The Desolations of Devil's Acre

by Ransom Riggs

  “Me neither!” Enoch said. “This floor polish smells like kerosene.”

  “No, I mean, why are we being made to just wait around? We’ve just been told that Caul is coming, and who knows what sort of fighting force he’ll arrive with. Shouldn’t we be assembling one of our own? Preparing for battle?”

  “I bet you could round up a battalion of killer bees,” Olive said. She pushed herself down from the ceiling and grabbed onto a chair. “There’s a loop door that leads to some flowering fields in Paraguay . . . second-floor hallway, third door left from the loo.”

  “There’s a town on London’s outskirts full of invisibles trained in guerrilla warfare,” Millard said.

  Horace turned to Fiona. “Have you had any more contact with the tree people from the Great Hibernian forest? An army of trees, think of that!”

  Fiona whispered something to Hugh, who said, “No, but she says she could drop a line.”

  “We already have an army,” Claire said. “They’re called the home guard.”

  “What’s left of it,” Hugh said with a sigh. “The hollows tore them to shreds during the raids.”

  “I wouldn’t trust them to defend my lunch, much less my loop,” said Enoch.

  Olive pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh, they’re outside the door. You’ll hurt their feelings.”

  “I feel the same frustration as the rest of you,” Emma said, “but right now we need to set an example for all the other peculiars in Devil’s Acre, like Miss P said, and not run around like the sky is falling. When the ymbrynes need us to assemble a peculiar army, you can be sure they’ll let us know.”

  Grumbling, Hugh announced he was breaking for lunch and stomped off toward the kitchen.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  A little while later, Miss Peregrine arrived with Miss Cuckoo in tow. Noor and I spoke to them in the little sitting room near the kitchen. We told them everything we could about how to find V’s body and the challenges their team might face along the way, including but not limited to the injured hollowgast, more wights who may have gone to check on the one in the yellow raincoat, and the dopey but potentially troublesome cops at my house who had witnessed our exit through the pocket loop. “Might need to be memory-wiped,” Miss Peregrine muttered to Miss Cuckoo, who nodded.

  There would also be the remnants of the hurricane to deal with, I said, which could make driving tough. “You’ll need a car. My grandfather’s is in my parents’ driveway, but it needs a new tire.”

  “Let us worry about that,” Miss Peregrine replied.

  We were excused and went out into the kitchen, and the ymbrynes emerged a short time later. They laid out the basics of the mission and asked for two volunteers. Emma’s hand shot up. So did Enoch’s, but Miss Peregrine refused him. “You’re the only irreplaceable part of this operation, Mr. O’Connor, and I need you here, rested and ready to work, the moment we return with V’s body.”

  His eyes gleamed with excitement. “I’ll be ready.” He patted the jar-shaped protrusion in his jacket. “These murderers’ hearts are tops if you need your resurrectee to do something physical, but for strength of mind, a poet’s heart would be ideal . . . if I can lay my hands on one . . . Might need to sneak down to Westminster Abbey with a spade—”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Miss Peregrine.

  “All right, all right.”

  “I mean it.”

  He winked at her.

  She chose Bronwyn and Emma to join them on the retrieval mission, and Miss Wren asked Addison if he felt up to making the trip again. He snapped to attention and said, “Anything for you, madam.” He was the most loyal peculiar I knew, though that loyalty belonged to one ymbryne in particular. He would have died for Miss Wren, as several of his loop-mates already had when their menagerie was raided by the wights. If only every peculiar felt as he did, I’d have had no doubts about our chances against Caul.

  Their team assembled, the ymbrynes said they hoped to be back within a few hours, but not to worry if it took longer.

