Midnight Is My Time

by Mike Dellosso

  MIDNIGHT IS MY TIME BY MIKE DELLOSO

  Published by Lamplighter Suspense

  an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas

  2333 Barton Oaks Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614

  ISBN: 978-1-946016-45-4

  Copyright © 2018 by Mike Dellosso

  Cover design by Elaina Lee

  Interior design by AtriTeX Technologies P Ltd

  Available in print from your local bookstore, online, or from the publisher at: ShopLPC.com

  For more information on this book and the author, visit: MikeDellossoBooks.com

  All rights reserved. Noncommercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, provided the text does not exceed 500 words. When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line: “Midnight is My Time by Mike Dellosso published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Used by permission.”

  Commercial interests: No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are all products of the author’s imagination or are used for fictional purposes. Any mentioned brand names, places, and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, bear no association with the author or the publisher, and are used for fictional purposes only.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

  Brought to you by the creative team at Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas (LPCBooks.com): Eddie Jones, Publisher; Shonda Savage, Production Manager; Darla Crass, Managing Editor; General Editor, Denise Loock.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dellosso, Mike

  Midnight Is My Time/Mike Dellosso 1st ed.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For the loves of my life:

  Jen, Laura, Abby, Caroline, Elizabeth, and Nora

  Acknowledgments

  First, I’d like to thank my God for giving me the opportunity to write books. It is a blessing and responsibility I don’t take lightly.

  I’d like to give thanks to my wife and daughters who inspire me and encourage me. They make every day worth waking up to.

  Big thanks must go to my editors, Darla Crass and Denise Loock, special ladies who do a marvelous job of polishing and buffing and making a story even better.

  Thanks to Eddie and Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas for having such an amazing vision. The heart that beats within this publishing house is what drew me to them.

  And lastly, where would I be without my readers? Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting me over this past decade of writing books. You keep me going. Really.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  A Gift for You

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  Chapter 1

  The diner was nothing special, nothing to take note of, nothing to remember beyond this moment. One in probably a couple thousand just like it hidden in small towns across the barren landscape. To the locals, it was a reprieve from a day’s worth of toil and a chance to connect and catch up on gossip and news. And to the occasional journeyman looking for an inexpensive meal and place to rest his road-weary legs, it was an oasis.

  And Andy Mayer needed an oasis.

  He glanced around the place from his booth by the door. He didn’t even know where he was, but it was definitely a mining town. Weren’t most of them nowadays? Somewhere in central Pennsylvania, he supposed. It all looked the same since The Event. Dirt, rocks, dust, and a few anemic trees clinging to life, stretching their scrawny branches skyward like captives begging for food.

  Andy removed his Stetson and sat it on the seat next to him. Already the locals were staring. It was one thing to be a stranger, a whole different animal being a freak too.

  To his left was the counter, topped with polished Formica and lined with vinyl-upholstered stools. Behind that, the sounds and smells of a busy kitchen. Pots rattled and clanged; the grill sizzled and spit. Two booths away, a red-haired kid with a dirty face and buckteeth watched Andy with wide eyes. His mother ordered him to turn around. Didn’t he know it wasn’t polite to stare? She gave Andy a sheepish smile of apology and averted her eyes.

  Finally, the waitress came and set a menu in front of him.

  “Here ya go, sugar. Anything to drink?”

  He didn’t miss the hesitation in her voice and the pity in her eyes when she looked him in the face. Or was it disgust? Hard to tell the difference. She was a busty woman, middle-aged with big hair, long lashes. Her nametag said “Cindy.”

  Andy had noticed the drill outside behind the diner. The joint had fresh water from a real subterranean spring. Not many did anymore. “Big glass of your water, please,” he said. He lowered his head so she didn’t have to look at him.

  “Wonderful. I’ll give ya a couple minutes to look that menu over and be right back.” She turned and walked away, her wide hips swinging side to side like a grandfather clock’s pendulum.

  Andy opened the menu and studied the options. If the smell of the kitchen already had his stomach rumbling, the description of the meals in the menu tied it in knots. The fried chicken platter looked good. He’d get extra biscuits.

  Cindy returned with a tall glass of clear water and placed it in front of him. “There ya go. Where ya from?”

  Andy stared at the glass. It’d been weeks since he’d seen water that clear. “Kentucky.”

  She glanced at the Stetson on the seat next to him. “You a cowboy?”

