Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

“Then why haven’t I ever heard about this?” said Enoch.

“Because it was extremely controversial and the results were immediately covered up, so no one would attempt to replicate them. In any event, it turns out that you can bring a normal into a loop, but they have to be forced through, and only someone with an ymbryne’s power can do it. But because normals do not have a second soul, they cannot handle a time loop’s inherent paradoxes, and their brains turn to mush. They become drooling, catatonic vegetables from the moment they enter. Not unlike these poor people before us.”

There was a moment of quiet while Millard’s words registered. Then Emma’s hands went to her mouth and she said quietly, “Oh, hell. He’s right.”

“Well, then,” said the clown. “In that case, things are even worse than we thought.”

I felt the air go out of the room.

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Horace.

“He said the monsters stole their souls!” Olive shouted, and then she ran crying to Bronwyn and buried her face in her coat.

“These peculiars didn’t lose their abilities,” said Millard. “They were stolen from them—extracted, along with their souls, which were then fed to hollowgast. This allowed the hollows to evolve sufficiently to enter loops, a development which enabled their recent assault on peculiardom—and netted the wights even more kidnapped peculiars whose souls they could extract, with which they evolved still more hollows, and so on, in a vicious cycle.”

“Then it isn’t just the ymbrynes they want,” said Emma. “It’s us, too—and our souls.”

Hugh stood at the foot of the whispering man’s bed, his last bee buzzing angrily around him. “All the peculiar children they kidnapped over the years … this is what they were doing to them? I figured they just became hollowgast food. But this … this is leagues more evil.”

“Who’s to say they don’t mean to extract the ymbrynes’ souls, too?” said Enoch.

That sent a special chill through us. The clown turned to Horace and said, “How’s your best-case scenario looking now, fella?”

“Don’t tease me,” Horace replied. “I bite.”

“Everyone out!” ordered the nurse. “Souls or no souls, these people are ill. This is no place to bicker.”

We filed sullenly into the hall.

“All right, you’ve given us the horror show,” Emma said to the clown and the folding man, “and we are duly horrified. Now tell us what you want.”

“Simple,” said the folding man. “We want you to stay and fight with us.”