The King of Crows

by Libba Bray

  Abruptly, Sarah Beth stuck her feet down and skidded to a stop in the dirt. She climbed out of the swing and motioned for Isaiah to follow her into an old cornfield. The plants were taller than Sarah Beth and Isaiah, but the corn had been left to rot. It was brittle and yellowed, and bugs had eaten holes in the husks. Sarah Beth led him deep into the ruined field, and Isaiah cast a worried glance over his shoulder. He wanted to make sure he could still see the house. In the distance, the farmhouse’s pitched roof peeked out above the dried cornstalks.

  “That’s far enough,” Isaiah said.

  “Fine,” Sarah Beth said with a toss of her braids. “Here. Give me your hand.”

  Isaiah balked. “Why?”

  Sarah Beth put her hands on her skinny hips. “Well, if you’re only going to be silly, then I won’t show you.”

  Isaiah was torn. He didn’t like being called silly, but he was nervous about offering Sarah Beth his hand. “Will it hurt?”

  Sarah Beth smiled. “Not at all! It feels awfully good.”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know that?” After all, Sarah Beth had lived out on the farm her whole life without other Diviners around.

  “I know it the way you and I know things. Because we’re special. We need to start joining our powers together and making ’em stronger or we won’t ever be able to beat the King of Crows.”

  That was true. And coming together was what Sister Walker told them they were supposed to do. Henry and Ling went dream walking together all the time. Isaiah reckoned this wasn’t much different from that.

  He offered his hand. “All right. Show me how.”

  Sarah Beth smiled, showing the tips of her small, grayish teeth. She took hold of Isaiah’s hand. “Let’s moon glow together.”

  His body stiffened. He felt a tug, as if his heart were being pulled into Sarah Beth’s orbit, and then his body went warm and relaxed, a very pleasant sensation.

  Isaiah?

  He could hear her inside his own thoughts. “Mm-hmm.”

  What can you see?

  Isaiah told her what he saw: a strange, golden machine humming and glowing with life. The machine was terrifying, though. Screams came from inside it.

  It’s scary, Sarah Beth said.

  “It’s changing again,” Isaiah said.

  What Isaiah saw next frightened him far more. It was like Gideon everywhere. Cold and empty, with the dead, so many dead, scavenging for whatever they could find, snapping at one another over the picked-over remains of a dead animal.

  Do you see him? Do you see the King of Crows?

  “Yes, I see him.” In the midst of this barren landscape, the King of Crows sat on a high-backed chair inside a ruined mansion. He was demanding his tribute from the dead even though Isaiah could tell he didn’t need it anymore and there wasn’t much left to give him.

  Is he alone? I can’t tell from here.

  “Yes.”

  There’s nobody with him. Are you sure?

  Isaiah couldn’t be sure, because he was feeling tired.

  “Just the dead, I think,” he answered.

  Don’t let him see us! Sarah Beth warned. Is this the future?

  Isaiah hoped not. Just as quickly as it came on, the vision wobbled, and then it was gone. When they came out of it, Isaiah was tired and a little cold.

  “Whoo, that sure made me tired.”

  “Me, too,” Sarah Beth said. “We’re going to have to get our strength up,” she said, patting his shoulder. “We’ll make our moon glow so bright!”

  Isaiah liked that they had shared the same experience, the same feelings. It was a special bond between them. Everybody else was always so busy, but she had time for him. She was his friend.

  He was starting to like Sarah Beth. She understood how hard it was to be a kid. He liked that they had their own special power apart from the other Diviners—a secret. Memphis was always fussing at Isaiah to grow up. What Isaiah just did with Sarah Beth, wasn’t that being his own man? Yes. He decided it was so.

  “Come on. I’ll give you that push on the swing I promised.”

  “Are you okay to push me? You won’t faint or nothing?” Isaiah said. At dinner, he’d gotten the idea from Mrs. Olson that Sarah Beth wasn’t well.

  Sarah Beth narrowed her eyes. “I can push just fine, thank you very much.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Isaiah said, embarrassed.

  “Go on. Climb in,” she said when they had reached the oak tree.

