Midnight till One

It is four minutes until midnight; four minutes until the witching hour. A fabled journal entry found in an old stone church on the foggy shores of Northern California reads, “Midnight till one belongs to the dead. Good Lord deliver us.” The stroke of midnight is the ghoulish caress of anguish and trepidation for the dramatic and for all things darkly mystical. There are only the unproven accounts of those who claim to have witnessed the true darkness of midnight. Many have witnessed the hour slit through the outcome of a prison execution with all the lacerating ease of the Reaper’s scythe. Many others have prayed with tight white knuckles in the final heavy breaths before whispering the dread of midnight. The hour courts an unnatural stillness, the incense smoke dances to the orchestra conducted by the gentle wind. The stillness is broken only but suddenly and only for the flash of a moment. The speeding motorist ignoring residential courtesies. The passing motorist with frantic eyes and dirty hands. A motorist with miles behind them, desperate to put many more between they and the unquestionable scene left behind. The stillness resumes. The rain comes in waves. The sound of her breathing is the only sound over the splashing outside. Her exhales of rhythmic tranquility are a drug. The rain rests for the time being and the stillness resumes. It grows quieter, softer. Wet pellets drip in pattern and everything is dimmer, softer still. The approach of midnight. The hush. The first minute is the longest and there is no turning back from a purgatory of time. Her sudden startling and familiar sirens in the distance shatter fragile nerves, and somewhere close by the stroke of midnight has meant despair. The rain returns, gaining its confidence in the tension. The earlier sirens were not enough. Whatever despair occurred, more attention was necessary. Her unconscious disquieting was brief and unknown. The limbo is unflinching and the stillness resumes. Stray clouds lingering after the rain scatter the sky under the glowing stillness. Their movements occasionally muffle the light of the moon over the sleepiest of streets. A large dog barks at the unheard. The barking is fierce and adamant with such urgency that you listen. You listen for cautious footsteps to crush the wet autumn leaves. The unseen takes images in your mind, images of stories told of the darkest animals living among us. Deadbolts fasten and porch lights plummet along the sleepy street. In the silence, in the crisp chill dead of night it is the hour of the dead. Sweaty, horrid men who have made unholy deals sit in dimly lit rooms, stricken by the fear of imbursement. Smoking cigarettes end to end, they know the only price for the deeds committed is the one thing they are unwilling to pay. They will pay. The devastation of others harvests in time. When midnight to one belongs to the dead, all debts fair and proper will be collected fair and final. At the stroke of twelve, the dead and their blight in their hour of liberty find their all-too-late reprieve. Shattered by the hands of man, the darkest of unknowns has enabled the lost to collect in the most swift and unsuspecting of ways. The timid gentleman of yesterday’s high-society drops dead, alone and without witness. Those in the house recall of the hour with gooseflesh the bolt of a desperate shriek, then the thud of finality. His hands froze in twisted claws and his eyes the empty mirror of the terror of his final moments. His closest confidant takes to the grave the insistence that the death of his business partner was of supernatural consequence. The haunting of the past crawled slowly through time to take back what never belonged. The unspeakable details of arsenic and betrayal surrounding the secrets followed along to the grave. There is a train station a few blocks downtown. The rapid dinging of the track signals is a few minutes early. The routinely heard dinging sounds are no more a nuisance than the stampeding passenger train that will inevitably follow, trundling east towards San Bernardino with person or persons unknown. The midnight train is the last ride to sanctuary before venturing the witching hour in an abandoned downtown that favors in early closure. The rapid dinging of the east midnight train is the dinner bell for the citizens of the city beneath the city. The train is gone and its horn echoes from the darkness into obscurity. It is after midnight. The stranded of the station had better pull their coats up close and hold their breath tight. Midnight till one belongs to the dead. The hour has begun and the stillness resumes.