Pinebrook: A Dark and Bloody Ground

Chapter One

Bucklick

September 12, 2016

It had been three weeks since Abigail’s mother went missing.

Four weeks since Abigail had received a letter.

Her neighbors reported her missing two weeks ago in the late Kentucky summer.

Neighbors tend to mind their own business in Pinebrook but once the smell permeated into the house next door, they made it their business. They found the door smashed open. They went up to the bedroom to find the bed had been moved. An old, tufted chair laid backwards. The stench of death was so strong in the bedroom, it was gut wrenching.

She had been gone for at least two weeks and no one the wiser.

Abigail received a phone call from the Aster County police informing her of the search party in the woods behind the property but they had given up within a week. Only an emerald necklace with a silver chain lay on the nightstand. She would have never left it. Her mother was unwell, she told Officer Stanson defiantly, at first, filled with disbelief.

“Wandering off was a possibility” Stanson said sympathetically but the tone in his voice stated differently, “However that does not explain the breaking and entering. Nor does it explain the smell, and no body has been found. Your mother is likely dead, Ms. Payne.”

“Fuck!” she slammed down her phone on a cushion and took a shaky breath. Smokey, a gray and white cat sleeping on the corner of the couch startled awake and stretched. His green eyes fixated on her. Like her mother’s eyes.

Her mother was a tall, beautiful woman with fiery curls, lush green eyes, and freckled, porcelain skin. Foul play could have been possible. A twinge of guilt and acid rose in her stomach.

Abigail had been estranged from her mother for three years. Annabelle was cruel. Often whipping Abigail with brooms, ladles, switches, whatever was in her hand at the time. Abigail would feel the brunt of her mother’s wrath through these objects. Left to whimper in the corner for hours at a time.

Her mother had tried to extend an olive branch four years ago. “The land we always wanted,” the text said.

She did not wish to return to Pinebrook but arrangements had to be made.

Chapter Two

Pinebrook

September 13, 2016

Abigail arranged the electricity and internet not to be cut and moved some of her items to a storage unit. She would be going back to Pinebrook to stay for a while. She packed clothes and the basics that she would need. Pinebrook was a small, dry, but alcohol and meth-addled town. The trip would take a couple hours.

The drive from Bucklick was uneventful aside from two noisy cats in separate carriers and an antsy dog. Abigail exhaled sharply at the thought of returning to Pinebrook and to the residence her mother took after they grew apart.

Pinebrook was only a brief home for her, her mother and her had bounced all around Kentucky, they scraped by here and there as her mother jumped from job to job. Annabelle often went periods without work.

There were letters, half went unopened. Ripped out of a notebook and stuffed in envelopes. The ramblings of her mother seeing shadows in the hallway as she laid in bed, a child’s laughter, footsteps while reading in the manor’s den. She had blocked her mother’s phone number three years ago. The onslaught of texts and phone calls in the middle of the night became too much. She would no longer give into her mother’s delusions or have them in her own mind.

Just ahead was a small green sign with the bolded letters, ’Aster County.’ She took a deep breath and exhaled again but that did not stop the jolting in her heart. Once she made it to the property, it was around 6:45. There, stood her mother’s neighbor in the driveway with a baseball cap in one hand and a beer can in the other, holding a cigarette between two of his fingers.

“How ya doin’?” the older man smiled friendlily as she exited her car. His dark, gaunt face grew cracks around the corners of his mouth and next to his small, blue eyes.

“Fine... how-how about you?” she stammered.

“Good. I’m sorry about your mother. I didn’t know her but I’m sure she was a good woman,” he says; his mind made up about her mother’s fate.

If only you knew the half of it, she thought to herself.

“My name is Jerry. Now, I’m sure you don’t want to be staying in that house with the smell but there’s a trailer on the property,” he trailed off for a moment and shook his head, the smell of beer invading her nostrils, “I got the keys right here. She had no next of kin nearby so we padlocked the door and took all the keys or half the county would be carrying off whatever had the chance of copper in it.”

