by Libba Bray
Dreams. And suffering. And blood.
Sam squirmed against the knowledge of this as it flooded through him, threaded to the dreams until it was impossible to separate them from one another. For every moment Sam witnessed, there were hundreds more passing quietly by. These moments fractured, dividing like cells so that they could be played out to different ends. In one scenario, someone died. In another, they lived. An action brought peace; that same action brought terror. All these moments had millions more living inside them, universes upon universes. Little futures playing out. Fading. Splitting into other futures. Death and rebirth. So much energy. Sam could feel it threaded through him and back out into every one of those futures, those moments. It was dizzying.
“So much energy.” Sam didn’t know if he’d thought it or said it. He was losing the edges of himself.
“It’s you.” Miss Addie was framed in the doorway of a white clapboard church. “Tell Theta—the binding spell. Tell her—”
The universe split.
Miss Addie was in an open coffin on its way to the graveyard. She lay perfectly still, like the dead, but Sam could hear her screaming inside his head and he knew she was very much alive.
Split.
Sergei. His mother. Sergei, I must show you something.
A moment opened like the petals on a flower: Sam was a boy at Hopeful Harbor and his mother had her hands on either side of his head. She was angry. At him? No. But she was angry. And afraid. Something had happened to make her afraid.
“My love, forget what you know. Do not see,” she whispered, and she brushed her thumbs against his temples and it all went away.
Sergei. His mother’s voice. Now? Yes, now. Here.
From here on, no more forgetting. Keep awake, my love. Use your gift to stay safe.
Split.
A white buffalo was born. It slithered into weary grass that reached up to welcome its promise. The land held its breath for hope, waiting for the animal to make its first cries.
Breathe, Sam thought. Breathe!
Another moment came, followed by another. A woman with red hair and green eyes. He’d seen her once before. At the post office. An Englishwoman. But she was younger here. The redheaded woman pressed her body against a majestic tree. “In some realm, we shall be together,” she promised. “I will free you, my love.” The world split. The same woman was reaching into the tree and pulling out a dark-haired man like the midwife to a hard birth. He was falling into her arms, gulping for air through all that muck, and she was crying.
Split.
Sam was with Evie, happy in her arms, and she was laughing.
Split.
Evie was just out of reach, and he was screaming at her to stop, to come back. Why?
Sam wanted to follow that future to see where it led because it frightened him.
The universe split again into a fluttering of wings.
There was something familiar about the woman standing before him, her voice a thick rasp. “Listen to me. Quick now. You must break the cycle. Tell Memphis to heal the breach.”
Memphis. This was Memphis’s mother.
“Break the cycle,” Sam repeated. “How?”
“Sam?” Marlowe’s voice. “What’s that about a circle?”
The cells of time divided again. One moment did not split into other futures, though. It was stuck, like a phonograph needle hiccuping in the same groove, playing the same line of a song over and over. That moment pulled Sam toward it, brightening and expanding, pulsing like a heartbeat. A song punched through the colorful swirl of gases of time and space to reach him now:
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.…”
He was at the edge of a foggy soldiers’ camp. The song came from a record spinning around on an old Victrola perched atop a tree stump.
“Sam?” Marlowe’s voice again. “Are you inside? What do you see?”
Soldiers in a clearing. Familiar. Something familiar here. A young soldier with twinkling blue eyes and a small pout of a mouth smiled up at Sam, and Sam felt that he knew this man. “It’s just about to start,” the soldier said.
“Okay,” Sam said, though the soldier seemed to take no notice. They were readying for something big, Sam could tell. One soldier danced a little soft-shoe. Another shaved at a mirror affixed to a tree trunk. The soldier with twinkling eyes—why is he so familiar?—wrote in his journal.
“Sam?” Marlowe.
“Soldiers. I see soldiers.”
Sam focused on the field telephone. Soon that phone would ring. How did he know this? He had the oddest sensation, like knowing that a murder was about to happen and not knowing what to do to stop it.
