Even more revelations, everyone. And there's more after this, too.
For the first time in a long time, I had no memories for dreams, but nightmares. Nightmares that consisted of murderers hunting me down, gloating about their kills, lurking in the shadows of each room...
Then perhaps the most wicked of them all, a vision of the family I'd lost, the ghost of my mother and father come to visit. They were disappointed, angry even, for me to have messed with the past. Suddenly they wailed and were ripped to shreds by something invisible, maybe a hollow. Then Caul stepped out and shot me too...
"Don't worry, now you can be with them... family is forever, don't you think?"
I woke up in a cold sweat. I was in the same room, but the other children were gone. Miss Peregrine sat in the corner, knitting. She looked up at me.
"Ah, you're awake," She remarked. "How are you feeling?"
I blinked.
"Would you like some tea? Coffee? That might help. Just no alcohol."
"No, thanks," I said. She nodded and went back to her knitting.
"Are we still going to try to storm the wight's fort?" I asked after a while.
"I think we're going to take some time to recover first."
"I'm fine," I argued. "There are people in there that need our help."
"I'm sorry, I worry for everyone in that horrible place as well, but given the state you were in last night..." Miss Peregrine said. She shook her head. "You need the time, Miss Perine. Otherwise it will not work. "
"About last night," I started. "Are you going to say something?"
"What is there to say?" Miss P said. "Surely you've worked out a lot of it. And I daresay you may not be ready to relieve it yet. Sometimes memories are the worst torture devices imaginable. "
"Those people were my parents," I guessed. "They were killed."
Miss Peregrine nodded. "It also seems as though you take after your father, who seems to be a time traveler. Although it seems different than any other peculiarity I've ever heard of, I wouldn't be surprised if you were truly from a different time."
"That would be... weird," I said. "Do you think this has all happened before?"
"That would truly be an odd discovery if we found it was true," Her needles stopped clicking for a moment. She sat still for a few minutes. "An odd discovery indeed..."
"What?" I asked. "You're thinking about something, aren't you?" It was pretty obvious whenever something was on Miss Peregrine's mind.
"Just a feeling," Miss Peregrine admitted. "Nothing more. You look tired, Miss Perine. How about you attempt to sleep some more?"
. . .
For the next few nights, I had the same nightmares; there wasn't a day I didn't wake up in a sweat. Everyone still told me I looked ghastly, and when I looked in the mirror, I discovered it was true. I was extra-pale and sweaty-looking, with bags under my eyes. I knew I was fully in the present, but my blueish-green eyes looked dull like I was sleeping with my eyes open. Emma helped me comb through my dark hair which resembled a bird's nest. How I longed to take a shower, but Devil's Acre didn't have any. Not unless you wanted to look and feel even worse after.
Miss Peregrine was still insisting we wait. I suspect she was still rattled from the last time when we disappeared. I wasn't the only one who wanted to go, either. Joseph had left, but Emma and Jake were pestering about it, as well as Hugh, Bronwyn, and practically everyone else. Even Horace, who wasn't going to go, helped try to convince Miss Peregrine to let us. She wasn't budging. Bentham stayed out of it, we didn't even see him much.
The most we ever did the next few days was talk. We talked mostly about how to break in again because going in on the roof wasn't going to work. We were too vulnerable up in the air. After conversing multiple times, we concluded that we needed a hollow, for the panloopticon. It was our only hope. But again, Miss Peregrine wasn't letting us out of the house.
After a while, I got to looking better. I got less clammy every day, the color returning just a little to my cheeks, and the brightness returning to my eyes. Soon, even Miss Peregrine had to admit I looked better. The other children tried to weedle the memory out of me. Jake wouldn't share and they had been going at him for it for a while. I refused everyone except Horace and Emma. I felt like they would protect it and take it with all seriousness and matureness, which they did. They were also my closest friends out of the group.
I wasn't feeling much better, though. But I was getting restless, so I pretended I was fine. I'm sure everyone saw right through me, but everyone else was restless too.
Then one day, I was feeling much better. I woke up with my fingers tingly for the first time in what felt like ages. I pushed my hand through the air and blue strings spun out. It was refreshing. I shaped it into a bowl, and this time the scene took shape. It was my mother and father, rushing to the door. The freshness I had been feeling soured. I smashed the bowl, making it dissolve, and turned away.
Something was nagging at me, but I didn't know what. Then I realized. That memory was trying to reveal itself to me for a long time. It was trying to take shape that whole time-- the two figures running I had seen before was the beginning of the memory. Even while I had been dreaming about Jake and Miss Peregrine, this memory had been trying to show itself. But why? Why is it so important? It was just my parents, torment I didn't need. Why do I need to know something pointless, that would only cause me more pain than I already had? It wasn't like I was wondering about my unknown parents before, but I certainly was now. And my aunt-- I had asked her about my parents one of the few days I had been with her. But she just got a disgusted look and told me to shush. Who was she related to? My mother? My father? Why didn't she seem to like them?
So many new questions, just because of one stupid, pointless memory.
. . .
I was walking by Bentham's office when I heard him talking to someone on the phone.
"Yes, they're still here..." He was staying. "No intention of leaving still... they'll last maybe another week, perhaps two." He stopped and listened. "Yes yes, just give me another week, that'd be enough."