  “Was one.” Five years ago, Andy Mayer had stumbled upon the Circle K ranch in southern Kentucky. It was a good place to bury himself, to avoid the prying eyes of society, and to get lost in the land of horses. But as it always did, trouble found him, this time in the form of Dean Shannon. A week ago, Andy stuffe
d a duffel bag with clothes and left, started walking northeast. He had no idea why it was north and east other than the fact that he felt pulled there like metal to a magnet. At first, he’d tried to resist, tried for three days. He’d always wanted to go west, and in fact had set out toward St. Louis, but each day the pull had grown stronger until eventually he could no longer defy it. He had to obey, follow the path of least resistance. He didn’t know where he was headed, didn’t know when he’d reach his destination; he only knew he had to keep moving, had to head northeast.

  “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  He shrugged. “Not much of one.”

  “Where ya headed?”

  “Northeast.”

  She paused, removed a steno pad from her apron pocket, and slipped a pen from above her ear. “Not much for talkin’, huh?”

  “Don’t have much to say, ma’am.”

  “Just like a cowboy.”

  When Andy didn’t say anything, Cindy clicked the pen. “Well, what can I get ya?”

  “Fried chicken platter, extra biscuits, please.”

  While she jotted his order on the pad, she said, “You picked a good one, cowboy. Our fried chicken is the best in the county.”

  Behind Andy, the diner’s door opened and the bells chimed.

  “It’ll only be a few minutes.” Cindy winked at him and disappeared behind a group of three men who’d entered. They were all dressed in dirty jeans and sweat-stained T-shirts. Looked like they’d been working the mines all day. They stopped in front of Andy’s booth. The one in front rapped his large knuckles against the tabletop.

  “Hey, cowboy.”

  Andy looked up. They were young—mid to late twenties—and big. Miners for sure. Full of muscle and attitude. He knew the type; they grew ’em big in Kentucky too.

  One of the two in the back snickered and whispered something to the other about the “freak.”

  The one in front, the largest of the three, drilled Andy with beady green eyes. He wore a faded John Deere hat and had a spotty day’s worth of growth on his face. “You’re in our booth, cowboy.”

  Andy said nothing but broke eye contact. These guys were looking for trouble, and he wanted no part of it. He wanted to eat and then to move on in peace. Head northeast. To a destination he knew nothing of.

  The big guy rapped again on the tabletop like he was some persistent salesman unwilling to leave any door unanswered. “You deaf, cowboy? I said you’re in our booth.”

  A hush fell over the diner and heads turned. The evening’s entertainment had arrived. The kid with the red hair and beaver teeth was staring again. Andy met his eyes and found in them an innocence only children possessed. The boy couldn’t have been more than four years old.

  Andy interlaced his fingers on the tabletop. He stared at the kid, hoping some of that innocence would permeate the rest of the diner and the three punks looking for trouble would leave.

  It didn’t happen. John Deere bent at the waist and leaned in close to Andy as if he were speaking to a toddler. “You gonna move, freak, or are we gonna have to move you? Find another booth. This here one is ours. Always is.” His breath smelled like tobacco.

  Still, Andy said nothing. He looked one more time at the kid, gave a little smile, then scooted out of the booth. He wasn’t there for a fight, just some food.

  “That’s it, cowboy.” John Deere reached for Andy’s Stetson and crumpled it in his massive hand. “Oh, wait, you forgot your hat.” He handed it to Andy. “Can’t be a real cowboy without your hat, right?”

  The other two laughed and elbowed each other.

  Cindy approached and pushed her way through the miners. “Jason, knock it off. Cowboy, you sit yourself right back down. You were here first. It’s your booth. These three kids can find another one.”

  Andy didn’t move, didn’t make eye contact either. He held his Stetson in both hands and worked the wrinkles out of it. His mother had given it to him years ago. Just a day before she died. A day before Andy stood by and watched the life slip out of her. The red-haired kid still watched, eyes wide.

  “C’mon, Cindy.” Jason’s voice rose. “We’re here every night, pay your lousy salary, and you’re gonna side with the freak?”

  “Back off, boys.” Cindy turned to Andy. “Cowboy, c’mon. Sit yourself down here.”

  Andy made a move for the booth, but Jason was having none of it. He wasn’t the type to be humiliated by a woman and a freak, especially not in public. He stepped past Cindy, nearly knocking her over, and put a hand on Andy’s chest. There was hate and hurtin’ in his eyes. He was hungry for more than dinner. Violence was what he craved.

  Andy glanced at the man’s hand on his chest. The creases of his knuckles and the rims of his nails were caked with dirt. Mining dust stained his leathery skin. Andy then raised his eyes so he met the punk’s glare. A hint of something hid in Jason’s small eyes. Not fear. No, he was too arrogant and dumb to fear. It was uncertainty. He was used to bullying his way around but not used to bullying freaks. Andy unnerved him.

  “Jason, let it go,” Cindy said. Behind Jason, an elderly couple slid out of their booth and headed for the door without paying. They’d probably seen this sideshow before and wanted no part of it.

  Andy took a step back, creating space between his chest and Jason’s hand.