“Hey, what card am I holding?” one of the soldiers asked the blond twinkly-eyed fella.
“Eight of hearts,” the blond soldier answered without missing a beat.
“Son-of-a-bitch, O’Neill. Right again!”
O’Neill. Sam saw the patch on the soldiers’ uniforms: 144. He looked again at the blond soldier. Evie’s brother. Same bowlike mouth.
“Sam.” Marlowe. Insistent. “Leave the soldiers. Tell me what you see around you. Anything about the King of Crows. Concentrate.”
Sam walked away from the camp and into the lush winter forest. As he went farther in, the trees became diseased. From the tops of their leafless crowns, foul smoke belched up, blotting out the sky. Ash covered every surface. Sooty flakes fell on Sam’s clothes, and where they landed, they bit holes through the fabric. There was some sort of energy field here—Sam could feel it pulling on him, starting to make him uncomfortable, as if all his atoms were being thrown into chaos.
Sergei. Fight it, Little Fox. Do not let it claim you.
“Mama?”
Use your power, my son.
“What else do you see, Sam? We need to know.” Marlowe.
“I don’t feel so good. I wanna stop.”
The pressure of all that energy was squeezing in on Sam. He didn’t know how much more he could take.
“Sam. I need you to be brave,” Marlowe said.
Sam pushed aside the forest like a curtain. On the other side, as far as Sam’s eyes could see, was an army of the dead, hungry and waiting. And sitting on a throne of skulls, the King of Crows. Sam took a step backward. His foot squished into the carcass of some decaying animal.
“Who goes there?” The King of Crows was up and pushing through the dead with his feathered coat flapping and squawking as he moved. “One of Jake Marlowe’s little Diviner spies, no doubt.”
Use your power.
Don’t see me. Don’t see me, Sam thought.
The King of Crows sniffed. “Where are you? No matter. Jake Marlowe’s hubris will be to my advantage. I will tell him what he wants to hear.”
“Pack up your troubles. Pack up your troubles. Pack up your troubles.”
Sam was back on the field.
“The time is now!” the sergeant yelled to his men.
“Time to tell the story again,” the King of Crows said. “But only for a little while longer.” The King of Crows ran a hand across an hourglass. Inside, Sam saw every possible future collapsing into one filled with darkness and horror and death.
“And smile.”
The soldiers raced to their positions. Miss Addie stood in the middle of the field. She was an old woman. Her fingernails were bloodied and broken, as if she’d been scratching at something that would not yield. “Sam. I need to tell you about the ghosts. They’re not like before. They—”
Split.
There was a young woman in a white dress. “I know you. How do I know you?” she said. A bell tolled. In the distance was a white clapboard church. “I’m to be married there to my Elijah.”
Split.
The King of Crows cradled the hourglass. “Soon.”
The needle stuck.
“And smile.”
Lightning. In the flashes were the dead.
“And smile.”
Dust swept
across towns.
“And smile.”
The dark sky was everywhere.
“All is connected,” the King of Crows said.
The Eye was pulling Sam in, drawing his energy like filings to a magnet. The soldiers screamed as the Eye ripped them apart, their limbs and organs fused to its eternally spinning gears. Sam could feel the unholy pull deep in his own body, just one more spark of energy to be fed to the crushing machinery, trapped in its jaws forever.
Sergei! Fight! Do not let it take you!
“D-don’t s-see mm-mm-mmeeee!” Sam screamed.
His eyes fluttered open as the Eye powered down. He was back in the solarium. His body hurt as if he’d been beaten, rearranged. Marlowe raced to unbuckle the straps and lift the helmet from Sam’s smoking head. There were strange red marks on the skin of his arms. He shook all over and could not stop.
“Just a little radiation burn. Nothing to worry about,” Jake said. “I’ll have them apply a dressing.”
Tears streamed down Sam’s face. His nose ran. He couldn’t help either. Sam looked over at his mother. Her eyes were closed. She moaned and rolled her head from side to side.
“She’ll be fine. Just needs to rest,” Marlowe assured Sam.
