Before the Devil Breaks You

by Libba Bray

  “Now, now, Conor. We all know that Mr. Roland did it. Can you tell me what you saw?” Dr. Simpson barely blinked his big eyes.

  Conor wanted to count so badly he thought he could explode from the need. Under the table, he moved his fingers in the same rhythmic rotation, pinkie to thumb. “It was him but not him. Somethin’ got inside ’im.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Conor’s voice was soft as dandelion fluff. “Ghosts. They can get inside ya. Make ya do things. That’s why I hafta count. To keep ’em out.”

  “Do you see these ghosts often?”

  The lady’s voice flitted through Conor’s head, very faint: Don’t tell him anything. He will hurt you if you do. Conor’s eyes widened.

  Dr. Simpson’s thin lips turned down again. “Are the ghosts speaking to you now, Conor?”

  Keep still, the lady commanded.

  Conor’s breathing shallowed. He shook his head slowly. Under the table, his fingers worked quickly through their rotations.

  “All right. Just one more question,” Dr. Simpson said, and leaned in so that Conor felt as if the doc’s eyes were everywhere, inescapable, like the voices in his head. “Have you ever seen a man with a tall hat and a feathered coat? Does he ever speak to you, Conor?”

  And that was when Conor felt the world fall away.

  “I want to help you. You know that, don’t you, Conor?”

  Dr. Simpson’s gaze pressed into him like the hot end of a match. Conor tried to swallow. He nearly choked. And then the numbers exploded from his throat: “Onetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfiveseven!”

  “Well,” Dr. Simpson said, as if Conor had disappointed him greatly. He picked up Conor’s drawing and frowned at the broken soldiers flying through the air and a giant sun with an eye in the center. “We’ll speak when I return from my trip. I’m to deliver a speech at a eugenics conference. Do you know what eugenics is, Conor?”

  Conor shook his head.

  “It’s the future. The promise of a great and unsullied America.” Dr. Simpson rose from the table. “Do let me know if you see the fellow I mentioned, Conor. It’s very important.”

  Conor listened to the even click, clack of the doc’s heels receding in the hallway—left, right, left, right, one, two, one, two, steady as a clock, no variation—until there was nothing. He sat at the table for another half hour or so, and then a terrible feeling came over Conor all of a sudden, like an army of ghosts walking across his grave. His skin tingled. The vision was coming down.

  “There’s a window open,” Conor said calmly in his other voice, the one he used when he was his other self, the one who saw things. “You hafta shut all the windows so they can’t get in.”

  “What’s that?” Terrence asked, walking over.

  “They come in wit’ the fog.”

  Terrence checked all the windows. “Everything’s locked tight, Conor.” He looked out through the bars. “A little hazy but no fog to speak of. Not tonight.”

  “They c-come in w-with the f-fog,” Luther echoed. “He t-tells them t-to c-c-come.”

  “Swell.” Terrence sighed. “Now we got two of them. Before we know it, they’ll all be talking about it.” He put on the radio. The parlor filled with the sounds of a tenor’s aria.

  “They’re gonna die,” Conor said, and picked up his pencil.

  Deep in the bowels of the hospital, two night nurses made their rounds, a lantern in hand just in case the lights cut out again.

  “Thank you for going with me, Mrs. Bennett. I don’t want to go down there on my own,” the younger nurse said.

  “You mustn’t allow the patients’ talk to rattle you, Miss Headley,” Mrs. Bennett, the head nurse, reprimanded. She was older and had been at the hospital for many years. “You have to remain strong.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Bennett.”

  After what had happened to Big Mike and poor Mary, the young nurse had been jumpy. It didn’t help that many of the patients kept talking about ghosts on Ward’s Island. In the music room. At breakfast. While exercising in the yard. The same whisperings: The island was haunted. No one was safe. Just that afternoon, as she’d given dear Mrs. Pruett a sponge bath, the poor woman had muttered about seeing figures out on the lawn—Winking in the mist like fearsome diamonds. Oh, Miss. I fear they mean us harm!

  The fog. Each night, it seemed to get worse and worse, till it was hard to see anything at all. It was like being stuck inside a dark cloud, cut off from the rest of the world.

  It was just fog, Miss Headley told herself. The nights were cold and they were smack-dab in the middle of the river—nothing supernatural about it. Mrs. Bennett was right: She was letting the patients’ fears and that terrible murder get to her. There were no ghosts. She was here to do a job. To be a beacon to others. This thought made her feel better.

  As they neared the hydrotherapy room, freezing air greeted them. There was a window open at the back of the room.

