Because my parents’ now-three-doored sedan could only accommodate half our group, we’d have to go shopping in two shifts. Shift one would include Emma, because I always gave her preferential treatment and made no secret of it; Olive, because she was a cheerful presence and I wanted some cheering; Millard, because he wouldn’t stop pestering me; and Bronwyn, because her muscles were the only way to force open the stuck garage door. I promised Hugh, Horace, Enoch, and Claire that I’d be back for them in a couple of hours. Horace said he wasn’t interested in buying new clothes, anyway.
“The day denim became acceptable as daily wear,” he said, side-eyeing me, “contemporary fashion lost all credibility. The modern runway looks like a hobo camp.”
“You have to have new clothes,” said Claire. “Miss Peregrine says.”
Enoch scowled. “Miss Peregrine says, Miss Peregrine says! You sound like a windup toy.”
We left them squabbling and went to the garage. With some duct tape, baling wire, and a little spot-welding by Emma, we managed to reattach the driver’s-side door; it didn’t open or close, but we were a lot less likely to get pulled over by curious police officers with four doors than with just three. When we were finished we all piled in. A minute later we were winding down the banyan-shaded road that traced the spine of Needle Key.
Big houses loomed on either side of us, glimpses of beach in the gaps between. It was the first time my friends had seen so much of this world by day, and they were quiet as they drank it in, the girls glued to the windows in back, Millard’s breath fogging the glass on the passenger’s side. I tried to imagine what it looked like to them, these sights that had long ago faded into near invisibility for me.
The key narrowed as we drove south, the big houses giving way to smaller ones, then to colonies of squat condos from the seventies, gaudy signs announcing their names: POLYNESIAN ISLES, PARADISE SHORES, FANTASY ISLAND. As we hit the commercial zone, more blasts of color: pink-roofed knickknack shops that sold sunscreen and beer cozies; bright yellow bait stores; striped-awning real estate offices. And bars, of course, their rows of tiki torches dancing and doors flung open to let the sea breeze in and the creaky warble of Jimmy Buffett karaoke covers out, echoing all the way down to the water’s edge. The speed limit was so glacial, and the road so clogged with sun-drunk beachgoers, that there was time to sing along as you passed by. None of it had changed in my lifetime. Like a long-running play, you could set your watch to the movements of the actors and the timing of the set pieces, the same every day: the European tourists red as lobsters, wilting in the pencil-thin shade of cabbage palms; the leathery fishermen standing sentry along the bridge, hats and bellies drooping, casting lines into the shallows beside their Igloo coolers.
Leaving the key, we rose above the shimmering bay, tires humming over the bridge’s metal grates. Then we descended to the mainland side, an archipelago of mini-malls and shopping plazas encircled by oceanic parking lots.
“What a strange landscape,” said Bronwyn, breaking the silence. “Why did Abe move here, of all places in America?”
“Florida used to be one of the best areas for peculiars to hide,” said Millard. “Before the hollow wars, anyway. It was the winter home of all the circuses, and the whole middle of the state is a great trackless swamp. They said anybody, no matter how peculiar, could find a place to blend in here—or to vanish.”
We left behind the beige heart of town and headed out toward the boonies. Past the shuttered outlet mall, past the half-built housing development being slowly reclaimed by underbrush, loomed the biggest of the big-box stores. That’s where we were headed. I turned down Piney Woods Road, the mile-long corridor along which all the town’s nursing homes, over-fifty-five trailer parks, and retirement communities had been built. The road was lined with unsubtle billboards for hospitals, urgent care clinics, and mortuary parks. Everyone in town called Piney Woods Road the Highway to Heaven.
I started to brake as we approached a large sign depicting a circle of pine trees, and it wasn’t until I’d actually made the turn that I caught myself. There were several routes to the shopping center we were going to, but by force of habit I’d chosen this one, and because I’d let my mind wander, my subconscious had made the turn for me. It was the entrance to Circle Village, my grandfather’s subdivision.
“Oops, wrong way,” I said, stopping the car and putting it into reverse.
But before I could turn around and get back onto the road, Emma said, “Wait a minute. Jacob—wait.”
My hand lingered on the gearshift as a little wave of dread passed through me.
“Yeah?”
Emma was looking around, craning her neck to see out the back window.
“Isn’t this where Abe used to live?” asked Emma.
“It is, yeah.”
“Really?” said Olive, leaning up between the passenger’s and driver’s seats. “It is?”
“I turned in by accident,” I said. “I’ve driven here so many times, it was just, like, muscle memory.”
“I want to see,” said Olive. “Can we look around?”
“Sorry, there’s no time today,” I said, stealing a glance at Emma in my mirror. I could see only the back of her head; she was turned all the way around, staring out the rear window at the guard station that marked the beginning of the neighborhood.
