This is one of those stories that came to me fully-formed. Characters, plot… only the ending had a twist in it even I hadn’t anticipated. But the original idea was simple: what if Peter Pan was really a serial killer? And what if the Lost Boys were his victims?
This is a bit of a strange one, but I hope you guys enjoy <3
The Lost Boys are whispering again.
A harsh knock on his temple sends them scuttling back into the shadowy corners of his mind. And stay there. But he knows they will come crawling back the moment he lets his guard down. They always do.
A shaky grin splits his cheeks and the dry, scabby sores on his lips bloom with blood. His tongue darts out to taste it. Sweet as saltwater. Or is it the other way around? The bloody beads he doesn’t catch drip down, down, down to hang off the blades of grass that hide his bare feet, soft and wet between his toes.
Focus.
Bright, warm light pools against the windowsill like honey. Gauzy curtains, the white of bones, flutter in the summer night’s breeze. Spills of sweet laughter and soft conversation trickle through, ruffling his hair. He inches closer to the window, wanting to press his nose to the glass and soak in the sounds as they brush against his skin… but just then, a pale, graceful hand reaches out to slide the window shut. He ducks, just in time. He feels the shadow of the fingers caress his cheek. Then, the sound is sliced off, as the window slams shut.
The hook grows heavy, dragging him to the ground, leaden with fury, with rejection…
Focus.
“Fucking Lost Boys,” he mutters, though he can’t tell if that voice belonged to them or to himself. It’s good advice too, though he doesn’t care to admit it. No, the part of his soul that lives inside the furious metal of the hook wants to catch that pale, delicate hand and slice it off at the bone, just as it sliced him off from the warmth, the laughter, the feeling of home…
(You haven’t had a home in a long, long time, have you?)
He stifles a growl, deep in his throat. Shoves it down as it squirms against his fingers. Leave me alone. Dead men tell no tales, isn’t that right?
But they weren’t dead, those pesky Lost Boys, were they? No, they lived in the hollow shadows of his skull, where they’d built a little hideout, a little island all for themselves. A little place they called Neverland. A place where they never aged and they never shut their mouths.
“Should’ve cut their tongues out before I killed them,” he mutters, and then wonders if he should do it this time. If he catches her, that is.
His gaze jumps back to the window. The window that the owner of that graceful hand shut, as though just to keep him out. A sigh strangles itself through his nose. He can’t very well wait outside her bedroom window, can he? He’ll have to use the back door, then. Wait until the owner of the hand – Mrs. Darling, I presume? – climbs the stairwell, children in tow, to tuck them into bed and read them a tale in her soft-as-spun-sugar voice. Mr. Darling – Mrs. Darling, are you sure you know where your husband is? – won’t be a problem. Well, not for him, he amends, though he can’t say the same for the soft, sugary wife.
“Come on, Lost Boys,” he mutters. “We’re going on an adventure.”
The dewy grass crushes below the soles of his feet, cold as moonlight, despite the balmy summer night. He resists the urge to drag the heavy hook against the wall, brick by brick; a scar, a memento. Something to remember me by. It’s weighing on him tonight, the hook. It’s been too long, he knows that, but what was he supposed to do?
(Fixated on her, ain’t ya?)
He trips to a stop. Turns to the brick wall.
Smashes his head into the bricks.
The wash of pain is instant; cold, dizzying. Grounding. The whispering voices flee. They’ll be gone for a while now. He refuses to think about what they’d said – what they’d accused him of – as he presses his non-hook hand to his forehead and winces. It comes back slick with blood. He mutters a laugh, and swipes at the blood that runs down his temples and stings his eyes. Fuck. It’ll leave traces.
More traces than you’ve already left, numbskull?
That voice is his. Damn him.
The grass sways in his vision – is it his imagination or is the dew glossier than before? He blinks, and the garden fractures into a million tiny shards of petal and root and stem, and then reforms, with dizzying clarity. All better. He blinks once, twice, and then he traces the wall until he reaches the back door of the Darling estate, which has been left wide open with only a screen door to protect against any intruders. And the dog, he supposes, narrowing his eyes at the beast.
