“What's going on?” demanded Julian as he rushed in through the back door. He was carrying a plate of freshly-grilled steaks and nearly dropped it as he caught sight of Kim on the floor.
She glanced up at him blearily. Julian was alone. It'd been him opening the door; the masked figure was nowhere in sight. Crawling towards him on hands and knees, she clawed her way up his pant leg like a frightened cat and thrust a shaking finger at the door. “Close it!” she screamed.
Julian did as he was told, quickly shutting the door and fastening the bolt. He glanced around nervously, taking her into his arms and guiding her over to the table. “What happened, babe? Have a seat.” Setting down the plate of food he worked a hand through his sandy hair and let out a sigh. His thin arms were trembling. “You scared the hell out of me,” he said. “I was just outside, tending to the grill. Then, when I came in, you screamed. What happened?”
Kim hadn't even had a chance to catch her breath yet, but it was clear there would be no explaining herself. From the plate of steaks she plucked up a sharp grill utensil and jumped out of her chair, stomping towards the window and glancing outside. The scenery was darker now than it'd been even a few moments before. Night was settling in fast.
Still, there was no sign of the masked figure. He would have stood out like a sore thumb, would have been impossible to miss had he been there. No matter how long she waited, no matter how frenziedly she scanned the yard however, there was no sign of him. Shaking, she dropped the utensil into the sink and slumped against the basin, reaching for her stomach and very nearly throwing up. Julian was upon her at once, holding her by the shoulders as her legs began to give.
“Kim, you're scaring me. What's going on?”
She sucked in a deep breath and tried to steady her voice through the tears. “I... I saw someone outside this window just now,” she managed through grit teeth. She dried her tears against his t-shirt and stole a nervous glance out the window. Still, there was no one out there.
Julian shook his head. “No, babe, I was just out there grilling, I told you that. I was all alone out there, I'm sure of it. If someone had come that close to the house, then I would've seen 'em.”
“No,” she pressed. “No, I'm sure it wasn't you. They were wearing a mask, Julian. A white, plaster mask. And dark clothing. It wasn't you. I'm certain.”
Biting his lip, Julian reached behind her and tugged the short curtains closed, blocking out their view of the back yard. Sighing, he paced before her for a moment, rubbing at his brow and growing red-faced. He wanted to comfort her, but it was clear he was exceedingly annoyed by this outburst. “Honey, I'm telling you... I... I've been out there more than a half hour now. All alone, by the grill. Your nerves have been shot lately and you probably thought you saw something, but looking out that window I don't see a damn thing. Just calm down, have a sit and we can talk about it. Please?” He gave her a searching gaze, extending a hand towards one of the kitchen chairs she'd knocked out of place during her fall.
Kim felt betrayed. He doesn't believe me. Why the hell doesn't he believe me? She fought back a fresh wave of tears, shaking her head. “I know what I saw,” she muttered. Though, the more she reflected on it, the less she could blame him for not believing her. She was sick and tired of his not putting stock into her fears about the property, but when monumental freak-outs like this one yielded no proof on later inspection, how could she fault him for his skepticism? In his position she may not have believed him, either. Still, it stung to be on the receiving end every time. He refused to take her seriously and she didn't feel as though she could rely on anyone. Julian was going to treat her like she was crazy until she actually did go crazy.
“Please,” he said, marching to the table and sitting down, hands folded. “Just knock it off. You've been too high strung lately. You've been dreaming up problems where they don't exist, babe. We left the city to avoid stress, but now here we are freaking out over nothing. Not exactly relaxing, is it?” He sighed. “And you scared the hell out of me. I thought you were hurt, that you...” He shook his head and trailed off, looking up at the ceiling. His jaw tensed in annoyance.
“I'm sorry,” she mumbled, pursing her lips. Kim gulped and approached the table, taking the seat across from his. “Just... just hear me out though, won't you?”