“But we’re here now,” Olive said. “Remember how we always used to talk about visiting? Didn’t you always wonder what his house looked like?”
“Olive, no,” said Millard. “It’s a bad idea.”
“Yeah,” said Bronwyn, poking Olive and then jerking her head toward Emma. “Maybe another day.”
Olive finally got the hint. “Oh. Okay. You know, actually, I don’t feel like it, either . . .”
I hit the turn signal. I was just about to pull onto the road when Emma faced forward in her seat.
“I want to go,” she said. “I want to see his house.”
“You do?” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Millard.
“Yes.” She frowned. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Like I won’t be able to handle it.”
“Nobody said that,” said Millard.
“You were thinking it.”
“What about the clothes shopping?” I said, still hoping to get out of this.
“I think we should pay our respects,” said Emma. “That’s more important than clothes.”
The idea of touring them around Abe’s half-empty house sounded downright morbid, but at this point it seemed cruel to deny them.
“All right,” I said reluctantly. “Just for a minute.”
For the others, I think, it was simple curiosity, to learn more about who Abe had become after he left their loop. For Emma, it was more than that. Since she had arrived in Florida, I knew she had been thinking about my grandfather. She had spent years trying to imagine how and where he lived, piecing together an incomplete picture of his life in America from occasional letters. For years she had dreamed of coming to visit him and now that she was actually here, she couldn’t put it out of her mind. I felt her trying to, and failing. She’d spent too long dreaming about it—about him, about this place. In a way that felt entirely new and unsettling, I had started to feel his ghost looming between us in private moments. Maybe seeing where he had lived—and died—would help lay it to rest.
I hadn’t been to my grandfather’s house in months, not since before my dad and I left for Wales—back when I knew nothing. Of all the surreal moments I had experienced since my friends came to stay, none felt more like a dream than driving through my grandfather’s lazy, looping neighborhood with the very people he’d sent me abroad to find.
How little it had changed: Here was the same guard waving us through the gate, his face ghostly white with sunblock. Here were the yard gnomes and plastic flamingoes and rusting fish-shaped mailboxes, the houses they fronted all alike, a paint box of fading pastels. Here were the same craggy wraiths, slow-pedaling their orthopedic tricycles between the shuffleboard court and the community center. As if this place, too, were stuck in a time loop. Maybe that’s what my grandfather had liked about it.
“Certainly is a humble place,” said Millard. “No one would think a famous hollow-hunter lived here, that’s certain.”
“I’m sure that was intentional,” said Emma. “Abe had to keep a low profile.”
“Even so, I was expecting something a bit grander.”
“I think it’s sweet,” said Olive. “Little houses all in a row. I’m just sorry that after all these years wishing we could pay Abe a visit, he isn’t here to greet us.”
“Olive!” Bronwyn hissed.
Olive glanced at Emma and winced.
“It’s fine,” Emma said breezily. But then I met her eyes in the rearview mirror, and she quickly looked away.
I wondered if the real reason she’d wanted to come here was to prove something to me—that she was over him, that the old wounds didn’t ache anymore.
Then I turned a corner, and there it was, finally, humble as a shoebox, at the end of a weedy cul-de-sac. All along Morningbird Lane the houses looked a bit abandoned—most of the neighbors were still up north for the summer—but Abe’s looked worse, its lawn gone to seed, the yellow trim along the roofline beginning to flake and peel. Abe, as his neighbors would return to find come autumn, was gone forever.
“Well, this it,” I said, pulling into the driveway. “Just a regular house.”
“How long did he live here?” Bronwyn asked.
I was about to answer, but I was distracted by something unfamiliar that had escaped my notice until just then: a FOR SALE sign staked into the grass. I got out and marched through the yard, pulled it out of the ground, and threw it into the ditch.
No one had told me. Of course they hadn’t: I would have thrown a fit, and my parents didn’t want to deal with it. My feelings were too much trouble.
Emma came up behind me. “Are you okay?”
“I should be asking you that,” I said.
“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s just a house. Right?”
“Right,” I said. “So why does it bother me so much that my parents are selling it?”
She hugged me from behind. “You don’t have to explain. I understand.”
“Thanks. And I totally get it if you need to leave, whenever. Just say the word.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. Then, quieter, “But thank you.”
There was a sudden commotion behind us, and we turned to see Bronwyn and Olive standing by the trunk of the car.
“There’s someone in the boot!” Bronwyn cried.
We ran over. I could hear a muffled voice shouting. I pushed a button on the key fob and the trunk opened. Enoch popped up.
“Enoch!” cried Emma.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I said.
“You really thought I was going to let you leave me behind?” He blinked in the sudden sunlight. “Think again!”
