Hello! Thank you so much to anyone reading, and leaving reviews! I really appreciate them all! I'm curious to see if anyone has a preference to how much back story is provided for each of the individual characters? This chapter focuses mainly on Enoch, and gives a glimpse into his life before coming to Miss Peregrines! There is a TRIGGER WARNING for this chapter as it details abuse, self harm, and some mental illness issues like panic attacks and dissociative disorder. So please, take care of yourselves if that's a no-go for you!
Enoch struggled to face anything of his horrific past; the effects the direct reason for his macabre spirit and dark wit. In the time he had been alive, he had carefully crafted walls to keep the darkness that had crept into his soul hidden. His peculiarity made this difficult and was the only element of himself that he reasoned was simply destined to be gruesome. The rest he kept carefully to himself behind fortified walls of sarcasm, malice, and isolation. However, the sleepless nights that came with so much pent up emotion occasionally got the better of him. Those nights when there was too much suppressed within him, his heart rate would accelerate, his vision would go blurry, and the rage, the burning black pain reared its ugly head on his world until there was nothing left to destroy; be it object, animal, or person. It was the reason he had been asked to leave the other loop. There had been an 'incident' in his 1901 loop that he could barely recall despite how hard he tried to remember. All he remembered was the trigger; the words that had left that soft mouth as she walked away from him before the awful black part of his soul took over.
"I've had enough, Enoch, I can't stand you anymore! I'm leaving…"
Abandoned. Unwanted. Unlovable. Monster. Freak. Devil Spawn.
His father had been an unkind man on the best of days during his young life. And the loss of Enoch's mother, Louise, had left him in an even darker place. He dragged his son to this place with him and together they created a horrid, bloody world together.
A twelve-year-old Enoch had crept as quietly as he could down to the preparation room, hoping to whatever God there might be that Papa had had enough to drink that night that he wouldn't awaken when the bottom step inevitably creaked.
The high pitched squeal of the last step had Enoch holding his breath, covering his mouth as he slowly let out the breath as silently as he could, his own heartbeat sounding deafening in the drowning silence of the night. When no rousing shouts could be heard Enoch carefully pushed his way into the room, huffing quietly as he moved the heavy wooden door.
Everything had been so quiet since Mama had died, no more twinkling laughter to fill the dreary, wet, fall days with light. Mama was a month gone now and Enoch visited her every day, settling a new bunch of wildflowers on her grave before he sat to share his day with her. Papa had beat him the first time he saw him at the grave with the 'filthy weeds' but Mama had always loved those ones when she was alive, Enoch was sure of it.
Now he was here to play, the day filling him with so much sadness that moving out of bed seemed an awfully large feat to ask of him. But at night, after everything was quiet again it was easier to move. There was something comforting about the stillness of the night, like time was frozen somehow and sometimes Enoch could almost pretend that he had gone back in time to when Mama might find him walking the halls and send him back to bed with a small kiss. He saw shadows around the corner that looked like her when the light caught the furniture just right, and that made the fantasy feel all the more real for him.
Shaking himself of his fantasies he stepped into the preparation room and lit a few candles around the desk he used as his "work station", shoving the sloppy charcoal coloured curls away from his tired eyes. Rolling up worn sleeves he moved carefully towards the keeping cellar, a sharp saw blade in one hand and candle in the other.
He had never felt guilty for taking the hearts, as they were no longer any use to the dead, but there was something that itched at his soul as he carefully cut open the autopsy stitches to get at those his father had recently finished with. Thomas Moore had been one of Mama's friends and had only survived the illness that had swept away Mama a few weeks longer than she had. It was he that Enoch intended to bring back tonight, to make him the knight in shining armour he had once promised Enoch he could have been for Mama and himself.
"One day, Enoch, I'll come for you and your Mama, and together we will all ride far, far away from here."
But that day could never come now that it was just Enoch and Papa left, and Enoch ached for the man and his Mama even as he carefully stitched the stolen heart of a cow from the neighbouring farm into the man's chest.
"I miss you, Mr. Thomas," Enoch whispered quietly.
Mr. Thomas shuddered on the table and the heart beat a little too fast at first before settling into the regular rhythm that Enoch intended for it. The unseeing blue eyes opened slowly, blinking and adjusting as a low moan left the stale body. Hands twitched and stiff legs had spasms as the body of Mr. Thomas sat up and followed Enoch up the stairs. Once they arrived Enoch held out the sharp saw towards the dead man who took it with increased grace as Enoch strained to control the movements more precisely.
Heaving a sigh, Enoch left Mr. Thomas waiting while he brought more men from the town to life for the battle. With great effort he had raised three other men, sweat breaking out across his forehead at the effort of moving something that had once held life. The homunculi were much more simple to control, less precise movements were needed and they almost developed what Enoch liked to call a 'mind of their own' with a small guiding intention being their only necessity. People, on the other hand, had once had a purpose when they were alive and learning to manipulate a body that was built for that purpose rather than Enoch's own made raising the dead a great feat.
Time had passed and the battle had quietly raged on as Enoch added some of his makeshift dolls to the mix, watching and cackling as they hacked at the ankles and knees of Mr. Thomas' opponents of the evening. He had been having so much fun he hardly noticed the quick shuffle of feet on the stairs until it was far too late.
"ENOCH O'CONNOR!"
