Then the Seventh Hour lit up with green and yellow and blue, its note higher, a perfect continuation of the fifth and sixth.
But the sound that came after it made a few of the Hands scream.
It waslow.It waswrong.It was doom wrapped up insound—and it was coming straight from the larger platform of the Thirteenth Hour.
We watched in horror as the Seventh Hour began to vibrate, and then something at the top of it screeched. We couldn’t see all the way up there, but it sounded like a lid opening, and then the timesand that had been pouring down into the empty bulb began to moveup,out the top of the platform.
It floated over our heads as we watched, and slipped right into the top of the Thirteenth Hour.
Brown light shone from the platform and onto the large bulb that was filling up with sand from the seventh, and that awful sound continued to make the entire floor vibrate.
The Thirteenth Hour had come alive right before our eyes.
“Stop it! Make it stop!” someone shouted at the top of their lungs.
Helen and Russ were already moving, one with the bat in his hand, Helen with the piece of wood just as long, and they slammed it onto the glass of the Thirteenth Hour at the same time.
The sound of it was deafening. I moved back with the rest of the Hands, my ears covered, my eyes wide open as I waited and waited for the glass to break—but it didn’t. No matter how hard they hit it, the glass of the Thirteenth Hour bulb did not break.
March took the bat from Russ next and tried, hit the glass with all his strength.
Not a scratch on the surface.
“It’s not working! It’s not working!”
Then Helen ran to the Seventh Hour and slammed the piece of wood on the bulb.
Glass broke. Sand spilled out. The lights of it died, and the sound from the Thirteenth Hour faded together with thelight. No more timesand floated to it, only spilled on the floor.
“No—you shouldn’t have broken it, no!” Erith cried, trying to get the piece of wood out of Helen’s hands—but it wasn’t over yet.
No, nothing was over.
Instead, the Eighth Hour lit up, red and pink and purple, the sound of itkindto the ears again, a note higher than the previous one. The ninth followed, but nobody was laughing anymore. Instead, we were moving backward on instinct, waiting…
The Tenth Hour lit up. The note climbed higher.
The platform opened its lid, and the sand began to pour upward into the air as the Thirteenth Hour came to life again, sound and light and all.
Words popped in my head like they’d been hiding there all along:a sequence. A sound sequence activated it.
Helen screamed as she ran for the Tenth Hour now, wood in hand. Erith tried to call for her, but she didn't listen. Seth was already in front of the Tenth Hour, though, and he grabbed the narrow center where the bulbs constricted and the timesand funneled through—and he pulled.
The bulb came out of the platform with ease, and he fell back together with it because he’d pulled too hard.
Helen slowed down, stopped screaming. The timesand no longer floated into the Thirteenth Hour, and the lights of the tenth platform had faded.
Yet it continued.
The Eleventh Hour lit up, the sound sharper, purer. The Twelfth Hour followed. We waited with our breaths held. Seth was still on the floor hugging the bulb full of timesand that was almost as tall as him, and Helen still clung to that piece of wood, prepared…
But the Twelfth Hour didn’t activate the Thirteenth.
The First Hour did.
Helen was at it again, running, screaming, but March was faster. He grabbed the bulb with one hand and pulled it out in one movement.
The lights faded. The Thirteenth Hour remained dark, with only a handful of sand at the bottom of it.
