Before the Dawn (4 page)

"Yeah. Bye." Aline hung up, still thoughtful,
but she couldn't ignore her injured foot any longer. She still had
the silver leaf in her hand and, suddenly scared of the mystery it
presented, she locked it away in her nightstand drawer and went to
search for some antiseptic and bandages. She had no idea what was
going on regarding the dream and the strange way a part of it had
crept into reality. That leaf should have been just a figment of
her subconscious or something, but she had held it. It had cut her
skin. It was
real
. Which didn't make any kind of sense at
all.

She was still tending to her wound when her
dad passed by the open door of her room. He abruptly halted when he
noticed what Aline was doing and he rapped on the doorframe to get
her attention, something he always did whenever he wanted to come
into her "personal space" as he called it. His expression was a
mixture of curiosity and concern.

"What happened to your foot?" he asked. "Are
you all right?"

"I just stepped on something," she shrugged.
"It was an accident."

"Need any help bandaging that up?" he
offered.

She shook her head and gave him a little
smile. "No. It's nothing. I got it."

He nodded. "Okay then, if you're sure. Let me
know when you're ready to go to that dance so I can take a picture
of you all dressed up."

"Oh, please, no," she begged. "You seriously
don't have to do that."

He chuckled. "Come on. It's traditional or
something. These are your last few hours as a fifteen year old. At
midnight, you'll turn sixteen and you'll think that you know
everything and become more insufferable than ever. So I need a
picture of you to remember the time when you were still relatively
young and innocent." His tone was teasing, but she could tell by
the affectionate look on his face that he was being sentimental, in
his own manly way of course.

"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "Whatever
you want. We'll observe tradition just this once and you can take
as many pictures as you like."

"All right." He grinned. "Hey, I'm heading to
the grocery store for a last minute Halloween candy shopping
adventure. Do you still have time to join me or are you gonna be
getting ready for the dance?"

"Dad!" She was exasperated. "I can't believe
you didn't get candy yet! I always remind you to do that about a
week in advance. I even write it down in your planner."

"Sorry. I completely forgot all about it
until today." He didn't sound sorry at all. "So, are you coming
with me to the store or not?"

"I definitely should," she said gloomily, "or
you'll get the bad candy and all the little kids are gonna tell
everyone we're the house that gives away the worst treats." She
finished cleaning and bandaging up the cut on her foot, and then
she took a few minutes to make herself presentable for a public
appearance. However, she still looked like someone who had just
rolled out of bed when they got in the car and drove to the nearest
store, so Aline hoped really hard that no one she knew would see
her while she was out and about with her father.

Though she hadn't gone trick or treating in a
few years, she always loved it whenever Halloween came around. Of
course, a lot of her affection for the holiday was due to the fact
it was her birthday. When she was younger, she remembered that her
mom and dad always made quite a fuss about her being born just
after the stroke of midnight as October 30 became October 31. It
was a distinction that she used to lord over the other kids in
school, and she always insisted that everyone give her a share of
the candy they collected as a present. So as she and her father
headed for the store, Aline smiled with real pleasure when she saw
how everyone in town was getting ready for the big night tomorrow.
But, unlike the rest of the townspeople, she and her friends
weren't going to wait until night-time of October 31st to have
their fun. They would start partying as soon as it was officially
Halloween and her sixteenth birthday at midnight tonight.

Aline idly noticed that there seemed to be
more people on the streets than usual, and some of them were even
already in costume. One person in particular caught her eye. He was
dressed all in black, and what appeared to be tattered fabrics
swirling around his slim frame at first glance turned out to
actually be a coat completely covered in black feathers. Here and
there, twinkling as they caught the light, were little mirror
shards sewn into his outfit. He had a mask on too, a black velvety
thing that curved outwards into a sharp-looking beak. It covered
most of his face, but as their car passed him by, he suddenly
looked up right at her. Just then, the streetlight turned red, so
her dad stopped and she got more time to stare at the strange
guy.

