"A flat?"

"Two flats." Seventeen-year-old Frank Hardy stood up and sighed in disgust. "On the same side- which you could see for yourself if you’d get out of the car, you oaf."

"Oaf?" his year-younger brother Joe replied curiously. "That’s a new one. Besides, you were driving and the flats are on the driver’s side-" He grinned as Frank rolled his eyes, then opened the passenger-side door and got out. "So, we have two flats and one spare. I’m not a mathematical genius, but I think that equation spells a problem."

"Yes, especially when we’re trying to make a delivery," Frank grumbled, kicking lightly at the flattened front tire, too distracted to notice his brother’s mixed metaphor. "The police in Boonboro really need to invest in a fax machine or an internet connection, or something!"

Joe shrugged. "So they’re low-tech with a low budget. Nothing to be done about that. And the only solution I see is to start walking. We might run into either a phone booth or a garage."

Frank glanced around. They were stranded on a two-lane country road, several miles from the nearest small town- Boonboro- and finding either of the amenities his brother had mentioned seemed very unlikely. "I think we should head back to Boonboro," he said. "We passed a farmer’s house a little way back; someone might let us borrow the phone and call a wrecker."

"And call Dad, to let him know what happened. Maybe he’ll come pick us up; he does need this stuff," Joe agreed more seriously, leaning over the convertible door to pick up the packing envelope full of documents lying on the front seat. "I wonder if we got sabotaged," he added, his blue eyes narrowing at the thought.

"Possible. In which case we better start making tracks," Frank suggested, and set off at a brisk walk.

"This is kind of odd," Joe remarked after they’d proceeded about a mile.

"What’s odd?" Frank asked, brushing his dark hair from his face and turning up the collar of his light jacket. It was October 31st, Halloween day, and though the sky was brilliantly blue, the wind was pretty nippy.

"No traffic," Joe explained. 

"Not really so odd as that. We weren’t seeing too many people anyway, and we’ve only gone a mile or a little more. Let me guess," Frank deduced with a grin. "You’re mainly interested in traffic because you’re hoping to hitch a ride?"

"The thought crossed my mind," Joe admitted. "But actually, it might be wiser not to- just in case we were sabotaged. We might get picked up by the wrong people and find ourselves being kidnapped. Again."

"Again, yeah," Frank murmured, idly wondering how many times in their lives they’d ended up captives to criminals. Too many to conveniently recall. "Sensible thinking, bro."

The two walked on in silence. Frank glanced at his watch; just past one in the afternoon. Their father was expecting them home around one-thirty, although schedules in the Hardy household were subject to extreme change without notice. 

"I think I see a house ahead," Frank said after about another mile and a half. Joe paused glancing over to where his brother was pointing. It was hard to see through the trees, but he thought he could make out the man-made shape of a roof.

"Looks like it. Race ya!" Joe grinned and took off; Frank, taken off guard, took off right after him, even though he knew it was useless. Joe was a faster sprinter than he. Still, he had to at least make the effort!

The brothers drew to a halt, panting, at the end of the driveway. There was a blue Chevrolet parked halfway up, so it seemed someone was home. Frank opened the screen door and knocked, noticing that the inner door was slightly open. 

There was no response, so he knocked again. 

"Maybe out in back," Joe suggested when there was still no answer, and they hurried around the side of the house to look. The backyard revealed a basket of clothes sitting next to a bucket of clothespins and a washline stretched between two poles. Several shirts had been pinned up and were flapping in the wind, but there was no sign of the homeowner. Glancing around, Frank saw that the back door was also partly open. 

"Let’s check inside," he said, frowning. "Whoever lives here might have taken ill or had an accident, to not be answering the door."

"Might just be on the phone," Joe pointed out, but he followed Frank inside.

"I don’t hear anything..." Frank looked around the tidy basement, picked up the phone extension, and his frown deepened. "The line’s all staticky," he reported. Joe took it and listened. 

"Weird." He pressed a few digits, then shook his head. "Probably a bad connection, or maybe something’s interfering."

"Let’s check the rest of the place out." Frank turned towards the stairs and Joe followed. Neither of them could resist anything mysterious, and though it often landed them in trouble, they usually managed to scrape out of it with answers to all their questions. Surpressing their guilty feelings at of invading someone’s home, they searched the house from bottom to top, discovering only that the homeowners were neat, organized people.

"Strange. Maybe they ran over to a neighbor’s or something. Anyway, there’s no sign of forced entry," Frank murmured, examining the front door. 

"And nothing valuable taken- or at least, nothing obvious. Maybe there was a family emergency and they had to run off in a hurry and forgot to pull the doors tightly closed," Joe speculated.

"Too bad the phone line’s screwy," Frank remarked. "We could call Dad. C’mon, let’s get going. We’ll mention it at the next place we come to." He closed the door firmly behind him and the Hardy boys set out walking once more. 

"I think we’re almost to Boonboro," Joe remarked after another two miles or so of silent hiking. "And still no cars. That’s a little weird, we were passing more people on our way in."

"True," Frank agreed. He glanced at his watch again, and frowned. "Drat it, my watch has stopped, it still says a little after one."

Joe pulled up his windbreaker cuff and looked at his own watch, then stopped in his tracks. "You sure it’s stopped?" he asked slowly.

"Yeah, it read three past one when we left the car." Frank stopped beside his brother. "Why?"

"I’ve got three past one, also," Joe answered. He shook his head. "What’re the odds of that?"

"Stranger things have happened," Frank told him, trying to sound like the weird coincidence wasn’t bothering him. "Maybe the interference that messed with that phone line did something funky to our watches, too."

"Possibly." Joe started walking again, but it was plain he was also a little bothered. Then he perked up. "Hey, there’s a garage!"

Frank nodded; he’d seen it a few seconds before. The boys quickened their pace and soon were peering into the garage office, wincing a little at the heavy rock beat coming from a boom box on the floor. "Must be in the workshop," Joe suggested, nodding to where several cars were sitting. The boys walked around to the workshop and looked at each other with troubled frowns. There was no one in sight.

Frank took a deep breath, trying to squash the uneasy feeling in his gut. He was about to suggest splitting up to look around the place when Joe suddenly pointed at the clock hanging on the wall. 

It read 1:03. 

Frank immediately changed his mind. Something screwy was going on, and until they knew what it was, they were better off sticking together.

Joe seemed to be reading his mind. "I think we better not split up," he said tensely.

"I think you’re right, but we should look around."

Joe didn’t argue, but he was a little pale. A thorough search of the premises revealed nothing but a cigarette smouldering in an ash tray. "This is crazy," the younger boy murmured, running a distracted hand through his blond hair. "Who would just walk off and leave their boom box playing? And why? He can’t have left too long ago- the cigarette’s not burned out yet."

Frank bit his lip, thinking, but there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation. Surely anyone who’d left would have turned off the music and locked the place up! "Unless he was taken forcibly..."

"Well, it’s possible, but it sure doesn’t look that way. Everything’s pretty orderly."

Frank nodded, moving to the side of the road again. "Look, Boonboro’s just around the corner," he said steadily. "Let’s get down there and talk to the sherriff."

Joe nodded, some of the tension leaving his face. But when the two boys had jogged around the corner, they both skidded to a halt and stared down at the town with widened eyes.

"This is not normal." The strained voice was Joe Hardy’s, and the understatement was enormous. 

