by Libba Bray
Will shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Maybe,” he said at last.
BEFORE THE DEVIL BREAKS YOU
The first time Margaret Andrews Walker saw an actual Diviner at work, she was ten years old and helping her mother nurse the sick at the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School in Philadelphia. On Sundays after church, Margaret’s mother had her come and read to the patients. An elderly woman named Lavinia Cooper had been brought in, weak and short of breath. In Mrs. Cooper’s hometown, there had been no colored hospital, and the white hospitals wouldn’t admit her. By the time she’d been brought to Frederick Douglass, her chest cold had progressed to pneumonia.
When Lavinia began to recover, word spread along the ward that she could talk to the spirits and deliver prophecy. Already, she’d saved the life of one of the young doctors. On a rainy night, she warned him not to take his usual route home—“I can see that road washed clean away.” Sure enough, a flash flood swept up four people on the very road that doctor would’ve traveled. A day later, Lavinia had clasped the hands of a young nurse and, with her eyes staring straight up to the ceiling, announced that the nurse was pregnant days before it was confirmed. Whispers circulated: Lavinia Cooper had the sight. She was a spirit talker. One of the cunning folk. What the old-timers called a Diviner.
Margaret was not an impressionable child. As far as she was concerned, doctors and nurses couldn’t afford to believe in that sort of superstitious nonsense. She found the Cooper woman highly suspicious and did her best to avoid her.
“You are not here to serve yourself, Margaret Andrews Walker,” her mother had scolded, swatting her across the bottom even though Margaret was already ten. “You are here to serve the sick and the needy. Now, please make yourself useful and go read to Mrs. Cooper.”
Scowling, Margaret had sat in the chair farthest from the woman’s bed, nursing her wounded dignity as she read aloud from Little Women.
“Come close, child,” Mrs. Cooper bade in a voice made scratchy from coughing.
Margaret dragged her chair nearer to the old woman’s bedside.
“Your grandmother’s here. She wants me to tell you something.”
“My grandmother passed on last spring,” Margaret said matter-of-factly.
“Uh-huh, I know. But she’s here with us now, in this very room.”
“My grandmother is dead, Mrs. Cooper.”
“You don’t believe in spirits? Don’t believe in your ancestors, all your past kin?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Margaret said.
“Mmmm. Well. They surely do believe in you.” Mrs. Cooper looked up at the ceiling, and Margaret had the distinct impression that the old woman was speaking to someone else. “Yes. Yes, all right, then. Your grandmother and me having a chat. She says she got a special name for you. Now. What might that name be?”
Margaret decided to test Mrs. Cooper. “Lil Bit,” she lied.
“Lil Bit? Lil Bit, is it? All right. Lil Bit.”
Margaret’s anger spread at Lavinia Cooper’s satisfied smile. Grandmother Walker had been young Margaret’s favorite person in the whole world, and her passing had nearly broken Margaret’s heart. How dare this woman, this stranger, trespass on that sacred memory!
The old woman managed a feathery laugh between wheezes. “Your gran says you best quit lying ’fore she has to reach out from the grave and give you a slap like she did that time you put your cousin Dee in the attic for tattling. A bat got in there, and Dee screamed so loud it made a vase fall off the end of your gran’s sideboard. The vase had been a wedding present from your granddaddy Moses, and when your gran come in from putting the canning up in the basement, she let Dee out and gave you a proper whupping. Even made you break off your own switch. Your gran never called you no Lil Bit. She called you Sister on account of how you boss everybody ’round, just like you was in charge.”
That night, Sister Walker had lain awake. Only she and her grandmother knew that story. It had been their secret. That moment with Lavinia Cooper had been the start of Sister Walker’s conversion to belief in the supernatural world. She wanted to ask Mrs. Cooper all sorts of questions: What was this power? Where was her grandmother now? How many other Diviners were out there? But when she’d returned to Frederick Douglass two days later, Little Women in hand, the bed had been stripped. Mrs. Cooper was gone. The pneumonia had weakened her heart, and she’d died peacefully in her sleep.
