Beyond the Desired

Old Lida, it was called, the strange thing. At the hours of six A.M., noon, six P.M., and midnight, it would ring out in its stuttering, gasping, two-tone sound. Cast hundreds of years ago – some say as far back as the fourteenth century, later brought to America – It had been on top of the Baptist Church on Montgomery Road for as long as Green Valley had been a town. The first ring was as many bells were: clear, distinct, high. The second, though, was lower and heavy. It remains the only church bell that is able to ring two sounds just on its own in the world; nobody is sure how it happens. Its many detractors say that is the only reason it is kept ringing, waking people in the night. There is the odd death-knell, or a fire spotted, but for the most part Lida swings away four times a day, sounding ding-dong . . . ding-dong at the appointed time.

     Margaret Agost, called Grr by her friends, grimaced in the bell's direction as it rang the midnight, the scowl that was always on her face pointed away from the others in the room. The clock on the motel's bed stand ticked under the peals of the bell.
     "I'm going home," she told the other two people in the room.
     "Why? It's Friday," Reggie said. He tapped ash off the end of his cigarette.
     "I'm tired," Grr answered.
     "Just sleep here," Tommy said. He patted on one of the dusty single beds that were in the room. "We have it for the night." He took a drink from a can of Pabst and winked.
     "I'm going home," the girl said. She slid the chain lock off its berth and stepped into the warm night air of the American southwest. Lida's rings faded away into the starry sky. Grr closed the door behind her, leaving her two friends on their own. She dropped her own cigarette on the dirty asphalt and ground it out with her shoe.
     She turned up the street and headed for her home. She tried to get the smell of tar and nicotine out of her mouth before getting back; if her father was awake he would beat her. No smoking until sixteen! He had yelled the first – and only – time he had caught her. If he knew she was drinking it would be even worse, but she didn't drink much.
     Tommy and Reggie were just a year older than her and able to get these things. She figured once she was in high school, one year later, she would be able to get those things, but for now they were her source. They always tried to get her to stay, but they never could. She knew that Tommy wanted to have sex with her; it was obvious. She wondered if he knew how. She didn't.
     She was tired, but that wasn't why she had left them sitting in the Motor Motel, the seedy place that would rent a room to anyone with thirty-two dollars. The real reason was lately Old Lida had been sounding different. It made her feel like she was doing something wrong.
     Which she was at that hour of the day, – smoking and drinking and contemplating sex with Tommy. But it was all the time, even during the cold hours of the morning, and the ring at noon that Grr could only hear over the din of the school lunchroom if she concentrated.
     It made her feel unsafe . . . vulnerable. Even warm New Mexico felt cold when she sang in her cracked voice. Once she'd remembered the sound just as she was taking a test and had nearly burst into tears. Once ushered to the nurse's office she'd professed test anxiety.
     To get home she had to walk past the Baptist church that held Old Lida. It was not expansive; not many things in Green Valley were. It was a small town with small people and small values. Grr craned her neck back and looked up the height of the bell tower. Short black hair covered her shoulders. She could just see the lip of Old Lida, now still and silent.
     Just a stupid bell, she told herself, but in the warm darkness the lie she told herself dribbled down her spine and made her pick up her pace until she nearly ran home.
     Her father was asleep on the couch; the TV buzzed, projecting a late-night show. Her mother was gone, working a shift. She went by her father without fear and climbed into her bed. Her two sisters, both older and both intended, slept upstairs, but the basement was hers. She pulled the covers over her head and tried to fall asleep. She heard Old Lida's ding-dong as she fell asleep. The dark and her tired mind made it real.

