Nigh Read online

  NIGH

  nigh

  /nī/

  (adverb, preposition, & adjective): near, almost

  The world is ending.

  9 days left

  Blackness. Total fucking blackness.

  I’m lost in it, my insides unsettled like they never have been before, like there’s a throbbing, growing tumor somewhere inside me I’ll never be able to find.

  Vibrations run their way across my fingertips and up my arms to my shoulders and I open my eyes, the blackness disappearing as quickly as it took over.

  Fierce, but fleeting tremors move through the plane and I watch us fall from the sky through my window. No announcements are made.

  I look around and see the ten or so other passengers, each of their faces pasted with similar blank stares. I wonder for a moment if they are the crazies I’ve heard about, flying every day they can hoping for some final blaze of glory.

  The plane speeds up as it gets closer to the runway, and I sit back and try as best as I can to keep my eyes open. I don’t want the blackness to come back.

  We land and I grab my bag and make my way off the plane, the last of the other staggering zombies. None of us make eye contact. I see the stewardess for the first time since we took off next to the door. She smiles weakly at me, but I can’t return the gesture.

  A small group of men are gathered next to the terminal, each looking like they haven’t showered in weeks and holding signs that have things written on them like, “the end is nigh” and “stop pretending.” The men don’t say anything to me or the others. They just hold their signs.

  Unkempt people sleep on the floor of the airport, their things strewn about as if they have been there for weeks, maybe months. One lying near the desk in the terminal smells particularly bad.

  I make it to a bathroom and a man standing next to the sinks with a faded bible in his hand is yelling about “God” and “The Old Testament” and “Revelations.” I ignore him as do others, but his voice ricochets off the bathroom walls, which doesn’t help my jet lag.

  I walk through the rest of the airport passing similar people — women selling what they have left, men offering to kill me cheap, more people with signs, even more with bibles. I wonder why they don’t just shut down the damn airports. It’s where all the crazies go. Then again, I never would have been able to make it back in time if they had.

  The airports had once been busy, bustling even, immediately after The News. They were so busy that you couldn’t book a flight after a couple days. People wanted to travel. But, like most things that were part of people’s swift reactions to The News, it was a fleeting feeling. There were only two airlines still running now. The airports lost most of their security and staff and people stopped caring.

  But there were enough pilots and enough people that wanted to work that you could find flights here and there, all cheap.

  I make my way to the building’s front doors and the split second when I move through them and go from one world to the next is the best moment of my day. For that small sliver of time, the chaos disappears. The noises are gone and everything is right with the world because everything is quiet.

  Alas, the peace is brief and disappears like water through my fingers. I enter the sidewalk and exchange one piercing state of disarray for another. A man walks up to me and tells me he’ll fuck me and then kill me quick for two hundred dollars. Prices are getting cheaper, I think as I shoot the man a look that makes him move on.

  I look around the street for a cab, most of which have vanished almost as quickly as everything else. There’s only just enough system left in place to provide a vague, functioning skeleton of what once was.

  I see a cab with its light turned off and walk to it and tap on the driver’s side window. It rolls down.

  “Ride?” I ask.

  “Sure, as long as it’s not too far,” he says.

  “Just a few miles.”

  “Get in.” I jump in the backseat and tell the driver the address. I think I’ll be able to have a few moments of peace and reflection, but the world is too cruel for that. The man’s radio is screaming. He’s listening to one of the last radio stations left. It’s called Truth 104.9 and I hear a lot of people listening to it wherever I go. I think it’s because there’s nothing much else to listen to, but maybe people find some sort of comfort in the noise and what the people say.

  A guy is on I’ve heard before and he’s yelling about how we need a new leader and about how NASA has secret programs they are not telling us about. I ask the guy if he would mind turning it off.

  “Fuck you. You’re the one that needs the ride.” I tell him he’s right and say thanks and try not to listen to the radio voice. I reach into my pocket and pull one of the rings out. I hold it in my hand and move it around without looking at it. I feel the ridges and grooves and smooth bits that my mind and fingers have memorized. I touch it and feel it and make myself remember her and remember what I’m doing.

  I get lost in the ring and thoughts of her and where I was until the vehicle comes to a stop.

  “This is it,” the cabbie says. I return the ring to my pocket and hand the man money which he waves off with disgust. I tell him thank you and leave the cab, reentering the cacophony that is reality.

  226 days left

  The happiest day of my life was the day I learned the world was going to end. A level of elation I’d never experienced before shot through my body and I felt for the longest time like I was floating.

  A girl I was rooming with once told me what an orgasm felt like. I remember being thrilled at the way she described the sensation. At the time, it sounded like the single greatest thing a person could feel. Now, I doubt even the best orgasm could ever come close to touching the joy I felt when I heard The News.

  I’ve spent my whole life in and out of hospitals. I’ve never done the normal things a girl my age is supposed to do. I’ve never dated. I’ve never even had a real friend. I don’t go to school, and my parents do their best, but they can’t help but look at me like a wasted opportunity.

