The Amber Light (Black Acres Book 3) Read online

  Tearfully she knocked the phone from his grasp and tugged on the ends of his jacket. “No, please... let's... let's just go, please.” Her bangs were matted to her face by sweat and tears, the black strands standing out harshly against her porcelain-colored skin. Her eyes were swimming in their sockets, red and wide. She would pause now and then to glance around the room, or out the kitchen window, as if she expected doom to fall upon them at any moment.

  Gritting his teeth, Julian followed her to the door. “We can talk about this on our way out, I guess,” he said. “If you're right and someone is coming here, then there's no use in us wasting time. Come on.” He let her out of the house first into the cool day and hurriedly set to locking the door. From there, they started across the lawn to the gravel driveway where their sedan was parked. Unlocking it, Julian did a quick walk around its perimeter to make sure no one was hiding there and then opened the passenger-side door. Kim jumped in. As he lingered outside the vehicle, scanning the woods and surrounding areas for signs of the promised threat, Julian was baffled. He scratched at his head and frowned. There was no sign of anyone, anything. It looked like a pleasant, ordinary day out. He considered calling the whole thing off, coaxing her back out of the car and into the house, but knew her terror could not be assuaged. Dropping his hands to his sides, he resigned to placate her and hopped into the driver's seat.

  Kim was shuddering, putting on her seatbelt and fidgeting terribly. Her sandals clicked against the floor mat and she divided her worried glances between the windshield and the passenger-side window. Clutching her seatbelt, she watched as Julian put the key in the ignition. “Please, hurry,” she whispered breathlessly.

  He gave the key a turn.

  The two of them startled at the discordant grinding that issued from the engine. Julian gulped, looking out across the hood with a furrowed brow. “What the hell?” He turned the key again, but the result was the same. A grinding and clicking sound that was anything but a proper ignition.

  Something was wrong.

  Digging her nails into her knees, Kim looked over, face white and lips trembling. “What are you doing? Why aren't you starting it?”

  He shook his head, grimacing. “It's not me. There's... there's something wrong with the engine.”

  Kim slumped back, her limbs going slack like wet noodles. “What do you mean?” Suddenly reaching out to him, she gave him a hard shake and screamed. “Start it! Start the damn thing, Julian! Get us out of here, now! Please, do it!”

  He shook her off. “Jesus, just calm down, will you?” He tried a third time to start the car. This time, the engine made even less noise. Julian threw up his hands. “Engine is shot. I don't know what's going on.” He shook his head, gave her a solemn look. “Sorry, babe. We aren't going anywhere in this thing.”

  Looking positively defeated, Kim didn't even cry. She sat back, breathing heavily and trying to keep herself upright. Julian shuffled out of the car and popped the hood. He did it mostly to please her, and she knew it. He'd never been much of a mechanic. After some time, he slammed the thing down and shrugged to her through the windshield. He didn't know what was wrong and there was probably no way for him to fix it out here. They were effectively stranded.

  After several minutes of coaxing, Julian finally managed to lure Kim out of the vehicle. She sobbed, deflated, and crumpled in his arms. Despite his reassurances that he'd stop his renovation work for the day and remain vigilant, relief was not forthcoming. He offered to call the police, but each time she refused. The police could offer no protection from this. “Tell me what's wrong, who's coming?” he asked again and again. “I can't help you if I don't know what to expect!” But every time, she evaded. Kim herself didn't know what to expect, or when. What form this thing would take, what time it would make its move, if ever, was a mystery to her. Before long, her refusal to discuss the matter had Julian well-convinced that this entire episode had merely been a nervous breakdown, not at all rooted in reality.

  He all but dragged her into the house, sitting her down at the kitchen table and starting up some tea. From the couch he fetched a blanket, which he draped over her shoulders. Drying her tears and wrapping her in a warm embrace, he assured her constantly that everything was fine, and he accepted the blame for her condition. “I'm sorry,” said Julian, “it's all my fault, this. I should've made an effort to get out more. I can see that this isolation has been hard on you. It's been hard on me, too, but as soon as we're able, I promise we'll go out. I'll call a mechanic out here first thing tomorrow morning, have someone drop off a rental car, OK? A nice trip, a few days, even. How does that sound?” He poured these and other assurances into her ear like a sweet syrup, but she was left only with bitterness in the end. It was too late for such talk. Night was coming, and she had an awful feeling about what laid in store.

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

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

  Kim frightened him.

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

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

  These were the only comforts he could afford her.

  But it was pointless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  That was what she told herself.

  Chapter 10

  She awoke with a start.

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

  A creak sounded from the upstairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She did not make it much farther, however.

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

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

  Then another.

  Another.

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

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

  And it wasn't Dakota.

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

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

  It was coming.

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

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

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

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

  Dakota. It could be no one else.

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