it's been opened, she thought, there's no going back. She couldn't say why, but now that the door had been opened, she felt some subtle change in the air. This was a space that had been closed off, hidden away, for a reason. Probably it would have been better for it to have stayed that way.

  Drying her tears on Julian's chest, she looked up at him, her eyes still teeming with fright. He comforted her, gave a warm smile. But it didn't matter. His explanation, neat and tidy though it was, couldn't account for the entire incident. There was no way this thing had opened just because of some change in humidity or atmospheric pressure. It was easy for him to say that, of course. He hadn't had the dream. He hadn't seen what she'd seen. She trembled afresh as she thought back to it; the horrible sound issuing from the other side, the savage pounding on the door. She grit her teeth, wondered how much of what she'd seen had been dream-borne fantasy and how much of it genuine.

  “Well, since we're down here, maybe we should have a look around, yeah?” said Julian, wiping at his eyes and raising the flashlight once more. He waved the light about the space, highlighting a number of doubtful shapes within. A rocking chair, the crib. He paused on the mural, looking at the trees and clouds that'd been painted there. “Can't say for sure, but this looks like it was supposed to be a baby's room.” He chuckled incredulously, panning to the ceiling and studying its cobweb-ridden surface. “Hell of a place for a nursery.”

  Looking inside, even from the threshold, made her heart skip a beat. Still, she broke away from Julian and peered through the doorway, watching as he slowly set about elucidating the room. There was some clutter to be found therein, but none of it appeared to be anything more than garbage. If the smell of the air was any indication, there was surely mold growing in some unlit corner. The air was heavy, misty, and the refuse within looked as though it'd been punished by years of humidity. Wooden furniture sagged, their pieces saturated with moisture so that they had begun to lose their shape. A changing table with a festering mat was stationed near the crib. She scowled at the sight of it. “Why is this stuff here?” she asked, looking up at Julian. “The previous owners didn't have a baby. So... so who did this stuff belong to and why did they put it here?” She glanced at the mural, its bright flourishes taking on something of odiousness in the scant light. The sun painted there seemed to grin directly at her with wide, searching eyes. “No one... no one would ever keep a baby down here, wou
ld they?”

  Julian gulped, the question apparently making him rather uncomfortable. “I dunno.” A few moments later, he added, “That's what it looks like, though. Like someone was turning this into a nursery.”

  In the other corner, to their immediate right, they found a rickety table overburdened with what appeared to be religious curios. A smashed porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary sat upon the floor beside it, while its misty surface boasted no less than a dozen others, all of different shapes. There were crucifixes, too, and a number of rosaries slung around the bases of the statues, their beads looking oily when brought to light. Something disturbed Kim as she perused them. She noticed that all of the statues had been turned away from the door, and were facing in the same direction. They were facing the corner. Why was this? She thought to remark on it but knew Julian would only try and explain it away. It wasn't a coincidence, though. Of that much she felt assured.

  There were other things in the room, things that baffled them and defied easy description. An esoteric-looking panel set into the wall, replete with two large, red switches, could be found near the table where the statues stared solemnly into the corner. Julian wasn't sure what it was for, and after toying with the switches a short time, declared it useless. “I bet it was for an appliance or something, but the wires have probably been cut or ruined. No telling what it was for back in the day.”

  Across the way, Julian zeroed in on a chipped-up dresser. As it was brought to light Kim noticed something atop it that made her take pause. “W-what's that?” she asked. Compelled by curiosity, she took a few steps into the room, reaching over an empty bassinet, towards the dresser. Her hands closed around something slick, cool. It felt almost like skin in her hands. She trembled, frowned, but picked it up all the same.

  Walking quickly to the entrance, she asked for some light and looked it over with closeness, turning it this way and that in her hands.

  It was a leather-bound book.

  Misshapen and left soggy by years of neglect in the humid space, the book featured a singular word upon its dark brown cover. “Journal”. Kim brushed off a layer of moisture and dust and examined it further, running a hand along its spine. It was in bad shape, but was still holding together.

  She decided to bring it upstairs with her. There was no telling what she'd find in it, but the prospect of reading a journal or diary left behind by someone in this mysterious little chamber filled her both with hope and unease. As she looked to the stairs and considered ascending with the book in tow, she very nearly cast it back into the dark room. The leather-bound volume felt unclean in her hands, and deep down she wondered if she wouldn't be happier without it. But instead, she gripped it tightly, holding back the impulse. This was her only lead, her lifeline. Maybe, in these pages, she'd find something about the previous owners. Some hint about where they'd disappeared to eight years ago.

  Julian yawned and switched off the flashlight. “What a bust,” he said, trying to inject a little levity. “And here I was, expecting a stockpile of treasure or something.” He stepped back and tried to close the door, only managing to do so part of the way before the edge of the thing ground into the floor and came to a halt. It was still half-open. The door was so heavy and stubborn that it could not possibly have moved on its own as he'd earlier tried to explain. But that didn't much matter to him. Patting his hands against his sweatpants, he looked to the stairs. “Mind if we head back to bed now?”

  She nodded, and the pair ascended to the kitchen. Kim switched off the cellar light and closed the door, stealing one last glance down the stairs as she did so. There was nothing there, but she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. Julian wasn't focused on her, but was leaning over the sink, guzzling a glass of water. When the door closed behind her, the feeling subsided. There was something in that basement. I saw it. I saw that white hand. I know it.

