[Midnighters 02] - Touching Darkness

by Scott Westerfeld - (ebook by Undead)

  “Rex…” she growled.

  “Oops, sorry. Thinking about the message now.”

  And suddenly there it was against the bleak backdrop. A kind of undigested thought in his head, like a dream not quite remembered in the morning. He closed his eyes, but strangely that made the thought disappear, so he opened them again and stared out at the passing oil fields. Gradually his attention was caught by the rhythm of derricks rising and falling under the bright orange suns of mercury lamps. And then it became clear, like looking just to one side of a faint star and discovering that the periphery of vision is stronger than the center.

  “We must have Jessica Day,” he murmured.

  “Bingo,” Melissa said.

  “You heard that…? In normal time?”

  “Give the man a cigar.”

  Rex blinked, hearing the voice, distant but clear, exactly as Melissa had when they’d driven back from Rustle’s Bottom that night. “It was a human. You’ve known for a whole week that something human wanted Jessica.”

  “The Eagle has landed. Houston, we have a winner.”

  He stared dumbly out the window, unable to believe what he had heard in his mind or to comprehend the hysteria in her voice. Why would she hide this from him?

  Then suddenly he blinked. Melissa’s old Ford was passing a house he recognized, the two-story colonial fitting neatly over a vision she had left inside him. They were at the exact point on Kerr Street where she’d heard the voice.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rex asked in amazement.

  “Because…” Melissa’s voice choked off, and she breathed deeply, getting herself under control. Finally she sighed. “Well, Loverboy, why don’t you figure that one out on your own?”

  7

  11:24 p.m.

  DARKLING MANOR

  Rex was pissed. You didn’t have to be a mindcaster to know that.

  He stared glumly out the window, watching the houses flash by, his mind tasting of stomach acid and day-old Mountain Dew, the flavor of betrayal with a topping of wounded authority.

  As for Melissa, she didn’t much care that Rex was angry. It was far better than having to feel his pity.

  She still felt the tingle in her right hand, as if the flaking plastic of the Ford’s steering wheel were buzzing under it. The touch hadn’t been so bad, really. A little mindless maelstrom never hurt anybody, and just before the end she’d felt some kind of release, something shared between them that wasn’t just night terrors and cosmic angst. Something she wanted to try for again.

  But then Loverboy had to freak out. Like there was any reason to get all upset about the psychodrama that was her existence. Melissa figured that was just the way things were. And she had managed to give him the memory, one little token of communication amidst the crap-storm. That was something, at least.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said.

  She sighed. He never would.

  Why hadn’t she told him? The reasons all seemed to splinter as she thought of them, dividing into more and more… because she hadn’t been really sure she’d heard it. Because you couldn’t get upset about every stray thought. Because Jessica Day wasn’t her problem anyway.

  Nevertheless, he knew now. And she’d given the knowledge to him in a way that was more… interesting than just telling him. Funny—she hated seeing other people hold hands in school, their thoughts all syrupy and self-involved. But with Rex it hadn’t seemed so bad.

  Maybe next time he wouldn’t freak out.

  Melissa’s mind wandered again, opening itself wide to catch the dreams and nightmares of sleeping Bixby. Hardly anyone awake, even before midnight. (What a loser-magnet this town was.) Most of the conscious minds were locked into TV shows. Hundreds of psyches spread across town were all laughing at the same jokes at the same time like goose-stepping circus clowns. Sometimes on Thursday nights Melissa had to suffer through all of Bixby yucking in tandem to the latest hit sitcom or mindlessly sweating out the million-dollar finale of some so-called reality show. She shuddered. Only four months until the dreaded Super Bowl.

  Didn’t any of these brainless wonders ever notice that TV shows were called programs? The same word that meant a bunch of numbers stuck into a computer to make it dance for its masters?

  Melissa snorted, realizing she’d borrowed that last image from Dess’s brain. The girl was working on some secret project, her little hamster wheels spinning so fast that Melissa could smell the smoke at midnight. Soon she and Rex were going to have to sit Miss Polymath down and ask her exactly what she was up to.

