The Diviners

by Libba Bray

  “Karl Marx,” Jericho said. “Also not your own opinion. Do you believe that because you actually believe it, or do you believe it because you heard it from them first?”

  “I believe it,” Mabel answered. “Evil is a human invention. A choice.”

  “Jericho believes we are doomed to repeat our existence,” Evie said, waggling her eyebrows to show just how seriously she took this theory. “Nietzsche.”

  “I guess I’m not the only one influenced by other people’s opinions.” Mabel sniffed.

  Evie tried to hide her laugh with a cough. She glanced at Mabel and tapped the side of her nose surreptitiously, a signal. “Oh, dear!” Evie said with mock concern. “I seem to have lost my bracelet.”

  “No, you haven’t!” Mabel blurted out. She went to kick Evie under the table and got Jericho by mistake.

  “Ow,” he said, eyeing her.

  “Sorry.” Mabel’s eyes went wide in horror. She looked to Evie with a Please do something quickly expression.

  “Do you know what I believe? I believe we should have pie,” Evie announced and signaled for the server.

  They fell into near silence, the only sounds around the table the chewing and slurping of food. Evie tried to have a conversation with Mabel, but everything felt forced and awkward. Afterward, they rode the elevator together in uncomfortable silence, all of them watching its gold arrow tick the floors off one by one.

  Mabel practically leaped from the elevator when the gate opened on her floor. “Good night,” she said without turning around, and Evie knew she’d hear all about it later. The first stage of Operation Jericho had been a certified failure.

  When they reached their own floor they found that Uncle Will had tacked a note to the door: Gone to see Malloy—WF. It was pure Uncle Will, from the brevity to the initials. Evie crumpled the note and slammed the apartment door behind her. She glared at Jericho, who had just made himself at home in Will’s chair with his book.

  She moved to the couch and glared at him from there. “You didn’t need to be so rude, you know.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jericho mumbled.

  “To Mabel! You could at least try to be polite.”

  “I’m not interested in being polite. It’s false. Nietzsche says—”

  “Leave Nietzsche out of this. He’s dead, and for all I know he died of rudeness.” Evie fumed. “She’s very smart, you know. As smart as you are.”

  Jericho deigned to look up from his book. “She’s under her parents’ thumbs. She thinks what they think. What she said tonight about society making monsters—that was her mother talking.”

  “So you were listening!”

  “She needs her own opinions. She needs to learn to think for herself, not just parrot what other people say.”

  “You mean the way you hang on Uncle Will’s and Nietzsche’s every word?” Evie swiped the book away from him.

  “I do not,” Jericho said, taking it back. “And why are we having a conversation about Mabel? Why is it so important to you?”

  “Because…” Evie trailed off. She couldn’t very well say, Because Mabel’s goofy over you. Because for the past three years, I’ve gotten letters full of her longing. Because every time you walk into the room, she takes a breath and holds it. “Because she’s my friend. And nobody is rude to my friends. Got it?”

  Jericho let out a sigh of irritation. “From now on I will be the picture of politeness to Mabel.”

  “Thank you,” Evie said with a bow. Jericho ignored her.

  LIFE AND DEATH

  Memphis tore out the page from his notebook and crumpled it in disgust. He’d tried working on the poem again, the one about his mother and her coat of grief, but it wouldn’t come, and he wondered if he was doomed to be a failed writer as well as healer.

  The wind whistled through the fall leaves. It had been April when his mother died, the trees budding into flowers like girls turning shyly into young ladies. Spring, when nothing should be dying. Memphis’s father had roused him from sleep. His eyes were shadowed. “It’s time, son,” he’d said, and he led the sleepy Memphis through the dark house and into his mother’s room, where a lone candle burned. His mother lay shivering under a thin blanket.

  “Please, son. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to keep her here.”

  His father, leading him to the bed. Memphis’s mother wasn’t much more than bones, her hair thinned to candy floss. Beneath the blanket, her body was still. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes tracking something beyond Memphis’s vision. He was fourteen years old.

  “Go on, now, son,” his father said, his voice breaking. “Please.”

