Martin

Martin is the museum keeper in Cairnholm whose unexplained disappearance and death expose the hollowgast’s presence on the island. His brief return to speech provides the crucial clue that turns the search for a missing villager into an immediate threat to the children.

Identity and Disappearance

Martin lives alone in Cairnholm and is known in the village through ordinary routines: on Wednesday he fails to open his museum and does not appear at the Priest Hole for his customary nightcap. When Kev’s wife checks on him, she finds the front door open and his wallet and glasses left on the kitchen counter, but Martin is gone. The familiar objects suggest an abrupt departure rather than a planned absence, and the village begins to fear that he may be dead.

After Martin has also failed to return the following day, local men search sheds and look beneath overturned boats, considering the possibility that he has slept off a drinking binge somewhere. The search is interrupted by a short-band radio call announcing that his body has been recovered from the ocean. The contrast between the neighbors’ mundane explanations and the disturbing circumstances of his death establishes how little the village understands about the danger around it.

Discovery and Death

A fisherman recounts finding Martin while hauling nets near Gannet’s Point. The unusually heavy catch leads him to probe beneath his boat with a gaff; he hooks Martin instead. The fisherman says Martin looked as if he had fallen down the cliffs and been attacked by sharks, and notes that he was wearing a robe and underclothes rather than clothing suited to a nighttime walk in the rain. These details make a voluntary trip to the cliffs seem unlikely.

Later, at the fishmonger’s icehouse, Jacob and the others uncover Martin’s body from a trough of ice. The damage is severe, and his clothing remains consistent with the fisherman’s account: boxers and scraps of a terrycloth robe. The body confirms that Martin did not simply wander away or disappear of his own accord; someone or something had dragged him to the cliffs. Enoch warns that Martin is in such poor condition that attempting to revive him may fail, but Bronwyn insists they should try.

Brief Return and Revelation

During Enoch’s attempt, Martin’s hand rises and comes to rest on Jacob’s arm. The others gather close, but Jacob alone can hear the dead man speak. Martin’s first word is Jacob’s name, an unexpected sign that he recognizes him; Jacob asks him to repeat what he has said when he misses part of the faint message.

Martin whispers that he was killed, then answers Jacob’s question about who did it with “My old man.” The phrase initially leaves the identity of the killer uncertain. Jacob realizes that Martin is describing the bog boy, but that the bog boy was not actually responsible: Martin had encountered a hollowgast during the attack and mistaken it for his prized exhibit. Miss Peregrine’s explanation that hollowgasts become visible to others only when they are eating clarifies why Martin could see the creature while the danger remained hidden from the rest.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Martin’s death changes the meaning of his disappearance. What had seemed a local mystery involving an absent museum keeper becomes evidence that a hollowgast is loose on the island. Jacob tells the others that the creature is somewhere nearby, and Enoch urges him to ask Martin where it is. Martin’s brief revival therefore serves not as a rescue but as a narrow opportunity to identify the danger before his voice fades.

His fate also turns the museum’s prized exhibit into a point of tragic misrecognition: the creature Martin took for something familiar was the threat that killed him. The gap between what Martin saw and what the others could perceive makes his death an early warning about the hollowgast’s concealment, while his final words give Jacob a decisive role in interpreting the evidence.