Blue Noon

21

11:56 P.M.

SAMHAIN

Every night it seemed like the secret hour took longer to come.

Jonathan drummed his fingers on his windowsill, waiting for the cold wind to be silenced, for colors to blur together into blue, for weightlessness to pour into him. He didn't look at the clock, which never worked. Knowing how many minutes of Flatland were left only made the torture worse.

These stretches right before midnight were always the hardest. Jonathan wanted to be out there now, soaring over the still cars and softly glowing houses, feeling his muscles propel him across town.

To pass the time - to force the time to get moving - he counted off the coming days on his fingers. It was Thursday night, tomorrow was Friday, exactly two weeks until Halloween. If Dess was right, he would only have to endure this wait fifteen more times, including tonight.

And then he would be free of gravity altogether.

His eyes closed. Jonathan realized, of course, that the weakening of the blue time was a disaster; it would give the darklings free rein to hunt down thousands of people, maybe a lot more than that. His father, his classmates, everyone he knew was in terrible danger.

But he couldn't keep his mind off one fact: for however long the frozen midnight lasted, Flatland would be erased, and the world would have three dimensions. For a guilty moment Jonathan let himself feel the pleasure the thought gave him - being able to fly for days on end, however far the blue time expanded.

Maybe it would swallow the whole world.

At last midnight came, almost surprising him in his reverie. The earth shuddered, dropping its claims on his body, the chains of gravity finally falling away. He drifted upward, sucking in a deep, rib-cracking breath. Only at midnight did his lungs feel like they filled completely, no longer constrained by the suffocating weight of his own body. The weight of Flatland.

It was crazy to feel guilty about the joy this gave him. It wasn't his fault the world was ending.

Jonathan launched himself out the window, passing over his father's car and up onto the neighbor's roof with one well-practiced bound. There his right foot landed on its usual spot, a circle of cracked shingles marking where so many nightly flights began.

Then he pushed off toward Jessica's and - as he watched for flying slithers and power lines, calculating the best course down empty roads and across newly harvested fields - his mind kept returning to one thought... Only two more weeks of gravity, and then I'm free.

"Okay, everyone," Rex said. "Madeleine went into my mind last night."

Jonathan frowned. The five of them were meeting in Madeleine's house, seated around her scuffed dining table surrounded by the clutter of tridecagrams and other tangled shapes. But the old woman hadn't appeared tonight, and Rex had started talking as if she wasn't coming down. Wasn't she home?

Where else could she be at midnight?

"You actually let her touch you?" Dess asked.

"Melissa was there to protect me," Rex said.

Jonathan glanced at Jessica, and they both flinched, waiting for the nasty response they knew was coming, but Dess just coughed into her fist and rolled her eyes. Eerily, the scar the darkling had left over her eye was shaped just like one of Melissa's.

Jonathan was glad she kept quiet. Tonight Rex was scary enough without anyone provoking him. His expression seemed vacant somehow, as if there were some other creature inside him, showing off the Rex mask it was going to wear while trick-or-treating.

He looked weird enough in daylight, but in the secret hour the new Rex was almost too much to face.

"The darklings remember Samhain," Rex said.

"So that goth holiday is the real thing, huh?" Dess asked, shaking her head.

"It isn't a Gothic holiday," Rex answered. "The Goths were from Asia. Samhain was Celtic."

"From Asia?" Dess said, then groaned. "No, Rex, not the guys who conquered Rome. I mean the kids in black."

"Um, Dess?" Melissa said. "Mirror check."

"This dress is charcoal," Dess said.

"Probably the Goths had something like Samhain too," Rex kept going. "A lot of cultures have festivals at the end of October. The Feast of Souls. Something called Shadowfest. The Death of the Sun."

Jessica raised an eyebrow. "Shadowfest? That sounds... festive."

Dess let out a long sigh. "Why are we even talking about this? All that pagan stuff is from the Old World, but here in Oklahoma, Halloween is just an excuse to sell a bunch of candy and costumes to little kids. Like Angie said, the darklings hid themselves way before any Europeans got here."

Jonathan cleared his throat. "Actually, Dess, it's not just a European thing. You know the Day of the Dead down in Mexico? Even though it's the same day as All Hallows' Eve, the natives already had a holiday around then."

