Rise of Midnight Read online

  The next time I woke up, it was a noise that brought me from the shallow pond of my sleep. Wide awake now, I couldn’t be sure whether I’d heard a sound or if I’d just dreamt it. I sat still and held my breath, straining my ears to listen.

  Normally, I would’ve figured it was one of my family members rustling around downstairs. My house was never quiet, not even this late on a Friday night. With my mom always running behind my noisy little brother, my siblings and me dueling it out, our dog barking at every noise and my dad clanging around while cleaning his knife collection, my house could sound like absolute chaos at times.

  But this night was different. We’d spent the evening down the street, helping my grandma clean her house. After making dinner, she offered for us to spend the night. I’d volunteered to go back home to study and watch over Bandit, our partially blind old Yorkie. Tonight, I was the only one in the house except for Bandit. He usually slept on my parents’ bed, but for tonight, he lay sound asleep on the plush rug under my window.

  There came another muffled noise from downstairs. This time, I was sure of it. Remembering I was home alone, I broke out in a sweat all over again.

  Call 911, I thought.

  As my palm swiped the surface of my nightstand, I shuddered. My phone wasn’t there. Instantly, I realized I’d left it downstairs after studying. I clenched my fist. I sat up slow and steady to avoid making any sound as I moved. I heard another muted disturbance. My eyes went to Bandit. He remained still, unstartled. I cautiously tugged myself from my tangled covers.

  My eyes scanned my room while I tried to think. To the left of my bed was my vanity where I spent many hours doing homework or talking on the phone. On my right was the front wall of the house with my one and only window. It faced the street but was hidden from view by a tall Eastern Redbud in the front yard. The thought of jumping from that second story window crossed my mind. But then, I remembered that it wasn’t even possible. My dad had been working to fix all the windows, which were painted shut years ago, but he didn’t get around to working on the ones in our rooms.

  I jerked on the windowpane anyway, but no matter how hard I tried, the window wouldn’t budge. As I peered out, I realized that my house wasn’t exactly built to accommodate a second story escape plan, anyway. I tiptoed to my older sister Jericho’s room just next door, then tenderly walked across the hall into my brother Jacoby’s room. Like mine, the windows in their rooms were still painted shut, and I ended up nearly spraining my wrist trying to wrench them open.

  I stood in Jacoby’s room feeling helpless. I thought to break a window but worried I wasn’t strong enough to shatter the double pane, which would, in turn, draw the attention of whoever was in the house. My only option was to leave from somewhere downstairs. But I needed something to protect myself.

  I went straight to Jacoby’s bed. He’d inherited my dad’s infatuation with pocketknives and kept an exceptionally large one hidden under his mattress. He never let me forget where it was “just in case”, he’d say, but I admit, I never thought I’d have to go looking for it.

  After reaching into the wedge between Jacoby’s mattress and bed frame, I wrenched the knife from its hiding place. The pocketknife’s case was a thick, smooth steel with a mainly onyx interface and an overlay of textured slate plastic down the middle. It was also larger and heavier than any other I’d ever held.

  I paused in the hallway with it in my hand and listened before sliding the seven-inch blade out of its metal sheath. It clicked at its full extension. A muffled noise floated up the steps. This brought with it an uneasiness that was hard to overcome. I kept telling myself that maybe my dad or brother had left my grandma’s late and came home for something in the house, but that thought still wouldn’t calm me.

  I heard whispers. I forced myself to ease down the first step of the carpeted staircase, all the while holding the knife tight and ready to swing. But I should have known to skip over that first one, the only one that creaked under pressure. The noise nearly shook me from the inside. I waited on the unruly step. The whispering I’d thought I heard stopped.

  My grip on the knife grew as I knelt and peered into the main room. The light from the moon and streetlamps pouring through the windows wasn’t enough to see everything, but from where I stood, the living room and kitchen appeared vacant. Except for the few expected shadows looming in the corners, the rest of the house appeared empty. But I couldn’t be sure.