Margaret “Sister” Walker read everything she could find about Diviners. It was an obsession that saw her through medical training at Howard University. It was noted by a professor who, in turn, recommended her for a job at the newly created U.S. Department of Paranormal, where she would meet the only other person who shared her devotion: Will Fitzgerald. They made a formidable team: Will was scholarly but impulsive, too trusting and given to romantic ideals; Margaret, whose life hadn’t allowed her the privilege of romantic ideals as a birthright, was forthright and wary, organized and patient.
And when the eugenicists argued that her people were inferior by design, Margaret Walker meant to prove them wrong. After all, Lavinia Cooper was a Diviner, an exceptional person. And that exceptional person was black, like her. If she found more people like that, she could prove those eugenicists and their pseudoscience wrong. She would combat prejudice with real science. With fact and study and documentation. If there truly was a golden age coming in America, if the land of opportunity was at hand, she would make sure that her people weren’t left out of it.
And when presented with the perfect chance to make sure of that, she took it. She even went to prison for it. What would she be willing to do now? Sister Walker tapped her fingers on top of the file she’d saved. It held everything about Memphis: The records of Viola’s pregnancy. The monitoring. Dates. Addresses. Names of family. There were newspaper articles about the boy healer up in Harlem. It was foolish to keep them, she supposed. But it was a record. It was a witness to what they’d done. She’d seen how easy it was for her word to be dismissed. A person needed evidence. And sometimes even that wasn’t enough. Sister Walker closed the files back up in the cubby and blocked it with the painting of Paris, a city she’d always longed to visit, the city where Josephine Baker and Ada “Bricktop” Smith had found themselves.
A racking cough rumbled through Sister Walker’s lungs, a souvenir of the war and her time in that damp prison. She placed a lozenge under her tongue and waited for the spasm to subside.
There’d been one thing that Lavinia Cooper had said to Margaret that fateful night that had stuck with her for all these years. Margaret had thought that Lavinia was sleeping. But as she bent closer to the old woman, Lavinia took hold of Margaret’s wrist. Lavinia’s eyes were wide and frightened.
“I see you. You and your friends. You mustn’t let him in, child!”
Margaret’s wrist hurt. “Let who in?”
Lavinia shook with the force of her vision. “Before the Devil breaks you, first he will make you love him. Beware, little sister. Beware the King of Crows!”
Margaret hadn’t understood then.
She understood now. And she was afraid.
INTO THE MADHOUSE
When Evie returned to the Winthrop, there was a letter waiting for her from the superintendent at the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane. Evie ripped it open and read with mounting excitement—they had approved her visit and spelled out the rules: The warden would personally escort her around the grounds and the hospital itself. But under no circumstances could they allow her to speak with Luther Clayton, by order of the police. Evie had charmed her way around plenty of rules, though. This would be no different. She raced upstairs to call Woody and Sam. Then she got to work selecting just the right outfit, something that would look swell in the Daily News under the headline SAINTLY SWEETHEART SEER FORGIVES MAN WHO TRIED TO KILL HER.
The following afternoon, Evie, Sam, and T. S. Woodhouse boarded the steamer from Manhattan, traveling up the East River towa
rd Ward’s Island.
“Is that it? What a forsaken little spot,” Evie said as the boat pulled up to the long wooden pier sticking out from the stone seawall. Ward’s Island wasn’t much—a dotting of barracks-style buildings that Evie had heard were for the nurses, a collection of simple white outbuildings, a few scrubby trees. At the island’s far end, a train rattled across the Hell Gate’s elevated tracks, though there was no stop on Ward’s. The boat was the only way onto or off of the island. Everything about the place felt vulnerable and exposed—except for the asylum. Set back from the river a good five hundred feet or so, the enormous gothic masterpiece dominated the island like the witch’s palace in a twisted fairy tale, all turrets and spires and barred windows.
“Looks like a big spooky bat made outta bricks,” Sam said as they stepped onto the pier.
