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

Chapter 81

"Maybe lots of people go through life never knowing they're peculiar" {Emma Bloom, pg 257 book 3}

Seven Stages of Grief: Stage Six – Testing, seeking realistic solutions

"Your sister is –"

"Alma LeFay Peregrine, your headmistress."

"T-Then you're related to Caul too." Aurora said as her heart sped up.

Mr. Bentham looked down into his teacup with a sad look on his face, "Sadly yes. Though his real name is Jack, tragic what happened to him really." He looked back up at Aurora, "Tell me child, do you know the tale of the lost loop?"

"Abaton." Aurora nodded. "The legend goes that back in the old days, thousands of years ago, there was a special loop peculiars went to when they died. They didn't compare it to heaven, they said it was more like a library. It was thought that peculiar souls were a precious thing, in limited supply and it would be a waste to take them with us to the grave. So instead at the end of our lives a peculiar would make a pilgrimage to the library where their soul would be deposited for future use by others. Like the first law of thermodynamics, that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, or souls, in this case." Sometimes Aurora surprised herself with how much she'd picked up from Millard.

"The principle is similar I suppose." Bentham replied, "The ancients believed that only a certain number of peculiar souls were available to humanity and that when a peculiar was born he or she checked one out as you or I might borrow a book from a library. But when your life was over the soul had to be returned. This carried on for thousands of years until one day the library disappeared."

Aurora nodded, "According to legend the Library of Souls was located in the hills of Abaton but it had disappeared along with the library."

"We may never know for certain if Abaton is a real place, that's what makes it a legend." Bentham agreed. "But like rumors of buried treasure the legend has not stopped people from searching for it. It is said that Perplexus Anomalous himself committed years to the hunt for the lost loop of Abaton – which is how he began to discover so many of the loops that appear on his famous maps."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what this has to do with your brother."

"Ah yes, you see my brother too believed the story. He believed he could complete Perplexus' work and it didn't take long for him to convince others as well. I'm sad to say I helped him too but as I came to realize it was a fruitless endeavor Jack –Caul – only became more infatuated with it. When I tried to stop him he smeared me a traitor and turned the others against me and locked me in a cell. It was my fault for letting things go on as long as they did, I made so many excuses for him, but it was only after he imprisoned me that I saw the truth. Alma's vision was sharper and she'd pushed him away at an early age but I thought the bond between brothers ran deep, it wasn't until he'd thrown me in a hole to die that I realized Jack valued power over his own brother."

"But you didn't die." Aurora said noticing how saddened Bentham had become retelling his story.

"No," he paused, "I turned them into hollows."

Aurora almost dropped her teacup, "How?" she asked aghast.

"I tricked them. I never meant to turn them into monsters, I only meant to get rid of them. I told him it would prevent the danger of aging forward but in truth it was a procedure used to collapse loops quickly and permanently in an emergency. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine what would crawl out of that collapsed loop." He gave a sad shake of his head.

"But then how did you end up here?" Aurora asked somewhat reluctantly, feeling like the answer might be adding salt to his wound.

"Five years after encountering my first hollowgast I met my first wight, my brother Jack. He was more obsessed than ever with finding Abaton but he needed my machine and me to operate it."