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

Then I’m at the arcade where I had my twelfth birthday party, firing a plastic gun. Bodies bursting, blood-filled balloons.

Jacob where are you

Then school. Teacher’s writing on the board, but the letters don’t make sense. Then everyone’s on their feet, hurrying outside. Something’s wrong. A loud noise rising and falling. Everyone standing still, heads craned to the sky.

Air raid.

Jacob Jacob where are you

Hand on my shoulder. It’s an old man. A man without eyes. Come to steal mine. Not a man—a thing—a monster.

Running now. Chasing my old dog. Years ago she’d broken away from me, run off with her leash still attached and got it wrapped around a branch while trying to tree a squirrel. Strangled herself. We spent two weeks wandering the neighborhood calling her name. Found her after three. Old Snuffles.

The siren deafening now. I run and a car pulls alongside and picks me up. My parents are inside, in formal wear. They won’t look at me. The doors lock. We’re driving and it’s stifling hot outside, but the heater is on and the windows are up, and the radio is loud but tuned to the garble between stations.

Mom where are we going

She doesn’t answer.

Dad why are we stopping here

Then we’re out, walking, and I can breathe again. Pretty green place. Smell of fresh-cut grass. People in black, gathered around a hole in the ground.

A coffin open on a dais. I peer inside. It’s empty but for an oily stain slowly spreading across the bottom. Blacking the white satin. Quick, close the lid! Black tar bubbles out from the cracks and grooves and drips down into the grass and sinks into the earth.

Jacob where are you say something

The headstone reads: ABRAHAM EZRA PORTMAN. And I’m tumbling into his open grave, darkness spinning up to swallow me, and I keep falling and it’s bottomless, and then I’m somewhere underground, alone and wandering through a thousand interconnecting tunnels, and I’m wandering and it’s cold, so cold I’m afraid my skin will freeze and my bones will splinter, and everywhere there are yellow eyes watching me from the dark.

I follow his voice. Yakob, come here. Don’t be afraid.

The tunnel angles upward and there’s light at the end, and standing at its mouth, calmly reading a book, is a young man. And he looks just like me, or almost like me, and maybe he is me, I think, but then he speaks, and it’s my grandfather’s voice. I have something to show you.