by Ransom Riggs
“Goodness. What a trollop.”
“And that’s my whole exciting history.”
Her eyes got wide, then she lay back in the water and let herself float. The happy chatter of our friends rose and fell beneath the gentle crash of surf. “Jacob Portman, pure as the driven snow.”
“I, uh—yeah,” I said, feeling awkward. “That’s a weird way to put it.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know.”
“I know,” I said, though I’m not sure I did, then. Every movie and TV show aimed at teenage guys made it seem like not having lost your virginity by the time you had your driver’s license was some kind of personal failure. Which I knew was idiotic—but it’s hard not to internalize that stuff when you hear it so often.
“It means you’re careful with your heart,” she said. “I appreciate that.” She cocked an eye at me. “And I wouldn’t worry, in any case. I’m certain it’s not . . .” She dragged a finger across the water, a trail of steam chasing it “. . . a permanent condition.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, a little thrill shooting through me.
“Time will tell,” she said, letting her legs sink, then righting herself. She was focused on me in this intense way, studying me as we drifted closer, our hands linking and feet entangling underwater. Before anything else could entangle, we heard shouts, and I saw Miss Peregrine and Horace waving us in from the shore.
* * *
• • •
“It’s Hugh,” said Horace, handing me my phone as I slogged out of the surf.
I held it away from my dripping head. “Hello?”
“Jacob! Your uncles are waking up. Your parents, too, I think.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said. “Just keep them where they are.”
“I’ll try, but hurry,” said Hugh. “I don’t have any more of that dust stuff, and your uncles are mean.”
And then all of us who could run, ran.
Bronwyn carried Olive. Miss Peregrine, who could walk and fly but could not run, told us to go on ahead, and over my shoulder I watched as she dove into the sea and disappeared beneath the waves. A moment later her clothes floated to the surface without her, and then she burst out of the water in bird form and flapped over our heads toward my house. Seeing her shape-shift always made me want to clap my hands and shout, but I restrained myself in case any normals were watching, and ran on.
We arrived at my front door sweaty, sandy, and panting, but there was no time to clean up. I could hear my uncles’ angry voices through the garage door. We had to take care of them first, before old Mrs. Melloroos heard and called the cops.
As soon as we got inside, I went to the garage and began apologizing to my uncles. They were angry and confused and starting to get belligerent, and after a minute they barged past me into the house. Miss Peregrine was waiting in the hall with her feather and her penetrating stare, and soon both uncles were calm, quiet, and as pliable as Play-Doh. Their minds were so easy to wipe it was almost disappointing. In the dopey, highly suggestible state that followed, Miss Peregrine let me do the talking. I sat them on counter stools in the kitchen and explained that the last twenty-four hours had been totally uneventful, that my mental health was beyond reproach, and that all the recent family drama was the result of a misdiagnosis on the part of my new psychiatrist. Just to be on the safe side, I told them that any strange British people they might run into over the next few weeks—or speak to on the phone if they called the house—were distant relatives on my dad’s side, and they had come to pay respects to my dear departed grandfather. Uncle Bobby replied with hypnotized nods. Uncle Les kept muttering “Mm-hmm,” while filling his pockets with scrambled eggs from the leftover scraps of breakfast. I told them to go get some sleep, called them taxis, and sent them home.
Then it was time to deal with my parents. I asked Bronwyn to carry them upstairs to their bedroom before the sleep dust wore off, so they wouldn’t wake up in a wrecked car, surrounded by reminders of the previous night’s trauma. She left them in their bed and closed the door, and for a minute I paced the hall outside, leaving sandy footprints on the carpet, nervously trying to figure out what to say.
Emma came up the stairs. “Hey,” she whispered. “Before you go in, I wanted you to know something.”
I went to her and she clasped my hand. “Yeah?”
“She fancied you.”
“Who?”
“Janine Wilkins. A girl doesn’t lose her kiss virginity to just anyone, you know.”
“I, uh—” My brain was trying and failing to be in two very different places at once. “You’re messing with me, right?”
She laughed and looked down. “I mean, she did, but yes. I just came to wish you good luck. Not that you need it. You’ve got this.”
“Thanks.”
“We’re right downstairs, should you need anything.”
I nodded. And then I kissed her. She smiled and slipped back down the stairs.
* * *
• • •
They woke up gently in their own bed, sun laddering through the shutters. I watched them from a chair in the corner, nibbling my fingernails and trying to stay calm.
My mom opened her eyes first. She blinked, rubbed them. Sat up and groaned and massaged her neck. She had no idea she’d been sleeping in a car for eighteen hours. It would make anybody sore.
Then she saw me, and her brow furrowed.
“Honey? What are you doing here?”
“I, uh—I just wanted to explain some things.”
Then she looked down at herself, noticed that the clothes she was wearing were the same she’d been wearing last night. A confused look stole over her face.
“What time is it?”
“About three,” I said. “Everything’s okay.”
“No,” she said, looking around the room, confusion turning to panic.
I stood up. She pointed at me. “Stay there.”
