Scott Westerfeld: Touching Darkness

“But what’s it… What’s he doing down there?”

They rose together and stepped from the edge of the roof into a slow, graceful descent.

From the ground she could see the ghostly pallor of the man’s skin, the unrealness of his frozen stance. He was young and handsome, but daylight people always looked ungainly here in the blue time, like the inexplicably dorky poses Jessica always managed to strike in photographs. His jeweled watch was frozen at midnight exactly.

The object in his hands was a camera, its lens jutting through the bushes like a long, black snout.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

The camera was pointed at her house. At her window.

“Jonathan…”

“Yeah, I see.”

“He’s some kind of stalker!”

Jonathan’s voice grew soft. “Who just happens to be here at midnight? Watching your house?”

“He can’t possibly know anything. He’s a stiff.”

“I guess.” He took a tentative step closer to the man, snapping his fingers in front of his face. No response.

“What do we do, Jonathan?”

He bit his lip. “I guess we go see Rex tomorrow and ask him what this means.” He turned back to her. “For right now, you have to go back in.”

“What?” She looked at her window. She’d left it open, protected only by a gauzy curtain. “I don’t want to go back in there with him… watching.”

“You have to, Jess. Midnight’s over soon. You don’t want to get caught out here. You’d be grounded forever.”

“I know, but…” She looked at the man. There were worse things than being grounded.

“I’ll stay right here,” Jonathan said. “I’ll hide and wait until midnight ends and make sure he doesn’t do anything.”

Jessica’s feet were rooted to the spot, normal gravity heavy on her.

“Go on, Jess. I’ll be watching him.”

There was no use arguing. The midnight moon was setting, and she didn’t want to sneak back in the window during normal time. Once the man unfroze, she was probably safer inside than out. She touched Jonathan’s arm. “Okay. But be careful.”

“Everything’s going to be fine, I promise. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.” He kissed her hard and long this time, giving her one last taste of featherlightness. Then Jessica crossed the street and crawled in through her window.

The obsessively neat room seemed cold now, unwelcoming in the blue light. Jess ran her fingers along the bottom of the windowsill, feeling the thirteen thumbtacks. In a few minutes they would be useless. Number magic couldn’t protect her from the man outside. Soon even Demonstration would be just a flashlight.

She shut the sash and locked it, then moved around the room, securing the other windows.

A glance at her watch confirmed that she didn’t have time to check the locks in the whole house, not without waking up her parents or Beth. But she had to do something. She went to the neatly organized drawer of scissors, tape, and computer disks, found a rubber stop, and wedged it beneath her bedroom door. At least if anyone tried to come into her room, they’d make a lot of noise.

Still, Jessica knew she wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.

Sitting on the floor, her back against the door, she waited, clutching Demonstration in her hands. It might not do its flamethrower thing in normal time, but with its heavy steel shaft, it was better than nothing.

Jessica closed her eyes, waiting for the safety of the blue time to end.

The jolt came again—softer, as always when the suspended moment of midnight finished. The floor trembled beneath her, the world shuddering as it started up again.

A noise reached her ears and her eyes jerked open, her knuckles white against the flashlight. Color had flooded back into the room. There were hard shadows and bright, sharp details everywhere. Jessica squinted through the suddenly harsh light, eyes darting from window to window.

Then she saw what had made the noise and let out a sigh of relief. The quarter sat on her floor where it had finally fallen, bright against the dark wood.

Jessica crawled over and peered down at it.

“Tails,” she muttered.

Normal time came down on Jonathan like a lead blanket.

He lay flat on the roof, just above the man with the camera. Jonathan’s arms and legs were spread to gather more of the shingles’ friction, but as gravity returned, he slid for a dizzying second down the tilt of the roof. A scraping noise escaped from under him, and he cursed silently.

Then Jonathan heard the whir of the camera below, a string of insistent whispers that jumped to life as normal time began. The man had been taking multiple exposures, across the exact moment of midnight. That was bad news. But at least the camera’s whine had drowned out the sound of his slide.

Jonathan lifted his head painfully. It was hard even to breathe, squashed onto the cold expanse of slate by the suddenly crushing gravity. Below, the man lowered his camera and checked the time on his expensive watch, which glittered in the moonlight. He started to break down the long telephoto lens.

A shiver passed through Jonathan. The slate roof was cold now that midnight had fled, and the chill Oklahoma wind went straight through him. He’d expected to be home before the blue hour ended, so he hadn’t even brought a jacket.

Damn, he thought, imagining the long walk home. Moving silently, he drew his limbs closer to his body and blew into his hands.

Below, the man had gotten his camera into its case. Drawing his coat tighter, he crossed the backyard of the house in a low crouch and gracefully pulled himself over the wooden fence. The sound of footsteps faded down the alley.

Jonathan edged himself to the gutter and looked down, wishing he hadn’t picked the roof as his hiding place. A minute ago it had seemed the natural thing to do—natural when you could fly, anyway.

But here in Flatand, it was a nasty drop.

He lowered himself down, his fingertips clinging to the gutter, which creaked loudly. Then he fell like a sack of potatoes to the ground.

“Ow!” A sharp pain shot through his right ankle, but Jonathan bit the sound off, hoping it had been covered by the moan of the wind through the trees. The agony squeezed its way into his eyes, hot tears forcing their way out. He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. The man had already gotten too far ahead.

Jonathan limped across the lawn and pulled himself up the fence to peer over. He could see a figure at the end of the alley, walking away fast in the cold. Jonathan hauled himself over, his muscles straining. It always took a while to adjust to normal gravity, mentally as well as physically. Midnight only lasted for an hour every day, but it was the only time Jonathan felt complete. For the other twenty-four hours he was trapped in Flatland, stuck to the ground like an insect in honey.

Dropping onto the hard-packed dirt on the other side of the fence sent another lash of pain through his ankle. He bit his lip again to keep silent, crouching in the shadows by the fence until the man turned a corner up ahead.

Jonathan limped after him.

A few moments later the sound of a car starting rumbled down the alley. Jonathan scuttled into a back driveway, barely escaping the headlights. In his mind he saw an easy jump that would put him just over the roof above and out of sight, but in Flatland it was all Jonathan could do to scramble into the shadows behind a parked pickup truck.

The car passed slowly in the unpaved alley, grumbling over loose rocks and gravel. Its headlights were blinding. Jonathan’s eyes hadn’t adjusted from the blue hour any more than the rest of him had. He tasted blood in his mouth, where a throb of pain beat in time with his frantic heartbeat. Great. At some point he’d opened up his lip.