Strange Beginnings// j.p.

Chapter 5- New Discoveries

      The morning outside the pub was almost too perfect, like a photoshopped screensaver for a classroom computer, full of quaint cottages that gave way to rolling green hills lined with the ancient rock walls characteristic to U.K. landscape.

  The beauty of the day was quickly lost as we crossed the ridge separating the children's home from the rest of the island. Being that our luck was so great, we stepped right into a light drizzle of rain that was already turning the old dirt path into mud under our shoes. Figuring getting a bit wet would be better than walking all the way back to the pub to fetch our raincoats and galoshes, we simply kept walking, bowing our heads slightly against the moisture as we went. By the time we reached the decrepit old home, however, what had started as a simple drizzle was now a full downpour, and we were thoroughly soaked. We dove through the old doorway as quickly as we could to escape the deluge, the old rain-bloated floorboards protesting under our weight. We dried our clothes and our hair as best we could, and began to scour the house, for what, we didn't really know yet.

We went through the ground floor room by room, peeking under furniture and into closets, but after turning up emptyhanded, we made our way to the staircase and began climbing it, the old wood creaking and groaning perilously, but holding sturdy under our feet. The second floor was nothing like the first, almost perfectly preserved, save for the layers of dust and some mold and moss let in by a few broken windows. It was easy to imagine the children living in those rooms, their toys and crayons and clothing left behind, nothing disturbed from its place for close to 70 years, almost as if time had stopped the night they died.

I broke off from Jake as he began wandering down the hall, making my way into what turned out to be a small library, the books still sitting on bowed shelves, books like Peter Pan and The Secret Garden, books of ancient histories and even older literatures, and in one corner, a handful of old single desks and a chalkboard, and my heart clenched as I realized I was standing in a classroom belonging to these children, and Miss Peregrine was their faithful teacher.

I made my way back into the hallway after a moment of silent reflection in the library and was about to keep walking to the very end of it, when I heard crying from a doorway on my left. I turned into the room and found Jake laying on a moldy old twin bed, sobbing, an old suitcase sitting open and empty on the floor next to him. "Jake, baby, what's wrong?" I made my way to sit next to him on the bed, holding out my arms to him. He sat up from the filthy sheets just enough to bury his face in my neck, clinging to me as he cried. "This was his room, Lessie... I can just feel it..." His tears soaked my skin and the collar of my sweater, "This was his room, and his bed, and this is where he had to lay at night, thinking of his family being starved and tortured, about having to leave his home and everything he loved, a-and...!" I rocked him gently, stroking his hair and soothing him until his crying finally subsided. Pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead, I wiped away his tears before taking notice of a trunk tucked away under the other bed in the room. I got up and crossed the room, pulling the old steamer trunk out into the middle of the room. Jake joined me on the floor, investigating the rusty padlock holding the trunk closed, which didn't break open with a hard tug the way an old metal object should. It would've taken hours to search the whole house for a key we may not even find, but I had another idea. With a bit of effort, I began pushing the trunk out into the hall and closer to the railing of the stairs until it tipped over the edge and went crashing down, through the ground floor and thudding into the basement, leaving a large hole in its wake. We rushed down the stairs to peer into the massive hole, finding the trunk split open like an egg, its contents strewn everywhere. I began to recognize faces and shapes on the scattered papers that had spilled from the trunk, realizing they were in fact more old photographs. Digging in my backpack, I pulled out a flashlight and held it up, turning to look at Jake as we spoke in unison. "We have to go down there."