by Ransom Riggs
“Thanks to this ridiculous article,” Millard continued, “they were able to track her to a beach town in California, and then to a particular beach. Beaches are terrible places to be invisible, because the sand gives your footsteps away, so they were able to corner her long enough to introduce themselves and explain what was happening to her, and she accepted their offer of help.”
“What if there are no newspaper headlines about our subject?” asked Emma. “And nothing so obvious as a carnival in town?”
“What if they’re in a school of three thousand kids who all look peculiar?” said Enoch.
“In such cases, where there’s a known location but no other lead, they would go to the area, blend in, and simply wait for the peculiar to give themselves away somehow.”
“A stakeout,” I said. “Like in the movies.”
“How long do stakeouts take?” Bronwyn asked.
“Weeks, sometimes longer.”
“Weeks!” said Enoch. “Longer!”
“We won’t need weeks,” I said. “We’ll go in the school. Talk to people. Ask around. You guys will just have to blend in.”
“That’ll be a snap, thanks to the extensive and thorough normalling lessons you’ve given us,” said Enoch.
“That was sarcasm!” said Bronwyn.
Enoch pointed at her. “Now you’re catching on.”
* * *
• • •
If I hadn’t been so tired, I’m sure the weirdness of sleeping on the pull-out sofa while Emma lay across the room would’ve kept me awake half the night. The distance between us felt unnatural, and in the rare moments of quiet we enjoyed, it preoccupied my mind completely. But the instant my head hit the pillow I was unconscious, and it seemed like only minutes had passed when I opened my eyes again to see Bronwyn bending over me, shaking my shoulder. Eight hours had disappeared in a dreamless blip, and though I hardly felt rested, it was already time to get moving again.
School would be starting in a couple of hours, and I wanted us to have the whole day to search. The one time-suck we allowed ourselves to indulge in was showers. Our hair was greasy and we had road dirt in our ears and under our nails. We would be representing all of peculiardom when we introduced ourselves to this person, whoever they were. At the very least, we agreed, we shouldn’t look like we’d all been sleeping in a car.
I showered first, then had some time to kill. I decided to do a newspaper search, like Abe and H had done in the case of the invisible girl. Such things were easier now, in the internet age, though I did have to leave the room and go back out of the loop so that my phone would function.
Standing by the ice machine in the hot, noisy present, I conducted a quick search for recent articles that mentioned the school. Within a short time, I found an article in the Brooklyn Eagle, dated a few weeks earlier, with the headline BIZARRE POWER OUTAGES MYSTIFY CON EDISON, FRAY NERVES AT HOOVER HIGH. The gist of the story was that, in the middle of a school day, during a presentation in the auditorium, all the lights had gone out. Eight hundred kids had been plunged into sudden blackness, and it had caused such chaos that there was a stampede, which led to injuries.
I thought that seemed strange. What was so terrifying about a blackout? It happened at our school, in lightning-storm-prone Florida, all the time. So I scrolled down to the comments, where actual students had posted, and learned that it was more than just a blackout. The generator-powered emergency lights failed, too. Strangest of all, one commenter wrote: “The flashlight on my cell didn’t work, and neither did anyone else’s.” The lights came on again a few minutes later, but by then the damage had been done.
To me, it sounded like an EMP—an electromagnetic pulse—that had knocked out devices, both electric and battery-powered. But there was another part of the story that didn’t fit that theory. Later that same day, there had been an explosion in the girls’ bathroom. Except it wasn’t exactly an explosion, according to the commenters.
“It looked like a flash bomb had gone off,” one person wrote. “The walls were burned and stuff, but nothing was broken.”
In other words, there was no blast damage. That meant it wasn’t a bomb, or a traditional explosion, or a fire. So what had happened?
Two men were reported injured, both school employees. The suspect in the blast was a female student, whose name wasn’t given because she was a minor. She had fled the scene and was being sought for questioning. What had two male employees of the school been doing in the girls’ bathroom? The article didn’t speculate, but one commenter did:
“PERRRRRRVS!!!!”
I returned to the loop, went back to our room, and told the others what I’d learned.
“Sounds like a peculiar event to me,” said Bronwyn.
Emma leaned out of the bathroom door, vigorously drying her hair. “If it is,” she said, her voice vibrating as she dried, “then I reckon we’re looking for someone who can manipulate electricity.”
“Or light,” said Millard.
“So we should start by talking to people about that day,” I said. “Ask them what they remember and who was involved. High schools are gossip factories. All we have to do is make some fast friends, and tap into people’s natural inclination to talk crap about one another.”
As I heard myself saying it, it sounded slightly absurd. Fast friends? In two years of high school, I’d had one.
“Maybe someone will know who the suspect girl was,” said Bronwyn. “The one who ran from the bathroom fire.”
“Maybe we can get our hands on the security camera footage,” said Enoch.
“Sounds like they’re powerful, whoever they are,” said Emma.
“Unquestionably,” said Millard. He was fully clothed in dress pants, a collared shirt, and a newsboy cap. “If someone is hunting them, they must be worth hunting. So, yes, I’d say they’re powerful. And possibly dangerous. If you suspect you’ve found them, do not engage. Alert the rest of us, and we’ll determine the best course of action.”