Its heavy eyes blink at him. It shifts onto its front paws, alert now.
“Here, beastie.”
The dog utters a low growl. He matches it with his own.
The world shatters and reforms again, an arc of wet crimson. When he blinks, the dog is lying on its side in the wet grass. Its breaths come slow, gurgling. Red blossoms across its white fur. Its eyes flutter. A trick of the breeze… but that isn’t right, is it? Still, it’s the beast’s last movement before its chest stops heaving and its head drops to the grass. Defeated.
His hook is slimy with blood. He grimaces, wipes it against the poor beast’s muzzle.
Let them think what they will. Perhaps it attacked another beast, how’s that for a theory? Besides, soon they’ll have bigger problems.
His steps are quiet as dust as he creeps to the back door and slides it open. A bead of blood slips down his cheeks, splats to the floor. You can’t do it all, Pete. Who said that one? he wonders, but then he notices the hook. Its weathered, leaden body has lightened; he trails a finger across its rusting contours and wonders if it is sickly pleased. It must be. He thinks of the body of the dog, lying in the deep, damp grass behind him, and wonders if its throaty growl will join the chorus of the Lost Boys inside his head. They could use a guard dog in Neverland.
As though summoned, the whispers return.
(Murderer. Depraved. Rotten on the inside)
You understand how it feels now, Pete, to leave a trail of bodies behind you, everywhere you go?
He startles; his skin trembles and his palms dampen. Who said that?
You thought dead men tell no tales? Let me tell you something, Pete, a single dead man has more tales to tell than all the living combined.
His hand grips the hook, tight enough to open a gash in his palm. The blood is bright against the metal, but it will join the maroon rust soon enough. Who the fuck said that?
You don’t remember me? The voice is thin, whispery, distinctly male and distinctly familiar. You killed me. Me, the true owner of the hook you call yours.
His hand trembles like a moth in a strong breeze. His cheeks feel cold. “I killed you. You’re gone now. Dust. Bones. What you deserve, abductor.”
But the voice has only grown stronger the longer he has held the hook, the more blood the metal has drank. Let go, then. But, for a moment, when he tries to unclasp his hand from the greedy mouth of the hook, it won’t let him go. Sweat dampens his temples, joins the blood there. He strains and strains and strains, and the hook finally lets go, spitting him out. His hand smacks into the cupboard next to him. When he stares at it, in the dimness of the unused hallway, it’s wet with blood.
“George? Is that you?”
He freezes. Look what you made me do. He wasn’t planning on killing beautiful, honey-tongued Mrs. Darling, though the thought flits through his mind and the treacherous hook snatches towards the voice, eager. But he holds it back and, instead, slinks through a door left ajar. On the other side, damp hair pressed to the wood, he listens to the gentle brush of Mrs. Darling’s slippered feet against the floorboards.
(Soft as spun sugar, soft as spun sugar)
Oh good, the Lost Boys are singing now.
He’s not soft. He will kill the daughter. Little Wendy Darling, who is sleeping just above him. Just a ceiling and a floor away, just a stairwell and a side of a door, just…
But what is he waiting for?
The journey to her room is as easy as slipping through light and sugar. And it feels like it, too. All soft, shaded lamps and the scent of something baking that brings a sharp, cold wash of hatred. He slips up the stairwell, bare feet quiet against the wood, and then he is standing before her door, and his heart is in his throat, and his bloody hand is clenched tightly in excitement and his thoughts have gone suddenly, blissfully silent.
The hook spurs him on, cracking open the door.
And then he is somewhere else, in a different room altogether, and the man opening the door isn’t him, it’s the other one, the voice in his head.
His throat clenches. His skin tightens. He’s back in that room, that room, that room, the one with the graying, grimy walls, and the metal bucket in the corner, and the shuttered windows. The one with the thick, snaking chains tied around his ankles, his wrists, just long enough to reach the bucket and nothing else. Certainly not the door through which he enters, that hook gleaming darkly in the sparse light of the shattered bulb.
