Black Acres- The Complete Collection Read online

  “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.

  Twenty-Five

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Somehow, she didn't really want to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  There was nothing in the closet.

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

  Dakota's journal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Twenty-Six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Someone picked up.

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

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

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

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