The Secret Hour (8 page)

“So all I have to do is carry a piece of metal with a thirteen-letter name around with me,” Jessica asked with disbelief in her voice, “and I’ll be fine?”

“Well, there’s a lot more to it,” Dess said. “For one thing, the metal should be clean.”

“What, they’re afraid of soap too?”

“Not that kind of clean,” Rex said. “Untouched by midnight. You see, when something from the daylight world is disturbed during the blue time, it becomes part of their world. That changes it forever.”

“So how can you tell what’s clean?”

Rex took a deep breath. It was time to take over from Dess. “Haven’t you wondered how we knew you were a midnighter, Jessica?”

She thought hard for a second, then gave a defeated sigh. “I can’t keep track of all the stuff I’ve been wondering lately. But yeah, Dess seemed to know something from the moment we met. I just figured she was psychic.”

Melissa snorted quietly, her fingers drumming along with her music.

“Well, when things have been changed by the secret hour, they look different. To me, anyway. And you’re a midnighter, so you always look different. You’re naturally part of that world.” Rex pulled off his glasses.

Jessica’s face became completely clear to him. Rex could see the lines of exhaustion below her eyes and her alert, questioning expression, ready to absorb whatever they could tell her.

“I can also read the lore, marks left behind by other midnighters. There are signs all over Bixby, some of them left thousands of years ago.”

Jessica looked at him closely, possibly wondering if he was crazy. “And only you can see them?”

“So far.” He swallowed. “Can we try something, Jessica?”

“Sure.”

He led her to a museum case by the excavated wall. Under the glass was a collection of Clovis points, all from the Bixby area and all about ten thousand years old.

Although the label didn’t say so, one of the points had been retrieved from inside the rib cage of the “saber-tooth” skeleton embedded in the wall. The rest had been found in ancient campsites, burial mounds, and the snake pit. With his glasses off, Rex could instantly spot the difference.

That one spearhead stood out from the rest with burning clarity, every facet so distinct that he could envision how the ancient hammer had struck off each flake of stone. The Focus had clung to this piece of obsidian for millennia, and from his first glimpse of it Rex had known instinctively that it had pierced the heart of the beast on the wall.

This point had killed a darkling.

Rex’s naked eyes could also see subtle differences in the way it had been crafted—the meridian groove where the shaft had once been attached was deeper and sturdier, the edge much sharper. Ten thousand years ago this spearhead had been a piece of high technology, as advanced as some futuristic jet fighter. It might have been made of rock, but it had been the electrolytic titanium of its day.

“Do any of these… jump out at you?” he asked.

Jessica looked over the points carefully, her brow furrowed in concentration. Rex felt his breath catch. Last night he had allowed himself to wonder what it would be like if Jessica were another seer, someone else who could see the signs and read the lore. At last Rex would have someone to help him sift through the endless troves of midnighter knowledge, to compare interpretations of confusing and contradictory tales, to read alongside him.

Someone to share responsibility when things went wrong.

“This one’s kind of different.”

Jessica was pointing at a digging trowel, a stubby hand tool that wasn’t a spearhead at all. Rex let his breath out slowly, not wanting his disappointment to show, not wanting to feel the entire weight of it yet.

“Yeah, it is different. They used it to dig for root vegetables.”

“Root vegetables?”

“Big fans of yams, Stone Agers.” He put his glasses back on.

“So it’s a yam digger. That’s not what you brought me over here for, is it?”

“No,” he admitted. “I wanted to know if you could see something.”

“You mean, see the secret hour like you can?”

Rex nodded. “I can tell which of these spearheads killed a darkling. The touch lingers. I can see it.”

Jessica stared into the case and frowned. “Maybe my eyes
are
wrong.”

“No, Jessica. Different midnighters have different talents. We just don’t know what yours is yet.”

She shrugged, then pointed. “That’s a darkling skeleton up there, isn’t it?”

He was surprised for a moment, then nodded, realizing that she’d seen a creature like it in the flesh.

