THE TIME BETWEEN
LIGHTS

Sometimes it’s hard to see clearly. Sometimes things just slip right by.

There is a time between lights—that time when the light of day has failed, and the streetlights have not yet come on—when things go unseen, unnoticed, unknown. Everything seems somehow quieter. The world becomes slightly muffled. Not only the sounds but the sights, as well. More things hide in the time between lights than in full darkness. Not a lot of people know this.

The only reason I know this is that I’m one of the things that hides.

It’s really not that hard once you know how to do it. You just stick close to the walls and the ground. The twilight seems to join things. I’m sure there’s some sort of scientific explanation for it, but I’m not interested. Besides, not everything that goes unseen in the time between lights can be explained by science.

When I first hid between the lights, I didn’t see anything that you wouldn’t see. I saw people, buildings, cars. The next few times I hid, it was the same. But the fifth time, I saw other people. People I knew didn’t belong there. And they saw me, too. They were the only ones who could see me. I didn’t know how they could because by that fifth time I had become rather adept at the art and felt very confident in my abilities to remain hidden.

I was hunkered down in an alleyway, waiting for someone, anyone, to fuck with. Stuffed behind a big blue garbage bin, I watched the street, phasing myself between the lights. It was fun to play like that sometimes. People walking by who chanced a glance down the alley would occasionally do double takes, thinking they might have seen something—a piece of paper or a candy wrapper blowing in the breeze, perhaps—flitting around the garbage bin, but when they looked closer, there was nothing there. A bit confused but logically convinced it was a “trick of the light,” they walk on, the incident completely forgotten by the time they reach the next block.

Let me assure you, though: the light plays no tricks. Everything between the lights is very clear, once you’re inside.

New York is the best place to play between the lights because there are so many alleyways—the drawback is that not many people willingly venture into them, which spoils the game somewhat. I’ve played in other cities— Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago—but New York is the most fun, so I decided to stay and perfect the art here.

Awoman walked by while I flitted about the garbage bin. Tall, slender, blonde hair, business suit. Miss No Nonsense, you could tell by her gait—probably on her way home from some high-powered corporate job. That’s another thing: you become quite an observer of human behavior once you watch things from between the lights.

Things you would normally never notice about someone are projected to the forefront. Most of the time, these things are important to the game. It’s easier to scare them, confuse them, when these personality cockroaches are pushed out into the light.

The woman turned her head quickly to the right and scanned the alleyway. I settled back down beside the garbage bin and quickly phased myself in and out twice, just enough to catch her eye during her scan. She did the double take, her step faltered, and then she did something people don’t usually do. She actually stopped.

Maybe I was losing my touch. Could she see me?

I made sure I was completely hidden, then studied her where she stood. Her brow was crinkled. She was motionless. But now that I was looking closely, I could see she wasn’t looking at me. She seemed to be looking over my right shoulder. I turned my head, following her gaze. That’s when I saw them for the first time.

Two men, standing near the back of the alley. One was framed by the door that led into the kitchen of the Sun-Lee Chinese restaurant; the other squatted at the standing one’s feet, back hunched, one arm resting on his knees, the other dangling at his side, knuckle dragging on the littered ground. But they weren’t looking at the woman, they were looking at me.

They wore long, black wool coats, and their limbs and bodies were severely elongated. The standing one must have been seven feet tall, his hands coming down to his knees, and the hunkered one would likely have been even taller than his counterpart when standing up. Their eyes were little white marbles. Faces expressionless.

When I looked back to the woman, she was gone, presumably walked on hurriedly, frightened. I turned again and looked to the two men. They were walking toward me. Now I saw their boots, their stretched feet. The marbles in their heads tracked me as I stood up. I backed out into the street, bumped into a passer-by who swore at me when I slipped out of hiding. I struggled to keep from phasing myself into the streetlights. I craned my head up and saw above me that they’d just come on, their hum making it harder for me to hide.

I glanced back to the men in the black wool overcoats. They were flitting like strobe lights, and my tenuous grasp on the time between lights faltered with their every step. One of them smiled wide and I saw inside his mouth. There was nothing. No teeth, no tongue, just gaping emptiness. Lips stretched and curled up at the corners, wrinkles under the marbles—but still merely an inference of a genuine smile.

Then they were gone, winking out like stars on the cusp of dawn, and I was suddenly standing in plain view of everyone on the street. Someone else nudged me as I fully appeared. I stumbled and leaned against the nearby light post . . . and felt something whisper through me.

I shuddered and walked home, sticking close to the streetlights.

