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When the Morning Comes

Erika Murdey

        A rustling sound stirred her from her sleep. Her eyes creaked open as the small dog emerged from beneath the sheets. His dark shape oozed across her covered legs and onto the floor. “Bowser, come back!” she hissed. But she might as well have been pleading with the moon.
    Steady snores broke their pattern beside her. She turned from the disobedient dog onto one elbow to face her husband. Her whispers had not completely shaken him from sleep- his breathing resumed its familiar nighttime rhythm. She watched his back; his smooth side rose and fell. Slurping noises in the hall jerked her attention away from him, her eyes went wide, her own breath fast and ragged. Then she relaxed. Bowser was drinking water. He was thirsty. He didn’t have to go outside.
    The past few nights the little terrier had needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. She’d come to dread his early morning excursions more and more. There were things out there.
    What kind of things she couldn’t tell. Sometimes there were scurrying, scampering things that tumbled through the field at the edge of her backyard. Sometimes there were crashing, thumping things that tore through the grass at her approach, and she couldn’t tell if the things were running away- or towards her.
    But when Bowser finished drinking he would come back to bed, she was sure of it. She eased back under the thick comforter and listened as the dog’s tongue lapped the water, soothing as white noise.
    When the sound cut off and the dog’s black and white face failed to appear in the doorway she sat up. “Bowser!” she whispered, hoping either to draw the dog back or awaken her husband. But no dog came to her call, and her voice did not pierce her husband’s slumber.
    She threw off the covers and swung her feet to the floor, then fumbled in the darkness for her bathrobe. Trying to trap the clinging warmth of the bed under her robe, she wrapped it around her thin nightgown. As she did her eyes found the clock. 3:30. The red numbers seemed as angry as she was. Why did the dog have to get up around three each morning? At least he had let her sleep in thirty minutes more than usual.
    The dog’s bladder seemed to have its own alarm clock, lately. Even if she took him out late in the night he roused her around three to go out again. She and Bowser would shamble outside, shut the main door behind them and leave the screened door to swing shut on its own. And then they would leave the front yard with its meager glow from the porch light and journey to the backyard. Where the things were.
    Encased in her bathrobe, she left her husband and his comfortable snores behind. Feeling her way down the hall, she entered the living room.
    Starlight poured through the windows, seeming too bright after the dark corridor. She maneuvered around the coffee table, its solid cherry-stained wood dominating the middle of the floor.
    As she passed the tall, oak TV cabinet a threatening hiss hit her ears. “It’s okay, Alfie,” she told the luminous, white cockatiel, “it’s just me.” The bird ruffled his feathers and resumed picking at the seeds in his dish. Hulls flew in a cloud around him, and in the night’s stillness she imagined she could hear them as they fell to the bottom of his cage.
    
    She turned to find Bowser and instead saw Franklin sitting on the window sill, his pointed ears erect and alert. He stared, immobile, out the window by the door. “Franklin, you silly cat. What are you looking at?” She stroked his silky, short fur and he purred, the sound like marbles rolling on a hardwood floor. He briefly regarded her with glowing green eyes before turning back to his vigil at the glass.
    Bending beside him, she followed the cat’s wide-eyed gaze. The world outside was painted in blacks and grays. She looked at the cat, at the dog. Their bodies were tense, even in the dark. “There’s nothing out there, guys.” But did she believe it herself?
    She shivered, then shook her head. If she was ever going to get back to bed she had to take the Bowser out. That, or go back to bed and have the first sight to greet her in the morning be a little pile of dog crap.
    The leash hung by the door, and she removed it and hooked her dog’s collar to it. She took a deep breath and opened the door. The screen door was there, with a long gash across the middle that she’d been meaning to fix. Suddenly, she wanted to turn back, dog poop be damned. Instead she pushed down the latch for the screen door and stepped through.
    Bowser darted forward. “Hey!” she cried. He pulled her around the house and it wasn’t until they were in the backyard that she realized she hadn’t shut the main door. But the screen door always closed on its own. What would enter her home? A few minutes of early fall chill? The last of summer’s moths? If she brought her dog around to close that door she would never be able to convince herself back here. Where the things were.
    She let the dog lead her down the hill, as they’d done every night. When they came to the edge of the field with the tall grass Bowser hunched to do his business. She looked into the field, into the dry corn stalks a few yards from where she stood. There was papery rustling to the left, then the right. A quick crunch of dried stalks- a deer? A pattering of what, mice? The sounds didn’t follow a path, they were legion. Her skin felt pinched, and she looked at her wrist to find she was covered in goosebumps.
    Bowser growled.
    She stared at the dog. “What is it, boy?” she whispered.
    He growled again, then she heard his loud, threatening bark. She froze. He never barked, never growled, never made a noise. Then she heard it.
    It sounded like a train rolling through the field. A wide path of corn bent before it. Whatever it was, it didn’t cut through the corn, it ploughed over the corn. Her body was ice, and she watched from the hill as the black line in the field rushed closer and closer.
    Her legs cut out from under her and she screamed. Then Bowser jumped on her chest and refused to budge when she pushed him. “You knocked me down? We have to get out of here, we have to-”
    A gust of wind hurtled past her. She forgot her anger and hugged the dog tight. It was like being on the edge of a tornado. Then the current died and she sat up. There was a path cut through the corn and long grass that led up the hill, and to her home.
    She stared dumbly at the line, her head and throat felt hollow. “We have to go, go see,” she said. She started up the hill and found herself anchored to the ground. “Come, Bowser.” But he wouldn’t move.
    She scooped the dog up in her arms. He was shaking.
    She trudged up the hill and around to the front of the house. The hole in the screen was wider now. A heavy gust of wind blew out the door, from inside the house. She was shaking too, now.
    She shoved the screen door open and slammed the main door behind her and locked it. Then she set down Bowser. He stood as though he’d been hit with a volt of electricity, a line of hair along his back stood on end.
    Franklin was absent from the windowsill, but he lay in an awkward position below it. “Kitty-cat?” He didn’t wake up.
    Further into the room she looked up at the bird cage, but Alfie was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t hear him moving. Did birds sleep on the floor of the cage? They had to sometimes, right? She wanted to look but couldn’t. Something cold touched the back of her leg and she jumped. It was Bowser, who trailed her closer than a shadow.
    She had to go back to bed.
    In the bedroom there was absolute silence. She strained for the sound of her husband’s snores, her husband’s breathing. Anything. But there was nothing. “Honey?” she said. The word echoed like it had been spoken in a crypt. His side was as still as stone. She reached for his shoulder- she had to shake him awake.
    She stopped just before her hand touched him. She couldn’t wake him now. It couldn’t be true. She was fooling herself.
    She climbed into bed and Bowser jumped up and huddled beside her. He still trembled. She petted him and tried to comfort him. Everything would be fine when the sun came up. Everything would be fine.

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