Rex nodded. "And some Native Americans had festivals celebrating the Old Crone around this time."

Dess laughed. "Excuse me, Rex. The Old Crone?" She looked around at the others. "And what were those other ones? Shadowfest? Death of the Sun? Dawn of the Dead? Is it just me, or do all these holidays have a trying-too-hard-to-be-creepy ring to them?"

"Of course they do," Rex said, his scary mask unruffled by her teasing. "Look at the bare trees outside, the gray sky, the dead grass everywhere. The word Samhain is Celtic for 'summer's end.' The beginning of winter." Suddenly Rex's voice sounded dry, like he'd been out in the desert without water for a few days. "The dying of the light, when warmth turns to cold."

Everyone was silent for a moment, even Melissa looking a little spooked by Rex. Jonathan heard a creaking noise above his head. So Madeleine was here. But why was she hiding upstairs?

He glanced at Melissa, wondering what exactly had happened between the three of them the night before.

Dess broke the mood, letting out an exasperated breath. "This isn't about spooks and ghosts, Rex, it's about numbers. The eleventh month plus one is twelve. That's all it is."

Jonathan frowned. Back in Philadelphia, his mother had always taken him to church on All Hallows' Eve. Even the Catholic version of Samhain had given him the willies.

"So tell us, Rex," he said. "Way back when, before Halloween got all cutesy, what was the point of Samhain?"

"Well, believe it or not, people did wear costumes," Rex said. "But the most important ritual was building bonfires. They burned everything they could, even the bones of their slaughtered cattle, hoping to drive away the night for a little while longer. Of course, they knew winter was going to win sooner or later. Samhain recognizes the coming of darkness."

"Hey," Dess said. "Now there's a snappy greeting card: 'Hope that you and yours have a lovely coming of darkness.' "

"I agree," Rex said. "It doesn't seem like the best time of year for a holiday. But for some reason, the coming of darkness wasn't a bad thing."

"Like I said, it's a goth holiday," Dess muttered.

"Yet during all of recorded history, it was a time of celebration," Rex continued. "But what were they celebrating? Think about it. Back then winter must have been a pretty scary time of year."

"Because everyone starved?" Jonathan said.

Rex's face curled into something resembling a smile. "Everyone but the darklings. Remember, even before the secret hour was created, darklings hunted at night. In winter, nights get longer and longer. So originally those bonfires weren't symbolic; they were designed to keep the predators away for as long as possible."

The rapturous expression on Rex's face made Jonathan shiver; his eyelids were fluttering, as if he was mainlining darkling memories. Jessica reached over and squeezed Jonathan's hand beneath the table.

He coughed. "Sure, Rex. That's not something a normal person would celebrate."

"No. But one Samhain a long time ago, everything changed. The darklings never showed up again, even after the bonfires burned down. They had retreated into midnight. So those bonfires changed in meaning. Instead of a last-ditch survival maneuver, they were now an act of celebration. Halloween is the anniversary of the beginning of the secret hour, the day humanity finally reached the top of the food chain."

Dess sat up straighter. "Huh. So maybe this whole history thing does actually make sense. I mean, if the darklings really did disappear on October 31, that's why it was such a good day in the old system. It was the day when everyone was finally safe from them forever."

"Not forever," Rex said.

"Oh, right." Dess's voice softened. "November 1 is going to be a darkling holiday from now on, isn't it?"

He nodded. "They're going to turn the food chain around again. But the good news is this long midnight won't last forever - just for twenty-five hours, a single day by the old reckoning."

Jonathan knew he should be relieved, but somewhere deep inside him, he felt a little spark of disappointment.

"Okay, Rex," Dess said. "What's the bad news?"

"The long midnight will happen every Halloween, the rip getting bigger and bigger every time. From now on, humans are the candy."

Jonathan's disappointment lifted a little. A whole day every year.

"So what do we do about this?" Jessica said. "Wasn't that the point of you talking to the darklings? To find out some way to stop it?"

Rex didn't respond for a while, his face strangely unmoving. Jessica looked over at Jonathan, who only shrugged. He realized that some part of him was scared that the seer already had a plan, something that would shove the secret hour back into its bottle. Which would be a good thing, of course, saving thousands of lives at least.