“Your brain,” said Millard, shaking his head. “Sometimes it just defies belief.”
“Yes, my brilliance catches a lot of people off guard.” Enoch clambered out onto the driveway, then looked around, confused. “Wait. This isn’t a clothing shop.”
“Goodness, he is brilliant,” said Millard.
“It’s Abe’s house,” said Bronwyn.
Enoch mouth fell open. “What!” He raised an eyebrow at Emma. “Whose idea was this?”
“Mine,” I said, hoping to shut down an awkward conversation before it began.
“We’re here to pay our respects,” said Bronwyn.
“If you say so,” said Enoch.
I hadn’t brought the keys to the house, but it didn’t matter. There was a spare hidden beneath a conch shell in the vegetable garden, one only Grandpa Portman and I knew about. There was something sweet about finding it just where it was supposed to be. Moments later I was unlocking the front door and we were stepping inside.
The air-conditioning had probably been off for most of the summer, and the house was hot and stale. Worse than the stifling temperature was the state of the place. Clothes and papers were stacked in unsteady piles on the floor, household items were littered across countertops, trash spilled from a pyramid of garbage bags in the corner. My father and my aunt had never finished sorting through Grandpa Portman’s things. Dad abandoned the project (and the house, it seemed) when we left for Wales and planted a FOR SALE sign out front in the hope someone else might do the work instead. It looked like a ransacked Salvation Army store, not the home of a respected elder, and I was overcome by a wave of shame. I found myself trying to apologize and explain and tidy up all at the same time, as if I could hide what my friends had already seen.
“Gosh,” said Enoch, clicking his tongue as he looked around, “he must have really been bad off at the end.”
“No—it was—it was never like this,” I stammered, scooping old magazines from the seat of Abe’s armchair. “At least, not while he was alive—”
“Jacob, wait,” said Emma.
“Can you guys go outside for a minute while I do this?”
“Jacob!” Emma caught me by the shoulders. “Stop.”
“I’ll be quick,” I said. “He didn’t live like this. I swear.”
“I know,” said Emma. “Abe wouldn’t even have breakfast without a clean collared shirt on.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So—”
“We want to help.”
Enoch pulled a face. “We do?”
“Yes!” said Olive. “We’ll all pitch in.”
“I agree,” said Bronwyn. “It shouldn’t be left like this.”
“Why not?” said Enoch. “Abe’s dead. Who cares if his house is clean?”
“We do,” said Millard, and Enoch stumbled as if Millard had shoved him. “And if you’re not going to help, go lock yourself in the boot of the car again!”
“Yeah!” cried Olive.
“No need to get violent, mates.” Enoch grabbed a broom from the corner and twirled it around. “See, I’m game. Sweepy-sweep!”
Emma clapped her hands. “Then let’s get this place shipshape.”
We dove in and started working. Emma took charge, giving orders like a drill sergeant, which I think helped keep her mind from wandering into painful territory. “Books on shelves. Clothes in closets. Trash in cans!”
With one hand, Bronwyn lifted Abe’s easy chair over her head. “Where does this go?”
We dusted and swept. We threw open windows to let in fresh air. Bronwyn took room-sized carpets into the yard and beat the dust out of them—by herself. Even Enoch didn’t seem to mind the work once we settled into a rhythm. Everything was coated with dust and grime, and it got onto our hands and clothes and in our hair. But nobody minded.
As we worked, I saw ghostly images of my grandfather everywhere. In his plaid chair, reading one of his spy novels. At the living room window, silhouetted against a bright afternoon, just watching—for the postman, he would say, and chuckle. Stooped over a pot of Polish stew in the kitchen, tending it while telling me stories. At the big drawing table he kept in the garage, pushpins and yarn spread out everywhere, making maps with me on a summer afternoon. “Where should the river go?” he would say, handing me a blue marker. “What about the town?” White hair rising like tendrils of smoke from his scalp. “Here maybe is better?” he’d say, urging my hand a little this way or that.
When my friends and I were finished, we went out to the lanai, seeking refuge in the slight breeze and mopping our brows. Enoch had been right, of course—no one would care that the work had been done. It was a gesture, useless but meaningful. Abe’s friends had not been able to attend his funeral. Somehow, cleaning his house had become their goodbye.
“You guys didn’t have to do that,” I said.
“We know,” said Bronwyn. “But it felt good.”
She popped the top on a soda we’d found in the fridge, then took a long drink, burped, and passed it to Emma.
“I’m only sorry the others couldn’t be here,” said Emma, taking a small sip. “We should bring them later, so they can see it, too.”
“We’re not finished, are we?” said Enoch. He actually sounded let down.
“That’s the whole house,” I replied. “Unless you want to clean the yard, too.”
“What about the war room?” asked Millard.
“The what?”
