A Map of Days

by Ransom Riggs

  “Look at this!” he said, turning to an old man who happened to be pushing a cart nearby. “Look at it!”

  The old man hurried away.

  “Horace, you’re scaring people,” I said, drawing him close. “It’s only cheese.”

  “Only cheese!” he said.

  “Okay, it’s a lot of cheese.”

  “It’s the pinnacle of human achievement,” he declared seriously. “I thought Britain was an empire. But this—this—is world domination!”

  “My stomach hurts just looking at it,” said Claire.

  “How dare you,” Horace replied.

  When we finally managed to drag him out of the grocery store and into a shop that sold clothes, Horace was less impressed by the selection. I had purposely chosen the blandest store and steered them toward the blandest choices—simple colors, standard combinations; whatever the mannequins were wearing.

  His mood darkened as we filled the basket.

  “I’d rather go naked,” he said, holding a pair of jeans I’d handed him like it was a poisonous snake. “This is how you want me to dress? In denim, like a farmer?”

  “Everybody wears jeans now,” I said. “Not just farmers.”

  In fact, a pair of nice jeans was pretty fancy compared to what most people in the store were wearing that day. I saw Horace’s face pale as he took stock of the gym shorts, cargo pants, sweats, and pajamas nearby shoppers were sporting.

  He let the jeans drop to the floor.

  “Oh no,” he whispered. “Oh no, no.”

  “What’s the matter?” said Enoch. “Their fashion not up to your high standards?”

  “Forget standards. What of decency? What of self-respect?”

  A man walked by wearing camouflage pants, orange flip-flops, and a SpongeBob sweater with the sleeves scissored off.

  I thought Horace might cry.

  While he mourned the end of civilization, we picked out clothes for everyone else. Because the lead shoes Olive usually wore looked like they belonged to Frankenstein’s monster, we let her choose a new pair—something a size or two too large, so we could fill the extra space with weights.

  At my insistence the kids kept quiet as the cashier ran the items through the checkout. They stayed quiet even as they trailed me out of the mall and back across the parking lot to the car, their arms loaded with bags and their brains overloaded with stimuli.

  * * *

  • • •

  We returned home to find everyone else gone to the Acre for the afternoon—something about reconstruction assignment orientation meetings, according to the note Miss Peregrine had left. Emma had stayed behind, said the note, but for the longest time I couldn’t find her. Finally I heard her whistling inside the upstairs guest bathroom.

  I knocked. “It’s Jacob. Everything okay in there?”

  A faint red light glowed beneath the door.

  “Just a moment!” she called.

  I could hear her fumbling around. A moment later the light clicked on and the door swung open.

  “Did he call?” she said eagerly.

  “Not yet. What’s going on?”

  I peeked past her into the small bathroom. There was photo-developing equipment everywhere—metal canisters lining the toilet tank, plastic trays surrounding the sink, a bulky enlarger on the floor. I wrinkled my nose against the sharp smell of developing chemicals.

  “You don’t mind if I convert the loo into a darkroom, do you?” Emma said with a sheepish grin. “Because I kind of already did.”

  We had two other bathrooms. I told her I didn’t mind. She invited me inside to watch her work. There wasn’t much space, so I had to press myself into a corner. She was efficient but unhurried, talking as she went. Though she claimed to be new at this, her actions looked like muscle memory.

  “I know, it’s such a cliché.” She squatted, her back to me, twiddling dials on the enlarger. “The peculiar photophile.”

  “Is it a cliché?”

  “Ha, very funny. I take it you’ve noticed how every ymbryne has her big album of snaps, and there’s an entire government ministry devoted to cataloging us photographically, and every third peculiar fancies themselves some kind of genius with a camera . . . though most of them couldn’t take a photo of their own feet. Here, give me a hand with this.” She slid her hands under one side of the enlarger, and I lifted the other—it was surprisingly heavy—and we set it on a plank she’d laid across the bathtub.

  “Any theories about why?” I hadn’t given it much thought until then, but it did seem odd that people who lived the same day over and over would need to remember them with photographs.

  “Normals have been trying to erase us for centuries. I think photography is a way to fix ourselves in place. To prove we were here, and we weren’t the monsters they made us out to be.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  An egg timer buzzed. She picked up one of the metal canisters from the toilet, uncapped it, and poured a stream of chemicals into the sink. Then she slid a plastic spool out of it, unreeled from the spool a roll of negatives as long as her arm, squeegeed it dry with two fingers, and hung it from a wire she’d stretched across the shower.

  “But now that we’re in the present, it’s different,” she said. “I’m getting older, and for the first time since I can remember, every day I live is one I’ll never live again. So I’m going take at least one picture every day to remember it by. Even if it’s not very good.”

  “I think your pictures are great,” I said. “That photo of people walking down steps toward the beach that you sent me over the summer? That was so beautiful.”

  “Really? Thanks.”

  She was rarely shy about anything. I found her modesty immensely charming.

  “Okay, then, if you’re interested . . . I’ve just been developing some rolls of film I was shooting over the past few weeks.” She reached up and unclipped a photo from the wire. “These are members of the peculiar home guard.” She handed it to me. The print was still slightly wet. “They’re filling in the hole where Caul’s tower used to be. They’ve been working in twelve-hour shifts for ages. It was a huge mess.”

