Just Before Dawn

by Joshua Hernandez

  He stood and was suddenly quite conscious of his nakedness. He clamped his hands over his tender nether parts (who still protested softly about being knocked about on the ground and in the water) and watched the bird. It looked at him as if waiting for something, clicking its beak together every few seconds.

  “I thought you had gone,” John said softly after a short eternity. The bird stared. “I mean, you just flew away. What was I supposed to think? It’s not like I could follow after you. Don’t do that to me.” The bird clicked its beak together and stepped closer. “Please don’t do that again,” John said pleadingly. Another click from the bird and it turned and walked off on its spindly legs towards John’s cabin. He hurried after in a hobbling jog. He was afraid to scare the thing away. It was his secret; it was only for him. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was all the same.

  When they got to the cabin John walked up the three steps to his door and turned to the bird. “Will you stay?” he asked. The bird raised a leg and tucked its head under one wing. John smiled and ran inside to change. By the time he had done so, had eaten some leftover pot roast and surveyed the house for more surprises he went back out onto the steps. The bird was walking around in the shallows down in front of his cabin trying to catch a bite. John walked down to it. “Thank you,” he said from the edge of the water. He watched until the sunset and went back inside. He was hungry and tired, but glad that he remembered there was food in the icebox. Remembering something as small as that could have gone overlooked by some; but not by John. Not tonight.

  The phone rang at just past one in the morning. That made for two surprises for John. First, he didn’t even know he had had a phone for it to ring. Second, the bright red neon of the clock across from his bed was new too. At least he thought it was. Maybe it wasn’t, but he surely hadn’t noticed it before. John got out of bed and went over to where the phone sat beside the glowing red neon clock. His peripheral caught sight of the big bird (crane, his mind tried to remind him) sleeping on one leg down in the scrub as he walked by the window. He picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

  The phone was ringing on the other end.

  A confused sounding woman’s voice picked up on the other side. “Hello?” the voice echoed his earlier question. “I’m sorry,” John began, “the wires must have gotten crossed and”

  “John is that you?” the voice asked. It had gone up an octave and now sounded surprised, worried, angry and afraid for him, if all that could be conveyed in a single, short phrase.

  “Yeah,” he replied, “I’m John.”

  “Good lord,” the voice hissed into the receiver. “BEN!” it called suddenly, “BEN GET IN HERE! IT’S JOHN!” A brief thumping of someone heavy running up stairs sounded, followed by the crash of a door being slammed open. A second later the deep voice of a man spoke into the phone. “John, John? Is that really you boy? Good god almighty where have you been? John?”

  Terror welled up in John’s chest. They know! His mind screamed at him in a panic, though what they knew he couldn’t have told even himself. He just didn’t know. “I’m sorry,” he began, “I think you have me confused with”

  “Don’t do this John,” the man said, a pleading edge in his voice. “Every day I go by that damn hospital to see them and neither of them have had even a smattering of change. Asleep like always. In pain. Damn you…where are you? Where have you been?” the man, Ben, accused.

  “I…I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, though the fear and guilt crept into his voice. He had a vague idea beginning to form in his head, and it wasn’t making him feel any better.

  “Don’t give me that!” Ben suddenly roared. “You knew! You had to know! And my Karen? You’re telling me you didn’t know, you bastard? What about my Karen?!?” John could hear the woman in the background begging for Ben to stop. They had to have been husband and wife because very quickly she was back on and the man was storming around in the back, still talking loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough not to be understood.

  “John,” the woman said with a quavering voice, “it’s Maggie. Where are you?” The name Maggie meant something to John, but he couldn’t place it. He had the flitting memory of cherry pie and homemade stuffing, but it faded just as had everything else.

  “I’m…I’m at the cabin,” he answered before he could stop.

  “What cabin?” she asked.

  “Sarah Wilkins, call Sarah Wilkins,” he said, suddenly terrified beyond reasoning, and he hung up. He looked out the window and the crane was gone. John ran down stairs and threw open the door. The silhouette of the crane against the moon was all that remained. John shouted for an hour for the crane to come back, but it didn’t listen. It didn’t come back. It flew on into the silver sphere of the moon, its mournful cries carrying over the water like an emotional foghorn. John walked back into the house and shut himself off from the rest of the world, fading into the darkness of inside.