“Mom, don’t freak out. Let me explain.”
She looked away—ignored me, as if maybe I weren’t really there. “Frank.” She shook my father awake. “Frank!”
“Mmm.” He rolled over.
She shook harder. “Franklin.”
This was it: my last opportunity. The moment I’d been readying myself for. I had run through a few different approaches in my mind, but they all sounded ridiculous to me now—too blunt, too dumb. Just as my dad sat up and began to rub the sleep from his eyes, I all but lost my nerve, suddenly convinced I didn’t have the right words.
It didn’t matter. Ready or not, it was showtime.
“Mom, Dad, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
I walked to the foot of their bed and started talking. I can hardly remember what it was I said, only that I felt like a door-to-door salesman whose pitch was bombing. I tried to explain how my grandfather’s last words and his strange snapshots and the postcard from Miss Peregrine had led me to discover the peculiars’ house, and in it all of Abe’s old friends, who were not only still alive, they weren’t even old. But I found myself dancing around terms like time loop and powers because it just seemed like it was too soon, too much. My clumsily censored version of the truth combined with jitters seemed only to confirm to them that I was out of my mind, and the more I talked, the more they inched away from me, my mom drawing the comforter up around her shoulders and my dad scooting back against the headboard, that vein that popped out from his forehead when he was stressed dancing a jig. As if whatever mania was in me might be contagious.
“Just stop!” my mom shouted, finally interrupting me. “I can’t listen to any more of this.”
“But it’s true, and if you’d only hear me out—”
She threw the covers back and leapt out of bed. “We’ve heard enough! And we already know what happened. You were torn up about your grandpa. Yo
u secretly quit taking your medication.” She was pacing, angry. “We sent you halfway around the world at the worst possible time on the advice of a quack, and you had a breakdown! It’s nothing for you to be ashamed of, but we have to deal with this honestly. Okay? You can’t keep hiding behind these . . . stories.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. “You won’t even give me a chance.”
“We’ve given you a hundred,” my dad said.
“No. You never believe me.”
“Well, of course we don’t,” my mom said. “You’re a lonely boy who lost someone important. And then you meet these kids, who are ‘special’ just like your grandpa was, and only you can see them? It doesn’t take a PhD to diagnose. You’ve been making up imaginary friends since you were two.”
“I didn’t say I was the only one who could see them,” I said. “You met them last night in the driveway.”
Both my parents looked, for an instant, like they’d seen a ghost. Maybe they had blocked what happened last night from their minds. That can happen sometimes, when an isolated event so thoroughly disagrees with a person’s concept of reality.
“What are you talking about?” my mom said, her voice quavering.
It seemed there was nothing left to do but introduce them to my friends.
“Do you want to meet them?” I said. “Again?”
“Jacob,” said my father, his tone a warning.
“They’re here,” I said. “I promise they aren’t dangerous. Just . . . be cool, okay?”
I opened the door and brought Emma into the room. She had gotten as far as “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Portman,” when my mom screamed.
Miss Peregrine and Bronwyn ran in.
“What’s the matter?” Miss Peregrine said.
My mom shoved her—actually shoved Miss Peregrine—“Get out. Get OUT!” I saw Bronwyn restrain herself from grabbing my mom and throwing her into a wall.
“Maryann, calm down!” my dad shouted.
“They’re not going to hurt you!” I said.
I tried to grab her by the shoulders, but she wrenched out of my grip and sprinted from the room.
“Maryann!” my dad shouted again, but when he tried to run after her, Bronwyn grabbed him by the arms. He was too groggy from the dust to fight her.
I chased my mom down the stairs. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife. The other peculiars came out of hiding, and as she stood with her back against the refrigerator, waving the knife, they ringed around her, just out of stabbing range.
“Calm down, Mrs. Portman!” Emma said. “We don’t mean you any harm!”
“Get away from me!” my mom screamed. “Oh God. Oh God!”
Maybe it was Olive crawling toward her along the ceiling—she’d grabbed a fishing net from the garage and meant to drop it on my mom—or Millard’s voice shouting from what seemed a floating bathrobe, but finally my mom just fainted. The knife clattered to the tile floor, and she slumped down next to it—a sight so pathetic I had to look away.
I could hear my dad shouting from upstairs. He was calling my mom’s name. It must have sounded like we’d killed her.
“We’ve got her,” Emma said to me. “Go to your father.”
I stepped on the dropped knife and slid it under a cabinet, just in case my mom came to. Emma, Horace, Hugh, and Millard lifted her and carried her toward the couch. There was nothing more I could do, so I ran upstairs.
My dad was crouched in the corner of the bedroom, clutching a pillow. Bronwyn stood guard in the doorway with her arms spread, ready to catch him if he tried to run.
When my dad saw me, his expression turned to ice.
“Where is she?” he said. “What did they do to her?”
“Mom’s okay,” I said. “She’s sleeping now.”
He was shaking his head. “She’ll never get over this.”
“She will. Miss Peregrine has the power to take away certain memories. She won’t remember.”
“And your uncles?”