“You’re p-playing with the King of C-Crows. You c-can’t trust him.”
“Don’t you think I know that!” Marlowe snapped. “That’s why I need to know what you can see. So I can prepare for it. Be one step ahead of him.”
“So the United States government can prepare for it,” Jefferson added. “We are paying for these experiments. Don’t forget—the King of Crows will become our property.”
Sam kept his gaze on Marlowe. “You have no idea who he is. What he is.”
“He’s the most extraordinary being anyone has ever encountered, Sam. And we—Will, Rotke, Miriam, Margaret, and I—we found him quite by accident.”
“That’s one way of putting it. You’re talking about the tear between worlds,” Sam said. He was dizzy and nauseated. It felt as if someone had punched out all his insides and put them back in the wrong order.
“A door between worlds!” Marlowe’s eyes gleamed. “But we have to stabilize it long enough so that we don’t lose our connection to it.”
“You can also close doors. I’m just saying, some doors are very good closed.”
“That other world is a place of unbounded energy. Of unlimited power. Already, it has given us so much. Why, in just ten short years, Sam, I’ve been able to provide giant leaps forward in industry and invention thanks to our connection. The power coming from that other dimension and the King of Crows is without limit, Sam! And we, the greatest nation on earth, will control it. It will belong to Marlowe Industries.”
“And to the Republic for which it stands,” Mr. Jefferson added pointedly.
“What I see is that the King of Crows has got you right where he wants you!”
Sam thought about screaming. There were people who worked here. Servants. Did they know what was going on upstairs in the solarium? Did they care?
“Sir, we have to leave for New York soon. The memorial.”
“Yes, yes. I know.” Jake sounded irritated by the interruption. And Sam knew that Marlowe would’ve gone for another round if he hadn’t been inconvenienced by his dead fiancée’s memorial service in New York City.
“Y-you’re a m-monster,” Sam whispered through the foamy blood on his lips.
“I hope to change your mind about that, Sam. I truly do,” Marlowe whispered. The bastard had the audacity to sound sincere when he said it.
The Shadow Men returned Sam to his cell, locking him in. Sam couldn’t do much more than lie in his bed. He felt a hundred years old after what Marlowe’s Eye had done to him. And even when he shut his eyes, he could still feel his connection to that other world. He could still hear the screams of the soldiers.
Sam curled up in a ball and cried softly. “Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.”
CHAOS
The public memorial for Sarah Snow in Times Square was the biggest ticket since Marlowe’s ill-fated exhibition. Two hundred thousand people were expected. Radio microphones lined the stage. Cameras stood at the ready to turn it into a newsreel that would play at every picture palace across the nation. Everyone wanted to be seen and counted at Sarah Snow’s memorial. It was all about appearances. And after the bombing, appearances mattered; no one could afford to look unpatriotic. As she moved among the throngs of New Yorkers looking to be counted among the faithful, Evie thought about how Mr. Phillips had asked her to sign a loyalty oath. It was the reason she’d left WGI. From what she’d heard, others were being asked to sign loyalty pledges in businesses all over town. She wondered if any of them had refused. She wondered if she had been stupid to say no.
Newsies pushed into the crowd, hawking the late edition: “Ghosts Take Manhattan! Ghouls in Gotham!” New Yorkers tossed their nickels and crowded around to read about the previous night’s hauntings. From downtown to uptown, East Side to West, nowhere was safe. What did the sightings mean? the people asked one another. What did the ghosts want? And most important: Whose fault was it—who should shoulder the blame? The city had the feel of a town awaiting a hurricane.
Evie peered out from under the brim of Sam’s Greek fisherman’s cap, searching for Jericho in the crowd. She’d been harsh with him last night. It haunted her now. But she was also angry with him for the way he’d judged them when he knew the stakes. Evie and the others were fighting a war, and Jericho thought he could sit it out.
