Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Jacob’s talk with Miss Peregrine is on Tuesday night, and he and his dad are supposed to leave that Sunday, in just a few days. Jacob doesn’t know what to do—he can’t leave his family and everything he knows, but he can’t go home after learning all he’s learned. Moreover, Jacob can’t get advice from anyone: he can’t talk to his dad, and Emma and Miss Peregrine are biased, wanting him to stay. Jacob remembers that his grandfather had chosen to leave for a reason as well. But at the same time, Jacob knows he would live his life as a hunted man.

Jacob wonders about a third option, like the life his grandfather led. But Jacob realizes that compared to his grandfather, he can’t defend himself at all. A voice in his head starts making him doubt himself, calling himself “weak” and a “loser.” The voice says that that’s why his grandfather didn’t tell Jacob who he really was—he knew Jacob couldn’t handle it.

For the next few days, Jacob obsesses over what to do; meanwhile, his dad spends more and more time in the bar sulking. The drunker he gets, the more he starts telling Jacob about his problems, like his belief that Jacob’s mom is going to leave him. Jacob spends more time avoiding him. Meanwhile, at Miss Peregrine’s, the children are essentially locked down in the house, with rotating sentries keeping watch. The kids start to go a little wild, being cooped up all day.

Miss Peregrine smokes her pipe all day while in constant motion, checking on the children. Miss Avocet is also still there, and the children theorize why the hollows are trying to capture ymbrynes. But being confined to the house makes them apathetic and unhappy. One night, Jacob experiences Horace’s peculiar talent for the first time—Horace is caught in a waking nightmare, screaming terribly and babbling about an apocalyptic event. They carry him to bed, and the next moment he claims he can’t remember the dream. He explains that his dreams rarely come true, but Jacob senses Horace is hiding something.

Meanwhile, people have begun disappearing from Cairnholm: Martin disappeared, and the next day his body was fished out of the ocean. The fisherman who found Martin explained that it looked like Martin fell down a cliff and was eaten by sharks. He was dressed for bed, not for taking a walk. Men in the pub wonder if he was drunk, or if he was chased—or if there’s something suspicious about the new birder.

Jacob’s dad admits he ran into the birder as the man was walking out of town two nights earlier. He was trying to be intimidating, but when Jacob’s dad spoke to him, the man just walked off. Jacob asks if anything was strange about his face, and his dad admits that he was wearing sunglasses at night. Jacob realizes then that the birder is almost certainly a wight, and he has to get back to Miss Peregrine.

The weather foils Jacob’s plan to return: a massive storm is rolling in and the town goes on lockdown, shuttering windows and doors and tying up their boats. The mainland police can’t collect Martin’s body, so they store him in ice at the fishmonger’s. Jacob has to get back to the children’s home, so he fakes being sick, locks his room, and slips out the window and down the drainpipe. He tears down the path to the children’s home, and when he arrives, he tells Miss Peregrine all that has happened in the town. Miss Peregrine is shocked, explaining that if hollows can’t eat peculiars, they’ll start to prey on common people instead, which is likely what happened to Martin.

Miss Peregrine makes an announcement, explaining that no one can leave the house for any reason. When Jacob protests that he needs to return to the town, Miss Peregrine refuses to let him leave as well—if the wights are following Jacob, he could be putting the children at risk. Jacob explains he needs to protect his dad and the other townspeople, and Miss Peregrine says that if he leaves, she asks that he never come back.

Jacob trudges upstairs to Emma’s room, explaining what Miss Peregrine said to him. He tells her that he has to leave; he can’t hide out while his dad is in danger. Emma insists on going with Jacob, even though there’s a risk that if she stays out too long, she’ll age very rapidly. But she wants to fight against the wights and the hollows—she explains that “living like this might just be worse than dying.” She tells the other kids in the room—Bronwyn, Millard, and Enoch—that she doesn’t want to sit around and wait for the wights to show up at the home.

Millard protests, saying that they have no idea how to find the wights or the hollows—even though Jacob can see them, he doesn’t necessarily know where to find them. Enoch then has an idea: revive Martin to find out all they can about what and who killed him. They decide that Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, and Enoch will go together, but Millard wants no part of it.

After dinner, when the house is most chaotic, Jacob and Emma sneak out of the attic and onto the roof, where Bronwyn and Enoch are already waiting. Hanging onto Olive, who’s come to help, the children slowly lower themselves to the ground. The group then runs through the bog and the cairn, finding the storm roaring on the other side. In the town, everything is shuttered, and they navigate to the fishmonger’s shop. Bronwyn kicks the door in, and in the back of the shop, they shovel through the different cases of ice to find Martin’s body.  

Martin’s body is completely torn up, with his face completely shredded and his torso open and empty of his vital organs. Seeing how damaged his body is, Enoch says it may not work—and even if Martin does wake up, he won’t be happy. Enoch pulls a sheep heart from his pocket and convulses as he raises it above his head. When it doesn’t seem to work, he pulls out three more hearts, and only on the last one does Martin wake up suddenly, as if shocked by a defibrillator.

