Scott Westerfeld - Touching Darkness

Dess’s eyes widened, and she pulled away.

He sighed. “Do you want your numbers or not?”

Her face twitched for a moment, but finally she scowled and said, “Okay. But if you lose it, break it, or get arrested and they take it, you’re dead.”

Jonathan just rolled his eyes and listened as she explained how to capture coordinates. As he walked away from the car, he whispered to himself, “You’re welcome.”

On the other side Jonathan dropped to the ground at the edge of an unfinished lot, then paused to shake the termites from his sneakers and the pain from his still-sprained ankle. Construction materials were strewn across the dry, bare soil. There was no frame yet, just a wide driveway leading to a gaping foundation. He moved quickly through the site, figuring he’d be less conspicuous walking down the street than creeping through an empty lot.

At this time on a weekday few cars passed him, and no one seemed to pay him any mind. Half the houses looked unoccupied. He could smell the fresh paint jobs and see the seams in the newly rolled-down lawns.

Spotting Darkling Manor was easy. It was across the street from the demon house, which had a broken window up on the second floor. The front door was sealed with yellow police tape. Jonathan wondered what the family was doing today. Sitting around watching TV and trying not to wonder what had happened last night? Or had they gone to a motel for a while?

Of course, the truly haunted house was on the other side of the street. Darkling Manor looked like every other home in the development. Everything about it—the garage, windows, lawn—was unnecessarily huge. The driveway was empty, and Rex and Melissa said they hadn’t seen a stick of furniture, so it seemed unlikely anyone was home. He walked around it, trying to look interested rather than criminal.

In the back he found the balcony with the sliding glass doors that Rex had described. Standing beneath it, as close as he could get to the house, Jonathan held up the GPS receiver and pressed capture. The shifting numbers froze.

According to Dess, that was it.

Jonathan paused. In daylight the house didn’t give him the chills he’d expected. It was so new, unlike any other darkling place he’d ever seen. He wondered if there were some clue inside, something that would tell him who owned it and who was behind the new threat to Jessica.

Around front again, he spotted the mailbox. Its little red flag was standing up. He crossed the lawn, glancing up and down the still empty street.

His gait slowed when he saw her. Peering at him out of the window of the demon house was a woman. She looked like someone who’d had a sleepless night, her face dark with suspicion.

Jonathan smiled and waved. She didn’t wave back. He opened the mailbox and reached in to find a single letter. Pulling it out, he waved again and turned back toward the house.

“Crap,” he whispered. The front door was probably locked, and the hairs on the back of Jonathan’s neck told him that he was still being watched. He headed around the back of the house the way he’d come, taking one last glance over his shoulder.

The woman’s face was still in the window, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was watching the private security car that was coming up the winding street.

Jonathan crammed the envelope into his pocket and ran, dashing across the backyard, rolling across a low fence and stumbling into another backyard. He passed yet another giant, empty house and crossed the next street over.

He kept going until he was breathless, moving across the streets instead of down them. The overweight rent-a-cops would never catch him on foot, even with his ankle screaming with every step. The screech of tires came from his right as they tried to parallel him in their car.

At the edge of the development, where Jonathan had come in, the houses were still under construction and the ground grew rough. A few workers silently watched him pass, not taking much interest. He dodged piles of dirt and broken bricks, wishing for a ten-second burst of midnight gravity to get him out of here. One hard jump in that direction would carry him all the way back to Dess.

Finally he reached the fence. He could see his father’s car through the bars. But there wasn’t any termite mound on this side, no footholds, no way to climb it.

He spun around. The security car crawled into sight a hundred yards away, leaving the road and growling onto the dirt strip of unsodded backyards, its tires spitting gravel and spinning up a cloud of dust.

Jonathan looked around frantically for something to get a boost from—a pile of bricks, a tree stump, anything. But the fence stretched along flat red soil as far as he could see.

Then his eyes fell on an old tire lying in the sun, its treads choked with dirt, its rubber cracked. He ran to it, lifted it upright, and sent it rolling ahead of him with a solid kick. Mosquito-breeding water sloshed from its innards as it wobbled along. Bracing it sideways against the fence, Jonathan planted a foot on it and pushed himself up.

The tire sagged as he jumped, but his hands managed to grasp the top spikes of the fence. The spitting tires of the car sounded as if they were right under him. Jonathan pulled himself up and over and dropped to the other side, every ounce of his normal-gravity weight landing on his bad ankle.

“Finally,” Dess said as he limped up. “I was getting bored.”

Jonathan started the car, looking back at the security guards. They slewed to a halt on the other side of the fence, their car immediately swallowed by its own dust cloud. The two rent-a-cops emerged, coughing in the dirt storm, and looked at him forlornly through the fence. One tested the tire with his foot, but it sagged almost flat under his weight.

Jonathan took a deep breath. No reason to rush.

“Hey, it’s those buttheads again,” Dess said. “Were they chasing you?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. You’re not really a total loser in normal time, you know.”

“Right.” His heart was pounding, his throat was scraped raw from inhaling dust, and his ankle was throbbing. He never felt this way at midnight, half dead from running a paltry mile. He pulled the GPS receiver from his belt. “Hope this thing still works.”

“It better,” she said, flicking it on. She stared at the numbers recorded on the little readout. A moment later a grin of satisfaction spread across her face. “Oh, this is so good!”

Jonathan felt himself smiling too. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, getting his heart beating. Not as good as flying, of course. “That’s from right under the balcony, just like you said.”

“I can see it…” Her eyes were open wide like those of a four-year-old girl entranced by her first butterfly. “I’ve got the pattern now. This is so freaky.”

She turned and leapt across the front seat, kissing him on the right cheek, hard and wet.

Jonathan laughed, then glanced at the cops again. They were getting slowly back into their car. It was miles back to the gate and then back here. He was enjoying just sitting here, ignoring them.

Then Jonathan remembered the letter in his pocket. He pulled it out, and the smile dropped from his face.

It wasn’t good news. Not at all.

“You think that’s freaky, check this out.” He tossed it to Dess.

She lifted it to her eyes as he pulled the car back onto the road, heading for the highway fast. They had to get back to school.

“What the hell…?” she murmured.

“It was in the mailbox at Darkling Manor. That must be the owner’s name, courtesy of Oklahoma Power and Light.”

“Oh, man, Jonathan,” Dess exclaimed. “With a name like that, they’ve got to be related.” She started to shake her head. “Jessica isn’t going to like this.”