The ticking clock next to her woke her up. It always did. The metallic clink of gears inside and the hand that spun around the face held her attention until she threw the covers off. Her sisters were already awake and eating breakfast, and Grr dallied getting dressed. Spending time with her sisters was not an item high on her list of activities.
     Finally she padded to the dirty kitchen and stared at the boxes of cereal. She picked one out and poured a bowl as her sisters talked.
     "Jeremy's going to be coming home next weekend," Ginger, the older of the two and nearly out of high school, said. "He might bring home that girl that he's been seeing. Mom wants to make sure she isn't some skank and honestly I don't trust Jeremy to realize when a girl's going behind his back."
     The middle daughter Bernice, called Bernie, laughed. "She could probably bang three dudes in a room he's in and he wouldn't notice anything." Both of Grr's sisters noticed her, and Bernie cleared her throat. "Didn't hear you come in last night Marge. What were you up to?"
     "We went to the drive in," Grr said. "They had a double feature."
     Ginger leaned over and stuck her mouth next to Bernie's ear, whispering. Bernie stuck out her tongue and laughed. "What movies did you see?" She asked Margaret.
     "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman and something that had a robot in it but I fell asleep for it. They were both super old and bad." Luckily, she did go to the drive-in enough to know what kind of movies they showed. On the table near where she sat was a newspaper. She pulled it next to her.
     "Most old movies are. Just a bunch of crappy actors in rubber suits," Ginger said. She took up a packet of cigarettes and stepped out the door to the porch to smoke.
     The door closed and Grr watched the remaining sister, just older than sixteen, turn and look at her. She knew what was coming.
     "Did he fuck you yet?" She asked. "Did that little fag finally tie you up and stick all three inches into you?" The words were accompanied by a smile that Grr had learned never contained anything good. "Is your cherry finally popped?"
     "Fuck off, bitch," Grr said. The curse words were unfamiliar and sour in her mouth, but it was the only response. She left the table and walked to her parents' room. She went in without knocking. Her mother was asleep on the bed and her father was gone, working. They always worked.
     That was her fault. After one son and two daughters – the perfect family for both of them – they had given up child rearing. But then came the knowledge of Margaret. At first they were going to abort, but found out that to abort would be dangerous to her mother, and so she was brought to term.
     She was the fourth child of three, younger than the youngest and barely remembered during the best days. On the worst days she could expect a lecture or a beating, or both.
     The family didn't have a lot of money to begin with, and now with more children than they both expected, working was a constant event. Jeremy, the oldest child and the single son, worked to put himself through the sham he called a college and get some sort of degree. Grr's mother worked at a dry cleaning service, steaming and pressing all sorts of clothes. Her father was a foreman at the steel mill miles out of town, and worked every day, something that he never failed to remind Grr.
     "Mom," Margaret said. Her mother had her face buried in the pillow. straggling, pale hair covered her head. There was no movement. "Mom."
     "What?" The voice was filtered by the pillow. "What time is it?"
     Margaret looked at the clock on the bedside table. "Ten thirty."
     Pamela Agost lifted her head up and looked around with sleep still in her eyes. She focused on her daughter and sat up. "What do you want this early?"
     "I want to go to this." Margaret handed the newspaper to her mother, who took it and fit a pair of glasses on her face. She squinted.
     "A protest against the bell? Why the hell do you want to go to this?"
     "I don't like it."
     "It's just a bell."
     "It sounds weird. It makes me sick. It makes me cold."
     "Fine," Pamela sighed. "I don't care. Be back for dinner or I'll have your hide. You have any homework?"
     "No," Grr lied.
     "You'd better not be lying," her mother said, taking her glasses off and putting her feet back on the bed.
     "I'm not." Margaret had leaned quickly how to lie. In a life like hers it was either lie or lose. She went back to the kitchen. Ginger had come back in and brought the smell of cigarette with her. She was talking on her cell phone. Bernie was gone from the table to who knew where. Grr didn't care.
     The protest was at noon, set to start when Old Lida rang. Grr thought that was a stupid idea but guessed that there was some complicated adult reason for doing it. She sat on the couch and watched TV until the cartoons were shut off in favor of car commercials and paid advertising of dishes or gardening tools guaranteed to make life easier. It was eleven thirty.
     The house was empty now. She ate a small lunch and went to the parking lot of the church. In the hot shine of the sun the bell was again just that, a bell. No herald of doom, no bringer of darkness, no death-device. She still didn't like it.
     A crowd of people surrounded a plastic table covered in shirts and paper. A few dozen people had already arrived and eventually Grr got to the front of the line. The woman on the other side handed her a shirt far too large and told her to sign her name on the piece of paper, which turned out to be a petition to have the bell scrapped. Grr eagerly scrawled her barely-legible name on a line and sat on a curb in the shade to wait for the start of the protest. More people arrived as it closer to noon. The sun hovered over them, hot even in the spring.
     Grr looked down at the shirt. It was a light green with a white square in the center. In the square was a silhouette of a bell with a jagged lightning bolt crack down the center, and the words "No More Bell!" She pulled the shirt over the one she was wearing and straightened it out, waiting for the chime that would start the very protesters trying to get rid of it. Grr looked around. She didn't know if there were enough people, and tried to think of something that would draw more. Her brain wouldn't cooperate.
     It happened. The bell began to sway. People called out, pointing and shouting. Grr looked up at it just as the first note sounded. She closed her eyes when the second one came, deeper and throbbing. The bell went on, again and again, telling them that it was noon. It seemed to dare them to protest. Grr clamped her hands over her ears and opened her eyes. She felt the crashes of the bell and watched it shudder as it swung. Even with her ears blocked the rings were loud and crashing, making her insides twist. Finally the bell slowed, coming to hang forlorn and quiet once more.
     "Okay!" Someone with a megaphone called. "Everyone please put your shirts on and stand in a circle in front of the church! If you didn't bring your own sign you can take one here if you want!" Grr went to the pile of extra signs and picked out one that said "When Something Is Broken We Fix It." She went to stand between a man and a woman, two people that she didn't recognize. Her shirt hung around her knees like a dress. The sun made her sweat.
     "Okay everyone, we'll start marching clockwise. We agreed on 'Bring It Down' as the saying," the person holding the megaphone said. Grr couldn't see who it was, but it sounded like a woman. "Here we go!"
     They began to march, bobbing their signs up and down, chanting 'Bring It Down, Bring It Down." Every time Grr got to a certain point in the circle, she would glance up at the bell's mostly hidden curve.
     More people arrived and joined the march, expanding their circle. It threatened to spill into the street. Policemen arrived and stood by, wiping sweat from their foreheads, watching for anything that could net them an arrest from any of the present groups. On-lookers appeared and watched for minutes at a time, thinking something more exciting would happen. Nothing did.
     Grr got bored. She lost count of the revolutions she had made. Her arms tired and her sign's bobbing slowed. She felt the tick of her internal clock.
     Eventually she noticed the table that had borne the shirts and papers cleared of and stacked with energy bars and bottles of water. She looked longingly in their direction as she marched.
     It was one in the afternoon before they were given a break from the march. Grr ran to the table and snatched a bottle of water, chugging it down quickly. She pushed past the pain of her protesting stomach and took a protein bar from one of the people that had set up the table. It had bits of chocolate and little nuts; Grr picked the nuts out and threw them to the parking lot asphalt. The sun's heat baked, and everywhere was too hot. She felt drenched in sweat.
     The march ceased for all of ten minutes, and then they gathered back in a circle and chanted once more. This continued, and Grr began to wish that she hadn't come. She didn't know how much effect her presence would have on the bell put she guessed it wouldn't be very much.
     Another half of an hour passed and Grr made the decision to go home. Before she could, though, the front door of the church opened and the church's head pastor stepped out, Brent Johnson, a man with receding blond hair. Grr had seen him hundreds of times, but for some reason she expected him to be wearing a black coat and a white collar. Instead he wore blue jeans and a shirt advertising a fun run ten years too late. The crowd stopped marching its circle and looked at him. The woman raised her megaphone.
     "We want you to take Old Lida down!" A straggled cheer picked up some strength as it went through the crowd. Grr cheered.
     "But it's just a bell!" The pastor said. "it's been here for over a hundred years!"
     "And it shows!" The woman with the megaphone blared, overpowering the poor pastor. "It's a broken old thing that should be removed! It doesn't even sound like a proper bell!"
     "It's got character!" The pastor shouted.
     "So would a new bell, one that doesn't sound like it's bi-polar!" Sparse laughter came from the crowd. "We want it taken down!"
     A cheer rose again and Grr cheered with them. She did want it taken down.
     "What if we only rang it for noon?" The pastor said. "Noon and weddings and funerals?"
     "No!" The woman shouted. The megaphone squealed. Everyone to a man covered their ears and winced. "It has to go!" The woman took a stack of papers from the man next to her. "This is a petition signed by everyone here who want the bell referred to as Old Lida rung no more and removed from the church. There are . . . " The woman took a quick estimate. "Over two-hundred names listed here, all of them of voting age and willing to repeat the act."
     Grr frowned – or, really, her scowl deepened – because she wasn't of voting age. Not for more than four more years. Grr looked around. She was the youngest person in the crowd, that seemed obvious, but there were others that didn't look eighteen there, too. Nobody else looked worried about this fact. The pastor responded.
     "All this trouble, just for a bell?" He paused. "The Elders and I will take what you've said into consideration. But we like the bell!" He turned to go back in, then stopped. "I guess don't expect us to do what you want as quick as that." He snapped his fingers and disappeared. Grr decided she'd had enough, and walked away, dumping her sign on the ground as she left. A few people glared at her, and she glared right back, employing a face that was destined for glares like some are destined for beauty. She walked home, kicking stones from the side of the road until she got back to her house. She didn't think that her dad would be back yet, so she entered the house noisily. Bernie sat at the kitchen table with a book open in front of her.
     "Where’d you go?" Bernie asked when Grr rounded the corner.
     "To protest the bell," Grr answered.
     "Is that where you got that huge shirt, too?"
     Grr looked down. She still wore the light green shirt. She pulled it off and threw it in Bernie's face. "No, I got it for you. It's the only thing that you'll be able to fit in when some prick knocks you up." She ran out of Bernie's reach, around the table, and down into the basement.
     She heard the click of the door to the basement steps being locked from the other side, and Bernie's voice filtered down. "Stay down there, bitch!"
     Grr shrugged. Her small room had enough things to do. She decided that she should at least figure out how much work she was expected to do by Monday, and so she cracked open the books from her school.
     After an hour or two of copying answers from the back of the book and scratching sentences that would make a computer science major blush into the open spaces of her worksheets she went up the stairs and pounded on the thin wood door.
     A few seconds later she heard steps on the linoleum, and the door cracked open, spilling light and the image of Grr's mother.
     "Bernie! Did you lock Marge in the basement?"
     "She said I was gonna get knocked up!" Came the shouted reply from some unseen place. Pamela looked down at Grr. Grr looked back, unwavering.
     "Don't say those things to your sister," her mother said, and then walked away from the door in wide, shuffling steps. Grr noticed that she failed to reprimand her sister for locking her in the basement. It was easy to notice.
     Grr pulled herself onto the main floor and sat in front of the TV, trying to ignore her family.