  Isaiah put his hands on the rope. He was flooded with memory. Hadn’t he seen this very tree in his visions before? There had been something bad about it, something that had frightened him.

  “Are you getting in?” Sarah Beth said, impatient.

  Isaiah climbed in. Sarah Beth grunted and shoved. After the third push, Isaiah gained some air, reveling in the freedom of his body and the lightness of late spring bending toward summertime. The sun hadn’t gone to bed yet; it was sitting low on the land, getting sleepier. Isaiah thought about the kittens under the porch. He couldn’t wait to see them again.

  The swing slowed. Sarah Beth had stopped pushing. She stood watching him with her skinny arms dangling at her sides, and she looked as sad as Isaiah had ever seen a person look. Sad and mad at the same time.

  “I hate it here. I’m lonely. Ma and Pa don’t really love me. I don’t have any friends. Everybody’s scared of me.”

  “How come they’re scared of you?”

  “’Cause I’m different. Just like you. I can see things like ghosts and the future, and it makes people nervous. Even the pastor gets nervous around me. And I’m not pretty in the way the other girls are,” she said softly. “I don’t belong anywhere in this world, Isaiah. Not a blessed place.”

  “That sounds real sad,” Isaiah said. He was afraid Sarah Beth might cry, and he wouldn’t know what to do then. “I’m not scared of you.”

  This seemed to be the right thing to say, because Sarah Beth brightened. “You’re brave, Isaiah. I knew you would be.”

  Isaiah puffed out his chest. “One time, Barney’s baseball went under the fence, and I was the only one who went after it!”

  “The older ones ignore you, don’t they? I can see it.”

  Isaiah shrugged it off. “Used to it by now.”

  “It isn’t fair. Why, you have the most special power of all! They should treat you with respect. You can see into the future. And you can see him, too, can’t you?”

  Him. The King of Crows.

  Isaiah nodded.

  “Well. We just have to stick together, I suppose,” Sarah Beth said and giggled, and Isaiah laughed, too. He felt lighter than he had in some time.

  “Will you be my friend, Isaiah?”

  Isaiah smiled. “You bet.”

  It was after supper, and Theta and Memphis were hiding in the hayloft. They’d been frantic to be together after so long apart. Their reunion had been quick and fevered, nearly desperate. Now, they huddled together for comfort, listening to the cooing of night birds and the insistent buzz of cicadas. Memphis had his arm around Theta as she leaned her head against his chest.

  “Do you think Evie will be all right?” she asked softly.

  Memphis kissed the top of her head. “We’ve done all we can.”

  “I’ve been reading Miss Addie’s spell book. There’s beaucoup folk medicine in it. I might be able to mix up a poultice for her.”

  “All right. But I don’t think you’d better tell Mrs. Olson it’s witchcraft. Doesn’t seem she’d take kindly to that.”

  “Gee, and here I was gonna go and ask for her broom,” Theta joked, then went solemn. “She has to be all right, Memphis. She just has to.”

  “I know.” What they’d faced in Gideon had been worse than any of them could’ve imagined. Like David facing Goliath without even a slingshot. Memphis kissed Theta again and again, as if to reassure himself that she was in his arms at last, and not a dream. “I was afraid I’d never see you again,” he said, looking into her big
dark-brown eyes. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. Theta kissed him back and burrowed into his side, her nose against his shirt so that she could smell the musky tang of the day on him. She didn’t care that they were both still dirty from the road and sweaty from what they’d done earlier.

  “What happened in Gideon… what happened to all those people and the town,” Theta said. “Will that happen everywhere?”

  “From what Ling and Jericho told us about Beckettsville, it sure sounds that way.”

  “How come nobody’s taking notice?”