He saw that she was looking at him, and he
smiled. It was as sharp as the edge of a knife against his lean
features. Then he decided to show off. Feeling slightly amused, she
watched as he seemed to conjure up a crystal ball out of thin air.
Then another one appeared in his hand, and then another, until he
was soon juggling three crystal balls. Her dad finally noticed the
guy's little exhibition and he laughed. "Do we have circus people
in town this year?" he wondered. "We've got a lot of folks dressed
like him walking around."

It was then Aline realized that the number of
costumed people seemed to have increased. And all of them were
performing some kind of trick or other before several groups of
locals. While the performers like the guy in feathers held
everyone's attention, she noticed that others who were equally
strange in appearance ran haphazardly through the crowds. They were
unspooling what looked like bright multi-colored threads from their
hands and creating a huge tangle of everything.

"What on earth do they think they're doing?"
she exclaimed, frowning. "Hey, Dad. Look. What are those people
doing?"

He looked, then he frowned, too. "What are
you talking about, honey?" he asked.

She stared at him with wide eyes. "What do
you mean by that? I'm talking about those weirdos who are tying up
everyone with their threads. Just look at them." She pointed at the
scene outside her window and then choked back a little scream. The
guy in feathers was standing right there, peeking through the glass
at her.

For a moment, their gazes met and held. His
eyes were as odd as the rest of him. They were amber in color, and
not in the same fanciful sense that people usually spoke of when
they were describing a pair of light-colored eyes. They looked like
actual amber. For a few unsettling seconds, she even thought that
she saw strange shapes like dragonfly wings and flower petals
trapped within those orbs. Then the feather-clad man's smile became
wider, sharper. And, without any sort of warning, his fist punched
through the glass of the window to reach for her.

She screamed in panic and heard her dad let
out a hoarse yell.

"Jesus!" he shouted, quickly adjusting his
grip on the steering wheel he had let go of for an instant. He
looked at her worriedly. "Ali, baby, are you okay? God, you
startled me. I think you fell asleep and started dreaming."

"Wh-what?" She was confused. Her heart was
pounding like crazy and she looked around to see how far they had
gotten away from the scary guy. "Oh, God! Dad, he punched through
the window. We should report him to the police!" It took several
minutes, but eventually it sank in that her father was looking at
her like she had gone insane. And she realized that the window on
her side of the car was completely whole. Her body turned cold at
the sight.

"Honey," her dad said slowly, reassuringly,
"you must have been dreaming. You probably dozed off when we
stopped in traffic a while back. Everything's okay."

"I fell asleep?" she said uncertainly.
Adrenaline was still coursing through her veins and she felt the
urge to lash out at something very strongly. But her dad was
looking very concerned about her and she didn't want to frighten
him or hurt him in any way just because she was extremely rattled
by what had happened. But what exactly had happened?

"Yes, you must have fallen asleep," he
nodded. "You just had a bad dream then you freaked out for a bit.
But everything is fine."

She knew that he meant to be comforting, but
his words only scared her more. She fell asleep and had a bad dream
in the few minutes it took them to wait out a red light? And what
about the guy in feathers and the other weird people in costumes
she had seen? Did she really just dream them up?

No. It couldn't have been just a dream. It
had felt too real. But what else could it all have been but a
dream? There was nothing to prove that it had actually
occurred.

What was going on?

***

Chapter 5

Aline got ready for the dance that night
without any of the excitement and enthusiasm she had felt for it
just a few days ago. Her mind kept going over and over what she had
seen and felt in the strange dream she had the previous night as
well as the mystifying encounter with the man wearing feathers
earlier. When she was all dressed, she barely glanced at her
reflection in the mirror to check if she looked okay. All she saw
in that brief moment was a pale, black-haired girl with dark eyes
who was made up to appear like a princess in a fantasy movie she
remembered watching when she was little.

