Chapter Text
Just as expected, the peculiars had understood. They hadn’t been happy that I wouldn’t be coming back, but they understood.
For the most part, they’d all assumed that I was leaving the island, and that was the reason why I wouldn’t be able to visit them anymore. With the sheep murders, it would only make sense if my father had decided to cut our trip short. It was only Emma who had wondered, and she’d waited until I left to confront me about it on the walk back to the cairn as I left.
“I know that’s not the real reason you’re not coming back,” Emma said quietly. Her voice broke the silence that had fallen over us for the past few moments, like scissors slicing through a gauze curtain. “Tell me the truth, Jaacob. Why are you really leaving?”
For a moment, I stayed quiet.
“Jacob.”
It was just one word. Somehow, though, it felt like a lot more than that. “There is another reason I’m not coming back.”
“Well, what is it, then?” Emma asked. Then, after a moment’s pause, she continued. “I’m not going to tell the others, if that’s what you’re worried about. I can tell them if you want me to, but I do know how to keep a secret, too.”
I didn’t want to at first, but… how much could it hurt, really, if Emma knew? She already knew I was hiding something and she didn’t tell anyone about that. If there was one person who could keep this secret, one person I could tell who would understand and still let me go about my plan, it would be her.
“All right,” I replied, voice low. “I’m not… certain, but I think… I’m worried I might know what’s been killing the sheep. If it’s what I think it is, it’s not going to stop with just some livestock.”
Emma was silent. I could feel her eyes on me – watching. Waiting.
“I think I’ve seen it before. Seen it, seen it. Personally. It… I think it followed me here.”
“And what is it?” Emma murmured.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to. But, if it followed me there, and it followed me here, I don’t want it following me into the loop. I don’t know if it can do that, and I really hope it can’t, but I’m not willing to risk it.”
Emma didn’t respond. I kept walking, hoping she would understand. Hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions about what and how and why. When she did speak, however, she said something completely unexpected.
“All right. So it’s just going to kill you, then?” Emma raised one sharp brow. “How am I supposed to be sure that it’s not going to tear you up and then come for us?”
“I– that’s what you’re worried about here?”
“Well, obviously. Do you know how upset Millard will be if you get murdered?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then? Did you mean that you were just gonna go handle all your future problems in futureland with no backup and no plan? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Wha– well, what do you want me to do about it? Because I’m not leading it right to the loop – that’ll be a death sentence for all of you!”
Emma scoffed. “Maybe let us help? Or at least let me help, since you don’t want anyone else to know about it. I told you I could keep a secret, didn’t I? Because as it turns out, I can also help solve the problem behind the secret in the first place, if you’ll just be sensible about this for two minutes and let me.”
“Emma, I don’t want anything to–”
She held up a handful of fire and gave me a look, effecting silencing that line of protest. “So. Yes or no? Either you let me help, or you keep visiting and I don’t have to tell Millard and the others that a sheep-murdering monster ripped their new best friend to bits.”
“It’s not going to rip me to bits,” I sighed, but… Emma had a point. I wanted to say that the peculiars wouldn’t know if I got killed, but given how many of them seemed to pop into the present from time to time, I wouldn’t put it past them to hear about it somehow. And besides, as much as Emma seemed to doubt my self-preservation instincts, I didn’t actually want that thing to kill me. I just… didn’t want it to kill all of them even more.
She raised an eyebrow expectantly, as though she could sense my change of heart, and I gave her a look.
“Fine. I’ll… keep you posted, I guess.”
“Excellent.” And that was that – Emma extinguished her handful of flames and started walking again, heading for the cairn like usual. “And if you don’t want the thing to know where the loop entrance is, just meet me at the house – your version of it, I mean. You said the monster, or whatever it is, is following you, so I should be fine to go back and forth, right?”
“I guess so. What about the others, though? Aren’t they going to wonder where you are?”
“Oh, they know better than to gossip. ‘Sides, I do things like this all the time – the others won’t find it that weird if I decide to go off on my own for a couple days, as long as I’m back before the loop resets.”
I nodded in understanding. Given how I first met Emma, it stood to reason that her disappearing to sulk or something for a few days wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary. And if not, well, Emma was liable to send them up in flames if they tried to ask too many questions, so she would probably be fine.
We reached the cairn soon enough, and for a moment, I hesitated, sending Emma one last glance.
