An Hour Before The Dawn

By Davide Marchi

And so act like me: every now and then turn off the light and let the shadow that creeps towards you reach you.

Listen to what it has to say.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nulla Die
• Release date: Jan 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781507154656

Book preview

An Hour Before The Dawn

Davide Marchi

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Translated by Cassidy Green 

An Hour Before The Dawn

Written By Davide Marchi

Copyright © 2023 Nulla die di Massimiliano Giordano

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Cassidy Green

Cover Design © 2023 Massimiliano Giordano

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Table of Contents

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Prologue

A scream

The red-faced demon

Knocking at the door

A man in the closet

The walls of the Underworld

The neutral horseman

Spectators

A greeting

There’s someone laughing

The illusionist’s reward

The yellow umbrella

Prologue

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Do you remember when, as a child, you were afraid of the dark?

Before turning off the lights, each time you made sure to already be secure under the covers, that shield so thin, and yet capable of protecting you from the most terrible horrors; only occasionally, when you were really out of breath, would you dare stick your head out to catch a breath and cast a glance into the dark, silent, solemn room.

And who knows what secrets would reveal themselves to the world in those nighttime hours (at midnight!) whose name alone would contain amazing expectations and hidden fears. While just asleep, far from indiscrete human eyes, monstrous creatures and whispering shadows would slither out from the cracks and half-open doors and, if you woke up by chance in the middle of the night, you yourself would hear murmurings and glimpse their shapes across the sheets: smiling, poised between fear and excitation, you would safely remain in your refuge, trembling only slightly when those shadows seemed to get closer.

And even if by now many years have passed since those moments, maybe also you, just like me, haven’t ceased making out deformed shapes in the corners of dark rooms and hearing inhuman screams (the voices of the dead?) during the nights when the wind whistles on the roof. And now that the light is out, you try to get to sleep, while indecipherable fears creep under your covers, disgustingly writhing between your toes.

There is a shadow, right next to your bed... do you see it? It seems to stare at you. Of course, both you and I, adults, rational people, we know that it’s probably just a bathrobe, a hanger, an ironed shirt hanging on the door frame... and yet you’d swear you hadn’t left any of that there; and those monstrous humps, those pointed protuberances... no, that shadow is something else.

Soon the most conscious part of your identity, rooted in the depth of your mind like a thousand-year-old oak, dissolves in an indistinct cloud and your imagination, as if freed from an unbearable weight, begins to suggest that you are in danger... it’s better to turn on the light.

You, on the other hand, surely can’t listen to such a childish thought and, continuing to fix wide-open eyes on that monstrous shadow, repress the shameful terror that grips your bowels.

It’s your imagination that populates that empty room with creatures: he who fixes his sight into the dark, is really just watching inside a mirror. But if it really is so, how is it possible that no one ever sees dreams, hopes, joy? Since the dawn of time, Man has always seen monsters, death, fear: is this, therefore, what really resides in us?

You begin to move towards the light switch: the shadow is one step away from you, unmoving.

Then

suddenly

it leaps

like a

snake

it slithers towards you

you look for the switch, but your hand finds only

sharp terrible

objects

icy fangs and

the shadow is a meter from you

an centimeter a

breath

Light.

Your hand, still leaning on the light switch, trembles with genuine terror... but in front of you nothing is there, only your house’s furniture that, lazily outstretched on the floor like cats to the sun, seem almost to mock you for your absurd fears of a moment ago.

As a child, when you still lived in the magical world that only children have the key to access, this view warmed your heart, reassuring you with its normalcy. But now... now your eyes seem almost to summon those shadows, to call upon them, while you search for them in every corner of the room. Weren’t you afraid, just a moment ago? Weren’t you running from them?

Like an indecisive lover, you now appear to pray for their return to your room. That they return to whisper of ancient and primordial terrors, of the most internal and least explored part of the human soul, of the world which men rarely manage to see... but in the cold light of your lamp, displaying objects in their inanimate emptiness and pedantically highlighting every detail, every fold of the sheet, every grain in the wood ceiling, the shadows are no longer there; perhaps they have disappeared in order to give way to reality, or maybe have only returned into their own world, waiting for the next moment to reappear in ours.

There’s no way to see them when that miserable electric lamp illuminates the room; in a moment even the memory of them will retreat into a tiny corner of your brain and leave you in your healthy conviction of not believing in such stupidities.

And so act like me: every now and then turn off the light and let the shadow that creeps towards you reach you. Listen to what it has to say.

A scream

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A scream in the night.

But was it really a scream, after all? Well, it certainly sounded just like the