The Diviners

by Libba Bray

  “Isaiah, what’re you doing?” Memphis shook the boy. Isaiah was cold to the touch.

  “Talking to Gabriel.” Isaiah’s teeth chattered. His eyes had the fixed, unseeing quality of a trance. “Memphis, brother,” Isaiah whispered. “The storm is coming… the storm is coming….”

  “Isaiah! Isaiah!” Memphis shook his brother hard.

  “What in heaven’s name is going on?” Octavia had wandered out in her nightgown. “What are you doing outside in the middle of the night?”

  “Isaiah’s having a nightmare. Come on now, Ice Man. Wake up!”

  “The ninth offering was an offering of lust and sin….” Isaiah said. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his mouth twitched.

  Octavia put a hand to her mouth in shock. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Memphis, help me get him inside.”

  Together, they carried the shaking Isaiah inside and placed him on his bed. Octavia fell to her knees beside the bed and put one hand on his forehead and the other across her heart. “Get on your knees, Memphis John. Pray with me. We’re gonna pray the Devil out of this child.”

  “There’s no devil in Isaiah!” Memphis growled.

  “They’re coming, brother….” Isaiah whispered. His shaking had become more violent.

  “Say it with me,” Octavia ordered. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

  Memphis watched the scene unfolding in the bedroom in horror. His best friend was dead. His brother was sick with visions. His mother lay in an early grave and haunted his sleep, and his father had left and was probably never coming back. Memphis was sick and tired of everything. He wanted to grab Theta and run away from it all.

  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” Octavia prayed fervently. “He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul—Memphis John, where do you think you’re going?”

  “Away from here!” Memphis shouted. He threw a coat on over his pajamas, shoved his sockless feet into his shoes, and tore out of the building, walking in an aimless fury. A fog had come up in the night. It hazed the street lamps and turned Harlem into a ghost town. Obscured by mist, the few people out on the streets were like laughing shades. Memphis turned away from them, walking uptown.

  Why was this happening? What if Isaiah was sick, like their mother? They hadn’t known how bad things were with her until it was too late. Was this a warning? He remembered what Sister Walker had said about Isaiah being like a radio that picked up signals. What signals was Isaiah getting, and how could he make them stop?

  He found himself in front of Trinity Cemetery. The open gate squeaked in the wind. Why was it open? A black cat slunk across the road, giving Memphis pause. “Go on! Git!” he hissed at it. Memphis shivered. It had gotten noticeably colder, though he couldn’t say why. It wasn’t wind. In fact, it was very still. Not a tree swaying. Not one rustle in the leaves. Gooseflesh tickled up Memphis’s arms and neck. He had the sudden thought that he should turn around, go home, and pull his covers up over his head.

  “Caw!” Up in the branches of a barren tree, a crow sat watching him.

  “Leave me alone!” Memphis howled at it.

  In the graveyard, he saw the silhouette of a figure in the fog. The person wasn’t moving at all. He was just standing there.

  “Memphis…”

  The voice was a rasp, like the scuttling of dried leaves in a gutter. Memphis stood perfectly still except for the quaking of his knees. His breath came out in a foggy Morse code of fear. He tried to speak, but his tongue had gone very dry.

  “Gabe?”

  The figure beckoned. “Brother…”

  The crow cawed again. Memphis began to laugh. He was losing his mind—that’s what was happening. He was trapped in some sort of nightmare and couldn’t wake up. With a feeling of fatality, he followed the figure deep into the foggy graveyard, until he came to the mausoleum where Gabe’s body had been hung like a broken angel. Now Gabe stood in the mist in his funeral suit. His skin was shiny and tight across his full face, and he shimmered around the edges, transient, phosphorescent, a deep-water fish swimming briefly through the shallows. Memphis was aware of a sound, like a ragged high note held on a trumpet. It rushed into Memphis’s ears and made his heart race. His knees gave and he fell to the ground, paralyzed. Above him, Gabe flickered, dreamlike, as if Memphis were seeing a cycle of Gabes passing through: His soulful-eyed friend. A laughing demon. A decaying death mask crawling with flies, eyes stitched shut, the tongue gone.

