Hi guys! I can't believe it's been so long (oops). I started writing this chapter what feels like a century ago but then one of my best friend's health started declining for months until they became severely ill/hospitalised, and it became emotionally difficult for me to face this fic and keep writing about a character who was also declining in health and becoming severely ill. Thankfully my friend is fine now though! But yeah I took a bit of a hiatus from writing this, and then life got in the way and suddenly... it had been a long long time since I updated! Sorry about that!
But good news, I'm posting two chapters at once (yay!). Anyone still reading this fic- thank you so much for your patience, you're amazing!
Also:
CW/ Maybe it's just me but I feel like some of these visions are a bit more intense? Maybe you won't think so but I thought I'd just give a heads up. Also several of them are based on real world events but I tried to choose ones that happened at least a few decades ago so they aren't too fresh in people's memory/directly personal.
Thankfully for Enoch and his stress levels, the peculiars couldn't stay long. They bid their farewells to Horace as they passed him on the way to the pocket loop in the yard- all looking relieved that he was lucid again and apologising to them profusely- before reluctantly heading back to the Acre to do either more research or more work, whichever fate they had resigned themselves to. Enoch almost felt bad for them, but then he remembered the hell that he was going to be left with.
He was surprised, then, to step out onto the deck and find Horace curled up on his side next to Bronwyn, as though he had shifted from leaning against her shoulder to the ground. Enoch felt a shot of fear run through him when he saw that Horace's eyes were closed and he was breathing slowly.
"You let him fall asleep?! What the hell were you thinking?" Enoch cried as he marched over to them, and Bronwyn frantically shushed him, glancing at Horace. He didn't stir.
"He was just so exhausted," she fretted, talking quietly to avoid waking him. "I thought if he only slept for a little while…"
"That ain't how it works," Enoch said, frustrated, but he kept his volume low too. "He's getting nightmares as soon as he falls asleep now."
"Not right now he ain't," Bronwyn pointed out, "He's been asleep for ages and look- no nightmares."
Enoch frowned nervously, glancing at Horace.
"But what if-"
"He needs the rest," Bronwyn insisted. "Can't we just wake him up if he starts to have a nightmare?"
Enoch hesitated, then finally relented.
"…Fine. I guess so. But we can't leave him like that," he said, his frown falling on Horace collapsed on the deck.
"I don't think we should move him," Bronwyn said nervously. "I don't want to risk waking him up if he's finally getting some proper sleep."
Enoch sighed.
"Help me get more blankets then."
They attempted to make Horace as comfortable as a person could be while lying on a hard wooden deck, but even with the extra blankets and pillows, Enoch didn't like how much he was still shivering or how frail he seemed. Millard was right- he'd lost weight, and it made him look sicker. Enoch swallowed down his worries as he stood, giving Horace one more anxious glance before following Bronwyn back into the house.
He noticed her checking the clock as soon as they'd crossed the doorway, chewing her bottom lip.
"You can go if you want," he said, and she spun to him surprise. "You're obviously stressed about missing work."
"Whaaat?" Bronwyn protested, very unconvincingly. "Definitely not. I skip work all the time, I ain't worried about being a little late…"
Enoch raised an eyebrow.
"I ain't stupid you know. I know I ain't always the best at reading people, but right now you're like a blazing sign that says 'stressed about work'."
Bronwyn rubbed her neck sheepishly.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Should I answer that?"
Bronwyn glanced at Horace nervously through the window.
"I feel bad leaving," she fretted. "What if something happens? What if he goes all-" she mimed spinning circles by her ear with her finger," "-again? You might need help."
Enoch gritted his teeth, but he shook his head.
"It'll be fine," he insisted. "Horace will be fine."
Bronwyn still looked worried, but she nodded.
"Well… if you're sure."
"It's only a few hours," Enoch shrugged. "Then everyone will be back anyway, plus the Bird."
"The Bird," Bronwyn echoed, as if just mentioning Miss Peregrine brought her some relief. "I wish she could just get away from her duties and stay here with him. I'd feel far less worried if she did."
Enoch chewed his lip, glaring down at the ground. He didn't want to admit how often he'd had the same thought. He wasn't an ymbryne, he wasn't qualified for any of this. Why couldn't Miss Peregrine be the one to make all the hard decisions?
"Right, well…" Bronwyn trailed off awkwardly, glancing at the clock again.
"You can go," he repeated.
Bronwyn nodded gratefully.
"See you in a few hours then."
Enoch watched through the window as she crossed the lawn towards the pocket loop entrance and disappeared. He headed over to the back door to check on Horace, watching him through the screen door for any signs of nightmares. He didn't stir. Enoch sighed, feeling exhausted himself after all the stress of the last few hours. Surely Horace would be fine for a little while if he just kept an eye on him from here? Enoch dragged a chair over from the dining room to the door and immediately collapsed onto it, his head heavy and body aching. Now that he had a moment of rest, all his missed sleep seemed to catch up to him at once. Despite his best intentions, he felt his own eyes begin to drift closed and his head sink to his chest, his consciousness fading out before he could stop it.
…
Horace woke up to a pounding headache and the late afternoon sun in his eyes. He groggily forced himself upright, feeling the wooziness of inadequate sleep. Looking around, he realised that Bronwyn had disappeared, leaving him alone out here. Horace grimaced and hugged his arms around himself, hunched over and feeling absolutely rotten. Whatever amount of sleep he'd had, it hadn't been enough. In fact, he even felt worse than before- his mouth dry and body aching, his pulse pounding in his temples. The heat had faded from the sun now, and he shivered without it.
A sudden bout of vertigo had Horace's hands shooting out to catch himself before he could collapse again, and with some effort he managed to push himself back upright, fighting the urge to sink to the ground and sleep some more. He'd gotten lucky with escaping his nightmares this time; he wasn't about to tempt fate.
Frowning in confusion as he pulled off layers of blankets that he was certain hadn't been there earlier, Horace wondered bitterly what had woken him in the first place. There had to be a damned good reason to wake him from the first proper sleep he'd had in days.
And then there it was.
He was suddenly flooded with terrible nausea, strong enough that it had him doubling over with his hand clamped over his mouth. He shuddered, trying to take deep breaths and let it pass, but soon he found his throat closing over.
Horace just managed to drag himself to the edge of the deck before his stomach roiled and he threw up onto the grass. Shoulders shaking, nails digging into the wood, he retched until he was certain he must be vomiting up his own organs along with everything else. Finally, Horace sat back, trembling hands smearing the tears from his eyes as he gasped air back into his lungs. His throat felt raw and cut up, every breath burning his windpipe.
As well-meaning as Bronwyn had been, it was a mistake for her to make him eat anything.
Horace closed his eyes and lay back down on the deck, feeling too sick and exhausted to move. He tried to take slow, deep breaths, his head spinning and worsening his nausea. After a moment, Horace cautiously opened his eyes and found that everything around him was tinged red. The world shook in time with his pulse. Horace squeezed his eyes shut again with a grimace as his head sank down to the deck. He curled into a ball and wished he could just disappear.
