Love, Elsie | Enoch O'Connor

Six

Everyone was sat around the fireplace and Horace as he placed a monocle on his right eye. The firewood crackled loudly under the projector screen and Miss Peregrine had dimmed the lights as she walked into the room after finishing her phone call.

I had sat beside Emma on the sofa, with Jake on her other side. Fiona, Hugh and the twins had sat on the floor in front of Horace, and on the sofa opposite was Enoch, directly in front of me with his usual scowl, Claire, Bronwyn and Olive besides him.

Scenes began to roll out on the projector screen, flashing clips of Horace in a clothes tailors, trying on different suits. He was by far the most fashionable of all the children and it was evident he prides himself with this.

Emma leans over to me, "Some of Horace's dreams are prophetic, but mostly he dreams about clothes."

"Prophetic as in, he can see into the future?" I asked, thinking of whenever I have dreamt things of happening and the events happened a matter of days later.

"Yeah, sometimes he has bad dreams though, some that don't really happen," As if on Emma's cue, Horace's dream flickered from the tailors to an older woman strapped down to a chair, trembling in fear. There were a few men around her with greyed out eyes and crazy hair, their teeth sharp with grimacing smiles. They were pushing her somewhere and the woman was lashing out so distraught that I could see the fear developing in some of the younger children's faces.

I reached out to Horace, placing a hand on his arm and soothed him as the look on his face was discomfort, just like Annie's whenever she had a nightmare. Suddenly, the woman had disappeared off the screen and we were back at the tailors.

From then on, everything ran smoothly, segments of the dreams similar to a lovely kids film, more suitable for the younger children in the room. There were two characters on screen, the picture quite blurred and dark with light spreading out from the window behind them. They slowly inched closer and all of a sudden I felt a pair of eyes, like lasers, trying to glare through the side of my head. I couldn't recognise who they were as it was a bit too blurry and I was tired, but before I could properly squint and take a look, the lights came on and Miss Peregrine announced that it was quite enough for the evening, and to start preparing for the reset and supper. There was a wave of 'aww's' and frowns as the children had to stop at an interesting part.

"We should probably get going," Jake spoke up as everyone was shuffling around, "I know Elsie's dad will be concerned about her."

"Won't you at least stay to see the reset, Jake?" Jake looked in my direction for approval and I shrugged as to say, why not. We were already quite late home, staying a few minutes longer couldn't possibly make a huge difference. So, we stayed to watch.

The children handed the gas masks around whilst Miss Peregrine set up her equipment and prepared herself to reset the day. Claire held my hand, squeezing it tight. I had no doubt that she wasn't scared, she must have seen this a million times so maybe she thought I'd be scared. As 'Run, Rabbit, Run' began to play, I felt my heart rate pick up in anticipation as I watched patiently. Claire was probably right in grabbing me in case I was scared, I was definitely a bit anxious.

We heard sirens and planes flying ahead, dropping what looked tiny so far away, but as it got closer, it was the bomb that dropped on the house outside of the loop. It kept getting closer and I sensed Jake beginning to freak out beside me, the tip of the flying bomb must've been inches away from the roof. Then time stopped.

The explosion we had been waiting for never came and all of a sudden, the doors to the belly of the plane opened and the bomb was concealed. As the clock turned further backwards, so did the sunset; oranges and yellows reverted to a strikingly blue sky, the clouds also shifting backwards as fast as Miss Peregrine could turn the bobbin of the clock anticlockwise. In a matter of minutes, we were in September 2nd, 1943, awaiting to live September 3rd, 1943 once more.