The Altar of Dawn

A man wakes to a detective at his door — and a dream he can't shake from his hands.

We had made a spectacle of ourselves in the hotel dining room. Shouting. Shattered glass. But that is how our blood boils—hot, then desperate. By the time sleep finally claimed us at the first dawn light, we were reconciled, exhausted by a night of frantic, airless fever.

A persistent hammering dragged me from a hollow, terrifying dream. Weak light bled through the curtains, though my head throbbed with something different than wine. Two drills bored into my temples as I crawled toward the door.

In the hallway stood the floor waiter, flanked by a stranger in a charcoal suit. His white shirt was frayed, a loose designer tie in clashing red and green hanging like a noose. He offered no words—only a badge. Homicide.

"Where is Mary?" The words came out thick, wrong. I threw a half-asleep glance back into the room, expecting her tangled in the sheets. The double bed was empty. Flat. Cold.

The terror took root then—not from the badge, but from the dream I'd just fled. The smell of damp earth. The weight of a shovel. I know everything, the thought surfaced before I could stop it — and it terrified me more than the badge ever could. Not a fact. Not yet. Only a vision: my own dirt-clogged hands hovering over her still, pale form in the grove behind the hotel.

The detective didn't move. He simply watched the way I tried to hide my fingernails against the doorframe.