The Diviners

by Libba Bray

  “Mabel Rose,” she said, shaking it.

  His smile was wry. “I know.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in there with the others?”

  “They’ll just spend the next hour arguing and getting nowhere,” he said, laughing, and Mabel smiled. That was exactly how these evenings tended to go. “In the end, they’ll agree to give another speech or write an editorial in the paper. Maybe they’ll try to unionize workers on the docks or picket a business or two.”

  “Isn’t that good?” Mabel asked.

  “They call themselves radicals, but they’re not, really.”

  “And you are, I suppose?” Mabel felt a little insulted on her parents’ behalf. “My parents have sacrificed a great deal for the good of others.”

  Arthur Brown’s gaze was unyielding. “Including their daughter?”

  Mabel felt the remark in her marrow. Her cheeks reddened. “That was rude.”

  “Yes, it was. I’m sorry. They mean well.”

  Mabel cocked her head. “But…?”

  Arthur smiled in an apologetic way. “There are times when change needs a little help. There’s a group of us who want to bring about change faster. Our way. If you want to meet up with us sometime, we could use a smart girl like you.”

  “I’m usually helping my parents,” Mabel said.

  He nodded. “Of course. Forget I mentioned it. It doesn’t have to be a meeting. There’s a joint nearby that makes the best egg creams. You like egg creams?”

  He had big brown eyes. Mabel felt a small electric thrill when she looked into them. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  He reached inside his jacket and Mabel saw the outline of a gun. “Here’s my card.”

  Mabel stared at the black lettering. ARTHUR BROWN.

  “Is that really your name?” she asked.

  He smirked. “It is now.”

  Mabel shivered in the chilly air. “I should get back to my studying.”

  “Pleasure, Mabel Rose.” He tipped his hat and held the window open for her before returning to the dining room and the arguing, which, Mabel knew, would go on well into the night.

  From the safety of her bedroom, she watched Arthur Brown make his passionate points. He spoke with confidence for someone so young. At one point, he caught her eye and smiled, and Mabel quickly ducked out of sight. She deliberated for a moment, then opened the secret drawer inside her music box and put Arthur Brown’s card inside.

  In the ramshackle apartment in the old Bennington, Miss Addie turned away from the window and fretted about in her room, trying to figure out what to do next. At last she called out to her sister. “Let me change my dress, sister.”

  She emerged a few moments later in an old nightgown and an apron. “Now.”

  Miss Lillian brought one of the cats from the kitchen, a tabby named Felix who was a fairly decent mouser, which was a shame. He was limp in her arms after the cream and opium. She laid him on the kitchen table, which had been covered in newspapers. Humming, Miss Addie opened a drawer in the secretary and took out a dagger. The dagger was as sharp as it was old.

  “That’s a nice tune, sister. What is it?” Lillian asked.

  “Something I heard on the radio. It was sung by a soprano, but I didn’t like her voice. Too reedy.”

  “So often that’s the case,” Miss Lillian clucked. “Are we ready?”

  “The time is now,” Miss Addie said. Miss Lillian held fast to Felix, whose small heart began to pound. He tried to squirm but was too woozy to do much.

  “It’ll all be over soon, kitty,” Miss Lillian assured him. She closed her eyes and spoke in long tangles of words, old as time, as Miss Addie plunged the knife into the cat’s belly, making the necessary incision. The cat stilled. She reached into the stomach cavity and pulled out its intestines, plopping them into a bowl. Some got on her apron and she was glad she’d changed first. She stared into the bowl, frowning. Miss Lillian left the cat’s bloodied corpse and joined her.

  “What is it, sister?”

  “They’re coming,” Miss Addie said. “Oh, dear sister, they are coming.”