“Why’d you bother getting dressed?” I asked. “We’re going back out there in a minute.”
“I miss wearing clothes sometimes. Also, chafing becomes an issue.”
“Say we’ve found this person,” said Enoch. “Then what? We say, ‘Come with us. We need to take you to a time loop.’?”
“Why not?” said Bronwyn.
“Because it sounds mad!”
“They’re uncontacted, remember,” I said. “They won’t know what a time loop is, what a peculiar is, that there are other people like them in the world—nothing.”
Enoch had just pulled on his creeper sneakers and was rolling his feet around in them. “Ugh, they’re so springy.”
“Jacob didn’t know anything when we first met him, and that worked out okay,” Bronwyn said.
“I thought I had gone insane,” I said, “and then Emma attacked me and nearly cut my throat!”
“I thought you were a wight!” she called from the bathroom.
“So you had a rocky start,” Bronwyn said, shrugging. “But now you’re in love!”
I pretended to be busy packing my bag. Enoch and Millard ignored her.
Bronwyn looked baffled. “What’d I say?”
Emma came out of the bathroom. Her sandy hair was tied into a loose ponytail. She wore a light green sweater that matched her eyes and dark jeans that fit her, well, perfectly, and contrasted with her Reeboks. The pang of longing I felt in that moment was so deep and sustained that I had to look away.
In a passable American accent, she said, “You guys ready to blend in?”
Bronwyn gave a big thumbs-up. “Flipping totally.” Her accent was sharp and weird. “Coooooooool, dudes.”
Just listening to her set my teeth on edge.
“Maybe you should stick to your regular accent. And no slang.”
She pooched out her b
ottom lip and flipped her thumb downward. “Bummer.”
We arrived at the school just before first bell. I parked several blocks away to avoid being spotted by an overzealous vice principal. As we walked, I paid close attention to my gut, on alert for any telltale twinges, but there were none.
We joined a mass of students climbing the main steps, then entered a long, bright hallway lined with classrooms and jammed with bodies. We flattened ourselves against a wall to keep from getting trampled and stood there, overwhelmed, as teenagers flowed around us like schools of fish.
We ducked into an empty classroom to talk. There were posters of Shakespeare and James Joyce on the wall and the desks were arranged in rows. I remembered what Emma said about never having attended a real school, and she looked a bit wistful as she took it in.
“I would never normally suggest this,” said Millard, “but I think we should split up. We’ll attract less attention than we would walking around in a big, baffled clump.”
“And we’ll cover more area, too,” said Emma.
“Then it’s decided.”
I wasn’t sure they were ready to be on their own in a modern American high school, but Millard was right; there was no choice but to dive in. Bronwyn paired off with Enoch and volunteered to observe the PE fields and outdoor areas. They would talk to people (but not in Bronwyn’s weird pseudo-American accent) and learn what they could. Being invisible, Millard couldn’t talk to anyone, so he would sneak into the main office. “If there was an incident dramatic enough to rate mention in a local newspaper,” he said, “then there are certainly records of other, smaller incidents somewhere in their files.”
“There might be a disciplinary write-up on this person, too,” said Emma.
“Or a psychiatric one,” I said. “If they ever tried to tell the truth about what was happening, they at least got sent to the school nurse for a mental health screening.”
“Good thinking,” said Millard.
That left Emma and me alone together, reluctantly paired. I suggested we go to the cafeteria, always a hotbed of gossip, and she agreed.
“Are you guys sure you’ll be okay?” I said before we all split up. “You’ll remember not to talk about the 1940s or use your abilities?”
“Yeah, Portman, we’ve got it,” Enoch said, waving his hand at me. “You just worry about you.”
“Everyone meet outside this room in one hour,” I said. “Anything goes wrong, pull a fire alarm and run for the front entrance. Got it?”
“Got it,” said everyone but Millard.
“Millard?” Emma said. “Where are you?”
The classroom door swung shut. He was already gone.
* * *
• • •
School cafeterias had long ranked among my least favorite places on the planet. They were loud, ugly, they stank, and they were filled—as this one was—with cliques of anxious teenagers swirling around in a complex social dance I could never quite figure out the steps to. And yet here I was, standing against a scuffed linoleum wall with Emma, having volunteered to spend an hour in one. I imagined myself, like I often did in school, as an anthropologist observing the rituals of some alien culture. Emma looked much more at home, even though the room was filled with people eight decades her junior. Her posture was loose. Her eyes coolly scanned the room.
She suggested we join the line for breakfast and sit down to eat.
“To blend in,” I said. “Smart.”
“Because I’m hungry.”
“Right.”
We got in line, shuffled past hair-netted cafeteria ladies, and were handed trays piled with rubbery scrambled eggs, scoops of greasy brown sausage-stuff, and boxes of chocolate milk. Emma recoiled a little, but accepted it without complaint. We took our trays and began to circle the room, looking for a place to sit, and at that point my just-talk-to-people plan, which had sounded reasonable in theory, began to seem absurd. What were we supposed to do, introduce ourselves to someone at random? So, have you noticed anybody strange lately? Everyone in the room was doing their own thing, talking to other people, locked into long-established friend groups—
“Hi, mind if we sit down? I’m Emma; this is Jacob.”
