Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (22 page)

“But it’s not as if they’re confined to the island, is it?” I asked. “Couldn’t they still leave
now
, from 1940?”

“Yes, and begin aging again, as normal. But to what end? To be caught up in a ferocious war? To encounter people who fear and misunderstand them? And there are other dangers as well. It’s best to stay here.”

“What other dangers?”

Her face clouded, as if she regretted having brought it up. “Nothing you need concern yourself with. Not yet, at least.”

With that she shooed me outside. I asked again what she meant by “other dangers,” but she shut the screen door in my face. “Enjoy the morning,” she chirped, forcing a smile. “Go find Miss Bloom, I’m sure she’s dying to see you.” And she disappeared into the house.

I wandered into the yard, wondering how I was supposed to get the image of that withered apple out of my head. Before long, though I did. It’s not that I forgot; it just stopped bothering me. It was the strangest thing.

Resuming my mission to find Emma, I learned from Hugh that she was on a supply run to the village, so I settled under a shade tree to wait. Within five minutes I was half-asleep in the grass, smiling like a dope, wondering serenely what might be on the menu for lunch. It was as if just being here had some kind of narcotic effect on me; like the loop itself was a drug—a mood enhancer and a sedative combined—and if I stayed too long, I’d never want to leave.

If that were true, I thought, it would explain a lot of things, like how people could live the same day over and over for decades without losing their minds. Yes, it was beautiful and life was good, but if every day were exactly alike and if the kids really couldn’t leave, as Miss Peregrine had said, then this place wasn’t just a heaven but a kind of prison, too. It was just so hypnotizingly pleasant that it might take a person years to notice, and by then it would be too late; leaving would be too dangerous.

So it’s not even a decision, really. You stay. It’s only later—years later—that you begin to wonder what might’ve happened if you hadn’t.

*   *   *

I must’ve dozed off, because around midmorning I awoke to something nudging my foot. I cracked an eye to discover a little humanoid figure trying to hide inside my shoe, but it had gotten tangled in the laces. It was stiff-limbed and awkward, half a hubcap tall, dressed in army fatigues. I watched it struggle to free itself for a moment and then go rigid, a wind-up toy on its last wind. I untied my shoe to extricate it and then turned it over, looking for the wind-up key, but I couldn’t find one. Up close it was a strange, crude-looking thing, its head a stump of rounded clay, its face a smeared thumbprint.

“Bring him here!” someone called from across the yard. A boy sat waving at me from a tree stump at the edge of the woods.

Lacking any pressing engagements, I picked up the clay soldier and walked over. Arranged around the boy was a whole menagerie of wind-up men, staggering around like damaged robots. As I drew near, the one in my hands jerked to life again, squirming as if he were trying to get away. I put it with the others and wiped shed clay on my pants.

“I’m Enoch,” the boy said. “You must be him.”

“I guess I am,” I replied.

“Sorry if he bothered you,” he said, herding the one I’d returned back to the others. “They get ideas, see. Ain’t properly trained yet. Only made ’em last week.” He spoke with a slight cockney accent. Cadaverous black circles ringed his eyes like a raccoon, and his overalls—the same ones he’d worn in pictures I’d seen—were streaked with clay and dirt. Except for his pudgy face, he might’ve been a chimney sweep out of
Oliver Twist
.

“You made these?” I asked, impressed. “How?”

“They’re homunculi,” he replied. “Sometimes I put doll heads on ’em, but this time I was in a hurry and didn’t bother.”

“What’s a homunculi?”

“More than one homunculus.” He said it like it was something any idiot would know. “Some people think its homunculuses, but I think that sounds daft, don’t you?”

“Definitely.”

The clay soldier I’d returned began wandering again. With his foot, Enoch nudged it back toward the group. They seemed to be going haywire, colliding with one another like excited atoms. “Fight, you nancies!” he commanded, which is when I realized they weren’t simply bumping into one another, but hitting and kicking. The errant clay man wasn’t interested in fighting, however, and when he began to totter away once more, Enoch snatched him up and snapped off his legs.

“That’s what happens to deserters in my army!” he cried, and tossed the crippled figure into the grass, where it writhed grotesquely as the others fell upon it.

“Do you treat all your toys that way?”

“Why?” he said. “Do you feel sorry for them?”

“I don’t know. Should I?”

“No. They wouldn’t be alive at all if it wasn’t for me.”

I laughed, and Enoch scowled at me. “What’s so funny?”

“You made a joke.”

“You are a bit thick, aren’t you?” he said. “Look here.” He grabbed one of the soldiers and stripped off its clothes. Then with both hands he cracked it down the middle and removed from its sticky chest a tiny, convulsing heart. The soldier instantly went limp. Enoch held the heart between his thumb and forefinger for me to see.

“It’s from a mouse,” he explained. “That’s what I can do—take the life of one thing and give it to another, either clay like this or something that used to be alive but ain’t anymore.” He tucked the stilled heart into his overalls. “Soon as I figger out how to train ’em up proper, I’ll have a whole army like this. Only they’ll be
massive.
” And he raised an arm up over his head to show me just how massive.

“What can
you
do?” he said.

“Me? Nothing, really. I mean, nothing special like you.”

“Pity,” he replied. “Are you going to come live with us anyway?” He didn’t say it like he wanted me to, exactly; he just seemed curious.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it.” That was a lie, of course. I had thought about it, but mostly in a daydreaming sort of way.