“Don’t worry, idiot.” She rolled her eyes, but somehow, it felt less derogatory than usual – more like she was teasing me than anything else. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, remember? I’ll be waiting on the front step.”
I smiled and nodded, already feeling a bit better with that reassurance. I cast her one last glance before stepping through the cairn, and the last thing I saw before the bright flash of the loop entrance overtook everything was Emma’s face, slowly fading from view in the centre of the light.
oOoOo
Emma was waiting at the remains of the old children’s home the next morning when I arrived. Despite what she’d said the afternoon before, I still couldn’t help but be a bit surprised that she’d actually come. She didn’t have much reason to, after all, and yet, here she was regardless, sitting right on the crumbling front step.
“There you are, you’re late,” she said crossly, standing up as she saw me coming down the path. “Took your sweet time getting here, didn’t you?”
I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I had to wait ‘til my father would let me leave.”
“I suppose that’s fine, then, but next time you had better leave a note or something if you plan to be late.”
“Hang on, did you even choose a meeting time? Last I remember, you just said where, not when –”
“Anyways,” Emma interrupted, “where is this sheep corpse? I’d like to have a look at it while I’m here, see if I can’t figure out what exactly it is that supposedly followed you here.”
“Are you sure you want to? Because it’s kind of–”
“I live with Enoch. I’ve seen worse.”
“Fair.” I sighed, shaking my head for a moment before I beckoned her back down the path again. “C’mon, it’s this way. You, uh, might have to hide for a bit if there’s other people nearby, though. I don’t think I could really come up with a convincing explanation for who you are or why you’re here.”
“Suppose that’s fair.”
I led the way down the path and deeper into the woods, heading in the direction of the sheep corpses. Despite a few days having passed, there had been no attempts to clean them up so far – they were just sitting there and rotting. It was pretty disgusting. The flies and other parasites had started to move in on the kills as well, leaving them a writhing, stinking mass of rotting meat just laying there in the middle of the forest clearing.
We could smell it before we could see it – the scent was pungent, and the winds today had carried it further than before. I saw Emma’s nose start to wrinkle right before the smell hit me a moment later, and we shared a heavy glance before we each pulled our clothes up over our faces so we could continue forward.
“Is that it?” Emma murmured, her voice muffled by the fabric of her dull blue scarf. She tipped her head forwards, gesturing towards a large, dark lump up ahead of us.
I nodded, making my windbreaker crinkle around my face. “Mhm. There’s another one a bit behind it.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah.”
The sounds of our footsteps squelching in the wet grass and mud was drowned out by the buzzing of the flies as we slowly drew closer. The corpses were much worse than last time I’d seen them – the flesh of the main body had dozens of holes bored through it, oozing blood and something else. There were pools of dark liquid forming around them, the wool already having soaked up as much blood as it could hold.
“Watch your step, there’s… bits,” I said lamely, eyeing a chunk of something right by Emma’s foot.
She stepped away from it, carefully placing her feet in the few clear spots of ground before she looked back at me. “And you saw the thing that did this? What the hell could that even be?”
At that, I fell silent.
“Jacob.”
“I don’t know,” I muttered weakly. “I don’t know.
Emma shot me an unreadable look. “Can you describe it? If it’s… a peculiar creature, or something like that, maybe I’ll know. I can at least fish for answers from Horace, even if I don’t have answers myself.”
I hesitated. I could tell Emma right now, I realised. I could describe the monstrosity to her down to the smallest detail, and rest easy knowing that it would be someone else’s problem. And yet… there was always the chance that she wouldn’t believe me. That she would think me just as crazy as my parents already did – that I would lose the last link to a world of people who actually cared for my presence.
And that was something I could not abide.
“I don’t know how to describe it,” I said slowly. “It was… like nothing I’d ever seen before. There’s not really a good comparison.”
Emma’s face twisted into a small, disappointed frown, and it was then that I said something I wasn’t sure if I would come to regret or not.
“I have a sketch of it, though. If, uh. If that would help.”
Her eyes widened, and Emma nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes, that– yeah, bring that with you tomorrow. That’s even better than a description.”
And perhaps I would regret telling Emma about this. Perhaps I would regret letting her help me, perhaps I would regret showing her the sheep and offering her the picture and letting her into this mess that was only mine to deal with, but at that moment, I couldn’t regret a single thing.
Because for once, I didn’t feel like I was on my own.