Before the Dawn (16 page)

Trevor frowned. "Tony and Gina who?"

"Oh, you know. Tony and Gina Torres," his
mother said. "That poor couple whose daughter slipped into this
strange coma and the doctors could never figure out what was wrong
with her. They moved away when they placed her in this special care
facility so they could be close to her." Trevor still looked
confused, and she huffed in exasperation. "Their daughter was in
your school, remember? I think you were both even in the same
year."

He seemed to vaguely remember something about
a girl who went into a coma. He wasn’t really sure though because
he mostly kept to himself during high school, preferring to sit
somewhere alone where he could scribble and sketch in peace. Though
there was this one girl he sort of remembered. He tried to rack his
brain for more details, but he could just come up with a faint
impression of dark hair and a pretty smile.

George changed the subject then by asking him
if he was all settled in his new house.

"I still have some stuff to do," he said.
"I’ll be going to get some groceries after breakfast, actually,
since I don’t have anything in the kitchen. Then I’ll fix up some
things I haven’t unpacked yet."

"Do you need any help with that?" his
stepfather asked.

"No," Trevor shook his head. "I’ve got
it."

"Oh, honey," his mother interjected, "don’t
make dinner tonight, okay? George and I are going to take you out.
Remember that Ballroom place where you used to work back in school?
It’s a restaurant now, and it’s actually quite nice."

"All right," he nodded after thinking about
it for less than a second. "Sure. Dinner tonight with you guys
would be great." And he meant it. The thought of eating alone in an
empty house again after his first lonely night was depressing.
"Should I drop by here first or meet you there?"

His mother told him that they’d pick him up
at seven. He agreed, finished up his breakfast, then went out to
run his errands. He discovered to his surprise that almost everyone
he encountered in the grocery store and on the streets seemed to
remember him or they knew that he was George’s stepson. The people
were actually quite nice and they all tried to make it a point to
welcome him. He was genuinely touched yet a bit uncomfortable with
all the warm attention because God knew he had gotten too used to
living in a big city where no one cared anything about strangers.
All this niceness and cheeriness were therefore quite
unsettling.

After his little trip to the store, he spent
the rest of the day making sure he was completely settled in the
house. He unpacked the stuff he had instructed the movers not to
touch, such as his computer and audio equipment. Then he wandered
through each room, checking and rechecking everything until he was
satisfied that he didn't have to call anyone for some repair work.
The house had certainly been kept in good condition. However, while
he was doing his inspection of the house, he was quite surprised to
find there was one room that sort of made him feel uneasy. The room
was not overly large, but it had an airy, spacious feel that was
made welcoming by the warm yellow paint on the walls. There was
nothing inside it that gave a hint as to who had once been its
occupant, but he knew with an odd certainty that it had been a
young girl's bedroom, most likely the Torres girl who had slipped
into the weird coma. There was just something about it that made it
easy for him to imagine that memories of that unfortunate girl
haunted the place. Of course he told himself that he was just being
fanciful, but he really couldn't shake the feeling. It was
weird.

After a long day of getting the house into
the order that he liked, he got ready for dinner and waited for his
mom and George to get him. He was really grateful that they were
both being very nice about not asking him uncomfortable questions
that he wasn’t ready to answer yet. Not that he wanted to talk
about Vera and the death of that relationship with them, or anyone
else for that matter. Some things were just too raw that using
words to describe them would be the equivalent of rubbing salt on
the wounds.

Once they drove up and he got in the car, he
allowed their good-natured bickering to distract him from his
thoughts. He had to smile as he listened to his mother scold George
for forgetting to buy candies for Halloween, again. "I swear," she
looked at Trevor’s reflection in the rear view mirror and rolled
her eyes, "he forgets to buy them every year. Then we end up
rushing to the store at the last minute and getting the worst candy
of the bunch". George, however, only laughed and teased her about
being the Halloween Nazi.

