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

by Ransom Riggs

  Enoch was carrying a small bag of worm-packed grave dirt, which the soldier opened, sniffed, and dropped in disgust. In my pocket he found my dead cell phone. Emma saw it clatter to the floor and looked at me strangely, wondering why I still had it. Horace lay unmoving on the floor, either knocked out or playing possum. Then it was Emma’s turn, but she wasn’t having it. When the soldier came toward her, she snarled, “Lay a hand on me and I’ll burn it off!”

  “Please, hold your fire!” he said, and broke out laughing. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

  “I’m not joking,” Emma said, and she took her hands out from behind her back. They were glowing red, and even from three feet away I could feel the heat they gave off.

  The soldier jumped out of her reach. “Hot touch and a temper to match!” he said. “I like that in a woman. But burn me and Clark there’ll spackle the wall with your brainy bits.”

  The soldier he’d indicated pressed the barrel of his rifle to Emma’s head. Emma squeezed her eyes shut, her chest rising and falling fast. Then she lowered her hands and folded them behind her back. She was positively vibrating with anger.

  So was I.

  “Careful, now,” the soldier warned her. “No sudden moves.”

  My fists clenched as I watched him slide his hands up and down her legs, then run his fingers under the neckline of her dress, all with unnecessary slowness and a leering grin. I’d never felt so powerless in all my life, not even when we were trapped in that animal cage.

  “She doesn’t have anything!” I shouted. “Leave her alone!”

  I was ignored.

  “I like this one,” the soldier said to Mr. White. “I think we should keep her awhile. For … science.”

  Mr. White grimaced. “You are a disgusting specimen, corporal.

  But I agree with you—she is fascinating. I’ve heard about you, you know,” he said to Emma. “I’d give anything to do what you can do. If only we could bottle those hands of yours …”

  Mr. White smiled weirdly before turning back to the soldier.

  “Finish up,” he snapped, “we don’t have all day.”

  “With pleasure,” the soldier replied, and then he stood, dragging his hands up Emma’s torso as he rose.

  What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion. I could see that this disgusting letch was about to lean in and give Emma a kiss. I could also see that, behind her back, Emma’s hands were now lined with flame. I knew where this was going: the second his lips got near her, she was going to reach around and melt his face—even if it meant taking a bullet. She’d reached a breaking point.

  So had I.

  I tensed, ready to fight. These, I was convinced, were our last moments. But we’d live them on our own terms—and if we were going to die, by God, we’d take a few wights with us along the way.

  The soldier slid his hands around Emma’s waist. The barrel of another’s rifle dug into her forehead. She seemed to be pushing back against it, daring it to fire. Behind her back I saw her hands begin to spread, white-hot flame tracing along each of her fingers.

  Here we go—

  Then CRACK!—the report of a gun, stunning and sharp. I shut down, blacked out for a second.

  When my sight came back, Emma was still standing. Her head still intact. The rifle that had been pressed against it was pointed down now, and the soldier who’d been about to kiss her had pulled away and spun around to face the window.

  The gunshot had come from outside.

  Every nerve in my body had gone numb, tingling with adrenaline.

  “What was that?” said Mr. White, rushing to the window. I could see through the glass over his shoulder. The soldier who’d gone to intercept the train was standing outside, waist-deep in wildflowers. His back was to us, his rifle aimed at the field.

  Mr. White reached through the bars that covered the window and pushed it open. “What the hell are you shooting at?” he shouted.

  “Why are you still here?”

  The soldier didn’t move, didn’t speak. The field was alive with the whine of insects, and briefly, that’s all we could hear.

  “Corporal Brown!” bellowed Mr. White.

  The man turned slowly, unsteady on his feet. The rifle slipped from his hands and fell into the tall grass. He took a few doddering steps forward.

  Mr. White took the revolver from his holster and pointed it out the window at Brown. “Say something, damn you!”

  Brown opened his mouth and tried to speak—but where his voice should’ve been, an eerie droning noise came echoing up from his guts, mimicking the sound that was everywhere in the fields around him.