  I gathered a false sense of bravery and slinked down the staircase in a crouching position. My hair stuck to my shoulders and lower back from the sweat soaking through my tank top. My heart was so loud in my ears I wondered if the neighbors could hear it.

  I made it to the bottom and stood. My trembling hand slid over the railing and mashed the light switch panel. Nearly every light downstairs flickered on. This confirmed that at least no one was in the living room. I peeked nervously over the two half-walls on my right that divided the living room from the kitchen and dining room. I focused in on the back of the house. There, the lights spilled through the sitting room and into the shallow hallway leading to my parents’ room.

  No movement anywhere. No one in sight. There was nowhere else for someone to hide. I finally knew I was alone now. A weight lifted off my chest. I let the knife rest at my side. I went to the kitchen feeling stupid for getting worked up over nothing but also grateful that it had been nothing. I snatched my cell phone off the table, killed the lights and started up the stairs.

  In my peripheral, one of the curtains on the front window move. I stopped in place and whirled around to face them. I found the smaller front window of my house cracked open, the wind lightly blowing the curtains. The window frame lock lay on the floor just below. I held my ground at first but forced myself toward it.

  The lacy curtains blew into me, and it made me shiver. I hesitated before closing the window when I noticed a darkened mass in the nook of my neighbor’s roof just across the street. I disregarded it until it seemed to move. Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw several more shadows move around the rooftops closest to me. They darted behind surrounding houses out of sight. My eyes tried following them all at once, but they were gone before I could tell what they were.

  But the shadow on the roof across the street remained. I leaned into the windowsill to get a better look. Within a few passing seconds, two tiny white beads appeared on the head of the figure, and they gleamed back eerily. My entire body went numb and tingly with another adrenaline release. When the feeling left my hands, I accidentally dropped the knife. In the time it took me to bend and grab it, the figure on the roof vanished.

  Convinced I was seeing things, I slipped my phone and the pocketknife into the band of my pants and shut the window. I picked the broken window lock off the ground and set it on the windowsill. The curtains overlapped one another as I drew them in. Inhaling deeply to settle my anxious stomach, I returned to the staircase. Before heading up, I gave everything one last check. I crawled back in bed, set my phone on my nightstand, hid the knife under my pillow and laid there wide awake and unable to calm myself.

  I don’t remember falling asleep. When my alarm ripped me from a deep slumber, my eyes felt swollen and burned. I frowned and swore heavy iron bars were strapped to my limbs as I moved under my warm covers. The sunlight made me squint. It peered through my blinds and sheer watermelon pink curtains as if to say a cheerful “good morning” to me. How I loathed leaving the comfort of my bed in the mornings…especially on a Saturday.

  While rolling over in bed, I turned off the alarm on my phone and read a text from my best friend Gemma.

  Hey, Autumn! Can't wait to see you at practice today! :)

  I yawned like a bear leaving hibernation. My arms hit the wooden headboard during my stretch. While I showered, I thought back on the night before—the dream, the scare I’d gotten from an imaginary intruder, the things I saw on my neighbors’ rooftops. It all felt like one big nightmare.

  As I got out of the shower,
I hung my baby blue and white, stiff to the point of being uncomfortable, cheerleading outfit on the door. A sigh rose in my chest at the sight of the white streak mixed in with the taupe and light-ash blonde of my hair. Frustrated, I took the half-empty hair dye box off the sink, threw it in the trash and turned on the blow-dryer.

  I’d had that streak ever since birth. The taunting that came with it subsided some as I got older but still somehow followed me around like a lurking shadow wherever I went. The streak grew right at the front of my head and ran its course through the wavy hair that fell over the right side of my face…or whichever way I parted my hair. I couldn’t seem to get rid of the stupid thing. I even tried dying it the night before. The color stayed in when I washed it in the sink but had washed right out during my shower this time.

