by Libba Bray
Evie turned and ran from the museum, ignoring Sam as he called out after her.
GOD IS DEAD
Evie walked the streets of the city until she was too tired to continue. In Central Park, she found a bench by the pond and sat to watch a rowboat with two couples in it. They laughed easily, enjoying the day’s sun. They seemed carefree and unbothered, and Evie hated them for it. She’d hoped Uncle Will of all people would understand. Evie wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Ordinarily, she’d go to Mabel for comfort. But that was out of the question, and Evie felt lost and alone.
She wandered back to the Bennington and climbed the stairs to the roof, where she sat with the pigeons. She had that coiled tightness ballooning in her chest, like her skin was on too tight. Like she’d come around a blind corner, and every demon she kept at bay had been there waiting. Will lectured about belief in the supernatural, but the only ghosts that frightened Evie were the very real ghosts inside her. Some mornings, she’d wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won’t be such an awful mess of a girl. I won’t lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won’t go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I’ll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She’d say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She’d take a dare she shouldn’t, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? “Oh, Evie, you’re too much,” people said, and it wasn’t complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time.
So why wasn’t she ever enough?
Evie stared at the long columns of windows cut into the building across the street. So many windows. Who lived behind them? Were they happy? Or did they sometimes sit on a rooftop haunted by a deep loneliness for which there seemed to be no cure?
The door creaked open on its hinges and Jericho angled his broad shoulders through the opening. “Thought I might find you here. What happened with your uncle Will?”
Evie turned her face away and wiped her eyes. “I stirred the tea counterclockwise.”
Jericho slid down the wall, keeping a respectable distance between them. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Evie said nothing. To the south, the sun glinted off the steel tip of a building. Smoke belched from rooftop chimneys in fat, sooty puffs. A billboard advertised Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum in giant iron letters. On the roof’s edge, the pigeons arched their necks, hunting for food.
“You asked me about how I came to live with your uncle Will. I didn’t answer you right away,” Jericho started. He pulled a heel of bread from his pocket and unwrapped it.
“No, you didn’t,” Evie said. Once, she’d been very curious about that. She couldn’t see that it mattered now, with her expulsion imminent. But she was grateful to Jericho for coming after her, for trying to comfort her in his way. She just wanted him to keep talking. “Will you tell me now?”
He squinted in the sun. “I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania. Cows and pastures. Rolling farmland. Mornings seem newly born there. It’s about as far from here as you can get.”
“Sounds swell,” Evie said, hoping her words didn’t sound as hollow as they felt.
Jericho waited for a spell, as if gathering words. “There was an epidemic. Infantile paralysis. It took my sister first. And then I woke up with a fever. By the time they got me to the hospital in Philadelphia, I couldn’t feel my legs and arms, and I was having trouble breathing. I was nine.”
As he spoke, Jericho tore the bread into tiny pieces, which he tossed onto the flat tar roof for the birds, who swarmed the food.
“They put me in a machine, a prototype of something they were working on called an iron lung. It breathes for you. Of course, you’re trapped inside it—like a metal coffin. I spent whole days staring up at the ceiling, watching the light from the windows behind me shift like a sundial. My mother would come up from Lancaster by horse and wagon every Sunday and pray for me. But there’s a lot to do on a farm, and there were two other children back home and another on the way. Soon it was every other Sunday. Then she just stopped coming.” Jericho broke up more of the bread and tossed it into the scrum of squawking birds. “I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.”
Evie wasn’t sure what she should say, so she kept quiet and watched the birds clustering around the food, fighting for it.
“Then I heard a bird chirping on the windowsill, signaling spring. I knew that if the bird could get there, so could she. I knew the minute I heard that bird outside my window that she wasn’t coming back. Even before the doctors told me my parents had signed the papers that made me a ward of the state, I knew.”
Jericho wiped his hands on his handkerchief.
“How could your parents just leave you?” Evie asked after a while.
“Invalids don’t grow up to work plows or threshing machines. I was beyond their care. And they had other mouths to feed.”
“How can you forgive them so easily?”
“What would not forgiving them do for me?”
“But you’re strong and healthy now. How…?”
Jericho tossed a small rock from the roof with a baseball player’s power. “They tried something new. I was lucky; it worked. And after some time, I recovered.”
“Why, that’s a miracle!”
“There are no miracles,” he said. His face was unreadable. “Will agreed to be my guardian. He needed an assistant, and I needed a home. He’s a good man. Better than most.”
“He only cares about his work and that damned museum,” Evie said, not caring that she swore.
“That isn’t true. I don’t know what happened today, but he was awfully worried. Talk to him, Evie.”
Evie wanted to tell Jericho what had happened, but she couldn’t seem to open herself to scrutiny again.
