Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - BOOCarz

“If it catches us, it’ll kill us all,” I shouted, “but if we
split up, it’ll have to choose. I’ll lead it around the long
way and try to lose it in the bog. The rest of you get to
the loop as quick you can!”
“You’re mad!” shouted Emma. “If anyone stays
behind it should be me! I can fight it with fire!”
“Not in this rain,” I said, “and not if you can’t see it!”
“I won’t let you kill yourself!” she shouted.
There was no time to argue, so Bronwyn and Enoch
ran ahead while Emma and I veered off the path,
hoping the creature would follow, and it did. It was
close enough now that I didn’t need a lightning flash to
know where it was; the twist in my gut was enough.
We ran arm in arm, tripping through a field rent with
furrows and ditches, falling and catching each other in
an epileptic dance. I was scanning the ground for
rocks to use as weapons when, out of the darkness
ahead, there appeared a structure—a small sagging
shack with broken windows and missing doors, which
in my panic I failed to recognize.
“We have to hide!” I said between gasping breaths.
Please let this creature be stupid, I prayed as we
sprinted toward the house, please, please let it be
stupid. We made a wide arc, hoping to enter it
unseen.
“Wait!” Emma cried as we rounded the back of it.
She pulled one of Enoch’s cheesecloths from her coat
and quickly tied it around a stone plucked from the
ground, making a kind of slingshot. She cradled it in
her hands until it caught fire and then hurled it away
from us. It landed in the boggy distance, glowing
weakly in the dark.
“Misdirection,” she explained, and we turned and
committed ourselves to the shack’s concealing
gloom.
* * *