Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. I Am Not Pan Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

I AM NOT PAN

1

“I’m leaving,” Maxime Ansell heard his mother say from beyond his shut bedroom door. He lay in bed, pretending to sleep. After the door into the garage opened and closed, sending a rattling whoosh through the home, Maxime tossed aside his covers.

Today was not a day to laze about. Not that he had any urge to laze about; he’d never been so excited, his guts alive with butterflies. Technically, they weren’t using the word date—he was too nervous to dare—but their agreeing to meet away from the group, purposefully alone, felt a lot like a date. That they weren’t going to the theatre or out to eat mattered none.

Maxime ran the shower, taking extra attention to scrub his armpits, butt, and genitals…just in case. Out, he deodorized, put on boxer shorts, and broke for his parents’ bedroom. Really, it was only his mother’s room now, but she hadn’t yet swept away the remnants of Maxime’s deceased father—in the ground a little more than a year now after a long battle with COPD. He and his mother had mentally readied for the eventual, but the sting was undeniable and deeper than imagined when that eventual occurred.

There was dust on his father’s side of the dresser. Maxime picked up the green bottle of Brut, dabbed his neck, his chest, and beneath his boxers…again, just in case. The bottle went back, and Maxime hurried to his room. He put on a tee with tighter than normal sleeves, a pair of baggy shorts, white socks, and a black ballcap with a yellow beak and a monkey crest on the front.

He looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand; it was only 8:17. He wasn’t meeting Hailey until nine, and it took about four minutes to get to the bridge. After, they were to go out to her uncle’s renovated chicken coop. Instead of straw, roosts, squawking birds, and a floor of crumbly shit the building had a couch, a dining table with two chairs, a TV with three retro gaming systems, a computer, and a mini-fridge full of cans of beer. As long as they didn’t touch the beer, her uncle said they could hang out anytime they were supposed to be somewhere else.

Maxime grabbed his phone from his bedroom along the way to the kitchen, scrolling as he walked. He had time for cereal, plenty of time. He loaded a bowl with Reese puffs and almond milk, then sat at the table. He spooned mechanically as his gaze bounced around social apps. Seeing all there was to see on a Saturday morning, he set the phone aside and drank the chocolatey dregs of his cereal.

His attention settled beyond his bowl, beyond the door to the back deck, to the dark clouds cutting through the blue sky like a hot knife through margarine. Wind gusted a leafy twig against the door. Maxime wiped his mouth. A plastic planter from who knew where bounced across the backyard. Rain began to slash violently.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled, thinking Hailey might chicken out on him.

Maxime picked up his phone. It was 8:29. He willed Hailey not to text, not to cancel. He looked to the yard again: a tree snapped somewhere beyond sight, a table umbrella from another yard leapt along, a strange black triangle danced over the grass before winking out—not blowing away, winking out. Maxime pushed to his feet, momentarily forgetting about his date that was not officially a date.

Without taking his eyes from the door, he stood, pushing back his chair. He stepped in reverse. Debris swirled around the yard. The sky went black as a moonless night. Firefly lights sparkled goldly, floating in positions that corresponded with unseen motions, drawing nearer and nearer. Maxime backed up until his butt met the wall. The firefly lights stopped, and the deck door swung open. Wind gusted about the kitchen, rattling dishes and banging cupboards.

The interior lights dulled the firefly sparkles, but they were still there, and again coming closer. On the floor, a huge, muddy footprint appeared, then another and another and another. A scream of terror and surprise erupted up from Maxime’s chest the moment he felt cold, clammy hands on his throat. The scents of rotten meat and strong liquor filled his nose, clouding his choking breaths as his body lifted from the floor. His phone dropped from his grip.

The invisible interloper carried him to the door. Maxime slipped from consciousness at the lack of oxygen some ten steps beyond, giving him only a glimpse of his world cracking open to reveal the edge of a great black cliff with endless black waters below, dual yellow moons hanging in the sky, letting him only momentarily feel the sensation of falling.

 

2

Aileen Ansell reached the library, her lunch and travel mug of coffee pinched in the crook of her elbow as she keyed open the lobby doors. Inside, the alarm beeped; she punched in the code to silence it. After turning the deadbolt behind her, she stepped into the library proper, dropping off her sack lunch and purse along the way. As she did every morning over the last year and a bit when she opened the building, she took her coffee to the children’s section. The place was tidy, but busy. She sat on a sturdy, undersized chair made of wood and looked at the mural she’d painted some six years earlier.

The career goal by the end of high school had been to become an artist. Real life stepped in—in the form of a guidance counsellor who knew how to explain the difficulty of creating financially prosperous art to hard-headed, self-certain teens like herself—and pushed her toward a career in books. Had she been into digital design, she likely would’ve been all right, but she had never had any interest in the assisted, corner-cutter world of digital art.

Over the years, she’d kept painting but had never seen enough profit to consider herself professional. The money was hardly the point anyway, especially now as she sat appreciating this slice of history. Before her on the wall was a confident boy in a green tunic, floating above a black sea and pirate ship. Next to him was the sparkling fairy light of Tinkerbell’s aura. She’d used three different photographs to encapsulate Maxime’s face, his personality, his essence, to bring to life this Peter Pan. And until COPD took Laurence, it had just been a fine work, one she was proud of but didn’t have to see every time she was in the library.

Since his death, she had to see it. Had to feel the presence of her son from a time before her husband got sick. It became like a link to what had been and would never be again.

Some days Aileen cried while she sat, but not today. Today the image filled her with the urge to do something special for her son. What that meant, she didn’t know yet.

She pushed to stand, took a sip from her coffee, then paused with the plastic spout to her lips. Liquid bubbled from her son’s eyes, as if he was crying. It ran down his face. Aileen closed her own eyes, shaking her head gently. Two tiny tears formed then, dribbling down from Tinkerbell’s face.

“Uh oh,” she said, knowing there was a leak somewhere in the roof, or perhaps the pipes hidden behind the cork drop ceiling.

She looked up, seeking the source, and saw nothing. That meant little, and perhaps she’d gotten lucky, catching a leak before it did any real damage. She turned away and headed back to the front desk, knowing one of three elderly patrons would be waiting by the door—possibly two of them, or all three, possibly more people altogether.

Once to the lobby, she gave the familiar face of Linda Grey an index finger, demanding the woman wait a minute. Aileen then properly stowed her lunch and purse, checked her cellphone one last time, then went to open the doors for the regular Saturday morning push—not quite a rush, but a push at the very least.

 

3

“Mrs. Ansell? We saw a rat.”

Aileen shuddered hearing the word. Of all the critters of the animal kingdom, she hated rats the most. When she was a kid, her father had a job selling meat out of a refrigerated truck for the slaughterhouse a mile out of town. It wasn’t a good job or a bad job, it was simply something to do after the radiator plant downsized due to outsourcing. At first, he’d felt robbed, but six months later, the entire plant was offshored and he was fortunate to have steady income when 150 more men and women were suddenly looking for work.

All that meat meant the Plante—Plante being Aileen’s maiden name—family ate well, but sometimes her father didn’t get back to the abattoir until after it was closed, meaning he brought home the complaint meat that disgruntled customers returned on follow-up visits. That meat, after being logged, was fed to their two dogs. It also attracted rats.

Aileen and her sisters had been sitting around the sandbox in the backyard, pretending the combed yellow sand was a jacuzzi tub, too hot to enter. They’d dip fingers and toes, repeating things they’d heard on the Lifetime movies their mother listened to all day while she sewed, mended, and crafted.

