A Peculiar Time in 1944 - A Millard Fanfic (Miss Peregrine's Home) #wattys2020

Chapter 76

The boy turned pale and started to shake before he dropped to the floor faint. The girl began to scream and didn't stop. In an instant the wight was banging on the chained door just as the train jolted and there was the unmistakable squeal of brakes. The train came to a stop and the doors opened. The moment there was enough space for them to fit through they took off running as fast as they could.

Unlike the last station this one was packed full of people and they struggled against the crowd as they ran for their lives. They put about twenty feet and fifty people between them and the train when the wight burst out of it. He started shoving commuters and yelling but either no one heard him or they ignored him. Then Emma decided to start tripping people, she kicked her large metal shoes left and right hitting people in the shins causing even more chaos. When they'd made it through they saw the wight had been swallowed up in the sea of people and Jake pulled them into a lift much sleeker and technologically advanced than anything Aurora had ever seen. The doors slid shut as Aurora saw the wight break free of the crowd, then they were safe again – for however short a time.

Then Aurora noticed that they weren't alone in the lift, there was a middle aged man with a torn shirt, his face crisscrossed with cuts with a bloodstained weapon – Aurora wasn't sure what it was.

"He's wearing a costume." Jake whispered.

"A costume?" Emma said a little too loudly. "But he's a grown man."

"So what?" the man asked taking offense, "And who are you supposed to be?"

"Peculiar children." Addison said, "And I am the seventh pup of the seventh pup in a long and illustrious line of –" The man fainted before Addison could finish.

"You've got to stop doing that." Emma said grinning despite herself.

"Serves him right, what a rude person."

"Why on earth is he dressed like that?" Aurora asked Jake as the doors slid open.

"I think you're about to find out."

Aurora turned and had to fight to keep her jaw from hitting the floor. The colors were so bright that at first she had to shield her eyes. There were costumed people everywhere, superheroes in capes, people that were covered in so much fake blood as they groaned and hobbled along half dead. People wielding fake weapons of every kind and above it all, a long banner that read: Comic Convention Today!

"They're only dressed up normals." Jake said as he led them forward, "And that's what we look like to them." Jake led them through the crowd and Aurora felt a pang in her heart as she remembered when her brother had come to Cairnholm and had explained comic books to her. They had been the latest thing then and surely her brother never dreamed it could turn into something like this, was he even still alive to see it, she wondered. They didn't get far before Addison shouted again.

"Huzzah for fortune! My nose tells me our friends were brought out of the underground here, via that escalator. We've gone the right way after all!"

"Thank the birds!" Emma said clapping her hands together.

"Do you think you can follow their trail?" Jake asked with hope.

"Do I think I can? They don't call me Addison the Astounding for nothing!"

They followed the peculiar dog past several oddly dressed people. One man with green hair and a bloody smile was standing beside his girlfriend who was reapplying her red and blue make-up and fixing her blonde ponytails. On top of a table was a man in all green leather with a bow and arrow. He shot one into the crowd and another man with knives sticking out from between his knuckles approached growling about the arrow spilling his beer before the two began a staged fight.