“You know, where Abe planned attacks on hollowgast, received encoded communications from other hollow-hunters, et cetera . . . he must have had one.”
“He, uh—No, he didn’t.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell you about it,” said Enoch. “It was probably full of top secret stuff, and you were just too small and dumb to understand.”
“I’m sure if Abe had had a war room, Jacob would have known,” said Emma.
“Yeah,” I said. Though I wasn’t so sure. I was the same kid who, after my grandfather had told me the truth about the peculiars, had let bullies at school convince me it was a fairy tale. I’d basically called him a liar to his face, which I know had hurt his feelings. So maybe he wouldn’t have trusted me with a secret like that, because I hadn’t trusted him. And anyway, how could you hide something like a war room in a little house like this?
“What about a basement?” asked Bronwyn. “Abe must have had a fortified basement to protect against hollowgast attacks.”
“If he’d had a place like that,” I said, getting frustrated, “then he wouldn’t have gotten killed by a hollowgast, would he?”
Bronwyn looked hurt. There was a brief, awkward silence.
“Jacob?” ventured Olive. “Is this what I think it is?”
She was standing by the screen door that opened to the backyard, running her hand down a long, flapping gash in the netting.
I felt a new flare of anger toward my father. Why hadn’t he fixed it, or torn it out entirely? Why was it still hanging there, like evidence at a crime scene?
“Yeah. That’s where the hollow came in,” I said. “But it didn’t happen here. I found him . . .” I pointed at the woods. “Way out.”
Olive and Bronwyn exchanged a loaded glance. Emma looked at the floor, the color draining from her cheeks. Maybe this, finally, was too much for her.
“There’s nothing to see, really, it’s just bushes and stuff,” I said. “I’m not sure I could find the exact spot again, anyway.”
A lie. I could have found it blindfolded.
“If you could bring yourself to try,” Emma said, looking up at me. Her jaw was set, her brow furrowed. “I need to see the place where it happened.”
I led them through knee-high grass to the edge of the woods, then plunged into the gloomy pine forest. I showed them how to navigate the spiny underbrush so they didn’t get cut on saw-toothed palmettoes or tangled in thickets of vine, and how to identify and avoid the patches where snakes made their nests. As we made our way, I retold the story of what happened that fateful evening—the night that had split my life into Before and After. The panicked call I’d gotten from Abe while I was at work. My delay in getting here because I’d had to wait to catch a ride with a friend—a delay that may have either cost my grandfather his life, or saved mine. How I’d found the house a wreck, then noticed my grandfather’s still-lit flashlight in the grass, shining into the woods. Fording into the black trees, just like we were doing now, and then—
A rustle in the brush sent everyone leaping into the air.
“It’s just a raccoon!” I said. “Don’t worry, if there were any hollows around right now, I’d feel it.”
We circled a patch of brush that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t be sure I’d found the exact spot where my grandfather died. The woods in Florida grew quickly, and since I’d been here last it had squirmed and shifted into an unfamiliar new configuration. I guess I couldn’t have found it blindfolded, after all. It had been too many months.
I stepped into a sunny clearing where the vines were low and the brush seemed to have been tamped down. “It was around here. I think.”
We gathered in a loose circle and observed a spontaneous moment of silence. Then, one by one, my friends took turns saying goodbye to him.
“You were a great man, Abraham Portman,” said Millard. “Peculiarkind could use more like you. We miss you dearly.”
“It isn’t fair, what happened to you,” said Bronwyn. “I wish we could have protected you like you used to protect us.”
“Thank you for sending Jacob,” said Olive. “We would all be dead without him.”
“Let’s not go overboard,” said Enoch, and then because he had spoken, it was his turn. He twisted his shoe in the dirt for a long moment, then said, “Why’d you have to do something stupid, like get yourself killed?” He laughed dryly. “I’m sorry if I was ever an ass to you. If it changes anything, I wish you weren’t dead.” And then he turned his face away and said quietly, “Goodbye, old friend.”
Olive touched her heart. “Enoch, that was nice.”
“Okay, settle down.” Enoch shook his head, embarrassed, and started walking back. “I’ll be at the house.”
Bronwyn and Olive looked to Emma, who hadn’t spoken yet.
“I’d like a moment alone, please,” she said.
The girls looked a little disappointed, and then everyone but me went after Enoch.
Emma glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows.
Me too?
She looked a bit sheepish.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course. I’ll just be over here. In case you need anything.”
She nodded. I walked about thirty paces, leaned against a tree, and waited. Emma stood at the spot for several minutes. I tried not to stare at her, but the more time passed, the more I caught myself watching the back of her head to see if it was bobbing, and her shoulders to see if they were shaking.
My eyes drifted to a vulture circling overhead. I looked down a moment later when I heard a noise in the brush.
