Page 120 of Freeing Hook

Except for the building looming from the top of the hill. A massive edifice built of stone. Unlike the quaint cottages, the building is boxy. Sharp lines and edges. Utilitarian.

It reminds me of the hospital back in Jolpa.

I don’t know why that gives me the shivers. Perhaps because during the Plague, hospitals were where people went to die. There’s something wrong with the building—my intuition tellsme as much—but it doesn’t matter. I need to get in and out of this cave before Charlie wakes up and realizes that I’m gone.

I’ll have to climb to get to the cave. My hands are already finding purchase on the cliffside when a shadow curls around them.

I whirl around, fists raised, thinking it’s Peter come for me in his shadow form. Instead, what I find is a boy obscured by shadows. No, a boy who is the shadows. He’s shorter than me, and though I can’t make out any of his facial features, there’s something familiar about him. He beckons me, his newsboy cap bobbing on his head as he shuffles away and toward the building at the top of the hill.

I hesitate. I really should be getting to the cave. Finding the Seer and breaking Peter’s curse before Astor comes after me and forces me to do the opposite.

When I don’t move, the boy turns back around and beckons again.

As nonsensical as it is, my heart goes out to him. He’s just a shadow. Just a memory. But he’s a wraith, meaning he was formed out of someone’s pain—a child’s pain. This boy could be grown now for all I know. He could be centuries dead, and whatever horrible thing happened to him would still live on in this wraith.

Perhaps that’s why I pity him. Because while the boy is gone, the pain is still here, and the wraith is trapped within it. This version of the boy will never be able to escape whatever tragedy befell him.

“After,” I say, nodding my chin up toward the cave. “I’ll follow you after I finish what I came here to do. Then you can tell me your story.”

The shadow boy shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is muffled, like it’s underwater. It still causes me to jolt, my back scraping the cliffside wall. “You must come now. They brought anew boy. He doesn’t know what they’ll do to him. You have to get him out. You can talk to his mother.”

I wrinkle my brow, confused, though I don’t know why. I want to tell the boy that it’s too late, that whatever he’s hoping to prevent already happened ages ago. But as I open my mouth to protest, he grabs at my sleeves.

It’s not as though he has any weight with which to pull me, but the gesture is desperate, and so is the “please” that escapes his lips.

It kills me to tell him no, but I can’t help the boy. I can’t reach into the past and rescue him from whatever hurt is about to befall him.

“Please, missus,” says the boy, and though I can’t see tears, the shadows go blurry at his cheeks, highlighted by the moonlight.

“I can’t,” I say, tugging my hand back. “It’s not real.” Or, it is, but not anymore. This is a memory, and whatever happened to the boy happened to him a long time ago. It’s not real. Not anymore.

The boy is distraught now, and he snaps. “It is real. He is real. They brought him to the orphanage this morning. And his name is Nolan, and he doesn’t know… He thinks they’re going to fix him, but they’re just going to make him worse. Please, his mother is still here. You can reason with her. She won’t believe me, but she’ll believe you.”

My heart stops in my chest. “You said the boy’s name is Nolan? And that building is an orphanage?”

The shadow boy nods his head eagerly, like he’s relieved that I finally understand. Reinvigorated, he tugs at my sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.”

My legs follow, my mind in a whir as the shadow boy gently tugs me up the cliffs. Weight-wise, I could break out of his gripwith ease. But I don’t. Rather, I can’t. My feet seem to follow whether I want them to or not.

“What’s your name?” I finally ask the boy on the way.

“Peter,” he says without looking at me. My heart might have tumbled to the ground if part of me hadn’t already known the answer to my question. My belly writhes. I scan his back, but find no wings. That makes sense. He wouldn’t have had them before the Sister.

“Peter,” I whisper, watching the boy before me, wishing I could make out his features.

He leads me into the orphanage by the front door. At first, I’m fearful the shadow boy will have me arrested by accident by whatever guards work at the orphanage now, but it quickly becomes clear that the place is abandoned. Moss has crept in through broken windows and played itself across the interior stone walls, which are otherwise completely bare. Lifeless.

Prison-like.

When he leads me down the hallway, my vision begins to black in and out. But I soon realize that’s not what’s happening at all.

I’m seeing shadows. Everywhere.

They’re all shaped like little boys, walking up and down the dark hallways, their heads hanging like they want for nothing more in the world than not to be noticed.

I think I might be sick.

Voices echo in the hall—adult ones, and young Peter takes me in through a door to the right. Inside are three shadows, one of which sits behind a desk, looking formidable, the other two opposite the desk in chairs. One is in the shape of a woman. She’s trembling, though she keeps her hands in her lap and her back straight. Beside her is a boy. He’s not cowering like the boys in the hall. Instead, he sits back in his chair, his legs splayed. Like he, not the warden, owns this place.

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