  The doctors like to say I don’t have much time left a lot. My parents used to tell me not to worry and to hope for the best. After a while, they stopped saying things like that.

  I don’t remember ever actually being told I was sick. It had always just been that way. Hospitals were my second home and in my actual home, I could do little more than sit around and think about my non-future.

  I’d mostly lay around and read celebrity gossip magazines my mom would give me when she was done with them. The bright pages used to make me angry at how unfair the whole damn world was.

  I had nothing — no interests, no hobbies and no one to talk to.

  Then The News came along and gave whatever I had to the whole goddamn world in one glorious and sweeping moment.

  I lie in my bed now staring at the ceiling listening to my parents watch people shout about it all on television. It’s the only thing anyone talks about anymore. They sit in the dark night after night, silently glued to those voices.

  It makes me smile.

  I’m so happy the world is ending. I feel like I can finally breathe.

  255 days left

  She tries hard to breathe but her throat is spitting blood. Her mouth, half gone, sucks for air but gets none. I grab her shoulders and pull her close to me. I don’t know what to do.

  Through the red and the pain, I see her eyes clearly for a moment, the eyes of a child, the eyes of someone dying who doesn’t understand the concept yet. They are confused and lost and burning out and I don’t know what to do.

  Her chest convulses a few times and then her eyes look off and I can feel her breath disappear and that makes me still and quiet.

  The dog stands his ground a few feet away, snarling. The
re’s a piece of thick flesh hanging from his lower lip, quivering with each growl. He lowers his head, not taking his eyes off me.

  After what cannot be more than a handful of seconds of us staring at each other, I watch the dog’s head explode and shower the ground and the rest of his body follow with a quick drop.

  I look up to see the girl’s father at the end of a shotgun. He stands sturdy over the remains of the animal, and my heart is ready to claw its way through my ribs and skin and shirt.

  The father looks to the girl in my arms and his eyes are still and quiet.

  He turns and walks back into his house.

  Her name is Cassie, I think. I don’t know how old she is, but I guess seven or eight. I sit there holding the mess left of her in my arms as the dog cooks next to us in the sun. After twenty or so minutes, I realize the father is not coming back out of his house and I call 9-1-1.

  They keep me on hold for nearly an hour, and then finally tell me that someone will be there soon.

  The sun starts to disappear after another thirty minutes and I lay Cassie next to the decaying flesh of her dog and sit and wait alone.

  Eventually, the only light in the air is from the street lamps. The one closest to me flickers, ready to die out. Flies start hovering and picking at the bodies next to me. I’m about to call 9-1-1 again when I see an ambulance with no lights flashing pull up to the curb.

  A short, wiry man who looks like he hasn’t slept or bathed in a week stumbles out of the vehicle. He takes one look at me and the two pools of bodies and then he walks to the back of the ambulance.

  He returns with a stretcher and two body bags.

  “Lucky they’re both small,” he says, “want to give me a hand?”

  He unzips one of the bags and hands me plastic gloves. I put them on and we lift the dog and Cassie into separate bags and zip them up. The smell is wretched and coats the air and pulls at my nose. The wiry man doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Technically, I’m not supposed to take the dog, but what the hell,” he says, stopping to look at me for a moment, “you’re not the father, are you?”

  “No,” I say, just then realizing how much of a fog my mind is really in, “I’m not.”

  “Good,” he says and then chuckles and shakes his head. “Want to help me carry these to the van?” Without answering, I help him grab the bags and put them onto the stretcher and then put the stretcher in the back of the ambulance. The bodies are surprisingly light and the whole ordeal goes by quick, which makes me nauseous.

  “She was alive and playing with that thing this morning,” I say, my eyes caught on the two black bags.

  “Ya,” I hear from the man, “been happening a lot lately. They say there’s something wrong with the animals, especially the dogs.”

  “Really?” I say, my attention turning completely to the man, “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “They don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

  “Who’s they?”

  “Everybody. Afraid it’s just one more thing that’ll make people snap.” I turn back to the bags and catch a glimpse of myself in the window of the door to the ambulance and realize then how completely painted in blood I am. It looks almost black in the night. I realize then how heavy it feels on my skin. I look to my hands and they are caked with a deep and rough red that I fear will never come off.

  “Here,” the man says. I look up from my hands and see he’s handing me a card. I grab it. In plain and simple black text, it reads: Night Watchers.

  Below that there is a phone number.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I know, I know,” he says as he closes the back doors to the vehicle, “it’s a stupid name. Don’t blame me for it, but what we do … it’s important, and you seem like the kind of guy who might want to help do the right thing.”

  “What are you talking about?” I feel like I’m dreaming now, like the man and the bodies left a long time ago, and I’m now laying in my bed, dried blood flaking onto the sheets, dreaming of something incomprehensible.

  “Just give the number a call,” he says, “maybe you’re interested, maybe you’re not, but like I said, animals, especially these damn dogs, have been acting weird … and nobody’s talking about it and nobody’s doing a damn thing about it either.”

