Before the Dawn (15 page)

"I'll get it done," he promised sullenly.
"Just give me four more weeks and I'll have everything finished
before the end of October."

"Really? Can I absolutely count on that?" He
sounded doubtful.

"Yes, God damn it," Trevor snapped. "I'll
finish it by then. After that, I'm done here. I'm leaving." Until
he said the words out loud, he hadn't realized just how seriously
he had been thinking these thoughts since Vera walked out. Matt was
even more astonished at this little declaration.

"What do you mean you're leaving?" he
demanded. "Leaving where?"

"The city," Trevor responded. "I don't wanna
be here right now and for the foreseeable future. I need to be
somewhere else." He sighed. "I just wanna get away from everything
for a while."

"But—but," Matt was sputtering as he
frantically tried to think of something to say that would make the
other man change his mind. Trevor could practically see the wheels
in his head turning furiously. "But what about the rest of the
series?" he finally managed to choke out. "You're contracted for
three more!"

"And I'll still make them," he assured Matt,
"just not here. I need the time away, man. You know that as well as
I do."

"But where are you gonna go? Good God, don't
tell me you wanna bum around on an island somewhere—"

Trevor shook his head. "No. That's not gonna
happen. Not much of a beach guy. Don't worry. I'll go somewhere
with a nice Internet provider so you can still keep bugging me via
email every day."

Matt then tried other tactics, other reasons
and arguments, just to convince Trevor to stay. He was probably
afraid that if Trevor did leave the city, then he'd lose what
little control he had over him and he'd never get the last three
books of the graphic novel series Trevor had been contracted to do.
But with every word Matt said, Trevor’s determination to follow
through on his idea just grew stronger. And, though he knew he was
still a long way off from getting over what had happened between
him and Vera, Trevor immediately felt a bit better once he had
decided on a goal to work for. He was going to stop acting like a
total loser, finish his latest work, then move somewhere far away
where he didn't have to stay in an apartment where he slept with
bad memories.

For the next two weeks, he wrote, drew,
revised, and re-drew whatever he made for about eight hours each
day. By the time he was done, earlier than he had anticipated, he
had gone past the number of pages he was expected to turn in and
the editor had to cut out some parts with a lot of dark looks and
grumbling under his breath while Trevor sat looking innocent in the
man’s office. He didn't really mind the guy taking out whole
chapters and panels. He didn't seem to mind much of anything these
days. But, with creating one book out of the way and three more
that he wasn't due to start working on anytime soon, he finally got
to focus on the matter of leasing his apartment and searching for
some place he could retreat to where he could get his head in some
kind of order.

Getting the apartment off his hands was easy.
There were always people looking for someplace decent to live in in
the city. But finding a safe harbor, a refuge, from all the crap
that had happened in his personal life over the past year was a bit
trickier. His real estate agent kept sending him photos and links
to virtual tours where he could check out different houses from all
across the country, but he never felt any one place was the right
fit. It was starting to get really frustrating.

He was beginning to be afraid that he would
end up on a beach somewhere after all, a thought that made him
shudder. Trevor didn’t really hate beaches, but they were just not
the ideal places for him either. He preferred mountains and woods,
which always drove Vera a bit crazy whenever he dragged her off on
a camping trip. However, he had to make a choice very soon because
the people who had leased the apartment from him would be moving
into the place in the next few weeks and he couldn't still be
hanging around by then. So on a late afternoon that had the
wonderful crispness of fall in the air, he went for a walk in the
park where he hoped to get his head clear enough to come up with a
decision.

He ended up thinking about Vera instead. How
he had spent most of his life feeling like something was slightly
off with the world, like there was something that he was missing,
and then when he had met her, he had thought that she would be the
one to fill in the blank spots. She was smart and beautiful, and
she had made him feel things he couldn’t remember ever feeling
before. So of course he had wanted to be with her. Of course he had
wanted to find out if she could finally complete that sense of
hollowness that had persisted inside him since he woke up one day
when he was sixteen and felt that the world was a darker place than
it should be. Nothing had helped him overcome that emotion, not
even when he actually got desperate enough to try therapy and
prescription drugs. But he had hoped so much that Vera would prove
to be the one who would make a difference in how he felt. Instead,
he had ended up hurting her in a way that she didn’t deserve.