  “Now, who left that window open?” the head nurse tutted, marching into the hydrotherapy room. Mist curled in the corners, thick as vines, making it look as though they were walking into an active steam room instead of a frigid bathhouse. The fog lent a sinister quality to the shadowy tubs and pipes of the room. Like they’d entered a ghost world.

  “The lights, if you please, Miss Headley.”

  Miss Headley did as she was told, toggling the buttons on the wall. “It’s no good, I’m afraid, Mrs. Bennett.”

  “That infernal Hell Gate blasting,” Mrs. Bennett muttered. “Keep the lantern held high, please.”

  Though the lantern’s glow was weak, the young nurse was still grateful for it. As she lifted it, the beam fell across the silent claw-foot tubs and the gooseneck pipes that fed them. On nearby hooks hung heavy canvas tarps that could be placed over patients sitting in those tubs to keep them calm. Sometimes, the young nurse thought about the memories those tarps held. The asylum was far better now in its treatment of the patients than it had been when journalist Nellie Bly had gone undercover on Blackwell’s Island in 1887. She’d lasted slightly more than a week in the hellish asylum there before she begged her editor to get her out. And then she’d written her famous exposé of the treatment of the mentally ill, “Ten Days in a Mad-House.”

  That had been the start of reform, but reform, the young nurse knew, was slow. You could feel it in the place, the horrors that had come before. Patients restrained against their will. Dunked into ice-cold baths. Sweated in fever boxes to rid them of syphilis. Beaten, starved, experimented upon, neglected, and abused, and horrors far worse than she dared think of at present. The mind was mysterious, and when those minds didn’t conform to society’s standards, it was hard going for the afflicted. That was why Miss Headley studied psychiatry: She and others like her wanted to bring hope and change to the field. She wanted to make a difference in the care of her patients.

  But the head nurse belonged to a different generation. She scoffed at the notion of music and art therapy, of talking daily with the patients to see if, together, they could heal the trauma of their fractured minds and work toward making them whole. Mrs. Bennett didn’t see the patients as people feeling sad or hurting. She didn’t see them as people needing care. She saw them as less than human, as problems to be solved or disappointments to be shut away out of sight. Miss Headley had overheard the head nurse telling Mrs. Washington, who lay in bed with severe depression, that she should Cheer up—come now, things aren’t as bad as all that, are they, hmm? She’d witnessed Mrs. Bennett escorting a female patient to that awful Dr. Simpson for sterilization. Sarah is a loose woman. Best to take care of that now, Mrs. Bennett had said, even though poor Sarah could neither read nor write and had the mind of a child.

  Power over others. That was what motivated some of these people. They didn’t want to heal so much as they wanted to win. Miss Headley would be glad when the last of their kind was gone, and the new ideas could come in. There was hope, even in a place like this. E
ven on Ward’s Island, spring eventually forced its way up from the frostbitten ground.

  The head nurse struggled with the window. “Why, it’s stuck as stuck can be. See if you can shut this, won’t you please, Miss Headley?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Bennett.” Miss Headley put down the lantern. With a grunt and a few hops, she snugged the sash down inch by inch, then stopped to catch her breath. On the other side of the glass, a thick block of mist blotted out any view of the bridge or river. When had that fog come up? It hadn’t been there when they’d started their rounds. She could just barely make out the skeletons of winter-stripped trees. It gave her a shiver.

  The door to the hydrotherapy room slammed shut, and Miss Headley yelped.

  “Mrs. Bennett?” she called. The fog inside the room had also thickened. But she could still make out Mrs. Bennett at the door, turning the lock. Where the head nurse had been standing, the lantern lay on its side. There was a sound in the room. An insect-like keening. Miss Headley was a nurse. She recognized that her pulse, normally rock-steady, was very fast.

  “Mrs. Bennett?” she called again, frightened.

  “I know you want me gone,” Mrs. Bennett said, taking a step forward. Mist curled at her fingertips, as if she were made of ice. “You think I’m old and should retire.”

  The young nurse took a step back. “No, Mrs. B-Bennett, I never—”

  “Liar! I can hear inside your head. I always knew, but they’ve shown me I was right.”

  “Who?”

  “The Forgotten.”

  The moment the word left the head nurse’s lips, Miss Headley saw spectral figures taking shape in the mist: pale, dead flesh, formless as specimens floating in jars of formaldehyde solution, a great mob of spirits. Some wore clothes that seemed to stretch back centuries. Others looked as if they had only been buried last week. She could feel their need and their anger as if it, too, were a physical presence, could feel it shifting toward hate as their voices slithered around the room, overwhelming her:

  You forgot about us.

  Forgot us, forgotten, oh why?

