Touching Darkness

"Gee, not since I checked three minutes ago." But she sighed, dutifully closing her eyes. They were pretty far from the center of town, out where Melissa's casting was clearest. The blasting mind noise of Bixby was miles behind them, and at this hour most of the population had already succumbed to sleep. The beings out in the desert that filled her mind with their alien tastes and ancient fears - the midnight things - hadn't awoken yet.



After a moment she shook her head. "Still no cops."



"Okay. Let's do it, then." He took a deep breath.



Slowly Melissa pulled off her right glove. Her pale hand was luminous in the darkness; there were no streetlights this far out, and the moon was only a glowing smear on the high, fish-scale clouds.



Rex laid his own right hand on the car seat, palm up. He saw it trembling but didn't bother to hold still. With Melissa it was pointless to pretend.



"Remember the first time?"



Rex swallowed. "Sure, Cowgirl."



It had all happened long ago, but he recalled their early experiences in the secret hour with a marvelous clarity. They had taken a long walk through the blue and empty streets of Bixby. Melissa was showing him how her talent worked, pointing at a house to say, "An old woman died slowly in there; I can still taste it." Or, "A child drowned in their swimming pool; they dream about it every night." Once she stopped to stare at a normal-looking house for a solid minute, Rex conjuring horrible images as he waited. But finally Melissa said, "They're happy in there. I think that's what it is, anyway."



At some point when he was eight years old, Rex had reached out - unknowingly and innocently to take her hand, that first and last time.



"I was real sorry about that, Cowgirl."



"I got over it. It's not your fault I'm like this."



"Yours either."



Melissa just smiled at him and reached out slowly, her hand trembling as much as his. In that moment Rex knew that she wanted this too. No mind reading required.



He didn't dare move, so he just closed his eyes.



Their fingers brushed, and it was fiercer, more intense than Rex remembered. He felt the wild hunger first, her animal need to consume his thoughts, and he almost pulled his hand back but fought to keep it still. Her mind came then, entering his in a bold, unstoppable surge of energy, rushing into corners and crannies and uprooting long-buried memories. The car spun around Rex, his hands clenching to take hold of anything real and solid, but his fingernails only sank into her flesh, making the contact stronger.



Melissa's own emotions followed the first onslaught, carried along like bitter backwash. Rex could sense her constant phobia of being touched, as well as her new misgivings about the sudden and overwhelming intimacy between them. Rex felt his throat tighten, his stomach lurching as he recognized her long-simmering fear of this moment, suddenly understanding how much greater her anxiety had been than his.



But still, she'd trusted him enough to reach out her hand...



Pieces of dark knowledge came through then: the way a darkling's mind tasted when it was very old, as bitter as a rusty nail held under a dry tongue; the chaos of Bixby High just before the late bell rang, almost loud enough to break her mind; the terror that with one touch, one of the clamoring minds that harassed her every daylight moment would invade and trespass on hers; and finally the sweet onset of the blue hour, a silence so glorious, it was as if everyone in the world had been exterminated, their petty thoughts all finally extinguished.



Then, suddenly, it was over.



He looked down at his hand, empty and slick with sweat. Melissa had somehow managed to pull away. Rex stared dumbly at his palm, watching four red half-moons appear, the marks of his own fingernails digging in after she had slipped out of his grasp.



But at least it was silent now. He was alone again inside his head.



He turned away from her to look out the window, feeling as bleak as the charcoal desert stretched out before him. Strange. Rex had expected to feel full once it was over. This was new information, like the wisdom of his books or the surety of lore, things that always made some part of him feel larger. This was something he'd wanted from her as long as he could remember. But somehow the knowledge of Melissa, of what it was like to be her, had emptied him.



"Maybe next time," she said.



He blinked at her. "What?"



"Maybe it'll be better next time." She tore her eyes from his and turned over the engine, the car springing to life beneath them.



Rex tried to offer reassurances and say something hopeful. Perhaps she would build up resistance. Or they would gain more control, sharing thoughts and ideas instead of raw sensations and blind fears. Maybe one day they could do more than touch for a few moments - maybe anything was possible. But Melissa shook her head at every thought that crossed Rex's mind, never taking her gaze from the road. This wasn't just her usual sensitivity, he realized. Melissa had been inside him every moment of the maelstrom and felt the desolation she had left in him.



There was nothing he could say that she didn't already know.



He watched the signs of midnight pass. It was better than thinking about what had happened between him and his oldest friend.



The midnight invasion had stopped, that much was for sure. When Jessica Day had first appeared in town, the marks had been everywhere, swaths of sharp Focus across the blur of Rex's vision, revealing where darklings and their foot soldiers had disturbed the daylight world. They had pushed farther into town every night, despite the clean metal and thirteen-pointed stars that protected Bixby, emboldened by their hatred of Jessica.



But now the marks were fading. Since she had discovered her talent, the darklings were powerless to attack Jessica directly. The town was softening again, losing the Focus. The darklings were in retreat.



Melissa made a turn. Rex frowned, unsure of where they were headed but unwilling to disturb the silence that had fallen between them since they'd touched. The plan had been to drive around Jessica's neighborhood and try to catch the thoughts of her human stalker. But they weren't headed into town. The desert was still in view, a black horizon stretching away toward Rustle's Bottom and the snake pit.



"Didn't you get my message?" Melissa said.



"What message?"



"About where we're going."



Rex chewed his lip. For a moment he wondered why he should bother to speak since she could evidently read every thought in his mind now. "Message? You know my father - "



"Not a telephone call. From my mind, moron." She turned to glare at him. "All you got was crap?"



"I wouldn't call it crap." The majesty of midnight's tastes, her profound loneliness, her long-tended hatred of humanity - none of it was crap. All of it was...



"Don't get all depressing on me, Rex. I tried to send you a message, that's all. I thought that was the way you wanted it to work. So quit feeling sorry for me and think for a second."



Rex took a deep breath, turned to stare out the window, and began to examine the mental fragments she had left inside him. He had to ignore what he'd learned, the awesome sadness of it. He had to forget for a moment that he had never managed to understand what his best friend....



"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 presented 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.