The man grins, widely, blackened teeth like gaps of shadow against fleshy lips.
And then all he knows is pain and flickering light and rage. Rage below the tears that leak from his eyes, the snot that spouts from his nostrils, the blood that bursts from new wounds and cakes on old ones.
The day he plunges that hook into the man’s throat, tears it open like paper and watches the blood flow like red ink, is the happiest day of his entire, miserable life.
Curse you, Pete!
He gasps and the light shifts, from broken to bright and glistening, and there is a shadow draped on the floor before him but it isn’t the man at all, it’s Wendy.
The name tumbles out in a rush of whispers.
(Wendy Darling)
The girl standing before him is half a head shorter than him, and pale as snow, except for the two spots in her cheeks, the red of poisoned apples. Her eyes glisten in the liquid lamplight. Angry, indignant. But, below that, frightened. A primal, animal fear.
He grins. Slowly, lips peeling away from teeth.
(Beautiful, ain’t she? In love, ain’t ya?)
Shut up!
He isn’t in love. He can’t wait to kill her. Just give me the chance, open those rosebud lips and scream.
But Wendy doesn’t scream. Instead, she pries the door open wider and sweeps her arm, a short, impatient gesture.
“Well? You’ve already let yourself into my house and my room, why not come in?”
His smile slips.
Wendy arches a brow. “What, have I frightened you with my manners? I should be calling my parents and the police right about now.”
Wordless, the hook craning its hungry mouth towards the pale skin and apple-cheeks, he steps inside the room. The door clicks shut behind him. He flinches. A flicker, a bend of light – warm and golden to sour and jagged – and the door shutting is heavy and locked with a dozen clasps, closing on his broken, bleeding body and his muffled, blood-soaked tears.
The Lost Boys are laughing in Neverland.
He can’t bring himself to silence them, as Wendy’s bright, blue-fire gaze latches onto his.
“Who are you? Why are you bleeding?”
(Answer her. Answer her you coward, you killed us and you can’t even talk to her? What, has she scared you?)
“I don’t have to tell you that,” he rasps, and his voice sounds unused, old as the rust on the hook.
“No? Then tell me what you want from me. I deserve that, at least, don’t I?”
Her words are hot and hard as burnt sugar.
The hook strains towards her. The voices rustle in his head. Neverland has awakened to watch his downfall, oh, it can’t wait. And the other voice, the one that haunts his nightmares, his hallucinations, is chuckling, hard and sharp as a blade. Oh, Pete, should’ve listened to me when I told you, it ain’t easy to kill someone.
I’ve killed before and I’ll kill again.
Not like this you haven’t. Not someone who’s willing to stand up to you. Only a coward kills his weakest victims, the ones that sob and blubber in a corner and tremble like a leaf at the sight of a knife.
That’s what you did to me, you fucking hypocrite.
So I’m a hypocrite. So what? You don’t have the balls, and that’s all that matters right now.
He hefts the hook. His vision fractures. But, when he blinks again, there is no spurt of wet, red blood, no muffled thud of skin and bones hitting the floor. And Wendy is still watching him, thin arms crossed over girlish body, eyes hard.
“Fine. I’ll call my parents then,” she says, taking a half-step towards the door.
“No,” he growls, and he finally moves.
The hook almost drags him to her in its bloodlust. His heels dig into the carpet to keep himself upright, as his non-hook hand wraps around her wrist. She opens her mouth, to scream, maybe, but he shoves her, hard, and she collapses against the wall. A small gash opens at her hairline; blood trickles down her temple and cheek, like sweet, sweet nectar. She raises a wavering hand to it, and her eyes widen with bright, blue-fire fear.
He huffs a strangled sound that isn’t a laugh or a sob, but something caught in the middle. The Lost Boys cram against the shore of Neverland, watching the fight with breath locked in their chests, more awake than they’ve been since he abducted and killed each of them in turn, watching the life fade from their youthful eyes and feeling the hot blood spray across his cheeks and lips.