  Gabe’s voice came out as a long, labored whisper, as if these were the last sounds he would ever make. “At the crossroads, you will have a choice, brother. Careful of the one who works with both hands. Don’t let the eye see you….”

  Memphis’s entire body shook. The horn reached a pitch that made him want to scream. The fog swirled around Gabe, and the last thing Memphis heard before blacking out was Gabe’s faint warning: “The storm is coming…. All are needed….”

  Sister Walker sat at her kitchen table in her robe, her hair tied in a scarf, an untouched cup of coffee in front of her, and listened to Memphis talk about his dead friend. She kept perfectly still as he spun out his frantic tale, which started with Isaiah’s trance and ended in Trinity Cemetery; she didn’t even move as he told her about how Gabe had issued a warning—“The storm is coming”—just before he vanished into the fog. When Memphis had finished, there was only the steady ticking of the kitchen clock and the first milky-blue light of dawn at the window.

  Finally, Sister Walker spoke. “Memphis, I want you to listen to me very carefully: You’ve had a terrible shock. I don’t know what happened in that graveyard, but for the time being, I would like you to keep this between us. Tell no one—no one, do you understand me?”

  Memphis was too tired to do anything other than nod.

  “As for Isaiah, I’m going to stop working with him for a small while, till he’s better. When he comes over next time, we will work on his arithmetic, and nothing more.”

  “Isaiah won’t like that,” Memphis said hollowly.

  “You let me worry about Isaiah.” She coughed long and hard and popped a lozenge into her mouth. Then she placed Memphis’s coat around his shoulders like a mother would do, and Memphis felt a cry ballooning at the back of his throat. “Go on home now, Memphis. Get some rest.”

  Sister Walker stood at the door watching Memphis trudge toward home. Her cough was bad—too little sleep. A swig of medicine and some hot tea would help for now. As for what she’d just heard, she had no remedy—only a deep sense of dread that some nameless horror was about to sweep its dark wing across the land, and that they might all be lost in its shadow.

  FALSE IDOLS

  The car screeched to a halt in front of the Globe Theatre, and Evie leaped from it before the engine had quit its sputterings. She tried the front doors. “Locked!” she shouted.

  “Stage door!” Jericho said. He took off for the alley with Evie and Sam in hot pursuit. The stage door was ajar. The handle was partially melted, the door frame blackened.

  Evie’s legs felt in danger of buckling as she crept along a dim backstage hallway past dressing rooms whose mirrors flashed in the dark.

  “Jericho?” she whispered urgently. “Sam?”

  “Here,” Sam said, popping out of a dressing room and making her jump.

  Light glowed from the stage, and as Evie drew closer, she could see that the spot was on full. She saw the lighted staircase from the Ba’al worship number, and her heartbeat quickened.

  “Theta?” she said. There was no response.

  Evie walked out on the stage. She put up a hand to block the blinding spotlight and followed it to the altar at the top of the staircase. The spot threw thousands of sparkles as it reflected off the beaded costume of the dead girl lying there.

  “Sam! Jericho!” Evie shouted and, despite her fear, bounded up the stairs. At the sight of the body, she put out a hand to keep herself from tumbling back down.

  “Is it her?” Sam shouted, racin
g up.

  “No,” Evie said, her voice small. The girl was a blond.

  “Her skin…” Sam said. He put a hand on Evie’s shoulder and she jumped.

  “It’s gone,” Jericho finished.

  The doors flew open, and shouts of “Stay where you are!” and “Don’t move!” reached them as a wave of police officers, guns drawn, streamed down the aisles. Evie could see their handcuffs gleaming in the dusky theater. “You’re under arrest,” an officer said.

  Evie offered her hands and allowed herself to be taken to the police station without protest.

  Detective Malloy was furious. As Evie sat with Jericho and Sam on the chairs outside his office, she could hear him lighting into Uncle Will. “… contaminating a crime scene… breaking and entering… thought I told you to stay out of this…”

  Will caught her eye only once through the half-open office door, and it was enough to make Evie snap her eyes forward again.

  “I’ll tell him it was my idea,” Sam said.

  “Swell. I’ll tell him it was your idea, too,” Evie said.