It was late. The sun was gone. Grr sat on her bed and played a handheld game; her parents thought that she slept.
     Disobeying her parents, even without them knowing, gave her a thrill. Her lungs felt filled with electric air, and her heart pulsed in heavy beats. She listened for steps above her even though she knew that no one would think to check on her. The only other things in the basement were a small bathroom, the water heater, and the washer and dryer.
     It was later than she thought it was. Without warning the discord of Old Lida's sound penetrated into her bedroom, making her jump and drop her Gameboy. Her tiny man died, crushed by spikes.
     Grr turned and looked at the window to her right. The bell's distant ringing had no effect other than the very sound, and she scowled in its direction. Apparently the church had not gotten the hint, or they had and decided that it wasn't worth thinking about it so soon.
     The bell rang on and on, ding and then dong. Again and again it sounded, and Grr gave up on counting the rings; they bled together.
     Finally it sounded and she felt like she was hearing the last one. Years of hearing the same ring two or more times a day had chiseled a pattern into her brain, and with that ring the pattern was over. She reached for her Gameboy.
     One more two-tone ringing, horrible and clear, was heard. Her brain heaved to interpret it, and her game slid between her fingers. The crackling, fizzling energy of the last ring was unforgettable. Then, more so, the perverse slurring of the final second half ring made her cry out and chills run down her spine. It was as if the bell's final ring had been snatched by a hand and stretched across her ears longer than it should have.
     Grr's ears burned with quiet. Something was wrong.
     The analog clock, constantly ticking, was dead. Grr reached for it and tapped it. It refused to budge. Grr shrugged and looked at her game.
     It refused to move. Button presses and smacks yielded no results. She even turned the game's switch off and on and the screen remained frozen, glowing. Grr stared at it in surprise and confusion. She tore off the back cover and pulled the batteries out. Still nothing changed.
     Grr put the game face down on her bed to hide the glow. She looked around the room. Her clock was busted and now her game could power itself, but other things felt strange. It was too quiet, too still. Her room felt full of dead air. The sound of the water heater from over her wall, a common and comforting sound, was gone.
     Nothing moved.
     Grr crept up the stairs, hearing them creak against the unnatural silence of the house they were like a gunshot. She pushed open the door.
     The upstairs was just as dead as the basement. The clocks were frozen at twelve double zero. The sounds that she associated with houses – humming refrigerator, ticking clocks, settling wood – were not heard. The only sounds were the ones she made, the only motions were hers. Her ears burned, hungry for noise. She began to hear her heart beating, louder than she ever had before.
     She went for the door to the porch and it swung open on a creaky hinge that made Grr grimace in pain. She guessed that the entire street had heard it.
     The outdoors took the strange sensation of noiselessness and amplified it into a deafening lack of noise that threatened to shake Grr off her feet. Cars did not run. Birds did not swing. The very wind itself had halted. The world outside her house felt life a still painting that she walked through; no motion or change was allowed. She moved like an intruder that could, if she wished, commit the capital sin: change.
     And yet . . . there was a sound. No, she realized, not a sound. A feeling. On the air and in her mind was a feeling of something coming from the direction of the church . . . and the bell. She took a step and the sound echoed around her, off of every surface it could find. Usually for a sound so insignificant there was resistance from greater sounds. Now not so. Every move she made a sound, unique and young and forgotten, appeared. Each was as loud as the next and each seemed like an intrusion on the still world like she was.
     She went toward the bell, hearing her steps cascade around her, far louder than she ever thought possible. She reached the church and looked up.
     It was no more than a gentle drifting, back and forth, and the barest creak of a supporting rope. But to Grr's movement-starved eyes and straining ears the bell was in a furious dance and a loud song. Her vision was fixated on it. The gentleness of its sway hypnotized her; she began to sway with it, back and forth. It moved as if pushed by the missing breeze.
     She stood there for uncounted minutes, unsure of how long. She wondered how she could ever have hated it. It was such a nurturing shape, a caring sound. It was unique and special, like she was.
     Yes. For the first time in her life she felt a feeling of appreciation inside her. Her brow lifted, dispelling the scowl that had been etched on her face for years. She smiled, full of joy for the bell that had finally shown her what she was.
     A sound – other than her heart's beat and the bell's creak the only sound – came from behind her. She turned.
     The bell gave another off-schedule ring, shaking her and making her stumble. She fell down to one knee, scraping it on the sidewalk. As the bell's sound died around her, she looked in the dark alley where she had seen-
     No, it must have been her imagination. Only her imagination could create something that would lock her limbs and freeze her brain, turning her very thoughts to static.
     She sat in front of the church in the dark of the night, now returned to normal. Sunday morning started for Grr in the dark and the quiet of the night that felt like a blinking carnival. Sounds that would have escaped her notice blared like sirens. Miniscule motions filled her eyes. She remained looking down the dark alley that had held something that her brain would not let her remember. She thought she had seen a face but she couldn't picture it, not for all her might.
     She managed to get herself to look up at the bell, now over her head. The feeling she had before was gone, and she didn't get it again. The bell's swaying, once a tether to her world, was reduced to a casual motion that was out of place nowhere. It was nothing but a bell again, and she was nothing again.
     She sat in darkness, wondering if something else would happen. Nothing did, and eventually she picked herself up and started the trip back home, surrounded by natural night.
     She eased the screen door shut and looked at the glowing clock attached to the microwave. She expected it to be almost two in the morning, but she climbed into bed a few minutes later at twelve forty-five.

The next morning Grr woke up confused and doubting. She wondered if the events of the last night had all been in her head, until she swung her legs over the side of the bed and saw her skinned knee. Her father was yelling down the stairs for her to get up; they had church. Grr's clock again ticked along, at the correct pace and place. She looked at it, not sure what to expect. It was eight thirty.
     All the clocks were in place. Nothing made the day different from any other day.
     Soon Grr sat in church, flanked by her sisters. Nearly the entire family dozed in the hot sanctuary. The pastor preached from Ecclesiastes thirteen and talked about life having meaning. Only Grr listened to his words with any attentiveness.
     After the service had ended Grr went up to the pastor as he said goodbye to other attendants. "Mr. Johnson," she said. The pastor looked down at her at smiled. She failed to return it.
     "Hello Marge. It was good to see your family today. Where are they?" He looked around.
     "They already left. I'm walking home. I need to ask you something."
     "Well, of course! What is it?"
     "Last night I was up late. I heard Old Lida ring at midnight, but something happened after that."
     The pastor's face changed. What had been a child's wondering became a serious matter. Grr continued. "It rang an extra time, and . . . I think time stopped."
     The pastor didn't answer, just watched her with slowly blinking eyes.
     "And . . . do you know anything about that?"
     After a pause, he spoke. "It's too hot for you to walk home today. Let me give you a ride back to your house after everyone else has left." He turned away to talk to another family. Grr sat on a bench in the foyer and waited until the building had cleared out. Eventually Pastor Johnson came up to her. "Okay. Let's go."

