Strange Strangers: The night things changed.
In the quiet, inky blackness of early morning, I awoke with a start. The room was shrouded in darkness, the kind that seemed to swallow up even the faintest hope of light. My young mind, perhaps no older than five or six, instinctively knew the hour. Just past 3 a.m., that liminal time when the world teeters on the edge of something otherworldly. Anxiety bubbled up within me, a nameless fear that I couldn't yet articulate, but it was there, as real as the walls of the ranch-style house in Chino, California, where I lived. I can still trace the layout of that house in my mind, every corner, every shadowed hallway. Even then, I had an intimate knowledge of its contours, perhaps because there were times, just before dawn, when I would find myself in different parts of the house, far from the safety of my bed. The clock ticked toward 5 a.m., the hour when my father would rise, a man of little patience. His wrath was a thing to be avoided at all costs. The thought of flipping on a hall ...