Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

I hurdled fallen logs and ducked low branches,
chasing her until my lungs burned. She kept trying to
lose me, cutting from the path into the trackless forest
and back. Finally the woods fell away and we broke
into open bogland. I saw my chance. Now she had
nowhere to hide—to catch her I had only to pour on
the speed—and with me in sneakers and jeans and
her in a dress it would be no contest. Just as I started
to catch up, though, she made a sudden turn and
plunged straight into the bog. I had no choice but to
follow.
Running became impossible. The ground couldn’t
be trusted: It kept giving way, tripping me into kneedeep
bog holes that soaked my pants and sucked at
my legs. The girl, though, seemed to know just where
to step, and she pulled farther and farther away, finally
disappearing into the mist so that I had only her
footprints to follow.
After she’d lost me, I kept expecting her prints to
veer back toward the path, but they plowed everdeeper
into the bog. Then the mist closed behind me
and I couldn’t see the path anymore, and I began to
wonder if I’d ever find my way out. I tried calling to her
—My name is Jacob Portman! I’m Abe’s grandson! I
won’t hurt you!—but the fog and the mud seemed to
swallow my voice.
Her footprints led to a mound of stones. It looked
like a big gray igloo, but it was a cairn—one of the
Neolithic tombs after which Cairnholm was named.
The cairn was a little taller than me, long and narrow
with a rectangular opening in one end, like a door,
and it rose from the mud on a tussock of grass.
Climbing out of the mire onto the relatively solid
ground that ringed it, I saw that the opening was the
entrance to a tunnel that burrowed deep inside.
Intricate loops and spirals had been carved on either
side, ancient hieroglyphs the meaning of which had