Chapter 5 #2
A tall shape, hat slanted, an arm at one side, and the other arm ended in that polished curve of iron. For a heartbeat I remembered Peter’s warning: That pirate pierces the necks of children with the hooked hand.
My body went rigid.
Roger hopped off the edge and stood at my side, tangling his fingers in mine.
“Father …”
The man stepped into the light. His wind- and sun-burned face more sorrow than fury. He removed his hat, pressed it to his heart, and bowed.
“Miss,” he said, then he placed the hat back on this head and was gone.
The deck swayed. My breath caught.
“Peter said he was a terror,” I whispered.
Roger’s head shook once, sharply. “Peter is the terror. He lies. He steals from the other world. He brings children here to feed the story that keeps him alive.”
A chill threaded down my spine. My brothers. I couldn’t leave them there much longer.
Roger leaned closer, his voice lowering to something barely human. “When a child stops amusing him … he doesn’t simply let them go. He consumes whatever wonder is left in them. He drains it. Leaves them hollow. That’s when their body returns to the other side, all dried skin and bone.”
My stomach clenched.
Roger kept speaking. “And if the story grows hungry, he takes more. Every twelve years, he goes on and fetches a new group, one by one. Once he’s taken all he can, he goes back to sleep and begins again.”
“Why every twelve years?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the age when a child starts realizing they’re leaving true childhood behind. Maybe there’s some meaning in it. So many stories just don’t have all of the answers.”
Something inside me snapped taught.
I needed to get back to my brothers.
Before Peter got to them.
“Tomorrow,” I whispered. I’ll post the letters tomorrow.
The clock struck midnight. I placed the letters together on my desk and watched the lamplight.
For a moment, the house was still.
Then, a sound from above. A slow, deliberate creak from the nursery.
Another, and another.
The pen slipped from my fingers and rolled across the desk.
I held my breath, listening.
Then came another sound. Softer. Nearer.
A footstep.
No. It can’t come in. Not this far. There are rules.
I rose from the chair. I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t a child. And I hadn’t invited it in.
That was what it needed. Permission. To enter your life. And I would not give it. Not this time.
The air had changed. Faint. Sweet. Metallic. Sugar and rust. The smell of nursery toys long after a child had stopped playing with them.
A floorboard creaked somewhere. Then another one.
Halfway up the stairs, I saw it. Small. Deliberate. Waiting.
A toy.
A wooden flute, no longer than my hand. The carvings along its length were crude but familiar: feathers, wings, the faint curve of a laughing mouth etched into the grain.
My pulse faltered. I knew this was his. I’d seen him play it before. How was he doing this? How did he get in? I would not call out. I would not address him because that was what he wanted. My acknowledgement. My attention. And I wouldn’t give it.
I bent down, hesitated to reach for it, and then it dissolved into a fine mist. A dark shimmer left behind on the step.
Before I reached the top of the stairs I heard it, the nursery doorknob jerked and twisted, as if someone were trapped inside.
Then came music.
I listened closely, approaching the door. With each step I reminded myself I hated him for what he did to me. For what he did to my brothers.
The doorknob turned again. Then stopped. Laugher. Not loud. Just clear enough for me to know that there was someone in that room.
Music played.
Jack, Jack, Jack-in-the-box,
Playing your music—when will it stop?
Jack, Jack, Jack-in-the-box,
You’re all wound up—time to pop!
John’s jack-in-the-box.
I could imagine it behind the door. The painted clown bursting free, red-cheeked, glass-eyed.
The jack-in-the-box went on. Wheezing. Someone was turning the crank.
A flicker of gold unspooled at my feet. Not lamplight. Not gaslight. It moved across the floorboards, restless. Alive. A glow too warm for fire. Too deliberate for flame.
Campfire.
The word surfaced before I could stop it.
I dropped to my knees. The chill bit through my nightdress as I pressed my ear to the floor, trying to looked through the seam beneath the nursery room door.
From beyond came a faint crackle of embers. And then, a voice. Sweet. Cruel. Impatient.
“Wendy. It’s time to play.”
I flinched, but he wasn’t talking to me, not me here in this house right now.
I pressed my eye close, trying to see, and what I saw was not my house. Not the nursery. Not London. A forest.
The trees pressed close, bark slick with sap, roots threading through soil that glowed red-orange in the firelight. And in that glow, movement.
Children. Over a dozen of them.
My boys.
Their names rose in my throat. All of them at once. But I couldn’t speak. I wanted to call out. I wanted to pull them through the door and hold them and tell them that I was sorry. I was so sorry. I should’ve gone back. I should have brought them home.
They spun around the fire barefoot and shrieking, their bodies smeared with soot, streaked in crimson.
Animal pelts clung to their shoulders, fox, wolf, boar, over their heads, the skulls of beasts too large for their frames: hollow eyes, curved bear jaws, a crocodile’s grin splitting open a boy’s face.
Blood glistened down their necks. Some held bones as flutes. Others slapped their thighs, the rhythm, primal, didn’t want to stop. But their laughter wasn’t really joy. It was worship.
