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Very few people experience the extra hour, that's something I learned pretty quickly. Growing up I mentioned it to my parents a few times and they brushed it off as a dream. As a child I was inclined to believe them and brush it off myself as dreaming, very real dreaming, but dreaming none-the-less but it continued and became harder for me to justify away as they had. I tried telling my parents again when I turned 16, I was on the verge of adulthood and thought that meant they would finally believe me, but they blamed it on exam stress and a overactive imagination.
Noises are worse in the extra hour, the creaking and the scratching of our old house are especially bad. The clocks stop ticking and for a moment right at the start of the hour there's a feeling of motion sickness in your stomach as the house goes completely silent and even the shadows of the trees dancing across my bedroom floor seem to pause. And then the thunder, lightning and rain start - no matter the weather. And the rain is always gone once it hits 12.01pm, I've run outside at the end of the hour and the grass is bone dry as if the rain had never even happened.
I don't know if time slows or stops in that hour but I think of it as stopping. And it happens no matter where I am.
And I say I've run outside at the end of the hour because I can't get out of my bedroom door while the hour is happening, I've even left it open to see if it's just the door being stuck but I'm never able to cross the threshold of the open door either and the hallway is always clouded in moving shadows. I even tried the window once. The only thing that I can open are my drawers and wardrobe doors - though I try not to as I never know what could be lurking in them.
The few times I remember being scared of the extra hour was when I was very young, I would never get out of bed, instead burrowing under my covers to pretend I'm dreaming until time started again. I used to try to ignore the skitters and the feeling of others in my room. The hushed whispers I heard and the moving around of my things from outside my covers. It wasn't until I was 9 or 10 that I braved getting out of bed during that time. And by then there wasn't much feeling of other as there was before or maybe because I was braver it didn't seem as bad to me? I'm not sure.
But suddenly the little creatures, I had no name for, and the shadowy elongated fingers that sometimes reached for me, or that I saw moving along my walls or my floor, didn't scare me anymore. Anything that comes from the extra hour I just refer to as other, because I don't think they come from here.
All the electronics seem to pause too, there's no Wi-Fi, there's no electricity running through the house or any of the electronics. My phone freezes. I keep candles in my room and a lighter for this reason, I tried a flashlight but it wouldn't turn on. And I tried to film it once to prove to my parents that I wasn't dreaming or making it up but the camera wouldn't turn on. I thought if I had one recording before the hour it would capture it all - but that didn't work either. It records until 11.59pm and then there's a only ever static until 12.02pm by which point I'm usually in front of the camera trying to see if it captured anything.
I did look into it and I found various lore on the extra hour, through online and library research, everything ranging from 'The witching hour' in pagan and wiccan lore to 'tween time' in fae lore. All myths and teachings surrounding an hour that occurs between 12am and 12.01am, it sounds like a oxymoron doesn't it? But believe me, it's very real.
When I turned 18, I still wouldn't give up that it was real and I was not deterred by my parents and their non-belief, through more searching I found a thread on a forum about it. But the thread, that only hosted 7 people including myself, shocked me. They all fear the 'dark hour' as they call it. They're terrified of it and they actively take steps to avoid it. They all want to get rid of it, to stop it from happening to them.
I don't tell them that I used to be scared of it but I'm not anymore. I don't tell them I count the minutes during the day until it's the 'dark hour'. I don't tell them that the thought of their so called 'dark hour' and the boy who lives within it are all that get me through some days.
They share horror stories of it of things that have happened. And I can't deny that some of their accounts are horrific. But I can't relate to experiences as bad as theirs and so keep my boy a secret, using my 'overactive imagination' to make up horror stories on par with their own. They all believe me when I tell them it's terrible, that I hate it, that I want it gone too - All the while hoping he never leaves me.
As with the rest, it's been happening as long as I can remember and as long as I'm awake at midnight I experience it. Some of those in the forums cycle through sleeping aids, they complain that even sleeping pills aren't enough to keep them asleep some nights though. I don't tell them I keep a stock of glucose tablets and energy drinks under my bed to make sure I manage to stay awake so I don't miss the hour they're so terrified of. The hour I would likely be terrified of too if it weren't for him.
I don't know for sure if he was there from the beginning, I really only remember him appearing after I'd experienced the 'dark hour' a fair few times already. I wasn't always awake at midnight so I don't know when for sure it started but to begin it was intermittent, it was only the odd time that I happened to be awake at midnight. Or if he was always there, he certainly didn't make himself known to start.
It was some time after my 11th birthday that I met him. One day he just stepped out of the shadows in my room and introduced himself. Cardan. He looked about my age, with floppy black hair, a pale complexion and black eyes with a golden ring around his irises. Without him even having to tell me I knew he was other. He wore black clothes but I don't think that would even matter because shadows seem to hang around him, no matter where he stood in the room.
Cardan is good at keeping the others away from me and my room and he tells me on those odd nights I don't wake in the dark hour he keeps them at bay still.
We just sit and talk most of the time. I tell him of here and how my days go, I tell him about my family, I hum and sing him songs I like and recap movies and TV shows I've seen. We take turns reading my books and making up our own stories. I show him pictures that I make a point of to print out now and I carry a camera everywhere now in case I see something I want to show to Cardan. I print off pages of the forums where the guys describe things that have happened and ask him about them. He tells me about his world, the creatures in it and his family. He tells me the differences between my world and his, he tells me he wishes he lived here and that he didn't have to go back every night.
The only thing we don't talk about is why he's here. None of the accounts on the forum have mentioned people during the dark hour. And when I repeatedly asked Cardan about it at the beginning he shrugged it off and I got the impression he knows as much about why he's here as I do.
It's been eight years now and I honestly can't imagine life without him.