The Desolations of Devil's Acre is the sixth and final book in the Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs. It was released on February 23rd, 2021.
Synopsis[]
The last thing Jacob Portman saw before the world went dark was a terrible, familiar face. Suddenly, he and Noor are back in the place where everything began—his grandfather’s house. Jacob doesn’t know how they escaped from Velyana Greenshank's loop to find themselves in Florida. But he does know one thing for certain: Caul has returned. After a narrow getaway from a blood- thirsty hollow, Jacob and Noor reunite with Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children in Devil’s Acre. The Acre is being plagued by desolations—weather fronts of ash and blood and bone—a terrible portent of Caul’s amassing army. Risen from the Library of Souls and more powerful than ever, Caul and his apocalyptic agenda seem unstoppable. Only one hope remains—deliver Noor to the meeting place of the seven prophesied ones. If they can decipher its secret location. Jacob and his friends will face deadly enemies and race through history’s most dangerous loops in this thrilling page-turner, the final adventure in the beloved Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series.
Epigraph[]
| “ | Sometimes an old paragraph, an old friend, an old letter will remind you that you are not who you once were, for the person who dwelt among them, valued this, chose that, wrote thus, no longer exists. Without noticing it you have traversed a great distance; the strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange at least awkward or uncomfortable. |
” |
–Rebecca Solnit, "The Blue of Distance," A Field Guide to Getting Lost | ||
Plot[]
Jacob starts to regain consciousness and hears the voices of his grandfather and his younger self. When he opens his eyes, he finds that he is alone in a house during a storm. He sees someone standing outside and calls for him, the man comes inside and helps him up, only to reveal he is a wight and tases Jacob. Jacob is saved by Noor Pradesh stabbing the wight in the neck. After the wight goes down, Noor helps Jacob up as he realizes they are at his grandfather's house in the middle of a storm. As Noor searches every room frantically for V, hoping she is still alive, Jacob tries to get her to leave in case there are more wights around. After finding nothing in the house, Noor realizes she and Jacob woke up in the same spots as they passed out at V's house and they go to where they think V should be. They find V's corpse on the lawn as Noor collapses on her knees and blames herself. Jacob gives her a minute before comforting her and senses a hollow.
The pair hide in Abe's bunker, carrying V with them. They look around and question their next move as Noor finds a device in V's hands, an Eject Button later revealed to be called an expulsatator, that was used to get them out of V's collapsing loop. Noor turns on an old computer as Jacob searches for a manual. He finds one, For Peculiar Eyes Only, and they start typing in commands until a map of the house with coded sections appears and Jacob senses the hollow right above them. Noor presses a button and they injure the hollow. Jacob tells her they need to go through the tunnel to the house across the street to get a car to escape in and they reluctantly leave V behind. They race to the fake house and enter the car in the garage, as well as seeing the hollow getting out of the a crater in the ground. They race through the maze of roads of the retirement community while avoiding the hollow. It puts on a furious chase, eventually managing to latch onto the car, but Noor hands Jacob a Swiss Army knife and he stabs at the tongue. They lose it after slamming it into a truck and go back to Jacob's house where they find police and animal control outside. After Jacob explains that he lives there, the offices explains that there are looters and a dog on the property, who turns out to be Addison MacHenry. Bronwyn Bruntley is also present, as she and Addison were looking for Jacob and Noor. The group escapes the police and into the shed in the backyard, which Miss Peregrine has turned into a pocket loop.
They return to the Acre and are greeted by Emma and Enoch. Emma reveals that the Arce has been experiencing desolations, such as raining bones, blood, and ash for the past two days, which was how long Noor and Jacob were gone. They tell them they need to speak with the ymbrynes and they take them to Miss Peregrine's new office. They walk past Bentham's collection and find new peculiars being documented and are nearly chased away by Nim. When they reach the office. The others leave Jake and Noor to speak with Miss Peregrine and Esmerelda Avocet. They tell them everything that happened since leaving for Noor's foster parent's apartment and returning to the Panloopticon. As they speak, the ymbrynes reveal the had suspicions that something was happening and Jake and Noor confirmed it. As they talk, they realize that the Acre is starting to collapse and they decide to tell the citizenry. Jacob and Noor wash up and put on clean clothes when Jacob realizes he is wearing Bentham's old suit and wonders what happened to him.
