by Scott Mebus
Fritz rode his rat over the fallen bricks and concrete, the blue mist clinging to his armor like sticky puffs of cotton candy as he searched for some clue as to what had happened. “Was this fog here before?” he asked Nicholas.
“No,” Alexa answered for the despondent Stuyvesant. “It was creepy around here, true. But not this creepy.”
“Are you certain the door was here?” Soka asked, swallowing as she tried to keep her composure.
“I promise you, it was,” Alexa explained, frustrated. “It was one of the three doors, right there.”
“Three doors?” Soka asked. “There are others?”
“Yes, there are three entrances to the Fortune Teller’s, and any one person can only pass through each entrance one time. So, essentially, you can ask the Fortune Teller three questions, one per door.”
“If you can find them,” Lincoln Douglass added. He kicked a pebble, which popped in and out of the heavy mist like a skipping stone as it went skidding off down an alleyway.
“Only one person ever did find all three, as far as we know,” Simon said, irritably waving away the mist from his bright aqua tunic.
“Who?” Bridget asked, her eyes wide.
“My father,” Alexa answered. “I discovered from studying his diaries that he’d found all three doors and asked his three questions. But I could only find a mention of the location of one of the doors—this one. Whole chunks of his journals are missing and I can’t seem to find those lost pages in any of his old haunts. It’s so frustrating. I know he wrote about his past; he told me time and again. But I guess the past is forever forgotten, now.” She sighed heavily, regretting the loss of her father’s thoughts and memories. “It’s gone, like this door.”
Rory felt just as defeated. The atmosphere of the neighborhood around them didn’t help. Here in Mannahatta, the Lower East Side was populated with ghostly memories of the old tenements built in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Known for their poverty and criminal element, with many of the dingy old structures pressed together so tightly that their mostly immigrant inhabitants could go days without seeing the sun, they had finally been torn down and the neighborhood rescued from squalor by the turn of the twentieth century. But the stain of those days remained in Mannahatta, and as Rory looked around at all the dismal, rickety buildings on every side, he could feel the tension creeping up his spine. Lincoln had spent the trip down happily informing him of all the evil spirits of sadistic gang leaders and murderers who made their home here, not to mention the hopeless souls who’d died within the tenements, condemned to haunt their decaying halls. Indeed, ever since they’d entered the neighborhood, Rory couldn’t stop shivering. He knew it was afternoon, but the alleys between the old, creaking buildings were as dark as night. Rory could hear moaning and other creepy sounds in the distance. They’d all hoped to be in and out without wasting much time.
But now they were staring at a pile of rubble where a wall used to be. There wasn’t a room on the other side of the ruined wall; instead the broken stones seemed to separate a small, muddy backyard from the alley. But Nicholas and Alexa swore that they had stepped through a door here to find the Fortune Teller.
“Maybe Kieft tore it down,” Lincoln suggested. “One stick of dynamite and BOOM!”
“Maybe,” Nicholas answered absently, rubbing his chin as he took in the devastation. “But that doesn’t explain the mist.”
“Or the fact that I want to jump out of my skin,” Alexa said.
“Maybe that’s just the Tenements,” Lincoln offered. “I always feel weird down here.”
“Not like this,” Nicholas said firmly. Rory opened his mouth to ask a question when suddenly Soka dropped to her knees, throwing up all over the mist-covered rubble. Everyone stood by, shocked, as Soka regained control of herself, tears running down her cheeks. Bridget immediately ran to Soka’s side and rubbed her back.
“You are not okay!” she scolded the shaking Munsee girl.
“No, it’s all right,” Soka insisted. “I’m better now. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“We’re all lucky that mist is covering up the sick,” Simon declared, turning away with a wince. “Otherwise I’d be joining her. That was the grossest—”
“Shh!” Soka cut him off, wiping her mouth as she scrambled to her feet. “Something is out there.”
The Munsee girl’s warning shut them all up, and they unconsciously huddled together as they listened. Rory imagined all the horrible creatures out in the dark and repressed a shiver.
