Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

on my arm and her knife at my side.
A minute passed. The men’s voices seemed to
fade and then return; it was hard to tell where they
were. My eyes drifted around the little room. It
seemed excessively rustic, even for Cairnholm. Tilting
in a corner was a stack of hand-woven baskets. A
chair upholstered in burlap stood before a giant coalfired
cooking range cast from iron. Hung on the wall
opposite us was a calendar, and though it was too
dim to read from where we stood, just looking at it
sparked a bizarre thought.
“What year is it?”
The girl told me to shut up.
“I’m serious,” I whispered.
She regarded me strangely for a moment. “I don’t
know what you’re playing at, but go have a look for
yourself,” she said, pushing me toward the calendar.
The top half was a black-and-white photo of a
tropical scene, full-bodied girls with enormous bangs
and vintage-looking swimsuits smiling on a beach.
Printed above the seam was “September 1940.” The
first and second days of the month had been crossed
out.
A detached numbness spread over me. I
considered all the strange things I’d seen that
morning: the bizarre and sudden change in the
weather; the island I thought I’d known, now populated
by strangers; how the style of everything around me
looked old but the things themselves were new. It
could all be explained by the calendar on the wall.
September 3, 1940. But how?
And then one of the last things my grandfather said
came to me. On the other side of the old man’s
grave. It was something I’d never been able to figure
out. There was a time I’d wondered if he’d meant
ghosts—that since all the children he’d known here
were dead, I’d have to go to the other side of the