Copyright
Dawning is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DAWNING: A NOVEL
Copyright © 2020 by Marie F. Crow
All rights reserved.
Editing by KP Editing
Cover Design by KP Designs
- www.kpdesignshop.com
Published by Kingston Publishing Company
- www.kingstonpublishing.com
The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Note from the Author
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
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
About the Author
About the Publisher
Note from the Author
It has been one year since the beginning of this journey. I am deeply honored by all of my fans who have embraced The Risen series. You have expressed to me your favorite characters and the connections you find with them. I feel this series is special in how it embraces the human element as well as the telling of classical horror.
As a “thank you” to all my fans, it is my pleasure to introduce The Risen Series: Dawning, Anniversary Edition. This book contains a variety of scenes and character depth not included in the original version.
- Marie F Crow
A world of fragile things, isn’t that how they describe winter? It’s a time when things slow down. When we isolate our- selves from the dark, seeking only the shelter of our families and the warmth they provide. A space of time when night comes sooner, and the dawns seems brighter. Months where our dreams are sparked with the yearnings for miracles and stories are shared of times gone by. Yes, that is how I remember winter.
I have a deep well of winters from which to drink. I hold memories of lighted trees and homes glimmering in the dark. I hold the smells of the holidays inside me. I can still hear melodies inspired to bring hope and goodwill, reminding us of the magic of miracles we choose to forget during the year. I remember the rush of children’s joy as the first snowfall covers the world in a virginal haze. I remember laughter. I miss that sound the most.
Sound is a weapon now. It is something hidden and shrouded with fear and dread. There are no more lighted trees or glimmering dreams among us. Smells have become dank and smothered with loneliness. Our songs are now of silence and deaths. They inspire only regrets. It inspires the type of remorse lurking in the deep dark of your memories.
This is our winter now. This is our life. The nights are too dark. The dawn is too soon. Our nightmares walk among us and we are all wide-awake.
We all have our own scars. People we have had to kill. People we have lost. Stories and versions of how we first knew something went wrong. Now we are branded with our horrors and clinging to our ropes of hope. Those ropes are serving to bind us all together or serve as nooses around our necks. Social lines are a long distant luxury of a world few care to remember.
A comfort we can no longer indulge. The only line we have now is “them” or “us” and every day the line seems to shrink more for “us”.
Perhaps it’s just our hope that shrinks as if it is a worn out balloon wrinkled and discolored from being too full for too long. Every loss seems to let out more of the precious air we used to keep us afloat. We are sinking fast in this new world. I fear for not only our safety but also for our humanity. When one must kill the ones they love to survive, what does that leave of the soul? Where does that darkness go? Where does the heart house such sorrow and how does it continue to fight? How can hope even compete with such truths?
The dust-covered memorabilia of yesterdays has no value when supplies are in such short demand. It holds no comfort to give to hunger-cramped stomachs. They don’t even make decent weapons against the flesh-eating monstrosities seeking to fill their mouths with our blood dripping deaths. Yet we still cling to the many “what ifs” as if some weight of self could be obtained from them. Perhaps we just would rather cling to what we have known versus facing the fears of unknown tomorrows. The last sparkling star of comfort before the dawn steals it away with either cruelty or death. I guess I have always had a hate for the dawn.
Chapter 1
“You should be going,” Lawless says, with his coffee-colored eyes watching me.
He’s right. I should be. Sitting here on the hood of my beat-up compact with his arms wrapped around me, it’s the last thing I want to do.
The crude male laughter is hard-pressed to ruin my mood. Bikers fill the parking lot of Grit as Marxx and Rhett watch from the doorway of the bar. Another night. Another fight. Now the “warring” groups do the normal drunken “I love you mans” as the many beers cloud the reason the fight even started.
“Precious,” Aimes says, rolling her eyes as she bounces the overly large sucker against her teeth. The noise is like a metronome, keeping time with the seconds until the dawn. “Why do men do that?” she asks, still watching the love fest.
“Eventually,” Lawless says, dragging the word out for comic relief, “your fists start to get tired of hittn’.”
“Aperentisly,” Aimes smirks, returning his comedy flavor with her own mockery of pronunciation, “yo’ face don’t.”
Lawless smirks, looking at me with amusement. “She’s a funny one,” he says.
“Says the one with the purdy bruise forming and a busted lip,” I say.
A sharp whistle from the bar pulls our attention. The lights behind him in the doorway frame Rhett’s looming outline. Being seen as only a solid black shape, it only adds more weight to the frightening reputation Aimes and I have given him.
