Before the Dawn Read Online Free PDF

the rest of the townspeople, she and her friends
weren't going to wait until night-time of October 31st to have
their fun. They would start partying as soon as it was officially
Halloween and her sixteenth birthday at midnight tonight.
    Aline idly noticed that there seemed to be
more people on the streets than usual, and some of them were even
already in costume. One person in particular caught her eye. He was
dressed all in black, and what appeared to be tattered fabrics
swirling around his slim frame at first glance turned out to
actually be a coat completely covered in black feathers. Here and
there, twinkling as they caught the light, were little mirror
shards sewn into his outfit. He had a mask on too, a black velvety
thing that curved outwards into a sharp-looking beak. It covered
most of his face, but as their car passed him by, he suddenly
looked up right at her. Just then, the streetlight turned red, so
her dad stopped and she got more time to stare at the strange
guy.
    He saw that she was looking at him, and he
smiled. It was as sharp as the edge of a knife against his lean
features. Then he decided to show off. Feeling slightly amused, she
watched as he seemed to conjure up a crystal ball out of thin air.
Then another one appeared in his hand, and then another, until he
was soon juggling three crystal balls. Her dad finally noticed the
guy's little exhibition and he laughed. "Do we have circus people
in town this year?" he wondered. "We've got a lot of folks dressed
like him walking around."
    It was then Aline realized that the number of
costumed people seemed to have increased. And all of them were
performing some kind of trick or other before several groups of
locals. While the performers like the guy in feathers held
everyone's attention, she noticed that others who were equally
strange in appearance ran haphazardly through the crowds. They were
unspooling what looked like bright multi-colored threads from their
hands and creating a huge tangle of everything.
    "What on earth do they think they're doing?"
she exclaimed, frowning. "Hey, Dad. Look. What are those people
doing?"
    He looked, then he frowned, too. "What are
you talking about, honey?" he asked.
    She stared at him with wide eyes. "What do
you mean by that? I'm talking about those weirdos who are tying up
everyone with their threads. Just look at them." She pointed at the
scene outside her window and then choked back a little scream. The
guy in feathers was standing right there, peeking through the glass
at her.
    For a moment, their gazes met and held. His
eyes were as odd as the rest of him. They were amber in color, and
not in the same fanciful sense that people usually spoke of when
they were describing a pair of light-colored eyes. They looked like
actual amber. For a few unsettling seconds, she even thought that
she saw strange shapes like dragonfly wings and flower petals
trapped within those orbs. Then the feather-clad man's smile became
wider, sharper. And, without any sort of warning, his fist punched
through the glass of the window to reach for her.
    She screamed in panic and heard her dad let
out a hoarse yell.
    "Jesus!" he shouted, quickly adjusting his
grip on the steering wheel he had let go of for an instant. He
looked at her worriedly. "Ali, baby, are you okay? God, you
startled me. I think you fell asleep and started dreaming."
    "Wh-what?" She was confused. Her heart was
pounding like crazy and she looked around to see how far they had
gotten away from the scary guy. "Oh, God! Dad, he punched through
the window. We should report him to the police!" It took several
minutes, but eventually it sank in that her father was looking at
her like she had gone insane. And she realized that the window on
her side of the car was completely whole. Her body turned cold at
the sight.
    "Honey," her dad said slowly, reassuringly,
"you must have been dreaming. You probably dozed off when we
stopped in traffic a while back. Everything's okay."
    "I fell