  Memphis was afraid. His mother seemed so close to death that he didn’t see how he could stop it. He’d wanted to heal her before, but she wouldn’t let him. “I won’t have my son responsible for that,” she’d said firmly. “What’s meant to be is meant to be, good or bad.” But Memphis didn’t want his mother to die. He put his hands on her. His mother’s eyes widened and she tried to shake her head, to duck his hands, but she was too weak.

  “I’m going to help you, Mama.”

  His mother parted her cracked lips to speak, but no sound came out. Memphis felt the healing grip take hold, and then he was under, pulled along by currents he couldn’t control and did not understand, the two of them carried out to a larger, unknown sea. In his healing trances, he always felt the presence of the spirits around him. It was a calm, protective presence, and he was never afraid. But it was different this time. The place he found himself was a dark graveyard, heavy with mist. The shades did not feel quite so benevolent as they pressed close to him. A skinny gray man in a tall hat sat upon a rock, his hands made into fists.

  “What would you give me for her, healer?” the man asked, and it seemed to Memphis as if the wind itself had whispered the question. The man nodded to his fists. “In one hand is life; in the other, death. Choose. Choose and you might have her back.”

  Memphis stepped forward, his finger inching closer. Right or left?

  Suddenly he saw his mother, gaunt and weak, in the graveyard. “You can’t bring me back, Memphis. Don’t ever try to bring back what’s gone!”

  The man grinned at her with teeth like tiny daggers. “The choice is his!”

  His mother looked frightened, but she did not back down. “He’s just a boy.”

  “The choice. Is. His.”

  Memphis concentrated on the man’s fists once more. He tapped the right one. The man smiled and opened his palm, and a shiny black baby bird squeaked at him.

  Memphis’s mother shook her head. “Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?”

  Memphis had no memory after that. He’d fallen ill with a fever, Octavia told him, and his father had put him to bed. The next morning, he woke to see Octavia covering the mirrors with sheets. His father sat in his chair, his shirt matted to him with sweat. “She’s gone,” he whispered, and in his eyes, Memphis saw the accusation: Why couldn’t you save her? All that gift, and you couldn’t save the one person who mattered?

  Now Memphis wiped the graveyard dirt from his hands. He smoothed out the page and stuck it back in his notebook. Then he headed toward home. As he passed the old house on the hill, he thought he heard something. Was that… whistling? Couldn’t be. But yes, there it was, just under the roar of the wind. Or was it only the wind itself? Memphis opened the gate and took two steps on the broken path. How many times he had read ghost stories and thought to himself, Don’t go up those stairs! Stay away from that old house! Yet here he was, standing in the yard of the oldest, most forbidding house he knew, contemplating going inside. The folly of standing at the boarded-over window of a decrepit house suddenly dawned fully on Memphis, and he backed away. He was immediately reminded of the murders taking place in the city. Why had that thought occurred to him now, here? Again he heard the sound of some faint whistling echoing from the empty chambers of the old house. Memphis ran, leaving the front gate screaming on it
s rusted hinges.

  Back in Harlem, Memphis walked along Lenox Avenue feeling out of step with the people out for a good time. He wandered until he found himself standing across the street from Miss A’Lelia Walker’s grand town house on 136th Street. Several nice cars were parked outside, and a butler stood at the door. The lights were ablaze, and inside, Memphis knew, she was probably hosting one of her famous salons visited by the likes of Harlem’s greatest talents—musicians, artists, writers, scholars. Memphis imagined himself at one of her parties, reading his poetry to an elegant audience. But the path from the sidewalk where he stood to the lighted salon seemed an impossible distance, and Memphis turned away. He thought about going to the Hotsy Totsy or the Tomb of the Fallen Angels to see what was going on. There was almost always a party somewhere. But instead, he headed toward home, the memory of his mother fresh in his mind. Blind Bill Johnson was sitting on the stoop of a brownstone playing his guitar softly, even though there was no one to hear it. Memphis tried to sneak past.

  “Who’s there? Who’s walking past old Blind Bill without saying nothing?”

  “It’s Memphis Campbell, sir.”

  Bill’s mouth relaxed into a toothy smile. “Good evening, Mr. Campbell. I’m mighty relieved it’s you and not some lou-lou come for me.”

  “What’s a lou-lou?”

  “Old Cajun word. What you call it? A bogeyman.”