They head back to the house and Jacob and Noor are greeted by Claire Densmore, Olive Abroholos Elephanta, Horace Somnusson, and Hugh Apiston. They head inside and see Fiona Frauenfeld resting in a bed in the kitchen and Jacob greets her. He and Noor finally tell the other peculiars what happened after they left to find V, and everyone begins to worry about their future and question if Caul planned on trapping himself in the Library of Souls to grow stronger. Emma calms them down by saying they can take Caul again due to their experience and numbers.
When Miss Peregrine leaves to speak with the other ymbrynes, Jacob sneaks upstairs to sleep. He lies down in Horace's bed and listens to a radio announcer, Amos Dextaire, talk about sports and the current weather in the Acre before turning the radio off and going to sleep. He wakes up to find Enoch on the edge of the bed and Emma comes in soon after, saying the ymbrynes have called a mandatory meeting for the entire loop. They head to an old operating theater the wights used to experiment on peculiars; after being checked if they have any ill intentions or not, Jacob soon sees residents of the Acre that he knows such as Ulysses Critchley and Itch, as well as most of the heads of the peculiar clans in America and the residents of the Portal, Georgia loop. Soon Angelica Minervis, Dogface, and Wreck Donovan approach Jacob and criticize the way the ymbrynes run things. Jacob's friends defend the ymbrynes and say it has only been a few weeks since they stopped the wights. Just then Miss Peregrine and eight other ymbrynes enter and tell those in attendance that Caul is back and might try to reclaim the Acre, causing the crowd to panic. Just after Sharon calms them down, Caul appears as a projection and announces his newfound powers and says he will not hurt them if they side with him and kill Jacob, Noor, and the ymbrynes. He vanishes and the audience goes into an even bigger state of panic. When things calm down some, the boy who checked for threats tries to stab Jacob and Noor, but is restrained and led away.
The ymbrynes escort Jacob and Noor to the council room and question if the assassination attempt was planned in advance or if the boy was mind controlled or radicalized on the spot. They theorize that Caul is trying to get the peculiars to surrender to his side, and they place Jacob and Noor under the watch of guards. Soon, Emma, Horace, and Millard enter the room with Fern, who divines peculiar ability, following in soon after. She tells them that Caul weakened during the broadcast and they theorize it might have been a recording. Two ymbrynes in training then arrive and reveal they traced a call sent out two days ago, to Pennsylvania, Slovenia, Thailand, Namibia, Brazil, and Iran. They believe these are the six others from the prophecy and the ymbrynes decide to call in three more ymbrynes to create a Quilt, sealing a loop off to prevent others from entering. They also believe one of the calls was meant for V and send a team to retrieve her body to have Enoch reanimate it for questioning.
Jacob and Noor are escorted back to Ditch House by two members of the home guard where they meet their friends, who are worried about the current situation and wonder if they should be preparing for an invasion when the ymbrynes come in and tell them they are leaving to retrieve V's body, and take Emma, Addison, and Bronwyn with them. After they leave, the others decide they don't want to stay idle, with Hugh and Fiona going scouting, Enoch going to find a poet's heart in preparation for reanimating V, and Millard takes Jacob and Noor to a clockmaker friend of his. As they sneak out and walk, they spot the American peculiar clans helping with supplies and scouting out locations for a possible ambush in case of attack. Wreck comes over the them and they have a short conversation, during which Wreck reveals that the Americans are staying to help because of an investment. Jacob, Noor and Millard continue on their way, and Millard introduces the other two to the clockmaker Klaus. After showing him the expulsatator, he reveals it is powered by ambrosia and he’s not sure if it can be fixed (as expulsatators are normally one-use), but agrees to try if they can get him a vile of ambrosia and his ancestor's femur Perplexus Anomalous took. As they walk back to the house, Jacob tries and fails to talk Noor out of watching V be resurrected. They return after the others and Jacob learns that his parents are back and have hired security guards to deal with “suspicious persons” on the property and their memories will be wiped again, something he feels could damage their minds. Enoch returns to tell them V’s body is ready and Miss Peregrine, Miss Wren, Noor, and Jacob enter and watch as Enoch resurrects V using various animal hearts and the poet heart he successfully acquired while the others wait outside. V is resurrected, but she does not directly answer when asked about the meeting location for the seven prophesied peculiars. Instead, she seems to be reliving a memory from when Noor was young, asking her if she is ready for bed. V tells a story from the Tales of the Peculiar about a porcupine girl whose father dies and his soul goes to live in her doll, Penny. But before she can reach the halfway point, the resurrection wears off. This story, which was Noor's childhood favorite, actually serves as a clue to the meeting place. After those that watched V's resurrection left the room, Miss Peregrine has Olive and Bronwyn take her badge and check out an unabridged version of the Tales from the library, has Millard get the oldest Map of Days he can find, and orders V to be placed on ice until a funeral can be held. When Enoch starts to complain about getting more hearts to resurrect her again later, Miss Peregrine dismisses it and says V has already told them the meeting place.
