The first thing Ethan Cole noticed upon awakening was the message inscribed across his bedroom wall; the second, and considerably more disquieting discovery, was the unmistakable realization that the handwriting belonged to him.
DON’T LET TODAY END.
For several bewildering moments, he remained motionless beneath the disordered blankets, contemplating those four ominous words with the peculiar apprehension of someone who had awakened to discover that the familiar architecture of his existence had been subtly, inexplicably altered during the night. Pale September sunlight penetrated the narrow division between the curtains and extended across the bedroom floor, illuminating the accumulated disorder of seventeen ordinary years: neglected textbooks, dismantled mechanical devices, unfinished assignments, and articles of clothing whose abandonment had long ago ceased to trouble him. Nothing appeared displaced, nothing suggested intrusion, and yet the message remained upon the wall with an authority that made the surrounding familiarity seem almost fraudulent.
Ethan eventually abandoned the uncertain sanctuary of his bed and approached the writing. The letters had been formed hurriedly with a black marker, and although desperation had distorted the penmanship, he recognized certain peculiarities that no stranger could reasonably have imitated: the severe inclination of the capital letters, the elongated stroke of every R, and the unconscious compression of words whenever his thoughts moved more rapidly than his hand.
He did not merely recognize the handwriting; he recognized the circumstances under which he wrote that way. Whenever Ethan became frightened, genuinely frightened rather than temporarily startled or apprehensive, his normally meticulous penmanship deteriorated into hurried, angular strokes.
That realization disturbed him considerably more than the message itself.
Reaching toward the wall, he touched the final letter with the tip of his index finger and discovered that the ink had dried completely. Whatever inexplicable episode had occurred during the night, sufficient time had elapsed for the evidence to become permanent, or at least permanent enough to guarantee an unpleasant conversation with his mother concerning property damage.
The ordinary inconvenience of that prospect restored a small measure of rationality.
There were explanations, Ethan reminded himself. There were always explanations, even when they remained temporarily inaccessible.
Perhaps Noah Bennett had entered through the bedroom window and decided that vandalism represented the natural evolution of his continually deteriorating sense of humor. Perhaps Ethan himself had awakened during the night, written the message while only partially conscious, and returned to bed without retaining any recollection of the incident. Sleepwalking seemed improbable, considering that he had never demonstrated the slightest tendency toward nocturnal wandering, but improbability was infinitely preferable to impossibility.
Then Ethan turned toward his desk and discovered the second message.
DON’T TRUST THE CLOCKS.
The words occupied the narrow section of wall above a chaotic collection of books, mechanical components, and the remains of an alarm clock he had dismantled six months earlier under the mistaken conviction that he could improve it. He approached the second inscription more cautiously than the first, although he could not have explained what danger the words themselves presented.
Something within their arrangement disturbed him. The first message possessed the frantic urgency of a command issued beneath extraordinary circumstances, whereas the second carried the darker implication of knowledge acquired through unpleasant experience.
Ethan turned toward the bedroom door.
The third message waited beside it.
FIND HER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
The silence that followed seemed to expand throughout the room.
“Find whom?” Ethan murmured.
Predictably, the walls offered no clarification.
He rubbed both hands across his face before returning his attention to the messages. At seventeen, Ethan considered himself reasonably intelligent, occasionally responsible, and generally resistant to melodrama. He did not believe in prophetic dreams, supernatural warnings, temporal disturbances, haunted bedrooms, or any of the increasingly ridiculous explanations Noah would undoubtedly suggest once he exhausted the possibility of a practical joke.
Nevertheless, three messages had appeared across Ethan’s walls during the night, every one of them written in his handwriting, and he remembered composing none of them.
He crossed toward the desk, opened the uppermost drawer, and retrieved a spiral notebook. After turning past several pages of mathematical calculations and unfinished sketches, he found an entry from the previous afternoon and carried it toward the nearest message.
The resemblance was not approximate.
It was absolute.
The peculiar construction of the letter T, the narrow curvature of every D, and the unnecessarily extended stroke beneath certain words belonged exclusively to him. A stranger might imitate another person’s handwriting; Noah, given sufficient time and an irresponsible quantity of determination, might even produce a convincing forgery. This, however, was not imitation.
Ethan knew that with the quiet certainty with which people recognized their own reflections.
“Well,” he murmured, lowering the notebook, “that complicates matters.”
The alarm clock beside his bed erupted into a shrill electronic clamor.