But it would also mean Jonathan would never fly for more than one hour a day....

Finally Rex spoke. "We'll try to stop it, to do whatever we can. When it comes, we'll gather people together and teach them how to fight for themselves."

"Um, Rex?" Jessica said. "What about keeping the secret hour a secret?"

"We don't anymore. After the long midnight we won't be able to." He looked down at the table. "And after what we saw in Madeleine's mind last night, I'm pretty sure I don't want us midnighters to stay in shadows anymore."

Everyone was silent for a moment as the idea that the blue time wouldn't be secret any longer slowly sank in.

Jonathan wondered again why the old mindcaster wasn't down here with them. But there were more important questions right now, he supposed. "So how do we organize a whole town in one night?"

Rex shook his head. "I don't know yet." He turned to Jessica. "But you remember how Angie said Samhain had something to do with the flame-bringer?"

"Yeah," she answered. "That was kind of hard to forget."

"Well, I've got a few ideas about how the rip works. And they have to do with you. But we need to do a few experiments. I want all of you to meet me in Jenks tomorrow morning. At six-thirty."

Dess let out a snort. "Hold on there, Rex. There's a six-thirty in the morning now? No one told me about that."

"Yeah, really," Jonathan said.

Rex rose from his seat, suddenly inhumanly tall, his bulk seeming to crowd against the ceiling. His features shifted on his face, the eyes growing as long and wide as a wolf's and burning violet. His hands slammed down onto the table, crooked like claws, then scraped across the wood in one slow, deliberate movement, his fingernails catching every imperfection.

Jonathan swallowed - the creature had come out from behind the mask.

"Do you think we have time to waste sleeping?" Rex said, his voice gone cold and dry and ancient. "Thousands will be killed, and for some it will be worse than dying. The old ones will suck them dry first, wringing out every drop of fear. They're coming for you, don't you see?"

He stood there, glaring at them all, while the old house filled with the echoes of his words, like whispers coming from every corner. Jonathan thought he saw the piles of junk around them glow brighter for a moment, their soft blue metal rimmed with cold fire.

A vague, choking noise came from Madeleine upstairs, as if she was crying out in a dream, but Jonathan didn't dare look up. The four of them just stared at Rex in stunned silence. Even Melissa looked bowled over by his sudden transformation.

A long moment later he sat back down, taking in a slow breath. "I know this is hard. But you can catch up on your sleep after Halloween."

His voice had gone back to normal, but they all still sat there, dumbfounded. Jonathan wished he could think of something to say, anything at all to break the silence. But the whole concept of language - hellos, goodbyes, jokes, mindless banter - it all seemed to have fled from his brain.

Rex was suddenly so alien. It would be like making small talk with a snake.

Finally Dess cleared her throat. "Okay, then. Six-thirty A.M.. it is."

Jessica looked up at Jonathan, mouthing the words, Let's go.

Jonathan didn't have any problem with that. Some serious flying was what he needed right now, stretching his limbs and soaring away from the earth, as far as he could get from Rex's weirdness.

But he remembered to ask, "So, Melissa, will you guys need a ride out there? I mean, since your car's all busted."

She looked at Rex, who shook his head no but didn't say anything more.

Great, Jonathan thought. Maybe they'll fly out with one of his darkling pals.

There was still time, so the two of them headed toward downtown.

"So what the hell is up with Rex?" Jonathan said softly, once Madeleine's house was safely behind them.

"Don't ask me," Jessica answered, squeezing his hand. "Did you notice what he said at the end, 'They're coming for you'?"

"As in us - not him. Makes sense, though. He's on speaking terms with the darklings these days." Jonathan waited until they'd caromed from the long top of an eighteen-wheeler on Kerr Street, then added, "But I guess we're safe, you and me."

"Oh, that makes me feel a lot better."

He glanced at her. "I just mean, we're safe as long as we stick together."

She didn't say anything, just squeezed his hand again.

They climbed the buildings of downtown like stepping-stones, bounding to the summit of the old Mobil Building. This was where they had hidden in the days before Jessica had found her talent, back when the darklings were desperate to kill her - before she discovered who she was.

Jonathan looked out across Bixby, laid out before them in the even, deep blue glow of the secret hour. He looked in the direction of Jenks, trying to see the rip, but its red tinge didn't show on the horizon.