  “Well, boomtowns come and go. Or the railroad bypasses a town and that town is forgotten, I s’pose. There’s a new scandal in the papers every day to keep everybody entertained, or people are so busy paying attention to what’s right in front of ’em they don’t see what’s going on with their neighbors,” Memphis said. After all, they’d been the only witnesses to the attacks in Gideon. But there was more to it than that: People had to want to see. Memphis thought about the porter’s story on the train from New York, and Ling and Jericho’s account of Beckettsville, told to them on the furious drive to Bountiful. He thought back to those newspaper clippings Will Fitzgerald used to keep, all those stories printed in small columns in back pages, written in a sneering tone that said it was so much nonsense and people didn’t need to pay it any mind. And he thought about all he’d experienced since leaving New York City—the refugees on the levee, the National Guard, sundown towns, the great big mansions sitting like kings on the land not far from the small shacks where folks didn’t even have running water or shoes. The way people could look at you like you weren’t the same as them, like you didn’t belong on their side of the street. Or the way their eyes could glance off you, like you were a ghost in your own country. Again and again, it came back to what Will had said—that stories, not borders, made nations. Ghosts were stories.

  He inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly with his words. “It’s hard enough to get people to pay attention to the monsters we live with in plain sight every day. The ones in the mirror. How we gonna get people to see ghosts they don’t want to believe in?”

  Theta knew they should be getting back. They couldn’t risk being found here. “At least Elijah won’t be bothering Miss Addie any longer,” she said, moving toward the ladder. She’d go inside first. Memphis would count to fifty and follow.

  “Hey.” Memphis laced his fingers in hers.

  “Hey.”

  “I love you, Theta.”

  They kissed, and Theta felt as if that kiss was the only thing that made sense.

  As the sun set, Theta gathered salt, garlic, and honey to make a thick paste. She applied the mixture to Evie’s angry skin and covered it with a cloth she’d soaked in a tub of water with silverware in it. Sam wanted to stay all night by Evie’s bedside, but Mrs. Olson insisted it wasn’t proper for a young man to spend the night in a young lady’s room. She allowed everyone to look in one last time on Evie, who slept fitfully, her hair damp with sweat as she shivered under her quilt. “I’ll pray for her,” Mrs. Olson said. She handed the men an oil lamp and directed them to the farmhands’ sleeping quarters near the barn while she led Ling and Theta to a narrow room off the kitchen before heading upstairs to her own bed.

  Wind rattled the bones of the old farmhouse. The early dark pressed its curious face against the windows of Evie’s room as she dreamed.

  Her eyes fluttered open to a narrow strip of gray high, high above. It flashed with light and shadow. Dirt walls surrounded her. Cold tickled the inside of her veins, making her flesh ache. Her body felt weighted with invisible stones.

  Did she have a name? She could not recall.

  With difficulty, she sat up, shifting the dirt. It tumbled down in a deluge, splattering her legs, hands, and face. Her heart was sluggish. Her lungs were heavy and tight. She opened her mouth for more air and coughed up tiny clumps of wet dirt. What was inside her? Above, the gray sky cycled swiftly—lightdarklightdark. A pale girl in a yellow dress appeared. She looked down. Both the girl and the dress were familiar.

  “I tried to tell you,” the girl said sadly.

  Lightdarklightdark.

  There was the drone of an approaching insect swarm, and the high, mechanical whine of some engine lurching toward disaster. A choir of screams rising like an angry river. Her earlier sleep had dissipated. In its place was a growing dread.

  Where am I? Help me!

  The girl shook her red curls. “I told you that you’d be sorry. Oh, why wouldn’t you ever listen, Evie?”

  Mabel. Mabel. Mabel.

  And she was Evie.

  And they had been in Gideon with the King of Crows and oh god oh god oh god! Evie scrabbled desperately at the earthen walls till her fingernails broke off. That was the heaviness inside her. The dead were a part of her. She could hear their voices all at once, thousands strong. She could feel them; she knew their pain and hunger. She, too, was hungry. A panicky nausea gripped her guts. She heaved and heaved. Four pale pink maggots fell from her lips and into her filthy lap.

  “I told you. I told you!”

  The machinelike shriek was everywhere.

  The King of Crows’s face loomed before her in the grave. “I told you we’d only just begun our dance.” He stroked Mabel’s hair.

  Evie tried to scream and vomited a stream of black bile. The oily ooze poured out of her. It coursed over her chin and down her neck, just like every ghost they had ever annihilated.

  As if she were one of them now.