  “So, what were you doing down there again?” he asked, stretching.

  Still at a loss for an explanation, Kim decided to lie. It would be more believable than the reality, anyway. “I, uh... I came down for a drink of water and thought I heard something in the basement. When I saw the door down there had opened, well, I freaked out and... must've been seeing things.”

  But that hadn't been the case at all. Waking up out of an awful dream, she'd found herself inexplicably in the cellar, the door closed behind her, standing in the darkness and shaking. Then, upon switching on the light, she'd found the secret door had opened, and had seen something scurrying away from the newly-unfastened entrance across the floor. Something inhuman, terrible. She'd caught only a glimpse, but it'd been sufficient to set her screaming. No rational explanation could ever make her doubt what she'd seen in that cellar. Just because Julian's brief search of the basement yielded nothing didn't mean that she'd simply hallucinated it. It'd gone under the stairs and seemingly vanished. Perhaps it'd just hidden itself away, or maybe it'd disappeared into the ether, into the very stuff of the house itself.

  Whatever the case, it'd been real. And whenever she thought about it, she couldn't stop herself from shuddering.

  She placed the water-stained journal upon the kitchen counter. Then, taking a sip of water, she joined Julian in returning to bed. The pair settled in, pulled up the covers and tried to return to sleep. Though he tossed and turned some, the disturbance likely affecting his nerves, Julian managed without too much trouble and was snoring in no time. For Kim, restful sleep proved elusive.

  She relaxed in the darkness, eyes closed, but mind ever-moving. Could she trust herself to go back to sleep? Would her body betray her, take her to some other frightening place where she would wake up and suffer another awful scare?

  Hesitantly, she slipped back into an uneasy sleep. As she drifted off, the leather-bound journal came to mind. She wondered what she would find in it as her consciousness eroded and sleep washed over her.

  Chapter 2

  It wasn't until Julian set out to cut the grass that Kim began to leaf through the journal.

  They'd shared a quick breakfast. She hadn't said anything about the book, had worked hard not to allude to it, for fear of ruining the mood. Still, she'd stolen many a longing glance at the musty volume as it sat upon the counter. When finally he'd finished his oatmeal and emptied half a carton's worth of orange juice, he announced his intent to try out their new mower and went out in his pajamas. The yard was massive, sprawling, and it would take him a good, long while to get it done to his exacting specifications.

  Now was the time.

  No sooner had Julian walked out the back door, humming to himself, did Kim rush from her seat over to the counter. She grabbed up the book and held it closely as though it were a treasure, before returning to the kitchen table and setting it out on the table before her. It'd dried up a little in the night, and the dark leather appeared puckered in the corners. It was in an awful state, worse than she remembered it, but she hoped that its contents might still prove legible.

  Slowly, carefully, as to test its strength, she pulled back the front cover. The material tensed and the volume as a whole trembled as if under strain, but the stiff cover finally gave and she appraised the pages for the first time. Running her hands against the weather-beaten paper, the edges of most pages frayed, she felt an immediate rush of nausea. It was mainly owed, she told herself, to a surging doubt that anything in the threadbare journal should have survived. Anything that'd been written there would probably be a blurred, unreadable mass thanks to the water damage.

  But there was something more to it.

  Her stomach flopped with unease, giving the spiced oatmeal in her gut quite the ride. As she touched the page, tasted that air that rose up from it, with its vaguely mildewy smell, she couldn't help but feel that it was an awful thing, an odious thing that she needed quickly to rid herself of. She could only guess at what might be stored on its pages, but it occurred to her that more knowledge about the previous owners would only see her grow more obsessed with them. Perhaps J
ulian was right in his nonchalance. He didn't care about those people, didn't pay them any mind. He berated her for her intense interest, tried to steer her away from her focus on the vanished couple. He thought her fascination with them to be unhealthy, something that would only contribute to her stress and recent jumpiness. Maybe he was onto something.

  Nevertheless, as she bit her lower lip almost to the point of drawing blood, she slid a fingernail behind the first page, a blank, and turned it. The ancient paper was not much in the habit of turning, the stiff page crinkling and resisting on its moist binding like a large, dead leaf. On the center of this first page, Kim discovered a blurred bit of writing. A name.

  She read it out aloud, tracing the elegant, though smudged lettering, with her finger. “Dakota.”

  Her heart quivered in her chest, her pulse quickened.

  This was Dakota's journal.

  The former lady of the house.

  One of the two individuals who'd disappeared.

  Kim planted her feet against the tacky linoleum floor and glanced around the kitchen, half-expecting to see someone there with her. The feeling of being watched that'd so plagued her last night in the cellar had returned with remarkable force. She was being pressured, cajoled into something. Looking down at the book and carefully turning to the next crumbling page seemed to be the only thing she could do to allay it. A bit of dust was thrown into the air with the flipping of the page, causing her to sneeze.

  This page, like the next several, would prove impossible to read. Though there would be numerous words she could make out along the way, or dates that hadn't been eroded by the years of humidity, it was impossible for her to make out anything of meaning in the passages. The earliest legible date in the journal was from 1973. Before Kim had even been born. It was strange to think that this journal had been started before her own parents had met. She took to flipping through it more quickly, seeking out a paragraph, a sentence she could make sense of.