  We wished them luck and they set off. It was strange to imagine my friends going to Englewood without me. Stranger still to imagine what they’d be bringing back.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The two ymbrynes hadn’t been gone twenty minutes when news broke of a new attack, and this time the aggressor was more than just a trash-talking hologram. We clustered around Horace’s radio to hear Amos Dextaire, whose usually silky voice was raw and rattled:

  “We’re hearing reports of an assault on Miss Plover’s loop in Squatney, East London. She’s just flown in, and we have her in the studio now. Miss Plover, thank you for being with us. Can you talk about what’s happening?” There was some shuffling and the sound of wings flapping. “She’s only just now turned to human form . . . Bear with us a moment, listeners . . .”

  Horace wrung his hands nervously. “Even Amos sounds shaken. Miss Plover must be a sight.”

  “Her loop was one of the few survivors of the hollow raids in London,” said Millard. “Makes sense that it was Caul’s first target.”

  The voice of a frightened woman came through the speaker. “Yes, Adrienne Plover ’ere. They came smashin’ in through the walls of our house—”

  “Who did, ma’am?”

  “Leaves and branches and wind. Caul, I think it was. I heard his voice, and the house came rippin’ apart . . . I dunno what he is now, couldn’t get a good look, but he ain’t human nummore. I was able to get my littlest ones out safe, except for Sheena and Ruzzie . . .”

  She broke down crying. Amos quickly took his microphone back. He thanked the ymbryne for stopping by the studio, then introduced Miss Bobolink, who instructed everyone listening to keep calm and carry on. “All Acre business will continue as normal until further notice. You’re expected to report to your work assignments and classes as usual. Curfew will be in effect after dark, but until then, go about your day as you would any other. Rest assured, we are taking every measure to ensure your safety and security.”

  “The more they say that, the less I believe it,” muttered Emma.

  “It’s official, then,” Millard said glumly. “Caul can do more than just project a hologram of himself. Now he can mount a physical attack.”

  “We’re sure that was him?” Horace said.

  Noor said, “Monstrous tree? Tornado winds? That’s him.”

  “Caul two-point-oh,” I concurred.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Hugh said. “Miss Plover’s loop was fairly isolated and only lightly defended. Easy pickings.”

  “Claire could have run Miss Plover out of that loop,” Enoch agreed.

  “And I can bite your toes off with my backmouth while you sleep tonight,” Claire growled. “Would you like that?”

  Enoch ignored her, as he usually did.

  “He knows he can’t really turn us against the ymbrynes,” Hugh said, “so Caul’s plan B is to scare us away. Get as many of us to abandon the Acre as he can, and then he’ll able to waltz into a nearly undefended loop.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Horace muttered. “He’s only just beginning. He’ll pick off one loop after another, growing stronger as he goes, and then he’ll come for us.” He looked around, eyes wide. “Does that sound like nothing to worry about?”

  “Sounds like nothing to be done about, so why worry?” said Hugh, his voice cracking on the word worry.

  “There’s plenty to be done, and I don’t mean laundry,” said Enoch. “I need that poet’s heart if I’m going to resurrect a body who’s going to be asked questions, or the answers will be half gibberish. I’m not just going to sit around and wait.”

  Hugh rose from the bed and moved toward the door. “Me neither. What do you say, Fee, feeling up to a little adventure?”

  She was already waiting for him in the doo
rway, long-stemmed flowers curling excitedly around her ankles.

  Claire jumped up and stomped over to them. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “That loop door Olive mentioned before,” Hugh said. “Twenty-one-Q, third from the loo. Just scouting; we’ll be back in a jiff. And if you tattle to Miss P about it, I’ll chew off your toes.”

  “Well . . . I officially object!” Going a bit red, she stamped off into a corner to sulk. But I knew she wouldn’t rat out her friends, even to curry favor with Miss Peregrine.

  “But the Panloopticon’s closed until further notice,” said Olive. “There’s no getting in without special permission.”

  “Sharon owes me a favor,” Enoch said, joining Hugh and Fiona by the door.

  I caught him by the arm before he could turn the handle. “Wait—go out the back or the home guards will see you.”

