by Libba Bray
“I’m fine,” she said in a calm voice. “I’m fine.”
The boy sat by the river with the Book of the Brethren turned to the last page. Evie’s heartbeat quickened as she tried to see it.
“The missing page. I’ve got it,” she said, and Will rushed to grab a pen. “ ‘Into this vessel, I bind your spirit. Into the fire, I commend your spirit. Into the darkness, I cast you, Beast, nevermore to rise.’ ”
Young John Hobbes ripped the page from the book, tearing it into tiny pieces and floating them on the river.
“We’ve got it, Evie. You can stop now,” Will said.
Evie had never gone quite so deep before. She was only vaguely aware of their voices, like a conversation heard in another room when falling asleep. It was almost like a drug, this feeling, and she wasn’t ready to stop.
“I’m somewhere else now,” Evie said dreamily.
She found herself walking through thick, sodden leaves in a blue-gray wood toward an encampment. Somber-faced men and women in plain clothes left their modest log cabins and walked with their children toward a white clapboard barn painted with the same sigils John Hobbes had scribbled along the bottom of all his notes. And there across the door was the five-pointed-star-and-snake emblem.
“The Pentacle of the Beast,” she murmured.
“Evie, I’m going to clap my hands now,” Will said. He did, and Evie pressed harder. She was beyond his reach now.
In her trance, she followed the others into the church. The women sat on one side in simple chairs, the children at their feet, while the men sat on the other side. His face grim, Pastor Algoode stood at the front with his son by his side. “The time has come. I have heard it in the town that even now the authorities ride to Brethren to take us down. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Yes, the time has come for the chosen one to begin his journey!”
“Hallelujah!” a woman shouted, raising her palms high.
“The time has come for the ritual to begin! For the Beast to rise and bring judgment to the sinners!”
“Hallelujah!” others joined in.
“We are the faithful. We must be strong. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen.” Pastor Algoode opened the book, finding the page he needed. “And I heard the angel’s voice as a voice of thunder saying, ‘None of the faithful shall enter the kingdom of the Lord but that they have purified their flesh with oil and the flames of heaven. Their sacrifice shall be the first, the sacrifice of the faithful, and the Beast will take from them the book and bathe in the smoke of their tithe. Thus will the first offering be made and the ritual begun.’ Hallelujah!”
Pastor Algoode passed around two jugs, which the faithful poured over themselves. Evie could smell the strong kerosene. Her heartbeat sped up. Pastor Algoode slipped his pendant around the boy’s neck and placed a hand on his forehead. “Take of our flesh and make it yours. Thus sayeth the Lord. Go. Do what you must. Find a dwelling and make it holy. Prepare ye the walls of your house. Do not forget to honor us with tribute.”
Calmly and quietly, the boy left the barn, locking it from the outside. On the other side of the door, Pastor Algoode continued praying while the congregation took up a plaintive hymn. Evie smelled smoke. Black wisps curled out from the cracks in the barn. Flames licked at the roof. The boy stood fast, also praying, letting the smoke fill his lungs. “The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” he intoned over and over.
Inside, the children screamed and coughed. The women tried to keep the song going. Pastor Algoode’s voice was choked with pain; it made his prayers into a fearsome cry. Evie wanted to get away, but she couldn’t. She could not command her hand to let go of the ring, nor could she remember the code word. She was too far under, with no idea how to get out or ask for help. The screams had died to isolated moans. The roof caved in. The smoke. Evie coughed; she was smothering. Shouts from the woods—someone was coming up the mountain. The boy opened his eyes quickly. For a second, Evie thought she saw flames reflected in the cool glass of those eyes. The boy walked calmly toward the woods and the sound of a man’s voice calling out. Suddenly, he stopped and turned toward Evie. Something about his face—calm, cold, cruel—made Evie’s heart beat wildly. He was looking right at her!
“I see you,” he said, and his voice was not the voice of a boy; it was a terrible thing, more bestial than human. “I see you now.”
“J-James,” Evie whispered, suddenly remembering the code word. “Help. James.”
The next thing she knew, Jericho was shaking her. Her fingers were cramped but the ring was gone; Sam had taken it from her. “Evie!” Jericho shouted. “Evie!”
She gulped in a huge breath, like a drowning woman breaking a lake’s surface. “Oh, god, oh, god!”
“We should have stopped, Will!” Jericho growled.
“It’s all right,” Will said rather automatically.
“I saw him—I saw the Beast! Horrible, horrible!” She gagged but did not vomit. Her head began to throb and her vision swam.
“I’ll get her some water,” Sam said, running for the kitchen.
Evie held on to the edge of the desk even though she was sitting. Her cheeks were pale and her forehead bathed in sweat. The room spun. “He… he looked at me! Right at me! He said, ‘I see you, I see you’!”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sam asked. He’d returned with the water and tried to get Evie to drink, but she couldn’t.
“It’s all right,” Will said, shaken.
“It’s not all right! You can’t do this to her. She’s not an experiment,” Jericho snapped at a stunned Will. He gathered Evie in his arms, carried her to her room, and placed her on the bed.
