Twice the hollow was close enough for its tongues to lash my back, and twice, just as I was certain one was about to lasso my neck and squeeze until my head popped, it stumbled and fell back. The only reason I made it to the cairn with my head still attached was that I knew exactly where to put my feet; thanks to Emma, I could run that route on a moonless night in half a hurricane.
Clambering onto the cairn-mound, I tore around to the stone entrance and dove in. It was black as tar inside but it didn’t matter—I only had to reach the chamber to be safe. I scrambled on my hands and knees, because even standing would’ve cost time I didn’t have to waste, and I was halfway to the end and feeling cautiously optimistic about my chances for survival when suddenly I could crawl no more. One of the tongues had caught my ankle.
The hollow had used two of its tongues to grapple onto the capstones around the tunnel’s mouth as leverage against the mud, and it covered the entrance with its body like a lid on a jar. The third tongue was reeling me toward it, I was a fish on a hook.
I scrabbled at the ground, but it was all gravel and my fingers slid right through. I flipped onto my back and clawed at the stones with my free hand, but I was sliding too quickly. I tried hacking at the tongue with my shears, but it was too sinewy and tough, a rope of undulating muscle, and my shears too dull. So I squeezed my eyes shut, because I didn’t want its gaping jaws to be the last thing I’d ever see, and gripped the shears in front of me with both hands. Time seemed to stretch out, like they say it does in car crashes and train accidents and free-falls from airplanes, and the next thing I felt was a bone-jarring collision as I slammed into the hollow.
All the breath rushed out of me and I heard it scream. We flew out of the tunnel together and rolled down the cairn mound into the bog, and when I opened my eyes again, I saw my shears buried to the hilt in the beast’s eye sockets. It howled like ten pigs being gelded, rolling and thrashing in the rain-swollen mud, weeping a black river of itself, viscous fluid pumping over the blades’ rusted handle.
I could feel it dying, the life draining out of it, its tongue loosening around my ankle. I could feel the difference in me, too, the panicky clutch in my stomach slowly coming undone. Finally, the creature stiffened and sank from view, slime closing over its head, a slick of dark blood the only sign it had ever been there.
I could feel the bog sucking me down with it. The more I struggled, the more it seemed to want me. What a strange find the two of us would make a thousand years from now, I thought, preserved together in the peat.
I tried to paddle toward solid ground but succeeded only in pushing myself deeper. The muck seemed to climb me, rising up my arms, my chest, collaring my throat like a noose.
I screamed for help—and miraculously, help came, in the form of what I thought at first was a firefly, flashing as it flew toward me. Then I heard Emma call out, and I answered.
A tree branch landed in the water. I grabbed it and Emma pulled, and when I finally came out of the bog I was shaking too hard to stand. Emma sank down beside me and I fell into her arms.
I killed it, I thought. I really killed it. All the time I’d spent being afraid, I never dreamed I could actually kill one!
It made me feel powerful. Now I could defend myself. I knew I’d never be as strong as my grandfather, but I wasn’t a gutless weakling, either. I could kill them.
I tested out the words. “It’s dead. I killed it.”
I laughed. Emma hugged me, pressing her cheek against mine. “I know he would’ve been proud of you,” she said.
We kissed, and it was gentle and nice, rain dripping from our noses and running warm into our just-open mouths. Too soon she broke away and whispered, “What you said before—did you mean it?”
“I’ll stay,” I said. “If Miss Peregrine will let me.”
“She will. I’ll make certain of it.”
“Before we worry about that, we’d better find my psychiatrist and take away his gun.”
“Right,” she said, her expression hardening. “No time to waste, then.”
* * *
We left the rain behind and emerged into a landscape of smoke and noise. The loop hadn’t yet reset, and the bog was pocked with bomb holes, the sky buzzing with planes, walls of orange flame marching against the distant tree line. I was about to suggest we wait until today became yesterday and all this disappeared before trying to cross to the house when a set of brawny arms clapped around me.
“You’re alive!” Bronwyn cried. Enoch and Hugh were with her, and when she pulled away they moved in to shake my hand and look me over.
“I’m sorry I called you a traitor,” Enoch said. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“Me, too,” I replied.
“All in one piece?” Hugh asked, looking me over.
“Two arms and two legs,” I said, kicking out my limbs to demonstrate their wholeness. “And you won’t have to worry about that hollow anymore. We killed it.”
“Oh, stuff the modesty!” Emma said proudly. “You killed it.”
“That’s brilliant,” Hugh said, but neither he nor the other two could muster a smile.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Wait. Why aren’t you three at the house? Where’s Miss Peregrine?”
“She’s gone,” said Bronwyn, her lip trembling. “Miss Avocet, too. He took them.”
“Oh God,” said Emma. We were too late.
“He come in with a gun,” Hugh said, studying the dirt. “Tried to take Claire hostage, but she chomped him with her backmouth, so he grabbed me instead. I tried to fight, but he knocked me upside the skull with his gun.” He touched the back of his ear and his fingers came away spotted with blood. “Locked everyone in the basement and said if Headmistress and Miss Avocet didn’t change into birds he’d put an extra hole in my head. So they did, and he stuffed ’em both into a cage.”
“He had a cage?” Emma said.
Hugh nodded. “Little one, too, so they didn’t have room to do nothing, like change back or fly off. I reckoned I was good as shot, but then he pushed me down the basement with the others and run off with the birds.”
“That’s how we found ’em when we come in,” Enoch said bitterly. “Hiding down there like a lot of cowards.”
“We wasn’t hiding!” Hugh cried. “He locked us in! He would’ve shot us!”
“Forget that,” snapped Emma. “Where’d he run off to? Why didn’t you go after him?!”
“We don’t know where he went,” said Bronwyn. “We was hoping you’d seen him.”
“No, we haven’t seen him!” Emma said, kicking a cairn stone in frustration.
Hugh drew something out of his shirt. It was a little photograph. “He stuffed this in my pocket before he went. Said if we tried to come after him, this is what would happen.”
Bronwyn snatched the photo from Hugh. “Oh,” she gasped. “Is that Miss Raven?”