To Sleep at Dawn

Trigger Warning: Contains themes of alcohol dependency, intense psychological distress, paranoia, and mental breakdown.

Darker seemed the days of late, with blankets of solitude smothering the hills of Gevinark. Abelhof squinted against the corona of light coming from his tallow-lit lantern, searching for his quarry. Although “searching” was too generous a term. Abelhof spent most of his nights at the top of The Tower, sitting in an oaken chair that splintered at the back left leg and wobbled with a drunken grace, one echoed by Abelhof as he kept the fires of Gevinark’s graveyard lit. He worked with tinder and sparks, keeping the lanterns and candles and braziers lit, beating back the tales he stood watch over. As he had for every night, since his sixteenth name day, when he took the job of Gravewatcher from an old and silently diminutive man, who had adamantly refused to offer a name. The man had told Abelhof one thing on the day he went to live in The Tower: “Keep the fires lit, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to sleep at dawn.”

Sleep at dawn, he thought lazily, sitting back down and pulling a flask from his belted tabard. Late are nights like this when one would await the sleep at dawn. He mumbled those inebriated thoughts to himself, drinking with vigor from his beaten tin flask. The recent years had all swept by to his recent memory, blurring as time seemed to take a dutiful toll on his soul, despite his relatively youthful age. Yet in comparison, all was young when displayed against the Gevinark Graves. Old wives tales spoke of men who slumbered in the shadows of the graves, awaiting for a foolish Gravewatcher they could trick into letting them free. Abelhof scoffed at such stories, even ones created by superstitious foo-

“What ails you, Watchman?”

Abelhof froze, the cold rim of his tin flask pressed against his lower lip. The cheap spirit that swilled through him turned sour in his throat as slivers of ice ran through his spine. The voice was low, almost a growl in the dark corner of the room behind him. His lantern sat in the window, still directed at the graveyard below, suddenly forgotten as Abelhof twitched at the thought of an intruder. With the deliberately slow care of a man trying not to wake a sleeping beast, Abelhof lowered the flask to his lap, trying to secure the cap as he fumbled to fit it back into his belt pouch. The tallow lantern flickered violently as a current of wind twirled through the trees below and traveled up the Tower’s stones.

“I asked a question, Watcher,” the voice rasped again. It carried the sound of hollow wood and bones scraping across granite floors. “Or has tallow and swill fogged your ears with your wits?”

“N-Nothing of import, goodfellow,” he muttered softly, his hands clammy as he fiddled with the pouch. His eyes flicked to the small brazier in the corner of the room closest to him. “Just the solitude. And a night that feels longer than the last.” In the stagnant coals sat a wrought poker of ashen iron, but his gaze was naturally drawn to the lantern sitting on the window before him, beckoning softly with their grace. But they were too far apart to hold both. Maybe if he was swift… but Abelhof's heart continued to thump a slow and steady beat, akin to a funeral dirge before the coffin was sealed shut.

“Nights here do not end,” the shadow murmured behind him. He could hear the faint sound of rustling cloth as the thing moved, inching slightly forward. “Perhaps not by my reckoning. They only hide when you force them to.” Abelhof didn’t turn around to face the being yet; his beating heart compelled him to focus on the lantern. His hands twitched at his sides, and his legs seemed ready to crumble. His own body seemed to revile the thought of facing this creature on his own.

The floorboards creaked loudly behind as some unnatural weight shifted from one side to the other. With that weight, Abelhof’s eyes flicked towards the poker once more.

“The iron will not save you, boy.” Another gust of wind threatened to smother the room in darkness. “Nor will your flame. A spark is a frail and foolish weapon against those who remember the deep black from before fire was ever struck."

“With flame comes strength," Abelhof quoted, instinctively drawing on old folk tales as he searched for a way out. “I carry that flame, for Gevinark, for my duty.”

“Duty,” the voice crooned, rasping slightly as its words became bitter. “How sweetly the bird sings praises of its cage. You call it duty and refuse to face the alternative. Tell me, Watchman…” The boards groaned as the voice drew slowly closer. Abelhof remained faced towards the window still, giving up on putting his drinking tin back, instead slowly searching his waist for the candle and tinder he was supposed to keep on him. He couldn't remember if he had replaced it with another flask or not.

“When that withered old man gave you the keys for these graves, did he applaud you? Or did he simply fill your hands with tallow and smile at your naivety? Finally, someone gullible enough to free him. Because of you.”

“I hold a sacred charge!” Abelhof’s fear flickered for a moment as a fury rose, but was stifled as the murmuring voice laughed with cruelty. “He spent his life defending Gevinark, as will I!”

“Sacred?” The voice laughed at him again, echoing in the small chamber. “He spent his life waiting for a fool. He traded your life to finally find an exit.” The slight scent of something rotten curled around Abelhof, almost making him gag. That scratchy voice sounded closer, but that was impossible. He didn't hear it move. Did he? “He traded your blood for his life, and walked down those stairs without so much as a glance behind him. He left you in an old tower with a crumbling chair and a bottle to rot your brains before the darkness ever approached you.”

