#amelia pagett

[jjackrabbitt]

That Damned Au, Book 1, Pt. 3

Frank’s right that time. They don’t find anything but dust. Other than that there’s just thrown about furniture and some sporadic holes in the walls. That doesn’t appear to be a consequence of the bomb that was dropped on the house. Amelia and Martin mourn the destroyed antiques. 

As they go further into the house it almost seems like vandalism. It becomes targeted, they can barely make out her form in a couple photos, but every picture of a small lady dressed in all black has been shot or kicked through.

The bedrooms seem virtually untouched. All except the master bedroom, which looks like a tornado swept through it.

Other than that, nothing. Just an old house.

And for almost a week it seems like that will be the end of it. Like they’ll spend their time on Cairnholm and do their research and maybe go back up to the house a couple more times for pictures.

Except that Jacob feels like there was something else there. Like reaching out to touch a curtain and feeling the outline of something or someone behind it. He knows something else is there. He just doesn’t think it would be a good idea to tell his father, or their new friends.

So he asks if he can go back up to the house by himself, he knows the way now after all.

Frank doesn’t think that’s quite a good idea, of course. None of them do. He could fall off a cliff, he could be attacked by a murderer, he could sink into the bog, a sheep could chase him. That’s Martin, Frank, Amelia and Kev’s concerns, in that order. Amelia points out that they don’t have murderers on Cairnholm, Martin says there’s no dangerous bogs near the trail up to the house, Amelia says there’s no dangerous cliffs near the trail either, and Kev maintains that sheep can be vicious.

Even so, it’s agreed that Jacob’s not going up alone just yet.

That weekend Amelia and Kev go up to the house with Jacob. Frank promised to call Maryann (and promised Jacob that he’d make excuses for why he wasn’t there), and Martin had to go to his job on the mainland.

Amelia and Kev are drinking buddies, and Amelia introduced Kev and Martin.

Amelia and Kev became friends in secondary school and spent the entire time getting in trouble. A lot of it involved skipping class to go explore the town they went to school in.

Martin, on the other hand, regularly got in trouble for doing other peoples school assignments (for money), skipping class to be in the library, and stealing books (he always returned them)

Amelia and Kev know each other well and aren’t so old that they’ve forgotten how much being a teenager can suck.

So on the way up they tell Jacob all sorts of weird stories about Cairnholm. They teach him how to play the nose flute. they stumble upon a warren of rabbits and Kev slips in the still-wet grass trying to catch one. He almost had it.

And for the first time in a while, Jacob isn’t thinking about Abes riddle. He isn’t thinking of the house they are walking toward and he isn’t scared. The weather is still dreary and disgustingly humid, but it’s a nice afternoon.

As they get closer to the house the woods seem to grow more alive with the sound of animals wandering through the forest around them. It doesn’t bother Jacob for once. He doesn’t consider if they should turn back rather than be eaten, it’s only the sounds of animals to him this time, not of danger.

And then they’re out of the woods and into the house. It seems much the same as it was last time. Except…wasn’t that chair tilted the other way? There’s a new hand print in the dust on the wall by the door. It doesn’t fit any of their hands. There’s new things overturned and things missing and strange black stains in new places on the floor.

Previously no one cared if Jacob wandered around the house while they were there, but this time Amelia and Kev tell him to stay with them. The previously nice afternoon is forgotten and something feels off. Normally Jacob would protest, insist that he be allowed to go where he pleases, but this time something stops him.

Something is different, the feeling of something else being there has  changed, less like a figure behind a curtain and more like a pit opened up in his stomach. It feels like it’s going to consume him.

Soon enough Amelia and Kev’s suspicions are confirmed, there’s a thunk upstairs.

What they don’t know is this: Emma, Hugh, Bronwyn, Millard, Fiona and Enoch are hiding upstairs, and if they knew what Jacob was feeling they would be a able to tell him that it means there’s a Hollow near by, and they know where it is.

The kids aren’t supposed to  be out, there’s been too  many wights hanging about lately, but they’re curious. They’ve seen Jacob and they can’t keep away.

Golan and Malthus have followed Jacob up to the house nearly every time he’s gone there. And they’re getting impatient.

[jjackrabbitt]

That Damned AU, Book 1, Pt. 2

They meet Martin and Amelia at the priest hole for lunch the next afternoon, after Frank and Jacob go bird watching. It’s kind of great. Amelia and Martin are hilarious together and their enthusiasm for the history of the island, and the bombed out orphanage, catch on with Frank. Soon he’s invested too. He doesn’t believe that Jacob will find anything up there more than dust, but the siblings excitement over the history and his sons little pet project are infectious

Martin doesn’t have a day to take off with either of his jobs that first week, so they decide Amelia will be their guide to the other side. Or just up the hill to the orphanage, either one works.