  It was the sound of bees. Hundreds, thousands of them. Next came the bees themselves: just a few at first, drifting through his parted lips. Then some power beyond his own seemed to take hold of him: his shoulders pulled back and his chest pressed forward and his jaws ratcheted wide open, and from his gaping mouth there poured forth such a dense stream of bees that they were like one solid object; a long, fat hose of insects unspooling endlessly from his throat.

  Mr. White stumbled back from the window, horrified and baffled.

  Out in the field, Brown collapsed in a cloud of stinging insects. As his body fell, another was revealed behind him.

  It was a boy.

  Hugh.

  He stood defiantly, staring through the window. The insects swung around him in a great, whirling sphere. The fields were packed with them—honeybees and hornets, wasps and yellow jackets, stinging things I couldn’t know or name—and every last one of them seemed to be at his command.

  Mr. White raised his gun and fired. Emptied his clip.

  Hugh went down, disappearing in the grass. I didn’t know whether he had fallen to the ground or dived to it. Then three other soldiers ran to the window, and while Bronwyn cried “Please, don’t kill him!” they raked the field with bullets, filling our ears with the thunder of their guns.

  Then there were bees in the room. A dozen, maybe, furious and flinging themselves at the soldiers.

  “Shut the window!” Mr. White screamed, swatting the air around him.

  A soldier slammed the window closed. They all went to work smacking the bees that had gotten in. While they were busy with that, more and more collected outside—a giant, seething blanket of them pulsing against the other side of the glass—so many that by the time Mr. White and his men had finished killing the bees inside the room, the ones outside had nearly shut out the sun.

  The soldiers clustered in the middle of the floor, backs together, rifles bristling out like porcupine quills. It was dark and hot, and the alien whine of a million manic bees reverberated through the room like something out of a nightmare.

  “Make them leave us alone!” Mr. White shouted, his voice cracking, desperate.

  As if anyone but Hugh could do that—if he was still alive.

  “I’ll make you another offer,” said Bekhir, pulling himself to his feet using the window bars, his hobbled silhouette outlined against the dark glass. “Put down your guns or I open this window.”

  Mr. White spun to face him. “Even a Gypsy wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that.”

  “You think too highly of us,” Bekhir said, sliding his fingers toward the handle.

  The soldiers raised their rifles.

  “Go ahead,” said Bekhir. “Shoot.”

  “Don’t, you’ll break the glass!” Mr. White shouted. “Grab him!”

  Two soldiers threw down their rifles and lunged at Bekhir, but not before he punched his fist through the glass.

  The entire window shattered. Bees flushed into the room. Chaos erupted—screams, gunfire, shoving—though I could hardly hear it over the roar of the insects, which seemed to fill not just my ears but every pore of my body.

  People were climbing over one another to get out. To my right I saw Bronwyn push Olive to the floor and cover her with her body. Emma shouted “Get down!” and we ducked for cover as bees tumbled over our skin, our hair. I waited to die,
for the bees to cover every exposed inch of me in stings that would shut down my nervous system.

  Someone kicked open the door. Light blasted in. A dozen boots thundered across the floorboards.

  It got quiet. I slowly uncovered my head.

  The bees were gone. So were the soldiers.

  Then, from outside, a chorus of panicked screams. I jumped up and rushed to the shattered window, where a knot of Gypsies and peculiars were already gathered, peering out.

  At first I didn’t see the soldiers at all—just a giant, swirling mass of insects, so dense it was opaque, about fifty feet down the footpath.

  The screams were coming from inside it.

  Then, one by one, the screamers fell silent. When it was all over, the cloud of bees began to spread and scatter, unveiling the bodies of Mr. White and his men. They lay clustered in the low grass, dead or nearly so.

  Twenty seconds later, their killers were gone, their monstrous hum fading as they settled back into the fields. In their wake fell a strange and bucolic calm, as if it were just another summer day, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  Emma counted the soldiers’ bodies on her fingers. “Six. That’s all of them,” she said. “It’s over.”