“There’s that snake Harriet Henderson,” Theta whispered, nodding toward the front of the barricade, where a policeman let the influential gossip columnist pass through and take her seat in the stands next to Jake Marlowe himself. She was wearing a new fur, Evie noted. The gossip business was paying off for Harriet—or the people paying her not to print gossip about them were paying off. Harriet drew a handkerchief from her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes.
“Impossible,” Evie gasped.
Theta tugged her veiled hat down to hide her face. She recognized several Follies girls in the crowd, and she hoped they didn’t see her. “What’s impossible?”
“Harriet’s tears. Why, everybody knows snakes don’t cry,” Evie said, making Theta giggle.
“Say, Memphis, you copacetic?” Theta asked, concerned.
Memphis nodded. In truth, he was feeling pretty beat up. The previous night’s ghost hunting had taken it out of him. Something about it had felt different. Off. He wanted to ask the others if they’d experienced the same unease, but he was afraid of their answers.
Theta waved to Henry and Ling, who were coming through the crowd with Jericho. Evie’s heart sped up. What would she say? What would he say?
“Hi,” Henry said, without his usual bonhomie. “Anyone else have a sleepless night?”
“Yes,” Memphis said, and he didn’t know if he was relieved not to be alone in that or worried that it meant Henry was also disturbed by their shared experience.
“Evie. Nice hat,” Jericho said crisply.
“Thank you. I’m rather fond of it. And the person it belongs to,” she responded in kind. Then: “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Jericho lied.
“Well. I’m awfully glad to hear it.”
“Careful, your enunciation is showing,” Theta whispered to her.
“What did the ghosts mean last night: You did this. Did what? Were they saying what’s happening is our fault?” Ling asked.
“That’s ridiculous! If anything, we’re trying to stop this,” Evie said, glancing at Jericho, who did not look her way.
“Isaiah, you got a sense about things. What’s to come?” Bill asked.
Isaiah shook his head. The visions came when and how they liked. He wondered if it was the same way for Sarah Beth, or if she’d figured out how to master her powers, and if she had, if she’d show him how to do it.
“Where’s Sister Walker? I thought she’d be
here by now,” Theta asked.
“Listen, I know Mr. Marlowe said we was to come up front, but I’d feel a whole heap better if we kept ourselves unseen,” Bill said. “There’s Shadow Men looking for Memphis and Isaiah.”
“I agree,” Theta said.
They moved farther into the crowd, away from the main event. Evie couldn’t stop thinking about Jericho. Everything between them was strained. But without him, they’d never have gotten through to Marlowe.
“Jericho…” Evie started. “About last night. I didn’t mean…” She reached for him just as the conductor played a long note on a xylophone. The Christian Crusaders hummed the pitch together, then began their somber hymn. People’s eyes were now on the stage. A wave of shushing rippled through the assembly. Evie retracted her hand.
Memphis gave Theta a sad smile. “I don’t think we should be seen together,” he whispered.
She nodded. She knew he was right, but she didn’t like it.
“Can I stay with Theta up here, so I can see better?” Isaiah pleaded, also in a whisper.
Memphis rubbed his hand across Isaiah’s head. “All right, Shrimpy. You can’t help being a Shrimpy.”
“Hey! Aunt Octavia says I grew an inch! She marked it on the wall.”
“Shhh!” a man scolded.
“Still a Shrimpy,” Memphis whispered close to Isaiah’s ear. “Don’t be trouble.”
“I won’t,” Isaiah said, irritated. Why did Memphis always treat him like a baby?
Memphis and Bill moved a few rows back, behind Evie, Theta, Isaiah, and Henry. A few feet away, Ling had found a spot where the ground was a little more even for her crutches.
“You okay?” Jericho asked, coming to Ling’s side. He knew it was hard for Ling to stand for long periods of time. And he wanted some distance from Evie.
“Yes, fine,” Ling said. It was the pain of Alma leaving that hit hardest tonight. Ling wondered if she would ever find someone who could love her as she was or if she was destined to be alone. She just wanted to get this night over with and go home to dream walk. At least in dreams, she had some control.