  It was nighttime and the kids were singing some repetitive song by a newer artist that thought it was cool to sample real artists and pass it off as original. John was laughing as Karen tried her hand at it, mucking up the words worse than the artist had done. Then everything went dark. John screamed and screamed until his lungs felt like they would burst, but nothing came back. His wife, his kids. Gone. Just like that. “The man sung you can’t go home,” a voice like his own only not called out. “No more going home for you, John Brown, mister gingerbread man you. Run, run as fast as you can,” his not voice taunted from all around him. John screamed in the darkness of his mind. Flashing lights, red and blues and yellows and the whites of luminescent LEDs filled his mind’s eye. Rock music was blaring. He liked this band; he thought their name was Wolf-something-or-other. Perhaps it was something else, less primal and more simple, like in the good days of rock

  Oh dear lord the pain was horrendous! “Kill me!” he screamed again, but no one will listen to him. It’s because he isn’t there. Not really he isn’t. And that, he realizes, is the problem. Where am I? he asks, and pain wakes him.

  It’s after five a.m. and something is pounding on his door. He wakes and sees an empty bottle (not quite so empty; there’s a bit of bronze colored liquid left yet, and he hasn’t destroyed his liver too much) in his hand. He is on the floor of his living room. The place is a mess, like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Funny thing is he’s not sure if it has. When was the last time…whatever her name was had come to help him out?

  The door resumes its pounding and he gets up and walks to the door in a lurching stagger. He opens it and a small woman in a blue shirt and denim jeans stares up at him in the predawn twilight. “We got a call from someone claiming to know you Mr. Brown,” she says as she scrunches her nose at the smell of him. He takes a deep breath and smells it too: urine, whiskey and sweat. “Says they’ve been looking a right long time now. Didn’t think you’d come up this way, they says to us. Not to your daddy’s place.” She leans right and looks past him to the destroyed den. “I says to them, ‘he couldn’t remember anything other than his name, and we asked the sheriff to take a look into it, but I reckon he was too busy, what with the strikes and all’,” she says to him with a knowing nod. He nods as if he knows what she is talking about, but he doesn’t. “I says, ‘funny thing is, he’s gone all strange. Bumped his head right fierce’.”

  He rubs at the scar on his forehead and winces. “Why wouldn’t I come up to…” he swallows hard, “my dad’s place?”

  “After the accident? Naw, you folks never came back after that. Must have been, what, twenty five years now?”

  He suddenly sees a flash in his head of a man falling over the railing catwalk in the mill. John is five. He screams and no one hears him. Just like that the flash is gone.

  “What else did they say to you?” he asks rather nicely.

  “Says they are coming up to get you. Be here soon. Dean’s making breakfast down at the cottage,” she says with a motion up the road through the trees
, “and I’ll be back with some food in about an hour. Get cleaned up and we’ll get all this taken care of.” Sarah reaches out and grabs his arm with affection. They stare at each other a moment and John thinks he might just start crying again. He’d rather she left and so he makes as if to leave. Sarah gets the clue with no further prodding.

  He nods and she nods. Then, one last look inside with a disapproving cluck, Sarah Wilkins turns and leaves. He watches as she walks off before nearly collapsing on the step. The lake is watching him in the distance. The sound her water makes on the shore is her laughing, and John doesn’t blame her. They are coming. “What happened?” he asks himself. He pleads, he thinks, he begs and he shouts at himself to know that is going on with him, but his mind never answers. He stands and turns to go into the house and the crane is standing there in the doorway. John nearly faints, but as he feels the swoon beginning the crane steps forward in a flash and touches the tip of its long beak onto John’s forehead. John screams in (pain, ecstasy, fear, hatred, self-pity) surprise and falls to his knees, but he doesn’t feel the thump of his knees on the wood.