Frank, beside him, was staring in disbelief. "No," he agreed after a long pause. "But I can’t imagine what the deal is. It doesn’t make any sense."

The sight that had so paralyzed the young sleuths was, at first glance, not a particularly odd one. It would have made a fine postcard picture; the main street of the town, with the vehicles of the townspeople in the streets.

Except that not one automobile was moving.

Frank noticed that the traffic lights were blinking yellow, not cycling through red, green, amber, red. He was about to mention that when, "Listen," Joe said softly.

"What?"

"Nothing. No engine noise. They’ve all been turned off."

Frank’s dark eyes widened. "You’re right, I can’t believe I didn’t notice that." He took a deep breath. "Well. We can either go down there and try to figure out what’s going on, or we can go back and try to hike to the next town- about thirty miles."

Joe slowly started down the hill. "They can’t all have just vanished into thin air," he said stoutly, but he was even paler than he had been. 

To both boys’ dismay and fear, it seemed as if Joe’s assertion was entirely in error; the townspeople did seem to have vanished into thin air. 

The cars and trucks on the road, aside from being empty and turned off, had another very peculiar thing in common; keys left in the ignition. Every single ignition had a set of keys dangling from it. "These cars were being driven," Frank whispered, baffled and intimidated by the eerie silence of the town. 

Summoning their nerve- and curiosity- the boys began to investigate. Shops were open, and nothing appeared to have been disturbed. In several cases, cash registers had been left wide open and change had been placed on countertops. The refrigerators in the grocery store were still working, keeping the dairy products and frozen food cold. The little sprinkler system came on and showered the salad greens with water, then shut off.

Plates of hot food sat at empty tables in the restaurants, some partly eaten, with utensils lying on or alongside the plates. The stoves and ovens were still putting out heat- but by far the creepiest aspect of the entire situation was that none of the food was burning. The soup boiled, without boiling over; the ribs roasted without charring. "This is crazy," Joe murmured, backing away from the uncanny place and shoving his trembling hands into his coat pockets. 

And everywhere they went, clocks ticked quietly away, minute hands stuck at three past and hour hands stuck at one. "The second hands are moving!" Frank said bewilderedly, staring at the clock in the bank. "Even the digital clocks are still recording the seconds, but it’s not adding up to minutes."

"What, we’re stuck in a timewarp?" Joe asked weakly, trying to smile.

"We can’t be- the sun’s lower than it was. Time is still going, it’s just not being counted," Frank mused, shaking his head. "But that can be accounted for- not easily..."

Joe frowned suddenly. "The police station," he said. 

"What?"

"Let’s go over there."

Frank gave him a baffled look, but followed his brother into the station. Joe leaned over the chief’s desk and rummaged through the outbox. "Here. This is what he was working on when we came in. And there’s only these two things on top of it. Whatever... happened, must have done so almost immediately after we left," he said, holding up the papers. "So why didn’t our watches stop until three past one?"

"Well, he might’ve gotten a phone call or had to leave the office for a while," Frank pointed out. 

Joe dropped the papers and watched them fall back into the box. "I wasn’t thinking," he mumbled. "Of course." 

"Don’t be so hard on yourself," Frank told him, touching his shoulder gently. "We could be looking at two different things- the clocks and the phones and other electronical messups on one hand, and the disappearings on the other."

"Well, but the stoves," Joe reminded him. "Some weird electricity or other energy source could spazz out the electronic stuff, but altering the cooking time of food?"

"Maybe Tom Swift is experimenting with a time machine and it’s given off some weird rays that alter time," Frank suggested, trying for lighthearted and failing miserably.

"And made an entire town vanish in the middle of what they were doing?" Joe took a deep breath and let it out rather shakily. "I dunno, brother. Besides, why didn’t it affect the freezers and the automatic timing on the sprinklers in the supermarket?"

Frank just shook his head. He was out of ideas. "We’ve got to get home," he said at last. "We’re way over our heads."

"How?" Joe asked hopelessly. "We can’t just take one of these cars, you know-"

"Why not? It’s an emergency, wouldn’t you say? And they all have the keys in them."

"Well...maybe one of the ones at the rear of the pack," Joe agreed after a moment. 

"Hmm, yeah, I guess we wouldn’t be able to get any of the others out of the middle," his brother admitted. He took a breath, then led the way back down the sidewalk to the end of the street. Feeling rather hesitant, the brothers selected a car that was several feet to the rear of the rest and got in. To their relief, it started easily enough, so whatever was affecting the phones and clocks was not influencing the engine. Frank drove; Joe reached over and turned on the radio. 

Dead air greeted their ears; the boys exchanged a very uneasy glance. Joe quickly spun the dial through several stations, pausing at the sounds of voices and music. It quickly became clear that the live shows that were were the silent ones. The pre-recorded or preset programs of music and commercials were continuing to broadcast. The boys did not take in the significance right away, for Joe shut off the radio, saying he’d wait till they were clear of the town and try again.

They were silent as the borrowed car cruised along the road; within five minutes they had passed their own crippled vehicle and were making good speed on the quiet country road.

It wasn’t until they were pulling onto the highway near their home that they realized the situation was far worse than they had imagined. Cars sat abandoned on the normally bustling road, scattered singly and in clumps in the lanes, making it impossible to drive. 

Joe took a shaky breath. "The shoulder," he murmured to his white-faced brother. Frank nodded slowly, seeming dazed, and slowly pulled onto the emergency access. "Try the radio again," he said after several minutes of cautious driving. He hoped no cars had been stranded on the shoulder recently! 

Joe switched on the radio with a shaky hand, unnerved by the seemingly endless procession of empty, nonfunctioning cars. This time as he went through the dial, he realized there was more dead air than before. Several programs had ended and it seemed there was no one in the studios to switch over to the next one. "The talk show from New York is coming through," he said at last, in a slightly reassured voice. 

Frank glanced over, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if that show was taped or not. He found himself fervently hoping not. Just how widespread was this frightening thing? How could people just vanish like this, leaving no trace of what had caused it? Why had the clocks stopped? What, if anything, was the connection? And most important to the unnerved teen at the moment; would they find anyone at home when they got there? He feared not- Bayport itself had plainly been affected, judging from the state of the highway.

Joe seemed to have reached the same conclusion; he leaned forward and turned off the radio, then stared out the window, his expression frightened. As soon as Frank pulled into their driveway, he was out of the car and into the house. A second later he stepped back out, saying nothing, only shaking his head.

Frank got out and went to Joe’s side, his heart sinking. "We need to figure out how widespread this is," he said quietly.

Joe nodded. "Why are we still here and not- not where everyone else is? Why do we seem to be the only two around?"

Frank just shook his head. It did seem odd, now that he thought about it. They had passed a few empty cars on the country road, which should have indicated that everyone in the vicinity was being...taken? But obviously the boys hadn’t been taken, so perhaps they’d been overlooked. And if that was the case, maybe other people had been overlooked, too. He said as much to Joe, who looked doubtful but didn’t argue. He didn’t have to; it was a pretty weak ‘maybe’. Everyone in Boonboro had appeared to be missing, after all.

"Well, let’s look around a bit," Frank said after a moment. "We might find something."

The Hardys soon found was that the situation in Bayport was the same as in Boonboro. Here, though, it was more obvious than ever that people had vanished in the middle of their activities. Televisions were on, lawn mowers were running; in fact everything automated was going just as if it were an ordinary day. Only the tasks that required human intervention had stopped in mid-process. "Why is the lawn mower running, but the car on the street not running?" Joe asked, bewildered, shoving his shaking hands into his pockets and hoping his brother wouldn’t notice. 