  I relived the dream, the noises, and the strange things on my neighbors’ roofs as I dabbed on a little eye makeup. But something made me stop. I stared closely at my reflection. My left eye was its normal smoky green, but something was weird about my right eye—it strangely looked like a hazy blue color. The change wasn’t obvious unless I leaned in nearly face to face with my reflection, but to me, the color difference was hard to overlook. My jaw dropped as I remembered the burning sensation I’d felt in that eye after my weird dream just hours earlier. Baffled, I grabbed my gym bag and headed downstairs.

  “Honey, I don’t see it,” Mom replied when I tried to show her my eye.

  She took her car keys off the kitchen counter. My dad, sister and brothers were still sleeping in at grandma’s house. Mom had come home early. Her champagne blonde hair whipped about as she briskly walked by.

  She was always in a rush. After four kids, my mom was the no-nonsense type but still thoughtful and caring—except when she was in a hurry.

  “You’re not looking close enough, Mom,” I persisted while rummaging through my gym bag to be sure I’d thrown in a change of clothes.

  “Autumn, peoples’ eyes don’t just change color overnight. They look the same to me,” she said as she hurried to the garage.

  “Mom, I swear. This one turned blue!” I insisted and pointed at my right eye. “Just look!”

  “Baby, I’m going to be late for lunch with Staci. And you’re going to be late for practice.”

  I sighed at her response as she started to leave.

  “Autumn, if you’re that worried about it, make yourself a doctor’s appointment. Okay?” she urged.

  “Not unless I’m dying,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, Autumn. Don’t be so dramatic. Also, will you take your schoolbooks off the kitchen table before your dad gets back? You know how much he hates clutter.”

  Upset she wouldn’t take me seriously, I snatched my French textbooks off the table without a word. I’d left them out the night before to study for my upcoming AP French test. I knew the test would be easy, but I’d tried skimming through a few pages just to brush up.

  French came to me naturally. When I started foreign language classes in middle school, my teachers said I picked up on French freakishly fast. Jacoby had even brought home a college-level textbook for me to study from. To me, it was irrelevant. I didn’t think I’d ever use French outside of school, and I wished it was math that I could pick up on so easily.

  “Bandit’s been acting weird,” I muttered as he whimpered and ran from me for the third time that morning. “Oh, I meant to tell you. Someone left the front window halfway opened yesterday. The lock was broken. I found it on the floor last night.”

  “Really?” Mom asked, alarmed. “That’s weird. It’s old though, must have popped off when your dad was working on the windows yesterday. He probably left it open by accident. I’ll take care of it after lunch.”

  “Speaking of that, do you know when Dad is supposed to fix the windows in our rooms next? We’d be screwed if there was a fire or if someone broke into the house in the middle of the night. I mean, who paints a window shut, anyway?”

  “He promised to work on them after he and everyone else got home from grandma’s today, but you know how he is,” Mom groaned. “I have to go, baby.”

  “Okay, see you later,” I said and gathered my things to leave. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Have fun at practice!” she called over her shoulder.

  On my way out, I texted Gemma to let her know I was leaving. I hopped in my old two-door Acura and maneuvered around Jacoby’s Camaro parked in the driveway. I eyed my older brother’s car enviously as I backed out of the garage. How I wished he’d let me borrow it on the weekends! Soon, the weather would be warm enough to use that sunroof of his.

  I sped to the high school where I met with the rest of the cheer squad. Before joining everyone in the middle of the gym floor, I raked my long, side-swept bangs over the right side of my face to conceal my newly blue eye. I spotted Gemma’s lightly freckled, fresh face in the group of girls. I passed the guys—we jokingly called them the “yell-leaders”—who stretched beside the bleachers. Practice was long and grueling as usual, but it always pumped me up. It made me feel alive. If it weren’t for cheerleading, I would’ve never gotten off my lazy butt.

  “Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” Coach Lacey announced in her vibrant southern accent when practice was over. “We need to keep practicin’ for the pep rally and basketball game on the 17th.” She went on about how important it was to be on time for practice next week and on and on. Finally, she said, “Okay, I’ll see y'all next week!”