  “No, sir. No bogeyman. Just me.”

  Blind Bill pursed his lips like he’d taken a shot of bathtub gin mixed with spit. “Not a good night to be roaming. Can’t you feel that on the back of your neck? The fifolet? Like the swamp gas rising up, the evil spirits following you.”

  Between the business up at the house and Blind Bill’s Cajun superstitions, Memphis was feeling spooked. He didn’t want to talk about ghosts and hobgoblins. “My aunt says I’m thick as a brick. I’d be the last person to feel spirits moving.”

  Blind Bill turned his face toward Memphis, almost as if he could see him standing there. “Heard me something real interesting over at Floyd’s shop today. Heard you used to be a healer.”

  “Once upon a time.”

  “You still got the healing spirit in you? Could you put dem hands on old Blind Bill and gimme back my sight?”

  “I don’t have that gift anymore.” Memphis was suddenly very tired, too tired to keep his words inside. They tumbled out to the old man. “It left me when my mother… She was real sick. And I laid hands on her, and…” Memphis’s throat ached. He swallowed against the tightness. “She died. She died right there under my hands. And whatever healing I had died with her.”

  “That’s a real sad story, Mr. Campbell,” Blind Bill said after a pause.

  Memphis’s nose ran with his tears and he was glad the old man couldn’t see him crying. He didn’t say anything else.

  Blind Bill nodded as if in some private conversation. “But you didn’t do nothin’ to your mama ’cepting try to ease her pain. You hear me? Sometimes, it’s a mercy,” he said quietly, and Memphis was grateful for the old man’s kindness. “I’ma give you something.”

  Bill rummaged in his pocket and came up with a butterscotch candy. He felt for Memphis’s hand and pressed it into his palm with his dry, scratchy fingers. “Here. You keep that. ’Case you ever need to ask Papa Legba’s protection.”

  “Papa who?”

  “Papa Legba. He’s the gatekeeper of the Vilokan—the spirit realm. He stands at the crossroads. If you’re lost, he can help you find your way. Just leave him a little something sweet.”

  Aunt Octavia would have a fit if she heard Bill talking that way. Once, she’d made them cross the street to avoid a nearly hidden matchbox of a store whose plate-glass windows were draped in red and black, with candles and figurines of saints with African faces. A small sign advertised CURSES LIFTED AND OBSTACLES TO HAPPINESS REMOVED. “Don’t you go anywhere near that voodoo,” she’d said when Isaiah demanded to know why they were going a block out of their way. Under her breath, she’d recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  Memphis held the candy uncertainly. It felt strangely heavy in his palm. “My aunt says you should pray only to Jesus.”

  Blind Bill grunted and spat. “You think the white folks’ god is gonna help you? You think he’s on our side?”

  “I don’t think anybody’s god is on our side.”

  Memphis readied himself for some rebuke. Instead, the old man nodded knowingly, the corners of his mouth twisting into a smile of bitter agreement. “That might be the most honest thing you ever said, Mr. Campbell. Damn sight better than that charm and hair oil you usually putting on.” He laughed then—a big, wheezing cough of a laugh—and slapped his leg, and the whole thing—the conversation, the candy, the earlier adventure at the house—struck Memphis as so completely ridiculous that he couldn’t stop himself from joining in. The two of them were doubled over like fools.

  “Oh, law, law, law,” Blind Bill said, patting his chest. “Ain’t that the way of the world, now? Good luck turns bad. Bad luck turns good. Just a big rolling craps game played between this world and the next, and we the dice getting tossed around. You go on home now, Mr. Campbell. Get you some rest. Live to fight another day. Plenty of time for regrettin’. Go out and have you some good times while you still young.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.” He’d changed his mind about going home. Blind Bill was right—Memphis was young, and so was the night. And so he charted his course for the Hotsy Totsy.

  Bill listened to Memphis Campbell’s footsteps fading away. He wanted to tell Memphis how lucky he was that the gift had left him when it did. What a mercy that was. How grateful he should be that the wrong people hadn’t found out about it. Bill felt in his pocket for some money for a bite to eat. He rubbed the dime and nickel between his fingers. Not much. If only he could stop gambling. But that was his curse; he couldn’t stay away from risk and chance, whether it was cards, the numbers game, craps, cockfighting, or horse racing. But he kept seeing that house in his dreams with the clouds and crossroads. He hadn’t worked out the gig for any of it yet, but he would. There was a number on the side of the house’s mailbox. If only he could see it, he felt sure, that number would be the key to winning big. And once he had his money, he could set about getting revenge.

  THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

  The house sat on the windswept hill like a sentinel. Ivy sprawled across the exterior, spreading like a stain. The windows were shuttered and nailed closed. The engraved cherrywood doors were a dull brown. If anyone could have seen inside, they’d have noted that cobwebs draped from doorways and spiders secreted their web-wrapped prey into crevices. Warped floorboards bowed dangerously in spots.

  In its day, the house had been magnificent. There had been celebrations and dances. On Sundays, carriages had passed by to admire the house’s commanding presence, a symbol of everything that was right and good and hopeful about the country. The house was a dream realized. The man who had built the house, Jacob Knowles, had made his fortune in steel, the very steel used to build the city. He and his wife had only one surviving child, a daughter named Ida, who was their greatest joy. Ida was small and prone to colds, and for this reason, her anxious parents indulged the girl’s every whim. There were piano lessons and pony rides and a small spaniel named Chester. When Ida played tea party on the lawn, servants waited nearby to pour tea for her dolls. Many were the days she pretended to be an Arabian princess surveying her kingdom. She would climb the stairs to the very top room of the house, an attic room with a small terrace. In 1863 she watched the smoke from the Draft Riot fires from there, daydreaming that she looked upon the lairs of distant dragons and not the simmering frustrations of a class and race war erupting into brutal mob violence. While the Civil War raged on, Ida grew into a young woman. She dreamed of marrying some handsome officer so that they might become the next master and mistress of the grand house. Months after the Civil War ended, Union soldiers joined General Grant himself for a party at the house that spilled ou
t onto the lawn for fireworks as the strains of a waltz echoed along the rafters. But Ida had a cold and was confined to her bed with a mustard plaster on her chest, sobbing at her misfortune though her mother patted her cheek and told her not to worry, that there would be another ball and a young man waiting for her, and besides, they were not ready to have their only daughter, their dear Ida, leave them just yet.

  But it was Ida’s mother who was to leave. A year after that ball, Mrs. Knowles fell sick with dysentery and was buried within a week. One year later, Jacob Knowles died of a sudden brain hemorrhage. It fell to twenty-year-old Ida to maintain Knowles’ End. Running a household was a far cry from playing princess, and though a distant cousin admonished Ida to be prudent with her spending, she did not heed his advice. Grief-stricken at the loss of her parents, Ida turned to the new Spiritualism for comfort. She opened Knowles’ End to Theosophists, card readers, and spirit mediums. The most gifted of these mediums was a wealthy widow named Mary White, who had an uncanny ability to put Ida in communication with her relatives on the other side. There was no rapping of the table, nor cheap levitation tricks, as so many attempted. No, Mary White had a genuine gift and a warm demeanor, and Mary and Ida became quite close, with Ida calling her “sister.” Once again, the house was filled with activity, and Knowles’ End became a place for spiritual meetings, card readings, séances, and all sorts of esoteric and occult gatherings. Ida felt certain it was only a matter of time before Knowles’ End was restored to its former glory. Mary had all but told her that the spirits assured it.

  Mary had a companion in these endeavors, a most charismatic man with transfixing eyes, a Mr. Hobbes. He was, she promised, a prophet. A holy man. Certainly, he spent many hours alone in the library reading, and sometimes, during their séances, he fell into strange trances and spoke in words Ida did not comprehend—proof, Mary told her, of his connection to the spirit realm.

  But Ida’s expenses were many—spirit mediums were costly—and the Knowles fortune dwindled quickly. Ida would be socially humiliated if her debts were to become known. It was Mary who offered to buy Knowles’ End and take Ida on as a boarder in order to spare her reputation. Mary agreed to let Ida have her favorite room, the attic room with the view of the city, and told her not to worry, that she would pay the back taxes and Mr. Hobbes would take on the hard work needed to make Knowles’ End, which had fallen into disrepair, beautiful again.