“I guess Daddy wants all his boys back inside,” Aimes says. She has a smirk that could scald even the strongest of egos. She is wear
ing it now.
“I dare you to go in and check,” I whisper. The smirk fades some around the edges.
“Never have I been so happy to have a vagina,” she says, and Lawless shakes his head amused with her blunt honesty.
“Says a lot about your past dates,” Lawless says, before placing a good-bye kiss on my forehead and patting Aimes’ leg as he passes her.
“Come on, think of something witty,” I quietly taunt her, as we watch him walk away. The grinning skull of his motorcycle club’s leather vest is further taunting her as well.
Her lips make a thousand different formations, but nothing comes out. Settling on a frown she says, “Maybe I’m just saving it for later.”
“Riiighhtt.” Smirking, I let her win this time.
“You ready to go home?” she asks me, searching in her pink purse for her keys.
Home. That’s a funny word and I fight to keep the sadistic humor from my face. Is home where my family lives, where communication between myself and my parents are now nothing more than post-it notes left reminding me of things to do? Where my younger siblings. “The Hawthorn Angels” as I have dubbed them with sarcasm over their perfection, wait for me to wake them and start the normal morning routine, is that home? Is my home the place where I have become some tarnished stain with my dark brunette hair amid their sea of platinum perfection? God, I hope not.
Listening to the bikes roar to life around us, a part of me wonders if this is home. The gritty biker bar Grit formed around the local MC by the same name where I have been able to invent a new life. Casting aside the disappointment of Helena Hawthorn, I have been able to invent a new me, storing away the resentments I harbor for hours every night as a barkeeper. After punching a man who thought his tip was his hand, I earned the names Hells and I have kept it ever since. That’s the joys of these men. You don’t get to pick your nickname. You just get stuck with it. All- in-all, it’s better than, “Hey, Barbie.”
“O where o where has Helena gone?” Aimes sings beside me. “To the dark side.” I wiggle my eyebrows, trying to steal some of the comedic flow she and Lawless so easily have. Watching her eyebrow arch, I know I have failed. “Ready to return to the land of the passive-aggressive? Oh yes please!”
Aimes almost snorts being caught off-guard with my honesty. “Which do you think of as home? Here or home-home?” I ask her.
“You mean this land of bikers, babes and bad humor?” she asks, gazing out at the collection of men stumbling around. “Kill me now.” Her eyes skip over the scene as she says, “I mean sure, the ‘rents fight but I’m kind of use to it. I think I would lose my shit if they actually got along. I swear one day one of them is going to just snap and shoot the other. How sad is that?”
“Head shots aren’t the worst way to go.”
Her face begins to glow as the smirk lopsidedly grows. With that look, I don’t need to wait for where she is taking the conversation. “No. Just no. We are not making parent’s deaths into a sex parody.”
“If you answered without me asking, it pretty much confirms you were thinking it too.”
“Just get off,” I say to her, as I push her from the hood of my car with the normal combination of amusement and exasperation Aimes creates in those around her.
“That’s what he said!” she shouts, as she heads to her car.
Opening my car door, I call back, “Hey Aimes, you getting your shots today?”
Her answer is the time-old charming one finger salute over her shoulder.
“By the way, it’s face shots. Not head shots,” I shout to her, as she climbs into her car.
Silly me for forgetting the lot full of drunken men who now stare at us both with unhidden delight.
“Starting tomorrow night for twenty bucks!” Aimes shouts out of her window, quickly pulling out of the lot and waving to me as she leaves me the lone female in the lot.
Not waiting for the men to start counting their cash, I too push the gas a little faster than I normally would exiting Grit’s parking lot.
As the road stretches in front of me, autopilot kicks in from the many trips to-and-fro from here. It lets my mind wander back over the many years I have wasted locked in some battle with my family. Not that every battle scar is my parent’s entire fault. I am just as guilty of throwing fuel to the fire. I made a game of pretty much picking and choosing the things which would upset them the most since the age of fifteen when they “let me” move into the loft of the garage. It’s what led to Aimes and I first daring the other to sneak over into Grit. The whole “underage” thing never bothered them much- imagine that.
Spite. Envy. Hate. It’s how this life started. Now it’s our passive-aggressive lifestyle.
Reaching home, my keys make the metallic connection allowing me in through the back door. During the week it’s my job to wake “the Angels” and get them ready for school. You know, since you’re up already, Helena, as it was put to me years ago when I started this routine. I will fight with Lilly over what she is going to wear. I will argue with Ashley over the exact amount of milk to put in her cereal. All of it will follow the fight with Conroy over the need for a coat. It’s all mindless, robotic fun times here in the land of Hawthorn.