  PLAYING WITH FIRE

  New York City

  A palpable tension pulled through the newsroom as two men in gray suits and hats and overcoats walked purposefully between the rows of reporters and stopped in front of Woody’s desk.

  “Mr. T. S. Woodhouse?”

  “Sorry, boys. I already gave to the Girl Scouts this year.”

  “Cute. I’m Mr. Adams. This is my associate, Mr. Jefferson.”

  The Shadow Men. Woody tried to remain calm.

  “We’ll need to see these letters, if you please, Mr. Woodhouse.”

  “Why? They’ve already been printed in the paper.”

  “But you’re going to stop printing them in the paper.”

  Woody smirked. “I don’t know how well you boys can read, but the Bill of Rights guarantees a free press. You don’t even have to read very far. It’s the First Amendment. I could print my laundry list, as long as it was factual.”

  “It’s a matter of national security. You understand.”

  “I understand that you’re asking me to divulge my sources.” Woody kept up his reporter’s bravado, but inside he was afraid, and he hoped the Shadow Men didn’t see him swallow hard just a moment after he spoke.

  One Shadow Man leaned so close that Woody could see the first hint of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw. “We are at war, sir. War from within. There are those who would tear apart the very fabric of freedom, and they must be stopped.”

  “You and I might not be in agreement on just who those usurpers of freedom are,” Woody answered. “One person’s treason is another’s patriotism.”

  “Careful, Mr. Woodhouse. You sound a bit like an anarchist yourself.” The Shadow Man leaned back. “We already know this is the work”—he stacked one quarter, then another on the edge of Woody’s desk—“of a dangerous Negro agitator.” He added a third, straightening the edges with clean fingers. “Worse than Marcus Garvey.” A fourth quarter. A fifth. “And we got rid of Mr. Garvey just fine.” Six pieces of silver. “So I’ll ask you again, Mr. Woodhouse: Where is Memphis Campbell hiding?”

  Woody kept very still. “How do you know it’s Memphis Campbell?”

  The Shadow Man’s mouth tightened into a semblance of a smile. “He sent a poem to the Crisis. The poem was called ‘The Voice of Tomorrow.’”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. Just like I’m sure there’s no connection between Luther Clayton shooting at Evie O’Neill and Project Buffalo.”

/>   The Shadow Man stopped smiling. “It would be a shame if you ended up a story yourself, Mr. Woodhouse. Like poor Dr. Fitzgerald, dead in his museum, more than likely killed by his coldhearted Diviner niece and her Diviner friends, under the tutelage of Margaret Walker. That’s what we’re up against. Anarchists with special powers. Enemies of the state with the means to destroy this great nation. What happens if such power goes unchecked?”

  Woody looked up at the Shadow Man and found that his eyes were the same gray as his suit. “An excellent question: What happens if power goes unchecked and unbalanced?”

  “You be careful now, Mr. Woodhouse. When you play with fire, or with people who can make fire, well, you might get burned.” Quick as a rattler strike, Mr. Adams swept the quarters into his palm and shoved them in a pocket, out of sight.

  Woody tapped his foot nervously. This was the sixth house he’d been to in three days. Each one had the same story: A daughter or brother or cousin had gone to a county fair or carnival and into the Fitter Families tent, where they’d taken a test. The daughter or brother or cousin had something special about them—they got premonitions about cards, fires, twisters, or even when somebody was going to die. Two had mentioned visions that had left them feeling unsettled for days—a man in a tall hat walking just ahead of a great big storm. These daughters, brothers, and cousins would come home from the fair with a bronze medal that read, YEA, I HAVE A GOODLY HERITAGE. And soon after, they’d disappear. Like Annabelle Carter did.

  “You said your sister went missing two days after the carnival came to town, Mrs. Plunkett?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, pouring tea into two china cups.

  “And she’d visited the Fitter Families tent?”

  “Yes. She came home with a bronze medal! She was so proud of it. It’s on the mantel there, beside her picture.”

  The woman pointed to the offensive medal resting above the fireplace. Woody offered a fleeting smile and sipped his tea. “You mentioned that Annabelle thought she’d been followed the next day?”