When they finally arrived at the restaurant,
Trevor found that the old Ballroom building had retained its
general shape, but everything else about it had changed. Instead of
the dark colors that used to make both the exteriors and the
interiors appear vaguely mysterious and menacing, the place was now
painted in bright hues. It had a sort of 1950s nostalgia atmosphere
going on and even the food was classic in its salty, fatty
goodness. The only thing that was really striking about this new
incarnation of the Ballroom was how much the forest near it had
grown through the years. It was like the woods had slowly but
surely crept up to the building until the trees were practically
growing outside its back door.

"Oh, yeah. The woods," their waiter, who said
his name was Stan, just shrugged when Trevor asked him why the
management didn't clear up the space where the trees were already
encroaching on the restaurant's territory. "Too much work," he
said. "They tried for the first few years, but it was like the
trees grew abnormally fast every time they got cut down. Finally,
the bosses just gave up. Now a couple of guys just make sure that
at least the leaves and other stuff don't make a lot of mess."

Trevor stared out through a nearby window at
the dark outlines of the trees as they ate their meal. It was kind
of creepy to be sitting here in what was more or less a modern
establishment while something ancient waited patiently to overrun
and reclaim the space they were in now. He felt an almost
superstitious fear that the woods were hiding something dark and
terrible that was only biding its time before it could be
unleashed. Then he laughed quietly at himself. He was thinking all
sorts of odd things these days, probably as a result of all the
stress he had recently gone through, and was still going through in
some ways. He had moved away so he wouldn't have to be reminded of
the past, but all he could think about when he wasn't distracting
himself with work was Vera and what had happened between them. It
wasn't fair.

Finally, after a lengthy and enjoyable dinner
with this mother and stepfather, the three of them were ready to go
home. They piled back into George’s car again with Trevor in the
backseat while his stepfather carefully drove along the dark
stretch of road that led back to Trevor’s street. His full stomach
was making him feel sleepy and he actually had to struggle to keep
his eyes open. He idly noticed that the woods had also come
marching right up to the very edges of the road. For a moment, he
was concerned that some animal might wander into the path of the
car, but he knew George was a conscientious driver so he wasn’t too
worried as his eyes grew heavier and heavier.

The light doze he had fallen into was
abruptly ended when he heard his mother scream, "Look out!" George
cursed furiously and Trevor got jolted around as his stepfather
stomped on the brakes and turned the wheel in a panic to avoid a
dark figure that was standing still in the middle of the road.
There was a screech of tires, then Trevor let out a scared yell
himself as the now out-of-control car ran off the road and smashed
hard against a nearby tree.

For a sick moment, he thought they had all
died. Then he blinked and realized he was still very much alive,
though a bit banged up. He heard someone moan in pain and,
instantly, he remembered his mother. Oh, God, what if she was—he
couldn’t finish the thought. As quickly as he could, he forced
himself to move and get out of the car. He went to check on his
mother and his heart almost stopped when he saw that she was
unconscious and there was a cut on her forehead. He felt for her
pulse and, thankfully, it was still beating away. He then went
around to the other side of the car to see how George was. His
stepfather was groaning and clutching his head.

"George? George, are you okay?" Trevor’s
fingers were clumsy as he unbuckled the other man’s seat belt.

"Annie," his stepfather tried to reach for
Trevor’s mom, but the effort proved to be too much for him. He
leaned back against his seat, his breathing harsh and labored.

"It’s gonna be all right, George," Trevor
promised. "You’re gonna be all right. I’ve got Mom. I’ll take care
of this." He went back to his mother’s side, pulling out the
cellphone from his jeans pocket as he did so. He had to force
himself to focus before he could successfully dial the number of
emergency services and he almost sobbed in relief when the operator
answered immediately. He told the man about the accident and was
assured that help was heading their way. He checked on his mother
again and suffered from a moment of pure terror when he couldn’t
manage to release the clasp on her seat belt for several seconds.
He had just accomplished this task when a strangled whimper reached
his ears and made him whip his head around, searching for the
source of the sound.