Olive and Bronwyn return with the Tales and they continue with the story, called the Tale of Pensevus. They learn that the girl grew up and lost the doll on a ship, but years later the doll, Penny, comes back guiding a peculiar boy who can absorb sustenance from the ground with tree roots coming out of his back. The woman raises the boy and one day Penny leaves on a carriage. When war breaks out, enemy soldiers take over the woman's home and arrest the boy. Eventually, Penny returns once more, this time in the hands of a peculiar soldier from the woman's own country, who can turn solid things into gas. After the woman tends to him, he saves her as well by turning the enemy soldiers into gas, revealing that Penny had led him to her. Noor remembers she had an old doll named Penny that she used to talk to, and they believe that it was the doll from the story. The group figures out that the meeting place is a collapsed loop that operated from 1916 to 1918 in northern France, belonging to Miss Tern, and they will have to leapfrog to get to it.
Suddenly, someone comes to the door to inform them that a hollow that every peculiar can see is attacking the Acre and Miss Peregrine has Jacob, Emma, and Bronwyn come with her. They find it by the entrance and see the home guard setting up a harpoon to kill it. Jacob is told to go back but refuses as the harpoon misses, killing a peculiar. Miss Peregrine reluctantly lets Jacob help and she flies off as Jacob, Emma, and Bronwyn start trying to lure it to a secluded location. Just then an American woman fires a gun at it, which fails to hurt it. Bronwyn leaves to get the harpoon as Jacob and Emma lure it into an underground abandoned building where they run into Hugh, who tells them he and Fiona came to help as well and that Fiona had suddenly run off. They find Fiona restraining the hollow with roots as Jacob tries and fails to get in its head (strangely, the hollow instead seems to be going into Jacob's head) and a fourth unknown tongue emerges and starts strangling Jacob. Fiona saves him by ripping the hollow apart with the roots that still bound it, and the peculiars meet up with Miss Peregrine and inform her of everything they learned about the hollow. She deduces that it is a new breed Caul has been working on recently. They return to the house and are ordered to rest for the leapfrogging trip to the past. As Jacob rests in Horace’s bed, he thinks of the dangers that the new and improved hollows could be.
Later that day, all residents and visitors to the Acre are amping up security, with anyone with a peculiarity fit for combat volunteering for the newly founded Defense Force. As Millard and Perplexus are trying to find a quick and safe route to Miss Tern's loop, the only one they could find so far is a two week trip for a loop in Mongolia to France, the ymbrynes tell the residents they are ready to activate the Quilt. Nearly all the residents gather at the entrance and watch as the ritual unfolds and succeeds, only for Caul to cast himself soon after. He shows footage of monsters attacking a loop and tells the residents to abandon the ymbrynes and serve him, and also drops propaganda leaflets showing that the ymbrynes promised to rewind the clan leader's clocks if they agreed to an alliance (the investment previously mentioned by the Americans) and mock wanted posters of the council. As Jacob and his friends walk back to their house, they are divided over the misinformation. While Emma, Olive, Claire, and Bronwyn are disgusted by the leaflets, Hugh and Jacob find it does make some sense as to why the alliance happened so fast. When Fiona, who slept through the ordeal, emerges from the house, Hugh says that not everyone has the same freedom as them. Soon the guards assigned to Noor and Jacob appear and say the ymbrynes want to speak with them. They are joined by Enoch, Olive, Emma, and Bronwyn and they make their way to the council room as they see more propaganda leaflets falling on people. A mob has formed by the time they reach the ministry.