"I felt different. Special," Grr said. "I didn't know how I felt. It was weird"
     They rode in Pastor Johnson's car toward Grr's house. Grr sat with her arms folded across her chest as they drove, and related the story of last night to the pastor.
     "I thought I heard a sound behind me. I looked." Grr paused. Pastor Johnson watched her out of the corner of his eye. "I think . . . I saw somebody but . . . I can't remember who. Or what." She looked out the window. "It scared me. It's like there's a white space in my memory where I saw it. And then the bell rang again and everything went back to normal. I went home and found that it was only forty-five minutes after twelve." She looked at the pastor. "I know I had been walking for more than an hour!"
     "You were," the pastor said finally.
     "But not very much time had passed! Did time stop?"
     "Not really, no," the pastor said. He checked his blind spot and turned a corner. "What you experienced doesn't happen to many people. In fact, only six in the whole world, as far as I know. They all lived in this town. Me included." He gave a sour grin. "Time didn't stop – that's impossible, no matter what the movies say – but you got an extra hour."
     "Like daylight savings time?"
     "No. This hour always exists, but most of the world forgets about it. They can't remember it at all. They don't have the choice. But you – and I – we're able to experience it." He looked at her. "Do you know why it is?"
     "It has something to do with the bell, right?"
     "Yes, that's right. Old Lida does it somehow. People who are attached or connected to the bell get it more frequently than those that aren't, but in your case I think an exception has been made. Unless you have a connection and didn't tell me?"
     Grr shook her head. "I was at the protest on Saturday to remove it. I don't like it." At least, I didn't.
     "Shame." They drove in silence. "You said you saw something. Something strange?"
     "I can't describe it. I don't remember anything at all. Just that I saw something and it was scary." The pastor nodded. They pulled in front of Grr's house. "What if it happens again?"
     "Of all the people that this . . . extra hour . . . happens to, none of us know what it's for, or why it's been forgotten. Don't try to solve a mystery wiser people than us have tangled with. Use the quiet time to yourself." He gave her a concerned smile. "I know sometimes your family can be a handful. Paint a picture or write a poem, or just get extra rest, if you can. Most people have trouble sleeping when it happens to them."
     "Okay," Grr said. She pushed open the car's door and climbed out. "Bye." She closed the door and walked up to the house.
     "Why'd you want to talk to the pastor?" Her father asked as soon as she entered the house. "What can he tell you that your mother or I can't?"
     "Maggie's pregnant!" Bernie said, leering as she chewed a sandwich. A piece of mashed food tumbled out of her mouth. Their father glanced at her and both girls knew if she had been in reach he would have slapped her.
     "Shut up! I'm not pregnant! I just wanted to talk to him!" Grr said.
     "The both of you, shut your mouths. Marge, get your own lunch, your mother is on a shift."
     Grr went into the kitchen and made a lunch. Ginger was there talking on her phone in a drawling voice with lengthened vowels. As soon as Grr entered she lowered her voice and moved away. Grr ignored her as she made her lunch.
     She took her lunch down the steps into her room, and as soon as she got in she heard the chorus of Old Lida.
     She looked out the window until the ringing died. She knew she didn't hate the bell, not anymore, but it still gave her a strange feeling when she heard it. Just a drop, just a taste of the feeling she had standing under it the night before.
     And the briefest moment passed when she felt at peace.

