Library of Souls
Page 36
The car stalled. The headlights died and the engine went quiet. As my friends surrounded the car, I tried to reassure my family. “It’s okay, they’re my friends, they’re not going to hurt you.”
My uncles passed out, their heads slumping onto my shoulders, and my mother’s screams gradually faded to whimpers. My dad was jumpy and wide-eyed. “This is nuts this is nuts this is totally nuts,” he kept muttering.
“Stay in the car,” I said, and reaching over an unconscious uncle I opened the door, crawled over him, and slid out.
Emma and I slammed together in a dizzy, twirling embrace. I could hardly speak. “What are you—how did you—”
I was tingling all over, certain I was still dreaming.
“I got your electrical letter!” she said.
“My … e-mail?”
“Yes, whatever you call it! When I didn’t hear from you I got worried, and then I remembered the machinated postbox you said you’d made for me. Horace was able to guess your password, and—”
“We came as soon as we heard,” said Miss Peregrine, shaking her head at my parents. “Very disappointing, but not entirely surprising.”
“We’re here to save you!” Olive crowed. “Like you saved us!”
“And I’m so glad to see you!” I said. “But don’t you have to go? You’ll start aging forward!”
“Didn’t you read my last few letters?” Emma said. “I explained everything …”
“My parents took them. That’s why they freaked out.”
“What? How awful!” She glared at my parents. “That’s stealing, you know! In any case, there’s nothing to worry about. We made an exciting discovery!”
“You mean I made an exciting discovery,” I heard Millard say. “All thanks to Perplexus. It took me days to figure out how to get him back to his loop using Bentham’s convoluted machine—during which time Perplexus should have aged forward. But he didn’t. What’s more, his gray hair even turned black again! That’s when I realized something had happened to him while he was in Abaton with us: his true age had been reset. When the ymbrynes collapsed the loop, it wound back his clock, so to speak, so that his body was exactly as old as it looked, rather than his actual age of five hundred and seventy-one.”
“And it wasn’t just Perplexus’s clock that got wound back,” Emma said excitedly, “but all of ours! Everyone who was in Abaton that day!”
“Apparently it’s a side effect of loop collapse,” Miss Peregrine said. “An extremely dangerous Fountain of Youth.”
“So this means … you won’t age forward? Ever?”
“Well, no faster than you!” Emma said, and laughed. “One day at a time!”
“That’s … amazing!” I said, overjoyed but struggling to take it all in. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming?”
“Quite sure,” said Miss Peregrine.
“Can we stay a while, Jacob?” said Claire, bouncing up to me. “You said we could come anytime!”
“I figured we’d make a holiday of it,” Miss Peregrine said before I could reply. “The children know almost nothing of the twenty-first century, and besides, this house looks much more comfortable than Bentham’s drafty old rat-trap. How many bedrooms?”
“Um … we have five, I think?”
“Yes, that’ll do. That’ll do just fine.”
“But what about my parents? And my uncles?”
She glanced at the car and waved a hand. “Your uncles can be memory-wiped with ease. As for your parents, I believe the cat’s out of the bag, as they say. They’ll have to be watched closely for a time, kept on a short leash. But if any two normals can be brought ’round to our way of seeing things, it’s the parents of the great Jacob Portman.”
“And the son and daughter-in-law of the great Abraham Portman!” said Emma.
“You … you knew my father?” my dad said timidly, peeping at us from the car window.
“I loved him like a son,” said Miss Peregrine. “As I do Jacob.”
Dad blinked, then slowly nodded, but I don’t think he understood.
“They’re going to stay with us for a while,” I said. “Okay?”
His eyes widened and he shrank away. “It’s … uh … I think you’d better ask your mother …”
She was curled in the passenger seat with her hands blocking her eyes.
I said, “Mom?”
“Go away,” she said. “Just go away, all of you!”
Miss Peregrine leaned down. “Mrs. Portman, look at me, please.”
Mom peeked through her fingers. “You aren’t really there. I had too much wine at dinner, that’s all.”
“We’re quite real, I assure you. And this may be hard to believe now, but we’re all going to be friends.”
My mom turned away. “Frank, change the channel. I don’t like this show.”
“Okay, honey,” my dad said. “Son, I think I’d better, um … um …” and then he shut his eyes, shook his head, and rolled up the window.
“Are you sure this isn’t going to melt their brains?” I asked Miss Peregrine.
“They’ll come around,” she replied. “Some take longer than others.”
* * *
We walked back toward my house in a group, the moon bright and rising, the hot night alive with wind and cicadas. Bronwyn pushed the dead car along behind us, my family still in it. I walked hand in hand with Emma, my mind reeling from all that had happened.
