Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

stayed too long, I’d never want to leave.
If that were true, I thought, it would explain a lot of
things, like how people could live the same day over
and over for decades without losing their minds. Yes,
it was beautiful and life was good, but if every day
were exactly alike and if the kids really couldn’t leave,
as Miss Peregrine had said, then this place wasn’t
just a heaven but a kind of prison, too. It was just so
hypnotizingly pleasant that it might take a person
years to notice, and by then it would be too late;
leaving would be too dangerous.
So it’s not even a decision, really. You stay. It’s only
later—years later—that you begin to wonder what
might’ve happened if you hadn’t.
* * *
I must’ve dozed off, because around midmorning I
awoke to something nudging my foot. I cracked an
eye to discover a little humanoid figure trying to hide
inside my shoe, but it had gotten tangled in the laces.
It was stiff-limbed and awkward, half a hubcap tall,
dressed in army fatigues. I watched it struggle to free
itself for a moment and then go rigid, a wind-up toy on
its last wind. I untied my shoe to extricate it and then
turned it over, looking for the wind-up key, but I
couldn’t find one. Up close it was a strange, crudelooking
thing, its head a stump of rounded clay, its
face a smeared thumbprint.
“Bring him here!” someone called from across the
yard. A boy sat waving at me from a tree stump at the
edge of the woods.
Lacking any pressing engagements, I picked up the
clay soldier and walked over. Arranged around the
boy was a whole menagerie of wind-up men,
staggering around like damaged robots. As I drew
near, the one in my hands jerked to life again,