Evie had never felt so sick. Her head pounded and her stomach roiled as she lay on sweat-drenched sheets in the dark room. Every sound echoed in her skull. She was vaguely aware that she was having the dream about James again, but it kaleidoscoped in and out of the images she’d pulled from John Hobbes’s ring till she couldn’t be certain what was happening anymore. At one point, she saw Naughty John playing chess with James on the battlefield, the Victrola playing so fast it made a mockery of the song. She saw Henry, too, running through the trees, calling for someone named Louis. A woman stood at the edge of the forest in her nightgown and a gas mask. When she raised the mask, Evie saw that it was Miss Addie. “Such a terrible choice,” she said as the sky lightened and the first waves of the explosion came toward them all.
At half past nine in the evening, Evie woke with a desperate thirst. She wobbled to the kitchen for water and saw that Uncle Will’s light was on. The door was ajar, but she knocked softly anyway.
“How are you feeling?” Will greeted her.
“Better.” Evie settled into an uncomfortable chair. It seemed to have been designed so that a visitor would not stay long. “What happened today, at the end?”
“You established a psychic link with him. You could see him, but he could also see you. That is the danger of your gift: You may open yourself up to the other side.” Will templed his fingers and bounced them gently against his chin. “Are you familiar with the story of the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York?”
“Are they a radio quartet?”
A smile flickered briefly on Will’s lips. “There was no radio in the mid–eighteen hundreds. The Fox sisters lived in Hydesville, New York, in a house that was rumored to be haunted. The youngest Fox sisters, Maggie and Kate, claimed to be in communication with the spirit world. They would ask questions and the spirit, whom they called ‘Mr. Splitfoot,’ would answer by rapping.” Will knocked on the desk for effect. “They became a sensation during the Spiritualism movement, conducting séances for many famous people.”
“This is what happens when there’s no radio,” Evie said.
“Yes, well, later on, the girls had a change of heart. They became religious and confessed that their communication with spirits was all an elaborate fraud, that they had produced the raps by the cracking of their toes. The s
isters fell on hard times. They became drunks; some said they drank to dull the phenomena.”
Evie stared at her big toe as it noodled a spot in the rug. “Is there a point to this tale?”
“A year later, Margaret Fox recanted. She had a change of heart. She told everyone that it had all happened just as they’d said. I believe her. I think the sisters were frightened, and so they stopped and renounced it all. It was as if they said to the restless spirits, ‘Be gone. We are closed to you.’ And long after the girls had died, a human skeleton was found in the basement of their home in Hydesville.”
Will shuffled the newspaper clippings on his desk. He’d probably been looking at them for hours, Evie guessed.
“Why is this happening now?” Evie asked.
Will templed his fingers again. “I don’t know. Something is drawing the likes of John Hobbes. Some energy here. Spirits are attracted to seismic energy shifts, chaos and political upheaval, religious movements, war and invention, industry and innovation. There were said to be a great many ghost sightings and unexplained phenomena reported during the American Revolution, and again during the Civil War. This country is founded on a certain tension.” He pressed his fists against each other. “There is a dualism inherent in democracy—opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy—and, as I’ve said, spirits are attracted to energy.” He let his hands rest on the desk.
“Can we stop him?”
“I believe we can.” Will offered a hint of a smile. “In the morning, we’ll drive to Brethren and exhume his body and take the source of his power on this plane—the pendant.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll bring it back to the museum, where we can create a protective circle. Using the incantation, we’ll trap his spirit in the pendant and then destroy the pendant before Solomon’s Comet passes through.”
Will was looking at her with a new appreciation, Evie felt.
“You were very brave today, Evangeline.”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
“The bravest. Family trait, you know.”
Evie felt much better for Will’s reassurance. Her stomach had settled and her head was lighter. She found her gaze drawn to the only photograph on Will’s desk—the mystery woman she’d seen when she’d held Will’s glove that day, just over a week ago. Was it only a week? It seemed like years.
“Who is she, Unc?”
Unconsciously, Will stroked a finger across the woman’s face. “Rotke Wasserman. She was my fiancée for a time.”
“Why didn’t you marry her?” Evie asked, and immediately realized her mistake. What if the woman had jilted Will at the altar? What if she’d left him for a man with more money and position?
“She died,” Will said softly.
“Oh.”
“It was many years ago,” Will said, as if that should soften it. “I haven’t been able to keep up with that other glove since. It’s always… lost.”
For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a pause.
“Yes. Well. We’ve both lost someone, I suppose.” Will turned the picture toward the wall.
Evie’s hand sought the comfort of her coin talisman. There was something she wanted to ask Will, had wanted to ask him since she’d first discovered ghosts were real. Only now did she feel brave enough to do so. “These stories about people communicating with the spirits of the dead, mediums… Could you really contact someone from the other side if you wanted to?”
Will’s gaze followed Evie’s hand as it held fast to the pendant at her neck. “It’s best to let the dead lie in peace,” he said gently.
