A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  “Abe was my grandfather,” I said.

  “He told you about me?” His voice was rising steadily. It seemed I’d really spooked him.

  “Not as such,” I said. “Look, there’s nothing to worry about and there’s no need to go into too many details. I’m not here to dig up bodies from your past. I just need to get in touch with the one called H. You spent time with him. You work here, in the inner sanctum . . .” I tumbled my hands, a gesture meant to imply the connection. “You’re my best bet.”

  He sighed, and I saw him relax a little. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against one of the shelves. “They didn’t leave me their business card, or anything,” he said, “and even if they had, that was a long time ago.”

  “I was hoping there might be something in your files,” I said. “The ymbrynes must have had some way to get in touch with them.”

  “So why don’t you ask the ymbrynes?”

  Now he was getting a little too comfortable. “I’m trying to be discreet. But if I have to, I’ll be sure and let them know it was Lester Noble, Jr., who referred me to them.”

  He frowned. “Okay, then,” he said tersely. “Let me see what I have.” He turned and walked down a wall, running his index finger along the folders as he went. He pulled a file folder from a shelf. Flipped through its contents, mumbling to himself. Then crossed to another wall and another shelf, and pulled two more folders. Shook his head, tucked them under his arm, and moved on. After a few minutes, he came to me with his hand held out. In his palm was an old matchbook.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “That’s all there is.”

  I took the matchbook. It was wrinkled at the edges, like it had spent a lot of time in someone’s pocket. The outside cover was blank. On the inside was an advertisement for a Chinese restaurant, an address, some random-looking numbers and letters, and a penciled note that read, Burn after reading. Clearly, someone had ignored those instructions.

  “Now, then.” Lester snatched his photo from me. “I’d say that’s an even trade, seeing as I could get fired for just letting you into this room, much less letting you walk out with that.”

  “It’s just an old matchbook,” I said. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “That’s for you to figure out.” He went to the door, opened it, and waited for me to leave. “Now, do me a favor, mate,” he said, his British accent returning, “and forget we ever met.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I crossed the Acre in such a rush, and with such focused intensity, that even those people who recognized me didn’t have the nerve to stop me. I came to Bentham’s house, ran up the stairs and down the long Panloopticon hall to the door marked A. PEREGRINE AND WARDS ONLY, dove in, and a moment later was spat onto the grass of my backyard. I stood dazed for a moment in the warm night, listening to the crickets and frogs harmonize, as TV light flickered from the windows of my living room.

  Miss Peregrine wasn’t perched on the roof anymore. No one had seen me return. I still had some time to myself. I crossed the yard to the dock, walked to the end of it, and sat. It was the only place I could think of where I’d be assured some privacy, and if anyone came to check on me, I’d hear their approach.

  I took out my phone and the matchbook, and set to figuring out how it could be used to reach H. A few minutes of thumb-typed research yielded this: The odd-looking string of letters and numbers below the address was a phone number, albeit an un-dialable one, in an alphanumeric style that had fallen out of use in the 1960s.

  I did a search for the name of the restaurant advertised on the matchbook. A lucky break: It was still in business. I looked up its modern phone number, and called it.

  I heard a series of clicks, like the call was being routed through some foreign exchange. Then it began to ring, maybe ten, twelve times, until a gruff male voice finally answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m calling for H. This is—”

  The line went dead. He’d hung up on me!

  I called back. This time he picked up after two rings.

  “You got the wrong number.”

  “This is Jacob Portman.”

  There was a pause. He didn’t hang up.

  “I’m Abe Portman’s grandson.”

  “So you say.”

  My heart sped up. The number was still good. I was talking to someone who knew my grandfather. Maybe H himself.

  “I can prove it.”

  “Let’s say I believe you,” the man said. “Which maybe I do, maybe I don’t. What does Jacob Portman want?”

  “A job.”

  “Try the want ads.”

  “A job doing what you do.”

  “Crossword puzzles?”

  “What?”

  “I’m retired, son.”

  “What you used to do, then. You and Abe and the others.”

  “And what do you know about that?” His tone was suddenly defensive.

  “I know a lot. I read Abe’s mission logs.”

  There was a metallic squeak and then a grunt, like H had just risen from a chair.

  “And?”

  “And I want to help. I know there are still hollowgast out there. Maybe not a lot of them, but even one could cause serious trouble. And there’s plenty to do besides that.”

  “That’s charitable of you, son. But we’re not in business anymore.”

  “Why not? Because Abe died?”

  “Because we got old.”

  “Well, then,” I said, feeling a surge of confidence, “I’ll start it up again. I have friends who can help, too. A new generation.”

  I heard a cupboard slap shut, a spoon tinkle in a cup. “You ever see a hollow in person?” he asked.

  “I have. And I’ve killed them.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You didn’t hear about the Library of Souls? The Battle for Devil’s Acre?”

  “I’m not exactly up on the latest current events.”

  “I can do what Abe did. I can see them. Control them, too.”

