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the drain, to mingle with all the other bad dreams that people washed away, a palpable mass of nightmares that swirled and roiled and was finally swallowed up by the darkness below the town.
    That image struck him, and for a moment he expected a hand to reach out of the drain and pull him in.  A scaly hand, like a half-man, half-crocodile.  It would pull him down, through the drain, into the sewers.  And John would never actually see the thing’s face.  Fear had no face.  That was why it was so frightening, because it could never be seen.  But he would know that the thing was there.  And that it was hungry for him.
    He stared at the drain.
    Nothing.
    Words entered his mind, unbidden and unwelcome, but no less real for all that. 
    Someone is coming.
    He shook his head, trying to cast the words from his mind, trying to give himself peace from an unremembered past that he could neither escape nor embrace.
    Nothing is so well-remembered as the aching emptiness of something forgotten. 
    He looked through the bathroom door, into the bedroom beyond.  The bed lay there, rumpled and damp from sweat and fear. 
    It was empty.
    He shook his head once again, and then moved to a chair, and took up a book and read.  The words passed obediently before him, straight as parade lines marching before the grandstand, but they left no mark in his mind.  He could never remember what he had read in these nighttime sessions.  He just read because it was better than laying awake in an empty bed and thinking of a time when it had been full. 
    At 8:20 that morning John drove his Pathfinder down the winding dirt road that led to the town’s main street.  The SUV thunked as it hove up over the concrete lip and then shuddered with relief at being on the only paved road that continued for more than two hundred feet in the entire town.  John cracked the window to enjoy the breeze that blew through the town.  It was a cool breeze that hinted of winter to come, though the cold season was still months in the future.  It cut John's nasal passages pleasantly, leaving him physically invigorated, though it did little for his mindset, which was always dark as he drove to work.
    He looked over to the seat beside him.  No one was there, and somehow that still surprised him.  It had been long enough that the shock should have been past, but somehow it remained.  The ache was always there, but in spite of that fact and the myriad reminders of Annie's departure, he always expected to see her beside him, smiling and laughing as she reached out to play with his hair. 
    He drove past the sign the town council had put up some five years before: Welcome to Loston, Pop. 1472 and counting. 
    The mountains loomed behind him.  Colorado was nothing but one large mountain, it seemed, but parts of it stood higher than the rest.  The mountains that guarded Loston were solid sentinels, vigilantly aware of all that transpired before them.  The mountains had always made Annie feel safe. 
    John turned into the driveway of the high school, located right next to Town Hall.  He parked the Pathfinder, got out without locking the door - no one had ever had a car broken into in Loston - and went into the office. 
    It was quiet inside, which was normal.  The office was a well-oiled mechanism that functioned with the smoothness and efficiency of a luxury automobile.  That was due in no small part to the woman whose flashing and - to the students - highly intimidating gaze now focused upon him. 
    Mertyl Breckman, the office secretary, noticed him immediately upon his arrival, as she noticed everyone who dared to brave her domain.  Though she had lost the last of her teeth some four years previous, it seemed the two hundred students at Loston High still lived in mortal fear that she would bite them.  Not even the principal commanded the respect that Mertyl did.  When she was especially agitated her mouth firmed into a line that was colder than a Nordic glacier,