He was wandering aimlessly down one of the
paths in the park, wrapped in these thoughts and ignoring all the
joggers rushing past, when he suddenly found himself knocked off
his feet without any warning and he fell face down.

"What the hell!?" He was prepared to launch
into a world-class rant when the person who had knocked him down
took one look at him, raised a dark eyebrow, and wrinkled his nose
as if he thought Trevor smelled bad.

"Oh, it's
you
," the offender said
quite dismissively. He was a young man—tall, lean, and incredibly
handsome, even though Trevor normally never noticed such things
about other guys. He had black hair that was slicked back and eyes
that were the oddest color Trevor had ever seen. They kind of
looked like amber. He was dressed quite strangely too, a
combination of punk rock and Victorian that was almost but not
quite steampunk. In fact, he looked a lot like he might have
stepped out of one of the pages in Trevor’s graphic novels. As
Trevor got to his feet, still glaring at the man, the
strange-looking guy just turned his back on him and picked up the
bicycle he must have been riding when he crashed right into Trevor.
When Trevor realized that the stranger intended to simply ride away
without anything resembling an apology, he quickly grabbed on to
the bike's handlebars.

"You're not getting off that easy," he said
angrily. "You ran into me with your bicycle. You at least owe me an
apology, never mind your insurance details, pal."

The young man looked astonished as if Trevor
was being outrageous by suggesting that he apologize. "Don't be
bloody daft!" he retorted. "It certainly was no fault of mine that
you were not fully aware of your surroundings so you never noticed
you were walking along the bicycle path."

"What?" Trevor was really angry now. "This
isn't a bicycle path. This path is for joggers and strollers only,
you jerk."

"Nonsense." He waved a hand and pointed to a
spot behind Trevor. "Of course it's a bicycle path. Look."

Trevor turned and looked, and there was a
sign that proved the man was right. But he could have sworn that
sign wasn't there earlier. Scowling more fiercely than ever, he
turned back to face the guy, ready to argue some more when, to his
complete surprise, there was no one there. And his hand was merely
grasping thin air where he was supposed to be holding on to a
bicycle.

Amused laughter rang out quite close to him.
He started and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw that a
woman had somehow crept up to his side and was now standing only a
few inches away from him without him noticing anything. He sort of
stumbled then righted himself as he hastily put a few feet between
him and the stranger, his nerves tingling in some kind of warning
he couldn't decipher.

"Do forgive Raven," she said to him in a
voice that was guaranteed to make any man feel weak in the knees.
"He can be such a thoughtless, careless boy sometimes." Her eyes
then raked over Trevor in an appraising manner and she smiled in a
way that scrambled his brains a little. She was, in a word,
gorgeous. Her black hair framed her heart-stoppingly beautiful face
in waves and her skin had that perfect, smooth glow only very rich
women could afford. But it was her eyes that really caught him.
They were the same eyes he had seen on the guy who had disappeared,
and they were full of secrets.

Her perfect pink lips curved into a smirk
when she saw that he was practically ogling her. "You grew up very
well," she commented, which he thought was a very strange thing to
say. He was about to ask her why she would say such a thing, but
she glanced over his shoulder then and frowned. "If you will excuse
me," she gave him a brief glance, "I have a wayward son to chase
after." She started to walk away, but turned back for a moment to
look at him again. "You have only a number of days to get to her,
soldier. I suggest you make haste. I would so hate it if all my
careful plans don’t come to fruition." And, with those mystifying
words, she stalked off. A sudden wind rose up then, picking up
leaves and other debris, obscuring Trevor’s vision for several
seconds. He blinked and batted the scraps away from his face, and
in that short time, the woman disappeared as thoroughly as the guy
had done earlier.