"Why do you keep asking me questions I can’t answer?" Frank retorted crossly. The creepy atmosphere, the silence and the emptiness were beginning to get to him. Joe said nothing more, just hunched his shoulders and kept walking. Eventually they reached the waterfront, and here they both stood still for a while in shocked dismay. Normally a frantically busy place, there was not a soul in sight. 

"No ships on the bay," Joe muttered. "That’s impossible! There had to have been ships docking and leaving...they can’t all have been moored!"

"Well, none of this is exactly making much sense," Frank pointed out with a sigh. The older boy shivered, as much from the wind sweeping off the bay as from his own fear. "Let’s get to the telegraph office and try to send some messages." Joe nodded and they hurried back into town. 

It was there, at the telegraph office, that the full scope of the creepy mystery truly hit them.

First, Frank tried radioing New York. There was no answer. Then he tried other East Coast cities; Washington D.C.; Richmond, Baltimore, Raleigh, Atlanta...all up and down the coast, he received no replies to his urgent inquiries. Then he tried cities in the middle states; Chicago and Omaha, Green Bay and Minneapolis. Then the West coast. Then Canada and Mexico. Finally he stopped, staring at the receiver, too badly shaken to keep going. 

"Either we’ve got a bad set here, or this entire continent..." Joe began, and didn’t finish. They could see for themselves that the radio was fine, in perfect working order. Unthinkingly, Joe glanced at his watch, then bit his lip. 1:03.

Frank didn’t answer, just took a deep breath and stood up. "This thing’s not powerful enough to-" He froze as something clattered outside. Electrified, both boys raced out of the office, staring up and down the street in search of whatever had made the noise. There was no one in sight.

Joe looked as if he was about to ask a question, but then closed his mouth and glanced away. "Dunno," Frank answered the unspoken query. "Maybe- maybe the wind just knocked something over."

"P-probably," the younger boy replied shakily. "You- were saying something about the radio not being powerful enough."

"Right. Not powerful enough to reach another country. But if anyone was there to notice that North America- and probably South America, too- aren’t functioning...they would surely have come investigating by now," Frank said slowly, feeling another twinge of fear. "We would’ve noticed airplanes or something."

"TV," Joe said suddenly. "Cable TV. It gets a lot of foreign channels."

Frank hesitated, not at all sure what good would it really do? They would probably find about the same thing on TV as they had on the radio; some programs still broadcasting, others not functioning. But they would have to find out sooner or later. ‘We can’t be the only two left on the planet!’ he thought fiercely. ‘There’ve got to be others! And we’ve got to find them.’

Frank was partly right. His deduction of what they’d see on TV was right on. But his conclusion that they couldn’t be the only two people on the planet was looking more and more inaccurate.

"This is getting really scary," Joe muttered after about half an hour, turning the set off with an impatient gesture of the remote control. "We can’t be the only-"

The sound of shattering glass broke him off in mid-word; both boys sat frozen for a moment, staring at the object that had just broken the window and was now rolling across the carpet. Then Frank leapt up and ran to the window to look out; Joe gingerly picked up the object, half-expecting it to go off in his hand. "There’s no one out there," Frank said slowly, sounding baffled. Joe came over to him, carefully avoiding the broken glass, still holding the object.

"It’s a softball," he murmured. "A perfectly ordinary softball- it’s even got the kid’s name written on it, Robby Evans. But who’d be playing ball at a time like this?"

"Evans," Frank repeated. "Evans are about a block down. C’mon!"

"No one," Frank concluded, shaking his head. Joe was standing close by, closer than usual, and his face was strained with his efforts to control his fear. Frank was feeling extremely creeped out as well, but he was having more success hiding it than his younger brother.

There was, without a doubt, no one in the Evans home. There was no one who could have thrown the softball through the window. But softballs didn’t fly under their own power; something had to be responsible for it!

But did he really want to know what that something might be?

"There’s nothing- no one- here," Joe said softly, stating the obvious. "Let’s get home, Frank. No point hanging around someone else’s house."

Frank nodded, dropping the softball onto the Evans’ dining room table. He and his brother walked quickly out the door, closing it firmly behind them. The sun had almost set, the older boy noticed, and shivered. 

The two of them returned to their own home, walking much more quickly than was usual for either of them. Frank wasn’t about to admit it, but he had the most unpleasant feeling of being watched...or followed. It was a relief to get into the house, but his relief didn’t last long. Their home was just as empty, just as silent, with the same watching, waiting feeling to it. "Well, we’re getting exactly nowhere," he mused, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. 

Joe sat down on the sofa, shivering despite his windbreaker. "I hate this," he said miserably. "I feel like- like someone’s watching me, and I don’t think they’re friendly. And-" he broke off, biting his lip and scuffing at the carpet with his sneakered feet.

"And?" Frank asked, sitting on the arm of the sofa.

"And it- it’s going to be dark soon, and- well, things were bad enough in daylight, but at least nothing was happening! Now- that softball- now I just have the awful feeling that other things are going to start happening, too." Joe looked away, his head lowered. 

"I was thinking along similar lines- it might not be rational, but you’re right, nothing inexplicable- I mean, nothing supernatural-" Frank stopped, sighed impatiently. "Things were weird, but they weren’t this weird," he concluded at last. "And that means they might keep getting weirder. And I don’t like the idea at all. I can’t decide if we’d be better staying in the house, or better getting away from town altogether."

"I think it’s going to be- to feel- the same, no matter where we are. And outside, we’ll have to deal with the weather, too," Joe pointed out, clenching his hands together tightly in a vain attempt to stop them from shaking. "And it’ll be...weirder in the dark, I’d think." 

Scarier, Frank translated silently, pulling his hand from his pocket and sliding his arm around Joe’s tense shoulders. "You’re right. And we’ll have food, water, blankets and other stuff here," he agreed. "Besides, Joe, keep in mind- it’s unnerving, yeah, but there’s no sign of violence. And we haven’t been hurt."

The word ‘yet’ hung in the air.

"Even when the window broke," he went on hurriedly, "it happened when we weren’t near it."

"True," Joe agreed, and Frank felt some of the tension ease from his brother’s body. 

"We should probably eat something."

"I’m not hungry."

"I’m not very hungry either, but we skipped lunch and we should eat at least a little." It would be a distraction, and they might just need their strength before dawn.

"We won’t be able to cook anything, I bet," Joe murmured, and Frank recalled the uncanny fires in the restaurant kitchens. 

"The microwave might work," he suggested.

As it turned out, the microwave did not work. And although the stove turned on easily enough, the pan they placed over the flame did not heat up. The flames were hot enough; Joe nearly burned his fingers, testing this, but the hot dog he held over the burner refused to cook. "This is crazy!" he exploded at last, dropping it on the counter and spinning to face Frank. "Things like this just don’t happen!"

"What do you want me to-" Frank clenched his teeth on the remainder of the sharp remark, sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Erupting at each other was not going to help the situation. "I know," he started again, more calmly. "But it is happening, and we’re going to have to cope with it."

"Sorry," Joe murmured, touching Frank’s hand gently. "I’m sorry, I just- I’m- scared." 