  She glanced at Rex. Because keeping secrets was wrong, wasn’t it?

  A fragment of a thought struck her, and Melissa slowed the car.

  Nothing in the content, but something about the flavor made her replay the words in her head…

  We can’t be late.

  Probably just someone racing to get home, trying to catch some movie on cable for the dozenth time. But there was something about the mind, as familiar as the smell of last year’s homeroom.

  “Catch something?” Rex asked.

  “Maybe.”

  She took the next left, through a stone gate and into a plantation of McMansions, giant new cookie-cutter houses stamped onto tiny lots just out of the reach of Tulsa property taxes. The thought had come from in here, she was positive.

  No one seemed to be awake; half the houses still hadn’t been moved into. She could see the curtainless windows and feel the empty rooms behind them. Ugly as they were, Melissa dreamed of living in a house like these one day—unstained by years of human habitation, no sleepless worries seeping out of the walls, no residue of ancient petty arguments.

  Most of the people who’d already moved into the complex were fast asleep, their dreams as smooth and interchangeable as the manicured front lawns.

  Then she felt it again and gripped the wheel hard. Melissa knew it was the one, the same mind that had thought so intensely a week ago, We must have Jessica Day.

  “What’re you—?”

  “Shush!”

  It was already slipping away, moving fast across the empty psychic terrain.

  “Crap!” It was in a car. (He was in a car—a male, she could tell suddenly.) The tendrils of his mind trailed away like a condensation cloud behind a jet plane. “I tasted him, Rex. But he’s driving.”

  “Which way?”

  “I… don’t know.” She shook her head; the last traces were fading. She brought the car to a halt. “He was around here somewhere.”

  “Same guy?”

  Melissa nodded. “And we’re only about a mile from where I heard him the first time. But we just missed him, running off to something he was late for. Want to look around some more?”

  “Sure.” Rex’s glasses were off, and he was staring at the overgrown houses. “There are signs here. Focus.”

  She took her foot off the brake, eased back onto the road.

  “Really? In this place?” Sure, they were close to the desert, but Melissa couldn’t imagine darklings taking an interest in this development, full of shiny new fixtures and stainless steel sprinkler systems. But the marks that Rex could see lingered longer than darkling mind traces, so there was no point arguing. She drove the car slowly along the meandering streets, keeping her mind watchful for cops or private security guards. Her old Ford stuck out here like a helping of dog turd on angel food cake.

  It was good to feel Rex’s mind at work, clear and pure as he looked for signs of Focus. In his excitement he had forgiven her slight against his authority, too intoxicated by his seer’s powers to hold a grudge. In some ways he was still the kid she’d rescued from solitude eight years before, enthralled by the mysteries of midnight, driven by his need to know more. Melissa was sure they would hold hands again soon.

  “Stop,” he whispered. Melissa halted the car, feeling the buzz of his excitement.

  The house he was staring at looked like all the others, two-storied and big-windowed, an overpowering double garage present
ed proudly to the world.

  “I wish you could see this, Cowgirl. It’s so Focused. They’ve been crawling all over it.”

  She let her mind drift in through its big front door. The place had hardly any human taste at all. “No one home. And if anyone lives there, they haven’t for very long.”

  “Darkling Manor,” Rex said quietly. “Not a clean brick on the joint.”

  She looked at her watch. Twenty to midnight. “Well, shall we take a look before the witching hour?”

  “What about your friend?”

  “He was headed somewhere in a hurry” She tasted the air. “Long gone.”

  “Okay. But ten minutes max. We should be back in the car and a couple of miles from here before midnight comes.” He shook his head. “Don’t want to be crashers at a darkling house party.”

  The door was unlocked.