It occurred to Trevor then that maybe he was
having a sort of breakdown, imagining people appearing and
disappearing around him. He went home after that and even took his
temperature just to make sure he wasn't delirious with some kind of
fever. After assuring himself of the fact that he seemed to be
physically fine, he had an early dinner and decided to go to bed.
Maybe the stress of trying to find a new home had gotten to him.
Maybe he just needed some sleep then he'd be okay. Yeah, maybe.

He went to sleep thinking that everything
would probably make more sense in the morning. But his subconscious
apparently had other ideas. For some reason, he found himself
dreaming of the time when he was sixteen and his mom had made them
move into this small town where nothing exciting ever happened. He
saw himself as he was then, too tall and gangly to be completely
comfortable with his own body. This was the town where the strange
depression that had plagued him for most of his life had started,
so maybe it really wasn’t so strange that he would be dreaming of
the place. But the things that then happened in his dream were just
plain weird. He was walking through the woods that he remembered
surrounded much of the town, seemingly in search of something
because he was calling out a word or a name, it seemed. Maybe he
was looking for someone, he couldn't really be sure. The dream got
even stranger then, with weird things like a black ballroom where a
girl danced until her feet were bleeding and something sharp
pierced his hand. But the thing that really stayed with him about
the dream when he woke up the next morning was this strong feeling
that he wanted to go back to that town. It was the place where his
life seemed to have taken a sadder turn for no reason that he had
ever been able to figure out, even with hours of analysis, so maybe
it was time for him to return there and try to solve the mystery of
his own head once and for all. Plus, it had the added allure of
being far away from anywhere Vera could possibly want to go to
since there wasn’t a beach anywhere near it. It wasn’t that he was
nervous about running into her again if he stayed in the city. It
was just that—he really didn’t want to be running into her again
anytime soon. Not until he could face her without shriveling up
inside.

His mom still lived in the town and, a few
years ago, she had married a nice widower named George and moved
into the guy’s big, empty house. So, after carefully avoiding her
phone calls over the past few weeks, he finally dialed her number
and told her that he was thinking of moving back, for good.
Needless to say, she was exhilarated at this news.

So he called up the real estate lady who had
been very patient with him and all his finicky ways, told her what
he wanted, and asked her to find him some houses. She was surprised
at first, but it took her less than an hour to provide him with a
few great options. He ended up picking out a house that was just a
few streets away from his mom’s place and, just like that, the
agent sent over the papers he needed to sign and he was its new
owner before the end of the week.

He packed up his stuff and, a few days before
Halloween, he moved into his new home in the old town he had left
seven years ago, hoping to start over with his life.

***

Chapter 17

"Look at you," his mom fussed when he showed
up for breakfast at his stepdad’s house the morning after he
arrived back in town. "You look so skinny." She placed a huge plate
of bacon, pancakes, and eggs before him. "Isn’t he too skinny,
George?" she asked her husband. "He’s practically drowning in that
sweater." She focused her attention on Trevor again. "You haven’t
been taking good care of yourself since Vera left, have you?"

His stepfather looked embarrassed for him.
"Oh, I’m sure he’s doing well enough, Annie," he admonished his
wife. Then he gave Trevor a sympathetic little smile. "I bet you’re
having second thoughts about moving back in town about now, right?"
he teased.

Trevor rolled his eyes. "God, yes," he
agreed, smothering a grin. Having his mother fuss over him like he
was a boy again was actually quite comforting. "Honestly, George,
how do you stand her?" he joked.

His mother smacked him on the head playfully.
"Don’t be a little smartie," she scolded. "We’re both just very
worried about you. And I can’t say enough how happy I am that you
got that old Torres house. It’s a very lovely place and it’s been
empty for ages since Tony and Gina moved away."