“Well, I won’t let this fine opportunity go to waste,” Aileen had said, rising to her feet, plugging her nose, then popping butt-first into the sandbox, directly onto a very large, very ugly rat. The rat screamed, squirming frantically around Aileen’s thigh as she leapt to her feet and started running. The rat clung, climbing higher when it had the chance, directly up her shorts.

All the girls began wailing, forcing their mother to charge out of the house. Their mother was equally afraid of rats, proving herself useless beyond grabbing Aileen and screaming, “Take your shorts down!” Aileen couldn’t, didn’t dare, despite that she felt the creature’s tiny heartbeat rattling against her backside where it had come to hide.

The rat remained there until Edward, the retired Navy man from next-door, came to see what was happening. He briskly yanked down Aileen’s pants. When the rat broke into a run, Edward instinctively shot out a boot, stomping the thing, sending its guts out its ass after launching a soft, warm turd onto Aileen’s lip.

She hadn’t seen a living rat in the wild since moving to town some twenty-three years ago. Now, Aileen looked at the kid. It was a girl named Norma, and if she was anything like her mother, she was prone to exaggeration.

“A rat or a mouse?”

“A rat, Mrs. Ansell. A big one. Bigger than Suzy’s mom’s Pomeranian.”

“Where?”

Norma pointed toward the children’s section. That none of the other children were running or screaming emboldened the librarian. She stepped around the check-in desk and made for the only place in the library where the volume was routinely louder than general talking. Once through the arched opening, she saw a woman scolding her son and three kids watching from the wings. In the kid’s hands was a clean-looking rat.

The woman faced Aileen, wincing. “I’m sorry. He snuck the damned thing in his pocket, and I was meeting with the Cold Casers upstairs.”

There were three small rooms open to public reservation, and once a month a group of women met to pick apart cold case murders from around the country.

Aileen offered an unimpressed smirk. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to take the animal outside.”

“Of course. Of course. I’m so, so sorry.” The woman grabbed the kid by the collar of his sweater. “All right, Ethan, you’ve embarrassed me enough for one day.”

The kid said nothing as he was paraded through the archway, then the library on the whole. Aileen turned on her heels, offering young Norma another unimpressed grin, but stopped and spun back around.

Tinkerbell, in the mural, had moved a foot to the right from Peter Pan’s teary-eyed face.

 

4

“I think I’m going crazy,” Aileen said to Whitney, an afternoon librarian who’d come in at 3:00 PM. “I swear, the mural is crying and Tinkerbell moved.”

Whitney laughed, a touch nervously. “What?”

“Come on.” Aileen led her subordinate into the children’s section.

“Okay, someone’s messing with you,” Whitney said. “You’re not crazy.” She let loose a big grin then. “Think it might be Maxime? Maybe one of his friends?”

Aileen thought a moment, then smacked her forehead. “Almost has to be, right?”

Before heading home, she shot her son two text messages. The first asking if he was pulling a trick on her, and the second asking if he wanted to go out for supper because she was feeling good about the day. When he didn’t reply, she decided she’d order them pizza, in case he had other plans—if he wasn’t there to eat half the pizza when it was hot, he’d have no qualms about plucking it from the fridge later on, especially since she routinely had an early supper. Though she wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about it, he was almost fifteen, which meant he was entitled to a life of his own and all the space that required.

She ordered on the app, then climbed out of her car in the Save-N-Go parking lot. It was busy, as most early evenings were. As she was stepping inside, basket in hand, a woman named Deborah Moyer stepped out, pushing a heaping cartload.

“Aileen! Where have you been?”

The women came together between the dual traffic flows. Aileen was all smiles—the day simply got better and better.

“Oh, you know,” Aileen said.

“Bull,” Deborah said. “We’ve moved onto axes.”

Aileen laughed. What had begun as a book club, eventually morphed into women taking different classes: pottery, self-defence, painting landscapes and fruit bowls, Indian cooking, knife-throwing, and now, apparently, axe-throwing.

“I’m sure I’d be terrible.”

“Double bull.”

This was inarguable. None of the other women threw knives like Aileen had. Even the instructor was wowed enough to ask Aileen if she wanted to see her personal collection of weapons. The town was tightknit enough that everyone knew Irma Tolstoy was a lesbian. Aileen had graciously thanked the woman for her offer but declined. Irma never brought it up again, and things resumed as if no offer had been made. Aileen had simply quit the group when Covid-19 forced every group to stop meeting, at least for a time.

“Okay, I’d probably be great. I think I must have some warrior princess in the bloodline,” Aileen said. “What else has been going on?”

“Same old. The boys are a menace and the girls are worse.” Deborah had five kids and a husband.

“That’s nothing new.”

“Janine died. Did you hear that?” Deborah said, smile fading instantly.

Aileen frowned. “Yes, I’d heard. Not sure how I feel about her family taking her away so…unceremoniously.”

“Would’ve been nice to say goodbye, but the Corona…”

There was nothing more needing said. Janine had passed at the height of the lockdowns.

“Well, we should get together sometime,” Aileen said after a ten-count of silence.

“Absolutely. I’ll give you a ring. It was so good seeing you.”

Aileen volleyed the sentiment, then stepped into the store. She’d have to rush if she wanted to eat warm pizza.

The smell had her mouth watering by the time she parked at home. Purse slung over her shoulder, she grabbed the pizza, climbed out, then plucked the packed grocery bag from the back seat. Maxime hadn’t texted her, so she wasn’t going to wait—it was only 5:33 PM…but the kid could’ve texted her. Inside, she set the pizza, her purse, and the cloth grocery bag on the counter.

“Maxime? You here?”

No answer came to her.

It wasn’t until she had a slice in her hand that she noticed the door to the back deck slightly ajar. She took a bite, stepping around the counter. On the floor were a few leaves and a set of massive boot prints, the treads strangely smooth, a bit like a pair of moccasins her grandmother gave her one Christmas after visiting a pow wow someplace up north.

Aileen took another bite from her slice as she reached into her purse. One-handedly, she sent Maxime a text message. Behind her, a device rumbled on the floor. She spun. There was his phone.

“Maxime?” she said, then louder, “Maxime!”

No way he went somewhere without his phone.

 

5

Hailey blushed to her ears when she stood before Aileen, not fully aware that Aileen had read the text messages she’d sent the woman’s son. Aileen put an arm around the girl’s shoulders when the police came and demanded to see the phone, demanded to see all the messages.

“This is child pornography,” one officer said to Hailey.

Aileen huffed. “A girl can send a shot of her boobs if she wants; what are you doing to find my son?”

The officer sneered. “He likely dropped his phone and went out with friends.”

“What friends?” Aileen said. “I’ve talked to every one of his friends!”

The officer looked at Hailey. “There’s probably another girlfriend he didn’t want to tell you about.”

Aileen shook her head. “No. No. What you’re saying is, you don’t care. You’re an asshole, and you don’t care about these boot prints, or that his phone was on the floor, or that he missed out on what sounds like a first date of sorts. How can you be so willfully obtuse?”

The officer looked to the boot prints. “He’s pranking you. Nobody has feet that big.”

Aileen let go of Hailey, her entire being thrumming with frustration. “Shaquille O’Neal has feet that big! Bigger!”

The officer scrunched his face. “You think Shaq kidnapped your son?”

“No, you dumb shit! If Shaq’s fucking feet are that big, so are other people’s feet!”

The officer straightened. “Watch your mouth.”

“No! My freedom of speech, in my own home, after my son’s been taken, is much more important than the fragility of your ego! Now, do something!”

The officer licked his teeth beneath his lips. “I’ll call it in. He’s probably with friends. Be sure to call the station when he comes home.” He looked to Hailey. “Do I have to tell your parents you’re sending child pornography.”