“Wow. So these things really were around ten thousand years ago,” she said. “Shouldn’t they be extinct by now or something? Like dinosaurs?”

“Not in Bixby.”

One of her eyebrows raised. “Rex, there aren’t any dinosaurs in Bixby, are there?”

He had to smile. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Rex silently led her back toward the table. It could have changed everything if Jessica had turned out to be a seer. He swallowed, unable to speak for a moment, then found part of last night’s speech on the tip of his tongue.

“Darklings almost went extinct, Jessica, but instead they hid themselves in the blue time. It’s been a long time since they lived in the world with the rest of us.”

“That must have been exciting, being chased around by those things twenty-four seven.”

“Twenty-
five
seven,” Rex corrected her. “Humans weren’t the top of the food chain back then. People had to deal with tigers and bears and dire wolves. But the darklings were the worst. They weren’t just stronger and faster, they were
smarter
than us. For a long time we were completely defenseless.”

They sat back down at the table, the darkness of the unused corner of the museum surrounding them. Melissa looked up at Rex, her satisfied expression showing that she could taste his disappointment.

“How did anyone survive?” Jessica asked.

Dess leaned forward. “The darklings are predators, Jessica. They didn’t want to wipe human beings out, just take enough to keep themselves fed.”

Jessica shivered. “What a nightmare.”

“Exactly,” Rex said. A small group of tourists was descending the ramp, and he lowered his voice. “Imagine wondering every night if they would be coming to feed. Imagine having no way to stop them. They were the original nightmares, Jessica. Every monster in folklore, every mythological monster, even our instinctive fear of the darkness, they’re all based on ancient memories of darklings.”

Dess’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward, also lowering her voice. “Not all darklings look like panthers, Jessica. You haven’t even met the
really
scary ones yet.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Jessica said. “And they all live in Bixby now?”

“We’re not sure about that,” Dess said. “But Bixby’s the only place with midnight that we know of. Even up in Tulsa, twenty miles from here, the blue time doesn’t come.”

“For some reason, Bixby’s special,” Rex said.

“Great,” Jessica said. “Mom wasn’t kidding when she said moving here would require some adjustments.”

She slumped in her chair.

Rex tried to remember the threads of his speech. “But don’t forget, we humans won. Gradually we discovered ways to protect ourselves. It turned out that new ideas scared the darklings.”

“Ideas? Scared
that
thing?” She looked across the room at the darkling skeleton.

“New tools, like forged metal and alloys,” Dess said. “And new concepts, like mathematics. And the darklings were always afraid of the light.”

“Fire was the first defense,” Rex said. “They’ve never gotten used to it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jessica said. “I’ll make sure I’ve got a flamethrower next time the secret hour comes around.”

Dess shook her head. “It won’t help you. Fire, electronic stuff, car engines, none of those technologies works in the midnight hour. You think we rode bicycles halfway across Bixby last night for the exercise?”

“That’s why the blue time was created,” Rex said. “A few thousand years ago, when the darklings were being pushed into the deepest forest by steel weapons and fire, they created it as a sanctuary for themselves.”

“They
made
the blue time?” Jessica asked.

Rex nodded. “The lore says that they took one hour from the day and collapsed it down to an instant so that human beings couldn’t see it anymore.”

Jessica said softly, “Except those who were born at exactly that instant.”

“You got it,” Dess said. “It has to happen to some people, you know? Only so many seconds in the day.”

Dess was looking at Jessica expectantly.

“What?” Jess asked.

Rex sighed. “She wants you to tell her how many seconds are in a day.”

Jessica shrugged. “A lot?”

“Sixty seconds per minute,” Dess supplied. “Sixty minutes per hour. Twenty-four hours per day.”

“That would be…” Jessica looked up at the ceiling in rapt concentration. “A
whole
lot?”

“Eighty-six thousand, four hundred,” Dess said quietly. “I thought maybe you were, you know, really good at math. You are in trig, after all.”

Jessica snorted. “That was my mom’s idea. When we changed schools, she decided to promote me to misunderstood genius.”