  Gemma approached me, her chic inverted bob dancing about as she walked. I smiled at her and took my gym bag from the bench, slinging it over my shoulder.

  “Well, I heard you and Devron are going on your first official date tonight,” she said when we left the locker room but sounded less than enthused. “That’s exciting.”

  “He’s picking me up at 7:30. I can’t wait,” I replied and grinned eagerly, despite worrying about her flat tone.

  “Are you sure about that guy?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

  I frowned. I wanted her to be excited for me. Devron was a senior, a guy I’d secretly had a little crush on for a while. Well, it wasn’t so much a secret anymore. I was far more excited than I led Gemma to believe, but I didn’t want anyone to know how embarrassingly infatuated I was with him. He sat beside me in my Algebra II class. He wasn’t overly tall, but he made up for it in good looks. We never talked, so I didn’t know much about him until this week when he unexpectedly leaned over his desk and asked me to hang out with him sometime.

  “Yeah, he seems like a nice guy,” I said and tried to laugh as genuinely as possible, but her question had me on edge. "We've only been talking for about a week, though."

  “Okay. Give it some time,” she advised and drew the words out. “Let me know how your date goes. Oh! Some of the girls want to eat at that cute little café on the Riverwalk again for lunch. Wanna go with us?”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. Lunch on the Riverwalk turned into an all-day event. After a movie and a little shopping, we decided on dinner at a place downtown called The Red Emerald. It wasn’t much to look at, and they never checked IDs there. But we didn’t go for the drinks. It was the steak that melted in our mouths, the steak that tasted like each and every slice had been individually seasoned that kept us coming back. I can safely bet they made the best steak in the entire Chicago area.

  During the meal, I reminded myself to keep my eyes low, to avoid eye contact with my friends as I‘d done earlier in the day, afraid one of them might ask about my right eye. This led me to think back on last night’s dream again and the things on the roofs across the street. I’d been so busy that day I’d forgotten about them. I stared blankly at my plate as I thought. I tried to remember what the voice of the woman in the dream had said. It took me a long minute before I could remember exactly, but then it came to me. My eyes widened as I translated it in my head.

  The voice in my dream had said the words “c’est ton temps". It was French for “it's your time”.

&nb
sp; “Autumn, what’s up with you?” Gemma asked as she held back a laugh from across the table.

  “Nothing,” I replied, snapping out of it and looking up from my plate. “I’m just really full.”

  She laughed as one of the other girls continued telling the group about her run-in with her crush at school Friday. The waiter brought us our checks and left. I set out some cash and glanced about, my mind still wandering.

  I felt someone staring at me from across the restaurant. Looking up, my eyes met those of an unfamiliar tan face. He sat alone in a booth at the back wall, his eyes wide and locked in my direction. At first, I wasn’t sure who he was staring at so strangely, and my eyes skimmed around trying to figure it out. When I got the feeling it was me, I looked back to where he was sitting. He wasn’t there anymore. Curious, I let my eyes roam the restaurant for him as my friends started talking about prom.

  I found him again, this time walking out the front door while adjusting his coat. He peered over his shoulder at me, and something about his eyes changed. They seemed to shine or refract the light from the bar but in a way that made me feel as though I were coming out of my skin. His eyes, they just didn’t look normal. I sprang out of my seat as he left the restaurant.

  “Autumn, are you sure you’re alright?” Gemma asked as I stood up over the table, an uneasiness filling my stomach.

  “Can we go now?” I asked while gathering my things. “I feel like I’m starting to lose my mind.”

  “Um, okay,” one of the other girls said and waved the waiter over.

  “What’s wrong?” Gemma asked as everyone reached for their purses.

  I lightly shook my head at her without looking in her direction. “I…I’m…seeing things. Apparently,” I stumbled my way around the sentence. Feeling crazy after the way she stared at me, I added, “Nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”