The wind picked up slightly and Horace began to shiver. Forcing his aching eyes open, he turned his sights on the screen door across the other side of the deck. At least in the house he'd be out of the wind.
Horace heaved himself upright on shaky arms that buckled at the elbows, breathing hard to push through the fatigue in his muscles. He managed to stumble unsteadily to his feet, but barely made it a step before he sank to the ground again, the world spinning dizzyingly.
Horace squeezed his eyes shut, sick and aching, before taking a deep breath and pushing himself up to try again. It was useless; any attempt to stand sent him tumbling to his hands and knees, his whole body trembling. Horace was certain the universe was laughing at him as he glared down at the deck between his splayed fingers, breath coming in shaky gasps.
Sighing in frustration, Horace gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet yet again despite his body's protests, but the air swirled around him and then suddenly the deck was pressed up to his face. His body ached. It took him a moment to understand what had happened, and then he was laughing; a sharp and tired sound, cut up with his frustration and hurt. Horace raised a shaky hand up to wipe his tearful eyes, but he could hardly manage it. He could barely feel his face.
The longer he lay there, the more a bone-deep exhaustion settled over him, weighing him down until he couldn't get up. He lay there with his cheek to the warm deck, breaths coming shakily as he tried to recover. But he could hardly keep his eyes open now- no matter how many times he forced them open, they would sink shut again a second later. His body felt like lead, melting into the floor. A sudden dread settled over him, blanketing him in the certainty that if he fell asleep now, he would never ever wake up.
Fear shot through him at the thought, but it wasn't enough to stop the sleep from slowly dragging him down, down, down.
Then someone placed a gentle hand on his arm and brought him back to his senses. Horace couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to see her properly, but from her voice and hazy outline he knew exactly who it was.
"Are you alright, Mr Somnusson?"
Horace could barely nod. She helped him sit up and Horace's head slumped to his chest. He didn't have the energy to lift it up.
Miss Peregrine wiped his tears, one arm around him to keep him upright. Horace could only stare down, at the fabric of her dress that swirled at his feet. Miss Peregrine's brow knitted as she took in his haggard expression and the tears in his eyes.
"What are you doing outside?" she asked him gently, but Horace didn't have the energy to respond. "Do you know where Mr O'Connor is?"
He managed to shake his head.
"Never mind that now," she decided, gently brushing the matted hair from his eyes. "Just take some deep breaths."
There were sudden rushing footsteps towards them, and he felt Miss Peregrine turn to face someone.
"Where were you, Mr O'Connor?"
She didn't sound accusatory, but Enoch's voice sounded defensive all the same.
Horace looked up blearily but could only just make out his outline. He couldn't understand his words.
"It's alright," Miss Peregrine insisted, talking past Horace as Enoch's garbled, frantic voice filled his ears. "It isn't your fault, you can't be expected to- Mr O'Connor listen to me- listen- it's alright, dear," she insisted.
Finally, Enoch's voice fizzled out, and Miss Peregrine turned her attention back to Horace.
"Help me get him inside, won't you?"
Suddenly Horace was moving. He felt like he was flying above everything, but some part of him was still aware of his stumbling feet on the ground and his arms over two sets of shoulders. It felt strange to be so light and so heavy at the same time.
Then they were inside the house, though he couldn't tell where. He couldn't make sense of anything he was seeing. Dots danced in his vision, and attempting to blink them away only made them worse. There was a cold, gnawing dread in his stomach that had been building since he woke up, and now it made him shudder.
Something was coming. Something terrible.
Then suddenly the world went dark, punctuated with pinpricks of searing, spinning light. And Horace was falling.
A deafening blast had knocked him off his feet and his face hit the mud. He clawed himself up, grabbing onto tangled tree roots as his boots slipped over the muddy ground, but he managed to find his footing. His head whipped around in fear, trying to see through the dark and the hot rain that sheered down diagonally to pelt at his helmet and soak through his fatigues. Rough wind thrashed the tropical plants around him, making them sway dangerously and raking branches across his skin. Then another blast had him staggering, his heart a jackhammer in his ribcage as the explosion lit up the night. It was a brilliant wall of fire, reaching up to the sky and catching the trees around it alight.
Not trees.
Horrifying, peeling screams and the smell of burning flesh hit him too fast to make sense of what was happening. The humanoid shapes seemed to dance- a desperate dance of flailing limbs, their bodies twisting, writhing, falling.
He wanted to cry, he wanted to look away, he wanted to run. But he was frozen in his horror.
Behind him, he heard barking orders as a pair of rough hands grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. The man was bleeding, blood trickling from his black hair down past his harrowed eyes but he held firm, shouting instructions in a language Horace didn't understand as another man beside him spoke rapidly into a radio communicator strapped to his backpack. Their olive drab uniforms clung to their bodies with rain and sweat and blood.
Several blasts in quick succession knocked him off balance and seemed to light up the whole night sky. The air was thick with a smell that he somehow knew was napalm. Men in olive green were streaming past them with bayonets in their hands, shouting in that same language that Horace couldn't make sense of. Some were limping, some were too filled with fear to notice their burned skin or streaming blood. All fleeing from the fire and the blasts and the gunshots that had begun to pelt them from all sides and punched holes in the rain-soaked leaves around them.
The man in front of him yelled again, angry, and then they were both running too. He fought his way through brush and mud and fallen bodies, shoving tangled vines from his face and weaving between poles of bamboo that speared up into the sky. There was a sudden roar of whirring machine blades above him, and he looked up to see a great hulking helicopter fly overhead in the opposite direction, painted camouflage green and branded with the American flag. He shook away his shock and ran faster, blinking rain out of his eyes and trying to breathe past his fear. A bullet whizzed past his head and he spun around and shot behind him in the dark, barely breaking stride, to kill whoever was trying to kill him.
There was a gun in his hands. How had he not noticed there was a gun in his hands?
His foot caught on a raised tree root and he felt his shin bone snap in a horrific flash of pain as he crashed to the ground.
The breath was stolen from him before he could even scream.
And then Horace was himself again. Alone, in the dark.
Lying on a fold-out sofa somewhere in Jacob's house, in a room that he rarely ventured into. The lights were switched on, but they were unusually dim, as if the light couldn't quite make it to his eyes. Slowly, cautiously, Horace sat up and looked around the lightless room. It felt eerie and abandoned; dust hung heavy in the air and the floor was cluttered with someone else's belongings, untouched for a long time. Then Horace looked up to see the forms of people he knew but couldn't quite place gathered all around him. Barely visible through the dark, and pleading with him. Their hands on him- shaking him, holding his hand, wiping tears from his face.
Horace was frozen, staring transfixed and trying fruitlessly to remember who these people were to him.
Wake up, they begged him. Wake up wake up wake up.
