Just Before Dawn

by Joshua Hernandez

  I slept under the covers that night, afraid of waking and seeing a watcher, or worse, the Red Guy and his knowing smile.

  The next morning I awoke with the sweaty, panicky, “Someone’s being been eating my porridge” feeling that gnawed at the back of my mind and the edge of my fingertips driving me up from the depths of sleep. I knew instantly that the Red Guy had wrecked my second chance. I hated him in those seconds, and less than ten minutes later, I was on the road. It had begun again.

  Not only had it begun again, but there were more of them. Doors like slits in reality, putrid things of ancient decay, seemed to just appear. One of them was in my alley, almost in the same exact position of where the Red Guy had turned to smile at me. I locked that one with three bricks, all of them buried at 45 degree angles around it. I found them all over, some of them feeling so new that the smell of burning and the sounds of tearing still came from around them. It took me weeks to get through them all just once. At night, no matter where I slept, the Watchers came. Sometimes they breathed so loudly in my presence that I could not sleep. When that happened I got back up and continued on, finding the doors, shutting them up, and locking them. My mind ached with near madness as exhaustion wore on. Still I drove on, and I couldn't help but feel a sort of kin-ship with the doors I was shutting up, a run down, tired sameness with the echo of dying machinery driving us both for our purposes. Only I knew that my machines would give out long before those of the doors, and that I would be but another decaying thing added to the miasma of the Something beyond them. A part of me even ached for that day, when I would finally be able to rest. Still, on I went, locking the doors as I found them. It was dangerous in it's monotony, and part of me was afraid that I would mess up once, forgetting one or getting the lock wrong. So many angles, so many tools, how could it be that I would always get it right?

  Worse still, was the door at the grocery store. Something told me that that particular one was old. One night I found myself parked in front of that door just waiting for something to happen. I kept having to get out of the car to move the carts, fixing them so that the door was better locked. I could smell the door, I could smell it, understand? It pulsed behind my ears, the smell burned my stomach and my eyes wanted to crawl away from its loathsome shape. But there it was, infinitely thin and strong. I cried all that night. I could not help it. Watching that door was like waiting for death; I knew it would open sooner or later, but the wait was terrifying none the less.

  Just before sunrise, as soon as I finally started to doze, a terrible boom shook the car. I came awake quicker than any time before, hurried out of the car, and stared at the door. Another resounding boom sounded, this one like thunder. Windows broke and car alarms went off and my knees nearly buckled. I watched as the tree, flimsy as it already was, began to split right down the middle. A sound like many trumpets, discordant and hollow, preceded a screeching like nothing I had ever before heard. Then I watched as the door began to open. Where at first it seemed the door had been a thing so thin that it was impossible to see it, it now came into view as a massive thing of ancient metal, towering like some kind of mountain-sized megalith over the town I called home. I could hear the groan of the metal as the Something behind it slammed against it (another of the earth-shattering booms sounded and I think I heard a building crack as it swayed on its foundations), trying to push it open further. “I locked it!” I screamed in terror, “I locked it and kept it that way!”

  But I hadn't. I looked to where my lock had been and saw the carts on their sides. One of the five was gone, leaving only four, an incomplete and ineffective lock. Then I heard the laughing. I turned and saw the Red Guy behind me, a dirt covered shopping cart in his grasp. He too was crying, only it seemed out of bliss and not horror. A look of relief so pure, so effortless was stamped across his face and I knew he had done it. He had finally broken my locks. He looked at me and I saw in his eyes the same self-loathing, the same exhaustion, the same hellish life I had been living, only reflected there was also something else; congratulatory self-satisfaction. He raised his hands up towards the door and laughed in manic relief. I turned back and saw that a crack had formed, an opening between the world I had come to accept as ours, and the other where the Something dwelt. A wave of heat fell upon me and I staggered backwards from it. I saw the eye staring out at me from behind that door as if it was pressed entirely against the opening portal.

  Then the eye looked right at me.

  In that instant I saw it as a whole, a creature so vast that it spanned continents in size. It's entire body radiated the same heat that was at that moment cooking me on the pavement. It's body was so bright that for a moment I thought it was made of light, but light so dense, so concentrated that it had been given horrible life. It was a massive, alien thing that looked at me, letting me look back at it in it in ever growing horror. I could feel it's hunger; but what it hungered for I could not fathom. Instead I just sat there, my mind screaming at me to do something, anything at all, looking into that eye. That terrible, horrible, burning eye.

  Finally I broke away from the gaze of the Something behind the door. The Red Guy had fallen to his knees and was screaming with joy. Suddenly, I was angry, so angry that I could not control what happened next. “You!” I screamed, though I don't know if he really heard me. His eyes were locked on the door, waving for it to open further. I reached into my pocket where the ever familiar presence of my knife seemed to call out to me like a song. Then, with the knife firmly in hand, I launched myself at the Red Guy. He didn't even resist as I fell on him screaming. My fist caught his jaw, my knee his stomach, my leg his crotch. He never even cried out, even when the knife first fell, all he saw was the door. But I couldn't stop. The knife came down; again, again, again! I felt him go limp somewhere after the first dozen stabs, but I still could not stop. I was afraid to turn away from this blinding red rage that covered everything else up. If I continued it would be over, I could just stay away from the eye in the place between our world and the next, and it would pass me over. It would, I just knew it would.

