Thin Ice (MPHfPC Fanfic)

Chapter Eight:

"Release me at once!" The wight howled. "Or my hollow is going to kill you all!"

The hollow. We'd forgotten about it, but we hadn't expected Dr. Golan so soon. Well, maybe Horace had, but none of us did. Everyone looked at Jake, who gulped.

I had read aloud to him the parts in the book where Jake had been controlling hollows, so he could have a sort-of preview of what would happen, what to expect, and how to control one better. We all expected him to control one now.

"You can do it," I said. "I believe in you."

Everyone echoed my words and Jake smiled. "I'll try," He said. "But no promises. Now let's go."

"First," Miss Peregrine said. "We need to get information out of the wight."

"You won't get it out of me!" the wight was struggling, but getting nowhere.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked. "Let me ask you... how did you get here this fast?"

The wight kept his mouth shut, so I said, "Or Hugh can send a scaudron of bees up your nose, into your mouth, sting your eyes, your-"

"Ok, Ok!" The wight said, looking around frantically. "It was because of you, August! We were following you, too, not just Jake! One of our normal spies saw you reading a blank book once, so we've been following you for a few weeks now..."

"Oh," I said, guilty. I turned to everyone. "I'm so sorry. I guess I had already messed up things by coming here early with Jake. You were right, Miss Peregrine." My cheeks reddened with shame.

"What's done is done." The headmistress said with a forgiving nod.

"How long to we have before your hollow gets here?" I asked the wight. He furrowed his eyebrows.

"Maybe another hour." He said reluctantly. "Your loop was hard to find." He looked at Miss Peregrine. "Once your brother finds out about this, he'll kill you. I'm the equivalent of his right-hand man."

We all chose to ignore the last statement. We knew he wasn't Caul's right-hand man, and that nobody would mourn the loss of this wight.

"You better be telling the truth," Horace said. "Or your going to regret it."

"No," said Miss Peregrine. "He won't get the chance to see if he was right or not. Mr. Portman, shoot him." She took a small gun out of the wight's other pocket and handed it to Jake.

"But-"

"No 'but's', Mr. Portman. You need to do this. We need to deviate from the written path less and less, or as much as we can. It's your fate to kill this wight. And it's already been proven that things could get worse. Prove things can get better."

Reluctantly, Jake took the gun and walked up to the wight, who started to struggle even harder, tried one last time to save himself.

"Jacob. I know your fragile consciousness. You could never handle killing someone. And, if you spare me, I can tell you all our secrets!"

"He's probably lying." I warned. But Jake didn't seem to hear me.

Jake took a deep breath and shakily aimed the gun at the wight. "We already know them all." And he primed the gun and pulled the trigger.