Martin rises, trembling, and reaches out to Jacob. Speaking softly, Martin realizes he is dead. Jacob asks if he can remember what happened. Martin says “My old man” killed him, but Jacob doesn’t know what that means. Martin explains that the old man slept so long before waking—and Martin always took such good care of the man. Martin spouts some poetry, and Jacob realizes that Martin mistook a hollowgast for the museum corpse, as Miss Peregrine told Jacob that hollows become visible when they’re eating. Jacob asks where Martin saw the hollow, and Martin only says, “He came to my door.”

At that moment, the birder comes to the doorway with a flashlight and a pistol. He sees Martin, whose life is draining from his body. Bronwyn asks who the man is, and the man explains that that doesn’t matter—what matters is he knows who they are, quoting facts about each of them. Scariest for Jacob, the man changes his voice drastically several times, revealing that he was Jacob’s middle school bus driver, his family’s landscaper—and, most startlingly, Dr. Golan. He pops out contact lenses to reveal completely white eyes.

Jacob is completely shocked, and Dr. Golan starts to say that he can still help Jacob. He can offer safety and money and give Jacob his life back if Jacob works with him and Malthus, gesturing to a shadow that appears in the doorway, accompanied by a disgusting smell. Golan offers a deal: help them find more peculiars and Jacob can live freely and not worry about being tracked down by a hollow. Jacob can see the appeal in the idea, but he knows he could never betray his friends, and he says he would rather die than help Golan.

Dr. Golan then leaves, saying Jacob has already helped him and setting Malthus on the children. Jacob asks Emma to shine a light on the shadowy figure, and when she conjures a fire, Jacob sees his nightmare come alive. The body is ancient and withering, with sharp teeth poking through a disturbing smile. Malthus opens his mouth, and three snake-like tongues emerge, slithering into the center of the room. Jacob is the only one that can see the hollow, but the others see its shadow on the wall. Jacob knows it’s just toying with them because they’re trapped.

Jacob says that the hollow is to the left, so they have to keep to the right and try for the door. Instead, Bronwyn throws one of the cases of ice at the hollow and then kicks out a section of wall, tossing the other kids through it. She then rams into the corner support, causing the building to collapse in on Malthus. The other kids cheer as they tear off into the night.

As they run, Jacob explains all he knows about Dr. Golan, and how the psychiatrist let him think that he was crazy, even though he clearly knew all along that Jacob was peculiar. He apologizes for not believing his grandfather and for telling the stories to a stranger. They run through the treacherous storm, slipping frequently, as Jacob occasionally spots Malthus behind them during lightning flashes. He knows that they can’t outrun it, so he suggests that they split up, with the others going ahead to escape while he stays behind. Emma refuses to let him hang back alone, so she swerves off the path with Jacob while Bronwyn and Enoch keep running.

Malthus follows Jacob and Emma like they planned, and they duck into a nearby shack, hoping the hollow is too stupid to follow them. Jacob realizes when he enters it that it’s the shack filled with excrement—and at this moment, it’s also filled with sheep. They move into another room in the shack that’s filled with rusted tools, and Jacob takes down a pair of giant scissors to use as a weapon. Then, they see Malthus’s tongue enter through an open window. It attempts to sniff out the kids, but the excrement masks their scent.

Malthus gives up and leaves, and Jacob turns to Emma and says that if they make it through this attack, he’ll stay to protect them. Just as they’re about to kiss, Malthus circles back and comes through the shack. The hollow tears sheep after sheep apart, making its way towards Jacob and Emma as the other animals all panic and scatter. Jacob gets an idea, running toward the door as a distraction to lure it away from Emma and taking off into the night.

Jacob reaches the bog, gaining an advantage because he knows exactly where to step, thanks to Emma. He runs into the cairn, but one of Malthus’s tongues catches Jacob’s ankle and pulls back. Jacob tries to stab the tongue with the shears, but to no avail. He turns around as he’s pulled towards the hollow and stabs into the hollow’s eye sockets, causing it to thrash and bleed a dark, thick fluid. The creature sinks into the bog, and Jacob can feel himself sinking too. He tries to paddle frantically and screams for help, and miraculously he sees a light—Emma. A tree branch lands in the water, and Emma pulls him out. Safe on the shore, he hugs Emma and feels proud that he was able to kill one of the monsters. Maybe he isn’t as weak as he thought.

Jacob and Emma emerge from the cairn before the loop has been reset, with bombs flying overhead. Bronwyn, Enoch, and Hugh greet them, relieved. Jacob and Emma explain happily that they killed the hollow, while Hugh reveals that Dr. Golan kidnapped Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet by threatening to kill the children with his gun. He forced them to change into birds and put them in a cage while locking the children in the basement. That’s when Bronwyn and Enoch came back and let them out, but they don’t know where the man went. He only left a photo, in which he makes it clear that he’ll kill the women if they come after him.