Contempt simmered inside him, but behind it was a creeping and sickening cold. Abelhof tried to summon up the memory of that day again, the old man's voice, his exact words… but as he reached for that past, the memories dissolved into a gray fog. He remembered the dim room, the smell of burnt wick, the weight of the key... but had the old man looked relieved? Had he looked at Abelhof with pity? Or worse, fear?

“You lie,” Abelhof growled, beating down that rising chill, but he couldn’t bring his eyes to leave the tallow lantern in the window. The small flame danced violently, casting long, erratic fingers of shadow across the sill. The shadow behind him seemed to loom over him, slowly smothering the flames.

“Do I?” The presence drew back slightly, its voice echoing as if speaking from the bottom of a deep well. “Let us test your grand memory then, brave Watchman. You say the fires have never failed. But do you remember three nights ago? When the northern fog rolled over the hills? The hills you swore to keep safe?”

Abelhof opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. Three nights ago? The days had turned into an endless, muddy blur of dusk and dawn. His fingers felt numb, but whether from the cold or the fear, he couldn’t tell.

“You don’t, do you?” the voice chuckled softly. “You remember taking a pull from that beaten tin flask, the one you cradle each and every night. You remember the burn in your throat, the warmth in your stomach… and then you remember the morning sun striking your eyelids. But what happened in the six hours between, Abelhof? Did you keep the fires lit?”

Abelhof’s heart continued to thumb against his ribs. He instinctively swore to himself that he kept them lit. He always did. That is what I do. I always have, I sit in the chair, I tend the sparks, I light the fires…

“Or did you sleep?” The darkness hummed behind him, a slow rumble Abelhof could feel in his old boots. “Did you slump back in that oaken chair of yours, chin fallen on your chest, and downing more swill than you could feasibly swallow? Snoring while the candles guttered out one by one? How many times have the graves gone dark while you drowned your mind in cheap barley spirit?” The voice turned bitter once more. “Do you know the answer, Watcher? I do.”

“No,” Abelhof gasped out. A bead of icy sweat rolled down his temple, stinging his eye. “No, the fires... I would know if they went out. The tales... the things in the dark would have come.”

“And how do you know they didn't?”

The question hung in the stagnant air, vast and terrifying.

“How do you know,” the darkness whispered, “that I haven't been standing in this room with you every night for the last five years?”

The wind picked up again, a low howl that rose to a threatening roar as the lantern teetered on the edge, and Abelhof sprung up out of his chair to catch it before it fell. The flame guttered and the wax burned his hands, making him cry out in agony as Abelhof cradled the small light against his chest, not daring to glance to the side where the darkness paced. His hands throbbed, somehow still cold as the wax dribbled over his fingers, blistering his skin as it traveled down and dripped to the floorboards below. The cold poker sat forgotten, and his mind turned entirely to the almost childish flame that remained in the lantern, seeking to protect it best he could.

Ignoring the darkness, he instead drew himself up tall enough to glance over the window’s edge. Down in the courtyard below, one of the four main braziers dimmed. The shadows around it seemed to wrinkle, malformed shapes with elongated and sharply pointed limbs crawling forward. The pain in his hands became a forgotten sensation as a new dread consumed him, a rising terror that threatened to shriek and claw itself free from his throat.

“Hmm…” the darkness behind him mused softly. “It seems the dark grows hungry down below.” The voice brushed against the back of Abelhof’s neck like a draft drawn from a tomb. “Tell me, Watcher…do you hear them crawling through the frost, or is that merely the phantom ringing of your sodden ears?”

Abelhof pressed his spine flat against the icy stone of the window frame, his calloused hands locked around the hot tin base of the lantern. Scalding tallow had cooled into a stiff, opaque crust over his fingers, but the throbbing heat was a distant thing, swallowed whole by the cold knot of terror tightening in his chest. His eyes searched that darkness, but even his meager flame couldn’t reveal it. He thought he saw the outline of a pale hand, of a shoulder turning away, even the sharp line of a jaw, but it just as quickly melded away into the rest of the shadows around it.

“You have a choice, Watcher.” The shadows seem to roll forward like mist as the voice edged forward, drawing closer to Abelhof. “The spiral down is long. Almost forty steps on that staircase between you and your dying flame. Forty steps to kindle the spark you forgot to tend.”

Abelhof’s breath hitched, a wet, ragged gasp. He looked down at the lantern cradled against his ribs. The tallow was half-spent, the floating wick drowning in a pool of liquid fat. If he carried it down the drafty stairwell, a single sharp gust through the arrow-slits could blow it out, plunging him into absolute blackness on the narrow steps. If he left it behind, he walked down defenseless, into a courtyard where something was already waiting.

“Or, perhaps, your drink was just a tad too strong tonight,” it whispered, almost intimately to him. “Perhaps you do not need to walk down at all, Abelhof. Is that brazier truly extinguished… or does your sight fail you?” 

