[Midnighters 01] - The Secret Hour

by Scott Westerfeld - (ebook by Undead)

  As they headed for the sloping ramp that led down to the basement floors, Rex checked his watch. It was a few minutes past noon; Jessica might already be waiting. But on the way he paused for a quick glance into a glass case of pre-Clovis finds.

  The case was full of crude arrowheads ranging from a half inch to five inches in length. Some were long and thin, others wide and barely pointed, like the end of a shovel. Most were spear points rather than true arrowheads. The makers had attached throwing shafts to them, but the wood had rotted away twelve thousand years ago. The newly arrived point was easy to spot. It was almost eight inches long, wafer thin and proportioned like a narrow leaf. It bore the telltale marks of a hammer made of soft stone and all the signs of a skilled workman. He propped up his glasses.

  It dissolved into a blur; no Focus clung to it at all. Rex’s face twisted with disappointment, and he continued down the ramp. So far he hadn’t seen anything from outside Bixby that showed signs of the blue time.

  In the whole world, were he and his friends really alone?

  Jessica Day was already there, waiting on the lowest level, her gaze lost in a model of a mastodon hunt. Tiny Stone Age figures surrounded the elephantine animal, hurling spears into its thick hide from every direction. One of the little guys was about to be impaled on a long, twisted tusk.

  “Pretty brave, huh?” Rex said.

  Jessica started, as if she hadn’t heard them approach. She recovered, then shrugged.

  “Actually, I was thinking twenty against one.”

  “Nineteen,” said Dess. Jessica raised an eyebrow.

  This is going well already, Rex thought. He’d had a whole speech planned, a regular show-and-tell. He had rehearsed it in his mind again and again before going to sleep the night before. But Jessica looked exhausted. Even with his glasses making her a bit fuzzy, her green eyes bore the marks of a sleepless night. He decided to throw out the speech.

  “You must have a lot of questions,” he said.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “This way.” They led Jessica to a small cluster of tables against one wall. This was where school groups ate their bag lunches. The four of them sat, Melissa pulling out her headphones, Dess leaning back precariously in her plastic chair.

  “Ask away,” Rex said, folding his hands on the table.

  Jessica took a deep breath, as if about to speak, but then a helpless expression came across her face. Rex could read it even with his glasses on. It was the look of someone with too many questions to know where to start. Rex forced himself to be patient as Jessica collected her thoughts.

  “A hubcap?” she finally blurted out.

  Rex smiled.

  “Not just any hubcap,” Dess said. “That was from a 1967 Mercury.”

  “Is 1967 a multiple of thirteen?” Rex asked.

  “Not hardly,” Dess scoffed. “But they made hubcaps out of real steel back then. None of this aluminum crap.”

  “Time-out,” Jessica called.

  “Oh, sorry,” Rex said sheepishly. “Explain, Dess, but keep it simple.”

  Dess pulled her necklace out of her shirtfront. A thirteen-pointed star dangled from its chain. In the dim light of the museum it caught the spotlights on the exhibits, twinkling as if with its own light.

  “Remember this?”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed those all over Bixby since you told me about them.”

  “Well,” Dess said, “this necklace is Darkling Protection 101. There are three things the darklings don’t like. One is steel.” She pinged the star with one fingernail. “The newer a type of metal is, the more it freaks darklings out.”

  “Steel,” Jessica said quietly to herself, as if this made sense to her.

  “Basically, darklings are really old,” Dess explained. “And like a lot of old people, they don’t like stuff that’s changed since they were born.”

  “They used to be afraid of cut stone,” Rex said. “Then forged metals: bronze and iron. But gradually they got used to them. Steel is newer.”

  “Hasn’t steel been around a long time?” Jessica asked. “Like swords and stuff?”

  “Yeah, but we’re talking stainless steel, a modern invention,” Dess said. “Of course, one day I’d like to get my hands on some electrolytic titanium or—”

  “Okay,” Jessica interrupted. “So they don’t like new metals.”

  “Especially alloys,” Dess said, “which means a mix of metals. Gold and silver are elements. They come straight up from the ground. The darklings aren’t scared of them at all.”

  “But they’re scared of alloys. So they couldn’t get through something made of steel?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s not that simple,” Dess said. “Thing number two that darklings are afraid of is… math.”

  “Math?”

  “Well, a certain kind of math,” Dess explained. “There are certain numbers and patterns and ratios that freak them out, basically.”

  Jessica’s expression remained one of disbelief.

  Rex had prepared for this. “Jess, have you heard of epilepsy?”

  “Uh, sure. It’s a disease, right? You fall down and start foaming at the mouth.”

  “And bite your own tongue off,” added Dess.

  “It’s a brain thing,” Rex said. “The seizures are usually triggered by a blinking light.”

  “It doesn’t matter how strong or fit you are,” Dess said. “A blinking light and you’re suddenly helpless. Like Superman and kryptonite. But the thing is, the light has to be flashing at a certain speed. Numbers work that way on the darklings.”

  “And that’s why Bixby has this thing about thirteen?” Jessica asked.

  “You got it. Guaranteed protection against darklings and their little friends. Something about that number drives them totally crazy. They can’t stand symbols that mean thirteen or groups of thirteen things. Even thirteen-letter words fry their heads.”

  Jessica let out a low whistle. “Psychosomatic.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good one,” Dess said. “So I gave that old hubcap a thirteen-letter name, Hypochondriac, and psychokitty got burned.”

  “Sure,” Jessica said.

  “Just remember to always keep a fresh tridecalogism in your mind.”

  “A fresh what?”

  “Tridecalogism is a thirteen-letter word that means ‘thirteen-letter word,’ ” Dess said, grinning happily.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I kind of made it up myself. So don’t try to use it to protect yourself. And remember, when you actually use a tridecalogism on a darkling, make sure you come up with a fresh one for the next night.”

  “They get used to words faster than they do metals,” Rex said.

  “Who knows?” Dess continued. “Maybe one day they’ll get used to the number thirteen. Then we’ll be looking for thirty-nine-letter words.”

  Rex flinched at the idea. “That’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

  “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?”

&
nbsp; “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.”

  13

  11:55 P.M.

  ACROBAT

  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.