Aileen pulled her phone from her pocket and snapped a picture of the officer. “What’s your name again? I’m taking this to your supervisor.”

The officer sneered, the left side of his mouth coming wide enough to reveal yellowy teeth. “Wayne Hudler Jr. My supervisor’s name is Wayne Hudler Sr.”

Aileen huffed. “Why am I not surprised? Well, listen to me, Junior, if you don’t look for my son, I will stop at nothing—I’ll picket, I’ll go to council meetings, I’ll petition every last citizen of this town—until we bring in the RCMP.”

The officer turned on his heels and started for the door. “Let us know when your son comes home, no matter how drunk or stoned he is.”

The reality of her situation nailed her anew and Aileen stumbled backward until she was in a dining chair. Hailey rubbed her shoulders.

“You can’t think of anywhere?”

Hailey shook her head. “We were going to meet, alone for the first time. When he didn’t come, I thought…I thought he…that’s why I sent the pic. I thought he was changing his mind and…and I… That cop won’t tell my dad, will he?”

“He might. Don’t send pictures of yourself like that—if he tells, just say you grabbed it off the internet, that it wasn’t even you—don’t even send pictures like that to Maxime. What if someone got his phone?”

Hailey began to cry. “I’m sorry. It was stupid; I’m sorry.”

Aileen sighed. “Do you need a ride home?”

Hailey nodded through her sniffles.

“Do you want some pizza first?”

Hailey nodded again.

 

6

“Call me if he contacts you somehow, okay? Even if he says not to for some reason.”

“Okay,” Hailey said, then climbed from the car.

Aileen backed into the street. A bicycle with a flickering headlight rolled toward her, and she thought of the changes to the mural. If Maxime was gone, he couldn’t have been playing a trick. Aileen stomped the gas, speeding across town, running two amber lights and rolling through a stop sign before she reached the library parking lot.

She parked in the handicap spot by the entrance, then burst through the door and punched the alarm code. She ran through the dark library until she got to the archway into the children’s section. It was doubly dark as streetlights didn’t reach that far, so she felt the wall for the light switch. Instantly upon flicking it, the room lit and she saw the mural…the mural of her son in the roll of Peter Pan, but now the glowing ferry was gone.

What did it mean?

She put her hands on the painting. Her son’s face was still wet. It had to be a message of some fashion. She touched where she’d originally painted Tinkerbell, expecting to come away at the very least with a tacky palm. Her hand was clean and dry. She touched where the fairy had been relocated to the last time she’d looked. Dry. Dry. Dry.

She stepped back, trying to understand, her eyes scanning the wall for a message. But there was nothing. The fairy was gone, her son’s face was wet, and…nothing else, nothing to go on. Aileen let loose a scream that echoed through the library.

By the entrance, she punched the code, relocked the door, then started toward her car. She opened up and as she was falling into the driver’s seat, a massive buzzing whipped by her ear, sounding like a dragon fly or an especially big June bug. She swatted next to her head, leaning into her car to be sure there wasn’t some untoward insect inside. She didn’t hear it and didn’t see it.

She started the car and rolled out to a side street. About a block from home, she heard the buzzing again. It stopped abruptly next to her ear.

“Hook’s got your son,” a high-pitched voice said.

Aileen glanced to the rearview mirror. On her shoulder was a humanoid shape, about the height of a softball. She slammed on the brakes, the tires squealing, the car skidding. The little humanoid figure leapt up and the buzzing recommenced as a pale-yellow light filled in the thing’s aura.

“He’s looking for Peter. He’s taken so many already, but Peter won’t come out…he needs a proper mother.”

“What the fucking fuck?” Aileen shouted, twisting in her seat, her foot rising from the brake pedal, the car rolling into a shallow ditch.

“Peter needs a mother; he’s never had a real one. You need to save your son. To do that, you have to convince Peter to come out and be his old self.”

Aileen put her hands to her eyes. “This is stress-induced. You can’t go crazy now; Maxime needs you.” She lowered her hands.

The fairy light had gone out as the figure settled on the headrest of the shotgun seat.

“We’re all a little crazy sometimes.”

“No!” Aileen said, covering her eyes again.

“Listen, your son needs you and Peter needs you. You have to try.”

Aileen began to sob. “Why is this happening?”

“Captain Hook’s been looking for Peter a long, long, long, long, long time, but Peter’s hiding. He needs a mother to make him himself and make things go back to how they were before. You have to help, or you’ll never see your son again.”

Aileen peeked between her fingers. “Let me guess, you’re Tinkerbell.”

The little figure wiggled her backside and a gentle tinkling bell jingled. “Of course, and we have to go fast as we can. It’ll be dark soon in Neverland, and we don’t want to be stuck out in the dark.”

“How?”

Tinkerbell flew, glowing briefly, then landed on Aileen’s shoulder. “Behind the place with all the books is a field. That will work perfect for what we need.”

 

7

What choice do I have?

I’ve lost it completely.

Remember Landon, your cousin. Schizophrenic, quit drinking water because he was sure the government poisoned it and he died of dehydration right in front of the psych ward nurses.

If you’re going crazy, you go crazy before my age.

Says the lady arguing in her head, following a goddamned pixie.

Aileen had climbed the chest-high rusty wire fence that led into the field behind the library. Tinkerbell floated a few feet in front like the shine of a flashlight, now and then punching or kicking at the grainy heads of the wildly overgrown grass.

Was she this childish in the book?

Kind of befitting, don’t you think? A librarian having an episode surrounding a piece of literature.

I hardly remember this one, though. Shouldn’t it be Jane Eyre or The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes if it’s anything?

Crazy does what crazy does.

I don’t feel crazy.

All crazies feel that.

I’m desperate. Maxime’s gone!

An image of Maxime lit on her mindscape; he was so small then, and a pair of crossed signals left the boy stuck after school, awaiting a ride. Aileen thought Laurence was taking him to get his haircut, while Laurence thought the haircut was tomorrow so he stuck around the office to do extra work. At 3:35 PM, the phone call came into the library and a perturbed teacher handed off a telephone to a scared little boy: “Mommy! Don’t leave me here! I want to come home!”

By the time she got to the school, the teacher and the boy were out front. Maxime had pissed his pants. The teacher was scowling.

“Did you throw me away? I don’t want to live nowhere else!”

He latched onto her leg, and she felt the dampness sinking through her slacks. She apologized and thanked the teacher, her mind naturally settling on the memory of the movie Laurence thought they should all watch about a toaster tossed away unwanted.

This isn’t that; that happened.

Tinkerbell is probably a flashlight in your hand.

Turn her off.

Try it.

Aileen snatched the unsuspecting fairy and squeezed. Teeth came down hard against Aileen’s index finger. A spot of blood bubbled up. The fairy buzzed up to Aileen.

“We don’t have time for this. It’ll be night soon!”

“It’s already night!” Aileen shouted, maybe at a fairy, maybe at nothing at all.

“Move, Peter—your son needs you!” Tinkerbell carried onward.

Talk about proving nothing. Think wackados can’t feel a bite when they imagine they’re bitten?

What then?

Aileen shrugged, then followed Tinkerbell. They’d already walked a few hundred feet through the grass. She was soaked, the waterline rising all the way to her armpits. She had her purse with her, also soaked, and in it was her cellphone. She was about to call the police, apologize, beg that they show mercy despite her temper…

…beg that they do their fucking jobs!

At least I’m doing something.

Following a mental break through a wet field, you’re doing something all right.

Tinkerbell stopped and turned. “You have something in that bag to blindfold you?”