  My eyes drop to the card and when I look up again, the man is gone. I hear the driver side door to the ambulance close and then the vehicle slowly makes its way down the street, the shadows swallowing it whole after only a few moments.

  I turn and look back to Cassie’s house. I don’t know why, but I expect to see the father.

  Instead, I see nothing, just a dead home with every window covered by cheap wood. My eyes fall to the ground where I sat half of the day, where Cassie died in my arms. Outlines of my two companions are drawn in blood on the grass. Some of the dog’s brains and bits of bone remain on the ground. Flies still circle the area. I walk back into my house.

  The card sits on my kitchen table for two weeks. I don’t know what exactly makes me eventually call. Maybe it’s Cassie’s eyes or the fact that images of her clawed throat have taken up permanent residence in the forefront of my mind; maybe it’s even that it takes two or three days for the blood to completely wash off my hands and, even then, I still see it no matter how much I scrub.

  Maybe it’s something inside me I can’t explain, but every time I find an excuse to walk past the card, my eyes find their way to it.

  Whatever the reason is, after two weeks, I watch as my fingers dial the number. I listen to familiar rings on the other end and then as I’m about to hang up, I hear a voice.

  “We meet every Tuesday at Jay’s Shop on Conner Street at 7 P.M.” Then I hear a click that echoes through my head. I drop the phone and wonder if I just listened to the sounds of a man or a machine. I’m dazed until something quickly snaps its way across my mind and I jump to a kitchen drawer, dig for a few seconds and then pull out a pen and paper and write, Jay’s Shop, Conner Street, Tuesday, 7 P.M.

  The building appears abandoned. A handful of windows give off pieces of light, but there’s a sense of nothingness inside. A sign sits atop the building, paint cracking, the bold lettered name on it unreadable.

  I leave my car and walk to the front door. I turn the knob expecting it to be locked and am surprised when I fall into a large room with a crowd of twenty or thirty gathered in the center of it.

  My first impression is of an AA meeting. Metal chairs scarred with rust are set up in front of a small wooden stage with a podium and chalkboard.

  When I come through the door, I know I’m late because everyone is sitting and someone is standing at the podium and all eyes are on me. I try to think of something to say but my throat is dry and my head is empty.

  Then someone familiar stands up and walks over to me.

  “I know him. It’s all good,” he says, waving at the crowd. The other men slowly but cautiously turn their eyes back to the stage where the person at the podium starts to speak again. I can’t focus enough to hear exactly what he’s saying.

  “Hey man, wasn’t sure if you’d ever show,” the EMT says to me, still looking like he’s a week deprived of sleep and hygiene.

  “Ya,” is all I can think to say.

  “We’re almost finished here. Clank is just handing out the routes for tonight, letting people know where the sightings have been happening.”

  “Clank?”

  “Ya … not sure if that’s his real name.”

  “Sightings?”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll all make sense soon, man. You can go with my group tonight. By the way, you got a gun?”

  “A gun?”

  “Ya, a gun, you got one?” I almost say no, but then I remember the .38 revolver I have at home. I only shot it once, years ago, and hit nothing on the target I bought.

  “Ya, I do.”

  “Good, good. Not a shotgun, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry. We g
ot plenty.” I say nothing back because I don’t know what to say. I feel as dazed and clouded as when I first talked to the man.

  As we both watch the stage and I take in the characters in the room, I start to feel aches and cramps in my stomach. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but something in me knows I don’t belong.

  The man at the podium finishes up and everyone stands and starts moving around the room, shaking hands and greeting each other.

  Some are what I expect: men who look like tree trunks with long white beards and leather jackets. Others look like upstanding, middle aged, balding suburban commercials. Some are young, some are old. The only common thread I notice is that everyone is male.

  The EMT taps me on the shoulder and then starts walking over to a group of five or six men in a circle in the corner of the room. I follow.

  He walks into the group while I stand on the outskirts. I hear him mumble something and then they all turn and look at me. I stand with my hands in my pockets wondering if there is going to be a way for me to sneak away without anyone noticing.

  “Everybody, this is the new guy I mentioned earlier. He’s going to come out with us tonight and see what we’re all about.” The EMT shoots me a dirty and mysterious smile. I don’t trust his lips. The others look at me with little interest. The EMT introduces most everyone to me and I introduce myself. I realize after hearing a few names and saying my own multiple times that I don’t know the EMT’s name and this makes me feel more nervous and sick than before.

  A map is brought out and two people are told they are driving. The EMT says he will take a separate car with me inside.

  Before we leave, I follow the EMT and everyone else to a different and smaller room. Someone stands at the doorway to the room and people line up against a wall and each one says a number when it’s their turn. The man at the door then disappears and comes back with a shotgun for each person. The action repeats itself again and again.

  I don’t know guns well, and all of them look the same to me. I know they are shotguns. Beyond that, the world I’ve entered only grows more foreign to my senses with each passing moment. When people walk away, they cock their weapons, look down the sights, or slowly caress the buttstocks of their weapons like they’re familiar with them and getting reacquainted.