Last time, some plot hooks and exposition. Now, more exposition.
4
9:45 A.M.
CORIOLIS FORCE
Anyone else gets the feeling the author was skimming through physics textbook when he was writing chapter titles?
In any case, that’s another short chapter consisting of a scene of Jessica eating breakfast. We learn that her mother works hard, being busy even on Sundays due to volunteering for a committee work to secure her job. Her father, who suddenly gets a name (Donald), isn’t very happy with her never being home. He also still doesn’t have a job and spends his time watching weather channel. Beth remains friendless and bratty.
The name of the chapter comes from Jessica bringing up her seeing a dust devil (though she omits the details of seeing it during the dark hour and just says she’s seen it on a way from school) and her father explaining Coriolis force effect (basically, Earth rotating causes air to move relative to Earth’s surface) and says that over flat surfaces like Oklahoma wind tend to be stronger since there isn’t anything to break it.
That was random, so I sense a foreshadowing.
“Maybe that was why wind didn’t blow in the secret hour: the earth had stopped spinning beneath Bixby.”
No, Jessica. There is no wind during the secret hour because air is frozen or otherwise altered. Jonathan has explained that already with coins: if Earth were to suddenly stand still, air would continue to move, now with a force greater than ever before. You, too, would retain your momentum.
Besides, there are other factors contributing to air flows, like areas with different temperature. You always get a breeze near large bodies of water like seas because the temperature of ground and water tend to be different due to them warming up at different speeds, which affects the air above, causing hot air to move towards lower temperature.
Basically, it’s clear that the secret hour fucks with the laws of physics on many levels, so to understand it you need more than a cursory knowledge of science.
Anyway, Jonathan calls, going by Hank since Jessica’s family doesn’t like him. He arranged a meeting with Rex to talk about the stalker. He and Jessica are going to go to him together. Jessica is surprised that Jonathan would willingly meet with Rex Greene (today is the naming day, it seems), and Jonathan ominously comments that she wouldn’t want to go to Rex’s house alone.
5
10:51 A.M.
ICE-CREAM SOCIAL
I see physics textbook ran out of good chapter names. Unless it was scribbled in a margin or something.
Jessica arrives to Rex’s house and meets Jonathan waiting for her there. On the way inside they are greeted by Rex’s father. He’s pretty out of it and rambles about his “babies” being gone and asks Jessica and Jonathan to help him look for them. Rex comes outside and gets father inside, promising that his babies will be found. Jessica asks what he’s talking about, and Rex explains it’s about spiders his father keeps as pets in an aquarium.
“Even with all the windows open, the house had a smell. More than one, in fact. There was old-person smell, like the rest home outside Chicago where Jessica’s grandmother was quietly growing senile. And there was also the distinctive scent of spent cigarettes marinating in water-filled ashtrays. ‘It’s a safety thing,’ Rex said when she raised her eyebrows at a bowl of soggy, disintegrating stogies. ‘Dad isn’t very good at putting his butts out. The water helps.’”
So, yeah, not exactly a nice place to live.
They go into Rex’s room, which is nicer than the rest of the house and filled with books and photocopies of various papers. Jonathan tells Rex about the man. Rex appears momentarily spooked, but then hides behind his knowledge of lore and says it’s not unprecedented for normal people to know about the secret hour. Apparently, decades ago nearly everyone in Bixby knew about it. They didn’t talk about it openly, but there are plenty of signs in old papers if you know what to look for.
‘Every small town has its secrets, things that outsiders don’t need to know. A long time ago Bixby was a much smaller town, with much bigger secrets than most.’
Yeah, I’m not sure this really works. Sounds like something way too big to keep it to yourself. I mean, it’s one thing for a bunch of lonely teenagers to keep such a secret, but to think a whole town would protect it and never invite scientists or someone, well, I don’t really buy it.
During the exposition, chapter title comes up when Rex pulls out an old newspaper clip to demonstrate townsfolk’s knowledge of the secret hour:
I’m not sure what a small town league would be able to do against Lasombra, but it is amusing if nothing else. Kinda a waste of a title, though, since I doubt they would appear again.
Either way, the situation didn’t last. At some point the town population exploded due to more work being available and people coming in. Apparently, they “wouldn’t understand,” so natives of Bixby kept quite about their secrets.
“Of course, even if someone leaked the secret, it seemed unlikely the newcomers would believe them, except for the few born at the stroke of midnight who could see it with their own eyes.”
