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.

The hollow had nearly reached level ground. I knew it as surely as if I could see it with my eyes. Meanwhile, we scoured the ground for anything that might be used as a weapon—but all we could find were pebbles. “I can be a weapon,” said Emma, and she clapped her hands and drew them apart again, an impressive fireball roaring to life between them.

“And don’t forget about my bees!” said Hugh, opening his mouth to let them out. “They can be fierce when provoked!”

Enoch, who always found a way to laugh at the most inappropriate times, let out a big guffaw. “What’re you going to do,” he said, “pollinate it to death?”

Hugh ignored him, turning to me instead. “You’ll be our eyes, Jacob. Just tell us where the beast is and we’ll sting his brains out!”

My compass needle of pain told me it was on the path now, and the way its venom was expanding to fill me meant it was closing in fast. “Any minute now,” I said, pointing to the bend in the path we’d come around. “Get ready.” If not for the adrenaline flooding my system, the pain would’ve been totally debilitating.

We assumed fight-or-flight positions, some of us crouching with fists raised like boxers, others like sprinters before the starting gun, though no one knew which way to run.

“What a depressing and inauspicious end to our adventures,” said Horace. “Devoured by a hollow in some Welsh backwater!”

“I thought they couldn’t enter loops,” said Enoch. “How the hell did it get in here?”

“It would seem they have evolved,” said Millard.

“Who gives a chuck how it happened!” Emma snapped. “It’s here and it’s hungry!”

Then from above us a small voice cried, “Look out below!” and I craned my neck to see Olive’s face pull back and disappear over the top of the rock wall. A moment later something like a long rope came sailing over the ledge. It unreeled and snapped taut, and then a net unfurled at the end of it and smacked against the ground. “Hurry!” came Olive’s voice again. “There’s a lever up here—everyone grab hold of the net and I’ll pull it!”

We ran to the net, but it was tiny, hardly large enough for two. Pinned to the rope at eye level was a photograph of a man inside the net—this very net—with his legs folded in front of him and hanging just above the ground before a sheer rock face—this very rock face. On the back of the photo a message was printed:

ONLY ACCESS TO MENAGERIE: CLIMB INSIDE!

WEIGHT LIMIT: ONE RIDER

STRICTLY ENFORCED

This contraption was some sort of primitive elevator—meant for one rider at a time, not eight. But there was no time to use it as intended, so we all dog-piled onto it, sticking our arms and legs through its holes, clinging to the rope above it, attaching ourselves any way we could.

“Take us up!” I shouted. The hollow very close now; the pain extraordinary.

For a few endless seconds, nothing happened. The hollow bolted around the bend, using its muscular tongues like legs, its atrophied human limbs hanging useless. Then a metallic squeal rang out, the rope pulled taut, and we lurched into the air.

The hollow had nearly closed the distance between us. It galloped with jaws wide open, as if to collect us between its teeth the way a whale feeds on plankton. We weren’t quite halfway up the wall when it reached the ground below us, looked up, and squatted like a spring about to uncoil.