Ethan recoiled so abruptly that the notebook escaped his hand and struck the floor. He turned toward the bedside table, where the illuminated display read 7:13.
His alarm was programmed for seven o’clock.
Crossing the room, Ethan pressed the button and silenced the offensive noise. Two seconds later, the alarm resumed with equal enthusiasm.
The display now read 6:42.
Ethan stared at it before striking the button again. Although the noise ceased, the illuminated numbers continued changing.
11:58.
3:17.
8:26.
7:00.
When the alarm began ringing for the third time, Ethan seized the electrical cord and disconnected it from the wall.
The display remained illuminated.
For several seconds, he simply stood there, holding the useless cord while the numbers continued their inexplicable progression.
He turned the clock over and removed the battery compartment.
There were no batteries inside.
A peculiar coldness settled beneath his ribs.
Behind him, the second message remained visible.
DON’T TRUST THE CLOCKS.
The numbers changed again.
7:01.
7:02.
7:03.
“Ethan!”
His mother’s voice ascended from the kitchen, shattering the unnatural stillness.
“You’re going to be late!”
He looked toward the bedroom door. “Coming!”
“Breakfast is getting cold!”
Ethan returned his attention to the clock.
The display had gone dark.
Rachel Cole stood in the kitchen with a coffee mug in one hand and an earring in the other, performing the familiar morning ritual of preparing for work while simultaneously attempting to maintain authority over a household that had never demonstrated particular enthusiasm for organization.
“Toast,” she announced as Ethan entered.
He stopped in the doorway. “Good morning.”
“Good morning. Your toast is getting cold.”
“I thought you were merely informing me of its existence.”
“I assumed its existence was sufficiently obvious.”
Ethan sat at the table and regarded his mother with an attentiveness that quickly attracted suspicion.
Rachel paused halfway through fastening her earring. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring at me.”
“I’m looking at you.”
“People generally blink while doing that.”
Ethan blinked deliberately.
“Better?”
“Somehow worse.”
Despite the morning’s peculiarities, he smiled.
Rachel Cole was thirty-nine, practical to the point of impatience, and possessed of an almost supernatural ability to recognize when her son was concealing something. She worked as an administrator at Evermore Community Hospital, where, according to her, she spent most of her professional life correcting mistakes committed by people who earned considerably larger salaries.
She finished fastening the earring and examined him more carefully.
“Did you sleep?”
“I believe so.”
“That is not usually a matter of opinion.”
Ethan picked up a piece of toast but found himself without an appetite.
“Can I ask you something?”
“That depends entirely upon whether the question requires money.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then your prospects have improved.”
He hesitated, uncertain how to describe the situation without sounding irrational.
“Suppose someone awakened and discovered messages written across his bedroom walls.”
Rachel’s expression changed immediately.
“What did you do to the walls?”
“That isn’t the important part.”
“It became the important part the moment you mentioned writing.”
“I didn’t say I wrote them.”
“You said they were in your bedroom.”
“Those statements are not equivalent.”
Rachel placed her coffee mug upon the counter.
“Ethan.”
“Hypothetically.”
“There is writing on your walls.”
“Yes.”
“In marker?”
“Possibly.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
“Permanent marker?”
“That remains scientifically undetermined.”
“Ethan.”
“Yes. Permanent marker.”
She inhaled slowly, presumably reconsidering several decisions she had made throughout parenthood.
“What does it say?”
Ethan considered telling her everything. The impulse lasted only a moment before an inexplicable reluctance prevented him.
“Nothing important.”
Rachel stared at him.
“You awakened, discovered mysterious writing across your bedroom, and introduced the subject through an elaborate hypothetical question, but the messages themselves are unimportant?”
“When you say it that way, I admit the situation sounds suspicious.”
“It sounded suspicious before I said anything.”
Ethan lowered his gaze toward the untouched toast.
“Do I sleepwalk?”
His mother’s irritation softened into confusion.
“Not that I know of.”
“Did I ever?”
“No.”
“Talk in my sleep?”
“When you were little.”
“What did I say?”
“Mostly nonsense.”
“That doesn’t narrow things down considerably.”
Rachel smiled despite herself, although her expression became more serious when Ethan did not return the smile.
“Why are you asking?”
“I don’t remember writing the messages.”
For the first time since he had entered the kitchen, his mother became completely still.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Were you awake late?”
“No.”
“Did you take anything? Medication for a headache, perhaps?”
“No.”