He handed her a torn sheet of paper with a number on it, “They’re good, my wife swears by ’em; carpet cleaners, they should get the smell right outta there. Well, I guess that’s that, if you need anything, I’m across the holler. And, I’m sorry about your mama.”

She nodded as he handed her the keys and hurried off. Mama, that’s what she called her, Mama, please, don’t hit me with that.

Abigail looked at the manor in front of her and sighed. It stood tall, graying white, columns overtaken with ivy and a shingled black roof. Thickets of yellow rose bushes grew above the porch banisters. The front door and frame had been ravaged by deep gashes. It looked like someone had attacked it with an ax.

There would be a lot of work to do before letting the property go. She could smell death in the breeze. She would not be stepping foot into the manor for some time despite Jerry’s complaint.

Going back to the car, she took her dog into her arms. He was a small, shaggy, black and white mutt named Chester that been had adopted from the pound. He had a crooked jaw, leaving half of his bottom teeth permanently visible. Leaving the car door open, she walked across a small field to the trailer. Passing a decrepit barn on the way. The trailer was fairly new in the background of the old and dilapidated structures.

Chester was whining in her arms, no doubt that he had to pee. She sat him down. He sniffed the ground with his tail tucked and walked back between her feet.

A small bunny darted out from behind the trailer and she felt something warm soak through her shoe. It took her attention from the rabbit and down to her dog. He had peed where he was standing. “It was just a rabbit,” she grumbled.

She shook her foot dripping of urine and walked up the steps to the door. She unlocked the trailer and Chester ran in. She slipped off her soaked shoe and stepped inside, colorful was the word best to describe it. It had already been furnished with some of her mother’s amenities and definitely someone else’s.

Was this rental property? she questioned herself.

Chester ran under the coffee table as she looked around, there were three large dream catchers on the wall. Two smaller ones with a larger one in the middle, decorated with faux suede, opulent feathers and a rainbow of glass beads. The outer two were red and the one in the middle; purple.

The couch was red with a colorful granny square blanket draped across the back and there was a brown La-Z-Boy in the corner. The coffee table had a remote to a tv neatly sitting beside a small statue of Buddha. An ashtray sat on the other side full of cigarette butts and ashes. The walls were painted a navy blue. Bamboo beaded curtains decorated yellowed-white drapes.

She left Chester to wander and walked back across the field with a socked foot to retrieve the cats. She looked out at the barn again in the distance from the car, but her curiosity would get the better of her tomorrow. For now, she had to get her and her pets settled in.

She took out a pair of brown hiking boots from a garbage bag in the backseat and pulled off her mud-soaked sock. Gathering the mewling cats, she made her way back to the trailer. She sat the now silent cats on the floor and removed her boots.

She wandered through the dimly lit hallway until she found a light switch. From there she went to the bathroom and straight to the bedroom. The bedroom was clean and tidy. She expected to stay at the Days Inn, but the trailer would do.

She let the cats out of their pens and they scattered under the couch. Chester stood there with a paw up and his tail tucked, staring at her. Must be the new place jitters, she thought to herself.

She was pulling folded clothes from the bags onto the bed as the sun was setting, she had an interview with a local clinic that Monday so she had time to settle into her temporary residence. She did not know when she would return to Bucklick or if she’d return. Leaving Kentucky altogether sounded good to her.

She took what looked like her mother’s clothes out of the dresser drawers and noticed a man’s tie-dyed shirt underneath. Then another and another. She stuffed them into the wrinkled garbage bags and sat them in the corner of the room. This would be her bedroom for the foreseeable future.

The next drawer contained a swath of candles, bundled herbs, crystals, and a pinnacle charm. She closed it, not further disturbing its contents.

She went back to the car to retrieve the pet supplies but neither the cats nor the dog showed an interest in food.

It was around 10:30 when she went to bed. The cats had yet to be seen and Chester curled up against her feet under a blue and white mandala comforter. The purple walls lulled her into sleep.