“I can hear something,” Simon muttered, nervously straining to listen. Tucket began to growl, his ears flattening back. After a minute, Rory could hear it, too. A creaking, as if something big were coming. Finally, a long shadow appeared at the end of the alley, and they prepared to face whatever danger approached.
“HERRING!” A voice cried out from the darkness, scaring them out of their wits. Terrified, Simon immediately leaped away—only Nicholas’s quick hand kept Simon from running off down another alley.
“GET YOUR HERRING, HERE!” the voice cried again, the shadow almost upon them. Nicholas and Alexa exchanged confused glances. By now, only Bridget still looked frightened.
“Fish?” she whispered, horrified. “I hate fish!”
The shadow stepped into the light, transforming from a creature of doom into a bent old man pushing a cart of fish.
“Hello, young people,” he said brightly, a strong Yiddish accent coloring his words. “Who wants a little pickled herring to last you till supper? I got deals here like you wouldn’t believe!”
Nicholas relaxed, shaking his head with a smile.
“You scared the daylights out of us, Mr. Russ,” he said.
“If it isn’t young Mr. Stuyvesant,” Mr. Russ said, smiling. “And you troublemakers are his Rattle Watch! I’ve heard such stories about you. How could I scare you? I’m just an old man with a barrel of fish to sell. How could I scare anyone?”
“It is a rough neighborhood,” Alexa pointed out.
“This was my neighborhood,” Mr. Russ said proudly. “I made my fortune here. What is there to be afraid of?”
“You tell me,” Simon said, nodding toward the blue mist. “This looks like a horror film.”
Mr. Russ wasn’t listening. Instead, his eyes had widened as he noticed Rory standing between Soka and Bridget.
“You,” he said, pointing a bony finger at the boy. “I know you.”
“What do you mean, you know him?” Alexa asked as the others gathered around Rory protectively. Rory felt a little irritated—he could handle himself against an old man, at least.
“It’s in my head,” the old man said. “She put it there.”
“She? Who is she?” Nicholas looked alarmed.
“The Fortune Teller.”
“You spoke to her?” Fritz asked intently. “Did you know her door was here?”
“Please, little fellow, this is my neighborhood,” Mr. Russ said, waving his hand dismissively at the roach. “The day something happens here I don’t know about? That’s the day I hand over my cart and get into the button business with my brother in-law. But this was more dumb luck than anything. I was just doing my rounds when I happened upon . . . well, I guess I should show you. Now, how did she say to do it? Oh yes.” Mr. Russ began to mutter as he twirled his hand in the air. Air began to move around them, blowing through their hair as the mist began to move. The bluish fog sent tendrils up into the air, rising up like smoky fingers reaching for the sky. Those fingers expanded, gradually forming into ghostly figures right before their eyes. Tucket began to bark, leaning forward to snap at the images in the fog, forcing Rory to hold him back. More mist floated up, re-creating a foggy version of the now destroyed wall. A ghostly door formed in the center of the wall, and the bluish figures solidified, their color becoming closer to green as they advanced on the mist wall. Rory could still see right through them as they moved, but they became solid enough to be recognizable. And w
ith a start, Rory realized that he did, in fact, recognize them.
“Those are Brokers of Tobias!” Bridget whispered at his side. Indeed, a familiar round figure waddled at their head, advancing with purpose on the ghostly door. T. R. Tobias, the God of Banking, stopped before the door and gestured for one of his Brokers to bang on it.
“Lady, I request your presence!” Tobias called out, and Rory jumped to hear his voice so clear. “I have come to collect on what you owe!”
At first nothing happened, and the Broker continued to bang steadily like a clockwork soldier wound all the way up. At last, a voice drifted through the door, female and scathing.
“I owe you nothing, Tobias,” it said. “Now get out of here!”
“What I paid you was more than sufficient,” Tobias insisted. “You are the one who refused to give service once I had paid. If your debt is not satisfied, I will be forced to have my employees do everything in their power to collect.”