It was then that Horace became aware of faint music filtering into his ears. At first it was too distant to make out, but as it became louder and clearer he realised it was an upbeat modern song, all heavy base and tinny vocals. The people flickered out of existence, the room beginning to fade as the music took over everything else.
"This is terrible," he murmured quietly, face expressionless and lips moving without his control. But then he felt them tugging up into a smile, growing wider as the music got louder, until he was beaming.
He turned to his left, laughing. "This music is terrible, babe."
Suddenly, she was in a sleek modern car, the music blasting through speakers around her as a coastal view flew past out the windows. The young man beside her grinned back.
"Yeah right, you love it."
She scoffed, resting sandled feet up on the dash and admiring the shimmering blue water to her right. She caught a glimpse of herself in the wing mirror; she was young- twenties maybe- with long bleached hair and pretty features covered with too much makeup.
Feeling free, the most free she'd felt since that day they decided to elope, she lowered the window and tilted her head back, closing her eyes and letting her arms reach out to feel the sea wind buffeting past.
She whooped at the top of her lungs, her hair billowing behind her in the wind, and he laughed at her dramatics, shaking his head. But then something changed in his eyes, some glimmer of pride, of wanting to show off to her.
He floored the accelerator and the engine screamed as they took off.
Her eyes snapped open, her heart jumping in terror.
"What are you doing?" she cried.
The wind hit her face too hard, roaring past her ears as coastal views raced past in seconds, faster than seconds. Her hair whipped around her head and tangled up over her face; she clawed it away.
He was cheering now beside her, but her cheers had become screams as he skidded around a corner, back wheels fishtailing out. He swerved himself back onto the straight, barely getting back under control.
"Stop!" she screamed at him. "Slow down, you're scaring me!"
He just smirked and revved faster. They were driving at break-neck pace now, beyond dangerous. He could barely keep the wheels straight.
"Stop! This isn't fun anymore, stop!"
She was choking on tears, knuckles white around her seatbelt as they approached an intersection.
"You're being such a baby," he teased, turning to her with a laugh.
Then, out of nowhere, a semi trailer pulled across the intersection ahead of them.
"Watch out!" she screamed, and heard him swear and swerve, not fast enough.
Collision like a bomb exploding. Her whole body thrown forwards so hard her chin hit her chest and she bit clean through her tongue. The sky above her, then a ceiling of debris and dirt, then sky again.
Dirt and sky, dirt and sky.
Her limbs flailed, body crashing and whipped around everywhere the seatbelt didn't tether.
Her temple smashed into the door. Again. Again.
She was sliced open and crushed from all sides, howling, her eyes squeezed shut.
Glass shattered, metal punched in around them.
Then- silence. Stillness.
Cautiously, tearfully, Horace opened her eyes.
Horace felt as though he'd been set on fire. The pain was so blinding that he could hardly think, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. He was hanging upside down by the woman's seatbelt, blood pooling in his head and worsening the ache in his temple. He was bleeding from a thousand places, shards of glass imbedded in his skin and tangled up in his hair. Worst of all, he could feel her shattered bones all throughout his body- his femur, his collar bone, his skull. Something in his chest was broken too, he knew that.
Horace dragged his gaze over to the driver's side and found the man's mangled corpse hanging upside down beside him, head oozing blood that dripped down to patter on the crumpled car ceiling. His eyes were wide and empty, a permanent look of shock on his face.
Horace's stomach jolted in terror and he panicked, trying to get away, but suddenly found he couldn't move. He was entirely paralysed, trapped in the woman's lifeless body. He desperately tried to move his arms or turn his head- her head- but it was no use. Until she regained consciousness, he was trapped in this car with the man's cooling corpse.
In vain, he tried to calm himself. Eventually, she would have to wake up and escape this wreck. Surely she would wake up soon, and free him. He wouldn't be trapped here forever. He wouldn't have to feel this pain forever.
It was only then that he caught his reflection in the cracked rearview mirror.
The woman's empty, dead eyes stared back.
Horace's mind went blank with panic, the woman's corpse suddenly a suffocating, slowly cooling prison.
Let me out! Let me OUT!
He fought with all his might to break free of her, sick terror flooding him, but he couldn't move. He couldn't even breathe.
Horace screamed himself awake.
"Mr Somnusson can you hear me?"
Miss Peregrine's face appeared in his line of sight, having successfully brought him back to consciousness. She looked concerned but not panicked as he gulped air back into his lungs, staring up at the slowly turning ceiling fan. His whole body still hurt so badly he could hardly move; a cold, grating pain, like someone had taken a rusted knife to his bones. Horace held back a sob as he gritted his teeth and dug his nails into his palms until his hands shook, forcing himself to bear it until it inevitably faded along with the dream. He blinked away the tears that welled up in his eyes.
"Should we sit him up?" Enoch sounded stressed, his voice coming from somewhere Horace couldn't see. He felt Enoch's hands on him, trying to push him upright, but Horace yelped in pain and weakly pushed him off.
"No," Horace managed to gasp out, voice haggard, as tears slid down his face. His breaths were fast and sharp as he let his head sink back to the floor. Finally, the pain began to fade.
Horace's head swam, his mind going foggy as a wave of exhaustion hit him. His vision blurred and seemed to swirl until he blinked it away, all of a sudden struggling to make sense of what was happening.
"Just let him recover for a moment," Miss Peregrine told Enoch gently, who was frowning as he watched Horace continue to stare blankly at the ceiling, his eyes glazed but expression pained. "He'll need time to adjust after being in a vision so long."
Horace felt hot tears trickling sideways down his face and he tried to focus on keeping his breathing slow and even, despite the growing panic in his chest. He'd lost track of what was happening. He didn't understand why he was here, why he was in pain. His throat felt like it was closing over and he could feel his rapid heartbeat thudding against his ribcage.
"Help…" Horace choked out quietly, feeling lost and confused.
"Shh, it's alright," Miss Peregrine reassured him, gently pushing him back down as he struggled to sit up. "Just stay there for a moment. Are you feeling alright? Are you still in pain?"
Horace stared at her face above him until it didn't look like a face anymore, just shifting eyes and mouth and nose on a fleshy face-shaped background. He squeezed his eyes shut, too confused to respond. For a moment his consciousness drifted, before he felt a hand shake him briskly.
"Don't fall asleep dear," a woman's voice said above him. "Will you look at me?"
He did, but it blurred.
"Do you know where you are?" she asked him, and he could make enough sense of the question to slightly shake his head.
It hurt far too much for such a small movement and Horace cringed, covering his face.
"Could you get me a cushion for his head?" the woman said to someone beside her, and Horace heard the person's footsteps fade out and reappear, and then his head was being gently lifted and a cushion was placed underneath. He peaked through his fingers to see a boy worriedly frowning down at him. Horace frowned back, trying to place him, but he was too lost in his own brain to figure it out.
