“But he’s not the killer. He can’t be.”
“He is, Evie. The police in New Brethren confirmed that he’s been preaching about the coming of the Beast and the arrival of Solomon’s Comet for the past six months. He’s admitted his crime. It’s over,” Will said with finality. “Why don’t you give yourself a night off to go out dancing with your friends? You’ve earned it. Now, I must return to my class.”
Evie sat on the wide staircase and listened to Will’s voice floating out from the classroom as he talked about the nature of evil.
Jericho came to sit beside her. “Murnau’s Faust is playing at the Palace.”
“Swell,” Evie said, still turning things over in her mind.
“I was just wondering if you might—”
There was a knock at the door.
“I’ll go,” Evie said, sighing. “Probably another reporter.”
“Want to go with me,” Jericho finished as he watched Evie walk away.
The Negro woman standing on the steps of the museum was tall and broad-shouldered and smartly attired in a brown plaid suit and a beige hat with a red band. She didn’t seem like a reporter; in fact, she carried herself more like a queen.
“May I help you?” Evie asked.
The woman’s smile was polite but formal. “I am looking for Dr. William Fitzgerald.”
“I’m afraid he’s teaching just now.”
“I see.” The woman nodded, thinking something over. “May I leave my card?”
“Of course.”
From her pocketbook, the woman retrieved a simple cream calling card. Evie rubbed a finger over the lettering. Miss Margaret Walker, with an address uptown. “Do you work for Mr. Fitzgerald?” the woman asked. There was something strange in the way she said “work,” with an air of suspicion that left Evie feeling guarded.
“I’m his niece, Evie O’Neill.”
“His niece,” Miss Walker said in wonder. “Well. Isn’t that something?”
Evie didn’t quite know what to make of Miss Margaret Walker. It wasn’t often that someone left her feeling so undone. “And do you work with my uncle, Miss Walker?”
Miss Walker’s mouth twitched, flirting with a semblance of smile before settling into something far harder. “No.” The woman started down the steps, then turned back. “Miss O’Neill, if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Seventeen.” The woman seemed to consider this. “Have a pleasant day, Miss O’Neill.”
Evie turned the card over and was surprised to see that Margaret Walker had left a note in script that was as precise and clipped as she appeared to be.
It’s coming back.
What was coming back? Who was Margaret Walker? And who was she to Will?
Upon returning to the library, Evie was surprised to find Will there. “Oh, you’ve finished already. Someone was just calling for you. A woman. She left her card.”
Will stared at the name on the card. He turned it over and read the other side.
“Who is she, Unc?”
“No one I know,” Will answered and tossed Margaret Walker’s card in the wastebasket.
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES
Evie was dreaming.
In the exotic, looping logic of dreams, she sat on the old wooden swing behind her family’s house in Ohio while James pushed her. She felt the desperate need to look behind her, to make sure he was there and to whisper a warning to him, but the swing rose higher and higher and she could do nothing but hold on tightly. On the fourth push, she swung so high that her pendant flew from her neck. Evie reached out a hand to grab it and fell down, down, down into a velvety forever.
A crow snatched it from her grasping fingers and flew with it into a churning, dark-gray sky above a vast wheat field. Lightning shot from the clouds and struck the land. The wheat burned. Evie put up an arm to shield herself from the heat.
When she took her arm away, she found herself on the streets of a deserted Times Square. Under the giant billboard for Marlowe Industries, the hollow-man war veteran sat in his wheelchair, rattling his cup. “The time is now,” he said.
The pretty woman in Uncle Will’s photograph skated past, laughing. “That’s you all over, William,” she said. Evie heard laughter and turned to see that it was Will, the young Will of family pictures. But when she looked again, it was James, standing on the edge of the familiar forest in the mist. He was pale. So very pale. Dark shadows lay beneath his vacant eyes. He waved to Evie, and she trailed him through the woods and into the army camp. Atop a barrel, a Victrola played, the record going round and round: “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile….”
Sandbags formed a wall in front of a long trench. A barbed-wire fence stretched for miles. And the fog sat heavily over it all.
“Don’t let your joy and laughter hear the snag. Smile, boys, that’s the style….”
Above the tree line, a long, serrated roof appeared, like a forgotten fairy castle in the mist. Where was James?
The record spun: “What’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile….”
The soldiers stood around talking, eating from tins, drinking from canteens. She blinked, and for a split second, the boys became skeletal specters. Evie screamed and hid her eyes, and when she looked again, they were just soldiers. One toasted her with his canteen. He smiled, and locusts hopped from his mouth.
“So, pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, s—”
An explosion rattled the ground. A column of fierce white light pierced the sky and spread out in rapid waves, decimating the trees and the soldiers where they stood—flesh peeled back from bone, sockets missing eyes, limbs melting, mouths open in unheard screams while the Victrola turned on a hiss. Evie ran. Her bare feet squished through fields of bloody mud. It splattered her nightgown, face, and arms. The blood became poppies, which rose beside the scorched trees. She saw James up ahead, his back to her. He was alive and unharmed!
James. She called his name, but in the world of the dream, she made no sound. James, James! She was close. She would reach him and they would run away from this horrible place. Yes, they would run. They would be all right. They—
He turned slowly toward her and removed his gas mask and she saw that his beautiful face was ghastly pale and skeletal, his teeth garish now that his lips were gone.
And then he was melting, like all the others.
Evie woke shaking. She sat up and pulled her knees to her chest and waited for her breathing to return to normal. She knew there’d be no more sleep tonight. Exhausted, she took herself to the kitchen for a glass of water, then settled into Will’s office chair and tried to comfort herself by straightening the mess that was his desk. She picked up a crystal paperweight. A letter opener. A framed picture of the woman she’d seen when she held Will’s glove. If she wanted to, she could press any of these things between her palms, concentrate, and draw out Will’s secrets. Jericho’s, too. And Sam’s and Mabel’s and Theta’s. The list was endless. But it was a form of stealing, knowing people’s secrets without their consent. And she wasn’t sure she wanted the responsibility of knowing.
She put the photograph back in its protected place and let her palm rest against the half-dollar pendant at her neck, feeling warmed by its presence. She’d never been able to read it; the coin was too imbued with her own memories. But she liked the weight of it against her neck. It was her last connection to James, and James had been her connection to everything good. She remembered the birthday note that had accompanied the gift:
Happy birthday, old girl.
Are you seven already? Before I know it, you’ll be pinning gardenias to your frocks and sitting with gentlemen callers on the front porch—under the watchful eye of your dear brother, of course. France is miserably muddy, I’m afraid. You’d have a grand time of it, making mud pies and throwing them at the Germans. Big day tomorrow, so I won’t write again for a while. Here is a little something to remember your old brother by. Don’t spend it all at Hale’s Candy Store.
Fondly, James