At last, the door creaked open to reveal a huge, hulking woman with an evil, glowing cigar hanging out of the side of her mouth. “I didn’t refuse you, foolish man,” she said, her voice deep and gritty, as if her vocal cords were coated in sand. “I asked for proper payment, and you would not give me what I required. So I owed you no answers to your questions. And once you left in a huff, you forfeited the right to reenter by this door. It seems pretty simple to me. You blew it. Now get out of here and take your little pets with you.”
“What I gave you was more than—” Tobias began again, but the Fortune Teller cut him off, pointing at his neck.
“There is my fee,” the Fortune Teller declared. “Still hanging around your neck. You know what? I am feeling forgiving. Give me that trinket and I will answer the question that you feel is so important that you come down here to threaten me with your big green monkeys.”
“You cannot have that,” Tobias said, eyes flashing with anger. His ghostly form turned away. “You leave me no choice. If you will not answer me, then perhaps you will answer my friend.”
A tendril of blue mist shot out around the corner, returning in the form of a little-girl spirit. The girl walked stiffly, as if her limbs weren’t controlled by her own will. And once Rory saw her wild, terrified eyes, he realized that, in fact, they weren’t. Willem Kieft had taken her over.
The Fortune Teller pulled back in her doorway, disgust flashing across her fleshy face.
“That is forbidden, you know this,” she spat.
“She has not passed through your door,” Tobias said innocently. “She has asked no questions of you. She brings items of great value which I’m sure you would be more than happy to take from her. I fail to see the problem.”
“You and your master have gone too far,” the Fortune Teller said, pulling herself up to her full height as she filled the doorway. “You have bent the rules to your liking for too long. This door is closed to you!”
“You cannot stop her from passing over your doorstep,” Tobias said, sounding as bored as if he were talking about the weather. “Those are the rules.”
“I know what you are doing,” the Fortune Teller informed him. “I will not be used. This door is closed . . . forever.”
The ground began to rumble, and Tobias’s ghostly face blanched. The soft glow emanating from the open doorway began to intensify, until it became as bright as a burning sun. Rory had to cover his eyes to protect them from blindness, even as the rumbling in the earth threatened to deafen him. Through his fingers, he spied ghostly Tobias turning tail and running, disappearing around the corner. The Brokers followed on his heels, but most of them moved too slowly. The burning light blew outward in a blaze of fire, burning through the Brokers closest to the door. A few staggered around the corner, their green metal skin bubbling up and melting like butter on a hot pan. The rest were incinerated by the flames, vaporized by the hot flash.
In the center of the light, the Fortune Teller was still visible. She turned to stare directly at Rory, her eyes boring into him.
“I am waiting for you,” she said, her voice echoing through time. “Your blood will show you the way.” She turned toward the alley. “I know you’re there, Mr. Russ. I have a job for you . . .”
With that, the light faded, as did the large figure of the Fortune Teller, and when it was gone, only the rubble remained. The mist has dissipated, its duty performed, leaving them all drained and astonished. Tucket padded up to the ground, sniffing suspiciously at a pebble. Simon snorted, though the look on his face was one of awe.
“Talk about overkill. What’s wrong with sending you a letter?”
Rory didn’t answer. He had the sinking sensation that even though he’d done his duty as a Light by opening the Trap, Mannahatta was not yet through with him.
3
A SHAPE IN THE NIGHT
William Randolph Hearst sat in his opulent office hidden in a decrepit old building deep in the Lower East Side. During his mortal days, he’d run his newspaper, the New York Journal American, from this old building, and the paper had been a hit. Mostly because Hearst was not afraid to sensationalize, using eye-popping headlines and lurid stories of murder and sordid crime to boost circulation. And if he had to bend the truth a bit to sell papers? Well, that was just part of the business. His proudest moment had been right before the Spanish-American War in the 1890s, when he’d used half-truths and explosive headlines to inflame the public into demanding that the United States declare war on Spain. Hearst always smiled when he thought of that war—it certainly had helped him sell a lot of papers.