But Julian wasn't looking at her. His gaze had been drawn instead to the weather-beaten journal on the table. His face had grown a deeper shade of red at its sighting and with a terrible scowl he blasted the tabletop with his fist. “And now what the hell is this?” he barked, reaching for the volume. “Did you take this out of the basement? Is this what has you all worked up and seeing ghosts and shit?” He squeezed the journal so hard between his hands that he shook.
“It's... it's Dakota's journal. It belonged to Dakota Reed, one of the people who lived here before us,” she tried to explain. “I know you're not interested in this, but I've learned some really weird things and--”
Julian wasn't much interested in her explanations, however. “You know what? The only weird thing here is your fascination with these people. They're dead and gone and it has nothing to do with us. Let it go already! All you're doing is causing problems for us by filling your head with this bullshit!” He stood up and opened the book, wrenching it in two with a grimace and throwing it across the room, where it landed in pieces near the trash bin. Pages fell out of it as it sailed through the air, littering the floor. Livid, he stormed out of the kitchen and went upstairs without another word.
Kim heard the bedroom door slam a short while later. She didn't see him again till the next morning. Carefully, and with tears stabbing at her eyes, she crossed the room and gathered up the broken book, tucking the pages one by one into some semblance of order. She clutched the thing to her chest and placed it neatly inside a kitchen drawer, obscuring it with dish towels.
She understood Julian's frustration. She almost couldn't blame him for blowing up at her.
But she wasn't through with the journal yet. In a little while, perhaps when this had blown over, she'd dive back in. She had no choice. The book called to her, and she knew that Dakota still had a good deal to share with her.
She spent the night laying on the sofa, her phone playing soft music until the battery died.
Eighteen
She awoke to someone nudging her in the shoulder. Opening her eyes, she found Julian standing near the edge of the sofa, shoving a small thermos into her hands and urging her up. “Come on, let's get out for a bit,” he said.
She stared up at him groggily, working a few tangles out of her black hair and yawning. “What's happening?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “I just think the two of us could use some fresh air. I want to go for a long walk, get out of the house for a little while. That's all.”
Shrugging, Kim sought out her hooded sweatshirt and threw it on. She ambled upstairs for a pair of jeans and then brushed her teeth before joining him at the back door.
The daylight was bright; how long she'd slept she couldn't be sure. She hadn't gotten a look at the clock. The day was chill, and a persistent breeze played across the sunlit landscape. The day was a curious marriage of warmth and ice, the sunlight providing ample heat but the wind stealing it away with every gust. She slipped the thermos into her front pocket and cradled it in her hands, following behind Julian with her head low and her eyes still bleary. It'd been a rough night. She'd slept a long, dreamless sleep and felt drained for it. Her head hurt and her memories of the previous night were grainy.
For his part, Julian seemed apologetic. “Sorry about last night,” he said. “I handled things poorly. But I want to make it right. And a day hiking the woods is exactly what we need.” He wrenched open his own thermos and took a small gulp of hot coffee. Zipping his jacket all the way up, he led them across the yard to the edge of the woods, offering a little smile. “You know, we haven't really explored the woods yet. You excited?”
At this, Kim's eyes shot wide op
en. They were going into the woods? She looked to the wall of dark, tall columns, the grooves standing out like stark crevasses, and shuddered. “Honestly? No.” And it was no lie. She'd follow him into the woods, if only to prove to herself that they were ordinary and that there was nothing to fear in them, but she couldn't even pretend to be excited about it. She'd seen and heard too many things out of these woods to want to spend time there. She was thankful for the sunshine, at least. “I guess it's about as good a day for it as any.”
Julian nodded. He knew that she was bothered by the prospect of hiking in the woods. This was likely just his way of making her face her fears. “Immersion therapy”, or something. “Hard to believe we've already been here more than a month, huh? Time flies,” he said.