Exhaustion filled his head with heavy fog and Horace gave up trying to make sense of anything around him, instead letting his eyelids sink closed as his mind began to swirl and fade out.
"Mr Somnusson," the woman said gently, and Horace winced as he forced his eyes open to look at her. "Listen to me. You're feeling like this because you have just had a vision, but if you fall asleep it's likely you will have a nightmare too. Try to stay awake, alright?"
He nodded, more carefully this time. It still hurt.
"Can you tell me where you are?" she asked him again, still gentle and calm. He stared at her blankly and shook his head. "Try to think. Where are we right now?"
Horace did, but his brain was too muddled and he couldn't even keep track of what he was supposed to be thinking about. Frustrated tears welled in his eyes and he covered his face again.
"I don't know," he said, voice hoarse from screaming. "I-I don't know, I don't-"
"That's alright," the woman assured him. "You're in Jacob Portman's house. You're lying on the floor just inside the back door. We were trying to bring you inside, do you remember?"
Horace stared up at the ceiling, throat burning with unshed tears. He felt stupid and small and out of control.
"Mr Somnusson," the woman said to get his attention back. "Can you tell me your name?"
He was mute for a moment, then looked at her.
"…Somnusson?" he guessed shakily.
"You're right, that's your surname," she nodded, "but what about your first name?"
He cringed in frustration, upset. Why was she asking him all these questions? He didn't know, he didn't know anything-
"Horace," he said suddenly, turning to her. "My- my name is Horace. Isn't it?"
"Correct," she smiled. "What about my name?"
He stared at her for a while, scanning her face.
"…Peregrine," he said finally.
She frowned slightly at his answer, but then seemed to let it go.
"Good enough," she decided. "What about him?"
Horace turned to the boy to his right, who had moved to sit beside him, and, Horace suddenly realised, had been holding his hand while they talked.
"Enoch…?" Horace said uncertainly, his voice wavering, and the boy looked relieved.
"Very good," Miss Peregrine smiled. "Last question dear- what day is it?" Horace opened his mouth wordlessly, head swimming, then closed it again. The woman looked a little concerned, but her voice was kind as she answered for him. "It's alright if you don't know. Today is Friday," she told him.
"Fr… Friday?" he mumbled. The word had no meaning to him.
"That's right," the woman said.
Horace was silent for a moment, trying to make sense of the swirling soup in his head. Cautiously, he began to look around him. He was in a building, he thought. At least, it seemed like a building. It had a ceiling.
The bloodied car roof from his vision suddenly took the ceiling's place, and for a split second the boy beside him was the mangled corpse of the man.
Horace gasped and flailed upright, ripping his hand from the corpse's grip and trying to get away.
"It's alright dear!" a woman said earnestly. He whirled to her, chest heaving, and found that the car and the corpse were gone. He was back in… somewhere. This place.
Horace looked around him in panic, feeling lost and unsafe as he tried to make sense of the foreign shapes and objects around him. It didn't even look like a room.
"Where am I?" he babbled. "Where have you taken me? Where- what-?"
"Do you remember what I said about where you are?" the woman asked him, her voice full of manufactured calm. "Where did I say we are right now?"
Horace squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.
"I don't- I-I can't-"
"Maybe that's too complex for now," she conceded, "What matters right now is that you are safe, you are in a place that is safe, and you are with people who want to help you. Everything is fine, you just need to focus on feeling better. Does that sound alright to you?"
Hesitantly, Horace nodded, shakily wiping a hand across his eyes.
"Take some deep breaths," the woman told him. "You've been through quite a fright."
Horace took a shuddering breath, sniffling. The boy put an arm around him, gently rubbing his back.
Now that his adrenaline rush was fading, Horace started to feel truly exhausted. His head felt like a dead weight, sinking towards his chest the moment he didn't work to hold it up. His eyes and head ached and he couldn't seem to keep his eyelids open. Most of all, his brain was sluggish, too tired to form a coherent thought other than how much he desperately wanted to sleep. Horace found himself weakly shrugging the boy's arm off and sinking down to the floor again, his whole body a dead weight.
Vaguely, Horace was aware of the boy and the woman talking to him, trying to make him stay awake, but they were too late. Horace was already sinking through the floor.
The moment he fell asleep, the dream swallowed him. He was in another forest, though the flames and fighting were gone and the air here wasn't as thick. Sunlight streamed in gaps in the tall canopy and he could see colourful birds chittering in the branches above him.
It was peaceful, almost.
Horace cautiously made his way through dense ferns and tangled roots, pushing aside leafy vines that curled their way up tree trunks and over branches, until the forest opened up to meet a winding dirt track.
Horace faltered.
There were footprints in the dirt. Many foot prints. And deep tire tracks, as if whoever had used this road had been in a hurry.
Feeling a little unnerved, Horace stepped out of the tree-line and onto the road, only to feel a crunch under his shoe. He lifted it to find a man's watch lying in the dirt, it's face now shattered.
Horace dragged his eyes along the road to the left to see other belongings strewn about the dirt; a tangled sweater, a single abandoned shoe, a child's toy.
Then, further to his left, he noticed it- a metal archway with a faded green sign that welcomed him to Jonestown. His feet had him walking towards it without his control.
The dirt path opened up gradually to reveal freshly plowed fields and fruit trees laden with produce. Ahead of him, a small collection of wooden buildings were dotted around a central pavilion, clearly designed as a meeting place for the town's inhabitants. The first thing Horace noticed as he got closer were countless dots of colour in the distance, strewn in clumps throughout the grass ringing the pavilion. As though someone had thrown the whole town's worth of dirty laundry out onto the lawn.
He realised too late the truth.
Horace staggered to a stop, blood draining from his face.
The blobs of colour were in fact the bloated bodies of hundreds of people. People in red shirts and blue dresses and white blouses. Children in sun hats and fluffy pink sweaters. All lying face-down and twisted in the grass, some in family groups, some alone. Couples with their arms round each other. Mothers holding babies with stiff arms.
It was deathly silent.
Nothing moved, nothing breathed.
The smell was overpowering- a mix of vomit and the beginnings of rot.
Horace shuddered, covering his mouth and nose, tears welling in his eyes at the sight of all these people- of so many tiny, infant children- dead for nothing, curled lifeless at his feet.
He stumbled backwards, feeling sick, and his back hit a wall.
Suddenly, tendrils of liquid metal began pooling from gaps in the wooden paneling behind him and coiled through the air, moving as if they had a life of their own. Horace panicked and tried to dart away, but they solidified into thick metal bands that shot out to loop around his wrists and ankles, trapping him against the wall.
It was then that he realised he wasn't standing at all- he was horizontal, pinned on his back to a metal table. The world went dark, and he found there was a hood over his head, pulled taut over his face and allowing only a few dots of light through.
Horace started to hyperventilate, panicking and turning his head in a vain attempt to see through the gaps in the hood. He heard the heavy footsteps of multiple people coming towards him and then a harsh voice rang out. Though he could tell it was English, the language felt foreign to him; he could hardly understand a word.