“Tough luck,” said Dess. She shrugged at Rex.

Melissa giggled again, singing along softly with her headphones. Rex barely caught the words.

“Tastes like… vanilla.”

Last year at PS 141 there’d been this really gross experiment in biology….

Jessica’s class had raised two bunches of flatworms in terrariums, which were basically aquariums but full of dirt instead of water. The flatworms really were flat, with little triangular heads kind of like the spear points that Rex was so fond of. They had two little spots that looked like eyes but weren’t. They could detect light, though.

In one terrarium the class always put the worm food in the same corner, under a little light that they switched on at feeding time. The light was like a restaurant sign: Come In, We’re Open.

In the other terrarium the class just sprinkled the food randomly on top of the dirt.

The flatworms in the first terrarium weren’t stupid. Pretty soon they figured out what the light meant. You could point a flashlight at any side of that terrarium, and the worms would come looking for food. They would even follow the light around in circles, if worm racing was what you were into.

Then, as it did in every biology class, the time came for the gross part.

Using the flashlight as bait, the class collected all the clever light-loving worms from the first terrarium. Then the teacher, Mrs. Hardaway, put them into a bowl and squished them into worm paste. Nobody was forced to watch, but a few kids did. Not Jessica.

In case that wasn’t gross enough, Mrs. Hardaway then fed the squished worms to the other worms. Apparently flatworms would eat anything, even other worms.

The next day the class gathered around, and for the first time ever Mrs. Hardaway moved the little restaurant light to the second terrarium. She let Jessica herself switch on the light. One by one the worms popped their little flat heads up, hungry for food. They had learned about the restaurant light by eating the worms from the other terrarium, like learning French by eating french fries, except infinitely grosser.

Tonight, sitting on her bed, waiting for midnight, surrounded by unpacked boxes, Jessica Day had the aftertaste of midnighter in her mouth.

Rex and Dess had kept her at the museum for hours, cramming her brain with everything they knew about the darklings, the blue time, midnighters and their talents, and the secret history of Bixby, Oklahoma. They’d ground up years of incredible experiences and unbelievable discoveries and served them all as one gigantic meal. And of course Jessica had no choice but to eat every bite. The secret hour was dangerous. What she didn’t know could really hurt her.

In the end, even Melissa had taken off her headphones to join in, explaining her own weird talent. It turned out that she, not Dess, was the psychic—a
real
psychic, not the psychosomatic kind—but in a way that sounded completely awful. She’d described it as being in a room with fifty radios blasting, all tuned to different stations. And Rex had warned Jessica not to touch her; physical contact turned the volume up way too high.

No wonder Melissa was so much fun to be around.

As Jessica watched the clock’s second hand slowly sweep out the remaining minutes, she rested one hand on her churning stomach. She had the feeling she always got before a test. This was quite a test. It included math, mythology, metallurgy, science, and ancient history. And getting a single question wrong could mean becoming worm food herself.

The day had probably been a lot more fun for Rex, Dess, and Melissa. For years the three of them had kept an entire world secret. They’d had to face the terrors and joys of midnight alone. So of course they’d been anxious to share them with someone new.

Jessica just wished she could remember more of what they’d said. After the first hour or three her sleepless night had started to take its toll, their voices turning into competing drones. Finally she’d told them she was going home.

It was amazing how quickly a new and mysterious world could go from totally unbelievable to completely unbearable.

She’d gotten back home just in time for dinner. Jessica could tell that Mom had been all ready to yell at her about the still unpacked boxes. But one look at Jessica’s exhausted face and her mother had instantly switched gears.

“Oh, sweetheart. You’ve been doing homework all day, haven’t you? This is my fault for putting you in all those advanced classes, isn’t it?”

Jessica hadn’t bothered to disagree. She’d half dozed through dinner and then gone straight to sleep. But she’d set her alarm for eleven-thirty. Tonight she wanted to be completely awake and dressed when the blue time came.