  The photo showed a line of uniformed men standing at the top of a deep crater, shoveling rubble down into it.

  “And here’s one I took of Miss P,” she said, handing me another print. “She doesn’t like having her picture made, so I had to catch her from the back.”

  In the photo, Miss P was wearing a black dress and a black hat and walking toward a black gate. “It looks like she’s going to a funeral,” I said.

  “Yes, we all were. There were funerals almost every day in the weeks after you left, for all the peculiars who were killed in the hollowgast raids.”

  “I can’t imagine going to a funeral every day. That must have been terrible.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  Emma said she had some more photos to develop.

  “Mind if I watch?” I asked.

  “If you don’t mind the smell of the chemicals. It gives some people headaches.”

  She went back to fiddling with the enlarger.

  “I’m curious why you don’t use a digital camera,” I said. “It’d be a lot easier.”

  “Is it like your computer telephone?”

  “Sort of,” I said, and having been reminded of it, I checked my phone again, but there were no missed calls.

  “Then it wouldn’t work inside most loops,” she said. “Just like your computer telephone doesn’t. But this old mare”—she held up her folding camera—“she can go anywhere. Okay, close the door.”

  I pushed it shut. She turned on the red light and turned off the white one overhead. We were plunged into near darkness, and the space was so tight with the two of us in there that it was hard not to bump her while she worked.


  Photo developing involves a lot of carefully timed waiting. Every forty-five seconds, she would have to agitate one of the canisters, or pour out a batch of chemicals and pour in another, or hang the negatives up to dry. In between, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait, and kiss, in the corner of the cramped and red-lit bathroom. Our first forty-five-second kiss was tentative and gentle, just warming up. The second was less so. During the third we kicked over a tray of chemicals, and after that we started ignoring the egg timer altogether. I’m pretty sure a roll of Emma’s film got ruined.

  And then my phone began to ring.

  I let go of Emma and snatched it from my pocket. The screen read no caller ID. I answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Pay attention.” It was the same gruff voice on the other end. H. “Abe’s spot, nine p.m. sharp. Sit at his booth. Order his usual.”

  “You want me to . . . meet you?”

  “And come alone.”

  He hung up.

  I lowered the phone.

  “That was fast,” said Emma. “And?”

  “We’ve got a date.”

  * * *

  • • •

  What do you wear to a job interview with a hollowgast hunter? I wasn’t sure, so I played it safe—jeans, my nicest pair of sneakers, and the most professional shirt I owned, a powder-blue polo shirt from Smart Aid with my name embroidered above the pocket. Emma elected to stay in her 1930s wartime clothes: a simple blue dress tied at the waist with a gray ribbon and black flats. I didn’t mention that H had told me to come alone. I didn’t want to go on any mission without her, so it only made sense that she be there. Telling her she hadn’t been invited would only make her feel awkward.

  The friends I’d taken mall shopping earlier were trying on their clothes, and the rest of the peculiars were still in the Acre. It was easy to slip away unnoticed. By eight thirty, we were driving into town.

  I hoped I had understood H’s terse instructions. “Abe’s spot” might’ve meant anything, but “his booth” and “his usual” put me in mind of one place in particular—the Mel-O-Dee Restaurant, an old-school diner out on US 41, that had been serving greasy burgers and blue plate specials since God was a child (or 1936, which was close enough). A happy fixture in my childhood memories, it had been my and Abe’s go-to place. I loved it, but my parents would never go (it was “depressing” and served “old people food”), so it was mine and Abe’s alone. We could be found in the same booth by the window nearly every Saturday afternoon, me with a gooey tuna melt and a strawberry milkshake and Abe with a plate of liver and onions. I hadn’t been back since I was twelve or thirteen. I couldn’t remember even driving by recently, and I found myself hoping it was still there. The town was changing fast, and most of the characterful old places had been torn down to make room for bland, modern shopping centers. I sped up, playing the radio and drumming the wheel to calm my nerves.

  I rounded a curve and it appeared behind a cluster of live oaks. It looked like it was barely clinging to life, its parking lot nearly empty and its old neon sign partly burned out.

  “This is where he wanted to meet us?” Emma asked, peering out the window as I pulled into the lot.

  “I’m ninety-eight percent sure.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “Brilliant.”

  We walked inside. The place hadn’t changed at all. Yellow plastic booths separated by fake plants, a long Formica counter, a soda fountain. I looked around for people who looked like they might be H, but there was just a decrepit old couple in the corner and a raggedy-looking middle-aged guy nursing a cup of coffee at the counter.

  The waitress shouted to us across the dining room.

  “Anywhere you like!”

  I led Emma to the booth by the window where Abe and I always sat. We picked up menus.

  “Why is it called the Mel-O-Dee?” she asked.

  “I think it used to be one of those singing-waiter places, a long time ago.”

