Ransom Riggs - Hollow City

And lo! towards us coming in a boat

An old man, grizzled with the hair of eld,

Moaning: Woe unto you, debased souls!

Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens.

I come to lead you to the other shore;

Into eternal darkness; into fire and frost.

And thou, that yonder standest, living soul,

Withdraw from these people, who are dead!

But he saw that I did not withdraw

Dantes Inferno, Canto III

PECULIAR PERSONAE

J ACOB P ORTMAN
Our hero, who can see and sense hollowgast

A BRAHAM P ORTMAN

( DECEASED )
Jacobs grandfather, killed by a hollowgast

E MMA B LOOM
A girl who can make fire with her hands, formerly involved with Jacobs grandfather

B RONWYN B RUNTLEY
An unusually strong girl

M ILLARD N ULLINGS
An invisible boy, scholar of all things peculiar

H ORACE S OMNUSSON
A boy who suffers from premonitory visions and dreams

O LIVE A BROHOLOS E LEPHANTA
A girl who is lighter than air

E NOCH OC ONNOR
A boy who can animate the dead for brief periods of time

H UGH A PISTON
A boy who commands and protects the many bees that live in his stomach

F IONA F RAUENFELD
A silent girl with a peculiar talent for making plants grow

C LAIRE D ENSMORE
A girl with an extra mouth in the back of her head; the youngest of Miss Peregrines peculiar children

A LMA L EFAY P EREGRINE
Ymbryne, shape-shifter, manipulator of time; headmistress of Cairnholms loop; arrested in bird form

E SMERELDA A VOCET
An ymbryne whose loop was raided by the corrupted; kidnapped by wights

NONPECULIAR PERSONAE

F RANKLIN P ORTMAN
Jacobs father; bird hobbyist, wannabe writer

M ARYANN P ORTMAN
Jacobs mother; heiress to Floridas second-largest drugstore chain

R ICKY P ICKERING
Jacobs only normal friend

D OCTOR G OLAN

( DECEASED )
A wight who posed as a psychiatrist to deceive Jacob and his family; later killed by Jacob

R ALPH W ALDO E MERSON

( DECEASED )
Essayist, lecturer, poet

W e rowed out through the harbor, past bobbing boats weeping rust from their seams, past juries of silent seabirds roosting atop the barnacled remains of sunken docks, past fishermen who lowered their nets to stare frozenly as we slipped by, uncertain whether we were real or imagined; a procession of waterborne ghosts, or ghosts soon to be. We were ten children and one bird in three small and unsteady boats, rowing with quiet intensity straight out to sea, the only safe harbor for miles receding quickly behind us, craggy and magical in the blue-gold light of dawn. Our goal, the rutted coast of mainland Wales, was somewhere before us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon.

We rowed past the old lighthouse, tranquil in the distance, which only last night had been the scene of so many traumas. It was there that, with bombs exploding around us, we had nearly drowned, nearly been torn apart by bullets; that I had taken a gun and pulled its trigger and killed a man, an act still incomprehensible to me; that we had lost Miss Peregrine and got her back againsnatched from the steel jaws of a submarinethough the Miss Peregrine who was returned to us was damaged, in need of help we didnt know how to give. She perched now on the stern of our boat, watching the sanctuary shed created slip away, more lost with every oar stroke.