Who’s really the hypocrite, huh, Pete? You killed me to stop me, but you’ve just become another version of me. Another victim of that fucking hook.
He stutters to a halt, mid-step. The room flashes – grimy, blood-caked walls and the thick copper scent of stale blood… when he is standing in the dark, broken room again, he is the one looming in the doorway while another kid, a boy, always, cowers in the grasp of the cold, merciless chains and begs him to stop with watery, blood-streaked eyes and bitten lips.
Something thuds against his neck. He wakes from the memory gasping for air that has fled from his cold, cold chest, and his hands fly to claw at his throat, and he can’t breathe, dammit, she hit him…
Something flickers off. Inside him or outside him, he can’t tell, but the sudden disappearance staggers him. He falls to the floor on bent legs, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. The room is glossy, blurring together like the…
The voices, they’re gone, it’s so quiet, so fucking quiet, oh my god–
His eyes fly open.
The hook. It’s gone.
Where it hung, he sees only the puckered, smooth flesh cut off at the wrist. He stares at it. Stares and stares. Everything is so quiet.
“There. Not so tough without your hook.”
His gaze flashes to Wendy, who stands, holding the hook in both, small hands. Her eyes are fastened to it and, though she spoke to him, it’s absent-minded, her voice faraway. His heart thuds against his ribs. The hook will ensnare her, too, he realizes. The thought seems to come from that same faraway place as her voice. Neverland, maybe.
He snaps back to himself.
“Give it back.”
But, when Wendy raises her eyes to him, he sees only blood and steel. “No. I feel safer having it on me. I think you can understand that.”
He lunges. But his legs are numb and without a master. Bent as broken bone below him.
The hook shifts towards him. Eager, a beast let loose from its leash.
Stop, he tries to say, please, and then he is back in that hollow, broken room again and the tears are flooding from his eyes and his throat is soggy and thick with them and the pain won’t stop, the man won’t stop!
He thinks it has taken a limb at first. Something is missing, he understands that much, and he braces himself for blood and the thin, glassy shriek of agony. But, when he looks down, his limbs are intact. He can’t figure out what the hook has taken.
“So, a shadow for a soul? I never would have guessed that’s how it works.”
From Wendy’s fingers – pale and graceful as Mrs. Darling’s hand at the window – hangs a shadow. Not quite black, but the gray of those grimy walls, the gray of the trapped spirits that once lingered and whispered in his head. The gray of the sand of Neverland’s shores, and the waters that surround it.
The gray of memory. Of a soul.
Wendy’s gaze is locked on the hook, but her words are for him.
“Of course, you’re carrying many more souls than that, aren’t you? But they’re trapped in this hook. I wish I knew how to free them.”
His lips are stitched shut. He feels light, too light, like he could float. Dizziness crashes into him, cold as lake water, and he collapses forward, retching. She couldn’t have really stolen his soul, could she have? That’s impossible. But the hook should have been impossible, too, and he knows the souls trapped in it are as real as he is. More, maybe.
“I’ll break it,” Wendy is deciding, when he swims back through the gray waters of the mind to the shore that is reality. “Or burn it, maybe. That’s what they do in films.”
“No,” he says, struggling to form the word – spittle clings to his lips; his teeth feel heavy in his mouth. “That’ll destroy the spirits, too.”
“How do you know? What if you’re just lying because you want your soul back?”
He grits his too-heavy teeth. They slip and sink into his lip. He holds back a groan and, instead, says, “Trust me, I should have been one of those spirits. But I stole the hook instead, and look what it made me. A killer. As bad as him.”
“As who?” Wendy asks, but he’s remembering the glassy shrieks of the boys he killed, the way they pierced through his temples, sliced through his skin. The guilt alone should have killed him, but he hadn’t felt it with the hook on – worse, he had reveled in it. Just like the man before him. Captain Hook. His lips writhe into a watery smile.
“Then how?” Wendy is crouching beside him now, thin lines of worry stitched into her forehead. Her eyes have softened to a glistening blue. I don’t deserve that. “How do I help them? How do I help you?”