The person George had barely managed to avoid
was still standing, staring with shocked eyes at the moon in the
sky, then at the dark trees by the side of the road. Trevor was
still shaking quite badly from the swift rush of adrenaline through
his body, but he tried to steady himself, and then he approached
the stranger warily.

It was a young girl—she couldn’t have been
more than sixteen or so—and she looked like hell. She was wearing
some sort of costume, a kind of princess outfit, that was torn and
dirty at the ends. Her dark hair was a wild tangle with bits of
leaves and flowers in it. Her feet, however, were bare. And as he
frowned down at them, because there seemed to be something strange
about her feet, he came to realize that they were bleeding.

"Oh, my God," he exhaled. "Hey, are you
okay?" He reached out towards her hesitantly because he didn't want
to spook her. She seemed like she would bolt at any second. "Hey,"
he repeated, "you okay? What happened? What were you doing out here
in the middle of the road?"

She just stared at him with wide, confused
eyes. He then had the thought that she looked like she was high on
some kind of drug. There was this expression on her face that made
her look like she wasn’t completely aware of what was happening
around her.

"I'm going to call for help, okay?" he told
her, speaking slowly and clearly. His first impulse was actually to
lead her to the car and make her sit down. But he wasn't sure how
she was going to react if he did that, and he strongly suspected
that she would probably freak out. So he resolved to try to make
her comfortable at least.

"Hey, are you cold?" he asked. "I've got a
jacket in the car. Hang on a second and I'll get it." She looked
like she never even heard him, so he walked over to the car and
grabbed his jacket from the backseat. He went back to where she was
still standing and looking around in some kind of daze. "Here you
go." Moving very carefully and trying to look as non-threatening as
he could, Trevor approached her and gently laid the jacket over her
shoulders. She stared at it in bewilderment for a moment then,
suddenly shivering like she finally realized how cold she had been,
she grabbed its edges and wrapped herself tightly with the warm
fabric. Her confused expression seemed to clear up a little and she
looked up to meet his eyes.

"Is this—real?" Her voice sounded creaky as
if she had not talked in a long time. "I'm not dancing anymore."
She looked down at her wounded feet and, suddenly, she started to
cry. "I'm not dancing anymore," she repeated and began to sob in
earnest. Then she collapsed into an exhausted heap.

The cops and the paramedics fortunately
arrived in time before Trevor could start to let panic take over
him. The EMTs were able to revive the girl and tend to his mom and
stepfather swiftly and efficiently. All four of them who were in
the accident were quickly packed up into two vans and rushed to the
hospital. Trevor was judged to be the one who had suffered the
least amount of trauma, so the cops who had responded to the
emergency call asked him to answer some of their questions about
what had happened. He wasn't much help though because all he could
tell them was how he had been sort of sleeping before the crash and
he hadn’t seen everything clearly. Then, after some probing and
bandaging by a doctor and a nurse, he was told that he was fine
enough to go home on his own. However, he insisted on seeing his
mother and stepdad first.

They had been placed in the same room.
George’s face looked horribly bruised but, otherwise, he was okay
according to the doctor who had also looked after Trevor. His mom,
though, had a broken wrist along with the cut on her forehead. The
doctor wanted to observe them for a day or two, so they would both
be staying in the hospital for a while. Trevor took the news
gratefully, but with a strange sense of impending doom. He was
extremely reluctant to leave and he lingered by their bedsides for
as long as he could until one of the police officers who had talked
to him earlier offered to take him home.

He chose to spend the night in the house his
mom shared with George. They had given him a spare key and he
intended to visit them in the hospital as soon as he could the next
morning and bring them some of their things. He felt very tired and
drowsy by the time he locked up the front door and made his way to
the guest room. It had been a long day and a very strange night. He
fell flat on top of the sheets without even bothering to change his
clothes. His eyes just refused to stay open anymore and, in what
seemed like seconds, he closed them and he was asleep.