Although she couldn’t remember half of what the other midnighters had tried to teach her, she hadn’t forgotten the important stuff. Jessica was armed with three new weapons: Deliciousness, Fossilization, and Jurisprudence, which were a coil of wire, a long screw, and a broken car-radio antenna. They weren’t much to look at, and Dess had said that none was as formidable as the mighty Hypochondriac, but she had guaranteed they would light a fire under a darkling’s tail. Or at least a sparky blue fireworks show. Jessica had also borrowed a few recipes of Dess’s to create her own traps. Her bedroom was slitherproof now.

In addition, there was no way she was going outside tonight.

The other three midnighters were headed for what Rex had called a “lore site.” Apparently there had been midnighters in Bixby for as long as there had been a secret hour, some born here and some, like Jessica, who’d stumbled into town. Generations of seers like Rex had slowly collected knowledge about the blue time and the darklings and recorded their discoveries where only other seers could find them. Out in the unchanging badlands huge, ancient rocks were marked with invisible runes that told the ancient stories.

Rex said that he would search until he discovered why the darklings were so interested in Jessica. “But maybe last night was a coincidence,” he’d said unconvincingly.

“Maybe they just like you,” Melissa had said, smacking her lips. “As in, ‘I like pizza.’ ”

Two minutes to go.

Jessica swallowed and lifted her feet off the floor. The slithers couldn’t possibly be here yet, but last night had brought all her childhood fears back to her. There were things under the bed. Maybe at the moment they were psychosomatic things, but she could still feel them down there.

She looked at her clock, which was set to Bixby time now. Dess had explained that “real midnight” happened at a different moment in every city. Time zones just kind of faked it. But now when her clock hit twelve, Jessica Day would be as far away from the sun as you could get.

One minute to go.

Jessica picked up Jurisprudence and pulled it out to its full length. She swished it through the air like a sword. The radio antenna was from a Chevy made in 1976, a year that apparently
was
a multiple of thirteen. Dess had been saving it for something special.

Jessica smiled. It was the oddest gift she’d ever gotten, but she had to admit it felt good in her hand.

The secret hour arrived.

The overhead light seemed to wink out, replaced by the familiar blue glow from every corner of the room. The sound of wind among the trees ceased abruptly. Her first time completely awake for the change, Jessica could
feel
as well as see and hear it. Something invisible seemed to pull at her, tugging her forward, as if she were finishing a roller-coaster ride, the car gradually coming to a halt. A sense of lightness came over her, and she felt a subtle flutter of arrested motion throughout her body.

The tingle of the whole world, stopping around her.

“Okay,” Jessica said to herself. “Here we go again.”

However real she knew it was, the blue time still seemed like a dream.

She walked around her room, touching things to reassure herself. The rough edges of cardboard boxes felt the same, the pinewood boards of the floor were as smooth and cool as always.

“Real, real, and real,” she affirmed quietly as her fingers brushed clothing, desk, the spines of books.

Now that midnight was here, Jessica found herself wondering what she was going to
do
with this extra hour. A few minutes ago she had heard her parents talking in the kitchen. But she didn’t want to see them pale and frozen; she was staying in her own room.

There was plenty of unpacking to do. She opened a few of the boxes and looked into their chaotic depths. But the blue, shadowless light seemed too alien for anything so mundane. She sat on her bed, picked up the dictionary she’d unpacked when she got home, and opened it to look for tridecalogisms.

She’d found only one—
splendiferous
—when her head started to hurt from the light. The other midnighters could probably read in the blue time just fine. Maybe Melissa was right; Jessica’s eyes did feel wrong, at least here in the secret hour.

She glanced out the window at the motionless world but shivered and looked away. The thought of something looking back in at her was too frightening.

She picked her feet up off the floor, lay back, and stared at the ceiling.

Jessica sighed. This could get very boring.

Not much later, she heard the noise.

It was a very soft thud, barely audible even in the absolute silence. Jessica immediately thought of panther paws and jumped off her bed.

She picked up Jurisprudence and jingled Fossilization and Deliciousness to check that they were still in her pocket. From the end of the bed Jessica couldn’t see very much of the street, but she was too scared to get any closer to the windows. She maneuvered around her bedroom, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was outside.