Yeah, no. The secret hous is easy to prove: just gather people right before midnight and ask them to give you stuff to do that you can accomplish in an hour and that would have visible results. Writing stuff on some paper, moving objects provided to you by those people, moving around yourself, moving other people, etc, etc. From an outside perspective, everything would change in an instant, and something like that would be rather hard to deny.
Though there is a second part to the story which may explain the first: all Midnighters suddenly disappeared in 1956. There is no lore after that, no new marks that Rex can see, nothing. Whatever happened, happened very fast and left no traces of Midnighters. Hence why Rex, Melissa and Dess were alone all that time.
Well, it’s nice to see this point being addressed. I brought up before the question of who has left the lore Rex is so fond of, and what happened to them. While the answer is not without its flaws, especially concerning the lack of more conventional information records (seriously, couldn’t anyone just write openly about the secret hour instead of hiding it between the lines?), but it’s a development in an interesting direction.
After all that exposition the conversation gets back to Jessica’s stalker. Jessica speculates if maybe he could be from the old time, just now returning to town, but the man was too young for that. The obvious answer here is that his parents are from the old times, but it’s kinda shot down by Rex who says Melissa used to scan people to find out if they knew the truth and didn’t find anyone over the years.
Rex promises to patrol around Jessica’s home with Melissa close to midnight in case the man would show up again and advices her to be careful.
‘Very careful. That’s what history seems to recommend. When the old midnighters vanished, it happened all at once, so quickly that nothing was recorded in the lore. Something got rid of them in one fell swoop.’
‘Like darklings, right?’ Jess felt the reassuring weight of Demonstration in her pocket.
Rex shrugged. ‘Maybe it was darklings … or maybe it happened in broad daylight.’
Subtle this book isn’t, but, well, it is an obvious guess.
6
11:02 P.M.
TOUCH
The music is more appropriate than you’d think. Here is the beginning of the chapter, unedited:
’Are you sure you’re ready for this?’
Melissa stared at him across the front seat of the old Ford, a wry look on her face. ‘Well, it is an awfully big step.’
Rex felt himself flush. After eight years he was used to the idea that Melissa could sense his emotions and read him better than anybody had a right to, but none of that made it any easier when she used her power to embarrass him.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘I only want to do this if you think you’re ready’
‘I thought that you . . .’
Oh course, in truth they talk about Rex touching Melissa to establish a telepathic link. Apparently, while with normal people touch makes their thoughts more intrusive to Melissa, with Midnighters the connection goes both ways, so she can transfer her thoughts and emotions into Rex’s mind.
By the way, they are aware of the innuendo and intentionally joke about it as a way around nervousness:
‘Yeah, it was my idea. But maybe we’re rushing things. I’d hate to ruin a beautiful friendship.’
At those words Rex felt a clenched laugh escape him. He looked up from her hands and saw that her smile had softened. His anger faded, taking with it the anxiety that had gradually built all day.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll still respect you in the morning.’
Honestly, I’m not sure why they decided to do it now, when they patrol around Jessica’s house in Melissa’s car in search for that stalker. But either way, they do it. The sensation is rather unpleasant:
“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.”
They are silent for some time, Rex digesting what he’s seen and Melissa starting to drive. Rex notices that they aren’t driving around Jessica’s house anymore, heading somewhere else, and Melissa asks him if he’s received her message. Apparently, she left a thought inside his mind.
Rex concentrates, and, indeed, a stray thought reveals itself to him:
‘We must have Jessica Day,’
Which you may recognize from the epilogue of the previous book.
Rex quickly puts two and two together and realizes that Melissa heard that thought in normal time, from a human, and knew someone was after Jessica for a week now. Melissa doesn’t deny any of it. Rex asks her why she didn’t say anything.
‘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?’
Because Jessica changes the dynamic of the secret hour, which, based on Dess’ isolation, you perceive as a threat to a few good things you have in your life, so you wouldn’t mind something happening to her?
We’ll have to wait until next time to find out. For now, the chapter ends.
During the exposition, chapter title comes up when Rex pulls out an old newspaper clip to demonstrate townsfolk’s knowledge of the secret hour:
The following section is all whited out for some reason. I have to highlight it to read the text.
We’ll have to way until next time to find out.
Should be “wait”, I think. /nitpick
The book was going after “anti-darkness” meaning with the announcement, so the effect is not surprising.
Everything should be fixed now.