Now Kieft was promising another war, a big one. Countless lives would be lost and futures destroyed in the battles ahead. And Hearst would do anything he could to get the fighting started.
He leaned back in his chair, savoring the soft buzz that always surrounded him. To some it might look strange, even a little disgusting, that so many flies hovered about his head. But information was the most important currency he could hold, and his flies went everywhere, saw everything. He sent his little beauties out into the world, into the nooks and crannies, the basements and the back alleys of the city, and they came back to him bursting with new gossip he could use to help his friends, crush his enemies, and sell a lot of papers.
At that moment a little black beauty hummed through his open window, lighting upon his outstretched finger.
“What do you have for me, darling?” Hearst asked the little insect, softly stroking its tiny feelers. The fly began to buzz, and as he listened, Hearst raised an eyebrow. The Fortune Teller, leaving a message for the famous Rory Hennessy, and more importantly, taking sides? The Fortune Teller never took sides! Kieft would want to know about this right away. He’d no doubt take steps to keep Rory away from the second and third doors, not that Hearst knew where they might be (though he’d kill to find out!).
More importantly, it was time for the people of Mannahatta to learn the facts behind the destruction of the Fortune Teller’s door. Of course, it would not do to mention the real reason behind it all. That wouldn’t be particularly helpful to the war effort. Instead, it would make for a better story if he led with the headline MUNSEE SAVAGES DESTROY FORTUNE TELLER DOOR, BUT NOT BEFORE SHE CURSES THEM AS EVIL! It might not be the truth, Hearst thought, smiling wickedly as he sent his flies out to find more fuel for his fire, but then again, the truth was whatever his paper said it was.
Night had fallen by the time Rory, Bridget, and their friends returned to Inwood Hill Park. Plopping down next to a tree near her mom’s body, Bridget watched Rory and the Rattle Watchers discussing what the Fortune Teller’s words—“Your blood will show you the way”—might mean. More importantly, she wondered why the Fortune Teller wanted to talk to Rory at all. Everything was getting more and more complicated and it was making her head hurt.
She glanced over at her flesh-and-blood body, lit on one side by the flickering orange flames of the fire and on the other by the otherworldly white light of the shell pit. The minute they’d returned, she’d tr
ied to blow her soul back into her real self again—and again, she couldn’t make it happen. She followed all the steps that used to work when she was taking her paper body out for joyrides over the summer. She leaned over her own mouth, closed her eyes, and blew as hard as she could. But instead of finding herself back in her real body, she remained stuck in paper. Something was holding her back, like when she got her jacket caught on the doorknob. And the scary bit, the little secret she wouldn’t tell anyone, was that a tiny part of her didn’t mind. After all, how could she help her mother back in her little-girl body? She needed to be strong, and her paper and-wood body was almost invulnerable. She’d learned to live with the pushing of her soul, the feeling that she was about to explode at any minute. She could hold herself together and be Malibu Death Barbie a little longer—she’d do it for her mom.
What she really needed was a sword. She’d lost her last one, the fabled Buttkicker, under Tobias’s bank. Maybe now was the time to make herself a new one. Liking the idea, Bridget pushed herself to her feet and walked into the trees, Tucket padding along behind her. She scoured the forest floor for a suitable piece of wood. Though the last Buttkicker had been made out of cardboard, this one needed to be stronger. Starlight shone dimly through the trees onto the ground before her, making it hard for her to pick out good specimens. But finally she happened upon the perfect branch. Leaning over to pick it up, she suddenly tensed as voices drifted past her on the wind. Deciding to investigate, Bridget crept through the trees toward the voices, with Tucket by her side. Reaching the source, she realized she was listening to the hushed words of her own brother and Soka. Glancing through the trees, she spied them in a little hollow, talking in quiet tones. She knew she shouldn’t eavesdrop, but curiosity got the better of her.