Bronwyn was racing toward me. I startled so badly that I almost fell over.
“Jacob! Emma! You have to come quick!”
Emma saw and ran over to us.
“What happened?” I said.
“We found something,” said Bronwyn. “In the house.”
The look on her face made me think it was something awful. A dead body. But her voice was full of excitement.
They were standing in the room Abe had used as his office. The old Persian carpet that stretched nearly wall to wall had been rolled up and pushed to one side, revealing pale, worn floorboards beneath.
Emma and I were panting from running.
“Bronwyn says . . . you found something,” Emma said.
“I wanted to test a theory,” said Millard. “So while you two were dallying in the woods, I asked Olive to take a walk around the house.”
Olive took a couple of steps, her lead shoes making a heavy thud with each footfall.
“Imagine my surprise when I had her walk through this room. Olive, would you demonstrate?”
Olive started at the wall and stomped across the room. When she reached the very center of the floor, the sound her lead shoes made changed from a solid thwump to something more hollow—and slightly metallic.
“There’s something under there,” I said.
“A void. A concavity,” said Millard.
I heard Millard’s knee connect with the floor, and then a letter opener floated over the floor, point down. It was thrust between two boards, and with a grunt Millard pried up a section of floor about three feet square. It swung back on a hinge, revealing a metal door that looked just large enough for a grown man to fit through.
“Holy shit.”
Olive looked aghast. I rarely swore in front of them, but this was just . . . well, holy shit.
“It’s a door,” I said.
“More of a hatch, really,” said Bronwyn.
“I hate to say I told you so,” said Millard. “But—I told you so.”
The metal door was made of dull gray steel. It had a recessed handle and a number pad. I knelt down and rapped the metal with my knuckle. It sounded thick and strong. Then I tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s locked,” said Olive. “We already tried to open it.”
“What’s the combination?” Bronwyn asked me.
“How should I know?”
“Told you he wouldn’t,” said Enoch. “You don’t know much, do you?”
I sighed. “Let me think for a second.”
“Could the code be someone’s birthday?” asked Olive.
I tried a few—mine, Abe’s, my dad’s, my grandmother’s, even Emma’s—but none worked.
“It’s not a birthday,” said Millard. “Abe would never have made the combination something so obvious.”
“We don’t even know how many numbers are in the combination,” said Emma.
Bronwyn squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, Jacob. Think.”
I tried to focus, but I was letting hurt feelings distract me. I had always thought of myself as closer to Abe than anybody. So how was it that he never mentioned the secret door in the floor of his study? He lived more than half his life in the shadows, and never made a real attempt to share it with me. Sure, he told me stories that sounded like fairy tales and shared a few old photos, but he never showed me anything. I never would have doubted his stories if he’d made more of an effort to prove them—like showing me the secret door to his secret room.
Unlike my father, I wanted to believe.
Had he really been so injured by my skepticism that it made him abandon some plan to tell me everything? I couldn’t believe that anymore. If he had told me the truth plainly, I would’ve guarded his secrets with my life. I think, in the end, he just didn’t want me to know because he didn’t trust me. And now here I was trying to guess the combination to a door he had never told me about, behind which were secrets he had never meant for me to uncover.
So why was I bothering?
“I’m out of ideas,” I said, and stood up.
“You’re giving up?” said Emma.
“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a root cellar.”
“You know it’s not.”
I shrugged. “My grandmother took fruit preservation very seriously.”
Enoch let out a frustrated sigh. “Maybe you’re holding out on us.”
“What?” I said, turning toward him.
“I think you know the code but you want to keep Abe’s secrets for yourself. Even though we found the door.”
I took an angry step toward him. Bronwyn put herself between us.
“Jacob, settle down! Enoch, shut up. You’re not helping.”
I gave him the finger.
“Ahh, who cares what’s in Abe’s dusty old hole in the ground,” said Enoch, and then he laughed. “It’s probably just a thousand old love letters from Emma.”
Now Emma gave him the finger, too.
“Or maybe a shrine with a big photo of her and candles all around . . .” He clapped his hands gleefully. “Oh, that would be so awkward for you two!”
“Come here so I can burn your eyebrows off,” said Emma.
“Ignore him,” I said.
She and I retreated to the doorway with our hands in our pockets. He’d gotten to both of us.
“I’m not hiding anything,” I said quietly. “I really don’t know what the code is.”
“I know,” she said, and touched my arm. “I was thinking. Maybe it’s not a number.”
“But it’s a number pad.”
“Maybe it’s a word. Look, the keys have letters and numbers.”
I went over to the door and looked. She was right: Every number key had three letters below it, like the buttons on a telephone.
“Was there a word that would have meant something to the both of you?” she said.
“E-m-m-a?” Enoch said.