"I’m getting pretty freaked myself," Frank muttered, looking uneasily at the kitchen window. The swift autumn day had passed, and only a little light remained in the sky. Then he stared, his eyes widening.

"What?" Joe asked, half groaned, and turned to look. "The streetlights," he said after a moment. 

"Streetlights are on timers," Frank stated. 

"Actually, I think they’re on solar detection," Joe corrected him. "That’s why they go on sometimes during a bad thunderstorm."

"Oh." Frank suddenly felt a little foolish. "Right, I forgot about that." He looked away, shaking his head, then realized what else was bugging him about the view from the window. The streetlights were on- but the lights of the neighboring houses remained off. Naturally; there was no one there to turn them on. A shudder ran down the teen’s back again; where the hell had everyone vanished to? Why? Why were he and Joe seemingly the last two people in the ...state? Country? Continent?

In the world?

The thought was too frightening to contemplate; an empty planet with a 16- and a 17- year old wandering about, trying to understand what had happened to their population. 

‘What if it’s like this for- for always? What if no one comes back from wherever they’ve gone? And how the heck are we going to get by with everything acting so strange? Can’t cook, can’t keep time, won’t be able to drive unless we haul the abandoned cars off the roads...’

"I guess sandwiches will have to do it," Joe was saying disgustedly. Frank was grateful to pull his attention away from his speculations, and busied himself with making a tuna sandwich. He was relieved to note that the electric can opener did work correctly. 

By the time they had finished eating, full dark had arrived outside. The house was bright, but seemed chilly despite the fact that neither boy had removed his jacket. Frank knew the heat was on, he could hear the furnace humming and feel the warm air drifting out of the vents. The chilled feeling was the result of their own fear. Together, they went into the living room and, seating themselves anxiously on the couch, turned on the television again. Not to see any particular show, but to try and pick up some hints as to whatever was happening.

The only hints they picked up were that everything live was not functioning, just as with the radio. And several of the pre-recorded programs, having reached their ends, had gone off the air as well. That, they had expected to some degree- but the Spanish channel happened to be one of the non-functioning ones. It was supposed to be some live show or other, according to the TV Guide, and the implication was inescapable. 

Joe turned and looked at Frank, his blue eyes haunted. "We can’t be the only two," he said in a whisper. "There’s got to be others."

"I’m sure there are," Frank answered, sliding a little closer as he spoke. "But we won’t be able to contact them, at least not for a while. And I doubt we’ll be able to join ‘em, or have them join us. Just getting down the road is a bit of a problem; getting across the ocean is a bit moreso." 

"Yeah." Joe sighed and gazed at the static-filled TV screen wistfully. Then he picked up the remote and shut it off. Silence filled the house. 

Joe Hardy was lying on his bed, trying valiantly to read a book, when the silence was broken.

He and Frank had come upstairs not long after turning off the TV; it was better than just sitting in the living room and waiting for something to happen. His room didn’t feel like the refuge it usually did, though.

Frank was curled up at the other end of the bed, also trying to read and apparently having more success than Joe was. He’d attempted to get on the computer, but the horrifying noise the CPU had made when they turned it on had made him switch it hurriedly off again. Joe, finally recovering from the shock, had said it sounded like a ghost had gotten stuck in the disk drive. It was an eerie, moaning sort of howl, a sound they had never heard any machine make before. Frank had taken a minute or so to reply to Joe’s comment, but finally ventured that it was probably connected with the weirdness of the clocks, phones and fires. 

"Couldn’t’ve gotten online anyway," he’d added after a moment, realizing it only then. "If the phones aren’t working, the modem sure won’t work."

Now, as Joe slowly turned over the page he was reading, he sighed to discover that what he’d just read hadn’t stuck with him. He was about to flip back and give it another try when the squeal of brakes skidding to a stop and the heavy crash of an impact brought him to his feet with a gasp. 

"That was right outside the house!" Frank said tensely, just as startled. "C’mon, someone-" He didn’t get to finish, because Joe was already moving. 

Racing out of their house, the boys paused on the sidewalk and stared up and down the street in amazement. There wasn’t even the slightest sign of a crash. Joe pulled his little flashlight from his pocket- he was almost never without it- and shone it up and down the street. He tried not to notice the blank, dark windows of the houses on the block. "Weird. Tire tracks," he muttered, stepping into the street and shining the light down on fresh skid lines. "But where’s the-"

"Joe!"

Joe spun around at the call, then stared, his mouth falling open. A tire was rolling down the street toward him, following the tire tracks that stopped a few feet away. Just rolling, as smoothly and steadily as if someone were pushing it- but there was no one there! And where had it come from? Any tires should be rolling away from the smashup- if there had been a smashup... He watched as it rolled right up to him, then reached out as it was about to pass him and shoved. The tire fell over and spun around once or twice before settling to the ground.

Joe jerked his hand away as Frank ran up. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just my hand- that thing’s freezing!"

Frank crouched over the tire and touched it carefully, then yanked his hand back. "Man, it sure is. Like it’s been in a freezer or something! Look, it’s even got ice in the treads."

Joe leaned closer, shining his flashlight on the tire. Light glittered and sparkled off the crushed ice. "Crazier and crazier," he muttered. "There’s been no ice or snow around here!"

"And there’s no sign at all of an-" Frank froze as a sudden, brilliant light illuminated the brothers. 

Staring wildly around, Joe tugged on Frank’s sleeve and pointed. A pair of headlights was blazing down on them, moving rapidly towards them, and from the height and power of the lights it seemed to be a very big vehicle! "Look out!" he yelled, and flung himself out of the way of the onrushing lights. An air horn blew as he landed hard on the sidewalk- but aside from that, the only sound was his own horrified cry.

When he got up, he immediately noticed two things. First, the mysterious tire was gone.

Second, his older brother was gone, too.

"Frank!" Joe cried out his brother’s name, then stared around the street, shaking in every limb. "FRANK!!" he shrieked again. He stumbled into the street, beaming his light around wildly. There was nothing but the pavement and the silent, dark houses. "What is happening?" he whispered on the end of a sob. "Frank! Where are you?!" What had charged them? The horn had sounded like it belonged to a Mack truck, but there had been no engine noise at all. Had the ghost truck killed his brother? Or had it just taken him away somewhere? 

Shuddering all over, Joe sank down to the curb and sat there, his head bowed. The cold October wind bit through his windbreaker, and he was soon shivering with more than fear. Still he sat, not knowing what to do; his mind was overwhelmed with the uncanny horror of his situation. ‘Cold,’ he realized at last, pulling the inadequate jacket closer around him. ‘Should go inside, get warm. Might get hypothermia if I don’t.’ He sat still for a moment longer, then forced himself to stand and walk back to his house- the only house in the neighborhood with lights shining in the windows.

"Joe?" Frank picked himself up from the sidewalk and shook his head. "This is getting more and more dangerous," he muttered. He had no idea whether a set of ghost headlights could really run someone down or not, but that set certainly had tried to. "Ghost headlights, what am I thinking?" he chided himself, but he shivered despite his efforts not to. There wasn’t much else they could have been, headlights with an air horn but no engine. "And the tire’s gone too," he realized, staring into the street. "I guess if it’d hit me, I’d be wherever the tire is..." Then his eyes went wide with horror. "Joe?" he called again.

There was no answer. The street was silent and empty. 