  “You know . . .” He sipped a drink loudly. “Maybe I did hear something about you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. You’re raw, untested. Impulsive. And in our line of work, that gets you killed real fast.”

  I gritted my teeth, but managed to keep my voice even and calm. “I know I have a lot to learn. But I think I have a lot to offer, too.”

  “You’re serious, huh.” He sounded both amused and impressed.

  “I am.”

  “All right. You talked yourself into a job interview.”

  “This wasn’t it?”

  He laughed. “Not even close.”

  “Okay, well, what do I—”

  “Don’t call again. I’ll call you.”

  The line went dead.

  * * *

  • • •

  I dashed into the house, waved to my friends as I darted past them in the living room—they were watching some zombie movie—and Emma jumped up and followed me into an empty bedroom.

  She hugged me hard, then poked me in the chest. “Start talking, Portman.”

  “I made contact with one of Abe’s old partners. I just talked to him on the phone.”

  She let me go and took a step back, eyes wide.

  “Pull the other one.”

  “I’m serious. This guy, H, worked with my grandfather for decades. They ran tons of missions together. But now he’s old, and he needs our help.”

  I was reaching a little there, maybe. But only a little. H did need our help, he just needed to be convinced of it first.

  “With what?”

  “A mission. Here in America.”

  “He should call the ymbrynes if he needs help.”

  “Our
ymbrynes don’t have authority in America. And apparently America doesn’t have ymbrynes of its own.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, Em. There are a hundred thousand things I don’t know. But I do know that Abe locked that door in his floor with a passcode only I would know. And he left that mission log for me to find. And if he’d had any idea there was a chance you would be here, he would’ve meant for you to find it, too.”

  She looked away, wrestling with something.

  “We can’t just run off on some mission. Miss Peregrine would never allow it.”

  “I know that.”

  She fixed me with a stare. “A mission doing what?”

  “I don’t know yet. H said he’ll be in touch.”

  “You really hate the assignment the ymbrynes gave you, huh?”

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “I think you’d be good at it. That was a pretty motivational speech.”

  “So you’re in?”

  A grin spread across her face.

  “Hell, yes.”

  That night I had a terrible dream. I was in a wasteland of burning fields, the horizon all soot and flame, black ooze puddled across the earth. I was frozen in the air, suspended above a deep pit. From its depths glowed two blue lights. They belonged to Caul—Caul in his monstrous form, a hundred feet tall, his arms like tree trunks and his fingers long, grasping roots reaching up toward me.

  He was calling my name. Jacob, Jacob, his voice a high and taunting singsong. I see you. I see you there. I seeeeee youuuuuuuu . . .

  Waves of putrid air funneled up around me, the smell like burning flesh. I wanted to gag, to escape, but I was paralyzed. I tried to speak, to shout down at him. But no words would come.

  There was a skittering sound, like rats were climbing the walls of the pit.

  “You’re not real,” I finally managed to say. “I killed you.”

  Yes, he said. And now I am everywhere.

  The skittering grew louder, until Caul’s fingers crawled over the lip of the pit—ten long and gnarled roots, coming at me, wrapping around my throat.

  I’ve got big plans for you, Jacob . . . Big, big plans . . .

  I thought my lungs would explode, then felt a sharp pain in my stomach.

  I bolted upright, gasping for breath, and clutched my gut. I was awake, at home, on the floor of my bedroom, my sleeping bag twisted around me.

  A slash of moonlight divided the room. Enoch and Hugh lay snoring in my bed. The hurt in my stomach was an old and familiar one. It was both pain and a compass needle.

  The needle pointed downstairs and outside.

  I disentangled myself from the sleeping bag and dashed out of the room and down the stairs. I moved silently, running on my toes. If this was what I thought it was, there wasn’t much my friends could do to help me. They would only get in the way, and I didn’t want to wake them up and cause a panic before I had assessed the situation. Fear only fueled a hollowgast.

  Fear made them hungry.

  I pulled a knife from the block on my way through the kitchen—not much good against a hollow, but better than nothing—then exited through the garage and outside, nearly tripping over a coiled garden hose as I rounded into the backyard. A hazy trail of ozone rose from the potting shed’s roof. The pocket loop had been used very recently.

  And then, as suddenly as the feeling had come upon me, it vanished. The compass needle moved toward the bay, then flipped around completely toward the gulf, then went slack. That had never happened before, and I couldn’t understand it. Could the whole thing have been a false alarm? Could nightmares trigger my peculiar reflex?

  Feeling the wet grass between my toes, I glanced down at what I was wearing: ripped sweatpants, an old T-shirt, no shoes, and I thought, This is how Abe died. This, almost exactly. Lured into the dark in his bedclothes, gripping an improvised weapon.