“Were you drinking?”
“Mom.”
“I have to ask.”
“I wasn’t drinking.”
Rachel studied him for several moments. Ethan could almost observe the movement of concern behind her eyes as she attempted to determine whether the situation required parental intervention or merely patience.
“Maybe you awakened during the night and don’t remember it.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“It happens.”
“Does it?”
“I assume it happens.”
“That is extraordinarily reassuring.”
She retrieved her coffee.
“If you’re genuinely worried, we’ll discuss it tonight. I’m already late for a meeting, and unless the messages are threatening you with immediate bodily harm, I suspect they can wait until after five.”
Ethan remembered the third inscription.
FIND HER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
“No immediate bodily harm,” he replied.
“Excellent. My standards for a successful morning continue declining.”
Rachel collected her handbag and crossed toward the refrigerator, where several family photographs were secured beneath brightly colored magnets.
Then she stopped.
The suddenness of her stillness attracted Ethan’s attention.
“Mom?”
Rachel did not answer.
“Mom?”
She blinked and looked toward him.
“What?”
“You were staring at the refrigerator.”
“I was?”
“For nearly ten seconds.”
She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Apparently I require another cup of coffee.”
Ethan watched as her attention returned to the photographs.
“Did we always have that one?”
He rose from the table and approached.
The photograph she indicated showed three members of the Cole family standing beside a lake beneath an intensely blue summer sky. Ethan recognized himself at approximately twelve years old. His father stood on the right, smiling with one hand resting upon Ethan’s shoulder, while Rachel occupied the opposite side.
Between Ethan and his mother was an inexplicable space.
It was not sufficiently large to attract immediate attention, yet once noticed, it became impossible to ignore. The three figures appeared awkwardly positioned, as though the photograph had originally contained a fourth person who had somehow been removed without disturbing the surrounding landscape.
Ethan leaned closer.
Something stirred within his memory.
Not an image, nor even a coherent thought, but rather the sensation of reaching for an object in darkness and discovering that someone had quietly moved it.
“Where was this taken?”
“Lake Monroe.”
“When?”
“Five years ago, I think.”
“Who came with us?”
Rachel frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Was anyone else there?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
His mother regarded him with increasing concern.
“Ethan, what is going on with you this morning?”
“I’m asking a question.”
“And I answered it.”
He returned his attention to the photograph.
There should have been someone standing within that empty space.
The conviction arrived without evidence and persisted without explanation.
“Mom, doesn’t this look strange to you?”
“It looks like your father refused to stand closer because he was irritated with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I made him ask someone to take the photograph instead of using the camera timer.”
“That sounds like Dad.”
“It was.”
She removed the photograph and examined it.
For the briefest instant, Ethan thought her expression changed. A shadow of uncertainty passed across her features, subtle enough that he might have imagined it.
Then it disappeared.
“I’m late.”
She replaced the photograph and kissed his forehead.
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Rachel hurried from the kitchen, and moments later the front door closed behind her.
Ethan remained alone before the refrigerator.
The house settled into silence around him.
He looked again at the photograph.
For one fleeting instant, a sound emerged from somewhere within the inaccessible corridors of his memory.
A child laughing.
Ethan turned.
The kitchen was empty.
The sound disappeared.
Yet the inexplicable certainty remained.
Someone was missing.
And whatever had taken that person from the photograph had apparently taken the memory of them as well.
Evermore possessed the peculiar charm of a town that visitors considered picturesque and many of its younger inhabitants regarded as an elaborate geographical prison. Established in 1847 within a secluded valley bordered by densely forested hills, the town had survived industrial expansion, economic decline, two catastrophic floods, and innumerable municipal committees devoted to preserving what the local newspaper habitually described as its historic character. To Ethan, historic character generally meant unreliable plumbing, inadequate cellular reception, and buildings whose owners had successfully reclassified structural deterioration as architectural significance.
The center of Evermore consisted of narrow streets bordered by weathered brick establishments, independent businesses, and enormous trees sufficiently ancient to have witnessed generations of residents arrive, complain about the town’s limitations, and eventually become the adults defending it against change. Above everything stood the clock tower, an imposing monument of dark stone whose four enormous faces had displayed precisely the same time for seventy-three years.
11:57.