Had it really been a month already? In recent days Kim hadn't much noticed the passage of time. And now, as they walked, she was less and less interested in his small-talk. The forest that rose ahead was a terrifying prospect. The bit of dead or dying grass that served to delineate the boundary between the field and the woods was striking to her. She felt herself approaching the borderland between familiarity and utter chaos. What would happen when they set foot on the other side of that border? Would they ever make it out again?
Slowly, as they stepped into the woods and left the house far behind, a subdued darkness began to fall over them. The towering trees, bald though they were, obscured the sunlight so that it fell in dribs and drabs. These woods, she thought, accumulated shadows just like the rooms in the house. It was the same darkness she'd witnessed there, substantial, and she was comforted little at the comparison. Everything in this area seemed bathed in the same darkness. The forest floor was mainly dirt. Here and there pockets of sparse grass or moss would turn up, but mostly she saw stretches of soft, flat earth and rocks. Weeds were precious few, and where they did occur they did so with great frailty, sticking out of the ground in thin tangles and limited in their proliferation, perhaps by the shade of the surrounding trees. The deeper they went, the more Kim felt herself wading in an ocean of shadow. It was like these woods were topped by a semi-transparent canopy, filtering the light and reducing it to a shadowed powder. She frowned, her nose accosted by a peppery earthiness, and found it harder to breathe here. It's like the shadows are a part of the air... like you're breathing them in.
“Can't wait to get started on that kitchen. I feel like we've been putting it off. But when I finally get started I'm going to rip out those cabinets and that flooring in one go. Just you wait. It's going to look like a million bucks when I'm through with it.” Julian talked on and on for a while about their renovation plans, however such things couldn't have been further from her mind. She didn't care about prettying up the house anymore. It could have been decked out in gold bricks and she still wouldn't have been happy there. Something was wrong with the property, and until she knew what it was and tried to set it right, she'd never be comfortable.
In order to keep from hyperventilating, she motioned to the woods around them and paused, looking upward. Since entering the woods, she hadn't heard a damn thing but their footsteps. There were no birdcalls, no frogs or insects ringing out. It was dread, pestilential silence, amplified to a disquieting degree. The sounds they generated in their advance seemed out of place, giving the overwhelming impression that this was not a space made for humankind. Their feet had never been intended to tread this stretch of forest. She broke up the silence with a question, recalling as she did so what Edwin had said on the matter. “Why do you think these trees are all dead? What's up with these woods? I haven't heard any birds, either.” She remembered Edwin saying something about how the woods had always been this way, and that he'd never seen a deer pass through them in all his decades living in the area.
He turned to her in a flash, sporting an exaggerated grimace and wide eyes. “It's because the ground is sour!” He laughed to himself, but when she didn't share his amusement he sighed and offered up a more serious response. “Well, I don't know a whole lot about trees, but maybe the soil here just isn't rich enough for them to grow. And... maybe the local birds all migrated or something. It is getting colder out.”
Kim arched a brow, shooting him a sidelong glance. “Man, you're a regular outdoorsman. A naturalist and a scholar.” She rolled her eyes. “When I was out with Edwin he told me a little bit about these woods. It doesn't make sense. The trees in the yard and in front of the house all have leaves. These woods, though... Edwin said that the trees out here have always looked this way and that he's never seen animals come through.”
“Huh,” replied Julian, giving his thermos a swirl.
Annoyed, Kim continued. “Of course, that doesn't explain the noise we heard coming out of here the other night. You remember that?”
At this, Julian twitched a little. He'd obviously worked hard to put it out of his mind, but now that the memory of that night had been roused, he didn't care to revisit it. “That...” He cleared his throat. “Just because he's never seen an animal come through doesn't mean that they never come through. I mean, maybe someone shot a bear and it staggered through here, wounded. Ever think of that?” He gulped, chasing his ever-mounting dread with a sip of coffee. His unease was written all over his face however. If the darting of his eyes past each and every dark trunk they passed was any indication, then he was having second thoughts about strolling through these woods where only a few nights back they'd heard that cacophonous, nightmarish cry.