  The waitress shuffled over. She had a hunched back and a blond wig that didn’t match her wrinkles and she hadn’t put her makeup on quite straight. NORMA, her name tag read. I recognized her—she’d been working here a long time. She took off the reading glasses she’d been wearing and looked at me, then smiled.

  “That you, junior?” she said. “My goodness, you got handsome.” She winked at Emma. “Speaking of handsome, how’s your grandpa?”

  “He died. Earlier this year.”

  “Oh, I’m real sorry to hear that, honey.”

  She reached over the table and rested her spotted hand on mine.

  “It happens,” I said.

  “You don’t have to tell me. You know, I’ll be ninety next year.”

  “Wow, that’s amazing.”

  “It’s sure something. Practically everyone I used to know is dead. Husband, friends, brother, and two sisters. Sometimes I think these good genes are a curse from God.” She flashed her big dentures at us. “What’re you kids having?”

  “Coffee,” said Emma.

  “The, uh, liver and onions,” I said.

  Norma looked at me, like my order had sparked something in her memory. “No tuna melt for you?”

  “I’m trying new things.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She held up one finger, then walked away from the table, ducked behind the counter, and came back with something in her hand. She leaned in and whispered, “He’s waiting for you.” She opened her palm and placed a small blue key before me, then turned and pointed toward the back of the restaurant. “Down the hall, last door past the bathrooms.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The last door past the bathrooms was made of heavy insulated metal and had a sign that read NO ADMITTANCE. I turned the key in the lock and opened the door, and we were embraced by a shroud of frozen air. Hugging ourselves against the chill we walked inside.

  Shelves stocked with frozen food lined the walls. Icicles like the spikes of an iron maiden were aimed down at us from the ceiling.

  “There’s no one in here,” I said. “I think Norma’s gone senile.”

  “Look at the floor,” said Emma. There were arrows made with electrical tape leading to the back of the room, where a curtain of thick plastic flaps hung from ceiling to floor. Stencil-painted across them were the words MEATING ROOM.

  “Is that a misspelling?” Emma said. “Or a strange joke?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  I shouldered through plastic curtains caked with frozen meat slime and led us into a smaller, even colder room that flickered under the light of a faulty fluorescent tube. There were cuts of meat everywhere, spilling from torn-open boxes, scattered across the floor, dusted with frost.

  “What the hell happened?” I said.

  I nudged a rack of lamb with my foot. The still-frozen meat had been bitten clean in half. I got a sudden, sinking feeling.

  “I think we should get out of here,” I said. “This might be a—”

  The word trap was leaving my lips when three things happened in quick succession:

  —I put my foot down on a big X made of tape on the floor.

  —The flickering bulb above our heads shattered, and the room went black.

  —I felt a roller-coastery lurch in my stomach and a sudden pressure change in my head.

  Then the light came back on, only now it was a yellow incandescent bulb in a wire cage. The boxes of meat were gone, replaced by bags of frozen vegetables. And I felt a sharp, unmistakable pain bloom in my gut.

  I touched Emma’s hand and raised a finger to my lips. I mouthed the word Hollow.

  Emma looked, for an instant, terrified—and then she swallowed hard and reined it in. She put her lips to my ear.

  “Can you control it?” she whispered.

  It felt like ages since I’d spoken hollowgast or even co
nfronted a hollow in person. I was way out of practice, and even at the top of my game, my control over a hollow had never come instantly.

  “I need time to feel it out,” I whispered. “A minute or two.”

  Emma nodded. “Then we’ll wait.”

  It was in the cold storage locker with us. My inner compass needle was warming up, even as my body was freezing, and it told me the beast was just beyond the plastic curtains. We could hear it chewing on something, grunting and slavering as it ate. We crouched by a wooden crate, trying to make ourselves invisible as the seconds ticked by.

  The hollow tossed aside whatever it had been eating and let out a thunderous belch.

  Emma shot me a questioning look—Anything?—and I shook my head. Nothing yet. Before I could start to gain control over it, I needed to hear it speak.

  It took a step toward us, its shadow falling crooked across the plastic curtains. I listened in vain for anything I could use to get a toehold in its brain—any little utterance would help—but the only sound it made was a ragged intake of breath. It was sniffing the air, gathering our scent. Working up a new appetite.

  I tapped Emma and pointed upward. We rose slowly to standing. We were going to have fight.

  Emma put out her hands, palms up, and I gritted my teeth, which were chattering either from cold or from fear. More likely the latter. I was surprised at how scared I was.

  The hollow’s shadow warped. One of its muscular tongues poked through the curtain flaps and curled experimentally in the air, like a periscope that was spying on us.

  Emma took a half step forward and quietly lit her hand-flames. She kept them small, but I could tell from the way she tensed her forearms that she was building up to a burst. Now the hollow’s second tongue pierced the curtains. Emma’s flames climbed a little higher, then higher still. A drop of freezing water hit the back of my neck. The icicles on the ceiling were starting to melt.

  It happened suddenly, as violence often does. The hollowgast screamed and punched its last tongue through the curtains, and then all three of them came at us. Emma shouted and released the blast of fire she’d been working up. Just as the tongues reached us, they got burned and reeled suddenly back again—but not before one of them wrapped around my foot, and dragged me along with it.