The air felt charged. Dangerous.
“Told you this was a bad idea,” Sam said to the others in what he thought was a soft voice. “He doesn’t know anything.”
“I ain’t no liar!” Conor’s eyes flashed. And then, quick as a panther, he was up and rushing Sam, pummeling him with fists until Memphis could pull him off and hold him in the chair. Conor’s breathing slowed. A glazed look came over his face.
“I’ll get the attendant,” Theta said, throwing wide the door.
“Conor?” Memphis said, but it was as if the boy had turned the lights out inside himself and was refusing to answer the door.
“Conor?” Isaiah tried, but he wasn’t answering. Isaiah took his pencil from his pocket and tucked it into Conor’s pocket. “For later. When you need it.”
The attendant, a big, burly man, had arrived. “All right, now, Conor. Time to go,” he said gently. He helped Conor from the chair, but Conor resisted, balling his fists.
“He’ll come tonight—they’ll all come! You’ll be trapped here and he’ll come for you one by one! One by one. All seven. One, two, t’ree, four, five, seven!”
“Let’s go, Conor. I know you don’t want the restraints.” The attendant led Conor by the arm, but he locked his feet and splayed a hand against the doorjamb, refusing to move. He was like a boy all of a sudden, wide-eyed and beseeching.
“Miriam!” he said.
“What did you say?” Sam said, stepping into the hall as the attendant hauled Conor away.
“The lady in my head! Her name is Miriam.”
“You think it could be my mother?” Sam asked Evie.
“We might’ve had a chance to ask if somebody hadn’t been so eager to get rid of him,” Evie said.
“I object!”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I hate to be wrong,” Sam said. “But you’re right.”
Evie smiled. “Music to my ears, Sam Lloyd.”
“So the ghosts can possess people, make them do things,” Memphis said, mulling over Conor’s story. “Why? What do they want? And why are they haunting this place?”
“Pretty sure it’s not for the beef stew,” Sam said, patting his stomach and wincing.
Memphis made a face. “You ate that?”
Sam shrugged. “I was hungry.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Now I gotta figure out a way to talk to Conor.”
“Well, you can figure it out after I talk to Luther Clayton. That’s the whole reason we came here, don’t forget,” Evie said, pacing.
“Well, thanks to you, they’re not gonna let us back in that ward. Could you stop with that back-and-forth? You’re making me dizzy. And you remind me of your uncle.”
Evie glared. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“So: Don’t. Pace.” Sam held up his arms in a shrug.
“I can’t help it. It’s being cooped up in here.” Through the barred windows, Evie looked out at the dismal weather. She could see the tinsmithing shop and the barn where some of the male patients tended peacefully to the animals. But that hadn’t always been the case here on Ward’s Island. Evie could sense it in the walls, like a stifled scream waiting to explode.
Down the hall, singing drifted out of the music therapy room, and Evie was grateful for the distraction of it to drown out the asylum’s secret confessions. She wandered down and stood just outside the room, observing. The shell-shocked patients were there. Once again, they faced one another, holding up their hands and staring into their empty palms. As Evie watched, fascinated, one of the men placed an imaginary object on the table. Without pause, another of the patients put his hand on the “object,” and after examining it, he transferred it to his left hand. Evie watched for another minute until she realized exactly where she’d seen this scenario before: It reminded her of those soldiers playing cards in her dreams. And then, as one, the men turned their heads toward Evie.
“They never should have done it,” they said in unison. They fell to the ground, screaming and writhing as if in great distress. Nurses rushed in to help the men back into their chairs. The men still reached their hands toward Evie. “Help us. Help us. Help us.”
Evie staggered down the hall, desperately in need of air. She stumbled outdoors and sucked in a lungful of cold mist. The rain was a solid wall. Evie couldn’t even see the pier through it. “Miss O’Neill. Are you all right?”
One of the nurses had followed her outside.
“When is the next ferry back to Manhattan?” Evie asked.
“I’m afraid no one’s leaving.” The nurse nodded toward the heavy rain. “The storm’s getting worse. They’ve canceled ferry service until tomorrow. You’re all stuck here for the night.”
Theta sat in the window seat, staring out at the incessant rain. “What’s the one thing I made you promise me?” she said on an angry plume of cigarette smoke.
“How was I to know there’d be a storm?” Evie asked. She’d taken up pacing again.
“I don’t know, Evil. But I’m blaming you anyway.”
“My aunt Octavia’s gonna kill me for being out all night with Isaiah,” Memphis said from the small table where he played peanut poker with Isaiah, who kept winning. “And whatever’s left of me, Papa Charles is gonna take care of when I don’t show up for work tonight. I can’t even call because the telephone lines are down in this storm.”
“There’s nobody to feed Archibald,” Theta fretted. “He’ll be so hungry.”
“Who’s Archibald?” Sam asked.
“My cat.”
“You got a cat?” Isaiah said, excited.
“Yeah. One of the Proctor sisters’ brood. I saved him from an untimely death.”
“Those old ladies in your building? They’re creepy,” Ling said.
“They’re not,” Theta said, and left it. She wanted to tell the others about what had happened with Miss Addie and the ghost. In fact, she’d meant to before, but she suddenly felt protective of the old woman—and of herself. Evie was always chiding Theta for holding on so tightly to her secrets, but secrets had kept Theta safe for years. Ever since she’d left Kansas. She wouldn’t know how to stop swallowing down her story if she tried. Besides, most people just wanted to talk about themselves, and if you held your breath, they’d rush in to fill the emptiness.
“Do you think some places just hold on to evil? That you can’t paint or wash it away? It lives on, no matter what you build on top,” Evie mused, rushing in, just as Theta figured she would.
Isaiah threw his hands in the air. “Are you trying to scare the living daylights outta me?”
“Sorry, Isaiah,” Evie said. “It’s just that ever since we started doing experiments together, I’m a raw nerve. I can barely touch something, and its history starts to whisper to me.”
As if to test or torture herself, Evie let her fingers drift from object to object, catching glimpses of their secrets: “… I only wanted the pain to stop. That’s why I swallowed the lye.…”