Her dad proved true to his word and he did
take pictures of her before she left home. He even complained a bit
about the decision she had made with her friends that they wouldn't
be taking dates to the dance. She bet he would have loved it if he
had been able to take photos of her posing with a guy in a bad
choice of a costume so he could make fun of it for years to come.
Right before she stepped out of the door to head for the limousine
waiting for her at the curb, he asked her if she really felt well
enough to enjoy herself since she was looking kind of pale. She
wasn't too sure of the answer either, but she just gave him a kiss
and told him not to worry.

Aline then put on a smile for her friends
when she joined them and resolved not to think about any weirdness
for now. Once everyone was in the limo, she told the others about
her phone conversation with Trevor and they all agreed that she
should definitely talk to him at the party so she could get things
cleared up between the two of them. They were happy for her that
the guy she liked seemed to feel the same way and they heartily
approved of the fact that he went to their school. Her previous
idea to date someone from the only Catholic school in town, which
was their biggest competitor in all sorts of scholarly and athletic
activities, had not been very popular with anyone last year,
especially since the guy turned out to be a bit of a douche. Now
they wanted her to settle down to dating a nice boy within their
campus so she wouldn't drag them to any inter-religious chastity
club meetings sponsored by the local parish anymore. Not that there
was anything wrong with chastity, they had said to Aline, but they
totally minded being chaste with the type of kids who normally
joined such clubs. Plus, again, her Catholic school boyfriend was a
bit of a douche. So she had broken up with him and that was
that.

The girls arrived at the dance acceptably
late for their social standing, and it never failed to secretly
amuse Aline that they always seemed to linger for a bit at the door
whenever they entered a room. It was like one of those scenes in
teen movies when the popular kids would show up and be introduced
by voiceover as they surveyed the room like high school royalty.
But it was a thankfully brief moment, and then they dove into the
crowd and started mingling with their schoolmates.

The decorations committee had really outdone
themselves in transforming the smelly gym into something that could
reasonably pass for an enchanted ballroom. The theme for this
year's dance, which Aline and her friends had vigorously campaigned
for, was the Faerie Court. They were sick of looking at kids in
sloppy or scary costumes, so they worked on their teachers and
schoolmates to convince them that it would be a good idea to have a
unified theme for the dance other than the usual instruction to
"Come in a Halloween costume." They settled on the Faerie Court
idea because all the girls could dress up in gowns and look pretty.
The girls had all been for it, but the boys had balked at dressing
up in fancy clothes instead of Freddie Krueger or Storm Trooper
outfits. But when more than one girl had a fight with her boyfriend
because he didn't want to dress up according to the theme and the
cheerleading squad declared their full support for the idea, it was
a done deal. The school's own royal court had put their seal of
approval on it, so everyone got in line.

For a few hours, Aline let herself forget
about all the weird stuff that had happened to her and she just had
fun. She danced and laughed with her friends, and the only thing
that distracted her from time to time was the thought that she
wished Trevor were with her. But she was going to see him in the
Ballroom, so the night still had the potential to be something
truly special. Before eleven, kids started leaving the dance and
Aline made her exit too along with her friends. As they got out of
the gym, laughing and slightly drunk from the shots they had downed
behind their teachers' backs, she started to feel really excited.
She'd be sixteen in about an hour, she was going to have an amazing
party, and she'd make sure she would get to at least kiss Trevor
before she went home. So what if she was having creepy dreams?
Tonight, she wasn’t going to sleep!

"Happy birthday to me!" she suddenly shouted
happily.

"Yeah! Happy birthday, Ali!" The other kids
she had invited to her party were getting into their rides, and
they called out greetings to her as they all began to drive through
the streets like a weird little caravan. There was something in the
air that seemed to make all of them feel a little reckless, but
Aline was laughing too hard the whole time to be worried about it.
The night felt alive and electric, like something amazing was going
to happen, and it was an exhilarating feeling. There was a curious
sense of anticipation that Aline could feel burning throughout her
whole body.