Not yet, anyway. It was growing every time an eclipse fell.

"We haven't been up here in a while," Jessica said.

"Yeah. I was kind of missing Pegasus." He looked up. The huge neon Mobil sign in the shape of a flying horse hovered over them protectively.

"That's not all I missed," Jessica said, a smile playing on her lips. "You remember what happened here, right?"

Jonathan nodded. "You mean, us hiding from the darklings?"

"Yeah. But not just that."

He thought for a moment. They hadn't really been up here since those early days. He shrugged.

Jessica let out a groan. "I can't believe you. This is where we first kissed!"

"Oh, right!" He swallowed. "But that was around the same time, yeah? I mean, I just said how we were hiding here, and that was when we..." Jonathan stumbled to a halt, realizing that explanations were only making things worse.

He took her hands, hoping that his midnight gravity would bring her smile back.

She just stared at him. "I can't believe you forgot."

"I didn't forget. I just didn't know what you were talking about."

"Ugh. That's even worse!"

"Why?"

"Because it's like you've totally forgotten." She pulled her hands away, looking out over the blue-lit city. "We haven't exactly... This last week we've hardly touched each other."

"No, I guess not." He sighed. "It seems like we're always in crisis mode."

"I guess it's not that big a deal, compared to the whole town getting sucked into oblivion. But shouldn't that make us closer or something?" She looked at him for an answer, like this was a particularly tricky problem from physics class.

"Look at it this way, Jessica," he said, putting his arm around her. "Once Samhain comes, we'll get to spend a whole day flying together."

"Jonathan!"

"What?" He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm just saying."

She groaned, turning away from him. "I knew you were thinking that way."

"What way?"

"You're excited that this is going to happen, aren't you?" she cried. "You'd probably be happy if it went on forever: blue time, all the time. No more Flatland. What could be better?"

He rolled his eyes but couldn't bring himself to contradict her aloud. After all, he'd been thinking that exact thing as midnight fell.

But that didn't make him a terrible person, did it?

Jonathan took a deep breath. Usually with Jessica, explaining things just seemed to make an argument go downhill. But for some reason, he always tried anyway. You had to keep talking to each other or nothing ever got resolved.

He began nervously. "Listen, Jess. Haven't you ever imagined the world ending? I mean, kind of fantasized about a nuclear war or a plague or something wiping out everybody - except you and a few friends? And of course it's all tragic and everything, but suddenly the whole world belongs to you?"

"Mmm... no, actually." She frowned. "In my fantasies I'm more of a rock star who can fly. And has no little sister."

He smiled, took her hand, and nudged them both a few feet into the air. "Well, one out of three isn't bad."

"Are you saying I'm not a rock star?"

"You don't even sing."

"I do in the shower." A smile finally crossed her face as they settled back to the rooftop, but then she pulled away again. "Jonathan, the problem is that this isn't a fantasy. It's real. I feel bad even joking about it."

"But Jessica, we didn't make this happen. It's not our fault. All we can do is try to save as many people as we can."

"And enjoy the extra flying time?"

"No! If we can stop it, we will. But maybe we should leave the planning to Rex. It's what he's good at, even if he's been a weirdo lately."

"Even if it means keeping Flatland on its current schedule?"

"Yes." He was silent for a moment, looking for words. "I don't hate the world the way it is, Jessica. I don't want my dad and your family and everyone else sucked into some nightmare. I know the difference between a stupid fantasy and the real end of the world. Okay?" He paused, not quite believing what he was about to say. "And whatever Rex comes up with, I'll follow his orders."

"You promise?"

"Sure. I promise. Even if he's acting totally crazy. Anything to stop this."

She looked at him, then finally nodded. "Okay."

He took her hand, felt his midnight gravity connect them. "Let's not worry about Bixby right now."

She smiled faintly and leaned toward him. His eyes closed as their lips met, and for a moment the rest of the world really did fall away. Jonathan pushed them up into the air until they seemed suspended in a dark blue void, with only each other to cling to.

When they parted, he said softly, "Whatever happens in the long midnight, we'll be okay - you and me. You know that, right?"

She shook her head, a sad look crossing her face, then silenced him with another kiss.