“But what if they aren’t at peace? What if they seem to need help? What if they show up in your dreams again and again?” Evie felt tears threatening again. She’d turned into a regular waterworks lately. She fought it. “What if they’re trying to get through to you and tell you something, only you’re not quite on the trolley?”
“What if they’re trying to harm you?” Will said. “Did you ever think of that?”
No. She hadn’t. But James? James would never hurt her. Would he?
“People tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,” Will said. “There are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories.”
“Unc, if you believe in ghosts and goblins—”
“I do not believe in goblins….”
“The goblinesque,” Evie said, rolling her eyes. “Why is it you have such trouble believing in God?”
“What sort of god would let this world happen?” he said, holding her gaze a moment too long before checking his pocket watch. “I believe it’s just time for Captain Nightfall and the Secret Brigade. Shall we catch it?”
“Sounds swell.”
Will flipped on the radio. Ominous music swelled. “Wherever evil lurks, wherever shadows gather, there will you find Captain Nightfall and his Secret Brigade as they fight the forces of iniquity and keep the citizens of this country safe from all manner of villainy….”
The shadow-painted living room filled with sound effects and music and the well-modulated voices of actors pretending to put the wicked in their place.
But it wasn’t enough to chase away the ghosts.
Rain beat gently against the windows. The trees of Central Park bowed with wind. And on the street in the dark, a whistling could be heard as John Hobbes walked the sodden blocks to the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. He passed easily into the old mansion, with its collections of gris gris bags, witches’ letters, and spirit photographs. Mere trifles. Child’s play. Umbrellas opened against a typhoon. In two days’ time, none of it would matter, anyway. But first, there was work to be done. Whistling, John Hobbes visited the old library. It was cloaked in night’s gloom, but he could see the untidy desk with no trouble. He saw very well in the dark now. First he slid open the drawer and left a small present. But he would also need something. There on the desk he saw it, winking out from under a stack of newspaper clippings. That would do. Yes, that would do nicely. He dropped it into his pocket and left the museum, singing softly, “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on….”
Upstairs in his bedroom, Sam woke briefly, thinking he heard someone singing, but all was quiet now, and so he rolled over and went back to sleep.
EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE
Memphis walked the leaf-strewn streets of the Upper West Side, pulling his coat closed against the brisk breeze. It was truly fall now. Chimney smoke burned the edges of the air, scenting the wind. The nights had weight. Everything will be fine, Memphis. Stop your worrying. Memphis walked faster, eager to get to the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Sister Walker had told him to keep the incident with Gabe’s ghost to himself, that he was probably seeing things out of grief and weariness. But between Isaiah’s trances, Gabe’s visitation, and the dream he shared with Theta, it was too much to ignore, and Memphis wanted someone to explain to him what was going on.
In the distance, Memphis saw the gothic towers of the Bennington peeking through the thinning leaves. That was where Theta lived, and for a moment he wished he could just run up and see her, forget this whole crazy world. But her world was just as mysterious as everything else he was worried about. He couldn’t do anything about that, and besides, he had answers to get, and so he moved on.
It was around Central Park West and Eighty-eighth Street that Memphis became aware that he was being followed. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw them: two men shadowing him at a respectful but consistent d
istance. Memphis knew at a glance that they were plainclothes cops. His heart raced, and he told himself to keep calm. He had no slips on him. He was fine. Memphis picked up his pace. So did the men. They were definitely following him, then. Memphis scanned the street, looking for an escape. Along Central Park West, diggers were hollowing out the street for the new subway line. Could he hide down there? No, he’d be trapped for sure, and probably break a leg in the process. But he might be able to outrun them. Memphis waited until he saw a car coming up the street, then darted out in front of it, making the driver swerve and take up the boulevard, momentarily blocking traffic. He sprinted full-out for Central Park. His lungs burned and his shoes clip-clopped loudly on the circuitous path ambling down through trees and sharp black rocks, the sun dappling the path with little fool’s-gold promises of light. Over his ragged breathing, Memphis could hear the cops running behind him, shouting. They were faster than they looked, but Memphis aimed to be even faster. He chanced another look behind; he was losing them, he saw, and a sudden joy took flight in his chest. He turned back around just in time to see the nurse and baby carriage directly in his path, and the nurse’s expression of horror as she stood, transfixed, unable to get out of his way. He had too much momentum on the downhill. He tried to stop and skidded, rolling to a stop in the grass, banged and bruised and dazed. His trousers were torn and bloodied at the knee. Still, he staggered to his feet, ready to run. But it was too late; the men were on him, lifting him violently to his feet and twisting his arms behind his back.
“What do we have here?” one cop gasped out, and Memphis was glad he’d at least winded them. “Looks like we got ourselves a numbers runner.”
“Not me,” Memphis said. “No slips on me.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s this in your pockets, then?” the other cop said. He pulled a wad of slips from his own pocket and shoved them into Memphis’s.
“I’d say there’s at least twenty-five slips there—enough for a judge to lock you up, boy.”