Kim tasted her coffee, but it clashed with the aftertaste of her toothpaste so that she nearly spit it out. Screwing the lid back on, she looked somberly at the stretch ahead of them, at the unchanging, dim scenery. It was one tree after another, after another, with the rare lump of moss or sprig of grass to break up the monotony. Hiking along this flat, tree-infested land was about the dullest thing she could think of.
They'd been out just a half hour when Kim decided she wanted to stop for a break. The taste of her toothpaste had faded and her mind demanded caffeine. At first, she'd leaned against a tree to support herself, but the moment her back touched the rocky, ashen bark, she gave a jolt and ambled away from it. It didn't feel right. Sucking down a few mouthfuls of coffee, she peered around them, growing uncomfortable as though they were standing in the midst of a huge crowd. Their words, their movements; it was almost like they were being witnessed, monitored. The trees, then, were the eavesdroppers. “Not much to see out here,” she said, grimacing.
Julian smoothed out a blonde cowlick and set his thermos down on the ground, stretching. “Yeah, well, I never expected it to be the greatest hike of our lives. Just figured we should get out here and have a look around now that we live here.”
“How long do these woods go on for?” she asked.
Julian shrugged. “There's no telling, really. A long way, I'm sure. Longer than I care to walk, anyhow.”
She was ready to ask him if they could just return home when something caught her eye amidst the mess of trees. They'd passed it by without noticing, but something in the way it dully reflected the sunlight from this angle brought it into view. It was tall as any of the trees and nearly as wide. It seemed to stretch twenty or thirty feet into the air and its sides were worked into brownish, rusted grooves. It terminated in a clear bubble, which threw off the natural light.
“What is that?” she asked, walking over to it. The closer she got, the more she could make out. It had a wide base, about two feet across, and was well-planted into the ground. It looked like some sort of streetlight, but was far stockier than those she knew from the city. Its presence in this endless mess of trees was baffling. Approaching it, she ran a hand against its ruddy exterior, shivering as it proved colder than she'd expected.
Julian wasn't far behind. He glanced up at the thing, appraising it for a moment, before answering her. “Well, it's a light of some sort, obviously.”
Kim smacked him in the arm. “You think? But... what is it for? What is it doing all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere?
”
Walking about its perimeter, Julian studied it. It was plain in design, uniformly grooved and giving no clues as to its operation. There were no buttons or switches to be seen, no cords extending from it. Nothing. It was a large, metal pole sticking out of the ground, topped by a small glass dome. “I dunno, but let's see if I can't figure it out.” Walking up to the thing, Julian threw his hands around it as best he could manage, planted his fingers in the grooves, and attempted to climb it. He had some difficulty at first, but made some headway after making a small jump. He was nearly a third of the way up when he slid back down, wincing. He'd earned a small cut on his hand from a piece of rusty metal. “No worries,” he said with a grin. “Pretty sure my Tetanus is up to date.” He patted his hands on his jeans and nursed his cut. “I only got up there a little ways, but there's no telling what it's for or how you turn it on. It's a light, that's all I can say. Maybe... maybe they used to do work out here in the woods and needed light. Or maybe, you know, they used it to make signals.”
“Signals for what?”
“Well, there's no telling how old it is. If it's from World War Two or something, it could've been a military thing. You know? Maybe that's why they call it the Beacon estate, eh?” He was pleased with himself, grinning ear to ear. Julian picked up his thermos and opened it, peering inside and searching for a few more drops. “It's rusted up and isn't likely to work anyhow, so who cares? Let's keep going.”
Kim didn't put too much thought towards the fixture and followed Julian soon thereafter, but as they walked, she wondered about the thing and whether or not it was still functional. If so, then they could possibly turn it on and find out what its purpose was. Turning back to glance at it one last time as they went, she stifled a shudder. She felt, for some reason, that it was a thing best left to obscurity.
Black Acres- The Complete Collection Page 11