In The Dead of the Night

08 | restless moonlight

I could almost feel how close Shawn had been to me when I saw the note lying on top of my pillow that night. I shivered at the thought of him being just inches from me, leaning over my body to place the note on the side of my pillow it wouldn't fall off of, walking away from me without my knowing. 

The note reassured he'd be back from the city by midnight, and more likely by evening, at the latest, although the time on the clock read 10:22 p.m. when I woke, and, given by the fact he'd mentioned 'all day' in his writing, he'd been in the city since morning. He's most likely driving back right now, I thought as I let my body collapse against the concrete outer wall, almost as freezing and ice-like as the rock-hard ground I sat on. The late night was more freezing than I ever remembered it being, and the gusts of wind swung the rusted, steel ladder back and forth with deafening booms every time it hit against the concrete wall again, as if it was easy. But something inside of me told me I should wait for him. Wouldn't he have waited for me if I was back later than expected? 

My hands shook the entire time. Even when they should have been too frozen to shake as hard they did, they persisted. Maybe, I trembled from something deeper than the cold. 

I climbed the warehouse when midnight had just about struck. If I was higher, maybe I'd have my worries relieved just a few seconds earlier, though I knew I didn't have to worry. Something was happening, a part of me swore, but that was just my paranoia. 

Only a few minutes after I reached the top of the building passed before the snow started coming down. Like ice, chunks of compressed snow that felt like fire on my skin as I scrambled down the ladder and ran into the building. Before closing the door behind me, I ran back to the lake and dipped my hands in it to warm them up, but the water felt so cold it could freeze. 

Nothing greater or lesser greeted me in the warehouse. I could look out through the cloudy glass toward the front of the building, but with the snowstorm outdoors and the ripples of the window through years of warping of old glass, there was no use to be there. Wrapping my body in a blanket from an unused bed, I watched the clock in the bedroom like time would go faster if I did. Seconds ticked by until I covered my ears to stop them from bleeding, each one eerily reminiscent of the sound of a bullet firing. 

When 5 a.m. struck, the snow finally stopped, and a sigh of relief left me. He'd just been waiting until the storm to stop to drive back, I thought to myself. Of course. 

I crawled back in bed and laid my head on the pillow as if I could actually fall asleep. I'd already slept through that whole day, which I wished I hadn't so I could convince him to let me come with him when he left this morning, and I damn sure didn't believe myself when I said he hadn't come back just because of the snow. The snow didn't start until after midnight; he was supposed to be back by midnight at the latest. He was supposed to be back for me by evening. 

For a while, I laid in bed, on my side, always keeping one ear up to listen for the sound of the door opening again, that I learned wouldn't come for another many tears. 

...

At midnight the next night, as the snow returned to the empty lands in a light flurry and the wind picked up until the rusting train carts outside began to swing and creak with the thick grey clouds, did the door finally open. I opened my eyes that had been closed only to give them a rest, although I found it easier to get carried away with my horrid imagination as my eyelids fluttered shut, and to try to stop the stream of tears I would never admit to. I threw the blankets off me and took the note in my hand as quickly as I could, and ran across the building with my cold, sore, unused legs stumbling under my weight to the voice that was yelling my name.