At first only Jacob and Noor are allowed in, but the rest are permitted to listen in. With all twelve council members present, the meeting starts. They discuss the loops Caul already attacked and agree to lower the Quilt's defenses and allow the refugees in later that night. Eventually they let in one of the survivors from the loop that was just attacked, Emmerick Daltwick, who describes the encounter with Caul. After the boy leaves, one of the ymbrynes reveals she recognized Percival Murnau as one of the monsters. Jacob and his friends ask the ymbrynes if they did make a deal to free the clan leaders from the loops and they confirm it, much to Olive's horror, as they needed the alliance and help and reveal they are close to safely recreating a controlled loop collapse. Just then the Americans barge in and berate the ymbrynes for supposedly letting the secret slip. After a short argument the Americans choose to withdraw their forces and go back home, demanding the ymbrynes power up the Panloopticon (which they don't). Shortly after the Americans are dragged out, Millard and Perplexus arrive and reveal they found three ways to get to the loop.
The first way is the two week trip from Mongolia, the second is an island in the Adriatic Sea that was quarantined due to the Spanish Flu Pandemic, and the third is a loop ten miles away from their destination that involves crossing a war zone. They choose the last option, planning to seek the help of Miss Hawksbill whose loop is near to Miss Tern's, and Jacob, Noor, Emma, Millard, Bronwyn, Enoch, and Addison agree to go. Jacob tries to get Noor to sit out the mission, but being one of the seven she refuses to stay behind. They are fitted into period appropriate costumes before heading back to Ditch House to inform Horace, who already knew and dreamt about their finding Miss Hawksbill, and joins the group that is going. The ymbryne council soon arrives to wish them well and when Jacob and Noor are alone, they say a final goodbye to V, who comes back to life briefly due to leftover blood still pumping, and tells them to find Horatio, a high ranking member of the wights. They tell this to Enoch, who says post spontaneous resurrection is somewhat common and is amazed she said that much, and explain it with be a few more days until she can be resurrected again. Later, Jacob sees Bronwyn and Millard arguing with Klaus about the expulsatator, which the clockmaker claims exploded and the pieces turned to ash before offering the bone clock they got him, saying it can slow down the speech of the dead so that the living can hear them, and wishing them luck on the trip. As they are about to head back inside, Wreck and Dogface arrive and reveal they decided to stay and help out. When the time comes, the eight peculiars are sealed in crates to hide them as they are brought to the Pantloopicon and Jacob and Emma share a crate. As they are rolled along, Jacob and Emma, awkwardly, sit close together and talk about the dangers they going to face and he wonders if he is the cause for everything lately. Emma chastises him for thinking that way and says Caul would have made improved hollows eventually and he helped prove that peculiars can have their internal clocks reset. At the Panloopticon, the peculiars bundle up and go through the door marked “France November 1918."
