Hollow City

Then something terrible occurred to me: what if this wasn’t a fear of heights I was feeling—but of hollows?

It couldn’t be, though: we were inside a loop, where hollows couldn’t go. And yet the more I studied the feeling churning in my gut, the more convinced I became that it wasn’t the drop itself that bothered me, but something beyond it.

I had to see for myself.

Everyone chattered anxiously in my ear, asking what was the matter, was I okay. I shut out their voices, tipped forward onto my hands, and crawled toward the edge of path. The closer I got, the worse my stomach felt, like it was being clawed to shreds from the inside. Inches away, I pressed my chest flat to the ground and reached out to hook my fingers over the ledge, then dragged myself forward until I could peek over it.

It took my eyes a moment to spot the hollow. At first it was just a shimmer against the craggy mountainside; a quivering spot in the air like heat waves rising from a hot car. An error, barely detectable.

This was how they looked to normals, and to other peculiars—to anyone who could not do what I did.

Then I actually experienced my peculiar ability coming to life. Very quickly, the churning in my belly contracted and focused into a single point of pain; and then, in a way I can’t fully explain, it became directional, lengthening from a point into a line, from one dimension to two. The line, like a compass needle, pointed diagonally at that faltering spot a hundred yards below and to the left on the mountainside, the waves and shimmers of which began to gather and coalesce into solid black mass, a humanoid thing made from tentacles and shadow, clinging to the rocks.

And then it saw me see it and its whole awful body drew taut. Hunkering close against the rocks, it unhinged its saw-toothed mouth and let loose an ear-splitting shriek.

My friends didn’t need me to describe what I was seeing. The sound alone was enough.

“Hollow!” someone shouted.

“Run!” shouted another, belaboring the obvious.

I scrambled back from the ledge and was pulled to my feet, and then we were all running in a pack, not down the mountain but up it, farther into the unknown rather than back toward the flat ground and loop exit that lay behind us. But it was too late to turn back; I could feel the hollow leaping from boulder to crag up the cliffside—but away from us, down the path, to cut us off in case we tried to run past it down the mountain. It was trapping us.

This was new. I’d never been able to track a hollow with anything other than my eyes before, but now I felt that little compass needle inside me pointing behind us, and I could almost picture the creature scrambling toward flat ground. It was as if, upon seeing the hollow, I’d planted a sort of homing beacon in it with my eyes.

We raced around a corner—my fleeting fear of heights now apparently gone—and were confronted by a smooth wall of rock, fifty feet high at least. The path ended here; all around us the ground fell away at crazy angles. The wall had no ladders, no handholds. We searched frantically for some other way—a secret passage in the rock, a door, a tunnel—but there was none, and no way forward but up; and no way up, apparently, other than via hot air balloon or the helping hand of a probably mythical giant.

Panic took hold. Miss Peregrine began to screech and Claire to cry as Horace stood and wailed, “This is the end, we’re all going to die!” The rest looked for last-ditch ways to save ourselves. Fiona dragged her hands along the wall, searching for crevices that might contain soil from which she could grow a vine or something else we could climb. Hugh ran to the edge of the path and peered over the drop-off. “We could jump, if only we had a parachute!”

“I can be a parachute!” said Olive. “Take hold of my legs!”

But it was a long way down, and at the bottom was dark and dangerous forest. It was better, Bronwyn decided, to send Olive up the rock face than down the mountain, and with limp, feverish Claire in one arm, Bronwyn led Olive by the hand to the wall. “Give me your shoes!” she said to Olive. “Take Claire and Miss P and get to the top as quick as you can!”

Olive looked terrified. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough!” she cried.

“You’ve got to try, little magpie! You’re the only one who can keep them safe!” And she knelt and set Claire down on her feet, and the sick girl tottered into Olive’s arms. Olive squeezed her tight, slipped off her leaden shoes, and then, just as they began to rise, Bronwyn transferred Miss Peregrine from her shoulder to the top of Olive’s head. Weighed down, Olive rose very slowly—it was only when Miss Peregrine began to flap her good wing and pull Olive up by the hair, Olive yelping and kicking her feet, that the three of them really took off.