In Darkness (Black Acres Book 4)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  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 a
nd, 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.