That night she lay covered in a light sheet, watching her clock creep closer to midnight. Her parents made her go to bed at nine, so she could be up for school, but sleep wouldn't come.
     She usually slept soundly, stewing in a mixture of anger and resentment to the other people in her house. Now though she shuffled and turned, trying to find comfort when there was none. She tried not to look at the clock.
     She started to get nervous. Old Lida would ring soon. She wondered if it would happen again.
     She didn't know what to call it. 'The Extra Hour' made it seem too much like daylight savings time. Giving it a vague word like 'It' made it seem monstrous and heretical. She didn't have any idea until – just as Old Lida started to ring in the new day – she realized it should be called the hidden hour.
     She heard the cry of the bell drain away, and felt the barest pieces of time slip by, listening for the extra ring that would herald the hidden hour.
     It came. The second half of the ring, the lower ring, was again spread thin as time stopped for everything around her.
     Grr's mouth became a cruel smile, and she reached for a marker. She went up the basement stairs in the dead, dark, sour air, fighting her way through the soundlessness.
     Soon she stood in front of Bernie's bed on the upper floor. She uncapped the marker. The sound echoed through the house, and the smell of the ink was far more pungent then it would have been in normal time. Grr pushed Bernie's arm out of the way and bent down.
     She stood up and reviewed her work. She liked the moustache but was more proud of the beard. The eyebrow ring had a nice look to it, too.
     Grr didn't know how long she had been in the hidden hour, but she knew it had been at least half of it. She hid the marker deep in her closet and sat on the porch, looking up at the frozen sky.
     She wondered if light was affected by the hidden hour. She didn't anything about how light worked but she knew it had to move to see things. She could still see things, that was for sure. She waved her hand in front of her face; it didn't look any different from a normal motion. It didn't seem blurred, and phantom images remained, or anything else. Streetlights and glowing clock faces were the same – like her Gameboy. The sky looked like it always did: distant, unreachable, and cold.
     She was about to go back in when something caught her eye. Her stomach turned, remembering but not seeing the thing that had appeared last night.
     Down her street, hidden behind a house three lots away on the other side of the street. The source of a flickering green light moved. To not notice the light was impossible in the dry and frozen land of the hidden hour.
     Grr stood, limbs rigid. Her heart seemed to stop.
     A sliver of something came around the corner.
     She woke up with a scream and a start, nearly diving out of her bed. Her mind filled with the roars of urgency, telling her to run and hide.
     Now lying on the floor beside her bed, Grr took stock. Morning light came through the window in her wall and she could see blue sky through it. Her clock told her it was eight in the morning.
     She stood, and the blood rushed out of her head. She wobbled and nearly fell over but recovered. The last thing she remembered was sitting on the porch and seeing . . . she didn't know. Something – down the street, coming straight at her. Old Lida's ring was stuck in her brain. Any time that she tried to think about what had been there she could only think of the bell.
     Memories came back to her. She had seen the . . . something . . . coming down the street at her, and her body had gone stiff as if stunned. It got closer, and she heard her mind shrieking for movement, nearly beginning to fry her nervous system with so much energy Grr thought she would explode. It got closer and closer and then Old Lida rang once, like the night before, and the world snapped and crashed back to the noise and the motion, dispelling the something that had been rushing to dismantle her.
     Grr sat on her bed. Her pajama bottoms were twisted around, and she righted them. She heard talking above her, and started to get ready for school.
     As she went up the stairs she wondered if everything she had seen was a dream. She remembered, after Old Lida rang and the hidden hour ended, running down to her bedroom and diving under the covers, shaking and wet with terror. Sleep had come eventually, and now she paid the debt. She got to the main level of the house yawning and uncomfortable, feeling cramped, unhappy, and still floating on the effects of terror that had pumped through her veins the night before. She pushed open the door with stiff fingers and it creaked. Bright morning light blinded her.
     She went to the kitchen where her parents and Ginger already were. She sat at the table and looked at the down at her place mat, unable to get herself to move any more.
     "Was that you we heard screaming, Marge?" her father asked. He hid behind the paper, reading sports news.
     Grr nodded, expecting to hear her neck creak as she tilted it. She rubbed her eyes.
     "Hey!" Her father said, putting his paper down enough to look at her. "I asked you a question!"
     Grr realized he wouldn't have been able to see her nod, and nodded again, vigorously, dizzying herself in the process. She pulled herself out of the chair and poured a bowl of cereal.
     A scream came from the bathroom and Grr dropped her bowl, feeling the rush of energy and emotion identical to last night. The bowl dropped and smashed on the ground and Grr turned, pressing herself against the counter, expecting to see a something wheel around the corner of the hallway and come screaming at her, to feast.   
     Instead, a furious Bernie stomped straight at her and, seeing Grr's expression of fear, pointed an accusing finger. "Prepare to get your ass fucked, bitch!"
     Grr had forgotten all about it, but it came back now. In the morning light, the permanent marker's work – Grr's work – shone. The little Hitler moustache was greatly overshadowed by the full scholar's beard that started just under Bernie's bulbous bottom lip and ended halfway down her flushed, pudgy neck. The eyebrow ring looked just as good as it had earlier . . . but the scar on the cheek looked much better in the light.
     Bernie lunged for her sister but Grr scampered out of the way. Bernie slid along the cheap tile in her socks, ramming into the counter that Grr had been in front of. Grr fell to her hands and knees and ran under the table, knocking Ginger's legs out of the way and making her squeal. Bernie, foolishly, dropped down and tried to copy the path as Grr ran out of the kitchen. Their father finally came to his wits and wrapped his meaty fingers around the collar of Bernie's top, making her choke and fall to the floor.
     "MARGARET!" He bellowed. "Get your ass back in here!" Grr peeked around the corner. "Did you do this?"
     "Damn right she did! I know it!" Bernie said, wrenching her shirt out of her father's grasp and standing. "Who else would do it? Dad, this is permanent! I can't get it off!"
     "Margaret!"
     "I didn't do it!" Grr shouted. "I swear!"
     "She's lying!" Bernie howled, nearly at tears. "Prom season is coming up! Nobody will ask me now!"
     "Nobody was going to ask you anyway, you cow!" Grr shouted, before she realized this wouldn't help her much.
     "Marge! Did you do this or not?" Her father demanded.
     "No!" Grr repeated. "I went to bed before her! You know I did! You never let me stay up late on school nights! And I didn't do it after waking up, either! You heard me wake up!"
     "She could have done it after everybody else went to bed!" Bernie shouted. Behind them, Ginger watched the proceedings with a bored expression.
     "I can't do all that without waking you up!" Grr paused. "I bet she did it to herself to get me in trouble!"
     "You little-!" Bernie shouted, lunging forward again. Their father wasn't fast enough to catch her this time and she drove into Grr, fists flailing. Enraged, the older sister landed punch after punch on her, making her scream in pain.
     In a few seconds Bernie was pulled off of Grr, who had a rapidly growing bruise under her eye, a bleeding lip, and bright red scratches on one cheek. Grr panted, gasping for breath. Bernie had nearly smothered her. Ginger came around and hauled Grr to her feet, holding her tightly. Grr might have been able to fight off Bernie if it was a fair fight, but she wouldn't be able to get away from Ginger.
     "There!" Their father shouted. "Now Grr looks just as bad! Pam, can you try and clean Bernie up? Ginger, get Marge to stop crying. You're both still going to school. Both of you consider it punishment for what you did to the other!"
     The next thing Grr knew she sat on the toilet as Ginger clumsily applied bandages to her face. They had found another scratch on her forehead that stretched nearly all the way across her face; there was nothing that could be done except placing a band-aid on the deepest spot and keep the rest of it from bleeding. It was no professional job but Grr didn't care.
     Ginger was packing up, angry at being forced to clean up a mess she didn't even get to make, when she whirled at Grr and said. "What were you screaming about this morning anyway?"
     "A nightmare," Grr said.

"Jesus Christ Grr, did you get mauled by a tiger?" Her friend Betsy asked as she sat next to her in home room. "And how did you escape?"
     "It wasn't a tiger, it was a cow," Grr said sullenly. Her face hurt and she didn't look forward to going through the next week of school looking like an industrial accident. She allowed herself a small smile. "But you should see what she looks like."
     "One of your sisters?" Norman, in front of her, asked. Grr nodded. They started to realize that, more than normal, Grr didn't want to talk. She still didn't want to talk when rotund Mrs. Undurf entered and asked her what on Earth had happened.
     "I fell off my bike," Grr replied in an emotionless tone. The teacher nodded and turned to the whiteboard. Grr didn't own a bike; her parents never even thought of getting her one.
     She went through the school day telling people time and again that it she was either the target of a falsely vindictive sister, or a simple accident. It didn't matter what answer she gave when they asked, they believed her.
     She was dozing in math class when a clear noise woke her up. It was the distinct two-tone ring of Old Lida, and she heard it clearer than she ever had stuck in the noisy rooms of the school. It brought with it a still memory of a swirl of green terror coming at her, and for a moment in time, brought into sharp relief by a flush of pain from her face, she glimpsed the thing that her brain had filtered out.
     It was forgotten again, just as quickly as it was remembered, but the adrenaline that came from the brief glimpse was enough to keep Grr in a state of cold wakefulness for the rest of the day.