  In the quiet museum, Will sat at his desk, the green glow of the banker’s lamp the only light. Earlier, he’d noticed the plain sedan parked across the street and the two men in dark suits sitting inside, watching. One of them ate nuts from a paper bag, dropping the shells out the window. Will had locked up and, whistling a carefree tune, strolled to a nearby Automat with a view of the museum for a sandwich and coffee, which he barely touched. Only when he’d seen the sedan drive away did he return to the museum, frowning at the break in the piece of cellophane he’d left across the doorjamb. He took a long, slow walk through the building, examining each room. After a careful inventory, he saw that nothing was missing. It had just been a look-around. For now.

  Will craned his neck to gaze at the room’s mural, the angels and devils hanging above the hills, plains, and rivers, above the patriots, pioneers, Indians, and immigrants of the new world. Then, in the hushed green glow of the old library, he walked the stacks until he came to a large leather-bound edition of the Declaration of Independence. From inside its pages, he retrieved a worn envelope. The envelope had been stamped on the upper-right-hand corner: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF PARANORMAL, 1917. He opened the file to the first page.

  Memorandum. To: William Fitzgerald, Jacob Marlowe, Rotke Wasserman, Margaret Walker

  Top Secret.

  Project Buffalo.

  Will sat at the desk, rereading the file. When he had finished, he sat staring into the shadows.

  He sat for a very long time.

  THE MAN IN THE STOVEPIPE HAT

  The land was a pledge, and the land was an idea of freedom, born from the collective yearning of a restless nation built on dreams. Every rock, every creek, every sunrise and sunset seemed a bargain well-struck, a guarantee of more. The land was robust. Rivers ran swiftly by on currents of desire. Purple mountains crowned sweet-grassed plains. A rejoicing of elms and oaks, mighty redwoods and sheltering pines sang across hillsides that sloped gently toward valleys grateful for their song. Telephone poles jutted up beside roads, their lonely wires stretched across the open fields, thin promises of connection. Ramshackle hickory fences of the kind that made good neighbors bordered rustic farmhouses, curved around red barns and stoic windmills. Corn rustled lightly in warm breezes.

  In the towns, there were Main Streets of the sort that lined the halls of hazy, fond memory. A church steeple. Barbershop. Ice-cream parlor. Town square and a public green perfect for picnicking. Butcher. Baker. Candlestick maker. On the far side of the fabled towns, covered bridges made beautiful in the reflected glory of fall foliage hovered atop streams rich with fish fit for a wounded king. In the courthouse under a wheezing ceiling fan, the women’s fingers busied themselves with needlepoint—HOME SWEET HOME, GOD BLESS AMERICA—and their husbands fanned themselves with folded newspapers as an argument droned on about whether man had been fashioned in the image of a master craftsman, wound with a key at the back and set into motion to play his part in a mysterious destiny, preordained, or had crawled from the mud and trees of the jungles, cousin to the beasts, an evolutionary experiment of free will let loose in a world of choice and chance. No verdict was reached.

  The roads needed room. They stretched. They roamed and conquered. Past the open ranges. The deer and the antelope. The buffalo. Past the tribes pushed to the sides under the watch of the cross, for this nation has its reservations. They kept pace beside the railroad, that great steel spine of progress, backbone of industry. The cicadas’ song joined the song of the steam-train whistle, the shrill signal of the redbrick factories as they released the sweat-stained workers at five, then took them in again at seven. The coal miners hacked and hauled their load deep underground, one eye ever on the canary. Out west, oil spewed from hard earth, staining everything in money. In the cotton fields, the weeping left their harps upon the trees.

  The roads reached the cities. The gleaming cities frantic with am
bition, rich in the commerce of longing, a golden paradise of businessmen prophets, billboards advertising the abundance augured on Wall Street, promised by Madison Avenue: “Physicians say Lucky Strikes—they’re toasted for your pleasure!” “Move with the times! Imperial Airways.” “Of course you want Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream!” “Studebaker—the automobile with a reputation behind it!” The people sculpted monuments to great men, men who had built the nation, led the armies, their beliefs safely ensconced in marble and granite. The people made idols and tore them down again, baptizing them in ticker tape parades, blessing them in long tears of profit and loss, throwaway tributes tossed with abandon from tall windows, a celebration of the good times that seem as if they will never stop, the land a fatted calf.