Soon after entering, they decide to shout Miss Hawksbill's name to find her. They see a woman, who turns out to be Miss Hawksbill, running away from them and leading them to her loop and house in a bombed yard. She lets the peculiars in after they tell her they are peculiar, just as another bomb explodes. They see various animal heads on the walls, who each can talk, and Miss Hawksbill says Miss Tern, whose loop's collapse was caused by Miss Tern's death, is her sister and explains how Miss Hawksbill saved as many of her sister’s animal wards as she could. The group asks Miss Hawksbill to help them to Miss Tern's loop, and after Noor reveals that she is one of the seven, Miss Hawksbill leads them through no-man's-land. Thanks to Miss Hawksbill's intricate knowledge of the battlefield and its events, everyone is able to go unnoticed by most troops and they evade getting killed. They enter into the ruins of a town zoo that serves as the loop entrance. Upon arriving in the loop, they are greeted by Jacques the grimbear guarding the entrance. Miss Hawksbill tells them not to inform Miss Tern that they are in a collapsed loop, as Miss Tern's memory now resets with it, she has no knowledge of her death, and she tends to get rather upset. They meet up with Miss Tern, with Miss Hawksbill lying about being in disguise and a grimbear accidentally crushing her arm to explain the appearance that the Miss Tern of the past is not used to. Miss Tern takes them to her house and explains that others of the prophecy have already arrived. While the ymbryne sisters have a chat, Jacob and his friends enter the meeting room and are greeted by a woman made of fire, who asks which one of them is the light eater. Noor speaks up, and the woman attacks her with a sword of light as a test, which Noor absorbs and a second light eater reveals himself. He introduces himself as Julius Purcell and the woman is revealed to be a phantasm created by Sebbie Mayfield. They say they are waiting for the other prophecy members to arrive, with one boy going for a walk, and the others learn the light eaters know very little about the prophecy. The group explains it to the light eaters, who become uneasy, but think they can do it. They all sit down for a meal and learn more about Julius and Sebbie; afterwards, the light eaters see what they can do as the other watch. Soon Julius's ymbryne, Miss Petrel, arrives with a girl named Sophie, the girl who put out the calls to the ymbrynes that cared for the prophesied seven, and she reveals the other light eaters are all dead. However, only one is needed to consume Caul's soul and the other six are simply backups in case the first fails.
The three ymbrynes in the loop decide to escort the peculiars to the present and they head inside to get their things, only to be confronted by two wights. One holds collared updated hollow and another with a pistol and a flamethrower. As the hollow goes to eat them. The wight with the flamethrower shoots another wight and tells the hollow to go. The wight reveals himself to be Horatio and he sets the house on fire to slow the others down. They ride horseback with the ymbrynes guiding them as three hollows pursue them. They exit through the back membrane, but end up in the trenches and the First World War. As the hollows continue to chase after them, they find a tank and a young soldier to drive it. They drive through the war zone in the tank as the hollows and bullets nearly hit them. They manage to injure and kill the hollows just as a mortar round lands near the tanks and the soldier is killed. Millard activates the bone clock and time freezes. They start walking through a battle field frozen in time when a mutated Percival Murnau appears. The ymbrynes dive bomb at the mutated wight and Miss Petrel is killed. Julius smashes the clock and time starts up again. They enter the present as Murnau is distracted by the soldier's rounds.
They exit into a modern day normal park and, after putting on sunglasses to hide his eyes, Horatio buys tickets to London and they wait for the train. They board and get a private car when it arrives. Unfortunately Murnau appears behind them on an earthen wave they they move out of the car until the train picks up speed and they lose him. After they calm down, Horatio explain how it was like being a hollow and how he hid in the sewers for days until his transformation was completed and stole the face of a wight he killed before switching it with his own and infiltrating their ranks to find Noor. The turncoat wight agrees to teach Jacob how to control the updated hollows as the ride continues.
