Legacy of the Birds: Book One of the Spark(A MPHFPC Fanfiction)

Chapter Two

John woke up in the middle of night.

Pensevus whispered, telling him to leave the inn, fast as fast can be. He carried his stuff and hurried downstairs. Before he reached the first floor, he heard someone talking. Peeking through the stairs, he saw a man talking to the inn owner. The man turned around, John caught a glimpse of his eye, completely blank, a wight. John rushed back to his room and locked the door.

The inn owner didn't like wights, but nowadays their words were laws. The wight claimed that he was searching for a young man with crime record. "Only one customer fit your description, sir," the inn owner answered. "He live on the third floor." "Take me to him," said the wight.

Standing in front of the room, the wight knocked. No one answered. He knocked again, still nothing happened. So the owner opened the door. Only to find that the room was empty, as if no one ever lived there.

"Maybe he climbed out of the window," the inn owner said in a shaking voice. The wight did not reply. The inn owner was waiting anxiously for the wight to announce his fate, but the wight simply walked away after saying something to his walkie-talkie.

*

John ran as fast as fast can be, keeping himself in shadows. He was thinking that there must be other wights or even hollows when a loud roar confirmed his suspicion.

All these just for him? He couldn't understand.

Penny whispered to him again, and he hurried to a narrow passageway nearby. It led to a seafood market, so he hid behind a crab tank, hoping the odour left by marine creatures could provide some cover.

It was too dark for John to see anything, so he just listened. He heard a series of unmistakable triple-step echoes of two feet plus a tongue approached. He heard tanks falling into pieces and water spilling out. He heard more tanks exploded as they hit the ground.

Suddenly, a chain reaction of impacts sent all the tanks crashing to the floor, causing a terrific explosion. Than, something closer moved. With the faint light from outside the building, John saw the tank in front of him being lifted by two black tongues.

The hollow crushed the tank, raining glass on him. And then there was nothing between the creature and him. Not even a pane of glass.

For a moment he wished the monster could just kill him so that all these terrors and suffering could end.

But it did not kill him.

The beast just stood there, eyes fixed on him. 

Meanwhile, a pair of eyes in Devil's Acre stared at the doll on the boy's hands through the hollow's black eyes. Before anything happened, John grabbed Penny and ran away.

*

Caul was dead. They killed him. 

His corpse laid lifelessly beneath her feet.

"It's over now," Millard said. "We won." 

"Children, we can go home now," Miss Peregrine told them.

They walked down the hallway of Panloopticon, and stopped in front of a wooden door with no mark on it. Miss Peregrine opened the door, and led them in.

Beyond the furniture and the missing fourth wall, there was a forest that seemed strangely familiar. They passed through the forest, found themselves stepping on a familiar dirt path.

 Around a bend in the path, Miss Peregrine's house stood there, glorious. Everyone shouted with disbelief.

They were on Cairnholm again!

They circled the house. The air was filled with the fragrance of ocean breeze and flowers. The sun shone down at the garden. Everything looked just as she remembered. Miss Peregrine climbed the steps to the front door, then turned to look at her wards. She sniffled, looked away, then drew a deep breath.

"I'm so very proud to call you my children. It's been the honor of my life to care for you, and to have been cared for by you. You've made me a very happy ymbryne."

Olive unstrapped her shoes, flung herself up the stairs and latched on to Miss Peregrine. The rest of the them quickly followed, and one by one she gathered them into her open arms. "Welcome home, all of you."

She woke up, crushed by reality.

Their house was bombed, Miss Peregrine and her other friends were long dead. A decade ago, she stood on the blood-soaked land of Devil's Acre, surrounded by corpses of her friends.

She had heard about how people who had been through wars suffer from nightmares. But she never had them.

Because in her dreams, they did not lose. In her dreams, everything was put right again.

Her nightmare was what she found when she woke up.

Every night, she had the same dream. And every morning, she experienced the same nightmare.

*

John heard something snarled. Apparently hollows weren't the only thing they sent to hunt him. He crawled under tables in a seafood restaurant, hoping to get out of this cursed building as soon as possible.

Something was sniffing the air.

John made his way to the kitchen before a pair of paws stepped into the restaurant, followed with another pair. It's eyes scanned the room and then stopped at a metal door. John could see the animal's head as it peered at him through the round window of the kitchen door.

The handle slowly turned. The door opened silently.

Standing framed in the doorway, the creature hissed and moved into the room. It went down the first aisle. John crawled down the second one, heading for the door.

An ordinary kitchen counter was the only thing between the creature and him.

John brushed up against a pot, and it fell to the ground, clattering. The creature turned and moved toward his direction with an incredible speed. John slid into a steel cabinet. He tried to pull down the sliding door, but it was stuck.

The creature pounced.

But instead of ripping John into pieces, it hit his reflection on a metal cabinet.

John lifted himself into a freezer. The floor was so icy that he could barely stand. The creature jumped up. As it landed on the freezer floor, it skidded right past John. He hurried out the freezer and slam the door close, trapping that animal inside.

John picked up Penny, who accidentally fell out of his bag earlier. He opened a door that marked Staff Only and left the kitchen, fast as fast can be.