I turned toward him. “I swear to God, Enoch . . .”
Bronwyn picked him up and threw him over her shoulder.
“Hey! Put me down!”
“You’re getting a time-out,” said Bronwyn, and she walked him out of the room while he wriggled and complained.
“As I was saying,” said Emma. “Some secret you had between the two of you. Something only you would know.”
I considered it for a moment, then knelt down by the hatch. First, I tried names—mine, Abe’s, Emma’s—but no dice. Then, just for the hell of it, I keyed in the word p-e-c-u-l-i-a-r.
Nope. Way too obvious.
“You know, it might not even be in English,” said Millard. “Abe spoke Polish, too.”
“Maybe you should take the night to think it over,” Emma said.
But now my mind was whirring. Polish. Yes, he spoke it now and then, mostly to himself. He’d never taught me any, except for one word. Tygrysku—a pet name he’d given me. It meant “little tiger.”
I punched it in.
The tumblers inside the lock opened with a clunk.
Holy shit.
The door opened to reveal a ladder descending into darkness. I swung my foot onto the first rung.
“Wish me luck,” I said.
“Let me go first,” Emma said. She held out her palm and made a flame.
“It should be me,” I said. “If there’s anything nasty waiting down there, I want to get eaten first.”
“How very chivalrous,” said Millard.
I climbed down ten steps onto a concrete floor. It was cooler than the house above by ten or fifteen degrees. Before me was total darkness. I took out my phone and shone its light around, which was only bright enough to show me the walls—curved, gray concrete. It was a tunnel: claustrophobically tight, so low I had to hunch. My phone light was too puny to see what lay ahead, or how far the tunnel went.
“Well?” Emma called down.
“No monsters!” I shouted. “But I could use more light.”
So much for chivalry.
“Be right there!” said Emma.
“Us too!” I heard Olive say.
It was only then, as I was waiting for my friends to climb down, that it hit me—my grandfather had meant for me to find this place.
Tygrysku. It was a bread crumb in the forest. Just like the postcard from Miss Peregrine that he’d tucked into that volume of Emerson.
Emma reached the bottom and lit a flame in her hand. “Well,” she said, looking at the tunnel ahead. “It’s definitely not a root cellar.”
She winked at me and I grinned back. She seemed cool and collected, but I’m pretty sure it was an act; every nerve in me was jangling.
“May I come down?” Enoch called down from the room above. “Or am I to be punished for having a sense of humor?”
Bronwyn had just reached the bottom of the ladder. “You stay where you are,” she said. “In case anyone comes, we don’t want to be caught down here unawares.”
“In case who comes?” he said.
“Whoever,” said Bronwyn.
We gathered in a cluster with Emma at the front, her flame held out to make a light.
“Move slowly, listen out for anything strange, and keep your wits about you,” she said. “We don’t know what’s down here, and it’s possible Abe could have booby-trapped the place.”
We began to move forward, hunched and shuffling. I tried to imagine where we were in relation to the house above us, based on the direction the tunnel was facing. After twenty or thirty feet, we were most likely beneath the living room. After forty, we were leaving the house altogether, and after fifty, I was fairly certain we were under the front yard.
Finally, the tunnel ended at a door. It was heavy-looking, like the hatch behind us, but it was hanging slightly ajar.
“Hello?” I called. At the sound of my voice Bronwyn startled badly.
“Sorry,” I said to her.
“Are you expecting someone?” Millard asked.
“No. But you never know.”
Though I tried not to show it, I was so nervous I was vibrating.
Emma stepped through the door, then stood shining her flame around for a moment. “Looks safe enough,” she said. “But this might be useful . . .”
She reached for the wall, flicked a switch, and a bank of fluorescent lights clinked on inside the room.
“Hey now!” Olive said. “That’s more like it.”
Emma closed her hand to extinguish her flame, and we piled in after her. And then I turned a slow circle, taking everything in. The room was small, maybe twenty feet by fifteen, but I could finally stand up to full height. In the way of my grandfather, it was meticulously organized. Along one wall were four metal beds arranged bunk-style in two stacks, a tight roll of sheets and blankets sealed in plastic at the foot of each. There was a big locker bolted to the wall, which Emma opened to find all kinds of supplies: flashlights, batteries, basic tools, and enough canned and dried food to last several weeks. Beside that was a big blue drum filled with drinking water, and next to that, a strange-looking plastic box, which I recognized from the survivalist magazines I sometimes found in Abe’s garage as a chemical toilet.
“Wow, look at this!” said Bronwyn. She was standing in a corner, her eye pressed against a metal cylinder that protruded down from the ceiling. “I can see outside!”
