Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

The next morning, Jacob slips a note under his father’s door to let him know where he is going. He then goes to grab the apple from his nightstand, only to find it shriveled. Once inside the loop, no one greets him. At the house, Miss Peregrine stops him. She is upset because he discussed the future with the children: “Do you think it’s wise to discuss events in the future with children from the past?” She asserts that her duty is to keep the children safe within the loop. If the children were to leave the loop, they would grow old and die.

After talking with Miss Peregrine, Jacob goes to wait for Emma, who is in town, and falls asleep in the grass. He wakes up to a humanoid creature crawling into his shoe. A boy a little way away asks Jacob to bring the clay soldier to him. The boy’s name is Enoch, and there are many clay soldiers wandering around him. Enoch explains that he can take the life from one thing and give it to another. He further tells Jacob that Emma has not told him some things about the place out of fear that Jacob would realize the loop is not that great. He suggests Jacob go upstairs to the room at the end and speak with Victor.

He goes to the room, which is locked, and finds a key in the doorjamb. Inside, the boy named Victor is lifeless. He is Bronwyn’s brother. Enoch comes into the room and says he can wake him up to ask Victor how he died. Miss Peregrine begins coming upstairs, and they close the door and wait for her to pass. Enoch then tells Jacob about Raid the Village, a game the children play where they raid the village and take what they want. He says Emma does not take part.

Jacob attempts to leave, but hears Miss Peregrine again and hides in another room, which he realizes is Emma’s. Inside the room, he finds a hatbox that says, “Private / Correspondence of Emma Bloom / Do not open.” He opens the box anyway and finds a collection of letters from his grandfather. The last correspondence from his grandfather is a picture of Abraham holding a young girl with the caption: “This is why.” Emma walks in on Jacob reading the letters and tells him that if he wanted to know what happened, he could have asked.

They discuss what happened and Emma tells Jacob that his grandfather told her he would come back after the war because he loved her. Instead, he never returned. After the discussion, Emma agrees to tell Jacob about what happened to Victor, but they arrange to meet late at night so as to not arouse suspicion. Back at the pub, he finds his father morose because another birder showed up and appears to know what he is doing. Jacob’s father fears the new birder jeopardizes his book.

The birder comes into the pub and orders steaks, which are given to him rare. That night, on the way to see Emma, Jacob notices a man watching him from afar. Emma meets him and insists they go elsewhere to talk. She takes him to the water and gives him a snorkel. Once out in the water, she brings him to a shipwreck. They descend into it and breathe out of an oxygen hose. She takes him through a doorway where there are bright fish.

Upon resurfacing, they end up kissing and she tells him he should stay. He tells her that he can’t because he is ordinary. Emma admits to him that common people cannot pass through loops. Abraham had a power: he could see monsters. Jacob realizes he can, too.

“He could see the monsters. The moment she said it, all the horrors I thought I’d put behind me came flooding back. They were real, and they’d killed my grandfather.” Emma tells him that monsters cannot enter loops. She then tells him Victor died because he left the loop and was killed by the hollowgast, the monsters. Two of the peculiar children are waiting for Emma and Jacob on the shore because one of Miss Peregrine’s friends, another ymbryne (someone who can create loops) has shown up.

Jacob questions Miss Peregrine about when she was going to tell him about his power, and she tells him she was going to but felt she couldn’t spring everything onto him so quickly. He feels as though he has been seduced. Miss Peregrine explains that the hollowgast are bad peculiars and that his grandfather left to fight in the war and to fight hollowgast. Miss Avocet, the other ymbryne, tells them that wights attached and abducted another ymbryne.

Because of the danger, Miss Peregrine suggests Jacob stay the night since she does not feel comfortable with anyone traveling alone. They go to the greenhouse to talk. Miss Peregrine confides that her brothers grew up among ymbryne and thought they could conquer death by manipulating loops in the right way. The brothers, along with many other peculiars, went out to Siberia to try their experiment. It failed and ended in an explosion, which created the hollowgast.

Wights are hollowgast that have devoured enough peculiars to pass for real people. The wights also do not have pupils, and Jacob remembers the blind man on his grandfather’s block the night Abraham was killed. With danger mounting and Miss Avocet a witness to the awfulness the hollowgast can incur, Miss Peregrine asks that Jacob watch for newcomers. He tells her about the new birder on the island. When he goes back to the pub, he tells his father to avoid the birder because he has a bad feeling about him.