by Libba Bray
“I don’t know, Evil. But I’m blaming you anyway.”
“My aunt Octavia’s gonna kill me for being out all night with Isaiah,” Memphis said from the small table where he played peanut poker with Isaiah, who kept winning. “And whatever’s left of me, Papa Charles is gonna take care of when I don’t show up for work tonight. I can’t even call because the telephone lines are down in this storm.”
“There’s nobody to feed Archibald,” Theta fretted. “He’ll be so hungry.”
“Who’s Archibald?” Sam asked.
“My cat.”
“You got a cat?” Isaiah said, excited.
“Yeah. One of the Proctor sisters’ brood. I saved him from an untimely death.”
“Those old ladies in your building? They’re creepy,” Ling said.
“They’re not,” Theta said, and left it. She wanted to tell the others about what had happened with Miss Addie and the ghost. In fact, she’d meant to before, but she suddenly felt protective of the old woman—and of herself. Evie was always chiding Theta for holding on so tightly to her secrets, but secrets had kept Theta safe for years. Ever since she’d left Kansas. She wouldn’t know how to stop swallowing down her story if she tried. Besides, most people just wanted to talk about themselves, and if you held your breath, they’d rush in to fill the emptiness.
“Do you think some places just hold on to evil? That you can’t paint or wash it away? It lives on, no matter what you build on top,” Evie mused, rushing in, just as Theta figured she would.
Isaiah threw his hands in the air. “Are you trying to scare the living daylights outta me?”
“Sorry, Isaiah,” Evie said. “It’s just that ever since we started doing experiments together, I’m a raw nerve. I can barely touch something, and its history starts to whisper to me.”
As if to test or torture herself, Evie let her fingers drift from object to object, catching glimpses of their secrets:
“… I only wanted the pain to stop. That’s why I swallowed the lye.…”
“… 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?”
“I’m only saying, something about this experiment stinks. They’re not being on the level with us. About what’s on the other side.”
“I can tell you what’s on the other side—French girls!” One of the soldiers curved his hands through the air in the shape of a woman’s body. The gloom was dispelled by talk of sweethearts left behind, of whether or not European girls were “friendly” and loved American boys. Of glory and right and might.
“Always writing, Luther. What do you write about?” One of the other soldiers ripped Luther’s letter from him.
“Give that back!” Luther made a grab for it, but the other soldier was bigger and pushed him back easily.
“‘Oh, my darling,’” the soldier read aloud to the others. “‘I long to hold you in my arms and wish that we were far from here and safe to love…’”
James snatched the letter away. “Come on, Gilroy. Enough.”
“You’re always protecting him. Saint O’Neill,” the big soldier teased. “Come on, read it to us, why don’tcha? Live a little.”
James handed the letter back to Luther. “I know what he writes. I don’t have to look.” He tapped one finger against his temple and smiled.
“Shit, O’Neill. You’ll be the best code breaker in the army. Can you read what everybody’s thinking?”
“Not always. But often enough.” James winked. “So you fellas might want to be careful.” James placed a hand on Luther’s shoulder. “Don’t let them bother you.”
Deep in her trance, Evie smiled, happy to know that the brother she remembered as good and kind had been exactly that. But the memory was shifting. There was a forest of tall pines. A partially frozen lake. A soldiers’ camp in a clearing. Four soldiers hunched over a game of cards at a small table. The sergeant gazed into a mirror hung from a branch on a tree as he scraped a razor along his strong jaw. On a shorn stump, an old Victrola turned round and round: “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile!”
Evie had witnessed this scene many times in her dreams. But this, she knew now, was no dream.
One soldier stared at the Victrola. “Faster,” he said, his neck tendons straining as he concentrated. The record picked up speed, making the singer’s voice go comically high.
The shaving soldier laughed. “Sounds like a buncha hyenas.”
“Now, just a minute! We’re not supposed to use our powers yet,” one of the soldiers at the table called out as he examined the hand he’d been dealt.
With a sigh, the soldier who’d revved up the record slowed it down again. “Just wanted to dance,” he said, breaking into a little soft shoe.
Another soldier lit his cigarette with a flame at the end of his finger. “Handy,” he said, and blew it out. “Hey, Luther! What’s with the long face? Come join the party!”
Luther stood off to one side, staring into the expanse of forest, his hands in his pockets. “I can’t shake the bad feeling.”
“C’mon now, Luther. They shot us up with super serum,” the shaving man said. He flicked shaving cream from his razor into the bushes, giving them a coating like snow. “We’re invincible! We don’t have to be afraid—it’s the enemy that should be afraid of us!”
The soldier with the fiery fingers leaned back in his chair. “Luther, you honestly think Mr. Marlowe and the United States Army would do anything bad to us? We are the one forty-four!”
“The one forty-four!” the others responded.