The voice sounded again, growing angrier. He realised they were asking him something, demanding something of him.
I don't know, I don't know, Horace tried to say, but he couldn't find the words. I don't understand…
The voice muttered something, a command to one of the others in the room, and then suddenly the table flipped backwards so Horace was nearly upside down. Before he had a chance to react, someone began pouring water over his face.
Horace gasped for air, but the wet fabric of the hood was just sucked tighter over his face, suffocating him. He was instantly flooded with blind panic, thrashing to break free as a deep sense of claustrophobia set in, his heaving breaths barely enough to get any air. Soon the water began to flood through the hood and into his mouth and nose, filling his nasal cavity and burning all the way down his throat. He started to choke, coughing and writhing, hardly able to think past his terror. Just as he was about to lose consciousness, he was suddenly flipped right side up and the hood was pulled from his head. Horace collapsed to his hands and knees, spitting up water and coughing his lungs out, shaking with leftover panic. He gasped for air, so focussed on recovering that it didn't even occur to him that he was no longer pinned to the table.
Finally, Horace managed to collect himself. He wiped his eyes with shuddering hands, chest still heaving as he looked around him. He was back in Jacob's house, it was evening. Everything was eerily empty and silent, the tiles echoing unnaturally with his footsteps as he unsteadily climbed to his feet.
A sudden scream from elsewhere in the house had him jumping out of his skin, startled. It was awful; long and agonised and breaking at the end.
Then he heard sniffling and the sound of hurried, weighted footsteps coming towards him.
"Olive?" he choked out, stunned, as she stumbled into the room. She had tears in her eyes and she looked frightened, her bottom lip trembling as she ran past him, oblivious to his presence.
"Olive, wait!" he cried, rushing after her. "What's happening? What-"
She rounded a corner and he heard her wailing Miss Peregrine's name. Panicked, he dashed around the corner after her but found she had vanished, the door to the back garden left open in her wake, revealing nothing but the evening sky and a cool breeze.
Horace shakily tried to slow his breathing, feeling unnerved and confused. He jumped as another scream rang out, feeling a pit of dread begin to grow in his stomach. He stared back down the corridor he'd run down, branching off into familiar rooms that suddenly felt entirely unfamiliar. Horace got the distinct, creeping feeling he should stay away from the source of the sound at all costs.
Then he blinked, and the world around him had shifted to somewhere else.
Horace found himself standing among clothing racks in a large, expensive-looking department store. It was almost modern, the clothes similar to those he had been forced to sift through on shopping trips with Jacob, but the technology at the checkout booths looked older. Serene music played out idly in the background as customers wandered around him, oblivious to his presence.
But some of them seemed unnerved, as did the store attendants, eyes scanning the walls, the ceiling. Others had stopped in their tracks, faces pinched with worry.
Horace frowned, that deep sense of dread settling over him again. Warily, he retreated towards a nearby window, hoping to get his bearings. Or find an escape.
He soon discovered the window would not help him with the latter. He peered through the glass to find that where he was standing was easily six, seven storeys high. The busy city streets surrounding the pink-painted department store were dizzyingly far below him. Horace took an unsteady step back, suddenly feeling queasy.
No sooner had he done so, the building began to rumble and shake severely. Pieces of the ceiling peeled off and crashed to the floor. There were cries of alarm as several people around him tumbled to their hands and knees. A moment later, shrill emergency alarms wailed brokenly through the store, and immediately people began to scream and stampede. Horace's eyes darted around desperately as he was caught in a crush of panicked bodies and flailing limbs, scanning frantically for somewhere safe to go, some exit- but there was nowhere to run.
The building shook again, worse than before. Horace cried out as he was thrown to the floor.
And then, all in a split second-
A terrific boom, like an explosion from all sides.
Screeching metal, ear-shreddingly loud.
The store around him disintegrating- windows shattering, walls cascading into dust, displays tumbling and smashing.
The ceiling cracking and caving in on top of him, a wave of jagged concrete.
Then, a disturbing drop in his stomach as the ground beneath his feet gave way, and Horace tumbled into the abyss.
Falling.
Screaming.
Concrete and debris imploding around him.
Darkness and suffocating dust
Pain and panic.
A deafening roar in his ears.
Horace hit the ground with enough force to kill him instantly.
For a long time there was nothing.
When his consciousness finally returned, he was lying on his back on the dirty, wet asphalt of an alley. At first he wondered if by some miracle he had survived unscathed.
But then he felt it, sensed it somehow.
He was someone else entirely. In another place, another time, another life entirely.
It was dark. He could hear the rush of cars just past the alley entrance, people on their way home from work. His clothes clung to him as rain pelted down, stinging his eyes and trickling down his cheeks.
He noticed all this before he noticed the wash of red coating his shirt, the throbbing of warm liquid spilling down over his chest onto the dirt and muck of the alley, mixing with the pools of rainwater.
He noticed all this before he noticed he could hardly breathe.
He was gasping. Wheezing through a jagged hole stabbed into his lungs. He went wide-eyed with panic and pain as he gurgled on his own blood, clutching uselessly at his chest.
He stared dumbly up at a young man who towered over him, with a scarf tied hastily over the lower half of his face and a bloody knife in his hands. The knife clattered to the ground and the man crouched over him, hands frantic as they grabbed at his blood-soaked jacket pockets, patting down the sides of his jeans, looking for something.
The world was fading now, his vision turning blurry as the man finally found what he was looking for- a wallet and cell phone, a bag of pills. The man stood. Pocketed his findings. Grabbed his knife. He gave one long look at this dying person on the ground. And ran away.
The world went black.
Horace was weightless. Formless. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, could just vaguely make out voices he recognised speaking to him. Someone was shaking his shoulder, trying to wake him up. But they faded away into nothing as the vision pulled him back under.
The world solidified around him, and Horace felt his heartbeat begin to speed up, a sudden terror flooding him as he came into consciousness and found himself once again in the silent, eery town.
Only now, it wasn't silent.
Horace whirled around in panic at the sounds of screams. He was standing in the centre pavilion, the heat and humming of insects oppressive. Around him, hundreds of people were in disarray; some fighting, some weeping, others forming silent, snaking lines- waiting to receive cups of liquid one by one.
Armed guards dragged stragglers to the front, separated wailing children from parents who wouldn't comply.
Horace was frozen in horror, wide-eyed and mute as he absorbed the scene around him.
People were dying in the grass at his feet, writhing and gurgling on their own vomit. Some people were already dead.
A cup of poison disguised as a sugary drink was shoved into Horace's hands by a man with a gun. To his horror, Horace found his hands lifted it to his mouth without his control.
And then suddenly the juice pouring into his open mouth became water poured through a scrap of cloth over his face. His hands were bound to a cold metal table. He was suffocating. Horace thrashed; panicking, terrified.