For several minutes, Frank stood by the side of the road, trembling. At last he stepped into the street, half-expecting another blaze of headlights, but nothing happened. He crossed the street, then slowly walked back to his home. 

Opening the front door, he stepped inside and stared around the living room, not sure what he was looking for. The door swung shut behind him and he jumped, then hurried up the stairs, carefully not looking around. ‘What am I going to do? What can I do?’ he asked himself frantically. ‘Maybe I should leave, after all. Maybe we both should have left, earlier, but who knows what else might be out there? At least-’

A sound from downstairs. The sound of a drawer opening. Frank gasped and ran back down the steps. "Joe?" he called, hope straining his voice. Reaching the kitchen, he paused; the silverware drawer was hanging open, but aside from that there was nothing peculiar going on- and no sign of his brother. 

Something in the living room scraped; whirling, Frank saw that one of the pictures had come loose from the wall and landed on the sofa. "Stop it!" he shouted, backing up a step. "Whoever you are, whatever you’re up to, just- stop it! Go play with someone else’s furniture!"

Silence. Frank couldn’t stop trembling; ordinarily he’d feel like an idiot, yelling at an empty room in an empty house, but there was nothing ordinary about tonight. Swallowing hard, he backed into the kitchen and slid the silverware drawer shut, flinching as it squeaked. A sudden creak of wood over his head made him jump, but that, he told himself firmly, was just the old house settling.

He was halfway up the stairs again, his heart pounding at every crick and crack of the old wood, when a sudden tremendous clattering made him cry out in fear. He froze on the steps, then realized that the sound was that of the neighbor’s metal garbage cans toppling over. All four of them, simultaneously- with enough violence to dislodge the lids, from the sound of it. He gripped the wooden handrail hard, bit his lower lip, and forced himself to continue up the stairs.

Joe walked into the silent house and stood silently in the living room for a while. It was warmer than the outdoors, but he couldn’t stop shaking. He was alone. Everyone had disappeared; even his brother was gone. He didn’t know what to do. There didn’t seem to be anything to be done. Maybe he should try to sleep, he thought, and then shook his head. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, he knew that much. 

Something flickered at the edge of his peripheral vision, jerking him back to awareness, and he turned his head sharply. For just a second, he could have sworn he saw... something, but it was gone too fast to tell what. Frowning, he glanced around, but everything seemed to be in place. 

Joe shook his head again, moving for the stairs. He was freaked out, it wasn’t unusual to think you’d seen something weird when- 

The chandelier over the dining room table was moving. Swinging like a miniature pendulum, silently, eerily. Light and shadow chased each other over the walls of the room. Joe froze in his tracks and stared, and suddenly it was still, as still as if it had never moved. "I’m seeing things," he whispered, clenching his eyes shut and then opening them again. Taking a deep breath, he walked past the dining room and stepped on the first stair. Then he turned to look again, and gasped.

The picture on the dining room wall was blank! 

Normally a scene of a boat on a lake, it was now a patch of bare, brownish canvas with a dark wooden frame around it.

Joe took a long, shuddering breath and turned slowly. The pictures on the living room wall were also blank. They hadn’t been when he came into the room, so it had just now happened. Terror-stricken, he raced up the steps and stared up and down the hallway. Every picture frame held either blank paper or canvas. 

The sixteen-year-old stumbled forward, pushed open the closest door- his own room- and saw that the pictures on his desk, photographs of his parents and his brother, were blank as well. "No," he whispered, his fists clenching. "No! You can’t! You’ve taken them away, you can’t take their pictures, too!" He sank to his knees beside the bed- and then froze again. His bed- the sheets- 

A cry of terror echoed through the house as Joe stared at the blood-stained sheets of his bed. Lifting his hands, he rubbed at his eyes, then stared again. "No," he whimpered. Whose blood was it? His parents’? Frank’s? But even as he stared, the blood melted away, vanishing. Was that what had happened to everyone else? Had they all been killed, their bodies and blood vanishing? "Crazy," he whispered hoarsely, but was that any more crazy than everything else that had happened today?

Frank leaned back against the wall of his room and slowly let himself slide down to the floor. He had crept up the stairs as silently as he could, tiptoed down the hall and shut the door very cautiously, afraid to make even the slightest sound. He had an irrational fear that if he made a noise, it would provoke the other noises- the inexplicable ones.

He wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his head on his knees, hearing the thud-thud-thud of his pounding pulse and feeling the shivers that shook him from head to toe. He breathed as slowly and steadily as he could, but the fear wouldn’t leave him. 

Very little ever rattled Frank Hardy. Certainly he’d never felt more than a moment’s alarm, swiftly passing, when confronted with anything ‘supernatural’. He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses or the occult. Experience had taught him that such things were a mix of hoax and superstition. And when it wasn’t, there was generally a scientific explanation for weird and rather unnerving happenings.

But there was nothing of the hoax or superstition about this day and night. No one would go to this sort of trouble just to play a Halloween joke on a teenager. And there was no scientific explanation that he could think of that would explain all, or even some, of the mystery. People didn’t vanish, leaving keys in cars and food on stoves. Clocks didn’t all stop at a particular time, yet keep ticking. Fire didn’t warm his hands, yet fail to cook food. Objects didn’t move under their own power.

For the first time in his seventeen years, Frank was face-to-face with a supernatural phenomenon he could neither dismiss nor explain, and it was scaring him more than any physical danger ever had. He wondered what time it really was. He wished the sun would come up again; maybe it would put a stop to this freakiness. But maybe the sunlight would just reveal more... worse.

It was while he was thinking this that there came a strange scratching sound. Sounded like a rat, the boy thought, suddenly realizing that, just as he hadn’t seen any people, he also had not seen any pets- any animals at all. The scratching died away, then returned again and he looked up, frowning. A rat scratching at the plaster- except they didn’t have rats. The scratching persisted now, sometimes coming from several places at one time.

Then the knocking began. Not on the front door- on the walls, ceiling and roof. Little taps that sounded like acorns dropping gave way to a battering noise like hail; a pounding as of hammers seemed to make the whole house shudder. Frank gasped as an impact over his head made the dresser shudder and several of the objects on it shift. But there was no sign that the wall had been hit! No dented plaster, not even any flaking paint. The boy groaned and buried his face in his arms.

Abruptly as they had started, the knocks stopped. The scratching had died away. In the sudden silence, Frank could clearly hear the steps creaking, and moaned again. Was someone coming up? Or going down? The question seemed to be answered when his bedroom door swung open, hinges squealing. The boy’s head jerked up and he stared at the empty air, waiting, waiting for he knew not what.

A tremendous shattering crash made him cry out in fear; he scrambled to his feet and took a step towards the door, when another, different crash halted him. The first had sounded like glass and china breaking; the second sounded more like something extremely heavy landing on a very solid surface. He found himself backing away from the door as the house shook with crash after crash; wood splintering, glass breaking, chairs and tables toppling, doors slamming. 

Thuds and bangs and squealings, rattlings and hissings reberverated- some close by, some in other rooms. Deep in the basement, he heard a clanging that sounded exactly like someone beating on the dryer with a frying pan. The garbage disposal in the kitchen sink ran with a horrible grinding noise, as though there were a spoon stuck in it. Pots and pans slammed themselves together in the kitchen as cutlery clattered violently. The front door knocker beat a random barrage. A scraping noise came from the living room; the distant sound of upholstery being torn apart. Thuds sounded like books being flung at the walls of the den, and then an entire bookshelf seemed to smash to the floor. 

Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off. Gunshots sounded. Waves crashed against the walls of the house. Thunder crackled and boomed. A lion roared in the hallway; a wolf howled from inside Frank’s closet. Ripping noises made him stare at his bed, but whatever was ripping, it wasn’t the sheets. A low, ominous rumble made the room seem to vibrate. A whip cracked like a starter pistol. Chains rattled, ominously quiet. 

Frank had sunk to his knees in the middle of the room, his spilling eyes darting from one place to another in his attempts to locate the source of the sounds, his fists clenched helplessly against his shaking body. He was almost beyond terror when a voice shrieked right beside him, drowning out his own terrified cry. As if this were a signal, other voices joined in, shouting, arguing, whispering, calmly debating. Screaming. Sobbing, he clamped his hands over his ears, unable to understand a word, only knowing that he must be going insane. 

Joe Hardy didn’t know what to think. What to do. There didn’t seem to be anything to do; he was going mad, that was all.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he wrapped himself up in the blanket, in a forlorn attempt to bring some warmth back into his shivering body, but the cold was not the problem. Joe had never really decided where he stood on supernatural things; he knew Frank didn’t believe in them, but Joe had always wondered if there might not be something to it all.

Now he was finding out that there was, and he was terrified of it. 

At first he’d thought his eyes were just playing tricks on him. But the flickers in his vision were getting more and more visible, lasting longer. And he really didn’t like what he was seeing! 

Weird colors danced before his eyes, a psychedelic rainbow that fractured and spun hectically around him. Spots speckled randomly over the walls, then vanished, only to reappear in new places. The rug under his feet seemed to ripple and wave, the way that tall grass waves when wind blows over it- or when something creeps through it. 

Worse were the vague things that hovered at the sides of his sight. Ghostly greenish clouds, vague human-shaped forms, animal outlines, bright floating lights- they all vanished when he looked directly at them, reappeared when he looked away. Turning his head, Joe gasped; there was a gaping hole in the wall of his room. He could see the hallway through it. And he could see something else- something creeping up out of the hole. Bugs, he realized after a moment, drawing the blanket closer around him. Termites?

Spiders.

Joe hated spiders, had ever since he’d nearly been bitten by a Black Widow. Now he could only stare in horror as first one, then several, then dozens of spiders crawled quietly out of the broken wall and began to explore the room. He knew perfectly well that most of them were harmless, but he still shuddered as the creatures crept up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

And then they were gone. Joe closed his eyes in relief; when he opened them; he yelped in shock. A large rat was sitting on the floor in front of him, sniffing the air, its mouth slightly open. It turned at his cry- and suddenly it wasn’t a rat. It was a wolf. "I’m going crazy," Joe whispered aloud, staring wide-eyed at the impossible animal. 

This time the animal didn’t vanish. Instead, the lights went out. Joe’s breath caught in his throat; turning his head quickly, he saw sparks flying from the electrical socket. ‘A short,’ he thought, hoping that was all it was. ‘Blew a fuse or something.’ Joe thought about going down to the basement to check it out, but dismissed the idea at once. He couldn’t make himself do it. He couldn’t even make himself descend to the kitchen for a candle. He’d lost his little flashlight in the confusion outside, but after a minute or so he remembered that there was a larger one in his nightstand drawer. He managed to persuade his frozen body to move over and open the drawer, but as he moved, something outside the window flickered. Joe turned to look- and screamed in shock.

Eyes.

Eyes were floating outside his second-story window. Eyes that glowed eerily red, eyes that were fixed on him, that seemed to bore into him. They narrowed at his scream, and below them a mouth opened, baring needle-sharp teeth in a grin. Two hands pressed flat against the window, gnarled hands with long, thin fingers topped with talon-like claws. 

Joe whimpered, tore his gaze away, scrambled frantically for the flashlight, for anything that he could use to defend himself if the...creature broke the window. But when he opened the nightstand, he cried out again and yanked his hands away; small purple eyes gazed up at him from inside the drawer. "No!" he shouted, closing his eyes and wrapping the blanket over his head. "No, no, no..." His voice trailed away into soft, terrified sobs. Silence filled the room. Joe could feel the eyes of the creature in the window on him, knew the thing was enjoying his fear. The hideous silence stretched on and on. 

A sudden, bright light flashing made him pull back the blanket from his head; he was almost blinded by a brilliant burst of green lightning. In the unnatural light Joe saw that the thing at the window was gone- where was it? he wondered, and that was his last coherent thought for a long time, for the nightmares hovering around the sides of his sight closed in on him.

Unnatural eyes stared at him, eyes with no visible owners. A demonlike figure coalesced from an orange-tinted cloud to breathe fire from its mouth, revealing the unspeakable misshapen things that were all homing in on the bed where Joe lay terror-stricken. Crawling, mincing, slithering, they scrambled out of drawers, peered from around corners, slinked out from under furniture and crept over the head and foot of the bed. They dug claws into the dangling sheets to climb up, scaled the walls to scamper across like lizards, launched themselves into the air and flapped wildly around the room. Joe sat frozen, too scared to scream.

The fire dripped sparks on the floor, igniting the carpet. The blaze as it spread rapidly over the floor; soon the flames were racing up all four walls, charring the ceiling. And as each creature was touched by the flames, it vanished, leaving behind a faces in the flames; the faces of his parents, his father pale and gaunt, his mother in terrible pain. His brother lying still and cold. His girlfriend’s tearful face. People he didn’t know, screaming soundlessly, their faces contorted and their clothes torn, revealing horrific wounds. 

A huge hand reached down from nowhere and closed tightly around the blanket, stripping it away and flinging it into the fire. It reached down again; icy fingers closed around Joe’s paralyzed body. He was lifted and the hand plunged into a vast, dark, frigidly cold lake. Joe struggled weakly, the cold and fear sapping his strength, his will. He held his breath, felt his heart beating faster, his lungs straining for air...

Joe woke with a gasp, sat straight up in bed- and tried to check the scream that was burning his throat as he realized where he was. Panting, he stared wildly around his room. His nightstand drawer was closed. There was no hole in the wall. The blanket was bunched around him- there was no sign of the creatures or the lake of fear. Trembling, he looked at the window, where dawn was just breaking. "I...dreamed it?" he muttered, and felt his throat contract painfully. His voice was hoarse, he sounded like he was coming down with laryngitis.

Hoarse from screaming. From calling for his brother. His legs ached from the walking they’d done the day before; there was a strange mark on his right hand where he’d touched the icy cold tire the previous night. 

Joe sank back on the bed, exhausted and despairing. He had no idea what had been dream and what had been real, but the day before had happened, there could be no doubt of- His thoughts stopped as he turned his head; the clock beside him was flashing 3:23. 

"Three twenty-three?" he croaked, sitting up with a jolt. So the power had been working for almost three and a half hours? But did that mean-? He pushed himself out of bed and staggered a little as he tried to hurry to the door. Flinging it open he saw, out of the corner of his eye, something move...and froze. Turning, he cringed as he saw nothing there.

A door squeaked, making him jump. The bathroom door. That was where he’d seen the movement. Maybe...maybe someone was here? Maybe they’d just gone in? He started again at the sound of water running, then moved slowly down the hallway, trembling. Reaching out, he pushed gently on the door; it squeaked again as it swung open. 