According to the version of local history taught to every child unfortunate enough to attend school within the Evermore district, the mechanism had stopped during an electrical catastrophe on October 17, 1953. The resulting fire had severely damaged the tower’s interior and coincided with the disappearance of a local girl whose body had never been recovered. The municipality had subsequently declined to restore the mechanism, a decision that some residents attributed to reverence for those affected by the tragedy and others, including Ethan, attributed to the considerably more plausible explanation that the town government had refused to finance the repairs.
Ordinarily, Ethan passed the tower without granting it more than a momentary glance. On this particular morning, however, the second message upon his bedroom wall had transformed every clock he encountered into a potential source of suspicion.
The pharmacy displayed 8:14.
The bakery insisted that it was 7:51.
A decorative clock outside Evermore Savings Bank confidently announced 9:32.
Ethan consulted his phone.
8:07.
He stopped walking.
Noah Bennett, who had been describing an argument with his father concerning the mysteriously damaged rear bumper of the family automobile, continued several paces before realizing that his audience had disappeared.
“You could at least pretend to remain interested in my domestic difficulties.”
Ethan glanced toward him. “I’m attempting to determine why every clock in town displays a different time.”
Noah examined the nearest clock before shrugging. “Because Evermore is approximately three municipal elections away from collapsing into the earth?”
“I’m serious.”
“That was a serious answer.”
Ethan returned his attention to the clocks. “They’re all wrong.”
“Clocks tend to become inaccurate when people neglect to repair them.”
“All of them?”
Noah adjusted the strap of his backpack. “Perhaps the town council secretly declared war against chronological accuracy.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Ethan might have appreciated the remark. Instead, his attention had shifted toward the clock tower.
A girl stood beneath it.
The surrounding square was crowded with pedestrians, students, and commuters proceeding through the familiar obligations of an ordinary morning, yet something about her absolute stillness separated her from the movement surrounding her. She wore a dark coat despite the mild September weather, and her long brown hair moved gently across her shoulders beneath the autumn breeze. From that distance, Ethan could not distinguish the precise details of her appearance, although he was certain he had never encountered her before.
The girl was watching him.
Not with the idle curiosity one stranger might direct toward another, but with an intensity that immediately unsettled him. There was recognition within her expression, accompanied by something Ethan found considerably more difficult to interpret.
Relief.
She looked as though she had been waiting for him.
“Ethan?”
Noah’s voice seemed to arrive from an extraordinary distance.
Ethan scarcely heard him.
The girl took a single step forward.
The clock tower bell rang.
The sound descended across the square with such tremendous resonance that Ethan recoiled.
Nobody else reacted.
Pedestrians continued their conversations. Vehicles proceeded through the intersection. A man seated outside the bakery calmly turned a newspaper page.
The bell rang again.
Ethan looked toward Noah.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The bell.”
“What bell?”
Ethan turned back toward the tower.
The girl had disappeared.
Above the empty square, the clock remained fixed at 11:57.
For the first time since awakening, Ethan began to suspect that the messages upon his bedroom walls had not been written to frighten him.
They had been written to help him.
The considerably more troubling question was why he had needed to warn himself at all.
By eleven o’clock, the extraordinary events of the morning had surrendered to the dependable monotony of education, and Ethan found himself unexpectedly irritated by the return of normality. He understood the absurdity of this reaction. A rational person should have welcomed several uneventful hours after awakening to mysterious messages, malfunctioning clocks, an altered photograph, and an unknown girl who appeared to recognize him. Nevertheless, uncertainty had produced an uncomfortable vigilance within him, and he discovered that waiting for something inexplicable to happen was considerably more exhausting than confronting the inexplicable event itself.
During mathematics, he repeatedly examined the clock above the classroom entrance.
Nothing happened.
During American history, he watched the second hand of the clock beside the teacher’s desk complete every revolution with infuriating reliability.
Nothing happened.
By the beginning of chemistry, Ethan had almost persuaded himself that the morning’s events were unrelated peculiarities exaggerated by insufficient sleep and an overactive imagination.
Then, at precisely 11:36, Mr. Aldridge stopped speaking.
Ethan looked up from his notebook.
The chemistry teacher stood before the whiteboard with a marker raised in one hand, his mouth partially open in the middle of an explanation concerning molecular reactions.
He did not move.
Neither did anyone else.
For several seconds, Ethan remained seated, expecting the peculiar stillness to resolve itself. When it did not, he looked toward the student beside him.
Her pencil remained suspended above an unfinished equation.
Across the classroom, another student had been turning a page. The paper remained partially elevated between two fingers, motionless despite the ventilation system that should have disturbed it.