With all his strength, Horace managed to rip a hand free and claw the cloth from his face, only to find it was a floral blouse.
A rack of clothes had tumbled down onto him when the building shook, and he frantically shoved it off of him and staggered to his feet as the customers around him stared warily at the walls and ceiling, faces pinched with worry.
He sprinted for the window, stupid and desperate and so blind with panic that he really believed it would save him. He pummelled the glass with his fists, trying to break it, trying to- he didn't even know.
He was breathing so fast it burned his lungs. The building shook a second time, worse than the first.
"No no no, help!" he screamed to no one. "Help me! Let me out! It's going to fall! It's going to-"
The window vanished and his fists were pummelling air. Horace staggered forward, losing balance, and caught himself on a pole of bamboo that swayed in the shearing rain. There was mud beneath his combat boots.
He ducked for cover as bullets pelted the air around him, punching holes through leaves that whipped around in the rough wind, barely missing him. He tried to run but his boot caught in a tangled root and sent him tumbling down.
Instead of mud, his body hit the ground of a dark alleyway. He desperately scrabbled backwards on his hands, feet skidding over the rain-soaked ground as a man with a knife walked towards him through the dark. The knife glinted, sharp and wicked, as it pierced his chest.
Horace woke up to his mind on fire.
His head was in agony; a piercing, focused pain, as though someone was forcing a jagged spike through his temples. His brain was moving too fast- just a panicked stream of frightened memories and desperate, incoherent thoughts that he couldn't stop.
Where am I?
Why does it hurt?
Someone help me, someone-
What's happening to me?
It hurts so much, why, why?
I don't understand, I don't understand-
His heart was thundering in his chest so hard and fast it made him dizzy, panic clawing at his throat and strangling him until he could hardly get enough air.
His eyes darted around wildly, but nothing made sense, nothing was familiar or recognisable in this place. All the objects in the room seemed to bleed and blend into each other until they were nothing at all. Nothing was fixed, nothing was concrete.
Nothing in this world was real but him and his fear and his pain.
Echoing voices reached him through the haze, and two unfamiliar faces appeared in his vision. A boy and a woman, shifting in and out, their features swirling into each other. Saying… something. A reassurance, maybe? Or maybe they were laughing at him, mocking him for being so stupid and confused. He couldn't be certain.
He squeezed his eyes shut and begged for it to stop.
Horace wasn't sure how long they let him lie there. It could have been minutes, or hours, or days. He drifted in and out, watching the woman and the boy through half-lidded eyes as they nervously watched him back. They were waiting, he realised. Waiting for… something.
Eventually the woman spoke, but Horace just stared straight through her as the words jumbled in his ears and faded out.
"I don't… understand," he slurred, head spinning.
Enoch chewed the skin of his lip, anxiously watching as Miss Peregrine attempted to have a rational conversation with an entirely irrational person. He wasn't sure Horace was even fully conscious at this point.
"That's alright," Miss Peregrine reassured Horace, keeping a hand on his arm in the hopes that it would train his focus onto her. "It's okay if you're still a little confused. I was asking if you're feeling well enough to sit up again now. Do you feel dizzy at all?"
Horace was barely listening. He was watching in awe as beautiful patterns began to swirl across the ceiling above him; an iridescent mix of greens and blues and pinks like light on an oil slick. They slowly spread out over the ceiling, catching around the turning ceiling fan and spinning out in little whirlpools. The woman's voice faded out into the background until he forgot why she was even here.
"So… pretty," he slurred to no one. "…So, so pretty…"
Enoch glanced over at Miss Peregrine nervously.
"What's he on about?"
"Horace," Miss Peregrine said gently. "Are you listening to me dear? I want to know if you're feeling alright to sit up."
Horace mumbled something unintelligible, his wide eyes vacant. Miss Peregrine put a hand on his shoulder, and slowly Horace dragged his eyes to her.
"Why don't you hold onto Mr O'Connor and I, and we'll help you up?"
"No it's… s'okay…" he drunkenly pushed her hand off. "I don't feel like it today…"
His voice faded out as his eyes began to drift closed.
Miss Peregrine frowned.
"Stay awake," she said, shaking his shoulder. Horace grimaced without opening his eyes and swatted at her hand, trying to push her away. "Enough of that," Miss Peregrine scolded. "Open your eyes. Come on now, you need to wake up."
When he didn't respond, she shook him again, until he finally opened his eyes to glare at her.
"Get off," Horace snapped, but he could barely stay conscious and his voice was slurred with exhaustion. He didn't seem to even register who she was.
"If you fall asleep now, you will have another nightmare," Miss Peregrine said, her tone more authoritarian now. "Do you want that?"
Horace either wouldn't or couldn't respond. He closed his eyes again, turning his head away from her as his body went slack.
Miss Peregrine sighed softly, turning to Enoch.
"He'll just keep falling asleep if he lies there," she said. "Will you give me a hand?"
Together, they managed to sit Horace upright despite his protests. But the moment he was no longer lying down, Horace felt a wave of dizziness come over him and his head fell back, his arms hanging uselessly by his sides. Miss Peregrine and Enoch both struggled to hold onto him and keep him upright as Horace went limp, his gaze growing distant and unfocussed.
Enoch stared at him fearfully, then looked to Miss Peregrine. Her face was marred with a deep frown, looking nervous as Horace's eyes began to sink closed. Enoch shook him.
"Horace," he said forcefully, but his voice trembled.
Horace's eyes opened slightly, enough to stare straight through him, unseeing, before they closed again and he was gone. Horace felt himself dissolve into nothing, the world around him slipping away until he found himself caught in yet another dream.
Horace walked slowly through silent darkness. The air was unnaturally cold and damp, like a person's exhaled breath. It clung to his skin and pulled on his clothes, but still he walked.
The silence around him was eerie, so quiet it felt oppressive. So devoid of other sounds that he could hear his own pounding heart in his chest like a drum.
Slowly, as his eyes began to adjust, Horace started to make out figures in the dark.
At first they were too far away too see clearly, flashes of movement barely perceptible in the darkness, but as they crept closer to Horace he realised they were human-like figures, their features so muddled that they seemed deformed. Hollowed eyes and misshapen faces and stretched mouths, blurring and drifting apart into fog as they moved.
They were speaking to him, he realised. Whispering, calling out to him in hisses of air as though their voice boxes were missing. Saying his name.
Horace shivered and tried not to look at them, picking up speed and praying there was a way out of this place.
They began to follow him; cautiously at first, hovering around him like a school of fish, darting away whenever he moved too quickly. But the longer he ignored them the more agitated they became, the more desperate.
Soon they were surrounding him. Their hazy faces were in his, soulless eyes wide and boring into his own, mouths gaping open and closed in gasping, forgotten attempts at speech. Their expressions were twisted in anguish, and they grabbed at him as if pleading for his help.