  Cindy grabbed Jason by the arm and tried to pull him out of the way. “You boys get outta here, you hear me? You’re not welcome here no more.”

  Anger flashed in Jason’s eyes, and the muscles along his jawline flexed. He spun and shoved Cindy, sending her clattering into the booth and spilling the sugar across the tabletop.

  Andy hoped the redhead wasn’t watching. He didn’t want the kid to see what was to come next.

  In a motion so quick and smooth that it even caught him by surprise, Andy snatched Jason by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. He ran the big guy forward until his waist met the counter, then slammed his head down hard. Jason came up with glassy eyes and a nose spouting blood. The other two cursed and jumped in, swinging thick arms like windmills. A familiar darkness moved over Andy, a deep shadow of something fierce and malevolent, something not of this world. It came from inside him, from some deep cavern within his calloused soul. It emerged, ugly and twisted, and demanded control. It was the master now, and Andy its helpless servant.

  The rest was a smudge in his mind.

  He caught moments, like movie stills, flashing by, images from a dream, really, blurred and disconnected. His elbow connecting with a face, an abdomen. The sound of teeth breaking. Grunts, groans. Cursing. His foot slamming into a jeaned knee. Glass breaking. Sweat, blood. The crack and pop of breaking bones. Everything beyond his immediate reach faded out of view. Cindy, the kid—God, the kid—the other patrons, they vanished into a dark fog.

  Then there was nothing. He stood, heaving, fists clenched, sweat dripping from his nose. The darkness was gone now, vanished as quickly as it had arrived to hijack his humanity and turn him into something . . . nonhuman. The three miners—the punks—lay on the floor, Jason motionless, the other two writhing like eels out of water. The big one held his forearm and gritted his teeth. It was cocked at a sickening angle, unnatural. The other held his knee and bawled like a toddler.

  Andy looked up, found Cindy, found the kid. The innocence was gone, replaced by fear. Cindy’s eyes were large. Her mouth moved as if she wanted to say something, but nothing came out. The kid’s mouth hung open like the hinges had busted. His mother grabbed his arm and hurried him out the door.

  From somewhere behind the counter, Andy heard the words, “Somebody call the cops.” Then he was gone, out the door, into the blazing evening sun, and across the parking lot. His feet slapped the asphalt and matched the tempo of his heart thumping in his throat. He hit the road running full speed and kept at it until his legs and lungs could carry him no farther. There, somewhere miles down another road he had stumbled upon after crossing a clearing and picking his way th
rough a small but thick patch of woods, he spotted a four-foot corrugated drainage pipe that crossed under the road and emptied into a ditch. He crawled inside, pulled his knees to his chest, tilted his hat forward, and let the tears come.

  That wasn’t him back there. He wasn’t a man prone to violence. He didn’t want a fight. But he had fought; it had happened again. Just like with Dean. The darkness had swept in and filtered through every molecule of his being, taking control, lusting for violence and blood and havoc. It had once again done irreparable damage.

  And though the drainage pipe was cramped and hard, it didn’t take him long to fall asleep where he was met by images of devils and monsters. Gruesome beasts performing grisly acts of violence and perversion.

  He awoke with a start. Beyond the pipe, the sky was dark, the stars visible. The air had a chill to it. He’d had the same nightmare the past three nights. It was part of the pull, the strange force tugging him northeast, always northeast.

  Chapter 2

  Her world was dark, a black canvas that stretched to infinity in every direction. But that didn’t keep her from seeing. Since she was eight years old, she’d seen the world, not through optic nerves transmitting impulses to the brain but through her other senses. Her ability to take information collected from her auditory and olfactory nerves and thousands of receptors in her flesh enabled her to form images in her mind. Those images evolved out of her distant memory of colors, light, and shapes, then morphed into ghostly stills that shimmered and blinked like dreams from another dimension. This was how she saw the world.

  And she saw him there, in the drainage pipe. As she made her way down the barren road, alone, being careful not to scuff her feet, she heard his even, steady breathing—sleep breathing. She smelled the aroma of frying oil and horses and sweat and fear. Anger was there too. Lots of anger.

  Carefully, she made her way down the embankment, picking her way along, using her white cane to sense—to see—the changes in terrain, the rocks, the stunted shrubbery, the patches of dried grass. Finally, she made it to the bottom of the culvert that ran parallel to the road. Standing there, listening, she saw him against the black backdrop of her mind. He was a large man; she could tell by the depth of his breathing. And he was alone, his breathing solitary and lonesome. Obviously, he did not belong in a drainage pipe, which meant he had a story and, no doubt, one rife with heartache and hurt and violence. She had a mind to leave him. His story was none of her business. His drainage pipe slumber was not her concern.