The children think about where Dr. Golan might have gone, realizing that he’d have to get off the island. He must be inside the loop, because the storm outside the loop is too bad to get off the island. The children argue about the best way to go about finding him, particularly because he has a gun. But before they form a plan, Fiona approaches them, explaining that Millard followed the man, who didn’t realize that he hadn’t shut Millard in the basement. Millard saw that the man took Emma’s boat, but the tide was too rough, so he had to pull onto the lighthouse’s rock.

Jacob and the other children crawl to the edge of the cliff to stake out the lighthouse, the sky exploding with bombs. They realize the only way to get to the lighthouse is to swim to it, deciding that the best people to go are Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, and Millard. They first swim out to the shipwreck, where they can pause and rest against the boat’s hull. Emma concocts a plan: she and Jacob will distract Golan until Bronwyn sneaks up behind him and attacks him, while Millard goes for the birdcage.

Suddenly, a shot rings out, and the kids realize that Golan has seen them. Millard suggests that he can go first—he’s the hardest to see. Millard sets out while Dr. Golan continues to fire at them, and suddenly, Jacob sees the outline of Millard’s body, covered in red. He’s been shot. The kids dive into the water, hoping to get away from the bullets, sharing the breathing tube. Rising to the surface again, they formulate a plan: they have to continue to the lighthouse because Millard might not make it if they turn back. Grabbing a piece of the ship’s hull as a giant shield, Bronwyn explains that she’ll carry Millard on her back.

The group gets to shore safely, protected by their shield. They see Dr. Golan just inside the lighthouse, holding the cage with two small birds. He threatens to shoot Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet if they come any closer, but Jacob guesses this is a lie: he needs the women for some reason, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of kidnapping them. Bronwyn speeds toward the lighthouse, still carrying the shield. She hurls it at Golan and hits him, causing him to fall back through the doorway. He then begins to climb the stairs inside. Having bought some time, Bronwyn tends to Millard’s wound and tells Jacob and Emma to go on.

Emma and Jacob enter the lighthouse and begin to climb the spiral stairs, knowing that it’s the only place they’re protected from the gunshots. Jacob starts to rock the unsteady staircase, hoping he can force Golan to come down. Even better, as the staircase sways and screws come loose, the gun clatters down the stairs and lands next to Jacob, who picks it up. Emma and Jacob then start to climb until they reach a landing at the top of the lighthouse. On one side of them is the light, and on the other side a small rail, over which they can see they’re ten stories above the rocks and the ocean.

Jacob tracks around one side of the lighthouse while Emma takes the other. Jacob finds Golan first, hunched against the railing with the bird cage between his knees, blood streaming down his face. He rises and runs, but Emma has him trapped on the other side. Jacob warns Golan to put the birdcage down, but Golan laughs; he knows Jacob doesn’t have the guts to shoot him, and if he does, he’ll throw the cage over the edge. Emma calls his bluff, saying that she doesn’t need Miss Peregrine to babysit her anymore, conjuring a fiery weapon between her hands.

Jacob asks what Golan wants with the ymbrynes, and Golan explains that the hollows need all the ymbrynes working together to get their experiment right and live forever. Jacob remembers Horace’s prophetic dream of the apocalypse and realizes what might happen if the wights and hollows fail again. Golan goes on, saying that the peculiars shouldn’t have to hide from normal humans: they should rule over others and make them slaves. Then, seeing a little red light glow on the cage bars, Dr. Golan tosses the cage over the railing.

Emma screams, and in the confusion, Golan knocks Jacob to the ground, trying to wrestle the gun away. But Emma grabs Dr. Golan’s neck, scalding his throat with her hands. He howls and grabs Emma’s throat in turn, and Jacob points the gun at Dr. Golan and fires. For a moment, time freezes, and then Dr. Golan stumbles backward, blood gushing from his throat, and he dies.

Emma then points out the LED light on the cage bobbing on the waves in the distance. She and Jacob scramble down the stairs and dive into the sea, swimming as fast as they can. The current is strong, and they soon lose sight of the cage’s light. Jacob tries to get Emma to return to shore, but they catch sight of the cage again; it looks as though it’s resting on a shipwreck, rising toward them. Suddenly, a swell surges, and a giant U-boat emerges from the water, catching Jacob and Emma on its deck. Jacob thinks this is what Golan must have been waiting for, and what the little red light signaled.

Emma starts running toward the cage, until a man in a grey uniform begins shooting at them, and Jacob tackles Emma out of the way and into the water. The lighthouse light passes over them, and Jacob sees that the soldier is a wight—he has no irises. The soldier grabs the cage and pulls out one bird. The other, Emma realizes, is floating in the water—Miss Peregrine. Emma scoops Miss Peregrine up, and she and Jacob swim away with their remaining strength, until they’re close enough to the shore that Bronwyn can pull them out of the surf.

After recovering a little, Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, and Millard take Emma’s canoe back to shore. There, the other children cheer at their return, but they quickly notice Miss Avocet’s absence and Millard’s frightening condition. They also realize that something is wrong with the time loop—it should have reset an hour earlier. They try to encourage Miss Peregrine to turn back, but she seems unable to turn back into a human. Returning to the house, they hope that after some time to rest, Miss Peregrine and the loop will go back to normal.