And at the center of them, standing before the fire, more like god than boy—
Peter.
His shadow stretched too long, too sharp, flickering in ways no fire could explain. His face was still a boy’s, perfect, radiant, but his eyes held something older. Something that had never been young.
He lifted a hand.
The children stilled. Their skull masks gleamed in the firelight, breath fogging the air in quick, shallow bursts.
“Shhhh,” he said.
The forest obeyed.
I felt it then, the pull. The same enchantment that had once bound me to his voice, his stories, his games. It threaded through me before I could stop it.
“Wendy …”
He smiled.
“Boys,” he murmured. “It’s time for a story. Right, Wendy?”
The fire snapped. The children shifted, small, eager. The soft thud of bare feet against damp earth.
They gathered in a circle around the flames. Their skulls glowed. Their small hands clutched together.
Then, softer, another voice.
A child’s.
Mine.
“Why are you whispering?” a younger me asked, low and teasing.
“Because there’s a monster in the forest.”
Laughter followed. Thin. Musical. The kind that circles when you listen too long.
“And if the monster finds us?” little me asked.
“Maybe she’s watching us right now.” Peter paused. Smiled. “Aren’t you, Wendy?”
I flinched. My stomach turned to ice.
The others laughed with her. With me.
My brave, beautiful boys.
I pressed closer to the floorboards. My pulse hammered in my throat.
I’m sleeping. I’m not really seeing this.
Then, Peter’s voice again. Softer than breath. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who forgot her promise.”
The flames bent inward. Every child turned toward the door. Toward me.
“No,” I said aloud.
The light shifted. I searched the seam beneath the door, but Peter was no longer there. Where had he gone?
“Don’t be afraid, Wendy.” The voice slipped through the keyhole. “You know I would always find you.”
I froze. My breath thinned. My body remembered what my mind refused to accept.
Beyond the door, the celebration twisted into frenzy. Children’s cheers rose. High. Sharp. Piercing.
Then, through the seam, I saw it. A blade. Small. Sharp. Gleaming. Lifted.
A cry tore out of me. I squeezed my eyes shut.
A squeal followed. Not laughter. Not human.
The light beneath the door flared red.
Iron and smoke. Blood and ash.
“Dinner!” Peter’s voice rang out, bright with delight. “I told you I’d catch that pig! A great big marsh pig!”
The children erupted in cheers, high, breathless, unrestrained.
Little Wendy’s laugh joined theirs.
Then came the sound. Wet. Rhythmic. Deliberate.
The pig screamed, shrill, uncanny, like a child being chased through reeds. Not quite animal. Not quite human.
The laughter swelled.
I pressed my palm against the door. It vibrated faintly beneath my skin. “Stop,” I whispered.
Something warm began to seep through the seam.
A thin trickle at first, winding between the boards, touching the tip of my shoe. Blood, thick and hot, reeking of copper and swamp rot and smoke.
It slid down the curve of my foot in a slow, deliberate ribbon.
My body refused to move.
A nightmare. This is a nightmare. But the heat was undeniable. The smell, a horrid truth.
Then, movement.
A shadow slipped through the seam where the blood had seeped. Rising slow as smoke.
It coiled around my ankle. Cool at first. Then it tightened.
I gasped, pushing back, but the dark followed, climbing my leg like a searching hand.
“Wendy.” Peter’s voice, closer now. Almost tender. “You belong here. With me. With the boys. Forever.”
“No,” I hissed, jerking free.
My skin still burned where the shadow had touched me. As if marked. As if claimed.
Then, a bark. Sharp. Alive. Defiant.
Dinah exploded down the hallway, a woolly storm of gray and white paws thundering against the floorboards. Her growl tore the silence open, low, primal, furious. She hurled herself toward the nursery door, teeth bared, fur bristling.
The shadow recoiled, the blood vanished, and the light snapped out.
I gasped, palms pressed hard to the boards. “Good girl. Good girl.”
She padded over and licked my face, tail wagging.
“It’s all right,” I lied, voice shaking. “It’s over now.”
But I knew better.
He had found me again. And I feared he wouldn’t leave empty-handed.
The shadows in the corner swelled, then receded, as if the house itself exhaled.
The rules, I reminded myself. He cannot come in. not this far. I am awake. I did not agree to play.
Then the telephone rang downstairs. Shrill, abrupt. I startled, then stood and made my way down.
I lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Wendy.”
Michael’s voice. Older now, roughened by years and distance, but still carrying that fragile, boyish tremor, the same one from when he used to call for me in the dark.
I gripped the cord tightly. “Michael?”
How many years has it been?
I almost asked, but I remembered. Since the funeral. Since the accident that took Mother and Father together. A derailed trolley on a bright summer day.
“I just had a nightmare,” he said quietly.
The words struck like a match to kindling.
“Me too.”
The line hissed. Crackled.
Went dead.
For a long moment, I listened to the silence breathing back through the receiver. I stood there staring at the front door, thinking about the windows. Wondering how long they would all hold.
And in that quiet, I heard something faint. Not static.
Wings.