“I’m not saying they’re doing it on purpose,” Luther explained. “I’m saying they don’t realize what they’re getting themselves into.”
“And you do?”
“It’s that stuff they put inside me. Gives me a sense for what’s going to happen before it happens.”
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile!” the soft-shoe dancer sang to Luther, and soon, all the men except for James joined in with the teasing.
“Aw, lay off, boys,” James tried, but the others only sang harder, finally convulsing into fits of laughter.
Luther exchanged a furtive glance with James, then set off for the trees. Behind him, he heard the sergeant calling, “Aw, Luther! Come on back down after you’ve finished sulking!”
Luther tromped through the still pines, coming at last to a hilly mound surrounded by sentinel trees. A confectioner’s dusting of snow dappled the spongy pine. A moment later, here came James. “Luther…”
Luther’s breath came out in smoky bullets. “I’m leaving.”
“Be sensible. The experiment’s about to begin. You can’t leave.”
“I can. Through the woods.”
“Luther, you’ll be court-martialed!”
“I don’t think so. Not if my gut is right. Come with me.”
James’s expression was somber. “I’m not a deserter.”
“Better than whatever’s gonna happen to us today.” Luther took a step closer and wrapped his arms around James’s waist.
James tried to pull away. “Not here. What if…?”
Luther silenced his protest with a kiss. “To hell with them. I love you. I want to save us both. Come with me.”
James kissed each of Luther’s palms and then his lips. “I have to do this. I promised. This is my country.”
Luther shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets and hunched his shoulders. “What if your country is asking you to do something you know is wrong?”
“Then I’ll accept the consequences. I signed up, and I’ll honor that.”
“Do you think your country would fight for you? For us?” Luther scoffed. “After all, you can read people’s thoughts now. You know what’s inside them.”
James angled his face toward the sky, cloudy gray with hints of blue. “You’d be surprised at what people think. It will all be fine. You’ll see.”
He kissed Luther’s forehead, then trekked back into the woods, toward the base, leaving a trail of footprints behind. Luther didn’t follow right away. He needed stillness. He needed to think. Along the lake’s edge, he looked out at the snow-dusted mountains and tried to shake his growing dread. More than anything, he wanted to believe as James did—that the people in charge of the experiment knew what they were doing and it would all be okay. But Luther had held back what he’d seen that had scared him most:
“Let me into your world,” the gray-faced man with the soulless eyes had whispered to Luther with a nearly orgiastic joy. “And I will tear it asunder.”
Whispering voices came from the forest.
“W
ho’s there?” Luther said. But he knew already. He could feel the press of the spirits at his back. The whispering grew louder, a clarion bell reverberating inside him:
“… It’s a trap, a trap, a trap…”
“… You are not safe from what comes. What comes. What comes…”
“… You must stop this stop this stop this…”
Luther bolted for the camp. As he neared, he could hear the men’s laughter. They were at ease. Bored. Passing the time. He had the feeling he had seen this all before: The quartet playing cards. The sergeant shaving. The dancing soldier beside the turning Victrola. Smile, smile, smile. His mouth in a half grin, James watched a hawk circling overhead. The air was crisp, the sky gray and calm. Light snow fell. Luther had never been more afraid.
We must stop this. The words wouldn’t come. What if he was wrong? What if he screamed the warnings—the warnings of the dead—and looked the fool?
“Don’t pick up the phone!” Luther said, breathless with fear.
The others regarded him curiously. Three seconds later, the field telephone rang. The sergeant wiped his jaw, pocketed his razor. “Spooky,” he said, shaking his head. The sergeant listened, nodding. “Yes. Yes. Ready, sir. Over and out.”
Luther took a step backward. Say something. Say something.
The sergeant yanked up his suspenders and grabbed his helmet. “Soldiers, this is not a drill. The time is now!”
“The time is now!” the men echoed, abandoning their card game mid-play and running for position. “Luther! I said, positions! That’s an order!”
Luther turned toward the forest. He would not die for a bad cause.
“Luther!” James called from the circle.
Luther saw his brothers-in-arms holding hands, ready. And then he had a sense of them, skeletal and screaming.
“Soldier! Take your position!” the sergeant ordered.
“James,” Luther whispered, but James was no longer looking at him.
Above the Marlowe estate, two streams of blue lightning shot up, piercing the cloudy sky, filling it with tentacles of blue light. The sky moved and groaned like a giant sea beast in pain, and in the next second, the electricity reached down like a staticky blue hand, surrounding the men of the one forty-four. Luther broke into a run, dropping his gun. He was numb with fear. Don’t look back. Just go. Keep running. But at the top of the hill, his heart reneged. Deserter. Luther turned. Down below in the clearing, the men of the one forty-four still held hands. Swirling mist wrapped itself in a deadly caress around their shaking bodies. The men stood fast, but their expressions—wide eyes, open mouths—betrayed their fear.