In the dark, Tinkerbell was nothing more than an orb, even up close. Aileen squinted, trying to make out the little face. It was possible that if she could master something about the delusion, then she’d return to a semblance of sanity.

“Blindfold me?”

“Of course. You’ve never flown, and when you step through, you’re going to need to fly.”

“Pantyhose?”

“Use it, cover your eyes. Now, what’s your happy thought?”

Aileen paused as she rummaged in her purse. She was fully in the depths of the Scotsman Sir James Matthew Barrie’s imagination.

“Hurry!”

Aileen tied the pantyhose around her face. The obvious happy thought was Maxime, but that wasn’t true. Human relationships were complicated. Her unconditional love did not mean she didn’t want to strangle him sometimes or send him outside so she could get some peace or make him go to sleep already for some goddamned privacy. Then it hit her. The one thing with no consequences.

Getting stoned in the middle of the night, alone, TV showing something downright idiotic.

“Good,” Tinkerbell said.

“Good, wha—”

Tinkerbell yanked Aileen forward, silencing the question. The floor seemed to have dropped out below her. She was falling fast, could just about taste her liver.

I’m going to die.

Dying now!

Edibles. Edibles. Edibles and Bojack. Edibles and Bobby Hill. Edibles and Beavis and Butthead. Edibles and—floating?

Aileen put her hands out to her sides. The flapping of Tinkerbell’s wings buzzed near her right ear. The pantyhose came away. The sky was a dark red hue, pomegranate seeds, the center of a raspberry, spilled blood. Her feet were less than two metres from the mossy forest floor.

Her mind blanked and she dropped. Her arms and legs windmilled uselessly until her feet sunk to her knees. Beneath the moss was thick, grey muck.

“Come on!” Tinkerbell grabbed onto Aileen’s collar with surprising strength and began yanking. “They’ll be up any minute.”

“Who?”

Tinkerbell didn’t answer, pulling until the stitches burst and the threads snapped at the collar of Aileen’s shirt. The woman pitched forward, her hands finding solid ground and a loose root. She began to reel herself. The fairy grabbed two tiny handfuls of hair at the top of Aileen’s head and began pulling.

“Ow!”

“Hurry! Hurry!”

To Aileen’s left, dirt began to puff and pop. Overhead, the sky darkened, the sun sinking much faster than it did in the world she called home.

“They’re coming!”

“Who?” Aileen shouted, crawling and kicking until her legs were free. She swatted at Tinkerbell and the fairy let go. “Who?” she said again.

“The Lost Boys! Hurry!”

Tinkerbell zoomed ahead and Aileen broke into a jog, thinking but the Lost Boys are good. She then said, “Why would we run from the Lost Boys?”

Tinkerbell raced back to Aileen, getting behind her and pushing at the center of her back. Aileen stumbled trying to keep pace. All around them, the dirt popped and sputtered. Hands began to appear like sunflowers from a field. There had to be hundreds of them.

“See that tree?”

Aileen did but had no spare oxygen to say so—seeing the hands put her legs into overdrive.

“See the knot?”

Aileen managed to nod.

“Dive into the knot!”

Boys, many only four or five, some closer to fourteen or fifteen, emerged from the soil. Their flesh looked blue beneath the rising moons. Their eyes were weepy obsidian orbs, their fingernails several inches long and jagged, black with dirt.

“Dive!”

One of the freakish children lunged at Aileen just as Tinkerbell shoved the back of her head. She had planned to jump feet first but found herself facing down what appeared to be a solid tree trunk. A gasp barreled up her throat as her head, then shoulders passed through the illusion. She whumped heavily onto her chest, forcing the air from her lungs. She whooped and whined as she crawled forward, moving deeper beneath the tree at Tinkerbell’s shoves.

Aileen fell flat when something pinched at her ankle. She pushed upward, donkey kicking. The grip loosened and she scrambled forward, only then noticing that there was light ahead.

“We’re okay now,” Tinkerbell said, circling Aileen, before chasing toward the light.

Aileen lay flat, wheezing, trying to let her lungs catch-up—her mind was miles from an even footing, but she was alive, which suddenly felt like utter luck. Once she could, she crawled through the well-worn tunnel, toward the light, and two voices. One was obviously Tinkerbell, but the other sounded like a young boy.

 

8

The slick walls of the hovel glowed greenly while a here and there sprouting crops of mushrooms glowed in orange. Tinkerbell’s light was out where she sat on a ledge a foot over the boy’s head.

The boy himself had a pointy nose, had curly brown hair, and wore clothes of leaves, but that was where the similarities to what Aileen suspected of Peter Pan ended. He was very tall and massively fat, his rolls puddling about him like a fluffy skirt where he sat on his feet. He stank of sour sweat and moldy shoes.

“So, you’re my new mummy?” he said.

Aileen squinted at this boy, so not what she expected, so not something she wanted to see.

“Peter Pan?”

“Of course. Who else?” The boy jerked his head to his right, then snapped out a hand in a whiplashing motion, snatching up a fat purple worm crawling along the wall. He popped half the thing in his mouth, then bit. Brown juice played down his chin, mingling with eaten worms of yore.

“But you’re a slob.”

Peter looked over his shoulder to Tinkerbell and spoke around a mouthful of chewed worm. “What’s a slob?”

“It’s impolite, that’s what. Especially to the great Peter Pan.”

Peter crowed and giggled, bouncing in place. Beneath him, his expelled waste gooshed and squished, freshening the sewage scent lingering below the odours of sweat and feet. Aileen gagged.

“This is my only hope to get—” Aileen silenced herself, closed her eyes, then beat upon her scalp with two tight fists. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

“She’s looney as Toodles!” Peter began bouncing anew. “It’s so good to have a mum again. Maybe we can have more Lost Boys, too.”

“I’m not your mum! My son was stolen, all because of you!” Aileen ceased hitting herself and pointed a furious finger at the blob of a boy.

Peter’s mouth opened, snapped closed, then opened once more. “Oh, you’ve done another dealing have you, Tink?”

“Shht!” the fairy said. “Hook has her son, and the great Peter Pan is going to rescue him, destroy the old pirate, and bring Neverland back to right.”

“He is?” Peter said, an index finger second knuckle-deep in a nostril.

“Yes!” Tinkerbell and Aileen said just a hair off perfect unison.

“Oh, have you brought me my shadow? It would be quite an unfair battle without my shadow.”

“No, but we’re going at first light to retrieve it,” Tinkerbell said.

Peter laughed. “I shall believe it when I see it. None of the other mums ever came back from hunting my shadow.”

Overhead, footfalls thumped upon the ground. A tinkle of dirt spit down on them. Aileen looked up, her mind recreated the flash of the decayed, zombified Lost Boy she’d seen in the moments before landing in the hidden hovel. She reached to her side and gave the bulge of her slight love handle a firm pinch. Still, she did not awaken from this nightmare.

“Am I really in Neverland?” she whispered.

“Where else would Peter Pan be?” Peter said.

Aileen frowned. “Anywhere? Doing anything to stop the theft of loved children?”

“Hook made them cuckoo bananas. We had many fun adventures before Hook stole Wendy and my shadow ran away,” Peter said.

“This is nuts,” Aileen said.

Tinkerbell buzzed close to her face, her little hands reaching into a little purse-like pouch hidden in the leafy folds of her dress. “We have a long day tomorrow; you need your rest.”

Aileen swatted, then scanned the filthy, stinking floor. “You expect me to sleep he—”

Tinkerbell blew red dust into the overwrought woman’s face and after a single breath, Aileen tumbled into a heap.

