Just Before Dawn

by Joshua Hernandez

  But that was all gone now. Or mostly gone at the very least.

  When he had first started this thing Peter had believed it a good idea, even if nothing came from it. Suicide had been one of his primary thoughts at the time. Women and he had not had a good track record, and the life he had led up to that point had been wracked with disaster. He had gone and seen a therapist sometime after the most recent heartbreak and had been told to write down his feelings. To talk to someone, to let them into his world. A friend of Peter's had told him about blogging, and Peter thought that there was his out. He would talk. If no one listened, oh well.

  But someone had listened. They read about his suicidal thoughts and commented back. They told him how they had never read anything like what he wrote. They told him that they understood him, that they felt the same way. Peter had felt almost like a “somebody”. He wrote on, about his life; his philosophies. Then he had progressed to his ideas about different subjects; the dark arts, movies, books, TV shows, religion and the paranormal. People started to donate to his site. His words were paying his way through life. Two years he had made his living from what he thought, and for two years he had been treated like “somebody”. But it didn't last. Peter knew it never did.

  For three months traffic to his page had slowed. Web-chats with those remaining of his devoted fans had petered off to almost none. He still kept the camera on most of the time he was writing, but he mostly treated it like it wasn't there.

  Like tonight.

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard as they waited for the next piece of genius to be written. Peter didn't know how much genius had been written in checkered boxers and a Slayer t-shirt but he was sure it couldn't have been much. He took his glasses off and placed them near the keyboard. He was done for the night. Sure, the entry was short, and incomplete, but he couldn't do it. He picked up a can of beer from his desk, popped it open and took a long drink. He sat it back down in its accustomed position and flipped the web-cam around to face the dark of the corner. After a second thought he turned it back and bent nearer to it and the microphone attached to it. “I think I might be done here,” Peter said, picking up his drink and taking another long pull. “I'm tired of writing crap for the masses when the masses don't give a rat's ass whether I live or die. I'm done.” He pushed himself away from the desk, knocking over his chair in the process. He didn't care. It wouldn't matter in the long run. He thought about the can of gas on the balcony but dismissed the idea. He may have wanted out, but other people lived in the building. He was suicidal, not a jerk.

  Then Peter thought about the prop noose in the closet. Some fan had sent it his way with a book about all the stars who had committed suicide in that gruesome manner. He had read the book and written a long rant about the attention seeking movie stars that had passed their prime, begging for someone just to look at them again. He had worn the noose while typing the entry, had even had the web-cam on, much to the joy of his fans. Then he had put the thing away. The rope had been coarse, the knot unmovable. It would be perfect.

  Peter went to the closet and opened the door, revealing a heap of junk he had stockpiled over the years. He was bent over, waist deep in the junk when a knock came on his door. Peter almost ignored it but the knock soon went from a quiet tapping to a relentless pounding. Peter leaned against the door frame of the closet and closed his eyes hoping the knock would stop. He wasn't in the mood to deal with anybody. If it was somebody trying to sell him something he would explode. He had four dollars in his wallet and his bank account was negative. The last time he had received any “donations” from his blog-site had been months ago. There was a pile of bills on the desk and tomorrow they were shutting down his phone line. Money. It always was about money. Peter was too tired to deal with it any more. The noose began to call again from the closet and Peter realized the knocking had stopped. Good. He had just begun to dig in the closet again when the knock started once more.

  Peter went to the door and looked out the peephole. No one was in the hall beyond the door that he could see. He turned away from the door and the knocking began again. Peter quickly turned back to the door and threw it open. All that lay on the other side was an empty hallway lit by the yellowed lights of his apartment complex. Peter went out into the hall and looked both ways. The door leading out at the end of the hall was covered with droplets of water from the rain, but it was neither open nor closing from a recent exit. Besides, that thing closed like thunder even without the wind to blow it. He would have recognized it if it were the door. Peter went back inside and locked the door behind him. It was probably one of the kids that lived down the hall. They liked to come over and look at his posters and collectable figures he had had since he was a kid. They also liked his game console, or used to before he pawned it off to pay the light bill. They came over one time after the game console was gone and when they left Peter found his stash of “Adult Periodicals” to be missing. Now they ignored him. Just another thing on the list of things to hate.

  Peter was about to go back to the closet when he heard something move in his small living room. Peter crept slowly beyond the counter near the door and peered into the dark room. A small dog about the size of a pug sat on the middle of the floor, panting with tongue hanging out. It was shaggy and black and its eyes reflected the light of the monitor with a strange blue glow. “What the hell,” Peter breathed as the little thing turned towards him and barked. Peter knelt and crept closer to the strange dog. He reached out a hand to pet the dog. “Come on little guy, I won't hurt you,” Peter purred.