  The wheel of sky turned toward dusk; the stars were not yet lit. An anxious wind worried the tops of trees into a fretful sway. From back doors, mothers called children in from games of hide-and-seek and kick-the-can to wash up and say grace before supper. The children complained mightily, but the mothers remained firm and the games were left with promises of tomorrow. Street lamps flickered on. The factories, the schools, the halls of justice, the churches fell quiet. A soft evening fog rolled in like a balm of forgetting.

  In the graveyards, the dead lay sleeping with eyes open.

  The gray man in the stovepipe hat stepped from the mist and surveyed the land. He had not stood there for some time, and much had changed in his absence. Much always changed. His skin was the mottled gray of a moth’s wing. His eyes were narrow and black, his nose sharp, and his lips thin as a new thought. His raggedy coat lay upon him like an undone winding sheet. He shook the dust from its many folds. Crows flew out and up, cawing, into the sky now tinged with the ominous clouds of a coming storm. He spoke to the crows in a whisper. Then he spoke to the trees and the rocks, the rivers and the hills. He spoke in many tongues and in a language beyond words.

  In their graves, the dead listened.

  The gray man strode into the honey-brown field, letting the stalks tickle the leathery cracks of his palms. The worn shine of his hat reflected a hazy miniature of the land. A rabbit leaped from spot to spot, sniffing for sustenance. Curious, it trundled close to the pointed tip of the gray man’s boot, and the man lifted the startled hare by the scruff of its neck. The rabbit twitched and kicked violently. Quick as a magician’s sleight of hand, the gray man reached through the rabbit’s fur and skin with his long fingers and withdrew its tiny heart, still feverish in its pulsations. The rabbit kicked exactly twice more, a reflex, and then stilled. The man in the stovepipe hat squeezed the heart in his brittle fist. The blood seeped into the fertile ground drop by drop.

  The dead heard.

  The man in the stovepipe hat closed his eyes and inhaled the sweetness of the air. In his palm, the rabbit’s heart beat faintly.

  “The time is now,” he said in a voice as raggedy as his coat.

  The heart slipped from his fingers. He threw back his head and raised his long, bloody fingers to the slate-gray sky. The clouds churned. Wind bent the wheat. He spoke the words, and lightning crackled on the tips of his fingers. It arced up and out. The sky was wild with fierce light. A spear of it struck the side of a lone tree and it caught, a burning signal on the great ochre plain seen by no one but the wind, heard by no one but the waking dead.

  The man in the stovepipe hat walked across the broken field, toward the sleeping towns and cities, the factories and cotton fields, the train tracks, roads, telephone poles, and ticker-tape parades. Toward the monuments of heroes, toward the longing and disillusion of the people. Light crackled around him as he walked, and behind him, the ground was black as cinders.

  SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD

  At the edge of the fog-shrouded forest, James beckoned. Evie could hear the huh-huh of her breathing as she followed him through the snow and the trees. The smell of pine was strong, the air was crisp, and even in her dream state, Evie was aware that this was different. Wrong. She had never heard her breath or smelled the pine before. Evie brushed a hand over a tree, and the bark was rough against her palm. As before, she followed James down into the clearing, with its doomed soldiers. She looked to the right. The heavy fog thinned at the top enough to show her a crenulated roofline and what looked to be turrets. A castle? Evie wondered.

  The sergeant dropped his cigarette and Evie wanted to cry out to him, tell him to run. But she couldn’t. She was only a spectator in this dream. The flash, when it came, seemed infinitely brighter, more powerful than it had before. Evie pushed up out of the trench and ran through bloody fields of poppies. James waited. In sleep, her muscles tensed, waiting for the moment when he removed his gas mask and became a hideous apparition.

  James’s hand went to his mask. When he pulled it away, he was still the golden boy, the favored son.

  He opened his mouth and she tensed again, waiting for some new horror.

  “Hello, old girl,” he said in a voice she had not heard in ten years. “They never should have done it.”