The cylinder had handles attached at the base and a viewing lens. Bronwyn stepped aside so I could look through it, and I saw a slightly blurred image of the cul-de-sac outside. I grabbed the handles and turned it, and the view rotated until I could see the house, partly obscured by a field of high grass.
“It’s a periscope,” I said. “It must be hidden at the edge of the yard.”
“So he could see them coming,” said Emma.
“What is this place?” said Olive.
“It must be a shelter,” said Bronwyn. “In case of hollowgast attack. See the four beds? So his family could hide, too.”
“It was for more than just waiting out attacks,” said Millard. “It was a receiving station.”
His voice came from the opposite wall, next to a big wooden desk. Its surface was almost entirely taken up by an odd-looking machine made of chrome and green-plated metal—like a cross between an archaic printer and a fax machine, with a keyboard stuck awkwardly to the front.
“This must be how he communicated.”
“With who?” said Bronwyn.
“The other hollow-hunters. See, this is a pneumatic teleprinter.”
“Oh, wow,” said Emma, crossing the small room to look at it. “I remember these. Miss Peregrine used to have one. Whatever happened to it?”
“It was part of a scheme for ymbrynes to communicate with one another without having to leave the safety of their loops,” Millard explained. “It didn’t work, in the end. Too complex, and too vulnerable to interception.”
But I was in a daze, only half listening. I’d been trying to wrap my mind around the fact that all this had been so close to me—quite literally under my feet—for years, and I hadn’t known it. That I had spent afternoons playing in the grass just twenty feet above where I was standing now. It boggled the mind, and it made me wonder: How much more peculiarness had I been exposed to without realizing it? I thought about my grandfather’s friends—the old fellows who would come around to visit now and then, whiling away a few hours chatting with Abe out on the back porch, or in his study.
I knew him back in Poland, my grandfather had said about one such visitor.
A friend from the war, was how he’d described another.
But who were they, really?
“You say this thing was for communicating with other hollow-hunters,” I said. “What do you know about them?”
“About the hunters?” said Emma. “We don’t know much, but that was by design. They were extremely secretive.”
“Do you know how many there were?”
“Not more than a dozen, I suppose,” said Millard. “But that’s just an educated guess.”
“And could they all control hollows?” I asked.
Maybe there were other peculiars like me out there. Maybe I could find them.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Emma. “That’s why Abe was so special.”
“And you, Mr. Jacob,” said Bronwyn.
“There’s one thing that doesn’t make sense,” said Millard. “Why didn’t Abe seek shelter down here the night the hollowgast came for him?”
“Maybe he didn’t have time,” said Olive.
“No,” I said. “He knew it was coming for him. He called me in a panic, hours earlier.”
“Maybe he forgot the combination code,” said Olive.
“He wasn’t senile,” Emma said.
There was only one explanation, but I could hardly say it; even thinking it made the breath lock in my throat.
“He didn’t come down here,” I said, “because he knew I’d come to the house looking for him. Even though he begged me to stay away.”
Bronwyn looked pained and raised her hand over her mouth. “And if he was down here . . . while you were up there . . .”
“He was protecting you,” Emma said. “Trying to draw the hollow away, off into the woods.”
My body felt too heavy for my legs, and I sat down on one of the cots.
“You couldn’t have known,” Emma said, perching herself next to me.
“No.” I let out a breath. “He told me monsters were coming, but I didn’t believe him. He might still be alive today—but I didn’t believe him. Again.”
“No. Don’t do this to yourself.” She sounded angry. “He didn’t tell you enough—not nearly enough. If he had, you would’ve believed him. Right?”
“Yeah . . .”
“But Abe loved his secrets.”
“Did he ever,” said Millard.
“I think he loved them more than people sometimes,” said Emma. “And in the end, that’s what got him killed. His secrets—not you.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Definitely.”
I knew she was right—mostly. I was angry at him for not sharing more with me, but it was hard to let go of the idea that he might have told me everything, if only I hadn’t pushed him away. So I felt angry and guilty at the same time, but I couldn’t talk to Emma about it. So I just nodded and said, “Well . . . at least we found this place. One less secret for Abe to take with him to the grave.”
“Maybe more than one,” Millard said, and he slid open a drawer in the desk. “Something here you might be interested in, Jacob.”
I was off the cot and across the room in a second. In the drawer was a big metal-ringed binder stuffed with pages. A label on the front read OPERATIONS LOG.
“Whoa,” I said. “Is this . . . ?”
“Just what it says,” Millard said.
The others crowded around as I slid my fingers under it and lifted it out of the drawer. It was several inches thick and weighed at least five pounds.
“Go on, then,” said Bronwyn.
“Don’t rush me,” I said.
I opened to a random page in the middle—a typewritten mission report with two photos stapled to it, one of costumed child on a sofa and one of a man and woman dressed as clowns.