The bodies dropped to the ground like puppets cut from their strings, landing precariously in heaps where the last twitches of life slowly left the bodies. Enoch froze in terror at being caught, mentally scolding himself for being so careless, so lost in his game, again. He turned and glanced over his shoulder carefully to see Papa glowering drunkenly at him from the hallway the bottle of whiskey sliding between his fingers.
"Papa, please I – I was just playing-"
"You call this playing?!" his father hissed wiping at his greasy face, pushing back curls that matched Enoch's own. "God, what did I ever do to deserve this?" he asked suddenly.
Enoch was puzzled at the quiet tone his father had used and allowed himself to take a few steps forward, hesitantly.
"Papa?"
Papa brought the whiskey bottle across Enoch's face before he could register the movement, the hard glass shattering against his jaw and the jagged remnants scraping the bruised skin. Gasping, Enoch struggled backwards, falling back and hastily shoving himself further back into the room.
"Devil Spawn! Your whore mother slept with the Devil himself to leave me with such an abomination! "Just playing'!" Papa mocked horridly.
"Don't! Don't speak about Mama like that!" Enoch screamed, spit and blood leaving his mouth even as he cowered away from his father's looming shape.
But Papa beat him all the same. Dragging the boy by his hair to the table, grinding his bruised cheek into the wood of the table as he tore the shirt from his back.
"You'll stay fucking still if you know what's good for you, boy," Papa hissed and Enoch shuddered knowing the belt was coming as he heard the tell-tale snick of his father loosening it off himself.
Enoch tried not to scream as the metal clip of the belt bit into his back opening old and creating new wounds in the soft flesh of his back. Even as he struggled to stand in the slippery pool of his own blood his father continued to beat him until his vision blurred in front of him.
"Keep your damn footing!"
Enoch almost cried with relief when his father yanked his hair, snapping his head back as the work saw came into his foggy vision.
"Should I put you out of your misery now, demon? Slit your throat here with all your other abominations?"
"Papa," Enoch croaked, "I'll stop, I'll be a good boy, I promise, please, please, Papa."
Enoch's Papa dragged him through the blood and dirt, kicking him as his feet slipped out from under him and Enoch groaned softly, exhaustion and blood loss beginning to take their toll.
Enoch remembered the freezing cold of the cellar floor under him as his father locked him in the dark of the keeping cellar.
"Now you can really sleep among the dead, you filthy bastard child."
It was memories such as this that sometimes resurfaced in Enoch's sleep, creating an endless nightmare of his father and the torture he had endured for the next five years of his life. Torture he had handled until he had run and found his first loop, and eventually his home with Miss Peregrine here, in his second loop. His trauma had horrid impacts on his sleep, he slept as little as he could to avoid the nightmares as long as possible, but this in turn made him irritable and isolated him from anyone who would have dared to call him a peer. That was until she had come along. Enoch forced her name from his mind even as he started to pick up the pieces of broken glass and wood that surrounded him in his room.
Enoch hated when the dust settled after one of his 'episodes' as Miss Peregrine had come to call them; there was usually a lot of repair to do, but it kept him busy, rebuilding his world, and his walls around himself once more, hoping that this time they would be strong enough to keep the darkness at bay. But he found as a piece of glass stuck sharply to the skin of his finger that there was still some left dwelling in him. Carefully removing the glass from his sticky fingers he gently rolled the side of his sweater up, revealing the dozens of small scars that littered the side of his body. His back bore very little of the damage his father had inflicted over the years but the addiction Enoch had come to have for the physical pain had fuelled the creation of his series of scars along his hips. Enoch pressed easily into the skin above his waistband, dragging the glass swiftly along the area until the red welled up and he let out a soft hiss at the sharp pain of the new cut. Flicking the glass away, Enoch wiped at the silent tears that threatened to leave sandy tracks across his flushed cheeks. Sighing, he surveyed the damage of this episode.
A few jars were smashed to fine shards and the majority of his homunculi lay in haphazard heaps of broken doll pieces, animal parts and hearts. The scissors he used for incision were embedded in the wall and he frowned, worried about the damage they might have incurred during his rage. Stepping towards them he heard soft laughter bubble up to him through his still open window and he shrunk back in horror, realizing that anyone paying any sort of attention would have been able to hear his episode as it had happened. He found he was thrown by some invisible force towards the window a quiet voice in his head begging that she hadn't been near, that she hadn't been in the house, for fuck's sake, anything but that. Pulling the curtains back desperately, Enoch scanned the yard frantically searching for her. His head fell into his hands with a broken sob when he saw she was nowhere to be seen. The small relief he felt at discovering that none of the other children had heard him was nothing compared to the waves of panic that threatened to turn his stomach out at any moment. She couldn't know, he had promised himself to keep this hidden from her. She didn't need to see how dark it got in here when she wasn't around. Didn't know if he could handle another dose of rejection from someone he begrudgingly had to admit was getting close to him. He smacked his head sharply against the wall, gasping and rubbing the sore spot as panic took over and he rushed to clean up as much of the mess as he could, knowing it was coming. She would be coming. His hand closed too fast on a broken jar and the glass sliced at his palm and he cried out, the pain no longer a release from the frantic dose of reality that was rushing in too fast on him.
"Son of a bitch!" he complained, nursing his hurt palm and looking for a rag to tie it up until he could deal with the cut later.
It was that moment he heard it, that soft knock on his half open door and the gentle creak of it giving way under the pressure of her hand. Olive.
"Enoch? Is everything alright?"