  I put my arms around her, shaking with gratitude and disbelief.

  “Which of you are hurt?” said Bronwyn, looking around frantically. Those last moments had been crazy—countless bees, gunfire in the dark. We checked ourselves for holes. Horace was dazed but conscious, a trickle of blood running from his temple. Bekhir’s stab wound was deep but would heal. The rest of us were shaken but unhurt—and miraculously, not a single one of us was bee-stung.

  “When you broke the window,” I said to Bekhir, “how did you know the bees wouldn’t attack us?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Luckily, your friend’s power is strong.”

  Our friend …

  Emma pulled away from me suddenly. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “Hugh!”

  In all the chaos, we’d forgotten about him. He was probably bleeding to death right now, somewhere in the tall grass. But just as we were about to tear outside and look for him, he appeared in the doorway—bedraggled and grass-stained, but smiling.

  “Hugh!” Olive cried, rushing to him. “You’re alive!”

  “I am!” he said heartily. “Are all of you?”

  “Thanks to you we are!” Bronwyn said. “Three cheers for

  Hugh!”

  “You’re our man in a pinch, Hugh!” cried Horace.

  “Nowhere am I deadlier than in a field of wildflowers,” Hugh said, enjoying the attention.

  “Sorry about all the times I made fun of your peculiarity,” said Enoch. “I suppose it’s not so useless.”

  “Additionally,” said Millard, “I’d like to compliment Hugh on his impeccable timing. Really, if you’d arrived just a few seconds later …”

  Hugh explained how he’d evaded capture at the depot by slipping down between the train and the platform—just like I’d thought.

  He’d sent one of his bees trailing after us, which allowed him to follow from a careful distance. “Then it was just a matter of finding the perfect time to strike,” he said proudly, as if victory had been assured from the moment he decided to save us.

  “And if you hadn’t accidentally stumbled across a field packed with bees?” Enoch said.

  Hugh dug something from his pocket and held it up: a peculiar chicken egg. “Plan B,” he said.

  Bekhir hobbled to Hugh and shook his hand. “Young man,” he said, “we owe you our lives.”

  “What about your peculiar boy?” Millard asked Bekhir.

  “He managed to escape with two of my men, thank God. We lost three fine animals today, but no people.” Bekhir bowed to Hugh, and I thought for a moment he might even take Hugh’s hand and kiss it. “You must allow us to repay you!”

  Hugh blushed. “There’s no need, I assure you—”

  “And no time, either,” said Emma, pushing Hugh out the door.

  “We have a train to catch!”

  Those of us who hadn’t yet realized Miss Peregrine was gone went pale.

  “We’ll take their jeep,” said Millard. “If we’re lucky—and if that wight was correct—we might just be able to catch the train during its stopover in Porthmadog.”

  “I know a shortcut,” Bekhir said, and he drew a simple map in the dirt with his shoe.

  We thanked the Gyspies. I told Bekhir we were sorry we’d caused them so much trouble, and he unleashed a big, booming laugh and waved us on down the path. “We’ll meet again, syndrigasti,” he said. “I’m certain of it!”

  * * *

  We squeezed into the wights’ jeep, eight kids packed like sardines into a vehicle built for three. Because I was the only one who’d driven a car before, I took the wheel. I spent way too long figuring out how to start the damn thing—not with a key, it turned out, but by pushing a button on the floor—and then there was the matter of shifting gears; I’d only driven a manual transmission a few times, and always with my dad coaching me from the passenger seat. Despite all that, after a minute or two we were—bumpily, jerkily, somewhat hesitatingly—on our way.

  I stomped the accelerator and drove as fast as the overloaded jeep would take us, while Millard shouted directions and everyone else held on for dear life. We reached the town of Porthmadog twenty minutes later, the train’s whistle blowing as we sped down the main street toward the station. We came to a skidding stop by the depot and tumbled out. I didn’t even bother to kill the engine. Racing through the station like cheetahs after a gazelle, we leapt on board the last car of the train just as it was pulling out of the station.