  “Thanks, mate.” He smiled and gave me a brotherly elbow to the ribs, and then the three of them went up the stairs to slip out an upper-floor window into the alley.

  An invisible hand tapped my shoulder. “I don’t suppose you and Noor would be amenable to a bit of sneaking around, as well?” Millard asked. “Unless there’s something here you’d rather be dusting.”

  Noor smirked. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I was hoping you still had V’s stopwatch. The expulsatator.”

  Noor checked the pocket of her striped dress. “Right here. It’s fried, though.”

  “Well, that’s just it. Maybe it’s not. I’d like to show it to my tinkerer friend, if you don’t mind. He’s got a knack for these things, and . . . if we really do have to close the Panloopticon, it would be a good thing to have a working expulsatator on hand. For emergencies.”

  “I guess it’s worth a try,” Noor said. “And it’s a hell of a lot better than going nuts waiting around here. What do you think, Jacob?”

  My feet were itching to move. There had only been guards at the door for a short time and already I felt like a prisoner. “Yeah, it’s worth a try. Let’s just make sure we’re back before . . .”

  I trailed off, the words stalled in my throat.

  Before they come back with V’s body.

  “It’s a promise,” said Millard.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  We snuck out the rear second-floor window like our friends had a few minutes before. After shimmying down a ladder of wobbly stilts, we dodged a stream of ashy sewage and darted down the narrow, crooked alley that ran behind the house. The guards wouldn’t have let us go even if we’d been able to convince them the trip was necessary, and we agreed that the fewer people who knew about the existence of a potentially repaired expulsatator, the better. It had saved Noor’s life once. If Caul closed in and the situation here in the Acre got really dire, it might be called upon to do so again; I couldn’t have some panicky peculiar trying to steal it. I especially didn’t want the Americans to find out about it. Desperation could make good people do bad things . . . and morally ambivalent people do really bad things.

  Once we’d gotten a few blocks from the house, we veered back onto Doleful Street, which was divided down the middle by Fever Ditch. On each side of the festering water, peculiars were out and they were busy—but this wasn’t an average day in the Acre. In spite of the ymbrynes’ instructions to carry on as usual, it looked like nearly everyone had forsaken their jobs and classes to prepare for an attack any way they could. The Ditch was a liquid parking lot of skiffs and barges, and boatmen were off-loading crates onto trucks and horse-drawn carts.

  “Food, clothing, tools, medicine,” Millard said. “Your basic siege survival supplies.”

  A few cases were stamped with the word EXPLOSIVES, which made me wonder if they were also bringing in conventional weapons. As if guns would do any good against a proto-demon like Caul, or whatever he’d become; I was pretty sure a flying slug of metal wasn’t going to stop him. But the worrying truth was that most peculiars’ abilities were not well-suited to combat. We weren’t soldiers. We weren’t superheroes. In the face of an organized assault, the best most of us could do was to hunker down and hope for the best. Maybe ten percent of us could muster any kind of aggressive defense. It’s why we needed the home guard, relatively useless as they were. And why we’d depended for so long on the protection of ymbrynes and their loops.

  The group most equipped for battle was the Americans. They’d spent the last half century in a Darwinian fight for survival that had privileged those with weaponizable abilities and forged the rest into fearless brawlers. So I was both surprised and grateful to see a number of them doing more than just watching bemusedly. LaMothe and a cadre of his Northerners were helping the boatmen roll supplies onto trucks. Farther down the banks, Parkins was barking orders from his levitating wheelchair as a group of his Californio cowboys looked for good ambush blinds: a rooftop here, a bridge stanchion there. One of them, a sour-faced lady with a long braid trailing one shoulder and a shotgun in her hands, stood guard outside a small house while another Californio brought armful after armful of weapons inside. Peeking through the door as we passed, I could see a growing cache of guns, knives, swords, and clubs, easily accessible in case of attack.