They get rained out that entire week. So they’re stuck with research. The closest they have to a library on the island is the Cairnholm Museum and Historical Society, so Martin does get to be included three out of the seven first days. He’s a great help, he knows just where he put the (admittedly few) texts and pictures of the old orphanage. He’s got some copies of pictures of the kids that were taken by cairnholm residents, some items taken from the house after the bomb, the deed to the land and plans for the house, all signed over to a Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine, and some news clippings talking about what the kids did in town on various dates.

Amelia and Martin are so excited to hear that Abe told Jacob stories about the kids. He can even put a few names to faces and tell them some of what Abe said they were like.

On Friday afternoon they hear over the radio that the skies should be mostly clear next week, and the four of them decide to go up on Monday.

Frank and Jacob have a…complicated relationship with Judaism. Abe lost his family when he was young, and Miss Peregrine wasn’t really equipped to keep him practicing. So his way of practicing was spotty, very pick and choosey. That’s not to say that it wasn’t important. Sure he didn’t go to any synagogue or remember a lot of the songs or celebrate most holidays or read torah or midrash, but he could spend time with Jacob on Saturdays and light the candles and hum the half remembered prayer his mame sang over them and keep kosher.

Frank didn’t really interact with Judaism at all growing up. He knew his father lit candles and hummed and wouldn’t eat a cheeseburger, but he didn’t have a clear picture of what it meant to be Jewish. He didn’t even have a bar mitzvah. He didn’t know that Abe didn’t have one either. Frank had never really felt connected to Judaism, or been concerned with it at all, but Susan had started doing her own research on it after their dad died, so of course he heard all about it. It was…surprisingly interesting. He’d never cared much for poetry either, but there were some interesting pieces about birds. He could see why these long dead people would write about them like they were miracles. He enjoyed the way the words started to make sense, how he no longer had to think about the difference between mikvah and minyan, teshuvah and tzedakah, ahavah and Abba. Of course learning this would never bring him closer to his father now, but it could give him a new understanding. He wasn’t sure he wanted to join a synagogue. But it did make him feel better, gave him something to do, to find his own small practices. He could think of why he was thankful or in awe of something with kavanah, intentional direction of the heart. He could find new restaurants to order from, ones that were kosher. He could do little celebrations with Jacob. The kid needed something good to be happening and as it turns out there’s a holiday almost every month.

Jacob hadn’t always know why Saturdays were his and his grandfathers day. He was so young he didn’t always pay attention to what day it was, just that he was with his grandpa, so he was having the best time. He knew that if he went over there and there were pirogis and the candles and his grandpa told funny stories, both of his childhood and people from thousands of years ago, and they practiced l’cha dodi, the song to welcome in the restfulness his grandfather said, that meant it was Friday night. And in the morning there would be the flea market and estate sales and an endless afternoon on the lanai making their maps. He hadn’t been over as much on Friday nights as he got older. He still hummed l’cha dodi to himself, even when he didn’t know all of the words anymore.

This is all to say that when Jacob and Frank got settled into the priest hole and had their dinner, which included sausage, they both had an extra moment of confusion of what was in the food here. This is all to say that their shabbes candles that week were the kerosene lanterns and Jacob taught Frank the melody to go with the prayer and l’cha dodi. That Frank looked at the lanterns and told Jacob about Channukah, the way Susan had explained it to him. And Frank got that feeling again, like maybe he could be a better father to Jacob than Abe had been to him, maybe they could be close and share things.

So Jacob actually gets to enjoy their trip before everything happens.

Monday morning Amelia and Martin show up to their room early, holding heavy muck boots, and grinning from ear to ear.

While Kev cooks them all breakfast, Martin waxes poetic about cairnholm’s bogs and tells them a million facts about the land. Kev asks if he should be jealous of the island and they all laugh and it’s easy. No one’s in to drink yet so it’s just the five of them and after a week here the food has actually started to smell good and through the narrow windows there’s thick fog and the faint sounds of people stirring.

Amelia rolls out a map of the island and shows them the course she’s plotted for them up the hill. They can stop at a few cairns and then the orphanage at the top of the hill. It should be a pretty easy hike, she’s taken similar routes and knows where to avoid.

Kev is staying behind, after all, if he left who else would be there to give the island population alcohol poisoning?

And up they go, into the hills and fog.