  I lowered the knife. Slowly, my hand stopped shaking. I walked the perimeter of my house, back and forth, waiting. No feeling came. Eventually I went back to my room and slipped into the sleeping bag on my floor, but I did not sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning I was checking my phone every minute, hoping for a call from H. He hadn’t said when he would be in touch. Emma and I debated telling the others, but decided to wait until we had a mission—and maybe we wouldn’t say anything even then. Maybe the mission would only involve the two of us. Maybe some of our friends wouldn’t want to go, or would be against the whole idea. What if one of them spilled the beans and told Miss Peregrine what we were planning before we had a chance to leave?

  After breakfast, I was obligated to take the peculiars out clothes shopping. It seemed like a good way to kill time while I waited, so I tried to throw myself into it and forget about H’s call.

  The first batch were Hugh, Claire, Olive, and Horace. I drove them to the mall. Not the mall by my house, where I worried we might encounter someone from my school. I picked the Shaker Pines mall, out by the Interstate. On the way, I pointed out the basic components of modern suburbia—that’s a bank, that’s a hospital, those are condos—because they kept asking what everything was. What seemed utterly banal to me was wondrous to them.

  In her loop, Miss Peregrine had worked miracles protecting her wards from physical harm, but in her zeal to keep them safe, she had banned anyone who visited from talking to them about the modern world, and that had put them at a disadvantage. They had been too sheltered, and now they were like little Rip van Winkles, waking after a long sleep to a world they didn’t understand. They knew about modern things up to a point—electricity, telephones, cars, airplanes, old movies, old music, and other things that were generally known and popular prior to September 3, 1940. After that, their knowledge was spotty and inconsistent. They had spent no more than a few sporadic hours in the present, and those were mostly on Cairnholm, where time had practically stood still even as the calendar changed. Compared to their island, even my small town seemed to move at a million miles per hour, and it occasionally paralyzed them with anxiety.

  In the mall’s colossal parking lot, Horace became overwhelmed and refused to get out of the car. “The past is so much less terrifying than the future,” he explained after some coaxing. “Even the most terrible era of the past is at least knowable. It can be studied. The world survived it. But in the present, one never knows when the whole world could come to a terrible, crashing end.”

  I tried to reason with him. “The world’s not going to end today. And even if it does, it’ll happen whether or not you go into this mall with us.”

  “I know that. But it feels like it will. But perhaps if I just sit here and don’t move, everything will stop moving with me, and nothing bad will happen.”

  Just then a car playing loud, bass-heavy music rolled by with its windows down. Horace tensed and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “See?” said Claire. “The world goes banging on, even if you just sit. So come inside with us.”

  “Oh, bollocks,” he said, and threw the car door open.

  As the others applauded his bravery, I made a mental note that Horace might not be the best companion to bring along on our first mission, whatever it was.

  Shaker Pines was a classic, as malls went—noisy, antiseptically bright, and layered in baffling cultural references (you try explaining the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. or the As Seen on TV store to someone from the first half of the last century). It was also crowded with teenagers, which was half the point. We weren’t here just to outfit them in modern clothes. I wanted to expose them to normal kids, kids they would be expected to imitate. It was more than a shopping trip; it was an anthropological expedition.

  We walked and browsed, the peculiars bunched in a knot around me like explorers in a jungle infamous for tiger attacks. We ate greasy things at the food court and sat watching other teen
agers, my friends quietly studying their behavior: their whispers and jokes; their startling bursts of laughter; the way they grouped themselves, tight and clannish, rarely mixing; how they did everything, even ate, without ever letting go of their phones.

  “Do they come from very rich families?” Claire asked, leaning into our group over her plastic tray, voice lowered.

  “I think they’re just normal teenagers,” I said.

  “They don’t work?”

  “They might have summer jobs part-time. I don’t know.”

  “When I was growing up,” said Hugh, “if you were old enough to lift something heavy, you were old enough to work. There was no sitting around all day, eating and talking.”

  “We were old enough to work even before we could lift heavy things,” said Olive. “My father sent me to work at a boot-blacking factory when I was five. It was awful.”

  “Mine sent me to a workhouse,” said Hugh. “I spent all day making rope.”

  “Good God,” I muttered.

  They came from a time before the concept of teenager-hood even existed. That was an invention of the postwar years, before which you had been either a child or an adult. I wondered how they would be able to impersonate modern teenagers if the very concept was foreign to them.

  What if this whole thing was a bad idea?

  Nervously, I checked my phone.

  Nothing from H. Nothing at all.

  We went to buy clothes, but along the way we lost Horace, who veered off into a grocery store that occupied one whole wing of the mall. We found him standing awestruck before a massive wall of cheese in the refrigerated foods section.

  “Feta, mozzarella, Camembert, Gouda, cheddar!” he said, rapturous. “A gourmand’s fantasyland.”

  It was just cheese to me, but to Horace it was a miracle: thirty feet of the stuff, sliced, whipped, in blocks and chunks, separately packaged, available in skim, whole, and 2 percent fat. He stood reading the labels as if in a trance, and I had to keep shushing him, lest his amazement draw attention.

  “It’s everything,” he muttered. “It’s everything.”