  “That’s interesting.” Melissa pushed it open, its new hinges utterly silent. The entrance hallway was grand and echoey, no rugs to muffle the sound of their boots across the polished wooden floor. No anything, she realized. The walls were bare of pictures, and no shoes or hanging coats cluttered the foyer. The two large front rooms were empty except for a portable phone. It sat lonely on a windowsill, its cord winding across the blank expanse of carpet, a demonic red eye showing that it was recharging.

  And the place tasted completely dead. Not a leftover thought anywhere. Even the dull roar of central Bixby miles away seemed muted by its walls.

  “Nothing to steal, I guess,” she said.

  “But lots of darkling action.” Rex was looking up the stairs, into corners. “Just like outside, it’s all in Focus.”

  “Maybe it’s some kind of darkling frat house.”

  “I’ve never seen them set up shop in a human dwelling before. Maybe a tire yard or a vacant lot, but not a house. Of course, nobody lives here.”

  “No,” Melissa said, “but the darklings aren’t paying the phone bill…”

  Rex chewed his lip. “Good point.”

  In the kitchen they found signs of habitation. Or maybe vandalism. The faucet had been yanked out from the sink, the handles of the cupboards torn off, every piece of metal removed. There were no appliances, and the lightbulb hung bare from the ceiling.

  “A darkling-friendly kitchen. What do they eat, anyway?”

  Rex just looked at her, sending out a stab of annoyance.

  “Oh, right. Us.” Melissa didn’t think about it in those terms much, but that was and always had been the prime source of conflict between the two races: the whole foodchain thing. Funny how that could mess up a relationship.

  “Let’s check upstairs,” Rex said, having gone through the drawers and cupboards and found them empty.

  She checked her watch. “Okay. But five minutes and we leave.”

  He turned his head slowly from left to right as they climbed the stairs, his eyes wide with the Focus. “Absolutely.”

  Upstairs was divided into three empty bedrooms, the largest with a big balcony that looked out into the dark Oklahoma night. Melissa stared through the sliding door and realized something. She pulled off a glove and put her hand to the cold glass.

  “You know, Rex, it’s warm in here.” Outside it was almost freezing, but someone had left the heating on, though they hadn’t bothered to lock the door…

  “Look at this!” he cried, his mind flooding the room with delight.

  He had pulled something from a closet, a box of small rectangular tiles that glowed white in the darkness. He squatted on the floor and dumped them out with a clatter. As his hands swept through the tiles to spread them out, she recognized the wooden sound.

  “Didn’t know you liked dominoes so much,” she said dryly.

  “Not dominoes.” Rex was flipping them all faceup. He hadn’t put on his glasses, so they must have been marked with Focus.

  She knelt beside him and squinted at the symbols on the tiles. They were the spindly figures of lore, the secret alphabet used to record midnighter history for ten thousand years.

  “Oh.” The thought that anyone besides Rex would use the ancient signs left her speechless for a moment.

  “But they’re not quite the same,” he muttered. “It’s like a slightly different alphabet…”

  Melissa didn’t respond. She steadied herself with one hand on the floor. The feel of him parsing the symbols was dizzying; his mind battered hers with a frenzy of calculation.

  “Or maybe some of them are signs I don’t know,” he said, picking through them, lifting one for closer inspection. “Symbols for concepts that don’t exist in the lore.”

  Melissa forced her mind to shut out his mental pyrotechnics. “But what are those things for, Rex?”

  The question brought his brain to a spinning halt. “I don’t know.”

  She thought of the stiffs they often found at the snake pit, frozen while staring at the piles of rocks that Bixby legend held would move at midnight. (Of course, sometimes Melissa moved them herself, just for fun—and to terrify the little trespassing morons.)

  “Could someone use them to communicate with the darklings?” she asked.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Darklings hate symbols and signs, any written language. That’s one of the new ideas that scared them off ten thousand years ago, along with math and fire and metal.”

  “But Rex, you’ve got your glasses off.”

  “I what?” He put one hand to his face. Melissa realized that Rex had momentarily forgotten he wasn’t wearing the thick lenses. The house was so marked with Focus that he could see everything clearly anyway.