He was right, Evie thought. The main building sat out in front as a welcome to visitors, but the asylum’s many three-story pavilions—the long brick rectangles that housed the patients—all connected to one another through a series of zigzagging right angles that swept out and around, like the giant wings of a bat.
“The island of the undesirables,” Woody snarked. “That’s what they call this place, you know. It’s where they stick everybody the rest of the swells would rather not see. It used to house the drunks, the juvenile delinquents, the consumptives. Before Ellis Island, it’s where they sent immigrants for processing.”
Evie didn’t need to hold an object to feel the sadness, the loneliness coming off the island. It made her feel unsettled. And they hadn’t even gone inside yet.
The warden, a Mr. John Smith, trundled down the pier, waving. He was a jovial man with a well-trimmed mustache and a stiff collar that looked to be pinching his neck.
“How do you do, Miss O’Neill. What an honor to have you here at our hospital,” he said, pumping Evie’s hand. “And Mr. Woodhouse, I do so appreciate your writing a story about us out here in the middle of the river! We’re overcrowded and underfunded. That story just might carry some weight with the governor and secure us the money we need.”
Woody smirked. “Thank Miss O’Neill. It was her idea.”
“Miss O’Neill. We are indebted to you. Well, there’s much to see. This way, if you would.”
“You told him you were writing about the hospital?” Sam whispered as they followed the warden up the stone pathway that wound through the marshy, windswept grass.
Woody shrugged. “I am. In a manner of speaking.”
“We had to find a way out here,” Evie explained.
Sam shook his head. “You two are something else.”
Woody narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? And I’m sure you use that little skill of yours only for the benefit of others. Save the sermons for Sarah Snow.”
A ferry trudged past the pier, heading toward the northern tip of the island. Several prisoners in black-and-white-striped uniforms stood on deck looking back at Evie, Sam, and Woody.
“We sometimes use prisoners from Welfare Island for labor,” the warden said, following Evie’s gaze.
“Yeah? You pay ’em for that labor?” Woody said, pen at the ready.
The warden’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve done tremendous work building seawalls, repairing roofs,” he said, ignoring the question. “Burials.”
Sam craned his neck, scanning the flat landscape. “I don’t see a cemetery.”
“They’re potter’s fields,” the warden explained. “Unmarked mass graves for the unwanted dead. It’s unfortunate, but there are people who have no one to speak for them and nowhere to go.”
Woody muttered as he continued jotting in his notebook. “Land of the insane is also home to the dead. That oughta sell a few papers in the morning.”
Now that she looked, Evie could see several tightly swaddled bodies lying in a row on the ferry’s broad back. Her stomach gave a little flip that sent needle-pricks of chill up her neck. “Mr. Smith, how many dead would you say are buried here?”
Mr. Smith blinked up at the dwindling sun. “Hard to say. But I’d put the figure at around fifty thousand, give or take.”
“Fifty thousand?” Woody repeated.
“Give or take. Now, if I can direct your attention to our wonderful tin-smithing shop on your right, operated by the patients themselves…”
“The unwanted dead? I sure hope they stay put while we’re here,” Sam whispered to Evie.
“Gotta hand it to you, Sheba, you sure know how to have fun,” Woody said, and popped his chewing gum.
They’d reached the columned portico of the main building; it jutted out from the asylum like the tongue in a great gothic skull, and Evie felt a strange sense of foreboding, as if the stones themselves wanted to confess their every secret. Surprisingly, the inside of the asylum was quite lovely and clean, with a coatroom, offices for bookkeeping and records, and nicely appointed waiting rooms for visitors. The warden led them past the surgeries and the examination and X-ray therapy rooms, past the dayrooms where some patients wove together straw mats. There were rooms dedicated to art and music therapy. The asylum even had its own bowling alley. On the crowded wards, nurses and attendants in crisp uniforms tended efficiently to patients. One nurse sat beside a female patient, holding her hand and listening attentively as the woman talked. Evie was warmed by the sight, and she felt guilty for having been so cavalier in lying to get into the asylum. These were good people trying to help other people who were hurting and in need of help. She’d make sure that Woody’s story gave them their due.
