THE FOURTH WATCH by Edwin Attella Page B

sluicing through treads. The
singular spot of light hurtling toward me, splitting in two...and
coming for me ... hunting me now!
    Annie Knight is humming softly to
the baby, the small baby floating warmly in her womb. It is the
fifteenth day of twelfth month, and its cold, but not really cold
enough to snow, but close. Just close enough for a cold rain ...
just close enough that the road could…
    Christmas is in the sound of
Annie's soft purring. Christmas songs, rendered almost in silence
and without words, heard only by her and I ... intended for only
her and I. In the gathering, roaring, whooshing torrents, the rain
from the tires thundering against the aluminum skin of the car, I
am warm in my rolling sea. As I look through her eyes at the lights
growing brighter on the black carpet ahead, I am suddenly aware
that I am not me, but he ... her baby ... our baby ... and just
then I know ... as I see the tanker truck turning sideways on the
road ahead, sliding sideways without traction and jackknifing into
a V-shape before flipping and rolling ... that I am powerless
against their fate. I can see Annie's knuckles go white on the
wheel, and her mouth makes an 0, and I can see her foot stomping on
the brakes, and the car sliding toward the tumbling tanker that
suddenly bursts into a massive fireball and roars toward us…them…
and then we are engulfed in the scorching light! Annie screams and
...
    *****
    I SAT BOLT UPRIGHT in bed, bathed in sweat, the echo of my own
scream reverberating throughout the empty house, my heart racing in
my chest, my lungs gasping for breath. I sat there in the dark,
waiting for it all to go. I cried softly, my eyes stinging, the
center of me aching. After a while I got up and pulled on a pair of
shorts and went down stairs. It was 2:45 AM. I got a can of beer
out of the refrigerator and took it out onto the deck and sat in
one of the lawn chairs that I used for deck furniture. A soft
breeze off the lake cooled my sweat-slick skin.
    The lake always has a different sound in the
early hours of morning. It is owned and operated by the bugs and
nocturnal creatures, by the crickets and foraging coons rustling in
the underbrush. The sound of the water lapping at the pilings
around the docks and the wind whispering with a silky voice in the
tree branches has a volume that is never heard in the day. It can
be peaceful or unsettling.
    The sky was choked with stars, and a
three-quarter moon rode high among them. I drank beer and watched
and listened. I remembered the night Annie died. Unbidden it came
to me in quick glimpses. Me dozed off on the bed when a urgent
knocking on the door brought me around, the TV playing in the
background as I stumbled down the stairs not awake enough yet to
worry. Pulling open the door and staring dumbfounded at Alex, and
Jack with his collar on, and a cop in uniform. I think I asked what
the hell time it was - or something as meaningless, and then the
wrongness of it all reached me through the fog in my head and a
sick feeling washed through me and my skin began to crawl and I
whispered "Annie."
    Then Jack had me in his arms and he was saying
that there was a terrible accident, and something about a truck. I
was looking over his shoulder at Alex standing there with a look of
such profound sorrow on his face that I knew and my knees buckled
and he zoomed out of focus as I passed out. Later in the night-
when I awoke, Jack was sitting in a chair next to the bed, his
reading glasses down on the tip of his nose, his Bible opened in
his lap, and then he told me it all. I became physically ill and
vomited into the toilet until my stomach was raw and
empty.
    The days that followed remain a blur. I don't
even really know how they happened except to say that Alex took
care of everything material and Jack, everything Spiritual. I
remember the wake, the endless river of people flowing by the
closed box where Annie lay. The open earthen mouth of the grave,
and Annie's parents standing at