The smell of the house washes over me with its thick per- fume of crisp lemons and soft, subtle vanilla. These early hours always make me feel as a trespasser. Today I am violating a sacred shrine with my smoke-infused hair and overdone makeup. The swollen lips left from the moments of passion with Lawless don’t help either.
It had been a brawl-infested night and we closed later than normal. That and the moments lingering in the parking lot and I am now running behind. The lost time leaves me without a chance for a morning shower before stepping into the perfect plastic bliss of this world. Now standing on the too white carpet, my feet sinking in the plush fibers removing all sounds of my ar- rival, I am required to start the day in what can only be thought of as “bar wear”. Sighing to myself, I know the extra fit of drama this will cause from Ashley.
My black high-heeled boots softly click their way up the stairs past the rows of grinning moments of time. Various seasons blend, capturing memories of events. I never look at what could be considered a model’s portfolio. I never pause to glance and reflect on the memories. There are none for me upon these walls. Twenty- three years later my green eyes and I still lack the strength to accept it.
I am lost in my souring mood when my body halts, leaving a few seconds for my brain to become aware. Something is different. Something is making my heart speed up and my brain slow down. I shiver as something I should be aware of caresses me.
There is a sound where there should be no sounds. The silent embrace of sleep should still surround us, keeping the house muted and hushed, but it’s not. There are horrible wet sounds filling the air around me. It sounds as if someone is walking through watery puddles as they enjoy heavily splashing something thick in their wake. It’s something that is misplaced and wrong, and yet shockingly real. Something my mind knows should not be here. Your mind knows when you should not be in certain places.
It sends hints with the hairs of your body or the skip of your heart. It sends them with the immobilization of limbs or reducing them to pure weakness. Unfortunately, we seldom ever heed our minds. We force through all the biological clues of danger in some misguided sense of immortality. We degrade ourselves with insults to inspire self-hatred of our cowardice. We do all we can to throw our lives away with the morbid curiosity of things and moments our minds know to leave alone, like I’m doing right now.
Every inch of my skin seems to beg me to turn around. My heart beats with a pattern of warnings as my legs continue to climb each step. My palms glide along the railing as sweat gathers and yet I still inch forward with each slow step in pure misguiding rebellion to my senses.
My mother’s hem is visible for a moment before it slips from view at the landing. The sharp peek–a-boo of her yellow night- gown contrasts with the surrounding white car
pet around her. I know this is wrong. My mind screams for me to realize this is wrong. Ye I cannot grasp the reasons for this to be dangerous. It’s just my mother, or Carol, as I now call her and have for too many years to ever repair our bond. The only things that should be afraid of Carol are dust and weeds. She is the envy of her local club of sheltered women for her well-to-do life and time-defying looks. Yet here my body is recoiling with urges to run from just the smallest flash of her nightgown.
Unfortunately, it is not just the nightgown. It’s the sounds. The sounds she too should be hearing. Sounds she should be calling for answers to and yet she is silent. Carol is never silent, and I think that is the most unsettling sensation.
“Carol?” My voice sounds overly large in the narrow hallway, as if it should hold an echo.
“Carol?” I call again when she doesn’t answer.
Her enduring silence seems to amplify in ways silence should not have the ability to do. It takes a life of its own becoming more than just an action, but a thing waiting in the room with us. The indecisiveness of turning the corner has my mind racing with fear. I must either take this last step or turn and run with little to no explanation as to why. My mind knows something is very wrong, but my brain can find no real proof for it.
They lock in an internal debate as one encourages me forward while the other pleads with me to go back. The last step seems to cause a civil war of my thoughts. I have climbed the same step every day for years of my life. It should be no more of a thought process than of walking through a well lived in room at night. It should be a motion memory of meaningless detail. Yet here it looms before me, causing a giant cliff of debate.
It is not until my eyes grow blurry with unshed tears that I begin to notice the details my mind has been fighting for me not to see. I finally see the discoloration of the carpet. I see the sprinkle-like patterns of red on the cream-colored walls. The landing itself slowly becomes a new place of sights from the one I have been standing so close to. Marking the moments of time as they pass, the downstairs clock’s second hand sounds as loud as fired bullets in the white noise of my panic as wet slick sounds are blending into a stomach-clinching melody. My mind knew all along that the final clue was only one-step away and it wants no part of it, even as my legs climb the cliff.
Dawning (The Risen Series Book 1) Page 1