Emma had stopped at a table. Four dumbstruck faces looked up at us—a blond girl whose tray had only an apple on it, a girl with pink-dyed hair poking out from under a beanie, and two sporty-looking guys in baseball hats whose trays were overflowing.
Pink Hair shrugged and said, “Sure.”
“Karen,” the apple girl said under her breath, but then she moved over so I could sit.
We put our trays down and sat. Three of them were looking at us like we were freaks, but Emma didn’t even seem to notice. She just dove right in.
“We’re new here, and we heard this school was, like, weird.”
She sounded practically American, but not quite—and they noticed.
“Where are you from?” Pink Hair said.
“England and Wales, thereabouts.”
“That’s cool,” said one of the hat guys. “I’m from seals. And he’s from dolphin.”
“It’s a country, dumbass,” said Pink Hair. “Near England.”
“Pss.” Hat Guy #1 rolled his neck. “Duh.”
“We’re exchange students,” I said.
Apple Girl raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound foreign.”
“Canada.” I was about to dip my plastic spork into the greasy brown stuff, then thought better of it.
“This school is definitely weird,” said Pink Hair. “Especially lately.”
“What happened with your auditorium?” I asked. “Power outage, or something?”
“Nah.” The quieter hat guy was shaking his head. “That’s just what the school told our parents.”
Apple Girl nodded at him. “Jon was there. He thinks this place is, like, haunted now.”
“I do not. I just don’t buy this ‘power outage’ thing. They’re covering something up.”
“Like what?” I said.
He looked down at his tray. Stirred his brown stuff.
“He doesn’t like talking about it,” Pink Hair whispered. “He thinks it makes him sound nuts.”
“Shut up, Karen,” said Apple Girl. She turned to Jon. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Come on, man,” said the other hat guy. “You tell Karen, but you won’t tell us?”
Jon held up his hands. “Fine, fine. And, like, it’s not even that this is what happened, okay? It’s just how it seemed.”
Everyone was looking at him expectantly. He drew in a deep breath.
“It was super dark. Nobody’s phones or flashlights were working. They say it was some kind of electrical thing. But there’s one door in the auditorium that leads straight outside, to the faculty parking lot?” He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping. “Someone opened it. But it barely gave off any light. And it was sunny that day.”
“What?” said Apple Girl. “I don’t get it.”
“It was like”—his voice dropped even more—“the dark was eating the light.”
I was about to bring up the not-quite explosion in the bathroom that had happened later that same day when I felt a hard tap on my shoulder. I turned to see the vice-principal-ish man from yesterday and a frowning woman with short hair and cold blue eyes.
“Excuse me,” said the man. “I need you both to come with us.”
Emma held up one hand and turned away. “Go away, we’re in the middle of a conversation.”
The kids at our table looked impressed. “Damn,” whispered Pink Hair.
“That wasn’t a request.” The cold-eyed lady grabbed Emma’s shoulder.
Emma shrugged her hand off. “Don’t touch me!”
Then things got ugly. It seemed like everyone in the cafeteria had stopped talking to stare at us. The lad
y went for Emma with both hands, and the man grabbed my arm. I flipped my tray of food at the man, who let me go long enough for me to jump up from the table, and Emma must have burned the lady because she shouted and leapt backward. And then we were running, together, toward the closest exit. The lady was down for the count, but the man was chasing us and shouting for other people to help stop us. A few tried, but we dodged them. Then, up ahead, a half-dozen athletes in basketball shirts blocked the exit we were running toward.
We stopped short of them and faced off.
“What now?” I said.
“We burn our way through,” Emma said, but I caught her hands before she could raise them.
“Don’t,” I hissed. I could see people aiming their phones at us, recording everything. “Not while everyone’s looking.”
I resigned myself to getting caught and started thinking of ways to talk our way out of this, but then the exit doors burst open behind the athletes. A throng of girls ran in screaming bloody murder. And I mean screaming—their faces contorted with horror and streaked with tears—and the focus of the athletes and the vice principal-ish man and the whole room shifted immediately to them. I didn’t even think about what might have made them scream like that; I just thanked the angels that it had happened. Emma and I plowed through the distracted jocks and out the open doors.
We skidded to a stop in the hallway, looking around and trying to remember which way the main entrance was, when I caught sight of something bizarre running down the hall toward us.
A pack of cats.
They were dripping wet and lurching in a stiff, very un-catlike way, and then I heard Enoch cackling and Bronwyn yelling as she chased him out of a science lab across the hall. He was doubled over laughing.
“I’m sorry! I couldn’t resist!”
As the cats wobbled around our legs, a bitter smell hit my nose—formaldehyde.
“Enoch, you idiot!” Bronwyn was shouting. “You’ve ruined everything!”
He had created perhaps the only distraction powerful enough to save us: a herd of zombie cats.