  The officers dragged a protesting T. S. Woodhouse into the precinct and dumped him unceremoniously into a chair beside Evie and the others.

  “Hey! I got rights, you know,” Woodhouse yelled.

  “Yeah?” the officer snapped back. “Not for long. Hey, Sarge—caught this one at the theater, sneaking pictures of the body with a camera he had strapped to his leg. Don’t that beat all?”

  “That camera is property of the Daily News, pal!” T.S. yelled. Then, noticing Evie, he said, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite Sheba.” Woodhouse sneered at her. “That was quite a little scavenger hunt you sent me on the other night. Ars Mysterium, huh? More like Betty Bunk.”

  “You got exactly what you deserved, Mr. Woodhouse.”

  T. S. Woodhouse’s eyes flashed. “Yeah? What do you think your uncle would say if he found out you were the one feeding me information on the case?”

  “That was you?” Sam said, eyebrows high.

  “And how,” Woodhouse said, without taking his eyes off Evie’s.

  “Are you blackmailing me, Mr. Woodhouse?”

  He shrugged. “I might be.”

  “Fine. You want to know who the Pentacle Killer is? It’s Naughty John Hobbes himself, come back from the dead to finish the ritual he started in 1875. And when he’s finished, he’s bringing hell on earth.”

  “Evie,” Jericho cautioned.

  Evie stared down T. S. Woodhouse. He responded with a cynical laugh. “You’re a hot sketch, Sheba. I’ll give you that. But I wouldn’t look for any more favorable articles on the museum—or you, if you catch my drift.”

  Will stepped out into the hallway. “No one is to say a word until we get home.”

  “So long, Sheba,” T. S. Woodhouse said. “It’s been good knowing you.”

  Henry was asleep, curled toward the wall. Theta slipped in behind him, matching the arch of him. She draped her arm across his side. He stirred, lacing his fingers in hers. Theta began to cry, and Henry turned to her.

  “Theta? What’s the matter?”

  “I was at the theater. I-I heard noises. Somebody was there, Hen!”

  Henry fought off his sleepiness and tried to make sense of what Theta was saying. “Who was there? What are you talking about, darlin’?”

  “I went back and Wally was there with the cops. He looked like he’d been punched. I pretended like I was out on the town and just walking by, and I asked him what happened.”

  Theta buried her face against Henry’s side. Henry could feel her trembling.

  “It was Daisy,” she finally managed. “The Pentacle Killer got Daisy. She must’ve come back for her earrings and… It could’ve been me, Henry.”

  Theta started to cry again. Henry pulled her close. The thought of losing Theta terrified him. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Oh, Hen, I heard this awful whistling coming from everywhere. I was running, but I couldn’t get the doors open, and…” Her voice softened to nearly a whisper. “It started to happen again, Hen. Just like Kansas.”

  Henry knew about what had happened in Kansas. He also knew it hadn’t happened since.

  “Well, you’re safe now. I got you.”

  “What’s happening, Hen?”

  “I don’t know, cher.”

  Henry put his arms around Theta; she rested her seal-black head against his chest, and they stayed that way till dawn.

  THE WILD MAN OF BORNEO

  The morning’s papers had a field day with the murder of Daisy Goodwin. FINAL BOW! MURDER AT THE FOLLIES! PENTACLE PERFORMANCE! Evie was reading the Daily News’s front-page story when Sam ran in waving a piece of official-looking paper overhead. “I’ve got news!” He trundled quickly up the spiral iron staircase to where Evie stood in the library’s tall stacks and preened like a cat who knows there’s a dish of cream waiting.

  “Okay. I’ll bite. What the devil are you so smug about?”

  “I found the tax records for Knowles’ End.” He swung his legs over the railing, hopped onto the rolling ladder, and pushed off.

  “When did you become wise in the ways of research?”

  “Well, I did rely on my charms,” Sam admitted. “You’d be surprised how helpful the girl in the records office can be.”

  Evie took the stairs two at a time to the first floor and trotted alongside Sam as he rode the library ladder. “Well? Did you find anything interesting?”

  Sam gave the ladder another push.

  “And how. For the past thirty years, the taxes have been paid by a Mrs. Eleanor Joan Ambrosio.” He paused dramatically.