  “So darklings have touched these,” he murmured, a few of the dominoes slipping through his fingers. “But how?”

  “Rex…” A familiar taste was penetrating the overwhelming clamor of Rex’s excitement. “What time is it?”

  He checked his watch. “You’re right. We should go soon. Just let me grab a few of these—”

  “Rex!” It wasn’t impending midnight that had her worried; it was something she’d felt before, and it was rushing back toward them. The voice seemed to suddenly crack through the psychic silence of the house.

  We’re just going to make it, no thanks to you, Angie.

  Her head spun, trying to sort Rex’s mental turmoil from the approaching thoughts. They came through grim and determined, angry at some inconvenience, and, most of all, anxious.

  “It’s him…” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  Keep it on the road, idiot. We’re almost there.

  She recognized the exact kind of fear now; it was of a type familiar from a thousand school mornings. There was always at least one mind trailing in after everyone else had settled into their desks, rushing along panicked at the thought of punishment. That was what she tasted: fear of being late.

  “He was in a hurry when he left,” she muttered, “but he was in a hurry to get back by midnight?

  “The guy you heard?”

  “Yes! We have to get out of here now.” She stood, still dizzy. For some reason, mindcasting in this house was like walking through syrup.

  Rex was scraping at the tiles, trying to return them all to the box.

  “There isn’t time!” She tasted the man’s bitter curses as he twisted at the steering wheel, felt his body sway on the quick turns, heard the skidding of tires…

  Rex looked up. He’d heard the tires too.

  Headlights crawled across the ceiling, and a screech came from the driveway.

  “He’s here,” she said, too late.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Rex said, taking her gloved hand softly as he checked his watch. “We only have to stay hidden for four minutes. It’s what’s coming after midnight that worries me.”

  They shoved the darkling dominoes back into the closet and crept to one of the smaller bedrooms. Hopefully the man wouldn’t poke around the empty house with so little time remaining before midnight. Rex pointed to a wide, shallow wardrobe with sliding doors.

 
The sound of the front door opening carried up the stairs just as they made it into the darkness of the wardrobe. Melissa felt Rex breathing hard next to her, off balance as he tried to avoid touching her accidentally. She slipped her other glove back on and steadied him with that hand, whispering, “Relax. Let me concentrate.”

  Rex’s mind calmed, and she could feel now that there were two of them downstairs, the man and… Angie. The woman radiated only calm; no wonder she’d been invisible to Melissa before now.

  “You’re lucky we made it,” came the man’s muffled voice, his footsteps audible on the stairs.

  Melissa controlled her breathing. The way sound echoed through the empty house, one bump against the wardrobe door and they’d be discovered.

  “I didn’t ask to break down. Next time I won’t bother to call you.” Her voice was low and controlled, not out of breath like his. Her mind held none of his fear of being late. Melissa felt the woman check her watch—a burst of satisfaction as she confirmed that everything was on schedule. Now that they were inside the house, Melissa could taste them clearly.

  “Promises, promises,” the guy shouted from the master bathroom. A rush of release filled his brain just as the trickling sound of piss reached Melissa’s ears. She shuddered at the intimacy.

  “Like you could handle this on your own,” the woman said in a voice so soft that it mostly reached Melissa as thought. She had a lock on Angie’s mind now: it was saturated with a sickly sweet contempt for the man. Angie didn’t need him here in the first place—he could barely interpret lore symbols, couldn’t see the big picture, was always lugging around his stupid camera, which of course never captured the spooks anyway. If he wasn’t related to the patriarch…

  The woman’s mind grew closer, her slow footsteps carrying her through the upstairs hall. She came to a halt just outside the room they’d hidden in.

  “Did we really need this big a house?”

  Rex’s shoulder muscles tightened under Melissa’s grip, his mind clouding hers with a wave of fear. Relax, she willed him.

  “Location, location, location,” the man said. “That’s all the spooks care about. Anyway, if this field is as big as they say, we should make about a hundred times what this cracker box cost.”