A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,146

time ago I made this poor creature a promise, and it’s got to be done before I die. Let him come.”

I stood up, backed away, and let go. The hollowgast dropped to the floor.

“Come here, Horatio. I can feel myself going. Come here.”

The hollow crept toward H. The old man tried to turn away from me.

“Don’t look. I don’t want this to be your last memory of me.”

The hollowgast straddled H and sat on his chest. When I realized what was about to happen I tried to command the hollowgast to move—I shouted at the thing—but H was blocking me.

I could hear him whispering to the creature.

“You’ve been a real good boy, Horatio. Remember what I taught you. Now, go on.”

The hollowgast whimpered, trembling.

“It’s okay,” H said gently, stroking the creature’s clawlike hand. “I’ll be okay.”

I looked away as it happened, though I’ll never forget the sound it made. When I looked back, his eyes were gone. The sockets looked like ripe plums with bites taken out of them. The hollowgast was chewing, and its shoulders were shaking, and it was making a noise that seemed caught between agony and ecstasy. After a minute it stood and turned slowly away, as if filled with shame.

“I forgive you,” H said. “I forgive you, brother.”

He seemed not to be speaking to the hollow, but to the air. To a ghost.

And then he was gone.

* * *

• • •

The hollowgast and I stared at each other across H’s body. I tried to gain control of it.

Sit down.

I had thought, if anything, it would be easier to control now that its master was dead. But my command had no effect.

I tried a second time, and then a third, with no results. I started planning ways to kill the thing, before it got a mind to come after my eyeballs next, and then Noor’s.

The hollowgast ratcheted its jaws open all the way, reeled out its three tongues, and made a terrifying sound—a squeal so high-pitched I thought the windows might crack. I grabbed a brass paperweight from a nearby table and steeled myself for a nasty fight.

But the hollowgast wasn’t coming for me. It was stumbling backward, and after a few steps its back hit the wall and came to a stop. And then the dull, directional pain that told me where the hollow was at all times began, very rapidly, to fade. At the same time, the creature’s tongues began to shrink. They shriveled and curled up and turned a deathly brown, and then they fell off, having withered like dead flowers.

The hollow was leaning against the wall with its head bowed and chest rising and falling as if it had just run a marathon. Then it collapsed to the floor, and its body began to shiver in the grip of a violent seizure.

I began to cross the room slowly, approaching it with careful, measured steps in case this was a trick. Then, as suddenly as they’d begun, the seizures stopped. At that same instant, the pain in my gut vanished.

The hollow began to stir. It turned its head and looked up at me. Its eyes were no longer black, weeping pools; now they were gray and lightening more by the second, gradually turning a pupilless blank.

The creature was transforming into something else: It was becoming a wight. I watched it for a minute, queasy but fascinated, ready to bash its head in with the paperweight if I needed to.

Its body began to squirm. The movement seemed involuntary, like its organs were metamorphosing inside its chest cavity. Its breathing, which had been wet and ragged like a hollowgast’s, quieted and became regular. It was almost like witnessing a birth.

It sat up and looked at me.

I took a step backward, gripped by a sudden idea. This creature had been H’s constant companion for years. It had seen and overheard all sorts of things. And now it was almost human. What might it remember, if it could remember anything at all? How much of its past life as a hollowgast did a wight retain? How quickly did its memories fade?

“Say something,” I commanded it. “Speak.”

It just stared at me. Didn’t even grunt. Maybe wights were born like livestock animals, able to stand and even to run, but mute, knowing nothing.

It reached out its arm, steadied itself against the wall, and rose slowly to its feet. It shuffled a short distance to an end table and ripped the tablecloth away. I thought for a moment it was