"Stop," Horace shuddered, trying to push their hands off him. His voice shook despite his efforts to stay calm. "Leave me alone!"
They let out a tremulous, unnatural wail in unison, like a choir singing out of harmony.
The hair on the back of Horace's neck stood up and he cringed, blood turning cold. He dodged out of their grasp and tried to get away, feeling unnerved and frightened as the figures drifted closer and closer, jostling each other to get to him first, their bodies blurring into smoke where they collided and blending into one another. Their chittering voices made his head buzz.
Horace shoved past them all, keeping his eyes trained on the ground as he picked up speed. Looking at them make his skin crawl. But then his path was blocked as one of the figures swept around in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. He tried to step around it, but it moved with him, leaving smears of fog in the air behind it.
Slowly, Horace forced himself to look up. The creature stared at him with bug eyes, its face blurring in and out and swirling into fog so that it looked like countless faces all super-imposed over one another. Horace could just make out an open, crying mouth.
But the longer he stared, the more the figure's face seemed to solidify, its features becoming just clear enough through the blur that Horace thought he could make out the face of a woman. The bulging, drifting mass of her body began to take shape, until he could see the silhouette of a baby in her arms. She wailed, one withered hand reaching out to grab at his shirt, the skin of her arm peeling away into streams of fog as she did so. The other figures were closing in around him, but she wouldn't let him go, blocking his exit.
"What do you want from me?" Horace pleaded.
Then suddenly she stepped forward into him, dissolving into fog that absorbed into his body. Horace gasped and stumbled back, feeling cold all over.
His sight faded out, and when it returned he was in some kind of rural city, standing in the dirt at the edge of a busy road. The asphalt was dilapidated after years of use, swathes of pale dirt smeared across it from countless footsteps. The road was filled with cars and people and animals pulling carts, sounds of the people talking and car horns blaring and donkeys bleating all overlapping and drowning each other out.
It was all so much, so different from the silent darkness he had just come from, that for a moment Horace was stunned. Confused as to why and how he had suddenly arrived here.
Then he saw her.
The woman was homeless, her skin caked with grime and the soles of her bare feet cracked and stained with yellow dust. She sat on the steps of a shuttered business across the other side of the road, her thin frame so swamped by fabric that he almost didn't see the baby in her arms until someone walked by her and she cried out to them, holding out her baby and begging for help. Horace couldn't make out her words, but he didn't need to. Her face was tear-stained, gaunt with hunger. The baby in her arms was limp and barely breathing, its limbs stick-thin and cheeks sunken, ribs protruding from its tiny chest.
Again and again the woman begged passersby for help, for food, but they all turned their heads and hurried away. Some in disgust, some in shame. Horace felt tears well in his eyes as the woman sobbed and begged. Suddenly, her head snapped up and she turned to look right at him, her pleading eyes finding his across the road. Horace felt like someone had stabbed straight through his chest.
Then the vision of her and the child faded, and Horace was back in the dark. The woman's ghostly figure was gone, dissolved into the air, into him. Horace's head swam and he staggered, feeling as though the woman had drained part of him away.
But he couldn't process what had happened for long. The other ghostly figures were excited now, their gasping voices overlapping and suddenly animated; hissing air and gnashing teeth. Horace's stomach dropped in fear as they surged towards him, all wanting what the woman had gotten. Wanting him to see.
Horace whirled around for an escape, but they had closed in around him, crushing in from all sides, their wraithlike arms extended. Horace shuddered, covering his face.
"No, please," he begged. "I don't want to see it, I-I can't-"
Their hands had reached him now, grabbing onto him and trying to pull him in different directions. If he didn't move now, the crowd would engulf him.
Horace squeezed his eyes shut and ran, stumbling through two, three, four bodies, their figures dissolving into fog that cocooned him, filled his eyes and mouth and lungs. He broke free of the crowd, choking on their grief as his mind filled with them.
An old man who collapsed in his living room, withering away for days as he watched his neighbours come and go, unable to hear his cries for help.
A small child whose parents abandoned her on a street corner, all alone on a freezing winter night.
A drunk man who staggered off the edge of a subway platform, minced under the weight of a train on the tracks.
A woman who found her brother hanging from the ceiling fan of their childhood bedroom.
Horace fell to his hands and knees, feeling sick and dizzy, spots dancing in his vision as their lives faded from his mind. He was so drained he just wanted to collapse, but the rest of the figures were starting to close in on him again. He felt a dozen hands on him, trying pulling him up, trying to engulf him in their misery.
"I'm sorry," he choked out. Then he staggered to his feet and ran.
Still their cold fingers clung to him, curled around his arms and his clothes and his hair, their arms lengthening into smears of smoke that dragged through the air behind him like jellyfish tentacles.
He was shuddering now, desperately trying to pull them off him as their whispers turned to unnatural wails that shivered through the empty air. Begging him to come back, to see their suffering. To save them from their future, or mourn their past. He couldn't tell anymore, he couldn't tell.
Horace covered his ears, sobbing, their howling voices filling his head until it felt like his brain was melting out of his skull.
He ran until finally their wailing stopped. Until the oppressive silence returned, and he was alone. Horace staggered to a stop, shivering, trying to get his breath back and calm his racing heart.
He wiped the tears from his eyes, taking a shuddering breath. But as he lowered his hand from his face, it seemed to blur, streaking through the air.
Horace froze.
He stared at his hand in cold fear, splaying his fingers and watching as they dissolved into each other with his movement.
Slowly, numbly, he looked down.
There were tendrils of fog coiling from his body.
The edges of his clothes and skin blurred, partially absorbing into the air.
No… no no no-
His voice came out as nothing but a jumbled hiss of air.
Horace woke feeling cold and shaken. He couldn't stop shuddering- the shock of what he'd experienced, the horror he'd seen keeping him transfixed, wide-eyed and trembling. His pulse rushed past his ears, a pounding, steady sound that drowned out Enoch's voice as he spoke to him.
Slowly, Horace managed to drag his gaze towards him.
"What's wrong?" Enoch asked him again, taking in Horace's unfocussed, shell-shocked demeanour with concern. "Are you hurting?"
He saw Horace shake his head slightly, such a minute movement that he almost missed it. Silent tears spilled down Horace's cheeks.
"Can you sit up?"
Horace answered by attempting to push himself upright, but his arms shook under his own weight and Enoch had to help him the rest of the way. On his other side, Miss Peregrine draped a blanket over him, and Enoch helped pull it around his shoulders.
Enoch scanned his face nervously.
"Do you know what's happening? Do you… do you know who I am?"
Horace was silent for a moment, struggling to process his words, but then he gave a small nod.
"Okay," Enoch said through a sigh of relief. "Okay, that's- that's a good sign, yeah?" He turned to Miss Peregrine for assurance.
"It's certainly reassuring that you're feeling more lucid, Mr Somnusson," she said gently.