Abelhof blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut until hot sparks danced behind his eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, the darkness seemed even larger than before. He opened his mouth to speak, to shout, to scream, but all sounds died on his lips.

Look. See. Prove it to yourself.

With a defiant turn away from the darkness, Abelhof stood and looked again to the graves below. For a terrifying, fleeting second, the courtyard below appeared perfectly bright. All four braziers burning with steady, golden fires, the headstones standing empty and silent in the night. Then, with a violent shudder of his mind, the illusion snapped. The third brazier was dark again, in the fair right corner of the graveyard. Its embers pitch black, and the crawling shapes were ten yards closer to the Tower’s base.

No.

NO.

No I kept them lit. I always have. I did my service, I… I swear it.

A thin, broken whimper escaped his throat before he could suppress it. The darkness responded to the whimper with a visible shudder and a soft hum, rippling like the tide as it studied him.

“You cannot trust the light, and you cannot trust your own rotting mind.” The shadows deepened, its void-like presence blurring the edges of the window. The glow in Abelhof's lantern began to shrink, turning a faint, sickly blue as the chill pressed in. “How long has it been, Watcher? How long have you been in this tower? Is this still your life? Is it still your body? How many nights have you passed by, sitting by that window, drinking from that flask, forgetting your flame-”

“I DID NOT FORGET!” Abelhof cried out, mad and sorrowful, throwing the words back at the shadows. “I did not forget…” He fell, weeping, the lantern almost slipping out of his grip. “I am the Gravewatcher, I keep the fires lit, and I…”

Am going mad.

The realization hung in the freezing air, and slowly, Abelhof’s tear stricken face lifted towards the darkness. The shadows did not strike. They did not leap or claw, they simply stood. Silent and immense, watching him break beneath the weight of his own collapsing sanity. The low, rumbling hum in the darkness faded into a terrifying, reverent quiet.

The hot wax had long cooled on his knuckles, binding his blistered flesh to the tin base of the lantern like a permanent mark of his bondage. Through the haze of his tears, the dark courtyard below seemed to blur, the terrifying shapes merging into a gray, featureless soup.

Then, a subtle shift occurred.

It began as a faint amber warmth bleeding across the eastern ridge of the Gevinark hills. Soft, pale gold light crept over the horizon, washing away the oppressive gloom that had smothered the graveyard all night. The bitter wind died to a gentle breeze. Down in the courtyard, the four braziers no longer sputtered; instead, they stood quiet and clean under the glorious, blissful morning sky. The twisted headstones cast long, peaceful shadows across green, frost-kissed grass. No crawling shapes lingered at the base of the Tower. No horrors crept up the outer stone. Shards of light began to pierce the hills, marching upward as warmth slowly enveloped the land once more.

Dawn had come.

A choked breath escaped Abelhof’s lips, a sound half-laugh, half-sob. The relief that flooded his veins was so overwhelming, so sweet, that his legs completely gave out beneath him. The ice in his spine melted away, replaced by an intoxicating, bone-deep warmth. He leaned out over the open window, letting his weight rest against it, breathing in deep as he reveled in the light.

"Look at that," the voice whispered softly from the corner of the room. No longer a rasping growl, but a tender, mournful sigh. "You made it, Watchman. The sun is up. The dark is gone."

Abelhof leaned back inside, his eyes wide and brimming with quiet, ecstatic tears. He looked at the lantern in his hands. Its tiny blue flame was a frail, useless thing against the radiant gold pouring through the window. He looked at the flask at his belt, feeling a sudden, strange disgust for the sour barley spirit that had clouded his mind for so many years. 

He didn't need the flask. He didn't need the iron poker. He didn't need the fire anymore. 

Keep the fires lit, and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to sleep at dawn.

With trembling, bloodied lips, Abelhof leaned over the lantern. He took a single, deep breath, tasting the fresh air of morning, and blew out the light.

The wick sputtered and died. A thin trail of gray smoke rose into the air.

And in that exact, fleeting instant, the world collapsed.

The golden horizon shattered like brittle glass. The warm morning sun dissolved into a suffocating, pitch-black abyss. There was no sky, no green grass, no peaceful morning, only the blinding, unnatural, phosphorescent glow of hundreds of pale, elongated eyes staring up from the darkness directly outside his window. The four braziers below were not burning; they were cold, shattered iron, smothered in black frost.

NO. NO, NO!

Abelhof’s breath seized in his throat, but before he could scream, two long, bone-white hands wrapped gently around his face from behind. The air turned to solid ice, smelling of fresh grave dirt and ancient linen, as the shadow leaned down, placing its cold, lipless mouth against his ear.

“Rest now, Gravewatcher,” the darkness whispered, its voice a soft, velvet kiss in the absolute dark. “You are lucky tonight. You get to sleep.”

The shadows rushed in from every corner of the room, smothering the Tower, the window, and Abelhof’s final, silent breath.