When I went in again, this the sixth time, I saw more of them. A different alley, but the same kinds of people. Same black wool coats, same white marble eyes, same hollow mouths. Walking the streets, noticing them everywhere, I forgot about my own childish games, and began to wonder about these twilight people. Was I intruding on them? Did they see me as some sort of interloper? Was the time between lights supposed to be theirs and theirs alone?

By the tenth time I phased into their realm, I was seeing more of them than of ordinary people. It was as though the regular people were blinking out one by one, being replaced. This suspicion was confirmed one day when I watched a group of teenagers slowly fade away right before my eyes, while behind me a group of the black-coated men appeared and began walking toward me. I shifted out of phase and swore to myself I would stop doing it, would just forget about this mystery and exist wholly in my own world with my own people. But just as I shifted and the glare from a streetlight shone through my spectacles, I caught the whisper of a word: “Eleven.”

I had to go in one more time.

The next day, I chose some deserted docks, waited for the sun to slip beneath the tops of the skyline, and phased myself between the lights.

The moment I dropped through, the men in the black wool coats surrounded me. Every one of them had their vacant mouths open, their marble eyes trained on me. Some of them wore black top hats. I had never seen this kind before—all the others just had slick black hair pasted to their heads.

One of the ones with a top hat stepped through the crowd, parting his brothers gently. He stood in front of me, reached a foot-long bony hand to my face and caressed my cheek. He smelled of burnt leaves and charred wood. When he spoke, the blackness writhed inside his mouth.

“Why do you come here?” he said.

I couldn’t speak. Wind whipped the water, lapping it against the docks. The massive ship anchored there groaned.

“Why do you return?”

I glanced quickly at the others in the top hats. They only stared like the rest of them.

“This is our place,” he continued. “Not yours. It has never been yours.”

What could I say?

“I know,” I said. And I did. Just then I felt a surging wave of shame for my intrusion into a realm that was not my own, could never be my own.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it sincerely, though the words felt weightless coming from my mouth.

Another top hat stepped forward, put his hand gently on the first one’s shoulder; the first one looked at the hand, looked at the face. A small bird flying overhead shadowed him briefly; he frowned, nodded once, then stepped aside.

“We are the ones people have forgotten,” the second top hat said. His voice was sad, quiet, nearly lost to the waves slapping at the ship. “Have people forgotten you?”

I was stunned into silence. The question dug trenches in my synapses and all other thought was obliterated.

“No, of course not,” I said, and took a step backward from the piercing marble eyes. “I just . . . ” I began, but could get no further. The waves seemed to be slapping against my head now. Pounding. Crashing.

“Who knows you?” said the second top hat. And immediately on its heels: “Yes, who?” said the first one.

Inside me, I felt drawers opening, doors unlocking, steps crumbling, falling away to splintered slivers. Who knows me?

No one.

“No one,” I said, and with those two words everything shattered. It felt as though my skull had split in distinct halves. I fell to my knees, then on to my side in the dirt. Top hats crowded my tearing vision, a city skyline of rigid rooftops, yawning crevasses, flickering, blinking, confused office lights.

“No one,” I mumbled through numb lips, and closed my eyes, shutting out the lights, the skyline, the waves, everything.

Everything but those two words.

When I woke up, it was nighttime. Solid night.

Nowhere to hide.

I was lying on my back, sprawled out—featureless sky above me, hard-packed dirt beneath.

When I sat up, memories shot at me, drove spiked nails into my head. I glanced around for the top hats, but there was no one. Wind, water, waves. That was all.

I tried to remember who I was, where I’d come from, who I might be married to, who my children might be, the job that, perhaps, I was late for, the house I may have left unlocked.

Nothing.

Wind.

Water.

Waves.

It suddenly struck me that it takes the first two to make the third.

I stood, brushed myself off, walked slowly, my boots crunching, to where the ship was anchored in the water.

Waves sloshed and sprinkled me, tiny showers.

Misted spray of far away memories: We are the ones people have forgotten.

Who knows you?

No one does. No one knows me. I don’t even know me. I have been forgotten.

I am of the forgotten.

I leaned carefully over the side of the metal dock, saw the moon reflected. Then the moon saw me, defined me.

I saw myself.

And I smiled.

I leaned back, took one deep breath—all I needed to understand—nodded, spun slowly on my heel, felt my long wool coat flutter around my ankles in the breeze.

As I walked toward the city skyline, I brought my hands up to my head to feel the smoothness of the top hat.

And burned inside for the time between lights.