  The dog barked at him viciously and tried to bite his hand. It had a screeching bark and Peter barely pulled his hand away as the thing arched its back and growled at him. Peter watched the thing cautiously. “What the hell!” Peter shouted, his shock quickly turning to anger. “Damn dog! You’re lucky I don’t find a baseball bat and take your head off you ugly S.O.B.” The dog yipped once more, as if making a threat and showed his teeth. Peter watched as the dog eventually lost interest in him and lay down on his carpet. Peter leaned against his counter. This made no sense. Where the hell did the dog come from? Peter looked over to the digital clock that sat on his small television set. The number changed from 9:26 to 9:27 in bright red numbers. Too late to call the pound. Well the damn thing would just have to sit and watch then.

  Peter went back to the closet, ignoring the dog. As he began to rummage through the accumulated junk he heard the soft scratch of paws against the fake tile of his walkway. He turned back to the little dog with a bit of fear creeping into his mind. The thing stood there looking at him with its head turned sideways a bit. Now it seemed like no more than a glob of shadow once it was gone from the light of Peter's monitor, and that was more than a bit unnerving. Peter kicked out softly to push it away and the dog yipped in surprise. It looked at Peter, its eyes reflecting the weak light of the monitor even though they were nowhere near it. The dog yipped once more and then lay back down, still looking at Peter. Peter hesitated for just a moment and then turned to continued digging through the closet.

  Peter's ankle suddenly felt as if it was on fire. He dropped to the floor and kicked his leg as the little dog held onto his ankle so tightly he could feel it begin to bleed. Peter rolled over and shook his leg, kicking with the other to try to dislodge the biting terror. The dog growled and held firm bringing tears to Peter's eyes. Finally Peter connected with his free foot and sent the dog sliding across the floor with an angry growl. Peter leaned against the frame of the door watching as a steady stream of blood ran from his ankle into a small pool on the floor. Peter took a good look at his ankle and saw nice round punctures where the dog had bit him. The dog growled again, and suddenly Peter was sure it wasn't a dog at all. Nothing that evil could be a real dog. The dog barked and ran at him, leaping at the last second with teeth bared and striking Peter in the chest. Peter screamed. It felt like a water balloon filled with hot pudding had just exploded on him. The dog, or whatever, hit him with enough
force to knock him sideways and sprawl him on the floor. Heat blossomed on Peter's chest. His clothes felt sticky and wet. Peter screamed and jerkily got to his feet, flipping the lights on with a free hand, his wounded ankle momentarily forgotten. The white light flipped on revealing the red of blood and gore all over his chest and arms. Dark fur matted with blood covered his shirt. Bits of exploded dog peppered Peter’s body. Peter screamed and blacked out.

  Peter awoke shivering. His A/C had clicked on while he was out and his wet clothing had gone from sickeningly warm to freezing cold in the time he had been out. He stood, not sure what he was feeling, or what was going on, and looked at the clock on his television. It blinked 12:00 over and over. The power must have gone out. Peter tried to decide what was more important, the air or getting cleaned up. Then he made the mistake of looking down. His stomach rose to his throat and it took all he had not to throw-up right then and there. He ran to the bathroom in his bedroom and threw up the lid to his toilet nearly dunking his own head into the porcelain seat as he fell to vomit. Five minutes later he stood in front of the mirror above his sink, his shirt off and hanging over the edge of the tub, trying to wash the remaining blood from his arms and face. He covered his face in soapy water and scrubbed as hard as he could in an attempt to feel clean. His boxers were still bloody but he hadn't the time to change them yet, and standing naked in the bathroom after a dog had just exploded on him felt less than sane.

  Peter dunked his face in the sink and screamed under the water. He pulled up and looked at himself in the mirror, feeling a little better now. He needed a shave and his hair was longer than necessary, but none of that mattered. At least not any more. He grabbed a dark shirt from the laundry bin and pulled it on, his mind going a mile a minute. Something strange had just happened, but it was something that he didn't feel the need to explain, however much it boggled his mind. It was odd, but it wasn't like the thing had shouted at him, “Peter don't kill yourself!” It was a dog. It had bit him. It had exploded. There was an explanation there, but he wasn't going to wait to find out what it was. This had been just another of those things about life he didn't need. He wanted this over. His thoughts calmed a bit as he stared in the mirror. He would go find the noose and be done with it. That was that. He really didn't want to take the time to contemplate things that really had no explanation. No, it was time to just have a bit of peace.

  Then he saw something move in the mirror behind him. A black shadow far larger than himself was moving slowly through his room. Peter turned as quickly as he could and he watched as the shadow disappeared...under his bed.