  Leo Burnham was notably absent but had sent some goons in his stead. Noor shied away as we walked by four of them at the Shrunken Head, just visible through an open window. One was polishing his pistol, while the others had taken knives from the kitchen and were making Molotov cocktails from bottles of liquor.

  “I can’t believe the ymbrynes let them in,” Noor muttered.

  “Nor can I,” Millard said. “All they care about—Burnham’s people especially—is expanding into other peculiars’ territory. It can only mean the ymbrynes don’t fear them . . . or don’t fear them as much as they fear Caul.”

  “Then they don’t know who they’re dealing with,” Noor said.

  Rounding a corner, we came upon Wreck Donovan and Dogface, who were working with a gang of Untouchables and some peculiars from the Acre to fortify the entrance of the peculiar ministries building with sandbags and gun emplacements, while Angelica was using her cloud to try and blow a bothersome squall of bones away from the workers.

  “I thought you were just here to observe!” I said, approaching Wreck.

  He grinned. “Well, someone had to get you people ready for battle. Your ymbrynes certainly aren’t lifting a finger.”

  Just as he said it, a scattering of finger bones rained onto the cobblestones nearby.

  “They’re working on something more important,” Millard said testily.

  “Ah, right, their secret plan to save everyone!” Wreck looked around with exaggerated eagerness. “Which will happen . . . when, exactly?”

  “I didn’t realize you cared what happened to us,” Noor said.

  Wreck picked up one of the skeletal fingers from the ground and wagged it at us. “Don’t confuse our assistance for caring. The dominoes are starting to fall, and if this one goes”—he circled the finger in the air—“then the cancer your ymbrynes have failed to quash could spread to our side of the Atlantic. We can’t allow that.”

  “How noble of you,” Millard said.

  “Heroes are rarely acknowledged in their own lifetimes,” Wreck said, flicking the finger away. “So it goes.”

  “But don’t expect us to stick around if things get really hairy,” said the half-warthog Untouchable as she passed carrying a sandbag. “We’re here to protect our investment, not die for you.”

  My head snapped toward Wreck. “What investment?”

  A flicker of irritation crossed his face, but he recovered quickly. “Our investment in you,” he said with saccharine sweetness, “who we hope to remain friends and allies with for years to come.”

  But they’d let something slip, and now we had even more reason to distrust them.

  “Com
e on, fellows, we don’t have all day to waste on this swaggering gasbag,” said Millard.

  Wreck flashed us a cocky two-fingered salute goodbye. Then with a lift of his arm a sandbag rose into the air and followed him as he walked off toward the ministries building.

  So that’s what he can do, I thought.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The tinkerer’s workshop lay on the Acre’s outer edges, a zone that ringed this loop’s peculiar heart like bathtub scum. With each zigzagging block Millard reassured us it was only a little farther, that the place we were heading was just around the next corner. Meanwhile, the streets kept narrowing and the grimy tenements leaned at ever more precarious angles and the glares from the normals who lived in them grew darker and more murderous.

  I was starting to wonder if we’d made a mistake ditching our two guards.

  From a doorway an old crone hissed, “Begone, ye cursed strangers!” and then spat at us while furiously scratching her head.

  We darted across the street as she retreated into a basement bolt-hole. “God, what’s eating her?” Noor said.

  “Lice, worms . . . possibly rats,” said Millard. “You’ll want to give all these looped normals a wide berth. It’s been raining blood and bones here for days, and I suspect they think it’s the end of the world.”

  “They might be right,” Noor said.

  “I didn’t know any peculiars lived out here,” I said, eager to change the subject.

  “Only Klaus,” Millard replied. “Says he doesn’t like people breathing down his neck. He’s a bit eccentric. Though I suppose that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

  We found the tinkerer’s house, at long last, in the middle of a deserted-looking block. A hand-lettered sign above the weathered door read CLOCK REPAIR. The door swung open before any of us had a chance to knock, and the next thing I knew there was a gun in our faces, a giant double-barreled blunderbuss wielded by an old man with wild white hair.