  Evie woke with a small, strangled gasp, her forehead damp with sweat. Her hands shook. He’d spoken to her! Air. She needed air. She climbed the fire escape and found her spot on the roof. The night air dried the sweat on her arms. She was chilly—it was November now; summer had fled for good—but she couldn’t face going back to her little room and her troubled sleep. On the edge of Central Park, a drunk zigzagged from curb to street, howling out a girl’s name and crying. Occasionally, he turned his face toward the sky, as if pleading with an unseen court for mercy, then shook his head.

  A sound from behind startled Evie. Jericho was there, his coat over his pajamas, book in hand.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Jericho said.

  “I’m already disturbed.”

  “You’re shivering.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

  “Now you’ll be cold.”

  “I don’t feel it so much.”

  “Oh,” Evie said.

  “Did you have the dream again?”

  She nodded. “But it was different. He spoke to me, Jericho. He looked right at me and said, ‘They never should have done it.’ ”

  “Who? Done what?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t help feeling that this is more than a dream, that he’s trying to tell me something very important.”

  “Or it’s just a dream because you miss him. I still dream about my family sometimes.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jericho took her hand in his. The thrill of his touch traveled the length of her arm, and this, too, she tried to ignore.

  “I didn’t think… I didn’t dare to hope that you’d understand. I assumed you’d think I was a freak,” he said.

  “We’re all freaks. We could get jobs on the boardwalk. Come see the Misfits of Manhattan! Small children and pregnant ladies not permitted.” Evie laughed bitterly, blinking back tears.

  “All this time, I thought I was alone. Different. But you’re different, too.” He was looking at her in a new way. “For the longest time, I wanted to die. I figured that I was dead inside already, that they’d killed me when they turned me into a machine. But I don’t feel dead anymore.” His face was so close to hers. His hand was on her back. “I know what I want now.”

  “What’s that?” Evie whispered.

  There was nothing awkward or tentative about Jericho’s kiss. He pressed his mouth against hers with a ferocious insistence. Every part of her felt awake and alive.

  Evie pushed him away. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” His expression hardened. “Is it because of what I am?”

  She shook her head. “It’s because of Mabel.”

  He was looking into her eyes. “Well, I don’t want Mabel. I want you. Tell me you don’t want me to kiss you, and I won’t.”

  Evie said nothing. Jericho pulled her close and kissed her again. Evie kissed hi
m back, happy for the feel of his lips on hers. Happy for his hands knotted in her hair, happy for his shirt gripped in hers. That was how the world worked, wasn’t it? You set your sights on something, and life came along with a sucker punch. Mabel wanted Jericho; Jericho wanted Evie. And right now, Evie wanted to forget. Kissing Jericho tonight didn’t have to mean anything. Tomorrow, the crank would be turned anew, and the gears of the world would lurch into motion. She could still fix things tomorrow or the day after. But this was right now, and right now she needed this. She needed him. Evie nestled against Jericho’s broad chest and let him cradle her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head as they looked toward the east, where the sun rose, staining the buildings with a faint watercolor hope.

  But something was coming. Something she didn’t understand. Something terrible. And she was afraid.

  “You all right?” Jericho murmured, his lips against her neck.

  “Yeah. Everything’s jake,” she lied.

  Down on the street, the drunk stopped calling for his girl. He sank to his knees, rested his head against the hard cobblestones, and cried. “What we lost, what we lost…”

  Somewhere in one of the faceless buildings, a radio played, Al Jolson’s cheery voice drowning out the misery of the drunk in the gutter: “I’m sitting on top of the world… just rolling along—just rolling along….”

  The sun cleared the horizon. The light stung her eyes. “Kiss me,” Evie said.

  He took her face in his hands and his kiss blotted out the sky.

  Author’s Note

  A lot of research went into creating the world of The Diviners. Many hours were logged in various libraries and archives or spent pouring over books, PDFs, primary sources, and photographs. No historians or librarians were harmed in the making of this book, but some were badgered extensively with questions. I am grateful for the aid and expertise of these wonderful, knowledgeable people.