  Peter began to shake, this time the cold having nothing to do with it. There was something under his bed. It was like being a kid all over again. Suddenly the room beyond the door from his bathroom seemed very small and very dark. It shook in his vision until Peter realized that the room wasn't shaking, he was, and quite spectacularly too. He watched the dark place under his bed and the darkness seemed to move. He could almost tell the difference between the regular dark and the writhing darkness of the thing that pretended to not be there. Peter's heart throbbed in his chest so loud he thought the people down the hall would hear it. Then that thing shifted and Peter saw eyes. They were bright blue, like the color of the error screen from his computer, with vertical slits for pupils. They watched him unblinking and Peter knew that the thing was waiting for him. He ran from his bathroom to the door to his living room trying desperately not to scream the whole while. He failed the last couple of steps. He knew it was there, right behind him, ready to take him wherever the hell that dark under the bed led to. He screamed and leapt onto the back of his couch, flipping it as he went. He thumped off of the horrible cushions and onto the floor on the other side into middle of the room. The light from his walkway was still on. Somehow it didn't seem bright enough. Luckily the monitor of his computer still glowed. The white of the wallpaper on his monitor seemed to pitch an almost holy light at the darkness in his room. It felt safe here, in the middle of the floor on the carpet. There was no thing under the bed in light like this. There were no monsters. None. Peter closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. There are no monsters.

  As soon as Peter's breathing was back under control he stood up and looked around his apartment. The rain was coming down hard now. He could even hear it slap against his windows and wall. The room looked as it always did; dirty and disheveled, his computer on and waiting, his T.V. off and unused. His couch was upended from when he had tried to hurdle it, but other than that nothing was off or out of place. His kitchen was the same dirty old kitchen. His living room was the same. Only the walkway by the closet and door were any different thanks to the exploding dog. Peter closed his eyes and took a deep breath again. He was feeling off. Scared. Things just were not sitting well in his mind. Maybe this was what going insane felt like.

  He opened his eyes and looked at the clock. No longer did it blink 12:00 over and over. It now said 10:37. Peter didn't feel like questioning it. In fact, he didn't feel like doing much of anything. Even the urge to kill himself was fading, for that particular moment at least. Peter righted his couch and sat down with a great puff of breath. He felt both hot and cold at the same time. Fear pumped through his body with so much force he could feel it in his temples and his fingertips. Working up his nerve Peter turned to face his bedroom. The light from the bathroom shone into the room giving it a gloomy look. The rain beat against the windows creating a generally creepy vibe, but other than that there was nothing there to be afraid of. A wad of clothes and what looked like an old Budweiser box peeking out from underneath those. The light hit the whole of it just enough to make it look creepy. Peter nearly laughed.

  He went back to the computer wondering if his camera had caught the whole debacle. Morbid curiosity won out over his still fading feelings of suicide so Peter went over to the desk, righted the chair, and sat down. He looked down into the corner of the monitor and noted the time at 10:42, made a few choices with the mouse and punched a command on the keyboard. The monitor flashed bright white and then shut off followed by a loud buzzing from the speakers. Peter slid the chair backwards in fear, the old feelings rushing back with more clarity than he ever would have desired. The light from his little hallway by the door reflected in the black glass of the monitor. Peter's heart raced at what he saw within the ghostly reflection. Something amorphous and shifting, almost like a mix of jelly and smoke, was slowly falling over the back of his couch, bright blue error-screen eyes looking at his back hungrily. Peter turned, screaming like a child, and saw nothing waiting to eat him.

  Peter heard a click and the white of the monitor began to shine once more. He turned and saw that everything was as it should have been. The window showing him the replay was open. It was playing, nice and constant, the image of him just sitting on his couch. Sitting and doing nothing else. He checked how long the recording was and his heart began once again to thump in his chest in fear. Four hours’ worth of recording had been done and all of it was of him just sitting motionless on the sofa. Peter’s eyes went down to the clock in the corner. It read 2:32 A.M. He clicked to the end of the video and saw himself get up and unplug the computer. A whole four hours were missing from his memory. Even worse, he had no idea when that had even happened.

  What the hell was going on?

  Peter set up the camera to record once more and brought up his word processor. He set up the video window so that he could see himself and he sat back in shock. He looked horrible. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair wild, his face pale and lined with fear. Somehow, in the last few missing hours, Peter had managed to age beyond his years. The effect was frightening even for a person who was positive of his own insanity. “I don't know what is going on,” he typed on the clear white electronic parchment. “I might be going insane, which would be okay considering I was going to kill myself. But I am afraid, not of the dying, but of the thing in the shadows.” He left the cursor where it was on the screen, blinking as it waited.
Reading his own words was painful. He was losing his damned mind. “I will not be afraid of the dark!” he shouted into his empty apartment. He turned in his chair and faced the prison that he had created for himself in this shabby apartment. Echoes of his own failure screamed at him from every corner. He went over to the kitchen and grabbed a big knife from one of the drawers. “I won't be afraid,” he said again, and as much as he wanted to be sure of himself, he wasn't.

  Peter quickly ran around the apartment, flipping on all the lights he could. His room, the living room, the kitchenette, the closet, even the light over the sink and stove hood. If there was a light on it, it was turned on. Finally he went to the living room and turned on the T.V., the flickering snow casting a strobe-light's shadow everywhere near him. Then he froze in terrifying realization. The T.V. shouldn't be throwing shadows like that. His hand loosened on the knife and he only faintly registered it falling to the carpet. Peter turned and his body nearly gave out, his knees feeling like jelly. All the lights in the apartment were off.