“Mr. Aldridge?”
Ethan’s voice sounded unnaturally loud.
No response followed.
He rose cautiously, and the scraping of his chair against the floor produced the only sound within the classroom. Twenty-four students remained completely motionless around him.
The situation was not merely silent.
It was suspended.
The distinction became immediately apparent to Ethan, although he could not have explained how he understood it. Silence suggested absence; this was interruption, as though some invisible mechanism responsible for advancing existence had abruptly ceased functioning.
Ethan approached the window.
Outside, the world had stopped.
A bird remained impossibly suspended above the courtyard. The branches of an enormous maple tree bent beneath a wind that no longer moved them. A student crossing the pavement stood with one foot elevated several inches above the ground.
Ethan pressed one hand against the window.
“What is happening?”
The clock above the classroom door began moving backward.
The second hand retreated once.
Then again.
And again.
A whisper passed through the room.
“Ethan.”
He turned.
Nobody had moved.
“Ethan.”
The voice belonged to a girl.
It seemed simultaneously distant and intimate, as though spoken immediately beside him from somewhere impossibly far away.
“Who are you?”
The classroom lights flickered.
“Find me.”
“Where?”
The whisper disappeared.
The second hand resumed its ordinary progression.
Mr. Aldridge lowered his marker.
“—and therefore the reaction requires an additional catalyst.”
The classroom returned to life.
The student beside Ethan completed her equation. The ventilation system disturbed the partially turned page. Outside, the bird continued across the sky.
Nobody screamed.
Nobody questioned what had happened.
Ethan remained standing beside his desk.
Mr. Aldridge regarded him with mild irritation.
“Mr. Cole?”
Ethan struggled to compose himself. “Yes?”
“Is there something you would like to contribute?”
Twenty-four students turned toward him.
Ethan looked toward the clock.
11:36.
Precisely the same time it had displayed before the world stopped.
“No, sir.”
“Then I suggest you return to your seat.”
Ethan obeyed.
The student beside him leaned closer.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded automatically, although the gesture felt dishonest.
For the remainder of the lesson, Ethan did not take another note.
Noah listened to the account during lunch with an expression that gradually transformed from skepticism into genuine concern.
“You’re telling me that everyone stopped moving.”
“Yes.”
“Except you.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I have no idea.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I was somewhat distracted by the temporary suspension of reality.”
“That seems reasonable.”
They occupied their customary table near the rear of the cafeteria, where the surrounding commotion provided sufficient privacy for a conversation that Ethan increasingly suspected would sound irrational to anyone else.
Noah leaned forward. “Did anything else happen?”
“I heard her.”
“The girl from the tower?”
“I think so.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to find her.”
Noah became unusually quiet.
Ethan studied him. “What?”
“I’m reconsidering the sleepwalking explanation.”
“Good.”
“I’m replacing it with the possibility that you’re experiencing a nervous breakdown.”
“Less good.”
“I’m serious, Ethan.”
“So am I.”
“That’s precisely what concerns me.”
Ethan looked away, and his attention settled upon Mrs. Whitaker, an elderly English teacher who had just entered the cafeteria carrying an enormous collection of papers.
Something about the scene disturbed him.
He had seen it before.
The recognition did not resemble ordinary memory. Ethan could not recall when the event had occurred, nor could he identify any previous occasion upon which he had witnessed it. Nevertheless, a certainty deeper than conscious recollection told him what would happen next.
“The student behind her is going to collide with her.”
Noah frowned. “What?”
A sophomore stepped backward.
He struck Mrs. Whitaker.
The papers scattered across the floor.
Ethan felt his stomach tighten.
“The milk.”
“What milk?”
A carton of chocolate milk stood near the edge of a neighboring table.
Ethan watched.
The carton fell.
It struck the floor and burst across Mrs. Whitaker’s shoes.
She exclaimed in surprise as laughter spread throughout the cafeteria.
Noah did not laugh.
He stared at Ethan.
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You predicted both things.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You’ve seen this happen before.”
The words were not a question.
Ethan watched Mrs. Whitaker gathering her papers.
“I think so.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember.”
Noah’s expression became considerably more serious.
Before he could respond, Ethan noticed the clock above the cafeteria exit.
11:57.
His phone displayed 12:24.
The clock’s second hand moved backward.
Ethan rose.
“Where are you going?”
“To find her.”
“That explanation requires considerably more information.”
Ethan was already walking away.