At the squeak, the person standing at the sink turned sharply, eyes going wide- and then even wider as their gazes met. 

"Joe!" 

"Frank?" The younger boy was almost afraid to believe his eyes. His doubts were removed, however, when his brother dropped the washcloth he was holding, stepped quickly forward, and hugged him fiercely. "Frank, where did you go?" he whispered, wrapping his arms around the warm, solid body. This was one sight that was real! 

His brother didn’t answer for several seconds; Joe could feel him shaking. "Where did you go?" Frank asked at last, his voice as hoarse as Joe’s own. "I thought that...that truck... or whatever it was, had taken you away!"

"I thought that’d happened to you," Joe replied, trying to shake his head in bewilderment. It didn’t work very well, since his cheek was against his taller brother’s shoulder. "And now I wake up and you’re here...and the clock is flashing at three-twenty-three...is- do you think anyone else-?" 

Frank let go long enough to look at his watch, and his eyes- bloodshot eyes, Joe noticed- widened. "My watch says four twenty-six," he whispered. "Time’s moving again!"

"And has been for about three hours," Joe concluded. "But..."

Frank turned to the sink and shut off the running water. "Let’s find out," he murmured, and the two of them moved to descend the stairs, keeping very close together.

"So did it happen or not?" Joe asked an hour later, draping himself on his bed and scooting over to make room for Frank to sit. The older boy sat down, frowning.

They had turned on the radios to discover the voices of live DJ’s broadcasting their post-Halloween shows. They had turned on the stove and quickly found that the flames charred a bit of paper they poked against the burner. Joe had clicked on the TV; the channels were all functioning again. Frank had used the phone to call the Speaking Clock and discovered that it was now a little after six-thirty. He’d promptly set his watch, then hung up. The newspaper was lying on the front lawn, and several cars had driven past the end of High Street when they went out to retrieve it.

On the other hand, the mysterious tire had been lying in the gutter, water puddled around it. And there was a very unfamiliar car in the driveway. Frank had called the police and informed them that someone seemed to have dumped a stolen car at their place. Then he’d found a rag and carefully, rather guiltily, wiped every single surface of the car thoroughly clean of fingerprints. Joe had grabbed up the packet of papers they’d got from the Boonboro sherriff and hustled inside to put them on his father’s desk. Now all they needed to do was find a couple spare tires and get their own car back! 

But that was a minor thing, easily accomplished. "I don’t know. Everything’s back to normal," he answered Joe’s question slowly. "But how much of it happened and how much of it was just nightmares or something..."

Joe propped his chin in his hands; he had calmed down considerably since the two had traded stories. Joe had seen things; Frank had heard things. They hadn’t been the same things, not by a long shot, but some parts did seem to be the sorts of things one had in nightmares. "Y’know what I think?" Joe said at last.

"Hmmm?"

"Well, the clock was blinking at 3:23 am, not 1:03 pm," Joe said thoughtfully. "That means it had been three hours since- well, since time started up again. I think what happened is, the...stuff kept on until Halloween was over, and then stopped, and-"

"But wouldn’t that be midnight?"

"Well, here it would be, but remember, the West Coast is three hours behind us. So three o’clock here is midnight over there. Whatever it was that did it might have been in control until Halloween was totally over."

Frank considered that. For pure speculation, it made a lot of sense. "And it explains why we’re so wiped, we’ve had three and a half hours of sleep," he said wearily. "On top of a truly terrifying night."

"No foolin’," Joe sighed, collapsing with his head on the pillow.

"I think I just realized something else," Frank mused after a moment. "You and I didn’t lose track of each other until we were out of each other’s sight. That is, when those- headlights came along."

"That’s true," Joe mused. "And that would fit in with the fact that everyone in Boonboro vanished so quickly. As soon as we’d left...wonder if that means everyone in Bayport disappeared as soon as we left town?"

"What I’m wondering is how people are going to react to it," Frank said with a frown. "No one’s going to have much of an explanation for why it happened."

Joe propped himself up again, his forehead creasing. "Then why wasn’t it on the news?" he asked softly. The brothers exchanged a thoughtful, perplexed look.

"And it wasn’t in the paper, either...no mention on the radio...and I don’t think it could be covered up too easily, so there ought to have been some sort of a stir."

"Maybe it wasn’t everyone else who disappeared, Frank. Maybe it was just us."

The older boy was quiet for a moment, and then he yawned. "It’s a thought," he agreed. "But I’m too tired to think about it anymore. I’m going back to sleep for a couple hours."

"Sounds like a good idea," Joe admitted, lying down again. "Just don’t disappear on me again, okay?"

"I won’t if you won’t," Frank told him, leaning over to squeeze Joe’s shoulder. "In fact, if it’s okay with you, I’ll stay right where I am."

"As long as you don’t grab all the covers," Joe answered sleepily as Frank flopped down beside him and pulled the quilt over them both.

"Who’re you calling?"

"Tom Swift."

Joe frowned at his brother curiously as Frank dialed the basement telephone. "Why?"

"I want to find out if he’s been up to anything that might explain Halloween," Frank told him, pausing in mid-dial. 

Joe’s frown deepened. It was November second, and by all accounts everyone had had a perfectly ordinary Halloween. Except for Frank and Joe. Joe had listened to his brother carefully question their parents and friends; he would have been glad to dismiss the whole thing as a particularly nasty nightmare, but that was proving impossible. Not because anyone had mentioned weird happenings, but because of the mysteries they themselves had inadvertantly perpetrated. For one thing, neither their friends or parents had seen them all night. For another, the whole business of the ‘borrowed’ car and the abandoning of their own had required a very imaginative explanation- fortunately accepted by all involved. 

And there remained the white scar on Joe’s hand and Frank’s fingertip, where they had touched the icy tire. 

It was entirely possible that Tom would have some sort of explanation, Joe thought. The problem was, would he try to find some way to duplicate the experience, or not?

Tom Swift was not exactly a friend of the Hardys. He was a tall, thin, blond boy of about Joe’s age. Joe had once described him to Frank as, "What they’d get if they mixed you with me, added about five times as much curiosity and six times as many brains, and siphoned out every ounce of humor." Frank had been hard put to disagree. Tom’s high intelligence and inquisitiveness started and stopped with machines.

The Hardys had met him purely by accident and discovered that if anyone could get into more misadventure than they could, it was Tom. He and his father were constantly designing and improving inventions that no one else was anywhere near to developing, and as a result, attempts to steal the new technology were frequent and ruthless. 

"Hey- Tom? Frank Hardy. Listen, got a few minutes? I wanted to know what you’ve been up to lately. Like, two days ago." A long silence. "Oh? Okay. Oh, I see. Okay, we’ll do that." Frank hung up with a sigh.

"Nothing?"

"On the contrary, he suggests we drop over and visit him," Frank replied. "He doesn’t want to talk on an unsecured phone line."

Joe felt his face pale a little. "So he does know something."

"Yeah. Sounded very nervous." The boys regarded each other for a moment, and then Frank shrugged. "Let’s get going. We better get Mom and Dad to okay it-"

"Maybe Dad’ll let Jack fly us," Joe mused as his brother headed for the basement stairs.

"All right, we can talk here," Tom Swift said, dropping onto the floor of his cave hideaway and turning off the electronic device he was holding.

"What’s that?" Joe asked curiously, sitting down nearby and scootching around a bit to get comfortable. The floor was padded with a strange gel-like but dry substance.