  He remembers:

  They are driving, and there is singing, but no one is happy. Why should they be? He is making them move, again. The kids are being uprooted from soccer, theater, band and karate, but none of that matters to John. The boss said move, he moves. He told Karen it would stop in Kansas City, but it didn’t. He said it would stop in Amarillo, San Antonio, Phoenix, Sacramento and even Cleveland. It never did. The kids are ignoring him as he tries to talk to them. Karen won’t even look at him. He’s not paying attention to the road as he shouts at her over the music. They round the curve, John’s memorized skill taking the turn with ease, and everything happens at once. The air horn blares, the car behind them honks repeatedly as multiple people slam on the brakes. He sees the wheels of the big-rig tear through the hood of his car, and suddenly he is flying through the air. The kids and Karen are wearing seatbelts. He is not. The truck flips and lands on the car, which almost immediately begins to smoke is it is dragged along. John feels something in his body break as he hits the embankment that marks the next curve in the road. He gets to his feet and sees another car had struck the semi from behind. The fire is blazing. People are screaming. Rock music is blaring from the nearest car that had struck the truck. He runs towards his car to a heavy metal soundtrack and

  “No!” he screams as he tries to pull away from the crane, but it simply clicks its beak and presses it against his head once more.

  he hears Karen screaming. He can’t get to her, but he sees the kids. He sees the kids! He runs over and pulls them out one by one. Something is leaking out of the truck and the kids’ clothes have caught fire. He tries to strip them as he rolls them on the ground to put them out. Some Good Samaritan runs up and sprays a small extinguisher on the kids. They are put out and are moaning in pain, but they are alive. Screams are still coming from the semi and the other two cars besides his own. He looks at the Samaritan who is in turn checking on the kids. Sirens are already sounding in the distance. John runs back to the car. He has to get her out! He tries to crawl into the crushed cab and he sees her hand, and just behind it, her face. She is crying and he is reaching for her and

  A tremendous bang sounds from behind him and he feels his legs lifted up over his head as he is thrown. He feels the fire catch on his clothing and knows he is dead in less time than it takes for his body to become fully airborne. He hits something hard and rolls down a hill, falling into the river at the bottom. He doesn’t wake for days, and when he does he’s not sure where he is. He’s wet and he’s hurt, but that’s about all he knows. He walks into town; a place called Coal Heights, and asks for a ride to the only place he can remember. The cabin on the lake with the clear water and the nice weather and friendly neighbors and

  He falls to his knees crying. John’s body aches with remembered pain as the scars from his burns, scars he hadn’t realized he even had, begin to throb. He remembers it all, dear god he remembers. He looks up at the crane expecting some kind of judgment and sees only compassion in the bird’s eyes. “Dead or dying!” John screams at the bird, “Dead or dying because of me! How can I live when they are dead or dying? I heard Ben. His grand-kids are in the hospital and Karen is gone! I did that!” He screamed, “Me!”

  The crane cocks its head to one side and watches. “And when they come they will take me to them and I will see them as they are; torn and lost. What life is that for them? The last they knew I was mad at them and them at me. My Karen died like that! Good lord what kind of life is that, to be kept alive in pain and suffering?”

  “And all this time,” he cried, “however many weeks or months it has been, I have been here. Away from them. What kind of father am I?” The crane clicked and stepped forward until it was looking down at John from above. “What can I do?” he begged looking up at the regal bird. The crane stood out against the drab house, its colors vibrant and alive in the thing John now saw as simply a hiding place for the head. “I would give up everything for them to wake and just be healthy. I just…” he sobbed into his hands, “I just want them to have something more than I can give them! I already feel it slipping away,” he moaned. The woman (Maggie his mind screamed) and her big husband (Brad? Brock? What was it?) would be there soon and John wasn’t even sure he would know who they were. It was like that now. “Even if they awoke, I wouldn’t know them,” he tried. The bird clicked again. “Not now I wouldn’t. And…and…I can’t remember dammit! I’m forgetting it all as I speak!” The crane squawked as John rocked back and forth on his knees. “Just…just make them better. They deserve it,” he cried.