  We stood doubled over and panting in the aisle while astonished passengers pretended not to stare. Sweating, dirty, and disheveled—we must’ve been a sight.

  “We made it,” Emma gasped. “I can’t believe we made it.”

  “I can’t believe I drove stick,” I said.

  The conductor appeared. “You’re back,” he said with a beleaguered sigh. “I trust you still have your tickets?”

  Horace fished them from his pocket in a wad.

  “This way to your cabin,” said the conductor.

  “Our trunk!” Bronwyn said, clutching at the conductor’s elbow. “Is it still there?”

  The conductor pried his arm away. “I tried taking it to lost and found. Couldn’t move the blessed thing an inch.”

  We ran from car to car until we reached the first-class cabin, where we found Bronwyn’s trunk sitting just where she’d left it. She rushed to it and threw open the latches, then the lid.

  Miss Peregrine wasn’t inside. I had a mini heart attack.

  “My bird!” Bronwyn cried. “Where’s my bird?!”

  “Calm down, it’s right here,” said the conductor, and he pointed above our heads. Miss Peregrine was perched on a luggage rack, fast asleep.

  Bronwyn stumbled back against the wall, so relieved she nearly fainted. “How did she get up there?”

  The conductor raised an eyebrow. “It’s a very lifelike toy.” He turned and went to the door, then stopped and said, “By the way, where can I get one? My daughter would just love it.”

  “I’m afraid she’s one of a kind,” Bronwyn said, and she took Miss Peregrine down and hugged her to her chest.

  * * *

  After all we’d been through over the past few days—not to mention the past few hours—the luxury of the first-class cabin came as a shock. Our car had plush leather couches, a dining table, and wide picture windows. It looked like a rich man’s living room, and we had it all to ourselves.

  We took turns washing up in the wood-paneled bathroom, then availed ourselves of the dining menu. “Order anything you like,” Enoch said, picking up a telephone that was attached to the arm of a reclining chair. “Hello, do you have goose liver pâté? I should like all of it. Yes, all that you have. And toast triangles.”

  No one said anything about what had hap
pened. It was too much, too awful, and for now we just wanted to recover and forget. There was so much else to be done, so many more dangers left to reckon with.

  We settled in for the journey. Outside, Porthmadog’s squat houses shrank away and Miss Wren’s mountain came into view, rising grayly above the hills. While the others drifted into conversations, my nose stayed glued to the window, and the endless unfolding thereness of 1940 beyond it—1940 being a place that had until recently been merely pocket-sized in my experience, no wider than a tiny island, and a place I could leave any time I wished by passing through the dark belly of Cairnholm’s cairn. Since leaving the island, though, it had become a world, a whole world of marshy forests and smoke-wreathed towns and valleys crisscrossed with shining rivers; and of people and things that looked old but weren’t yet, like props and extras in some elaborately staged but plotless period movie—all of it flashing by and by and by out my window like a dream without end.

  I fell asleep and woke, fell asleep and woke, the train’s rhythm hypnotizing me into a hazy state in which it was easy to forget that I was more than just a passive viewer, my window more than just a movie screen; that out there was every bit as real as in here. Then, slowly, I remembered how I’d come to be part of this: my grandfather; the island; the children. The pretty, flint-eyed girl next to me, her hand resting atop mine.

  “Am I really here?” I asked her.

  “Go back to sleep,” she said.

  “Do you think we’ll be all right?”

  She kissed me on the tip of my nose.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  More terrible dreams, all mixed up, fading in and out of one another. Snippets of horrors from recent days: the steel eye of a gun barrel staring me down from close range; a road strewn with fallen horses; a hollowgast’s tongues straining toward me across a chasm; that awful, grinning wight and his empty eyes.

  Then this: I’m back home again, but I’m a ghost. I drift down my street, through my front door, into my house. I find my father asleep at the kitchen table, a cordless phone clutched to his chest.