Ben Arnold set Luther up in a flophouse on the West Side, not far from Times Square. The war ended. An armistice was signed. Bombs exploded on Wall Street. The country raided houses and deported “aliens.” Motor cars rumbled through the skyscraper canyons. Ragtime birthed jazz and jazz birthed an age. Women cut their hair and raised their hemlines to dance. The country outlawed liquor; bathtub gin made outlaws. The neon lights of Broadway had never beamed brighter. People placed their faith in stocks; they were rich and getting richer.
On the streets, Luther Clayton begged for food and spare change. The one forty-four still screamed on the battlefield of his mind. The dead whispered to him, told him secrets. A pretty flapper passed by and tucked a dollar into his tin cup. Her, the dead whispered. She’s the one. Her face was familiar. Like James’s. She smiled. Her smile, like his.
The screaming got worse. The Shadow Men found him. They’d been watching for some time. They came with their dark suits and false smiles and murdering hands that looked so clean. “We need you to complete one last mission, soldier.” They put the gun in his hand. Told him to shoot the girl. “It will stop the screaming. Do this, and everything will be fine.”
They lie, the dead warned from their graves. They have always lied.
But there were other dead, and they were hungry and mean. The ones who belonged to him. Their voices drowned out the others. “Kill her,” they urged. “Kill her so that we might be free!”
Luther raised the gun. Watched Evie’s face shift to surprise. His hand shook. The screaming reached a fever pitch. The other Diviner, Sam, stopped Luther from shooting. There were police and a ferry ride to the island and the cell. But the screaming hadn’t stopped.
“You failed us!” the hungry dead hissed. “He will punish you!”
But the other dead whispered softly as a mother’s lullaby: Rest. Then speak of what you know. Show them what you have seen. Witness until their comfort yields to questions. Till their eyes cry with truth. Till their ears would hear the voices of tomorrow. Till their hearts, heavy with knowledge, beat in understanding.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
When Evie surfaced from her reading with Luther Clayton, her body trembled uncontrollably. Her stomach roiled as if she’d been on rough seas. She’d been under too deep for too long.
“You knew my brother. You…” she said at last between shaking breaths. “You loved him,” she said softly.
Luther’s face was wet. His pale, chapped lips quivered. “Y-yes. James. They never… should’ve d-done it.”
Evie’s throat ached with the bitter truth of what she’d seen. What they’d done. She knew the truth now. She knew, and there was no going back.
Luther looked into her eyes. There was some fire still left in him. “S-save him. Save them. Set them all f-free.”
“How? Where are they? Tell me how to find them!”
“They’re with him. The K-King of C-Crows,” Luther whispered. “Follow the Eye. The Eye keeps it open. Heal… the breach.”
“I don’t understand what that means, Luther. What is this Eye—how do we find it? How can we close it? Please. Please, can you tell us?” Evie pleaded, but Luther had struggled to hold on to that much. He had retreated into his memories again and was lost. Evie tucked the blanket around him and shut the door.
In the common room, the radio in the corner played an opera program softly as Evie told Memphis, Ling, and Sam everything she’d witnessed with Luther. A steely-eyed Sam sat on the edge of an abandoned wheelchair and pounded his right fist absently against the spokes. “They did that. Will and Sister Walker, Rotke and Jake.” He paused. “My mother. They shot those soldiers up with super serum and turned them into an experiment. They might’ve done that to us at some point.”
“Haven’t they already done that to us?” Evie said bitterly. She was pacing again, like Will. She didn’t care.
Memphis straddled the piano bench, his arms folded across his chest. “There’s something about us and that other world. Don’t you feel it? Like we’re joined in some way. We’re the ones who can talk to the ghosts and the King of Crows. We’re the ones who’ve seen that eye symbol in our sleep.”
“Seems like that would make us awfully valuable,” Evie said.
“And dangerous, like I said,” Sam chimed in. He jerked his head toward the hallway. “Looks like we got company.”
Conor Flynn stood in the open doorway, twirling a piece of his hair. “I need to draw,” he said, marching to his spot at the table and taking out his paper and the pencil Isaiah had given him.
“If these ghosts are a hive mind being controlled, then who’s the puppet master? Somebody has to be whipping them up,” Ling said from her spot on the divan.
The scratching of Conor’s pencil distracted Evie.
“What are you drawing, Conor?” she asked.
Conor didn’t answer. He drew as if he was channeling, his pencil moving with quick strokes. The others crowded around, watching in horror as the picture took shape. On Conor’s page, an army of hungry ghosts advanced on a boy in a boater hat just like the one Henry wore.
The lights winked. On. Off. On. Off. As if blinking out a message.
“The Hell Gate?” Sam asked.
Memphis shook his head. “Nobody’s blasting in this storm.”
“Maybe it’s the storm, then,” Sam said.
Conor’s head snapped up. “They’re coming. Onetwot’reefourfiveseven…”
Memphis, Sam, and Evie raced to the windows. Dusk had given way to dark very quickly. Lightning arced violently above Ward’s Island. A giant hand of blue-gray fog reached over the top of the Hell Gate until they could no longer see the bridge at all.
“You ever seen fog move like that before?” Memphis asked.
“No,” Evie whispered.
“Onetwot’reefourfivesevenOnetwot’reefourfiveseven…”
Memphis hurried from window to window, checking to be sure that they were tightly latched. And then he backed away from the view of the fog spreading across the island like an avalanche.
“Henry’s outside in that,” Ling said.
“One two… One. Two. T’ree… onetwot’reefourfiveseven…”
“We can’t go out there now,” Sam said.
“And we can’t leave him there!” Ling insisted. She swiped Conor’s picture and held it up to prove her point.
“What about Isaiah and Theta?” Memphis said. “I should’ve stayed with him!”
“… Fivesevenonetwot’reefourfivesevenone…”
“All right. We go back to the main building for Isaiah and Theta. And then we get Henry,” Sam said.
There was a breath of sudden quiet in the room.
“Why has he stopped counting?” Ling asked.
Conor’s eyes were huge and he was breathing in short bursts like a frightened pup. A cacophonous burst squawked from the radio, as if it were moving rapidly through stations in search of a signal. There followed a long hiss, and then, softly at first but growing ever louder, a buzzing like a swarm of flies.
“Turn it off,” Evie said.
Sam did but the sound persisted. Shrieks and sobs burst through the buzz as if the history of the asylum itself was trying to make itself heard through the machine. The flickering lights bounced shadows over them all. Through the open door, the Diviners could see bewildered attendants rushing frantic patients into their rooms, soothing them as best they could. “It’ll be just a moment; I’m shutting the door.”