“How many patients live here?” Evie asked as the warden continued their tour.
“Nearly seven thousand,” the warden said. “The asylum was built to house far less than that. And we’ve only a third of the staff we need. We’ve written to the governor countless times. It seems that no one cares about these poor people except us.”
Woody edged ahead of Sam and Evie. He licked the end of his pencil and took out his notebook. “Caring doctors and nurses… ignored by callous state…” Woody said, writing.
“Precisely so. Thank you, Mr. Woodhouse.”
“Don’t mention it,” Woody said, still scribbling away. “Say, that reminds me, Mr. Smith, how about this business with these murders? The Daily News hears the patient—a Mr. Roland, was it?—turned cannibal and ate an attendant and a nurse? The attendant, Mike Flanagan, was a big man, from what I hear. How did an old man like Mr. Roland have the strength to do that?”
“The asylum has no comment, sir.” Mr. Smith bristled.
“Oh, sure, sure. I just figured you’d want to set the record straight about that, the men who drowned, and those nurses who died. So many stories out there and whatnot. See, I heard that some of the patients have been complaining about ghosts?”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Mr. Woodhouse,” Mr. Smith said emphatically. “Only the ghosts that haunt the mind. That is what we try to help with here at the hospital. Now, this is our art room.…”
Evie was getting impatient to find Luther Clayton. In a waiting room, Evie spied a pamphlet on a table. AMERICA’S FUTURE DEPENDS ON EUGENICS. BETTERING OUR RACE THROUGH CAREFUL SELECTION AND PROPER RACIAL HYGIENE. WELL BORN IS WELL BRED. It was distributed by the Fitter Families of Future Firesides. Evie remembered seeing their tent at the fair up in Brethren. The pamphlet argued that the feebleminded, the promiscuous, the homosexual should be sterilized. And there should never be any mixing of races.
Evie had the urge to “accidentally” drop the pamphlet in the fire. A curious insert had been left inside the pamphlet:
Could you be an exceptional American? Do you exhibit unusual gifts? Have you ever had unexplained dreams of the future or of the past? Have you or anyone in your family had a visitation from spirits from beyond? The Eugenics Society administers tests to likely candidates free of charge. Write to us care of this address or visit a Fitter Families tent near you.
Why would eugenicists like Fitter Families be interested in Diviners?
“W
hat’s this?” Evie asked.
Mr. Smith peered at the paper in her hand. “Oh. That belongs to one of our doctors, Dr. Simpson,” he said in a clipped, disapproving tone. “He’s of the opinion that ailments of the mind can be prevented through better breeding and racial hygiene laws. He is an advocate for the sterilization of patients, inmates, and the poor.”
“I’m guessing your Dr. Simpson isn’t a fan of Jews,” Sam said, his eyes narrowed.
“But what about this bit here? Seems they’re looking for Diviners” Evie showed it to him.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea. I don’t believe in eugenics. And my dear wife is Jewish, Mr. Lloyd,” Mr. Smith said. He took the pamphlet and shoved it in a drawer. “Come. Let me show you our music therapy room—the best in the state!”
“I’ve seen one of those pamphlets before,” Woody whispered to Evie and Sam as Mr. Smith stopped to comfort a patient. “At Marlowe’s groundbreaking ceremony. There was a Fitter Families tent there. A nurse was handing them out.”
“Something’s not on the level about it,” Evie said.
“Yeah? You think there’s something not right about a buncha people claiming they’re a superior race? You don’t say,” Sam grumbled.
Mr. Smith led them through a spacious common room. An attendant played the piano while one of the patients bowed a violin. Some of the patients sang along. Others sat mute, staring. In one corner, four men had formed a circle, their chairs facing one another.
“We have a lot of shell-shocked men,” the warden said gently, following Evie’s line of sight.
“Oh,” Evie said, thinking of all the boys like James who’d fought in the Great War—the ones like her brother, who never made it home, and the broken men in this room, trapped in their own private hells.