A dark shape moved on the front walk. Jessica backed out of its view and gripped the car antenna tighter. Rex and Dess had promised she would be safe here. They had said she knew enough to defend herself.

What if they were wrong?

Her back was pressed against the door now. She imagined the great cat squeezing through the front door and down the halls of the house, stealing up behind her. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the thirteen thumbtacks stuck into the wood of her door would be a match for its powerful muscles.

No more sound came from outside. Was whatever it was still out there?

She had to take a look.

Jessica sank to her hands and knees and crept along the floor against the wall until she was just below the window. She sat there, listening as hard as she could. The total silence seemed to roar quietly, like the sound of the ocean trapped in a shell.

She inched her head up to peer over the windowsill.

A face looked back at her.

Jessica jumped away, swinging Jurisprudence in an arc before her so that it cracked against the glass. She scrambled backward until she bumped against her bed. The window began to slide open.

“It’s okay, Jessica. It’s just me,” a voice called through the gap.

Her car-radio antenna thrust out before her like a sword, Jessica blinked, forcing her brain to put together the familiar voice and the face she had glimpsed. After a few seconds of fear, recognition came, along with a wave of relief and surprise. It was Jonathan.

Jonathan perched at the window, evidently a bit reluctant to come inside. He seemed to think that Jessica was going to take another swing at him. Jurisprudence was still in her grip, passed nervously from hand to hand.

Jonathan sat with one leg folded under him, his other knee drawn up under his chin. He certainly didn’t seem very scary now.

He hadn’t said much since arriving at the window. He seemed to be waiting for her to calm down. Unlike in the lunchroom at school, Jonathan’s eyes were open wide. He didn’t look sleepy at all. Maybe he was photophobic in the daylight too.

She was glad he didn’t hide his eyes behind dark glasses, though. They were very pretty eyes.

He watched as Jessica slowly gained control of her breathing, his gaze intent but silent.

“I didn’t know you were a midnighter,” she finally managed.

“They didn’t tell you?” He laughed. “That figures.”

“They know about you?”

“Sure. Since the day I moved here.”

Jessica shook her head in disbelief. Six hours of midnighter lore and neither Rex, Dess, nor Melissa had bothered to mention the fifth midnighter in town.

“Wait a second,” Jess said as something occurred to her. “Are you the only one they didn’t tell me about? How many of you
are
there?”

Jonathan grinned. “Just one of me,” he said.

She stared back at him, still too overwhelmed to make sense of anything.

“No, there aren’t any others,” he said, more seriously. “I’m the only person they didn’t mention.”

“What, don’t they like you?”

He shrugged. “I’m not in the club, you know? I mean, Rex is okay, I guess, and Dess is actually pretty cool.” He paused, obviously not wanting to get started on Melissa. “But they take the whole thing way too seriously.”

“Too
seriously?”

“Yeah. They act like they’re on a mission from the Midnighters World Council or something.”

“There’s a Midnighters World Council?” Jessica asked.

He laughed. “No, but I bet Rex wishes there was. He thinks this whole midnight thing has some deep and mysterious meaning.”

Jessica blinked. It had never occurred to her to doubt that there were deep and mysterious forces at work. It all seemed pretty deep and mysterious to her.

“So what do you think, Jonathan?”

“I think we’re lucky to have a whole world to ourselves. To play in, explore, do whatever we want. Why mess it up with some big purpose?”

Jessica nodded. Since the darkling had attacked her, the secret hour had become a crisis, a deadly challenge. But that first, beautiful dream had been something else entirely. Something… easy.

“For Rex,” Jonathan continued, “the blue time is like some big textbook, and he’s always studying for the final exam. For me, it’s recess.”

She gave him a sour look. “There are some pretty big bullies on the playground.”

He shrugged. “I’m faster than the bullies. Always have been.”

Jessica wondered how that could be true. But Jonathan seemed perfectly at ease. He dangled his foot outside the window, never checking over his shoulder, unafraid.