  After a couple of minutes that could have really been seconds I looked down on what the anger (insanity) of my hands had done. He lay there, unmoving, a smile on his face. Once more, I began to cry. I could feel the weight of the world, of a dozen worlds and more, on my shoulders as I moved to do what needed to be done. The discordant singing that I had thought came from the opening door began again, only this time I was more aware of from whence it came. The noise, like sick trumpeting, was coming from hundreds of Watchers, all of whom were lined up on the roofs of the grocery store and every other building in that little strip-mall. Their seven fingered hands were up covering their eyes, their three fingered hands all pointing at the door. That sound was like a drill bit in my temples, almost crippling in the agonizing pain it was causing me. But I knew why they did it. They were waiting for me to fix it.

  I stood and grabbed the legs of the Red Guy. It took me a minute but I managed to drag him over to the planter where the door (I could feel the eye on me, staring at me with something akin to hatred even without knowing it was looking at me. But I knew, oh god, I knew) was still trying to open. I tossed the body into the planter and then, with my blood knife, began to carve into the soft earth around the (split)tree. I made symbols in sets of threes, over and over again until my arms were numb from the monotony of it. I was still doing it when the Watchers ceased their bellowing; I was still doing it when I heard the door shut, the Something on the other side bellowing endlessly as the lock snapped into place.

  Then, leaving the body in the planter, I went home.

  The next day I saw the eye everywhere I went. Behind every door I locked I found the eye watching me, regarding me. I could feel the dry-light of its gaze like a weight on my back as I kept on the confining presence that I'm sure had been around long before I had come to continue it. The Watchers began to leave in the night as things began to calm down, but the eye never left. I dreamed of it. I s
aw it in my food, in the car, in the people I passed on the road. It was relentless, always following me, never letting me rest. I could not escape it. I drove all over town to make sure the locks were taken care of, creating new designs in threes and fives to hold things together. To keep the door shut. The next few days passed in a haze of motion; the moving car, eating, sleeping, working, creating. The only thing in that period that stands out to me is the eye; that wicked eye of dry-light and the Something it belonged to.

  Then, one night, I realized something as I lay down to sleep: I had forgotten a lock. It wasn't a nice feeling either; it was like my stomach fell in on itself, I couldn't breathed and all over my skin I could feel needles endlessly pricking me, over and over again. The locks. They hadn't been completely tended to. Then, another feeling began to grow from that primal terror. It grew and grew, a sense of calm that slowly washed over me. So what if I forgot a lock? I was tired. So tired that I wasn't sure I could do it anymore. “So what,” I said aloud, and the raspy sound of my voice startled me. I hadn't realized it had grown so...sick.

  I heard it then, after I had spoken, the raspy breathing of the Watchers. I looked beyond my bed an saw three of them there, their seven fingered hands placed over their chests, their three fingered hands held high as if ready to strike me. Two of them had faces akin to horse skulls with the skin pulled back and no muscle beneath. The third almost looked human except for having three eyes, all of which were vivid red. My heart rapped against the inside of my ribs at such a pace I was afraid it would burst. Then, it spoke to me.

  There were no words, only images. I saw us four and then nothingness, complete and perfect in a void lacking light. I saw thousands upon thousands of the Watchers covering scarlet-black hills of wavy grass that possessed no color, all of them staring up at a black star that gave no light. I saw the shadows of buildings beyond them, skylines that were both familiar and alien to things I had seen in pictures and movies. Then I saw humans. More of us than I could count, far more than there were of these Watchers, all of us standing in row after row, our faces blissfully blind to the horror around us. Then Watchers began their singing, that horrible, shrill, ear shattering singing. As they sung the people began to move, going about their lives in a world only slightly removed from the one I was viewing. As they moved I saw the Watchers move after them. Where the people moved trails of viscous purple gas/liquid followed behind, and the Watchers used their seven fingered hands to separate strands of the strange gas/liquid. As they did that the three fingered hands wound the separated strands about their thick, clawed fingers and fed the substance into their waiting mouths. Everywhere the people went (I noticed the people were almost see through, like they were almost there, but weren't as well) the Watchers followed, eating the substance that was left behind. I can't begin to describe it as it was; it was so horrible to see, to watch, that I feared that if I hadn't been mad before I surely would be after seeing this.