“He’s already made up his mind to send me back to Ohio,” Evie said. “Perhaps if I were a ghost he’d listen.”
“There are no such things as ghosts, either. But don’t tell your uncle that,” Jericho said. It made Evie smile for a moment.
She knew she should start packing, but she wanted to forestall the inevitable just a little longer, to etch the skyline of the city forever in her mind. It had been a wonderful few weeks. It was a shame it was over.
Jericho took out his dog-eared book, and Evie nodded to it. “May I?”
Jericho handed it over, and Evie read from the bookmarked page: “ ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?’ ” Evie narrowed her eyes at him. “You sure know how to have a good time, don’t you?” She handed it back to him. “Will you read to me?”
“You want me to read Nietzsche to you?”
“The way I’m feeling, it couldn’t hurt.”
Jericho cleared his throat and found his place. “ ‘What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves…’ ”
Jericho’s voice lulled Evie. She watched the sun glint off the side of a water tower on the roof of a building to the west. Nearby, the pigeons hopped about in their constant quest for food.
“ ‘What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?’ ”
“Jericho, have they tried your miracle cure on anyone else?”
“I told you,” Jericho said. “There are no miracles.”
A STAY OF EXECUTION
Will returned home around suppertime and summoned Evie to his office. He sat stiffly in his chair, fidgeting with an unlit cigarette. The radio played softly.<
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“Evangeline, I shouldn’t have lost my temper earlier. I apologize.”
Evie shrugged. “Everybody gets sore sometimes.”
“It took me rather by surprise, I’m afraid.” Will lit the Chesterfield in his hand. He dragged on it, then blew out a thin stream of smoke. “Tell me more about this talent of yours.”
“It started two years ago, when the dreams about James began.”
“Your brother, James?”
“No. James the doorman,” Evie snapped, and instantly regretted it. The last thing she needed to do was to aggravate Will.
“There was no antecedent. I’m a curator and scholar. I must have sourcing,” Will said matter-of-factly. “How did you come to discover it?”
“The first time, it was a brooch of Mother’s. I wanted to wear it, but she wouldn’t let me. She’d left it on her dressing table, and I picked it up, but I couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to pin it to my dress. I kept turning it over in my hands, and I got the funniest feeling. The brooch felt warm. My hands warmed, too, and my palms tingled.” Evie paused. She’d wanted to talk about it, but now she felt exposed.
“Go on. What did you see? Were you privy to only an hour of the object’s history, or could you see back farther? Did it come on you as more of a feeling, a suggestion, or did you feel as if you were with the person, living that moment?”
“So… you believe me?”
Will nodded. “I believe you.”
Evie sat forward, hopeful. “It was just like sitting at the picture show, but a picture show where the projector light isn’t terribly strong. It was only a moment. I could see Mother sitting at her dressing table, and I could feel what she had been feeling when she’d worn the brooch.”
“What was that?”
Evie looked him in the eyes. “She wished I’d been the one to die instead of James.”
Will broke the gaze. “Mothers love all their children equally.”
“No, they don’t. That’s just what we all agree to say.”
“And that was the first time?”
“Yes. I tested it. Whenever I concentrated on an object, I could sense some of its history. It isn’t always in order. Sometimes the pictures I see are faint; other times, they’re stronger. I think when the emotion is strong, I feel and see more.”
“Has it gotten stronger, would you say? Or weaker?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t practiced it like the castanets,” Evie said. “Can you practice it like the castanets?”
“Have you met anyone else who can do what you do?” Will asked, ignoring her question.
“Are there others like me?”
“If so, they haven’t announced themselves. Have you told your parents about this?”
“It was hard enough telling you after what happened in Ohio. They think it was one of my little pranks.”
“Good, good,” Will said.
“Why are you asking all these questions?”
“I’m trying to understand,” Will said.
No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.
“So no one knows,” Will murmured.
“Well, I did show off a bit at that party Theta took me to,” Evie said uncertainly.
“You did this at a party?” Will sounded alarmed.
“It was nothing important! Just telling people what they’d had for dinner or the names of their dogs when they were kids. Most of the people there were fried.” Evie was careful not to mention her own drinking. “It was only in fun. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?”
“But that was Ohio! This is New York City. If girls can dance half-naked in nightclubs, I don’t see why I can’t do a little divining.”
“People aren’t afraid of half-dressed girls in nightclubs.”
“You think people would be afraid of me, then?”
“People always fear what they don’t understand, Evangeline. History proves that. I suppose if people were drinking…” Will didn’t finish his thought. “And you say you had one of these… episodes with Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle?”
Evie nodded. “I saw a terrible room and a large furnace and the outline of a man, I think. But it was only a silhouette, a shadow. I can’t be sure.” She shook her head. “Do you think what I saw was related to the murder?”