After arriving in London and find a working phone booth, they contact Miss Peregrine and tell her how the mission went as she tells them a mutated wight snuck in as they were leaving and trashed the Panloopticon, rendering it useless and the some of the ymbrynes were injured in the attack. After telling them to wait at a safe house, they hang up and find a news broadcast of peculiars fighting by the loop entrance and Caul appears behind them and asks that they join him or die, Emma attacks him and he uses his new found powers to fight back. He summons multiple arms to strangle then when Sophie posses Penny and the doll bites him. The arms vanish and they run away with Caul hot on their tails. A police officer opens fire and Caul absorbs his soul as they retreat. They enter an old tunnel with polluted water and dive in when one of the peculiars, who is siding with Caul, finds them and spits molten metal at them. They hide underwater under he leaves and Bronwyn kicks in a door that leads to a tunnel and find a hatch, however Jacob and Horatio serve a hollow and the two of them and Emma stay behind to fight Horatio decides to sacrifice himself to get the others to safety as Noor blasts the hollow and they drag a severely injured Horatio, who says he knows everything about Caul's plan and strategy before passing out. They emerge in a train yard and and the hollow is decapitated by an oncoming train. They take refuge in an old graveyard and Emma complains about being sick and tired of this life as Sophie says Caul took Penny's soul. Horatio wakes up and says the hollows are coming to London via a green and pink ship just as Horace remembers dreaming about this and Sharon arrives with what a fast boat packed with explosives. They decide to split up with Horace and Millard going to get an army of invisibles ready, Addison goes to inform a battalion Grimbears that they are needed, Enoch goes to resurrect an army of the dead respectively, Jacob, Emma, Sharon, Horacio, and Noor go to a ship that is transporting Caul’s army of Hollows, while Bronwyn goes to the safe house with the others. Jacob objects to Noor coming with them while Sebbie says it is not a good idea for all the light eaters to be in the same place at once. They find Sharon's boat docked outside a vegan restaurant and Horatio guides them to the wight's ship, a cruse ship named the Ruby Princess. Horactio loads the explosives into his coat as Jacob takes the detonator. All but Sharon board the ship. As they search for the cargo hold, the location housing the hollows, they discover the wights have taken over the ship and killed most of the passengers and are mind controlling the ones they didn’t kill via an ambrosia addict. They come across a wight as Horactio pretends to side with them and he knocks him out, only for them to be discovered and thrown to the hollows. Jacob tries to make a connection and fails. Emma recalls him being knocked out before using the hollows to destroy the wight's fortress, but he thinks it is to risky. Emma takes a thumb Mother Dust gave her and Horactio straps it to a bomb as he has the hollows shield the others. He throws and detonates it and Jacob goes in and out of consciousness as he links minds with the surviving hollows. He fully comes to and realizes he is controlling about forty hollows, the most he ever has, and he orders them to get them out of the cargo hold. They make their way to the deck with Jacob and Noor sharing a hollow and Emma and Horatio having their own. Along the way they take out every wight they see and reach the deck and see a helicopter above them. Horatio says that Abe predicted Jacob would be the strongest peculiar in history if he had the right training. Just then Caul arrives with a dozen ambrosia addicts and Jacob has the hollows attack and take out most of them as forces Caul to retreat, but not before he has a wight signal to a spy in the Acre to kill Miss Babax, rendering the Quilt useless.
They then go back to the Acre and find dead normals along the way, as a way to put fear of peculiars into them and enter the Acre to find a full blown war going on with the Acre in near ruins. Jacob sicks his hollows on the enemy, with looks of thanks and gratitude for the Acre residence and the Americans, as they head to the ministry building after running into Hugh, who informs them that everyone is there. Once they arrive Miss Peregrine informs them that the other light eaters are inside and he introduces her to Horatio. She takes him to a window as he joins Fiona and Hugh in controlling their respective properties. They get ready for their last stand as Enoch and Josep go outside to control the dead, Millard and other invisibles throw Armageddon Chicken eggs at the enemy, and Emma aides to home guard on the roof. Jacob sacrifices all of his Hollows to defeat Caul’s goons and keep his friends safe just as it starts to rain a corrosive substance that wipes out the last of Caul's forces. After everything settles down, Josep and Millard announce that Enoch is hurt and they go out to help him. Just then Caul arrives and demands their surrender. Noor tries to eat Caul's soul, but she is stopped by Miss Peregrine, who says it is to risky. Noor believes that his soul is made of light and that the light eaters from the prophecy must eat it. In an attempt to save all of peculiardom Sebbie, one of the peculiars from the prophecy, sacrifices herself in trying to eat Caul’s soul. However her sacrifice is in vein as Caul simply grows stronger. They retreat to the Panloopticon and the remaining ymbrynes create a Quilt around it. They wash up and meet up in the library. They discuss an evacuation plan and, when Horatio enters, he reveals the Hollow Hunters have a hidden loop in the Florida Everglades and they decide to evacuate through the micro loop to Jacob's house and destroy it so Caul can’t be followed. They also learn Caul's power is tied to the Library of Souls and the must destroy it to stop him. Noor tries to convince the others to let her get at Caul, but they say they don’t know what she has to do. The ymbrynes order the others to sleep as they fix the panlooptican. As he rests, Jacob wonders if Caul's revelations of Peculiardom to the normals with result in peculiars being placed in prison camps like his great-grandparents. He finds most of the others are awake and they share their worries just as Horace wakes up and calls Jacob a monster from the library of souls. Miss Peregrine comes and calms him down as Jacob goes for a walk. After going up a few flights of stairs, Nam calls him over and says Myron Bentham wants to talk with him. He finds Bentham in a bathroom and he tells Jacob to get a key leader to a second door to the Library of Souls and consume a soul from a jar. Jake is shocked and Bentham reveals Jacob and Abe are descendants of an ancient race of peculiars who resembled hollows, but had souls. Bentham says he with be strong enough to protect his friends as he vanishes. He finds the key and pockets it before running into Bronwyn, who says the Panloopticon is operational and they are leaving in ten minutes. After learning Noor is not with them, Olive gives him a note from Noor saying she is going after Caul and he goes after her.