"Bug detector- of the electronic type," Tom explained. "I’ve never found a bug in here that didn’t belong, but I don’t take chances."

The Hardys exchanged a glance at the brief flicker of humor, the first they’d ever seen from the boy. Frank took a seat beside his brother, then gave Tom an inquiring look. "So what went on?"

"First, tell me what happened to you guys."

The boys exchanged another glance, shrugged and gave Tom their version of Halloween’s events. By the time they were done, the young inventor was pale and quiet.

"Okay," he said at last, taking a deep breath. "You’re the only two who can track this to me, so I’ll tell you- you deserve the explanation. You’re right, Dad and I have been working on a time machine. In fact, we took it for a few trial runs last month, and it worked perfectly, or so we thought."

"So it just went haywire?" Joe inquired.

Tom hesitated. "In a way. Let me explain a little. Manipulating time is an incredibly difficult and complicated process. You have to alter just about every form of energy known to man- radiowaves, ultraviolet, infrared, microwaves, all the components on the nuclear range- the whole bit. I suppose we’re lucky we don’t have to split any atoms... Anyway, it takes a great deal of precision timing."

"That’s why no one has discovered it sooner," Frank murmured.

"Exactly. They didn’t even have the whole periodical table until very recently. Now, it also takes an incredible amount of energy," Tom went on. "Or at least, to go back in time does. There’s an incredible energy drain, and the farther you go, the greater it gets, until you reach the ultimate and would need infinite energy to go any further. So we went back as far as we could without frying the thing. No major problems."

The Hardys exchanged another glance, knowing Tom’s version of ‘major problems’ was vastly different from their own. "So you decided to try going forward?" Joe prodded.

"Yep. On Halloween morning. Dad had been away for a while, and it was his first day back. Well, guys, I still don’t know exactly what happened, but we found out one thing for sure. It takes virtually no energy to go forward in time. You still have to calculate everything precisely, but the actual expenditure is about a tenth that of a five-year hop backwards."

"We’ll take your word for it," Frank muttered.

"Problem is, that’s a hindsight situation. What we figured is that if going back took a lot of energy, going forward would take even more. I mean, we’re talking about a time that, technically, hasn’t even happened yet. Well, turns out that manipulating unformed possibilities is a lot simpler than messing with already set ones."

Joe frowned.

"What he’s saying," Frank translated, "is- well, remember Doug Adams’ Infinite Improbability Drive? It ran by tapping the power of infinite probabilities; in other words, the more unlikely it was to happen, the sooner it happened- on that spaceship. This is the other way around. The more unlikely it is, the more energy it takes to do it."

"Yeah- oh. So it’s more improbable that you’d turn up in the past, but more probable that you would arrive in the future, because the future hasn’t happened yet and you can pretty well decide for yourself what your future will be."

"Up to a point, yes, but you’ve got the idea," Tom agreed. "It’s the sheer unlikelyhood of arriving in the past at all that requires so much energy to get around it."

"Okay, so you had a ‘pastload’ of energy, but you only needed a ‘futureload’ of it..."

Tom gave Joe a rather respectful look. "I’ll have to remember that," he remarked. "Nice and succinct. That’s exactly what happened, and that’s as far as exactitude goes." He paused and sighed. "Dad and I have, um, differing opinions on what happened next. Dad has two theories; he favors the one that says the overload of energy shot us right past time travel and into dimensional travel. That we landed, not on a future Earth, but on an entirely different Earth. That it was us who were unseen and unheard."

"That leaves a lot unexplained," Frank murmured.

"I know, but he says people who’re affected by the time travel- that was us, or so we thought- would find the dimension sort of stuck, because the machine was acting on us directly. Doesn’t make much sense to me. His other theory is that instead of dimensionally travelling, we did time travel- but just got flung so far forward that no one from this era existed anymore. He’s pretty well abandoned that one, though. Maybe we wouldn’t be there, but other people should’ve been. Unless they were all abducted by aliens sometime between now and then, which does seem a trifle unlikely."

"It might’ve been some other catastrophe," Joe pointed out. Tom and Frank ignored this.

"So what’s your theory?" Frank asked. "Why were we affected by it when no one else was, or rather, seemed to be?"

Tom hesitated for a long moment. "I think we did something we never even considered," he answered at last. "Given what you described to me, and what we experienced, I can’t see any other explanation... I think, first, the energy we used was so powerful that it catapulted the whole world through time. That explains the clocks and phones and even the fires’ behavior. When we time travel, time stops for us- our watches have frozen up on every trip. And they don’t start back up again until we’re home again. We can’t contact anyone- we haven’t tried listening to the radio yet," he added thoughtfully.

"Okay, that makes sense," Frank agreed. Joe nodded. 

"Secondly, I think it ripped open the spiritual dimension in the process. That accounts for all the rest of it- the vanishings, the things moving by themselves, all the stuff you two experienced. We got some very nasty surprises ourselves. As to why you were aware of what was going on and very few other people were- I think you’d have to ask the ghosts that."

Frank and Joe stared at Tom, then each other. "You’re saying you think- you think you let loose a bunch of ghosts and poltergeists?" Frank managed at last, dumbfounded. He’d never imagined such an opinion could come from Tom Swift.

"It would make sense, though," Joe mused. "After all, it was Halloween. I know," he added at a look from his brother. "A lot of the old Halloween stuff, like haunted houses and seances and stuff, is just talk and suggestion- people talk themselves into believing a lot of nonsense. But remember, Frank, people have been calling on spirits at Halloween for centuries. And some very weird things have happened that don’t have much of an explanation. Suppose all that repeated summoning over the years had already weakened whatever barrier there was to keep the spirits in their own, um, place."

"That was about my own thought," Tom agreed. "It does explain your poltergeists. You should have been frozen in place, just like the clocks- just like everyone else was. You were caught somewhere in the middle, not frozen, but not able to see what Dad and I saw, either. Someone or something interfered."

"But why us? Why doesn’t anyone else remember anything happening?"

"Maybe they do and just don’t want to admit it," Joe retorted. "I mean, look at us and our very imaginitive explanation of that car!"

"But their reactions, Joe! No one else was unnerved, no one else was wiped out from being up all night-"

"Tell you what I think," Tom said, interrupting the burgeoning argument. "I think it happened to people that the ghosts wanted to convince."

"Convince?"

"That they exist."

Silence fell. 

"That would be why it was so extreme," Joe said at last, reading his brother’s mind. "Little, unnerving stuff could be brushed off, explained- maybe not well, but technology does weird things. But full-blown haunted...that’s a different story."

"I suspect they got mad when you told ‘em off," Tom remarked, looking at Frank. 

Frank nodded slowly, brushing his hair from his eyes. "It...did get real tense in the house, after that," he admitted. "I guess they knocked over the neighbor’s garbage cans just because I said that about messing with someone else’s stuff."

"So, when Halloween was over, did they leave, or...?" Joe’s question trailed off into another silence.

"I’m hoping that when Dad and I returned, using so much of the power in the process, that closed up the rift or sent them back or whatever. But-" Tom stopped in mid-phrase, his eyes suddenly widening. The Hardys turned to look where he pointed, and chills crept down their spines.

A small stone was drifting into the cave from the outside. Floating quietly and without fuss through the air.

The three boys watched in fascination, not unmixed with fear, as the stone settled gently to the padding before Tom.

"I...don’t think it did."