Wednesday morning, now: hot and weary.
     Grr sat up in bed, waiting for it to be late enough for her to get up and not arouse suspicion. She knew even if she did that none of her family would take an interest in what she struggled with. And even if they did, there was no way for them to help her; only one person could help her now, she knew.
     Monday night she had gone to bed hoping to avoid being drawn into the hidden hour, or perhaps she could fall asleep before it came, but of course she didn't. Old Lida rang and it began.
     Grr stayed in bed instead of getting up and causing trouble or wandering the streets. She's glad she did, because as she felt the hidden hour winding down – drawing to a close – a green light, shrinking and growing in a sick pulse, could be seen around the corner of the next house over through her window, seeming to come closer. With the ring of Old Lida the green light once more disappeared, but even with it gone Grr felt a new fear: it knew how to find her.
     That day had not been any better than Monday. She and Bernie avoided each other and went to school. She didn't have to field many questions but people looked at her strange, due the cuts and the bruise. She felt tired, and could not concentrate.
     She went to bed that night hoping – praying – that the hidden hour would pass her by, but it did not. By the morning she was resolved to talk to Pastor Johnson again.
     Because during the hidden hour that night, Grr hid under her bed, huddled into herself. She closed her eyes at one point, and when she opened them, what she thought was the sweet light of morning came through her window.
     She threw the covers off her and gazed up at the window, hope rising inside her.
     The next thing she knew she was screaming, high, desperate, and chilling, as Old Lida rang and the thing that pressed itself against her window disappeared.
     She didn't sleep, not a wink, but barricaded the window and the door with everything she could find, from her toys to a small stack of wood that was being stored there. She locked both of them and taped the draperies shut over and over. She pulled her blankets and sheets into her closet, closed it, and taped it shut from the inside. She kept the clock with her and a flashlight on the entire time, at least until the batteries died around four in the morning. She sat in cramped darkness until six in the morning, heard Old Lida ring, and finally sank into uncomfortable sleep. Her alarm clock rang and she woke up at eight.
     She pushed open the door, tearing the tape. The sun banished the darkness of her closet like a holy word, and she crawled out, dragging along with her the burrow she had assembled. She threw the blankets and pillow on the bed and took down the barricade in case her parents entered. She sat on the bed and waited a few minutes, and then went upstairs.
     Her hair, never really docile, tangled into a knot. The wounds on her face stung. She felt tired enough to fall asleep on the steps as she climbed them.
     When she finally pushed open the door and walked into the kitchen even her negligent family noticed her appearance. Grr decided she must look worse than she thought, but she only poured a bowl of cold cereal and ate it dry.
     After a few minutes of silence, her mother cleared her throat. "Marge. I had a late shift last night, I got in just before midnight." Grr looked up at her mother through bleary eyes. "I heard you yelling."
     Grr remembered the scream that had escaped her lips, and to class it as a yell was like calling Mozart's symphonies "ditties."
     Grr lowered her head to look at her cereal. For a moment it appeared to look back. "I had a nightmare."
     "Again?" Ginger snorted.
     She was ignored. "Do you have nightmares a lot?" Her mother asked. I must look really bad, Grr thought.
     "No."
     "What was the nightmare about?" Bernie asked, grinning. "Go to school without any clothes on?" She recoiled from Grr's look.
     Grr dumped her bowl in the sink. "I'm going to school."
     "But it's only eight thirty!" Her mother yelled after her as she walked out the door.

She didn't go to school, but instead she headed for Old Lida's tower and the church. She got there a little before nine and the building was still locked, so she sat on the steps under the dark sky. Soon it began to rain, and she retreated under the short eaves, watching her legs get wetter as time went on.
     Before nine-thirty the pastor arrived, not discovering Grr until he was nearly up the steps. He looked at her from under the hood of his jacket.
     "I've never seen such a heart-wrenching sight. Come inside."
     Grr followed him into his office. He pushed a chair up to his desk and sat on the other side. He laced his fingers together. "Talk whenever you're ready."
     It took a few minutes. She didn't know where to start, where to end, or what would be in the middle. She said as much.
     "It's the extra hour, isn't it? Something's happening to you. That's why you'd come to me," pastor Johnson said. Grr nodded. She felt like crying. "We last spoke on Sunday. Did anything happen that night?"
     Grr nodded, and started to speak. Feeling guilty and ashamed, she talked about drawing on her sister during the hidden hour, and then how she sat on the porch's step thinking about light, when she saw the green glow creep around the house a block down.
     "Then suddenly I was in my bed and screaming. It was morning. I remembered seeing something rush at me but I can't remember actually seeing it." She shook her head.
     After a few seconds the pastor said "it was the same thing you saw before you talked to me on Sunday?" Grr nodded. "Okay. What happened next?"
     She told him about Monday night, and the glow that started to invade her bedroom. Without pausing she went right into Tuesday night, how the something had pressed itself right up to her window and peered in.
     The pastor sat, resting his mouth against his hands, not talking nor moving. Finally he pressed his palms against the tabletop. "Margaret, you're one of six people I know about that this happens to. The first one was the man that brought the bell from Germany. The next people were his daughter, and then his granddaughter. She's still alive, living in the senior home twenty miles north of here. The fourth was a young man that was partially insane. Whether that happened before or after what you call the hidden hour can't be determined. He's dead now, I'm afraid.
     "I'm the fifth. It happened a year or two after I started working here. Not everyday, not like you – you've had more nights with it already than I did in the first year. But it got more frequent. My wife just thinks I have insomnia."
     "She doesn't know about it?"
     "I told her, and she says she understands, but I don't really think she does." The pastor took in a breath. "You're the sixth person, by far the youngest.
     "But . . . nobody has ever described something inside the hidden hour like you are."
     "Are you saying I'm lying?" Grr nearly shouted.
     "No, no. Why would you? You already have something nearly no one else does. Why embellish an already fantastic account?" Grr didn't know if she was supposed to answer. The pastor continued. "No, I believe you. I don't like it. They frighten you; they are supposed to. They seem made for it."
     "Why?"
     "Your brain destroys concrete evidence of them, up to the point that you don't know what they look like. Your brain is not stupid, Margaret. I think that if it's doing that then the memory of whatever is out there will harm you." The pastor tilted his head, as if he'd stumbled upon some answer.
     He looked at Grr. "I have to tell you something you won't like. I don't think that I can help you."
     "What? Why not?" Grr demanded.
     "How could I? The only way would be for us to be together during the hidden hour, and even then it's no guarantee. Putting aside skipping school for the moment, I don't think they'd like us spending a night together, your parents or my wife."
     Grr stared with a slack mouth at a distance between her and the desk. Thinking about the next night scared her – but to know that she had a lifetime of terror waiting for her threatened to drive her mad.
     "I want Old Lida taken down!" She said, her voice shaking. "I want it taken down! It's the bell doing this, you know it is! If it doesn't ring, the hidden hour won't happen! Please!" Grr sobbed. "Please take it down!" She pounded her fists on the table. Fat tears dropped onto the sparse carpet. "Please!"
     "You're getting your wish," Pastor Johnson said when Grr lapsed into silence. She looked at him. "The Elders voted to have it removed. Enough people wanted it gone. And now, how can I tell you it will stay up? It'll be taken down on Saturday." Grr sniffed. "I suppose I'll have to get used to writing my sermons during the day. That extra hour or two a week was quite useful."
     "I'm sorry," Grr said. She didn't know what else to say.
     "Think nothing of it." The pastor looked at his watch. "Let's get you to school."

Pastor Johnson led her into the lobby of the middle school and spoke to the receptionist.
     "Margaret needed to talk to someone about a problem she's been having. She feels much better now."
     "There are councilors at the school," the woman said in a tone that held admonition.
     "I'm sure there are," pastor Johnson said. "And if she had wanted to talk to them, she would have. You'll allow her back in?"
     The woman nodded and produced a slip of paper. She wrote down the time. "What's your full name, young lady?" She asked Grr.
     "Margaret Agost."
     The woman looked up at the pastor. "Yours?"
     "Brent Johnson."
     "Sign here please," the woman said, sliding the piece of paper over the counter. With a small, charming smile, the pastor removed a pen from the nearby cup and signed it.
     "We'll be communicating with her parents," the woman said. She put the slip away and glared up at the pastor.
     Taking the hint, he moved for the door, but halted as he passed Grr. "If anything . . ." he searched ". . . different happens, call me. Can you find my number?"
     "I will," Grr promised.
     "Good. If I don't pick up, leave a message." He looked over his shoulder at the woman, who was watching the two of them closely with her mouth caught in a pinched frown, and then leaned down next to Grr's ear. His hot breath tickled. "Phones won't work during the hour. I'm afraid you'll be on your own." Grr nodded to him, and he walked out the door into the rain.
     "What did he say to you?" The woman asked Grr as she walked past, heading to the class that was in session. Grr looked up at her and, like the flick of a switch, decided she hated this woman.
     "Fuck off, bitch," she said, walking past. The woman stared open-mouthed until she was around the corner.

