“… There’s a great big hole in the middle of me, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t fill it. I try to keep the awful, empty sadness out, but it keeps coming back in.…”
“… I’m to be committed? On what cause? Because I’m a suffragette? Is it mad to believe that women deserve the same rights as men? To fight against such injustice is bravery, not insanity, sir.…”
“… I killed them all. And then I had my supper.…”
“Feels like a living tomb. So much sadness and confusion, horror and fear.” Evie’s fingers skipped lightly along the buckles of a restraining jacket. The hair on her arm prickled as the metal began its whisper-call to her, eager to tell its stories. She yanked her hand away. She did not want to be the confessor to this place’s sins.
Lightning flashed at the windows. Thunder ricocheted through the halls, making everybody jumpy. It was nearly half past four, the iron sky deepening toward dusk.
“Those men in the music room were acting out a scene from my dreams. It’s always the same: The soldiers. The card game. The Victrola. And then something dreadful happens. They’re all killed.”
“If that was supposed to make me feel better, it didn’t,” Theta said.
“Every time I’ve talked to Luther, he’s said the same thing: ‘They never should’ve done it.’ In my dreams, James has said it, too. Never should’ve done what? Who is they?”
“Sheba!” Sam waved to Evie from a doorway. He held up a key. “Who wants to say hi to Luther Clayton?”
“Where did you get that?” Theta asked.
“Stole it off Molly,” Sam said. “It’s the key to his room.”
“So that’s why you were cozying up to her,” Evie said.
“That, and she’s a real tomato.”
“Once again, Sam, I don’t know if I want to kiss or kill you.”
“Better kiss me, then, to make sure,” Sam said, and winked.
“Come on, Romeo,” Evie said, tugging on Sam’s sleeve. “Let’s ankle while we can.”
“I don’t think Isaiah should go,” Memphis said, and Isaiah started in with his protests.
“You never let me do anything!”
“I’m the one who has to look out for you,” Memphis said.
“I’ll stay here with him,” Theta said. “I wanna be here for when Henry comes back. He won’t know where we are.”
“Don’t wanna stay here with her,” Isaiah said.
“Isaiah!” Memphis pointed a finger at his brother. “Apologize.”
Isaiah pressed his lips tightly together and stared at the braided rug.
“Isaiah…” Memphis warned.
“It’s jake,” Theta said, even though it had hurt her feelings. “Go on and talk to Luther.”
Memphis narrowed his eyes at Isaiah. “We’re gonna talk about this later.”
“There’s a lot of ground to cover. Luther’s ward is all the way in the back,” Sam said, looking toward Ling. “You can stay here if you want.”
Ling bristled. There had been a lot of walking already. A throbbing ache burned along Ling’s muscles and burrowed deep into her spine, but she was afraid of being left behind, afraid of being seen as less than, or not seen at all.
“I’m fine,” she said, hoisting herself up on her crutches.
And the four of them set off through the asylum’s zigzagging wards toward its farthermost, forgotten realm and Luther Clayton.
Luther was resting in his room.
“Hello, Luther,” Evie said. “Remember me? Evie O’Neill?” She took a breath. “James’s sister?”
Luther stirred. He inclined his head toward Evie. “You sh-shouldn’t have c-c-come. It’s n-not s-safe.”
“I had to see you again.”
“They never should’ve d-done it.”
“I think he’s on some kind of medicine,” Memphis said. “It might make the reading harder. Maybe I’d better stay close?”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry for this, Luther. But I have to know what happened to you, and to my brother.” Evie closed her hand around the watch at his wrist. The whispers started.
And then she was falling deeply into Luther’s memory.
WITNESS
There was snow on the ground. A sugary, fairy-tale frost that glittered in the sun. On the frozen lawn of the great house, a dozen soldiers gathered around one of their own as he stood in front of a fat, round searchlight, eyes tightly closed, one hand stretched toward its bulk as if he could grab hold of its incandescence.
“Concentrate,” Rotke Wasserman encouraged. She was a slim woman with a heart-shaped face and kind, dark eyes made watery by the cold.
“Yes, Miss.” The young soldier recommitted, grimacing with the effort, and in the next second, the bulbs of the searchlight hummed, rising in pitch to a scream before exploding in sparks of light.
“That’s extraordinary!” Jake Marlowe cried, clapping the young man on the back. “Extraordinary!”
“Thank you, sir.” The soldier looked happy but exhausted. His nose bled. Someone else handed him a handkerchief.
“Thanks, O’Neill,” the soldier said.
Evie gasped as her brother came into view. His pocket had been stitched with his name: JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL. He wore an armband embroidered with the radiant eye-and-lightning-bolt symbol.
“This stuff really gonna help us beat the Germans?” James asked.
“If everything goes as planned tomorrow, you men will be the most powerful force on earth,” Marlowe assured him.
“How’s about that, huh? Ain’t that just bully?” The bloody-nosed soldier said later as he flopped onto his mattress in a long room flanked by rows of neatly made beds. “The most powerful men on earth—the new Americans!”
Luther sat on the bed opposite writing a letter. “What was wrong with us before?”
“Aw, Luther. Don’t be a wet blanket,” another soldier called from his bed, where he polished his boots. “He’s making us special. Don’t you wanna be special?”
“Sure. I suppose. But…”
“But what?” the boot polisher said, exasperated.
“What do they want us to do with these new powers?” Luther asked.
The bloody-nosed soldier shrugged. “Fight the Germans! Keep our shores safe from the enemy. Win the war. We’ll win all the wars!”
“I don’t think they’re being completely honest with us about what they’re doing,” Luther said.
“That’s Uncle Sam!” A soldier laughed. “Need-to-know only.”
“It’s just… I’ve been having odd dreams about this fellow in a tall hat.”
“Has he got a gray face and a nose sharp as a beak?” James asked.
“Say, I’ve seen that fella, too!” another soldier said.
The others quickly agreed.
Luther raked a hand through his dark hair. “The dead, they talk to me now, you know, and some of ’em warned me about that man in the hat. They say, ‘We shouldn’t let him loose or give him too much power.’”
“What does that mean? Let him loose how?”
“I dunno.” Luther drummed his pencil against his thigh. “There’s this messenger. A bird. Last night, that messenger told me to be careful. Said it was a trap. And then… then they killed that bird.”
The others were listening now, afraid.
“Gee, why you got to say such terrible things, Luther? Why you got to be so spooky?”