His lip is burning, and that weightlessness has returned, worse than ever. He feels unreal, as light as a hallucination. A ghost.
“How?”
“You have to kill– you have to kill me,” he whispers. “With the hook. But don’t let the hook tempt you. You can’t use it once you kill me. You have to bury me with it. That way, all of us will be saved.”
He thinks she can see the lie swimming in his eyes, floating in his words. Not quite all of them. Not him. But he made his choice, his mistake. He would pay for taking the hook, for becoming a monster. The new Captain Hook, enemy of the Lost Boys. His own enemy, once.
The hook drops to the floor with a heavy clang. Won’t her parents hear? he thinks, distracted, and then he realizes that Wendy is crying, those blue eyes softening into rippling pools.
“I can’t kill you. I can’t kill anyone.”
He chokes on a laugh. “Of course you can, Wendy, darling. I said the same thing as you once, and guess what I went and did?”
“It wasn’t you, it was the hook…”
“I chose the hook. I had the same chance as you and I killed him. The man who took me from my family. I killed him and then I went right on killing. I became him. Don’t make that mistake.”
Wendy takes his hand in her own soft, warm one, and he flinches. Sharp. She drops it, quickly, but he has already remembered something else, something further back than Captain Hook and his agonies in the room full of blood and broken light, something that made him hate the bright, warm lamps and the spiraling scent of sugar in the Darlings’ living room. A touch, soft as melted butter, sweet and gentle as a breeze. His mother? But then, she is gone and, with her, the remaining strength flees him.
He collapses in a broken heap.
“Are you alright?”
Wendy hovers above him. The apples in her cheeks are gone, he notices. Pity.
“It must be your soul,” Wendy says.
He quiets her with a slurred whisper. “You can do it, Wendy, darling. Just one slash of the hook. Do it to my soul, if you can’t do it to a living body. And all the Lost Boys will be found.” He chuckles, the sound like dry leaves scuttling across the pavement. “Come, Wendy, do it for me.”
He smiles… or hopes he does. I seem to have lost control of my lips, terribly sorry, darling.
Wendy is nodding, eyes watery as twin puddles. She brings the hook up and it glitters, dark as fog in the night.
And then, it arcs down, and he drifts off to sleep.
The hook calls to her in the voices of thousands. A tapestry of whispers, stitching itself into her mind.
But Wendy looks at the boy’s shadow and can not heed the whispers.
His body dissolved into shimmering dust when the hook pierced his shadow. His voice calls to her, too, now. She tries to ignore it as she rolls the shadow into a neat, gray bundle, with the hook trapped in its center. Pinning it.
The moment the hook disappears, the voices dissolve as well.
Only much later, when the shadow and the hidden hook are buried deep down and faraway, does Wendy try to conjure up the boy’s face again. She finds that she can’t. It has dissolved into shadow. And, as the days pass, so do the whispers that dart in through the window occasionally, or find her when she is on the edge of sleep. Only the hook seems to have embedded itself in her mind. She can not forget it, though she tries as hard as she can. Something in it speaks to her – not in the whispers, of course, which have been buried with it, but in a voiceless call.
And one night, when she tries to remember what has kept her from answering the hook’s summons, she finds that she can’t.
Thought I would experiment with a Buy Me A Coffee link, but I would never expect or want anyone to spend money that they don’t feel they can afford. Just an option for anyone who feels the story deserved it or truly wants to support. Reading the story is all the support I really hope for, though. Hope you guys enjoyed!
This was a cool retelling of the story. I enjoyed the read. Biggest criticism would be that the dialog near the end felt off. maybe too explainy. It felt jarring for Wendy to stand up to him. at least time. I think it would of been cool if initially it was more physical. him trying to give hook what it wants but Wendy able to cleverly slip free and turn the tables.
other than my own personal preference not really anything else i could criticize one. well structured, kept me in suspense of what was gonna happen and ended kinda like a camp fire story might. gives it that lingering vibe.
great job! sorry it took so long to read this.
A clever retelling of a classic story that makes a very enjoyable read, congratulations!