Chapter Text
I hadn’t expected Emma to be in the study when I came in. I’d been searching for Bronwyn (who was also there, though on a different sofa) at the request of Fiona via Hugh, apparently because they needed her to hold up a tree while Fiona fixed its trunk. When I opened the door, however, I was greeted with a surly glare and a politely surprised head tilt.
“Mister Jacob, did you need something?” Bronwyn asked, sitting up a little straighter. She didn’t have anything in her hands, but Emma was holding a book, so I wondered if perhaps the shorter girl had been reading to the other.
I nodded. “Sorry to interrupt, but Fiona wanted your help with a broken tree. I think she needs someone to hold it upright so she can grow the trunk back.”
“I wonder how it broke… well, I’ll go and help her fix it anyways. Emma, I’ll be right back.”
Bronwyn stood up and left the room, leaving me with Emma. I made to exit, ready to close the door behind me and not bother the girl who still seemed understandably upset about the news I’d brought when I first arrived, but she stopped me before I got the chance. “Jacob. I want to talk to you.”
Well, that’s not ominous at all. I closed the door and took a seat on the couch that Bronwyn had just vacated, fidgeting a bit as Emma closed her book and stared me down.
“You’re Abe’s grandson,” she stated.
I nodded.
“He… had a wife? Kids?”
“Yeah, he… she died some years ago too, and he had one son. That was, um. My dad.” Hopefully, she wouldn’t take this too badly.
Emma tilted her head down, shadowing her eyes with strawberry blonde bangs. “I see. And… how did he die, exactly?”
Ah. That question.
I swallowed nervously, faltering as I tried to figure out how to explain it without sounding clinically insane. Granted, maybe I was, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever I had seen that night was real. My instincts said it was, but logic said it wasn’t, and right now, I couldn’t pick between the two – neither had ever been wrong before, after all, but nor had they contradicted.
“Something attacked him,” I started quietly. “It… I couldn’t really tell what it was, it was dark and it ran off before I could figure it out, but it had already hurt him too badly by the time me and my friend showed up. He– we shot at it, tried to hit the thing before it ran off, but I guess we missed.”
“You don’t know what it was that killed him?” Emma’s brow furrowed as she looked up. “What animals even live out in American towns that could kill someone like Abe?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it could’ve been a bear, not with how open and random the wounds were, but– sorry. I shouldn’t describe them. He was your friend, that was rude of me.”
“No, it’s… I wouldn’t have seen him again anyways, not with how he’d started a new life in America. Was… was he happy?”
I paused for a moment before looking at my hands, fingers curling into my palm one by one. “Yeah. He was.”
“He didn’t tell you about the peculiarities, did he?” Emma asked, and I got the sense that something in the conversation had changed, somehow. Like a cord of tension had been unwrapped from its anchors and dropped to lay limp on the ground. “Well, stories maybe, but he didn’t explain it, right?”
“No, not really,” I confirmed. “He used to tell me stories about where he grew up when I was younger, but he never said more than a few names, and never more than once. My dad didn’t really like him telling me so many ‘fairy tales’, as he put it, so I didn’t hear as many as I got older.”
Emma frowned. “That’s stupid. Who says you can’t have fairy tales for your whole life? I’d set his hats on fire if he said that to me.”
Well, that was an interesting mental image. “Probably don’t set his hats on fire, but I don’t think I’d mind a tie or two.”
“Well, be careful around here, or else it’ll be your ties I’m setting on fire. I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that you’re a very clever wight.” Her eyes narrowed and she made an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at me, two fingers pointed first at her eyes and then at mine.
Piece apparently said, Emma picked up her book again, marking the page and promptly grabbing a different book whose title read The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. I was pretty sure I recognised the title (and also pretty sure that the novel was French), but neither of us got a chance to say or read anything as the door swung open again, revealing Bronwyn and a hazy sort of shadow behind her. As she walked back in and the shadow followed into the sunlight, I realised that it was Millard.
I also promptly realised that Millard was not wearing any clothes. At all.
“Millard,” I said slowly, expression surely one of concern, “where are your pants and why are they not on you?”
Millard jolted as if he’d been shocked, looking around wildly and making his hair fly out. “How’d you know I was here?”
“You’re… you’re standing right in front of me? I do have eyes, you know.”
“You can see me?!”
“Yes? Kinda? I mean, you’re a little translucent, but I thought that was your peculiarity–”
Emma choked and leaned forwards, looking at me with an aghast expression. “You can see Millard?!”
“Mostly?”