Will’s expression was grim. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think I should tell the police?” Evie asked.
“Certainly not.”
“But why not? If it would help…”
“Most likely they’d think you were some sort of crackpot. Or worse—a fame-seeker trying to get her name in the papers. Terrence and I have been friends for some time. I know how the police think.”
“But if I could read something else from the murders, something belonging to Tommy Duffy, for instance…”
“Absolutely not,” Will commanded. “I don’t think you should touch anything having to do with these murders.” Will sprang up from his chair and paced the length of the parlor. Midway, he stopped to tap his ash into a tall silver ashtray beside a navy-striped wingback chair that looked as if it had never been sat in. It was as if Will’s coiled energy didn’t allow him to sit long enough to make an impression on the cushion. “We are going to catch our killer with good old-fashioned detective work, even if we have to go through every occult book in the museum’s library.”
“So… I can stay?” Evie asked.
“Yes. You can stay. For now. But there will be new rules. There will be no further cavorting in speakeasies. And you will be expected to help out around the museum.”
“Of course.” It was better than a train back to Ohio. And once she proved to Will how indispensable she was, he’d have to keep her on for the long run. “Thank you, Unc.” Evie threw her arms around Will, who stiffened and waited for her to withdraw.
In the doorway, Jericho cleared his throat and waited to be recognized. He dropped the late-edition paper on Will’s desk. “You might want to read this.”
“ ‘Exclusive to the New York Daily News, by T. S. Woodhouse. Museum Makes a Pentacle Killing,’ ” Will read aloud. He frowned and waved the paper about. “What’s this?”
Evie snatched the paper away and kept reading. “ ‘New York City, that bustling metropolis, is no stranger to violence. Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and the rest of the Brownsville Boys of Murder, Inc., have kept the bodies piling up faster than the cops can take bribes to look the other way. But the Pentacle Murders have given even hardened New Yorkers the heebie-jeebies. Mothers won’t let their children play stickball on the streets after dark. Shopgirls spend their hard-earned dough on taxis straight home to their cold-water flats in Murray Hill and Orchard Street. The Sultan of Swing, Mr. Babe Ruth himself, has promised a five-hundred-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the foul fiend. But in the midst of this Manhattan murder mania, there is one joint that’s raking it in—the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. That’s the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies to you folks in the know.’ Unc, the museum made the papers!”
Evie continued. “ ‘Their business is anything spooky, and anything spooky is good for business. On a recent Friday, this reporter witnessed a mob scene parked outside the doors of the old Cornelius T. Rathbone mansion near Central Park. That’s because the curator of the museum, Professor William Fitzgerald’—oh, Unc! That’s you!” Evie exclaimed. “ ‘… is helping the New York boys in blue figure out what makes this diabolical killer tick in the hope of finding him before he strikes again. He’s aided in his work by his niece, Miss Evie O’Neill, late of Zenith, Ohio, a comely seventeen-year-old Sheba who knows her onions about everything from witches’ coifs to the bo
nes of Chinese conjurers. But when this reporter tried to get the goods on the hunt for a killer, the dame played coy. “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that,” she said and batted those baby blues. Fellas, start lining up. There’s more than one killer in this town.’ ”
Evie tried to keep the grin from her face. T. S. Woodhouse had come through after all.
“Evangeline, did you speak to this Woodhouse fellow?” Will demanded.
Evie’s eyes went wide. “Unc, I had no idea he was a reporter! He was a paying customer. I gave him the tour. When he started asking questions, I stonewalled him. He played me for a chump, that cad!”
“You have to be more careful. Develop a New Yorker’s skin.” Will tapped a second cigarette against the table, packing down the tobacco before lighting it. “Whatever happened to objective, truthful reporting?”
“Haven’t you heard? It doesn’t sell papers,” Jericho said.
“You’re so right, Unc. That Woodhouse is a rat. But he did mention the museum, at least,” Evie said. “Do you know what this means?”
Will blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “Trouble,” he said.
The phone rang, startling them all. Will took the call, his expression hardening. “We’ll meet you there.”
“What is it?” Evie asked.
“The Pentacle Killer has struck again.”
THE BOGEYMAN
Will and Evie were met at the front door of the Grand Masonic Lodge by a small man with a thin mustache whose round black spectacles magnified his eyes into two large, blinking blue orbs that made Evie think of an owl.
“This way,” the man said nervously. “The police are already here, of course.” He led them through a wood-paneled hallway to a plain door. A brass plaque designated it the Gothic Room. The small man opened the door into a stuffy antechamber before opening a second door into a large room like a church’s sanctuary. The smell hit Evie right away—a terrible, cloying odor of smoke and cooked flesh that sat at the back of her throat.