I read the report aloud. It was written in the terse and emotionless language of law enforcement. It outlined a mission to rescue a peculiar child from a wight and a hollowgast who were hunting him, then deliver the child to a safe loop.
I flipped a few pages in the binder, which was full of similar reports stretching all the way back to the 1950s, then closed it.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Millard.
“Abe did more than just find and kill hollows,” said Bronwyn.
“Right,” said Millard. “He was saving peculiar children, too.”
I looked at Emma. “Did you know?”
She looked down. “He never discussed his work.”
“But rescuing peculiar children is an ymbryne’s job,” said Olive.
“Yeah,” said Emma, “but if the wights were using the kids as bait, like in that entry, maybe they couldn’t.”
I was hung up on another detail, but for now I kept it to myself.
“HEY!” a voice shouted from the doorway, and we all jumped and turned to see Enoch standing there.
“I told you not to come down here!” said Bronwyn.
“What did you expect? You left me alone for ages.” He stepped into the room and looked around. “So, this is what all the fuss and bother was about? Looks like a prison cell.”
Emma looked at her watch. “It’s almost six. We’d better be getting back.”
“The others are going to kill us,” said Olive. “We’ve been gone all afternoon, and we still haven’t got new clothes!”
Then I remembered Miss Peregrine’s promise. She’d have something to show me at nightfall, she said, which was in just an hour or two. Truth be told, I didn’t much care about whatever it was she had to show me anymore. All I could think about was getting home to my bedroom, closing the door, and reading my grandfather’s logbook from cover to cover.
When we got home, the sun was just starting to dip below the trees. The friends we’d left behind complained loudly about our having been gone so long, but when we told them why—and what we’d found—they forgot their anger and hung on Millard’s every word as he recounted the story.
My parents were gone. They had packed their bags and left for a trip to Asia. I found a note in my mom’s handwriting on the kitchen counter. They would miss me lots, the note read, were available by phone or email anytime, and would I please remember to pay the gardeners. I could tell from the breezy and casual tone of the note—Love you, Jakey!—that Miss Peregrine had done a great job erasing the last few months of worrying about me from their minds. They didn’t seem concerned that I might have a breakdown or run away again while they were gone. In fact, they didn’t seem to care very much at all. And that was fine. Good riddance, I thought. At least we had the place to ourselves.
Miss Peregrine wasn’t around, either. She’d left the house just after we had and had been gone all day, Horace reported.
“Did she say where she was going?” I asked.
“She only said that we were to meet her at precisely seven fifteen at the potting shed in your backyard.”
“The potting shed.”
“At seven fifteen, precisely.”
That gave me just over an hour of free time.
I snuck up to my room. I put IV by Led Zeppelin on the record player, which is what I listened to whenever I was doing something that required serious concentration. I climbed onto my bed with my grandfather’s logbook, laid it out in front of me, and began to read.
I hadn’t read more than a page when Emma poked her head into the room. I invited her to join me.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve had quite enough of Abe Portman for one day.” And she went out.
There were many hundreds of pages in the logbook, spanning a period of decades. Most of the entries followed the format of the one I’d read down in the bunker: light on detail, free from emotion, and often accompanied by a photo or some other piece of visual evidence. It would’ve taken me a week to read every word, so even with an hour on my hands, I could only skim. But it was enough to form a sketchy outline of Abe’s work in America.
He usually worked alone, but not always. Some entries referenced other “operatives,” named only with single letters—F, P, V. But most often, H.
H was the man my father had met, if his partially wiped memory could be trusted. If Abe had trusted H enough to introduce his son to him, he must’ve been important. So who was he? What was the structure of their organization? Who assigned their missions? Every new piece of information spawned a dozen more questions.
In the early days, their work was focused almost exclusively on hunting and killing hollows. But as the years progressed, more and more of the missions involved finding and rescuing peculiar children. Which was admirable, no doubt, but Bronwyn’s question stayed with me: Wasn’t that the ymbrynes’ job? Was there something stopping American ymbrynes from doing it?
Was something wrong with them?
The entries began in 1953 and stopped abruptly in 1985. Why did they stop? Was there another logbook I hadn’t found yet? Had Abe retired in 1985? Or had something changed?
After an hour of reading, I had a few more answers and a lot more new questions. First among them: Was there more work like this to be done? Was there still a group of hollow-hunters out there somewhere, fighting monsters and rescuing peculiars? If so, I wanted very much to find them. I wanted to be part of it, to use my gift to carry on my grandfather’s work here in America. After all, maybe that’s what he wanted! Yes, he’d locked away his secrets, but he’d done it using the name he’d given me as the key. But he’d died too soon to tell me.
First things first. To get answers to my questions, I’d have to find the only person in the world likely to know Abe’s secrets.
I had to find H.