“I see,” Memphis said, turning away.
“Theta. You knew all about us,” Evie said. “Why—”
“Don’t you get it? The rest of you got good powers. Memphis heals! Ling and Henry can help people in dreams. Isaiah and Evie can read the future and the past and figure stuff out. Me? All I can do is destroy.”
Isaiah sidled up to her. “You saved my life. Twice.”
Impulsively, Isaiah threw his arms around Theta, and she returned the hug, grateful for it.
“We can sort this out later. Right now we gotta figure out how to get these ghosts to go away,” Sam said. “Who’s got ideas?”
No one spoke.
“Don’t all jump in at once. Form an orderly line,” Sam said.
“Uncle Will said that ghosts used to be human, and that humans want things. The question is: What do these ghosts want?” Evie asked.
“They don’t want to be dead,” Henry offered. “They won’t accept the finality of death.”
“’Cause they been forgot,” Conor said. “They’re angry. That’s all they feel all the time. Angry and mean. They want youse to feel it, too.”
“So… they’re bullies,” Sam said.
“They’re a mob,” Memphis said. “How do you stop a mob?”
“With a lot of guns and things that blow other things up?” Sam said.
“Not for long,” Evie said. “And anyway, it won’t work on ghosts. They’re already dead, remember?”
Memphis tapped his finger against his lips and stared out the window at the night. “The Forgotten. The Forgotten,” he muttered.
“Uh, Memphis? You going ghost on us?” Sam asked.
Memphis turned away from the window and faced the others. He folded his arms across his chest and nodded, as if he were having a private conversation with himself. “Conor just said the ghosts are angry. That they’ve been forgotten.” A thought was fighting to take shape in Memphis’s head. He was thinking of the 135th Street library. All those books, all those stories waiting to be discovered. Stories that needed telling. “Will says that we have to see them ghost by ghost. We need to break up the mob. Draw the ghosts out.”
“How do we do that?” Evie asked. “There are hundreds of them!”
“We get them to talk,” Memphis said. “We let them know we’re listening.”
Sam snorted. “Did you see what they did to that doctor with the ax? What they did to the nurses? They don’t wanna talk; they wanna invade. Take over. They wanna hurt us.”
“I wish we’d had more training with Sister Walker,” Ling said. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”
“I don’t think they knew what they were doing, either,” Theta said, popping her chewing gum.
“Look,” Sam said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m just saying, what do we do if they decide to climb inside any of us and take us for a bad ride? What if, while we’re listening to their spooky bedtime stories, the Forgotten get us to act on our worst fears and”—Sam glanced at Evie—“hidden impulses.”
“Yeah. How will we know if it’s us or a ghost?” Isaiah asked.
“Preferably before we start eating each other’s faces,” Henry said. “‘Oh, pardon me, I thought you were my pal, Ling. But now that you’re trying to eat my face, I can see I was wrong about that!’”
Ling grimaced. “If I were going to eat a face, it would not be yours.”
“I’ll have you know my face is quite edible,” Henry insisted.
“Anybody in this asylum could be infected. Anybody could be somebody other than who they claim to be,” Theta said. “You can’t be sure that a friend is a friend.”
“So what now?” Evie asked.
“Seems like whatever we do, we’ve got to take the fight to the source. To the potter’s fields,” Henry said.
Theta ground out her cigarette. “Swell. Every time I think this night can’t get worse, it does.”
The lights dimmed and winked.
“They’re coming back,” Conor said. “We better go now.”
Henry poked his head out the door. Down by the nurses’ station, the lights were out again. Fog seeped around the window cracks and waterfalled over the windowsill. It circled one of the nurses, who burst into hysterical laughter. “Everything dies,” she said, pulling out strands of her hair. “Oh, our lives are such folly!”
“Hen? Whaddaya see?” Theta asked. The others were crowded behind him in a clump.
Henry gave them an awkward smile over his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Let’s ankle.”
Evie took hold of Isaiah’s hand. “Just keep walking,” she told him.
Henry pushed Luther Clayton’s wheelchair. Memphis kept a watch on Conor, who moved with feral quickness. Far behind them, the deadly fog advanced.
“If anything comes at us, Theta, can you keep ’em back?” Ling asked, and Theta knew what she was being asked to do.
“Gee. That happened fast,” she said bitterly.
“We need to hurry before this gets any worse,” Memphis said, opening the front door. The clammy air stuck to their skins. The disorienting fog was everywhere. Even the bright lights of the city seemed to have been swallowed up. It was as if they’d been cut off from the rest of the world.
“Anything could be waiting in this,” Ling warned.
“Stick close,” Henry said. “It would be easy for us to lose one another out here.”
Sam turned to Conor. “The lady telling you anything?”
Conor shook his head.
“Hurry,” Luther said, so suddenly it made them jump. “Grave… graveyard.”
They pressed on, keeping alert for anything that might be coming at them in the gloom. Ling wished this were a dream. If it were, she’d be able to speak more easily with the dead. And, if something terrible happened, at least she’d be able to run. The bottom of her crutch met the rise of a grave. The air had grown noticeably colder. The smell of rot returned.
“I think we’re close,” she said.
The fog rippled as the wraiths took shape—cold eyes, mummified faces, bared teeth, and, underneath it all, the palpable feeling of rage and thwarted need.
Henry took a step forward. Theta yanked him back by his sleeve. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?” she whispered.
“This worked last time.” He inched forward again, his hands up in a placating gesture. “Y-you don’t want to hurt us.”
The rotted mouths twisted into cruel smiles. “Oh, but we do,” they said as one, and let loose an unholy screech that sent Henry running back to the group.
“It really did work last time,” he insisted.
“What do you want?” Evie shouted.
“Want?” The Forgotten cocked their heads.
“You must want something. Isn’t that why you came back? We can’t help you if we don’t know.”
“We are the Forgotten. We want everything,” the ghosts said again.
“No. You’re not forgotten,” Memphis said, coming to stand beside Evie and Theta. “Tell us. Tell us who you are. We’re listening.”
The ghosts blinked as if trying to remember something that they’d thought irretrievably lost.
“Who are you?” Memphis pivoted, staring directly at one of the ghosts, though it terrified him to do it. The creature’s opalescent eyes showed Memphis’s reflection.