  Then came the bird-things and the horror doubled. They looked like big crows with long, leathery necks and serrated bills. They would land on a person and I would watch that person die. One landed on an old lady and I saw, literally saw, a heart attack begin. Another landed on a man that was floating around (I assumed he was in a car) and I saw him suddenly thrown like a rag doll, eyes wide with terror, mouth screaming. Where the bird-things went, death followed. The Watchers would follow the bird-things and stop them from getting to us, but there was no compassion in the act. They chased away the bird-things like a farmer would crows or rabbits. Like pests. I blinked and the Watcher from my room, the three eyed thing, looked at me with a smile, as if showing me some great charity they were performing in their dark world. A world close to ours, so close as to be neighbors. The thought gave me chills. He looked at me again, the smile so cold and yet I could see the gesture for what it was, it was trying to convince me to help them. The look was given words in my mind. It said, without emotion, without any real feeling to it at all, “Without us, you simply will not be.”

  The locks were their way to stay connected to us, I knew then. I knew it as easily as I knew how to breathe. They needed us, and they kept the bird-things from killing us all with their hunger. Either way about it, we were food. The bird things were the predators. The Watchers were the parasites. I stood there for hours, possibly days even, in that shadow world (there's a hell of a good universe next door, e. e. cummings had once written, only I never wanted to go). Then, I was in bed, shaking violently from the horrors I had seen. My mind ached, but my hands reached for my keys. As it touched them the eye, that warm, dry-light eye, flashed before my sight and was then gone. The locks were calling. I left my bed to correct my mistake.

  The will to keep going for the Watchers, however, was gone. I knew what was going on now and it made me sick. I knew why they wanted the door shut. Shadows were expelled in the dark. The light of that eye, that single eye, was painful to me. How much more was it to them? So I made a choice.

  Yesterday I saw a woman staring at the place where the lock was, her eyes wide with morbid fear as her toe reached out and nudged the weeks-old corpse of the Red Guy. I saw her hand go to the carts I had fixed into position countless times before. She would be the next to take my curse on, the Watchers had damned her like they had damned me. I think the Watchers could tell that I had already begun to fight them. I had been going slower. The last few locks I had done in threes, not fives. They knew it too. They could probably end me, but I didn't think it worked like that. Not in daylight, at least. I watched the woman fix the carts, and she screamed the whole time. No one noticed. Just as no one had noticed the dead Red Guy in the planter for weeks. She fixed the lock, and I let her.

  But I had seen her come. I had seen her arrive at the store. I knew what car she had been driving and I was done helping the Watchers.

  So I cut her brake lines before I left.

  Today I bought a red hoodie. Whatever that Something is behind the door has got to be better than being cattle for the Watchers in the shadows. At least I think so. I'm on my way to break a few locks. Fours work good for that, you know. Really good.

  Movie Night

  Drew Adams arrives at work at precisely 8:15. He always arrives at 8:15; if he didn’t there was something wrong and nothing was ever wrong with Drew. He parks his car (a green Chrysler five years old and still immaculate) in the same space as always. He checks himself in the mirror. His turtleneck, gray, and pants, khaki, are still without wrinkle. His glasses are clean and ready to go. Drew checks his parking space out of concern. Martha, the girl at the desk, hasn’t arrived to park to his right yet and he makes sure to leave her enough space to open her door. She’s pregnant and Drew loves to talk to her about it.

  In fact, Drew just loves to talk. He says hi to the security guard as he walks through the front door to the building. The man, Mike Sanchez, says his hellos with Drew and walks him to the elevator. Drew asks Mike about his kids and Mike does the same about Drew’s wife. It’s a regular morning ritual, but since it is Thursday there is no morning donut. That’s only for Mondays. Drew and Mike part at the elevator, Mike wishing Drew a good day at work. Drew smiles and steps on the elevator.

  Seven floors later Drew steps off the elevator and onto the floor where he works. He works for Dewey, Morgan & Morgan, an old accounting firm that bought out the entire floor some twenty years before. The carpets are old, the paint dull, but Drew likes it nonetheless. He clocks in, goes to his desk, and begins his work. Drew whistles while he works. It may be cliché, but Drew likes what he does. He was always good with numbers and he has yet to lose his knack for them.

  At 8:30 the rest of his co-workers show up. Most of them file by without a second glance but a few stop to say hello. Drew greets them with a smile and does his best to make them return one. It doesn’t always work, but when it does Drew smiles all the more. Kathy, the girl the next desk over, is chewing gum as she sits down next to Drew. She pops it when he says good morning and gives him a look t
hat isn’t too friendly. Drew doesn’t seem to catch it. “You know, this weekend is going to be great,” he begins, and so it starts. He tells Kathy all about his plans for the weekend. He has a trip planned, over to the coast. “The marina, and maybe the aquarium,” he says. He smiles the whole time he talks. Because his eyes never leave the charts he is reading, or the screen he is typing on, he doesn’t see Kathy roll hers.

  He turns to her and asks, “Have you been to the Aquarium?” His smile is so innocent that Kathy falters for a moment, unsure if she should answer or continue ignoring him. Finally she answers. “Once,” she says, “when I was a kid. Didn’t really like it much ‘cause it smelled so fishy.” Her answer makes Drew laugh so hard tears fall. He wipes his eyes as he repeats her answer. “Smelled so he laughs again, the irony of her statement lost on Kathy. She rolls her eyes again as he turns back to his work, still chuckling about the silly statement.fishy,”