He held nothing back.
     The punch knocked her off her feet and back against the door, stunning her and raising a bruise on her head. He had hit her right where Bernie had hit her a few days earlier, bringing tears to her eyes and swelling it shut. She whimpered.
     "Little bitch! You think you could skip school and get away with it!"
     "I needed to-" Grr tried to say.
     "SHUT UP!" Her father hit her again, on the chin. "Did you think you didn't need to go to school?! Did you think you were too good for it?"
     He hit her in the stomach, standing over her. They were the only two home. Her mother was gone at work, Bernie was at a friend's house, and Ginger was stuck at school working on a project.
     And so Grr's father pounded on her, furious. Every hit grew fresh pain in her body, and fresh anger.
     They kept coming. Fred Agost knew how to punch and he did it well. Grr had no chance to stop them, not with her small, weak body. She curled her arms around her head to keep the sour flesh from splitting like fruit. Blows rained down on her arms and chest and legs.
     With each blow her mind brought up images. They started as white bursts, but with each hammer blow on her tired body the white turned to green. The green got darker.
     Fred Agost landed a punch on the top of her head and rattled her. The punch knocked something loose in her memory . . . and just for a moment, Grr remembered what hunted her during the hidden hour.
     She released a blasting scream, loud enough to drown out the screaming that was in her head and rock her father back two steps. "Jesus!" He yelled. As soon as the scream died Grr curled into a ball.
     Her father took a moment to collect himself. His unwanted daughter had screamed during a beating before, but that was like no other scream. He stepped forward. "If you think that's-"
     "Do you know why I skipped school?" Her voice froze him. She sounded deep like a demon. She uncurled her arms and lifted her head up and the wounds, old and new, covered her face. Her one open eye was clear. "It's because every night – every god-damn night! – I have a nightmare that I can't wake up from! It's real, just as real as you or I or all those punches! The first night I didn't realize it! The second night I saw it closer to our home! Every night it comes closer to me!" Her voice thundered through the house. Her father took a step back without realizing it.
     "I can't get it out of my head, and I can't remember it! I burns itself out of my brain the moment I see it and all that's left is fact that I know it's coming to kill me! Me! Last night I looked it right in whatever it has for eyes and I didn't sleep again! I might never sleep again! I had to skip school because I had to talk to someone who would understand me!"
     Her eye narrowed, and Fred Agost saw the desperation there, the almighty fear that rode his child like a horse. "It's trying to kill me and I know it can!"
     Her father was at the other end of the entrance hall. His fists were clenched, and he had forgotten to breathe.
     She dropped her head and her eye was hidden; the spell broke. Fred shook himself. "Get yourself cleaned up." He walked away; his heart pounded and jumped. He felt afraid.

She taped up one of her blankets over the window, and then wedged a piece of cardboard box under the curtain rod, shutting out all the light coming out of the window. Her wounds stung. She took aspirin after dinner but there was only so much it could do. The door to her room was already barricaded, with the bed itself, and the window was clamped as tight as she could get it.
     After dinner, as quietly as she could, she searched through old papers set to be thrown out and found a bulletin from the church that included Pastor Johnson's cell phone number, with instructions to call if any church goers needed help or healing. The paper was folded next to her other supplies in the closet. The flashlight, and an extra, a pitcher of water, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a few pillows and blankets, a bunch of books and her Gameboy, and a wood baseball bat. She had also pulled a phone with a long cord into her closet from the outside hall, and turned off the ringer. Her clock was next to it.
     Grr stepped back from the window and looked around. She'd done her best; could she do better? There was nothing else to utilize, nothing she could stack against the door or window. She was stuck in the room until the morning.
     She brushed her fingers over one of the bruises on her face. Her family knew better than to comment on her injuries. If they said a word, they were likely to be punished or hit themselves. Grr guessed only her mother even knew the reason for them – just as likely she didn't care. She trusted her husband to punish when he thought best.
     Grr stripped the sheets off her bed and built them into a comfortable den. She turned off the room's light, settled herself down, and shut the closet.
     It made her hot and cramped, but it felt safe. It was ten at night.
     The next two hours passed too fast and too slow. Every time she used a flashlight to check the clock – which ticked away resolutely – she was ten minutes closer to the hidden hour. She set the bat over her lap and put her head down on her pillow.
     She couldn't sleep. Her body was weary, yes, but the idea of falling asleep and leaving herself a sitting duck to . . . whatever was out there was impossible. She badly wanted to rest but her buzzing brain and thumping heart kept her awake.
     She checked the clock. Ten minutes until midnight.
     Old Lida would be taken down. Pastor Johnson had said so. She only needed to get through three more nightmare hours and then it would be done. Old Lida would never ring again.
     Even as she thought about it, she heard the bell's peal. The first note stopped her cold, and the second note send her heart pumping crazily. The closet suddenly seemed very dark, and very tight.
     Old Lida rang on. Again, again, again. She knew there were twelve, and then the special one that only three living people could hear.
     It rang with the final slurring sound that told her time had stopped for everything but her, two others, natural light, Old Lida, and something that her brain wouldn't let her see.
     The hour passed with the dripping slowness of torture. The clock didn't tick, and the flashlight didn't shine, and so she had no way of knowing how much time passed.
     She heard nothing and saw nothing. No garish green light filtered under the closet's door or through the cracks. She held the bat in both hands and spun it, feeling the grain of the wood under her fingers. Her face hurt.
     She thought the hour was nearly over; maybe ten minutes remained. Nothing had shown itself in any way. She pressed herself against the wall and kept her eyes on the door inches from her swollen face.
     If she had dared to crack open the door and peer out into her room, she would have noticed a green glow illuminating the window, shifting and moving – as if the source was looking for a way in.
     But she didn't. She wouldn't have been able to peel her fingers away from the handle of the bat if she wanted to.
     Finally she heard the other special ring that Old Lida reserved for her. The hour ended. Grr flicked on the flashlight and it illuminated the clock, stinging her eyes. Yes: the clock read midnight and ticked onward, its second hand descending to the six.
     Grr put her head down on the pillow and set the bat next to her. She snuggled next to it as it promised protection. She fell asleep.