“One thing I don’t understand,” I said. “How did you get here? And so quickly?”
I tried to picture a girl with a mouth in the back of her head and a boy with bees buzzing around him getting through airport security. And Millard: had they snuck him onto an airplane? How did they even get passports?
“We got lucky,” Emma said. “One of Bentham’s rooms led to a loop just a hundred miles from here.”
“Some appalling swamp,” Miss Peregrine said. “Crocodiles and knee-deep muck. No idea what my brother wanted with the place. Anyhow, from there I managed to effect our exit into the present, and then it was just a matter of catching two buses and walking three and one-half miles. The whole trip took less than a day. Needless to say, we’re tired and parched from our journey.”
We had arrived on my front porch. Miss Peregrine looked at me expectantly.
“Right! There are sodas in the fridge, I think …”
I fumbled the key into door and opened it.
“Hospitality, Mr. Portman, hospitality!” Miss Peregrine said, breezing past me into the house. “Leave your shoes outside, children, we’re not in Devil’s Acre anymore!”
I stood holding the door as they tramped inside, muddy shoes and all.
“Yes, this will do nicely!” I heard Miss Peregrine say. “Where’s the kitchen?”
“What should I do with the car?” Bronwyn said, still standing at its rear bumper. “And, uh … the normals?”
“Could you put them in the garage?” I said. “And maybe keep an eye on them for a minute or two?”
She looked at Emma and me, then smiled. “Sure thing.”
I found the garage door opener and hit the button. Bronwyn rolled the car and my dazed parents inside, and then Emma and I were left alone on the front porch.
“You’re sure it’s okay that we stay?” Emma said.
“It’ll be tricky with my family,” I said. “But Miss P seems to think we can make it work.”
“I meant, is it okay with you. The way we left things was …”
“Are you kidding? I’m so happy you’re here, I can hardly speak.”
“Okay. You’re smiling, so I suppose I believe you.”
Smiling? I was grinning like a fool.
Emma took a step toward me. I slipped my arms around her. We held each other, my cheek pressed to her forehead.
“I never wanted to lose you,” she whispered. “But I didn’t see a way around it. A clean break seemed easier than losing you in slow motion.”
“You don’t have to explain. I understand.”
“Anyway, maybe we don’t have to, now. Be just friends. If you don’t want to.”
“Maybe it’s a good idea, though,” I said. “Just for a while.”
“Oh,” she said quickly, disappointed. “Sure …”
“No, what I mean is …” I pulled away gently, looking at her. “Now that we have time, we can go slow. I could ask you out to the movies … we could go for walks … you know, like normal people do.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know too much about what normal people do.”
“It’s not complicated,” I said. “You taught me how to be peculiar. Maybe now I can teach you how to be normal. Well, as normal as I know how to be.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. “Sure, Jacob. I think that sounds nice.” She took my hand, leaned toward me, and kissed me on the cheek. “Now that we have time.”
And it occurred to me, standing there, just breathing with her, quiet settling around us, that those might be the three most beautiful words in the English language.
We have time.
About the Photography
The images that appear in this book are authentic, vintage found photographs, and with the exception of a handful that have undergone digital processing, they are unaltered. They were painstakingly collected over the course of several years: discovered at flea markets, vintage paper shows, and in the archives of photo collectors more accomplished than I, who were kind enough to part with some of their most peculiar treasures to help create this book.
The following photos were graciously lent for use by their owners:
PAGE TITLE FROM THE COLLECTION OF
This page Wights testing gas Erin Waters
This page Man with pirates John Van Noate
This page Floating girl Jack Mord/The Thanatos Archive
This page Taxidermied girl Adriana Müller
This page Myron Bentham John Van Noate
This page Ymbrynes and their grim Jack Mord/The Thanatos Archive
This page Boy with wings John Van Noate
This page Bloody hallway Jack Mord/The Thanatos Archive
This page Bowels of the machine John Van Noate
This page Parrot in cage John Van Noate
This page Inside the tower Peter J. Cohen
This page Drainage pipe John Van Noate
This page Doctor and nurses John Van Noate
This page Man with thinning hair John Van Noate
This page Man in dark glasses John Van Noate
This page Boy and girl John Van Noate
Ransom Riggs grew up in Florida but now makes his home in the land of peculiar children—Los Angeles. He was raised on a steady diet of ghost stories and British comedy, which probably explains the novels he writes. There’s a nonzero chance he’s in your house right now, watching you from underneath the bed. (Go ahead and check. We’ll wait.) If not, you can always find him on Twitter @ransomriggs.
quirkbooks.com/peculiarchildren