Horace was silent, shivering. He didn't want to tell them the truth, to see the hope break and fade from their faces. Horace's throat felt raw with unshed tears as he took a shuddering breath. He didn't know to break it to them that he knew the world around him was real, it's just that he wasn't.
When he looked down, he could still see tendrils of fog floating from his body and into the air. His whole body felt numb and formless, like he wasn't really there. And beneath everything was a terrible dread, a sense that he was so weak and intangible that he could dissolve into nothing at any second. It terrified him.
"You okay?" Enoch frowned. Horace couldn't hide the fear and grief in his expression so he covered his face with his hands, trying desperately to fight his tears. But his skin was smoke and his bones were hollow and he was already fading away.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Horace mumbled tearfully, shivering.
"What're you sorry about? You ain't got nothing to be sorry for," Enoch assured him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Horace felt it pass straight through him.
Horace just shook his head, lowering his hands from his face and staring down at palms made of fog.
"I'm lying, it's a lie…" His head felt like it was floating above his body. "You'll be so disappointed when you find out…"
Enoch and Miss Peregrine shared a look.
"Find out what, dear?" Miss Peregrine asked him. Horace couldn't meet their eyes.
"I'm not real… not really here-" His voice broke and he blinked away tears. "S-sorry…"
Enoch sounded unnerved.
"What are you talking about?"
He flinched in surprise as Horace suddenly slumped into him, hiding his face in his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, sorry…" he mumbled over and over, voice slurring.
Enoch wrapped his arms around Horace and looked to Miss Peregrine helplessly, not knowing what to make of this.
Miss Peregrine's lips were pursed in concern, but then she forced a look of calm understanding, seemingly deciding it was best to play along.
"You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for," she assured Horace. "It's perfectly alright if you aren't real, isn't that right Mr O'Connor? We'll still love you all the same."
Enoch was staring between the two of them, stunned, but then he swallowed down his confusion and nodded.
"Yeah, 'course."
Horace was silent for a moment.
"…Really?" he mumbled into Enoch's shoulder. He sounded hurt and suspicious.
"Really," Enoch insisted, trying to sound unfazed despite the bizarre conversation. "Don't make no difference to me."
Horace shakily pulled away from him, but he felt so dizzy that he nearly fell backwards and Miss Peregrine had to steady him. As Horace smeared his tears, Enoch caught Miss Peregrine's eye.
Hallucination? he mouthed to her. She nodded grimly.
Horace could feel himself breaking apart and drifting away into the air. He watched his skin peel off in layers and dissolve, but he felt no pain; only cold that seeped into his muscles and left him shuddering. Every breath felt less steady, less complete, as his organs began to melt and evaporate.
"I don't want to feel like this," he said quietly, voice breaking.
"Like you're not real?" Enoch asked, and Horace shook his head as tears welled in his eyes and he knotted his fingers in his hair.
"All of it," he choked out. "All- all of this I…" he forced a shuddering, tearful breath in. It hurt. "I-I want it to stop. Please, please I just want it to stop."
He squeezed his eyes shut, tears beginning to spill down his cheeks. Enoch opened his mouth wordlessly, lost for how to comfort him. Miss Peregrine filled the gap.
"It will," Miss Peregrine assured Horace. "This will pass, I promise you it will."
Horace blinked away fresh tears, feeling cold and sick with dread. He was starting to feel confused again, struggling to grasp onto the thoughts and memories floating around his brain.
"Promise…" he echoed, his voice feeling unfamiliar in his mouth. He frowned. "What-"
Horace's voice cut off as his head swam and he bent over double with his fingers curled white-knuckled at his temples. His confusion grew until he could no longer make out where he was, who he was with. He felt like his brain was encrusted with ice.
Enoch leant forward to meet his eyes.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Tell me what's happening."
Horace didn't respond. He felt so exhausted and outside of his own body that he could hardly process anything, could barely form thoughts or move or feel. He straightened up and went quiet, staring blankly into the distance with tears spilling down his cheeks. When Enoch waved a hand in front of his face, he didn't react.
"What do we do?" Enoch asked nervously.
"Just give him time," Miss Peregrine replied, but she sounded worried.
Enoch took Horace's hand, chewing his lip with nerves. They waited for what felt like an eternity, but Horace didn't move, wouldn't even look at them.
"…Horace?" Enoch tried again after a while. He squeezed Horace's hand, scanning his face for any sign of a reaction, but found none. "Can you hear me?" Enoch continued, growing more unnerved. "Do you… do you understand what I'm saying?"
Finally, Horace's gaze dragged over to Enoch. But he seemed to stare past him, his expression slack. He stayed silent.
Enoch looked hopeful.
"Hello," he said gently. "So you can hear me, yeah? Are you feeling better now? Or still not real?"
Horace stared at him, struggling to follow his words.
"I…" Horace's voice faded out. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly, his gaze far away, his brain too muddled to form words.
He was tired, so tired, and he felt his eyes sink closed, his mind fading. But the second he did, he was flooded with a roar of overlapping images of horror and suffering like a power hose through his brain.
He let out a strangled gasp, stiffening, gaze darting around the room.
"No no no," he mumbled, voice frightened, his eyes wide and vacant. "Stop, stop…"
"It's alright," Miss Peregrine said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "We're right here, everything is fine."
Horace was still mumbling quietly as if he hadn't heard her, shuddering and blinking away tears.
"Please, I don't like this… I don't- I don't like it at all…"
Suddenly, they heard overlapping voices from out in the garden and the sound of the shed door closing as the rest of the peculiars returned through the pocket loop. Miss Peregrine's brow knitted.
"That will be the other children," she said quietly. Her gaze was trained through the screen door across the lawn, where Enoch could just make out his friends crossing the lawn towards the house. He glanced at Miss Peregrine, who was still watching them intently with a worried frown on her face. Enoch wondered if her falcon eyes could see further than his could. "They'll be coming this way," she said. "We'll have to move him."
It was then that Enoch remembered where exactly Horace was sitting; they'd have to practically step over him to get through the door.
"Just tell them to come in through the front door instead," he scoffed, struggling to hold Horace upright. "I think they'll survive walking a few more metres."
"Even so, he can't stay here forever. I'll instruct the children to come around the front, and collect Miss Bruntley to help us get him on his feet. Will you be alright alone for a few minutes?"
Enoch readjusted his hold on Horace as he started to slip, then nodded.
"Just don't be long, yeah?"
Miss Peregrine gave him a sympathetic look and nodded, rising with some difficulty from the floor. As she headed out into the garden, Enoch glanced at Horace nervously. He was still mumbling to himself, his expression fearful but eyes vacant. Horace shivered, and Enoch wrapped his arms around him again, wishing they'd brought more of the blankets in from outside.
"…Where- where am I?" Horace said, sounding frightened. "Where… it's so cold…"
"It's okay," Enoch assured him quietly. "You're safe, you're okay."
Horace just shivered and squeezed his eyes shut.
Thanks for reading!