Jacob finds the door via a portrait on the ceiling and enters Abaton, he finds the loop in ruins and locates the library. He finds multiple pieces of soul jars and soul residue as he walks. He hears Bentham's voice instructing him and finds the jars Bentham wants in the incubation chamber Caul made the hollows in and finds one that did not make it to term. As he is loaded jars into an emptied cocoon, Jacob hears the voices of Emma, Bronwyn, Hugh, and Miss Peregrine tell him to stop his plan and turn back. As Bronwyn goes to restrain him, he has the dead hollow restrain her and goes on. He finds the pool and pours in the souls and goes in. Just then Caul arrives and attacks him, the others arrive soon after and Caul grabs a hold of them and drains their life force as he swats Jacob aside. When he regains his seances, he finds Noor right beside him and realizes he is a hollow. He straps Noor to his back and they go back in. Noor starts eating Caul's soul as Jacob swats Caul's limbs away and Hugh attacks with his bees. As Caul is near death and Noor is dizzy from absorbing so much light, she goes to finish him off when Caul Grabs her and she she passes out, Hugh attacks again and Noor, who was faking, finishes him off as his body turns to dust and is blown away by Miss Peregrine's wings. They run out as the library starts to collapse and Noor vomits out Caul's soul and takes the extra souls out of Jacob, reuniting him to normal just as the floor beneath them gives way.
After a while, Jacob wakes up at his grandfather’s house and is greeted by Miss Peregrine and his friends. He realizes he is fully human, with Noor saving him before it became irreversible, and Emma reveals she had the eject button, which Klaus lied about being destroyed. They take one of the neighbor's car to get back to his house where they are greeted by ninety five peculiars and ten ymbrynes, the only peculiars unaccounted for are the American clan leaders. He sees his parents out on the dock and the ymbrynes anounce they have a way to perform a controlled Loop Collapse to reset everyone’s internal clocks, privately she tells Jacob that Bentham whispered the process to her. The all clear as they prepare to collapse the micro loop in Jacob's backyard. After a while he agrees to it and says goodbye to his memory wiped parents. His mother cries and hugs before falling asleep him while his father seemingly understands and says goodbye as him and watches as his son is the last to leave the loop. The following morning, Miss Avocet dies and they hold an ymbryne funeral for her, Miss Babax, and V. They watch as the other ymbrynes dance and place the deceased in a shed with holes in the roof as bird fly in to pick the bones clean, as ymbryne bones have medicinal purposes. As they leave, Jacob thinks of the challenges peculiars will face now that they are public knowledge and hopes they can do good deeds to earn the normal's trust. When they get back to Ditch House, Miss Peregrine says she has a surprise for the kids, she takes them to the the Panloopticon as she explains that the role of head ymbryne will be split between her and Miss Cuckoo with the ymbrynes in training living with them. They are taken to a familiar forest and find themselves back at the house where everything started, on the island of Cairnholm Wales, but this time one day before the last loop so as not to worry about bombs falling on the house and they find the ymbrynes in training on the lawn and they go inside for a meal. This is where the story ends and the peculiars all return to their peaceful, yet extraordinary lives.
Photographs[]
Main article: The Desolations of Devil's Acre Photographs