  Evie rolled her eyes. “And?”

  “That name didn’t mean anything to me. So I did a little digging. Ambrosio is a married name. Blodgett is her maiden name. Ring any bells?”

  “No.” Evie reached for the ladder and Sam pushed off again, leaving her grasping at the air. He was really enjoying this, she could tell.

  “Mary White married a fella named Blodgett. Eleanor was their daughter.”

  Evie kept pace with the ladder. “So her daughter kept up the taxes on Knowles’ End? Why?”

  “That’s exactly what I said. See? We think alike.”

  “Will you come down from there, please? You’re making me dizzy.” Evie stopped the ladder abruptly and Sam leaped down.

  “Aw, doll. You say the sweetest things.”

  “Sam, I’m warning you. You might be the next victim.”

  Sam settled into a chair and placed his boots up on the table. He laced his fingers behind his neck, and his bent elbows stuck out on either side of his head like wings. “It was pretty ingenious of me to think of going after the tax records, if I do say so myself.”

  “When you’ve finished congratulating yourself, could you explain?”

  “Seemed odd to me. If the daughter inherited the old place, why keep it? Why not just sell it off and make some dough? Why hold on to an old eyesore?” He paused again.

  “Will you keep me in suspense all night?”

  Sam grinned. “All night?”

  “Just get on with it.”

  Sam tipped the chair onto its back legs, rocking it just slightly. “I did a little more digging and found a record of an offer from Milton and Sons Real Estate to buy the place. Apparently they thought the spot might be perfect for some fancy housing, and they were willing to pay some cabbage for it, too. But the offer was refused, signed by the rightful owner, Mrs. Mary White Blodgett.” He popped a grape into his mouth and let that land.

  “Our Mary White? Former lover of John Hobbes?”

  “Yup. The same.”

  Evie’s heartbeat quickened. “How long ago was the offer made?”

  “Three months.”

  “Mary White is alive?” Evie said, wide-eyed.

  “Yes she is. Living in one of those shacks out at Coney and still holding on to that house up on the hill.”

  “Now why would she do that, I wonder?”
>
  “Maybe we should find out.”

  Mary White Blodgett lived on Surf Avenue in a wind-and-salt-battered bungalow with a view of the Thunderbolt roller coaster. Mrs. White’s daughter, Eleanor, met Will and Evie at the door wearing a housedress, her hair set with bobby pins.

  “Mrs. Ambrosio?” Will asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “How do you do? I’m William Fitzgerald. From the museum. We spoke on the phone.”

  Some spark of recognition showed in the woman’s eyes. “Oh, yeah. So we did. My mother’s an old lady, and she’s real sick. So don’t go agitatin’ her.”

  “Of course,” Will said, removing his hat.

  Mrs. Ambrosio led them through a sitting room littered with empty Whitman’s Sampler boxes and a collection of Radithor bottles that hadn’t yet made it to the rubbish bin. The place smelled of old beer and salt. “It’s the cleaning girl’s day off,” she said, and it was hard to know if it was a gallows joke or an excuse—or perhaps both. “Wait here in the kitchen a minute.”

  Evie kept her hands to herself. She didn’t want to stand in the place, much less sit. On the messy kitchen table, a bottle marked MORPHINE stood dangerously close to one labeled RAT POISON. A dirty syringe lay on a wad of bloodstained cotton.

  Mrs. Ambrosio disappeared behind a curtain, but her voice could still be heard, loud and shrill. “Ma! Those people are here to see you about Mr. Hobbes.”

  Mrs. Ambrosio reappeared suddenly, moving the bottles hurriedly into a cabinet and shutting the door. “We get rats sometimes,” she explained. “Like I said, she’s real sick. You can have fifteen minutes. Then it’s time for her nap.”

  Behind the curtain, Mary White’s bedroom was tomblike. The roller shades had been pulled down, and the bright beach sunshine bled around the edges. The old woman sat propped in bed against a pillow. She wore a sleep cap and a dirty peach silk boudoir jacket. Under the fragile skin of her arms, her gray-blue veins stood up like a knotty mountain ridge drawn along the folds of an old map.