The corridor beyond the cafeteria was deserted.
Ethan proceeded quickly, uncertain where he was going but increasingly convinced that remaining still would accomplish nothing. The mysterious girl had appeared beneath the clock tower. Her voice had reached him during the inexplicable interruption in chemistry. The message upon his bedroom wall instructed him to find her.
These events were connected.
As Ethan passed a glass trophy case, movement appeared within the reflection.
He stopped.
The girl stood behind him.
Ethan turned.
She was at the opposite end of the corridor.
“Wait.”
She walked away.
“Wait!”
Ethan ran after her.
The girl disappeared around the corner.
He followed.
The adjoining corridor was empty.
“Who are you?”
His voice echoed through the abandoned passageway.
No answer followed.
Then Ethan noticed the writing.
Three words had been scratched into the painted wall.
YOU FORGOT AGAIN.
He approached with mounting apprehension.
The handwriting was his.
Ethan touched the inscription.
Behind him, the school bell rang.
Students began emerging from classrooms.
He looked back toward the wall.
The message had disappeared.
At 11:49 that evening, Ethan climbed through his bedroom window.
He had spent the intervening hours attempting to construct a rational explanation for the day’s events and had accomplished nothing beyond increasing his own confusion. The messages remained unexplained. The clocks continued behaving unpredictably. He had witnessed the apparent suspension of time, predicted events he could not remember experiencing, and encountered a girl who seemed to know him.
The third message had become impossible to ignore.
FIND HER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
Evermore appeared profoundly different beneath darkness. The familiar streets narrowed beneath the amber illumination of streetlamps, while the surrounding hills disappeared into an impenetrable horizon. Ethan moved rapidly toward the town square, his footsteps echoing between sleeping houses.
At 11:55, the clock tower became visible.
At 11:57, he entered the square.
The girl was not there.
Ethan turned slowly, examining every shadowed doorway and deserted street.
“Where are you?”
The town offered no response.
His phone displayed 11:58.
He approached the tower.
“Can you hear me?”
Silence surrounded him.
11:59.
An apprehension more profound than anything he had experienced throughout the day settled over him. Ethan did not understand why midnight mattered, nor what catastrophe the conclusion of the day might produce, but the desperation within the messages he had written to himself had become impossible to dismiss.
Then he saw her.
She stood across the square beneath a streetlamp.
For one extraordinary moment, the distance between them seemed to expand. Buildings stretched impossibly along the street. The illuminated windows of distant houses appeared where the square should have ended.
Ethan could see his own bedroom window.
The girl stood beneath the streetlamp outside his house.
He could not move.
Every clock in Evermore began ringing.
The overwhelming sound descended upon the town as the girl looked directly at him.
Her expression contained neither surprise nor confusion.
Only sadness.
She spoke, although Ethan could not hear her.
Then, impossibly, the distance between them disappeared, and her voice reached him with absolute clarity.
“You were supposed to remember.”
Ethan stared at her.
“What?”
The clock tower moved.
For the first time in seventy-three years, the minute hand advanced.
11:58.
The girl’s expression transformed into horror.
“No.”
“Who are you?”
11:59.
“Ethan, listen to me.”
“How do you know my name?”
The world seemed to tremble around them. Windows fractured throughout the square, and the streetlamps extinguished themselves one after another.
The girl ran toward him.
“Don’t let it end!”
Midnight arrived.
Ethan Cole awakened in his bedroom.
Morning sunlight penetrated the narrow separation between the curtains.
His heart pounded violently.
For several moments, he remained motionless beneath the blankets, unwilling to look toward the wall.
Then he did.
DON’T LET TODAY END.
He turned toward the desk.
DON’T TRUST THE CLOCKS.
Then toward the door.
FIND HER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
Downstairs, his mother called that he was going to be late.
The alarm clock began ringing.
The display read 7:13.
Ethan climbed slowly from bed and disconnected the electrical cord.
The illuminated numbers continued changing.
6:42.
11:58.
3:17.
Behind him, his mother shouted that breakfast was getting cold.
Ethan stared at the messages upon his walls, and as the impossible familiarity of the morning settled around him, he finally understood what his own forgotten warnings had been attempting to tell him.
The previous day had not been a dream.
The mysterious girl had been real.
The clocks had been telling the truth in the only way they could.
And somehow, while the remainder of Evermore continued without the slightest awareness of what had occurred, Ethan Cole had awakened inside a morning that had already happened.