I stopped and Bentham stepped out, off the phone. He looked at me and I raised an eyebrow. His eyes got wide.
"Uh," Bentham said, defending himself. "It's not what you think!"
"I think it's exactly what I was thinking," I said acidly. "You told someone we're here! I knew we couldn't trust you! We would have been better off in the streets."
"No, you wouldn't have," Bentham argued, pulling me into his office so quickly you wouldn't have known he had broken legs. I held up my hands as he closed the door, reminding him I could leave whenever I wanted. "You see-"
"How much longer until they get here?" I interrupted.
"A week," Bentham said bluntly. The answer surprised me so much that I dropped my hands and my mouth fell open.
"What?"
"A week," Bentham repeated. "You see, they've always known you were here. But I had convinced them to let you stay here all this time, under the condition that you would cause no trouble. Due to the nature of your peculiarities, the wights thought that if you didn't know you were prisoners, you wouldn't cause any trouble. When they found out that you had tried to break in, they were furious. I thought they were going to come right then and take you all. But I, somehow, convinced them to give me more time."
"More time for what?"
"I find all of you particularly interesting. Especially you and Jacob Portman. But mostly you," Benthem explained, sitting in a chair. He gestured toward a seat across from him, which I hesitantly took. "Because there was another past. Another timeline. Another way."
"Really?" I ask, disbelieving. "Or are you saying all this as a ruse while the wights come rushing?"
"Of course not!" Bentham gave a wheezy laugh. "Always suspicious. You remind me of Alma, you know that? "
"No," I said. "But who I remind you of doesn't matter."
"Oh yes," Bentham said, leaning forward in his chair. "Yes it does, August. And do you know who else you remind me of?"
"Who?" I asked, my heart suddenly pumping. My back started to sweat. Bentham had a crazed look in his eyes like he had been waiting for this moment and was going to die of excitement. He was making me nervous.
"Euphora." Bentham told me.
"Oh," I said, my voice shaking slightly, taking on an uncharacteristically high pitch. "Um... And who is that?" He didn't know about my memory.
"Someone I thought had moved on into a different world," Bentham said. His lips twitched, "The last I had seen of her, she was in that dreaded building." He meant the wight's base.
"She was a nice young lady, easily discouraged, but easily motivated to do right. Stubborn, but powerful, too. Too powerful, in my opinion. And all my brother wanted to do was use it." He frowned, sitting back in his chair again. "Didn't care if she lived or died. He blackmailed her up until we... got stuck."
"Got stuck?" I prompted.
"I heard about your book," Bentham said. "I'm sure you know all about it."
"So it all had happened before." I clarified.
"Well, it seems that book only told the public knowledge, or at least what the public used to know before you started to mess everything up. There were a few things that were... altered."
"Altered?" I repeated. "What do you mean? How? By whom?"
"Altered as in memories changed. A few things were essential to Caul's plan, but mostly he changed them purely to torment and cause confusion if things were to go wrong for him in the Library."
"Which it did." I pointed out.
"Yes," Bentham confirmed. "And it worked."
"What was wrong in my book?" I bit my lip and sat up straight.
"Not much, but just enough to wipe any trace of Euphora out of history," Bentham explained. He looked guilty. "I only found out about this after you came in 2001. Everything was spun back to before any of those events in your book happened, and now they're happening again. Except you're here. And Euphora is... traveling. In the world of time. I can only assume she, after finding a time traveler, joined them and is roaming. That could be one of the only things that explain why she isn't present now. I am the only one who remembers how things happened, other than Euphora. And you, although "remember" might be the wrong word in your case. It was because of an accident, I suppose. I had been taking a daily drink of a formula of which I hoped to gain invincibility-- rather selfish of me, looking back-- Which made me not invulnerable to physical pains but to the everlasting and ever changing effects of time. If anyone messes with the time when I'm around, do you know who knows? Who can feel it? Who can remember?"
"You?" I guessed.
"Yes." Bentham breathed a sigh.
"And have you... felt this Euphora girl travel in time recently?" I asked, holding onto a sliver of hope that she might still be alive.
"No." Bentham's face was full of sadness. "I was fond of her, you know? I started to love her like we had been a normal family, even through the horrible conditions in which we collaborated."
"A normal family?" I asked. I gulped. "Were you family?"
"I suppose I can come out with the truth now," Bentham sighed again. "Euphora was my niece. The daughter of my sister and her husband."
"I thought Ymbrynes couldn't marry," I commented through the pounding in my ears. All this was getting to be too much. Too mind-blowing. "I thought it wasn't allowed."
"That's the general rule, yes. But occasionally --very rarely-- the Ymbryne Council grants special permission if they feel gracious enough. Alma was on their good side at the time. The only condition was that they couldn't have a child. But they did, and so they hid her to keep her safe. Then Caul found out about her marriage and singled Mark out. Mark turned to Caul's side, faking his death. But apparently, he cared a sliver for Euphora still and kept her a secret for some time. It was many years later that he finally told Caul. You can imagine what happened."
"Yeah," I cleared my throat. I seemed to be a little slow in processing things like this and putting together the dots. But I got the point.
"And then there was you," Bentham said, leaning forward again, with the excitement in his eyes. "Who reminded me of both Alma and Euphora. That's why I thought you were interesting."