“She’s no better than the last bunch of mums you brung,” Peter said.

“We’ll see,” Tinkerbell said before flying back to her rocky perch. For so, so many years she’d been living in this squalor, endlessly dreaming of all the finery buried in the old house, in her old room. Someday, she’d have it all back, but first, Peter had to become the great Peter Pan again.

 

9

Aileen dreamed blips and flashes, nonsense jump-off points leading to impossible locations before the floors fell away and she dropped someplace new and forgettable. The moment preceding fully awakening, she recalled that her son was gone. A great, racking sob barreled up her throat.

“Why? Why Maxime?”

From across the echoey space came Tinkerbell’s sleepy voice: “Art opens gateways from here to there.”

Aileen remained silent a few moments. “So, it’s all my fault.” She sat up, looked around, drank in the slovenly existence of a titan from children’s literature. “He’s like that all because of his shadow?”

“He won’t fight without it.”

“But how can he not have a shadow? A shadow is nothing more than a blockage of light?”

Tinkerbell flitted across the room, glowing amid the murky effervescence. She landed on a stony jut from the wall, next to Aileen’s ear. “You have to be willing to stand in the light to have a shadow.”

Aileen tilted her head. “So, this is a confidence thing?”

“Not exactly. Peter bore through many pirate guts with his shadow at hand.”

“Is it a sword?”

Tinkerbell shook her tiny head, sending out a dandruff dusting of golden sparkles. “It isn’t easy to explain. And we shall see it soon enough.”

Aileen pushed to a crouch. “Then let’s go. Who knows what Hook is doing to my son… There have been others, what does Hook do with them?”

Tinkerbell downturned her face. “He makes them slaves until they’re worn out, then adds them to his collection.”

“His collection?”

Tinkerbell rubbed the back of her neck. “Another mother used a word after she saw. Do you know taxidermy?”

Aileen gasped, her hands and head began shaking. “There’s no time to lose.”

Tinkerbell flew to the exit, stopped, then turned, her fists on her hips. “We must wait for sun-up. The Lost Boys will eat us…well, you. I can fly away.”

“I can fly, can’t I? I flew here?”

Tinkerbell huffed. “I covered your eyes before dragging you off a precipice. Getting you off the ground without a hole and a blindfold will be all but impossible. You cannot fly.”

“Well…goddammit! At least tell me about the shadow. It can’t be easy to obtain, or you wouldn’t need my help.”

Tinkerbell looked over her shoulder to the world beyond the lair. “Since we have time, I’ll start at the beginning…”

—

A blanket of fog lingered above Neverland’s Sea of One Thousand Islands. The boys rode upon two canoes they’d discovered left behind after a battle between pirates and the Unishinu Napessiss. The boys piled in, along with Wendy, and stole off through the fog, in search of the pirate Starkey’s hat. Peter thought wearing a pirate hat into battle, against the pirates, was a grand sort of game, but first they needed to capture the wayward item.

With Peter in charge, there was no telling if a game would last an hour or a week. Only Curly ever complained, always wanting to play the game of feasting instead. They paddled slowly and quietly, leery of the Never Bird and her offspring.

“There it is!” Nibs said, stage-whispering.

“Hush,” Peter said, then steered the lead canoe to a rocky little island no more than thirty feet from coast to coast.

They hadn’t even gotten all their boots to land before the familiar voice of the dreaded Smee filled the air. “Not likely they’ll find’er ‘ere,” he said amid the loud splashes of paddles and the grinding of a boat’s keel against shore rocks.

Peter waved to the boys and Wendy, telling them to remain silent. He and his shadow crawled on belly over a rock and watched Smee and Starkey drag the Innu princess, Suusan Minush, up onto shore before unceremoniously tossing her to the ground.

Peter crawled back close enough to whisper to the boys. “Pirates. We must have wandered to Marooners’ Rock. Smee and that numbskull Starkey have Suusan Minush. Two against one. With her hands and feet tied. Decidedly unfair.”

“What’ll we do?” Tootles said.

“You have to save her,” Wendy said.

Peter gave Wendy a wink, then slinked back to the rock. He inhaled deeply and his voice changed drastically. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ahoy there, you lubbers.”

“Captain?” Smee said, straightening and looking around.

“Ay, that’s good enough, let her go.”

Smee scratched his head. “Had I not been warned, had I not known of your wily ways, had I been as daft as you’ve hoped, well, I might’ve been taken in by such a clever mimicry.”

Peter stiffened. Behind him, there came thrashing and screams. The twins had matching swords playing through their breasts from behind, their faces gone seagull white while red, red blood oozed from their mouths.

In unison, they howled, “I don’t want to play no more.”

More pirates converged, including the grand Captain Hook. He was smiling in that dainty way of his as he stepped onto land and unsheathed his sword. “Peter Pan,” he said.

Peter took out his sword, as did his shadow. Hook’s eyes widened.

“I see,” he said, then sneered before calling out, “Gut the princess.”

Smee giggled and Suusana Minush gargled so loudly it was audible to every island within five miles—including one not far from Marooners’ Rock where an Innu hunting party of Unishinu Napessiss were setting traps. The Unishinu Napessiss recognized the sound and took to the water, swimming with the ease of mermaids.

As the pirates tied up the remaining Lost Boys, and as Hook and Peter and his shadow circled in the pre-battle dance of the upper echelon, the hunters burst from the water, daggers between their teeth. They cut down two pirates in a blink, and despite being at throats in most circumstances, they cut the fair-fighting Lost Boys free—their shared enemy was a much larger problem than one another.

Within seconds, the pirates had lost the battle and were retreating to their boats, which would of course take them to the Jolly Roger. Peter crowed at Hook, a great whooping, teasing sound.

In a fury, Hook looked at Peter’s shadow and said, “You’ll always be less, yet you’ll put forth the same effort. Peter Pan will forever eat your happiness.” He then retreated as well and all the Lost Boys hooted while the Unishinu Napessiss walked somberly to their felled princess where she lay bleeding, head severed roughly from her neck.

—

“That’s different from the book,” Aileen said, frowning.

Tinkerbell scoffed. “Jim-Jim lied whenever he didn’t like the truth. I called him on it once, and in that book he wrote, he killed me dead.”

“Jim-Jim? James Barrie was a Lost Boy?”

“Sure. He was one of the few who got away when John and Michael returned home.”

Aileen thought a moment. “And Wendy?”

Tinkerbell’s little face became a tower of frost. “She’s on the Jolly Roger, where she wants to be.”

It took a few moments for Aileen to compute what James Barrie had changed from what she’d just been told. Before she could say another word, Tinkerbell looked outside.

“Daylight’s risen and the dead sleep.”

 

10

The sunlight was muted, though the sky was clear. Tinkerbell flew slowly enough that Aileen could watch her feet. The forest floor was well-trodden, though it appeared its inhabitants only came out at night.

“You said Innu, is that the…” she trailed. Old books brimmed with unacceptable descriptors, names, and attitudes. “Is that the Redskins?”

“In the book? I have to assume, though there wasn’t much red to them.”

“Hook killed them all?”

“He thinks so, but they could be on any number of islands, living peacefully—should they have given up brawling and battling, and without the Lost Boys, there’s only the pirates, and they’re not how they were.”

“What does that mean?”

Tinkerbell didn’t answer.

The forest thickened, forcing Aileen to push through a wall of foliage to keep up to the fairy. Once through, the forest fell away. Beneath her feet was pebble sand. Before her was the Sea of One Thousand Islands. Tinkerbell buzzed along the forest’s edge before swooping down to a large rock. The tiny creature rolled the rock aside with an elongated grunt, revealing seven rusty daggers.