  The crane nudged him and he nearly fell. He looked up at it and it seemed to have a question plastered on its face. “And Karen?” he asked, trying to guess what the crane meant. To John’s surprise, it nodded.

  “I just hope, wherever she is, she is safe and happy.”

  The crane clicked its beak and somewhere in the distance thunder crashed. John almost could swear the colors of the great crane got even more vivid at that moment, but how was that possible? It stood and stretched, showing off its entire body and thunder sounded again. Strangely enough, John wasn’t the least bit frightened. It nudged him again and began walking away from the house. After a few yards it stopped and peered back at John. It took him a minute, but he finally stood and began to follow. Every few yards it would stop and look back at John as if to make sure he was still following. John followed it all the way down to the edge of the water. It stepped into the shallows and John followed. Almost instantly the water seemed to jump up around his ankles. It was almost as if the water was playing with him. It lapped at his legs, up to his calves before enigmatically pulling away, daring him to follow. It was a game he had played before with her, he called the lake “her” when referring to it when alone, but it was still one that held endless wonder for him. The crane clicked its beak and looked at John expectantly. “What do you want me to do?” John asked.

  The crane waited. It hopped once and flapped its wings, showing off its impressive wingspan. John said nothing, choosing instead to wait. The crane made an irritated noise and held its wings wide, drawing itself up to its full height. John, understanding vaguely, imitated the bird. Suddenly he felt better. Lighter. The memories of all that bad…they were going away. He was sure that the…those…kids would be fine, whoever they were. In fact, he was positive they would be.

  The water of the lake brushed at John’s ankles playfully. John looked down and saw his own reflection in the water as if it was the first time. For the first time since coming to the lake John smiled a real smile.

  The Shadowed Corner

  “The first time I thought there was something under the bed I was five. My screams woke my father. He ran into the room with a baseball bat to save me. I didn't know it at the time, but there had been a series of missing kids in the area and my dad nearly panicked to hear me scream like that. He yelled at me for being scar
ed of nothing yet he still checked under the bed and in the closet for good measure. Even though I was told it was all nothing I knew that night with the explicit understanding only children are capable of that there had been a monster under my bed. I knew it just as I knew that the sun would rise in the morning and that if you broke a mirror you would have seven years bad luck. For me, as with all children, there was no differentiation between the lands of the mundane and the extraordinary. I was a child, and because of that singular belief process only children are capable of I lived in fear for the rest of my prepubescent childhood. Night time was not a pleasant time. I tucked my blankets in hard under the mattress to keep my covered legs from drifting over the bedside and there was a flashlight under my pillows at all times. I screamed at shadows and random feelings. I often thought I could hear it (whatever it was) breathing underneath my bed with only a thin layer of wood, metal springs and the fluff of my mattress between it and me. And no one ever believed me.

  Then I hit that magical time of puberty, when girls and comic books overtake the fears of childhood. I found friends that, like me, had once feared the boogeyman and now laughed at the children who were still afraid. I stopped sleeping with the lights on. I stopped hearing the breathing. I forgot about the images I had, until then, sworn I had seen against the wall. I had begun the process of growing up.

  We learn to forget at around age thirteen and it only gets worse with age. We forget about the places in the dark and the things that creep within them. A terrible thing, forgetting.”

  Peter looked at the screen of his monitor with growing apathy. The cursor stayed blinking where his last words cut off, as if a reminder of how much he had not accomplished. The soft glow of the flat screen was the only light in the small apartment made all the more dark by the rain clouds outside. Peter sighed and plopped his head down into his waiting hands. This blog was getting him nowhere. At first, when it was still new and shiny among the hundreds of other blogs on the internet, he had gotten good traffic on the site. People had been interested in his book reviews. They read his journals and thoughts, commenting back to him with the kind of ingenious remarks only people online could make. For a short time he had even been worshiped. “The Shadowed Corner” had had the kind of fans that found him at conventions and brought him books and fan-art. They had brought him things to sign, papers to read and new ideas for his blog. He had even had full on groupies on two different occasions, both times helping him destroy the monotony of everyday life, even if only for a night. He had been as close to a rock-star as he had ever dared to dream.