Discovering the Future

Chapter 27- Chapter 10 (Part 4)

Disclaimer: I don't own Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

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"Go!" I shouted, and we all bolted down the far side, the four of us sliding on our butts until we hit level ground and could run again.

There was another flash of lightning. It was even closer than before. At this rate there was no way we'd be able to outrun it. Our only hope was to outmaneuver it.

"If it catches us, it'll kill us all," I shouted, "but if we split up, it'll have to choose. I'll lead it around the long way and try to lose it in the bog. The rest of you get to the loop as quick as you can!"

"You never split up," Hugh said. "Someone always dies if you do."

"You're mad!" shouted Emma. "If anyone stays behind it should be me! I can fight it with fire!"

"Not in this rain," I said, "and not if you can't see it!"

"I won't let you kill yourself!" she shouted.

There was no time to argue, so Bronwyn and Enoch ran ahead while Emma and I veered off the path, hoping the creature would follow, and it did. It was close enough now that I didn't need a lightning flash to know where it was; the twist in my gut was enough.

We ran arm in arm, tripping through a field rent with furrows and ditches, falling and catching each other in an epileptic dance. I was scanning the ground for rocks to use as weapons when, out of the darkness ahead, there appeared a structure-a small sagging shack with broken windows and missing doors, which in my panic I failed to recognise.

Emma nodded. "Understandable."

"We have to hide!" I said between gasping breaths.

Please let this creature be stupid, I prayed as we sprinted toward the house, please, please let it be stupid. We made a wide arc, hoping to enter it unseen.

"Wait!" Emma cried as we rounded the back of it. She pulled one of Enoch's cheesecloths from her coat and quickly tied it around a stone plucked from the ground, making a kind of slingshot.

"See! They are good for something!" Victor cried, putting on a surprised expression.

She cradled it in her hands until it caught fire and then hurled it away from us. It landed in the boggy distance, glowing weakly in the dark.

"Misdirection," she explained and we turned and committed ourselves to the shack's concealing gloom.

We slipped through a door that that was hanging off its hinges and stepped down into a sea of dark, aromatic muck. As our feet sank with a nauseating squelch, I realised where we were.

"What is this?" Emma whispered, and then a sudden exhalation of animal breath made us both jump. The house was crowded with sheep taking shelter from the unfriendly night, just as we were. As our eyes adjusted, we caught the dull gleam of theirs staring back at us-dozens and dozens of them.

"Awww!" Claire and Olive cooed.

"It's what I think it is, isn't it," she said, lifting one foot gingerly.