“Are you any good with a knife?” Tinkerbell said, hovering before Aileen’s nose.

“Well, actually…yes.”

Tinkerbell snorted a humorless laugh. “That’s a first. Take what you’ll need. And the moment we get into the water, be at the ready.”

Aileen looked over the daggers before deciding to take them all. They were very different from the throwing knives she’d used before, but they were the same in all the most important ways. Once she had the knives stowed about her person, she chased down the beach to where Tinkerbell was dragging a canoe through the sand by a long piece of bright blue rope.

“Is there a paddle?” Aileen said.

“You worry about the knives,” Tinkerbell said without turning back.

Aileen settled herself on the second of the boat’s two benches. Tinkerbell gave the rope a stiff yank, whiplashing the boat into the quiet water. As if summoned by their presence, fog began to roll between the many islands directly ahead of them.

“How far are we going?” Aileen said.

Something brushed against the bottom of the boat, sending swirls onto the surf around them.

“Shh,” Tinkerbell said.

Aileen looked into the water to her right. The floor of the sea was well beyond view, everything between was clear, but dim. A great splash from ten feet ahead had Tinkerbell rising as high as the rope permitted. Aileen scanned the waters, glimpsing eyes in every swirl at the whim of sudden paranoia. A shadowy streak about six feet-long jerked in and out of view like an inverted bolt of lightning. Aileen lifted a dagger, ready to throw.

“What was that?” she hissed.

“Shh,” Tinkerbell said, quickening their pace.

Aileen’s head was on a swivel, bouncing from ripple to ripple. Then it came, scalp, forehead, and eyes. Aileen almost threw, her arm swinging forward automatically but her grip remaining tight.

That scalp, that forehead, those eyes…human!

It hit her then as the boat rocked—something brushing beneath like a teasing bully letting them know who ruled the water.

“The others—Peter said the others—did mermaids get them?”

“Shh.”

“They know we’re here! Was it mermaids?”

“Mostly,” Tinkerbell said, putting her effort into overdrive.

After a few seconds, the boat came to an abrupt stop. The rope slipped through Tinkerbell’s hands and she shot off, spiraling like a maple seedpod. A splash sounded from the stern, and Aileen spun. A woman, huge, wrinkled breasts hanging off her chest like saggy raisins. Her mouth was a tight oval, like a suckerfish. Beneath the translucent pink lips were rows of triangular teeth. Her nose had no nostrils, but the protrusion remained. The eyeballs were a milky, cataract blue. The forehead was average, and the hair was thick and grey with streaks of red.

“Fresh meat,” the voice said, almost singing it, smooth and sophisticated, a hint of British accent. “It will be easier for you if you give in immediately. Death doesn’t have to hurt.”

The woman pushed herself high enough on the boat to reveal the cut line where woman and fish came together. The scales shimmered wonderfully, tantalizingly, hypnotizingly. The mermaid climbed higher, was only inches from Aileen, awful mouth reaching for the undefended throat.

Tinkerbell screamed a sound that rang in Aileen’s brain like a car alarm. Her right hand swung with an uppercut arc, the dagger entering through the mermaid’s chin. Thick blue blood spurted over her awful lips as her eyes blinked rapidly and her fingers danced in pain. The mermaid slid backward as Aileen yanked the dagger away. In shock, she brought her hand high. The cool, gooey blood coated her to halfway up her forearm like she’d reached into a bucket of blueberry syrup.

“Lady!” Tinkerbell shouted, then yanked the boat forward by the rope.

Aileen spun on the bench; another mermaid had launched herself from the water about eight feet from the boat. In a sideways swipe, Aileen whipped the bloody dagger. It struck, piercing the mermaid’s chest. The beast made a sucky scream before thumping against the side of the boat, trying to withdraw the dagger with two slimy hands.

All around them, spiny mermaid backs breached the surf, the boat rocking side to side at the barrage of waves. Aileen grabbed another dagger, her mind shutdown to all but the battle and the skill she’d honed over so many weeks.

Coming directly at them were two chubby creatures, their faces a hideous juxtaposition between beautiful eyes and abominable mouths. Aileen fired, nailing the one on the right high in the spine. It stopped swimming and began flopping, face-down, impulses severed, nerves breakdancing uselessly. Aileen scooped a dagger from the boat’s dirty floor that had fallen from her pants. She launched it in a sidearm. The dagger sang a war cry of sliced air before it penetrated the advancing creature’s belly. Instantly, blue blood spilled in a wash as the creature floated on her back, beaver-like, trying to fold ropes of intestine back into her guts.

Tinkerbell crowed in triumph, then shouted, “You’ve slain Queen Kuliltu!”

The waters calmed. Two-dozen mermaids popped up in a circle directly around the corpse of the dying queen. They began to sing a wordless song that had Aileen relaxing all over, sighing out all the pent adrenaline. Tinkerbell zoomed, impervious to the siren-song of the awful creatures.

It was only as they reached a small island covered in greenery, lousy with the skeletons of never birds, that the power of the mermaids released Aileen Ansell, the latest great warrior of Neverland.

 

11

Tinkerbell buzzed excitedly around Aileen. “I never would’ve guessed! Everyone from where you were…well, they’re utterly useless, but you’re wonderful!”

Despite all that was happening, what lay in the balance, Aileen couldn’t help but feel prideful. “Will they come back?”

“Ha! They should cower! Back to the lagoon with you! They only started leaving their lagoon after Hook took over.”

“Okay…so, how do we find an unattached shadow.”

Tinkerbell huffed playfully. “Follow the bird bones, of course. Peter’s shadow has to eat something.”

It was on the tip of Aileen’s tongue to ask how a shadow ate anything, but she swallowed it. Nothing in this place was exactly as she suspected.

They walked several minutes, through thick foliage from odd trees with fronds running the lengths of their fuzzy trunks. Tinkerbell caught a different scent and waved Aileen in a new direction. Not long after, they came upon a tendril of smoke playing up through a patch of fat mushrooms with red-dotted caps.

“Chimney?” Aileen whispered.

“Wait here,” Tinkerbell said before she began ringing herself, as if her bones had bells in them. “Shadow? It’s me, Tinkerbell.” Ring ring ring.

A tree stump big around as a manhole cover flipped backward and a boy appeared. His flesh was so pale it looked blue. His nose and chin were pointy. He looked like Aileen expected Peter Pan to look, aside from the ghostliness of his pallor.

“It’s time to right Neverland,” Tinkerbell said.

The shadow looked from the fairy to Aileen, frowning.

“Don’t worry about her, Hook has her son, and she’s a warrior. She slain Queen Kuliltu. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

The shadow’s eyes widened, then his head nodded.

“Wait…why has Peter’s shadow been hiding if you were waiting…I don’t…what?” Aileen said.

Peter’s shadow climbed from his hovel. He was all of four feet—at max. He wore a long sword in a leather belt and a tunic made of leaves. On his feet were thick leather moccasins.

“Why didn’t Peter’s shadow just go with you before, join with Peter, then take down Hook?” Aileen said, beyond confused.

The shadow frowned anew, looking at Tinkerbell.

“Well…I maybe fibbed to you.” Tinkerbell flew close. “I had to, though. Hook has your son, but if you knew the truth, you’d be mad at me.”

“What did you do?” Aileen said, growling it from deep in her chest.

“That wasn’t Peter Pan you met…it was Curly. He’s the last Lost Boy.”

Aileen closed her eyes, shaking her head. “What?”

“We need you. And Hook has your son. That’s the truth. You’ll never get him back if we don’t get Peter back,” Tinkerbell said, tone pleading.

