Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #1) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,89

Emma said, “don’t listen to him.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I trusted him once. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Golan continued as though he hadn’t heard me. “I can offer you safety, money. I can give you your life back, Jacob. All you have to do is work with us.”

“Us?”

“Malthus and me,” he said, turning to call over his shoulder. “Come and say hello, Malthus.”

A shadow appeared in the doorway behind him, and a moment later we were overcome by a noxious wave of stench. Bronwyn gagged and fell back a step, and I saw Emma’s fists clench, as if she were thinking about charging it. I touched her arm and mouthed, Wait.

“This is all I’m proposing,” Golan continued, trying to sound reasonable. “Help us find more people like you. In return, you’ll have nothing to fear from Malthus or his kind. You can live at home. In your free time you’ll come with me and see the world, and we’ll pay you handsomely. We’ll tell your parents you’re my research assistant.”

“If I agree,” I said, “what happens to my friends?”

He made a dismissive gesture with his gun. “They made their choice long ago. What’s important is that there’s a grand plan in motion, Jacob, and you’ll be part of it.”

Did I consider it? I suppose I must have, if only for a moment. Dr. Golan was offering me exactly what I’d been looking for: a third option. A future that was neither stay here forever nor leave and die. But one look at my friends, their faces etched with worry, banished any temptation.

“Well?” said Golan. “What’s your answer?”

“I’d die before I did anything to help you.”

“Ah,” he said, “but you already have helped me.” He began to back toward the door. “It’s a pity we won’t have any more sessions together, Jacob. Though it isn’t a total loss, I suppose. The four of you together might be enough to finally shift old Malthus out of the debased form he’s been stuck in so long.”

“Oh, no,” Enoch whimpered, “I don’t want to be eaten!”

“Don’t cry, it’s degrading,” snapped Bronwyn. “We’ll just have to kill them, that’s all.”

“Wish I could stay and watch,” Golan said from the doorway. “I do love to watch!”

And then he was gone, and we were alone with it. I could hear the creature breathing in the dark, a viscid leaking like faulty pipeworks. We each took a step back, then another, until our shoulders met the wall, and we stood together like condemned prisoners before a firing squad.

“I need a light,” I whispered to Emma, who was in such shock that she seemed to have forgotten her own power.

Her hand came ablaze, and among the flickering shadows I saw it, lurking among the troughs. My nightmare. It stooped there, hairless and naked, mottled gray-black skin hanging off its frame in loose folds, its eyes collared in dripping putrefaction, legs bowed and feet clubbed and hands gnarled into useless claws—every part looking withered and wasted like the body of an impossibly old man—save one. Its outsized jaws were its main feature, a bulging enclosure of teeth as tall and sharp as little steak knives that the flesh of its mouth was hopeless to contain, so that its lips were perpetually drawn back in a deranged smile.

And then those awful teeth came unlocked, its mouth reeling open to admit three wiry tongues into the air, each as thick as my wrist. They unspooled across half the room’s length, ten feet or more, and then hung there, wriggling, the creature breathing raggedly through a pair of leprous holes in its face as if tasting our scent, considering how best to devour us. That we would be so easy to kill was the only reason we weren’t dead already; like a gourmand about to enjoy a fine meal, there was no reason to rush things.

The others couldn’t see it in the way I did but recognized its shadow projected on the wall and that of its ropelike tongues. Emma flexed her arm, and her flame burned brighter. “What’s it doing?” she whispered. “Why hasn’t it come at us?”

“It’s playing with us,” I said. “It knows we’re trapped.”

“We ain’t any such thing,” Bronwyn muttered. “Just gimme one square go at its face. I’ll punch its bloody teeth in.”

“I wouldn’t get anywhere near those teeth if I were you,” I said.

The hollow took a few lumbering steps forward to match the ones we’d taken back, its tongues unfurling more and then splitting apart,