He looked at me suspiciously. “But don’t you
want
to?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Narrowing his eyes, he nodded slowly, as if he’d just figured me out.

Then he leaned in and said under his breath, “Emma told you about Raid the Village, didn’t she?”

“Raid the what?”

He looked away. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a game some of us play.”

I got the distinct feeling I was being set up. “She didn’t tell me,” I said.

Enoch scooted toward me on the stump. “I
bet
she didn’t,” he said. “I bet there’s a
lot
of things about this place she wouldn’t like you to know.”

“Oh yeah? Why?”

“Cause then you’ll see it’s not as great as everybody wants you to think, and you won’t stay.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

“Can’t tell,” he said, flashing me a devilish smile. “I could get in big trouble.”

“Whatever,” I said. “You brought it up.”

I stood to go. “Wait!” he cried, grabbing my sleeve.

“Why should I if you’re not going to tell me anything?”

He rubbed his chin judiciously. “It’s true, I ain’t allowed to
say
anything ... but I reckon I couldn’t stop you if you was to go upstairs and have a look in the room at the end of the hall.”

“Why?” I said. “What’s in there?”

“My friend Victor. He wants to meet you. Go up and have a chat.”

“Fine,” I said. “I will.”

I started toward the house and then heard Enoch whistle. He mimed running a hand along the top of a door.
The key
, he mouthed.

“What do I need a key for if someone’s in there?”

He turned away, pretending not to hear.

*   *   *

I sauntered into the house and up the stairs like I had business there and didn’t care who knew it. Reaching the second floor unobserved, I crept to the room at end of the hall and tried the door. It was locked. I knocked, but there was no answer. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, I ran my hand along the top of the doorframe. Sure enough, I found a key.

I unlocked the door and slipped inside. It was like any other bedroom in the house—there was a dresser, a wardrobe, a vase of flowers on a nightstand. Late-morning sun shone through drawn curtains the color of mustard, throwing such yellow light everywhere that the whole room seemed encased in amber. Only then did I notice a young man lying in the bed, his eyes closed and mouth slightly open, half-hidden behind a lace curtain.

I froze, afraid I’d wake him. I recognized him from Miss Peregrine’s album, though I hadn’t seen him at meals or around the house, and we’d never been introduced. In the picture he’d been asleep in bed, just as he was now. Had he been quarantined, infected with some sleeping sickness? Was Enoch trying to get me sick, too?

“Hello?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

He didn’t move. I put a hand on his arm and shook him gently. His head lolled to one side.

Then something terrible occurred to me. To test a theory, I held my hand in front of his mouth. I couldn’t feel his breath. My finger brushed his lips, which were cold as ice. Shocked, I pulled my hand away.

Then I heard footsteps and spun around to see Bronwyn in the doorway. “You ain’t supposed to be in here!” she hissed.

“He’s dead,” I said.

Bronwyn’s eyes went to the boy and her face puckered. “That’s Victor.”

Suddenly it came to me, where I’d seen his face. He was the boy lifting the boulder in my grandfather’s pictures. Victor was Bronwyn’s brother. There was no telling how long he might’ve been dead; as long as the loop kept looping, it could be fifty years and only look like a day.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Maybe I’ll wake old Victor up,” came a voice from behind us, “and you can ask him yourself.” It was Enoch. He came in and shut the door.

Bronwyn beamed at him through welling tears. “Would you wake him? Oh
please
, Enoch.”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I’m running low on hearts as it is, and it takes a right lot of ’em to rise up a human being, even for just a minute.”

Bronwyn crossed to the dead boy and began to smooth his hair with her fingers. “Please,” she begged, “it’s been
ages
since we talked to Victor.”

“Well, I do have some cow hearts pickling in the basement,” he said, pretending to consider it. “But I
hate
to use inferior ingredients. Fresh is always better!”

Bronwyn began to cry in earnest. One of her tears fell onto the boy’s jacket, and she hurried to wipe it away with her sleeve.

“Don’t get so choked,” Enoch said, “you know I can’t stand it. Anyway, it’s cruel, waking Victor. He likes it where he is.”

“And where’s that?” I said.

“Who knows? But whenever we rouse him for a chat he seems in a dreadful hurry to get back.”

“What’s cruel is you toying with Bronwyn like that, and tricking me,” I said. “And if Victor’s dead, why don’t you just bury him?”

Bronwyn flashed me a look of utter derision. “Then we’d never get to
see
him,” she said.

“That stings, mate,” said Enoch. “I only mentioned coming up here because I wanted you to have all the facts, like. I’m on your side.”

“Yeah? What are the facts, then? How did Victor die?”

Bronwyn looked up. “He got killed by an—
owww!
” she squealed as Enoch pinched the back of her arm.

“Hush!” he cried. “It ain’t for you to tell!”

“This is ridiculous!” I said. “If neither of you will tell me, I’ll just go ask Miss Peregrine.”

Enoch took a quick stride toward me, eyes wide. “Oh no, you mustn’t do that.”

“Yeah? Why mustn’t I?”

“The Bird don’t like us talking about Victor,” he said. “It’s why she wears black all the time, you know. Anyway, she can’t find out we been in here. She’ll hang us by our pinky toes!”

As if on cue, we heard the unmistakable sound of Miss Peregrine limping up the stairs. Bronwyn turned white and dashed past me out the door, but before Enoch could escape I blocked his path. “Out of the way!” he hissed.