“So, where the hell is Peter Pan?” Aileen said, face gone deep red in frustration.

“On the Jolly Roger,” Tinkerbell said.

The shadow said nothing, as shadows cannot speak.

 

12

Outside a moment, Aileen thought she heard the telltale ticking of the crocodile which ate Hook’s hand.

“They all tick now,” Tinkerbell said. “Sound like a drum when close up.”

This explanation, alongside how low to the water Tinkerbell flew, let Aileen’s anxiety drop a few dozen notches. They reached shore unmolested and hurried back to the hovel. Night was many hours away, and Tinkerbell gave into hope, suggesting that if they hurried to the cove where the Jolly Roger docked, they’d bypass the living dead Lost Boys. Curly stayed behind, stating that he was a touch too hungry to go out and play. In his state, the only use they might’ve had for him was as sacrifice anyway.

Tinkerbell led the way to an animal run of some fashion—perhaps an animal Barrie never added to his original manuscript or play—and the Shadow and Aileen jogged behind. The Shadow carried his sword while Aileen had the four remaining daggers stuffed in the pockets of her jeans. Tinkerbell had only her wits and whatever magic hid in the pouches she wore upon her hips. They heard animals but saw none. The sky drew closer and closer to sundown; the trio never slowed. Aileen was surprised by herself and guessed there had to be something in Neverland’s air that kept her upright and forward-moving.

The ground beneath them began to pitch upward. Not long after that, the forest fell away to reveal a slim cart path and the first proofs of Hook’s most recent atrocities. To the right of the path, built on a rough wooden stand was a boy, maybe seven or eight. His flesh had been cured like drum leather, cat’s eye marbles replacing his real eyes. He wore a green tunic almost identical to what The Shadow wore. Around his neck was a sign tied off with fuzzy twine. In bold, blocky letters were the words I AM NOT PAN.

Aileen clenched her teeth tight together. “This is what he does to children?”

“After a time, yes,” Tinkerbell said.

The Shadow kept his cold eyes forward, refusing to look at the stuffed boy, almost as if he was frightened or embarrassed of the display. They carried on, winding with the path, and came to another boy, stuffed and cured and wearing a sign. I AM NOT PAN.

“Is Hook stealing boys that look the part, then killing them when they aren’t Peter Pan?” Aileen said, not losing a step.

“Something like that,” Tinkerbell said, then flew ahead, ending the conversation.

They passed a third, fourth, sixth, eighth, twelfth, twentieth, thirtieth boy on their way to the dock. One of the boys looked fresh enough that he might climb down off the stand, pull the marbles from his eye sockets, and shoot a game with other boys.

But what other boys? This was a place that didn’t follow the rules of time. It bent the rules of gravity. It defeated all sense of possibility. That recently stuffed child was doomed the moment he was brought, or at least the moment his mother failed to save him.

“You’ve brought mothers for each, haven’t you?” Aileen said.

“Yes, but shh, we’re getting close,” Tinkerbell said.

The Shadow glanced back at Aileen, a pained expression upon his face.

There were people here, the sound of drunken singing playing up from unseen mouths. The trio moved off the path, Aileen and The Shadow crouch-walking behind large rocks. Down a steep hill was the cove and the Jolly Roger, as well as two-dozen small buildings, assumedly these were the homes of the pirates.

Overhead, night was coming upon them quickly.

The Shadow tapped his sword against a rock for attention, then patted his chest, pointed to both Aileen and Tinkerbell, and finally, pointed a thumb over his shoulder.

“He wants us to follow behind him,” Tinkerbell said.

“Okay,” Aileen said, about to rise.

But Peter’s Shadow did not move, his face turned to the sky. They waited and waited, seeing nobody between them and the ship. The ship was far enough that they saw men with beards and what looked like pointed caps, but could see no faces. Night fell like a sneeze and Peter’s Shadow bolted over the stone and started down the hill. The fairy and the woman followed, Tinkerbell shining brightly far above their heads.

Aileen had to blink rapidly, trying to Etch-A-Sketch what she was seeing from her mind. Those peaked hats weren’t hats, and those beards weren’t exactly beards. The pirates of the Jolly Roger were humanoid rats. They wore the expected outfits and boots. They each had a sword, some had powder pistols.

A terrified weakness washed over Aileen and her legs turned to jelly. This was simply too much. Then one of the rats came out from the captain’s quarters that overlooked the massive deck. He put skinny fingers in his mouth and whistled.

Peter’s Shadow stopped them a moment behind a wagon loaded up with harvested grass, likely bedding for some unseen livestock. Aileen crouched behind the shadow while Tinkerbell remained high enough that she might be mistaken for a star.

“You respect him, you cower beneath him, he made you all that you are,” the rat said to the crowd, many hooting and cheering. “I present Captain James Hook!”

The door opened and a boy in loose-fitting clothing stepped out. A human boy. A boy who looked uncannily like Peter’s Shadow. One piece settled into place—hadn’t Barrie written that Peter Pan played captain of the pirates after defeating the dastardly man? What if Peter didn’t relinquish the role as was written?

Aileen wanted to scream at Tinkerbell, demand an explanation, but that would’ve put them at further disadvantage. As it stood, they had to mount the ship, look for her son, and do so without meeting their fates at the paws of giant rats. And they had to be rats. Oh god, she hated rats.

“Listen to me, my merry band of lubbers,” Peter cum Hook said, holding his right hand high, index finger bent into a hook. “Tonight we shall see if the Lost Boy my faithful servant has offered is the one true Peter Pan, or just another stuffy for the roadside.”

A squeaky hinge sounded and a steel grate was lifted from the floor. Filthy and sobbing, Maxime was dragged from below. Aileen breathed deeply through her nose, forgetting the terror she’d felt, and pushed upright. Instinct carved a path of little resistance—all eyes were on the captain and her son as Aileen waded through the greasy, stinking pirates. She began to sprint, reaching the plank onto the ship in just thirty lightning strides.

“Are you Peter Pan?” Hook said, after Maxime had been dragged up to the door of the captain’s quarters.

“No! I told you, no!” Maxime wailed.

The pain and fear in that voice further propelled Aileen. She withdrew a dagger from a back pocket as she wove through the mass of stinking, greasy rats.

“Is this true, Smee?” Hook said.

“Aye, Captain.”

“Aye? How about an eye?”

The crowd hooted and laughed. Maxime was held tightly as Hook reached up to his face. Maxime screamed and Aileen pivoted, cocking back with a dagger.

The overgrown nail of Hook’s fingertip dragged a gulley along the boy’s cheek but came away before finding his eye. A pirate had draped his body over a guardrail, a vomiting drunk.

“All right. Your eye first, then,” Hook said. He flicked his wrist after gently lifting the drunkard’s face, then shot his arm into the sky, turning to show everyone a plucked eyeball at the end of his crooked index finger. “I have to say, if he was the real—”

Aileen threw the dagger. Its uneven weight sent it spiraling to the left, though not far enough to miss entirely.

The pirates gasped in unison as a geyser of blood pumped free of Hook’s wrist, that hand playing as a hook, tumbling off the boat and landing in the water.

Peter’s scream joined Maxime’s whimpering, the pirates’ hoots and declarations and questions, and a gasping Tinkerbell. Hook stumbled holding his arm, trying to keep some of the blood inside.

The pirates settled, then stood watching, stunned by what had happened. Aileen pulled another dagger and threw, aiming for Hook’s stretched open mouth. The blade flew true, but a heartbeat before it struck, Tinkerbell’s light zoomed into view and the fairy knocked the dagger off course.