“Millard, you go and put some trousers on this instant, Mister Jacob doesn’t need an eyeful!” Bronwyn ordered, looking just as shocked. Millard bolted from the room without so much as another word, hopefully to go and clothe himself. “Mister Jacob, has he left yet?”
“Um… yeah, he just ran out. I guess he’s going to go and put on some pants.”
As soon as I’d confirmed he was gone, Emma fell back in her chair and Bronwyn folded her hands over her face, each of them wearing an identical expression of unmitigated shock. A moment later, Bronwyn had walked over to plop herself down on the couch right next to me, hands still folded and face still shaken.
I was beginning to think that perhaps being able to see Millard was not, in fact, a normal thing – or, well, relatively normal. Still, even if most people couldn’t see him, why did he come in without any clothes on? Wasn’t it uncomfortable? How was he not cold with no clothes on?
“Let me get this straight,” Emma started, and wasn’t that a fun beginning to a discussion. “You can see Millard.”
“...To a point? He’s sort of translucent, if that makes sense.”
“It very much does not. Bronwyn?”
“Does that mean he’s… see-through to you?” She asked, and I nodded.
“I can see an outline and stuff, but I can also see through him and see whatever’s behind him. It’s sort of like… stained glass, I think.”
A series of thumps came from outside the door before Millard burst into the study once more, this time fully clothed and with both Olive and Claire in tow. Claire had a shoeless Olive by the hand and was pulling her along like a balloon, which Olive didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.
Each girl took a seat on Emma’s couch while Millard opted to sit on the arm of mine and Bronwyn’s, right next to me.
Millard’s expression was murky as usual, but if I had to guess what face he was making, I would've said it was something like all five stages of grief at the same time. Claire mostly looked confused, whereas Olive seemed quite calm, like she didn’t actually mind the situation all that much and just wanted to know what everyone else was up to. Millard, however, was still staring at me out of the corner of his eye as Olive began to speak.
“So,” Olive said conversationally. “Jacob can see Millard.”
“Jacob can what?! ” Came a voice from the hall. I looked over to see Enoch standing there, eyes wide and jaw ajar. “Oh my bird, I gotta go tell Horace and Hugh–”
“Only sort of, ” I tried to correct, but he was already gone. I sighed, knowing that the entire house would likely be aware within the hour, but somehow, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. None of the peculiars were the type to use a secret against me, and besides, it wasn’t much of a secret if everyone knew. Besides, how would that knowledge even be used against me? If anything, it would be more problematic for Millard, since it would make it harder for him to run around sans clothes.
“You can see me. We’ve.. We’ve established that.” Millard said, tone strange. “Okay, this is definitely something that happens. Um… all right, prove it, then. What face am I making right now?”
“You’re sticking your tongue out at me,” I started. “Now you’re crossing your eyes. Now your tongue isn’t out, but you’re baring your teeth.”
“Huh.”
“Wait!” Claire shouted, standing up. She had let go of Olive, who was now strapped to the sofa with what I assumed to be a seatbelt specifically put there for her to be able to sit with everyone else. “Jacob, I have a question!”
“What is it?”
“What does Millard’s hair look like?”
Everyone blinked at that. I looked at him again with a tilt to my head, trying to figure out if I would describe the colour as sandy or light brown. “It’s pretty curly, actually, and long too, comes to just past his collarbone… I thought it was sandy blond at first, but it might just be a light brown that’s see-through. It's somewhere in that range, though.”
Claire nodded and sat back down again, looking rather pleased. “I knew it was curly like mine!”
“I sort of thought it was auburn,” Emma mused. “Though I suppose a light brown isn’t too far off.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s got the hues for auburn, but it could be close. It’s sort of hard to tell.”
“Given that no one else can see it, I think we’re going to have to take your word for it,” Millard noted, still sounding rather shocked. “Do you think that’s your peculiarity? Seeing things that other people can’t, like invisible people?”
“Maybe? Is that a thing you can get?”
Bronwyn held up a hand and see-sawed it back and forth in a ‘so-so’ motion. “Sort of? Peculiarities come in pretty much every type, but they all allow you to do something that no ordinary person could. It’s pretty unusual to be able to see someone that nobody else can see, like Millard, so perhaps this is your peculiarity.”
Seeing what nobody else can see.
The monster. The one that attacked my grandfather… the one that Ricky hadn’t seen, but I had. If my peculiarity allowed me to see things that no ordinary person could, then maybe… maybe that monster had been more than a hallucination or an exaggeration.
And if it was… what was I meant to do about it?