She did the same thing the next night. She'd had to endure more stares that day at school due to her injuries; again she told people she'd fallen off her bike. She knew that some of her friends like Betsy and Norman knew the truth, but they kept it to themselves. She was glad. She didn't know if they noticed that there was another change happening to her, the one brought about by sleepless nights and constant fear.
     She felt dry. Weak. Dirty. A shower didn't get rid of the feeling any more than a pounding from her father did. She never wanted to concentrate in school but now she simply couldn't. Her thoughts came and went and she didn't notice them.
     But she only had to wait two more days. Tonight – Thursday – and tomorrow. Then she could go and watch Old Lida be brought down, forever silenced. It would be a sweet sight for so many reasons that Grr's body pinged to see it.
     But now she had to hide. It was the same as the night before and the same things happened: time skipped by until Old Lida rang in the new day and the hidden hour, ending with the thirteenth ring that made Grr shudder and clamp her mouth shut for fear of having something hear her. Again she held the bat tight enough to force the blood out of her fingers, sitting in the closet next to flashlights and books and a plate that used to hold a sandwich
     Again – if she had dared – she could have seen a light searching, searching. This time it saw something she had missed.
     Again Old Lida rang and banished whatever it was outside Grr's window, and again Grr fell asleep next to the bat inside her constructed den, sweet relief flooding her.

Friday at school she was filled with nervous energy. She only had one more night to survive, and then the bell would fall. She ignored her teachers and concentrated on staying still and silent, afraid that thinking about it would jinx the event. After school Reggie and Tommy tried to get her to come with them to smoke and drink behind the store that Reggie's dad owned, but she turned them down. Out in the open? No protection? She would be killed.
     She waited through dinner and the slow weekend evening, until her mother ordered her to go to bed. Grr went down the stairs and prepared her room. She had gathered a few more pieces of cardboard, and set about building her defenses. The extra cardboard went up against her door and window, all but shutting out the light from the street lamp.
     At ten she climbed into her fort and waited, playing her Gameboy. or trying to read. She didn't feel so afraid anymore; she felt that whatever was outside her room couldn't get in. Tommy told her once that in old books vampires couldn't go in your house unless you invited them. Maybe it was like that.
     She watched the clock tick to thirty seconds before midnight, and heard Old Lida, for one of the last times. She drank in the limited sound, glad she wouldn't have to cower under its power for much longer.
     For that last time, she heard the extra discordant clang at the end, and all the sensations of the hidden hour became real. Her room was again quiet and still. No sound except that from her own motion.
     She waited out the hour, telling herself not to be afraid and failing. Each moment that passed she thought she heard another sound, heralding a monster from the depths of her imagination. She kept the bat close to her.
     There was, she guess, fifteen minutes left when her eyes began to deceive her. She thought that she could see inside her closet. She knew she shouldn't be able to; there was no light at all to see with.
     But she could just sense the curve of the bat in her hands . . . the closeness of the closet's door . . . the blankets piled around her.
     In a moment like a blast of lightning she realized the light was green.
     It was so dim at first, like the barest light from the sun's first slice as it rose on a new morning. Yet it grew stronger. Her stomach squeezed around itself. With perhaps ten minutes left the light was strong enough to make out the dim outlines of her fingers in front of her face, and still it grew. Another moment and Grr knew the truth: it was in her room.
     Soon it would pull open the closet and doom her to a death tinged with the color of madness. She resolved to try to hit it, but her arms felt weak and tired, too heavy to lift. Her one good eye was squeezed shut and she thought that she could still see the green light infiltrate her brain.
     She cracked open her eye and the green flowed under the door, turning the dark closet into a neon sign. Her heart stuttered.
     Something touched the closet door on the other side and Grr screamed, smacking the bat against the wood. She shut her mouth and heard the clear, distant, wonderful ring of Old Lida, and the closet was dark again. More time had passed than she thought.
     It took minutes to keep her heart from leaping out of her throat. There was a crack in the wood where she had struck it with the bat.
     It had almost gotten her. There was no other way to think about it. When her frenzied brain finally dropped to the level of normal thought, she considered herself lucky.

It was so hot the next day, it felt to Grr that her bruised skin was on fire. Her eye's swelling had receded a great deal, and she could have it open, though in the bright sun it leaked and she kept it closed. There was a big crowd around the church just before noon as a crane prepared to extend toward the heavy bell. Not all of the people wanted to see the bell be disconnected, many were there because it was an icon and an event to remember. The bell was already detached from the ropes that suspended it.
     Grr pushed her way through the crowd and up the steps, where Pastor Johnson stood with a few of the other church officials, looking up at the bell. When she got near him he looked down.
     "Margaret, you- what happened to you?" he asked, concerned.
     "I fell off my bike." She dropped her voice. "Last night it was in my room."
     The pastor looked over his shoulder at the other officials. They were indisposed. "Did it hurt you?" He asked quietly.
     Grr shook her head. "I've been hiding in my closet since Tuesday night. It tried to get in, though. I don't know how it got into my room. The door and window was locked and I put things in front of them. Can you make them get the bell down quicker?”
     "No, but I won't stop them, don't worry. The officials and I are in agreement. Enough people want it taken down, and there's no true reason to keep it up in this day and age."
     "How soon are they going to do it?" Grr asked, looking up at the crane that stretched up to the tower.
     "I tried to get them to wait until after noon, so we could hear it one more time, but I was overruled. It'll just be a few minutes. Are any of your family here?"
     Grr looked at him with a pained expression. Coupled with the bruises old and new, the pastor understood that they weren't, and that Grr was fine with that fact.
     Grr willed the crane to grow faster and bring it down. She wouldn't feel good until it was over.
     The end of the crane reached the bell's cover, and the man wearing a hard hat and work gloves that had climbed up from the inside attached it to the top of the bell. He gave a signal to a similarly dressed man inside the crane's cab, and the bell lifted into the air. The crane began to beep loudly, and Grr watched it back away from the building. Slowly the bell's shape dropped toward the street.
     Grr watched it, expecting something to happen. She thought maybe it would lash out with some energy and hurt her or others. Maybe it would begin to ring on its own, like at the beginning and end of the hidden hour.
     But in a moment it rested on the ground without so much as a tremor. At eye level it looked just like so much cast iron. It looked to be just as tall as she was, made like any other bell.
     "There," Pastor Johnson said. "You're safe now. It's over." he checked his watch. "It's just about noon. Old Lida won't ever ring again."
     Grr said nothing.
     The crowd dispersed, heading off to their Saturdays. A few people chatted in the shadow of the church. The sky was a light cyan color, and the clouds that drifted across it dropped dot shadows.
     Grr still stood on the steps of the church when one of the shadows passed over the bell and her.
     The Pastor's watch beeped.
     Grr's heart stopped as time froze.
     Birds in flight hovered. Clouds didn't move. The air was still and hot. The people still near the church were halted in mid step or mid word.
     Grr looked up at the pastor, who looked down at her with the same expression of surprise.
     "What?" He said weakly.
     Grr didn't hear him. Her eyes focused on a change in the light, coming out from between the buildings across from the church.
     She saw it, finally, – and she – and then – and then –
     "Margaret!" Pastor Johnson yelled. "Inside the church, now!" She couldn't move, locked by the figure he refused to look at. He grabbed her and dragged her into the church, pushing open the door with his shoulder.
     Outside more figures appeared. They dripped madness, radiated violence, finally free to roam and hunt.

To be continued.