I nodded. “Same for them.”
Miss Peregrine came in. “Mr. Portman. How do you do?”
My dad ignored her. Kept his eyes locked on me. “How could you?” He spat the words. “How could you bring these people into our house?”
“They came to help me,” I said. “To convince you I wasn’t insane.”
“You can’t do this to people.” He was talking to Miss P now. “Blaze into their lives. Scare the hell out of everyone. Erase whatever you want. It isn’t right.”
“It seems the truth is more than your wife can handle—for the time being, anyway,” Miss Peregrine said. “But Jacob was very much hoping that wouldn’t be the case for you.”
He stood up slowly. Let his hands drop to his sides. He looked resigned, resentful.
“Well, then. I guess you’d better lay it on me.”
I turned to look at Miss Peregrine.
“You’ll be okay?”
I nodded.
“We’ll be right outside,” she said, and she and Bronwyn went out, closing the door behind them.
* * *
• • •
I talked for a long time. I sat on the edge of the bed, and my dad sat in the chair in the corner, his eyes low and shoulders slumped, like a child enduring a lecture. I didn’t let his manner bother me. I told my story from the beginning, and this time I was calm.
I told him what I’d found on the island. How I had met the children and who they turned out to be. How I discovered I was one of them. I even told him about the hollowgast, though I didn’t go into the complexities of what came after, the battles we fought or the Library of Souls or Miss Peregrine’s evil brothers. It was enough, for now, that he know who his father was, and who I was.
When I finished, he hadn’t spoken in several minutes. He didn’t look afraid anymore. He just looked sad.
“Well?” I said.
“I should have known,” he said. “The way you and your grandpa got along. Like you had a secret language.” He was nodding gently to himself. “I should have known. I think part of me did know.”
“What do you mean? You knew about Grandpa, but not about me?”
“Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know.” He was staring past me, hard, like he was trying to see through fog. “I guess deep down I knew, but I never wanted to believe it.”
I inched toward the edge of the bed. “He told you?”
“I think he tried to, once. But I must have blocked it out—or someone stole the memory from me. But last night—” He tapped his forehead. “Seeing those people jogged something loose in my brain.”
Now it was his turn to talk and mine to listen.
“I was around ten when it happened. Your grandfather would go on these long business trips. He’d be away for weeks at a time. I always wanted to go with him, and I used to beg and plead, but he always, always said no. Until one day. One day he said yes.”
My father stood up and began pacing, as if just remembering this was giving him nervous energy to burn.
“We drove up to, I don’t remember exactly, North Florida or Georgia. We picked up an associate of his along the way. I knew him; he’d been by the house a time or two. Black guy. Always had a cigar in his mouth. Abe called him H. Just H. Anyway, he’d been real friendly the other times I’d met him, but this time he had a weird energy and he kept looking at me, and a couple of times I heard him say to my dad, You sure about this?
“Anyway, it got dark and we stopped for the night. Some ratty old motel. And in the middle of the night my dad wakes me up, and he’s scared. He says, Frank, get your things, and he rushes me out to the car. I’m still in my pajamas, and now I’m scared. Because nothing frightened my dad. Nothing. Well, we tear out of that parking lot like zombies are chasing us, but we don’t get more than a couple of blocks before the car goes whoom—it jus
t lurches, like something hit us from the side, only there were no other cars around. And then Dad hits the brakes and throws it in park and jumps out. He says, Get down, Frank, stay outta sight, but I can’t look away, and the next thing I know he gets yanked up into the air by something I can’t see. And he starts making these awful noises in his throat, and he drops back down to Earth, and he’s still making those god-awful sounds like an animal, and his eyes—I can see him in the headlights of the car—his eyes are rolled back in his head, all white, and his clothes are all stained with this black crud, and I get out of the car and start running, right into this cornfield. And I don’t look back. I think I must have passed out at some point, because the next thing I remember is I’m back in a motel room bed, and there’s my dad and H and two or three other people. And they’re so strange-looking. They’re all covered in dirt and blood, and the smell . . . God, the smell. And one of them—I’ll never forget—he’s got no face at all. Just a mask of skin. I’m so scared. Too scared to even scream. And Dad’s saying, It’s okay, Frankie, don’t be scared, this lady’s gonna talk to you now, don’t be scared. And this woman, she looked kind of like her—” At some point Miss Peregrine had cracked the door and leaned into the room, and my dad gestured at her. “She did something to me, so that the next day the memories were barely there anymore. Like it was just a bad dream. And my dad never ever spoke about it after that.”
“She was supposed to wipe your memories,” Miss Peregrine said. “It seems she didn’t quite finish the job.”
“I wish to God she had,” my dad said. “I had nightmares for years. For a while I thought I was really losing it. My dad told her not to get rid of my memories completely. Kind of a sadistic thing to do to a kid, don’t you think? But part of him wanted me to know. It was like a . . . a blackboard that had been wiped, but if you squinted hard enough you could still read it a little? But I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know. Because I really, really did not want that to be true about my father. That he was . . . like that.”