Aileen howled a non-word as she raced up the steps. She had another dagger in hand. At the top, Hook still stunned, looked at her with the wide eyes of a boy who knows he deserves a spanking, and is about to receive one. Aileen took a swing. At the same moment, Tinkerbell struck her between the shoulder blades, sending her stumbling. The knife went into Smee’s left nostril, cutting until half his snout flapped wetly at his movements.

Tinkerbell pounded into Aileen’s back once more, flattening her. “Don’t you dare hurt Peter!” she shouted.

Hook then began shouting at Tinkerbell, “My hand! The boy you brung, his mum cut off my hand! That’s not fair! Hook only loses to Pan! She’s not Pan!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Tinkerbell said, tears in her words.

“You took him?” Aileen said, her face pressed to the wooden floor, Maxime clinging to her side, his cheek weeping from a scarlet flesh gulley.

“Maybe it’s time to play something else?” Tinkerbell said. “Play how it used to be?”

“But I’m not done playing pirate!” Hook stamped his feet as his words entered octaves better known to bats.

A murmur rose from the crowd below as Peter’s Shadow stepped forward, his sword in hand.

“What’s he doing here, Tink?” Hook said, stamping his feet once more, as if his birthday party was ruined by the appearance of the class loser.

“He wants you to play Peter Pan games! Everything can go back, let me put everything back.”

“Never!” a feminine voice cried from the doorway of the Captain’s quarters. “I’m queen of the pirates and—”

Peter’s Shadow leapt at the girl in the huge billowy dress and goofy powder wig. His sword pierced the girl’s chest, silencing her demand. She made a pouty face before realization hit fully and she dropped to her butt, bending whatever undercarriage had kept the dress’ shape. The rats stood stunned.

“Wendy?” Hook said.

“See, she’s gone! We can be together again! Tinkerbell and Pan!”

Tinkerbell rose as she said this, giving Aileen ample time to grab for her final dagger. She shook off her son’s grip as she pulled herself sideways. She brought the dagger down, slamming it into Hook’s boot.

“Hey!” Hook shouted.

He was wearing boots four or five sizes too big; the dagger did no damage aside from sending Hook off balance. He tumbled backward, his foot sliding free. His back smashed heavily into the railing, cracking it. He came to a stop, leaned over the side of the ship.

All went silent as a tick-tock, tick-tock thundered louder and louder. Hook’s hand in the water, a crocodile had smelled the blood.

“Tink!” Hook shouted, now just a boy no longer interested in a selfish, sadistic game.

The crocodile leapt, most of its thirty feet stretching well above the surf. Tinkerbell bolted into the croc’s neck, as if attempting to close the beast’s mouth before it could latch onto Hook. It had little effect. The crocodile snapped Hook by the head and snatched him from the boat before dropping below the surf. Aileen crawled to the edge. Peter’s Shadow stepped up and stood above her. The pirates all hurried to see. Bubbles arose through the great swirling aftershock of the beast’s re-entry. The water blackened then.

Aileen felt Maxime’s hands and scooted back to him, clutching him tightly.

“Murderer!” Tinkerbell said as she buzzed up from the water.

She charged at Aileen’s face. The woman had no chance to protect herself with Maxime draped over her. She winced and tried to duck, but it proved unnecessary.

Peter’s Shadow, a being who had survived on the hunting and catching of never birds, plucked the fairy from her warpath by the wings, and in a single swift move, bit off Tinkerbell’s head, neck, and abdomen.

When the contact didn’t come, Aileen looked up at Peter’s Shadow, sparkling gold blood running down his chin. There was not a moment to consider what this meant as a mammoth sound rocked the boat, shattering all the windows and glass eyes onboard. An oblong shape rose and floated twenty feet above the ship’s crow’s nest. It was pale pink, about the size of a softball. All eyes were on it as it began to spin. Tendrils of black smoke rose from the water, from the ground, from the air in every direction. The pirates fell and began to writhe on the deck, smoke oozing from their mouths and ears. They then began to change shape, morphing back into human men. The pink shape became clearer in definition as it dragged in the darkness of Neverland.

Peter Pan’s heart.

It spun faster and faster, sucking up all the blackness that had dwelled in the unmothered boy’s soul. When it finally stopped, it dropped like a stone, back into the deep, deep water of Pirates Bay.

 

13

The pirates got drunk and attempted to include Aileen, Maxime, and Peter’s Shadow in the celebration. Maxime had become like a whimpering growth, clinging to his mother, while Aileen reeled, trying to figure out just how they’d get home. The original story came to her. Peter’s Shadow still held half the fairy in his hand as he smiled and swayed to the drunken music.

“You’ve been to…Earth. You were there when Peter met Wendy and her brothers, right?” Aileen said to the shadow. He nodded. “Can you take us back?”

He frowned, as if thinking. He then looked at his hand and the half-devoured fairy. Gently, using the tips of his fingers, he withdrew the tiny pouches Tinkerbell wore upon her hips. He looked in the first two, shook his head at each, but nodded at the third. He then gave Aileen raised eyebrows.

And now for happy thoughts.

This time, she wouldn’t need a blindfold, and the harmless fun of getting stoned never came to mind. Maxime was alive. He was alive. He was alive. He was alive!

“Honey, get on my back and wrap your legs around me. Keep your eyes closed and don’t open them for any reason. Got it?”

“Okay,” he said, then did as told.

Aileen nodded to Peter’s Shadow and the shadow nodded back. He shook a small helping of golden dust onto Aileen and Maxime while she internally chanted, “Maxime’s alive. Maxime’s alive.” Peter’s Shadow dusted himself, then took Aileen’s hand.

Her guts lurched as she rose. Maxime whined against her back.

“Hold tight and keep your eyes closed,” she said into the wind rushing against her face as Peter’s Shadow pulled them away from Neverland. Aileen also closed her eyes against the biting air, and within minutes, she felt the shift. Below her, it was night, the street lit up by seemingly endless rows of lights between massive, white townhouses.

They came down heavily on the street. Aileen landing doubly hard on her tailbone with the weight of her son on her back. Peter’s Shadow saluted her once, then shot into the sky.

“Eh, where’d you come from?” said a man, stepping backward while turning, hands on his penis, a stream of piss playing out before him.

“We need a hospital,” Aileen said, then added, “Is this England?”

“Course, ya daft cunt.”

The man continued backward stepping, stumbling, then tripping over his feet and slamming against a Fiat. The car’s alarm began to cry and the last of the man’s urine pattered onto his jeans. The door of 31 Kensington Park Gardens, London, England opened, and a middle-aged man stepped outside.

“Help us!” Aileen shouted to him.

The man killed the alarm to his car as he rushed to her side.

Aileen and Maxime Ansell had been gone a week by the time they reached the hospital. It took another week to get them home without their passports or money. Aileen fielded most of the early questions, stating that she’d found a piece of paper with an address on her kitchen floor and followed it, only to find the men who’d taken her son. She said they wore ski masks and spoke in an accent she couldn’t define, that they’d locked she and her son in a shipping container for several days. On the night they were discovered, she claimed that she and Maxime broke free of a moving van and ran until bumping into the drunkard. Nobody much believed it, but once Maxime was well enough to corroborate, there were no more arguments.

At the library, she painted over the Peter Pan scene with a forest full of happy and cartoony animals. No back story. No possibility of the impossible coming true. No hint of her son’s visage. For many months, she and Maxime played a game of pretend, telling each other the kidnapping story so often that they almost believed it. Though, at night she dreamed Neverland. She dreamed of flying, of giant rats, of Peter Pan.

XX