  Eat you down to the bones, you bitch!

  Left to rot in the cold, dark ground…

  He will lift us up to our rightful place!

  We will suck the dreams from your marrow.

  Fear us, fear us, fear is us is fear all fear!

  We are the Forgotten…

  Forgotten no more!

  The fog curled up behind Mrs. Bennett and puffed from her mouth like a long, murky snake. “Oh, everything is so clear to me now.”

  They’d gotten inside Mrs. Bennett somehow. Miss Headley took a step back. She shook her head. Her voice was weak. “No. No. They’re lying to you, Mrs. Bennett.”

  “You’re the liar!” the head nurse screeched, matching the force of the mob.

  Hanging on the wall was a long, hooked pole that could be used to secure the tarps. Miss Headley ran for it, only to see the pole fly from its perch with supernatural strength and into Mrs. Bennett’s waiting hand. One by one, the taps squeaked on, filling the baths with scalding water. Steam billowed up, joining the fog. The pole scraped across the tile floor as the head nurse advanced along with the ghostly mob.

  Miss Headley put up her hands. “Please, Mrs. Bennett.”

  Mrs. Bennett pushed Miss Headley into the tub. She screamed, “Help! Help! Oh, please, someone help!” Faster than her eyes could register, the tarp whipped across the tub, fastening at the sides like a canvas seal, trapping her inside. In horror, the young nurse watched as the tap to her tub prison began its slow turn.

  “No. Please,” she cried, drawing her feet close, then screaming and thrashing as the blistering water reached her. Hundreds of whispers filled the room, speaking all at once until the maddening din formed one unearthly voice that burst from Mrs. Bennett’s mouth: “Oh, King of Crows. Show us the way. For we are the Forgotten, forgotten no more.”

  The water rose. Under the tarp, Miss Headley’s body twitched and blistered in the hot water. Her eyes rolled up as her body finally stilled. Mrs. Bennett raised the hook high above her own head, bringing it down again and again.

  Upstairs, Conor Flynn already knew.

  He drew it all.

  RUNNING

  The world is black and white, gray and red.

  White snow. Thin gray smoke. Its acrid smell hurts your nose.

  The black: A scorched world. Crisped trees. Smoldering cabins. Charred horses. Bodies.

  And red snow, like strange flowers blooming.

  The man sinks to his knees. Cries. A great animal howl above the scream of wind.

  Red snow shifts, transforms into redbrick church.

  The man’s sad face looms above yours.

  Feel the warm scratch of wool tucked snugly around you.

  He speaks but you cannot hear.

  There is loud knocking against the church doors. Light spills out, hard and yellow. Arms reach for you—not the man’s. He is gone. Angels in black and white lift you into light.

  You shift in your sleep and the dream shifts with you.

  Now it is the room.

  The room in the house.

  The room in the house near the railroad tracks.

  To your left, the open window. Hot wind sucks cheap nylon curtains against the peeling paint of a wood frame. To your right, a chest of drawers: an overturned lamp, lampshade gone, naked bulb exposed. A pink wildflower droops in a small blue vase.

  Watch the vase. The wildflower. Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t…

  He grabs your chin, roughs your face toward his. His hard, beautiful face.

  He is shouting, wet mouth spilling out hateful words on a tide of boozy breath.

  Shouting. Purplish veins strain against the anger-red skin of his neck.

  Shouting. You ever try to leave me, I’ll kill you first!

  Shouting’s over, and the first slap comes stinging across your cheek. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you by now, but it always is. In your ears, a crack like a gunshot and the room goes wavy. Another blow follows. And another. Blood in your mouth like warm, liquid iron. One hand presses against your neck, holds you in place. You cannot see the other. But you hear it working.

  The clinking of the belt buckle giving way. The angry rustle of trousers.

  And it’s worse than the shouting and the slapping. Your eyes slide toward the rattling chest of drawers bumped by the bed again and again. The flower shakes in the vase. With each thump, petals fall off, drift to the warped floorboards. You drift down with them. You are not here. You are gone. Floating up and away as you’ve taught yourself to do.

  The hand at your neck tightens. You cannot speak. Cannot breathe.

  No longer floating, you are trapped in your body.

  That’s when it starts, deep in your belly.

  The world goes black and white, gray and red. Terror. Desperation. Survival. Rage. A twisting, whirring universe of emotion exploding into heat. It rushes through your veins like a brush fire through rain-starved grass. His eyes widen in horror, such horror you want to stop it for yourself as much as for him. You put up a hand, press it to his cheek to anchor yourself, and he screams and screams. The pressure of his palm leaves your neck.

  A sound reaches your ears. A voice on the wind. “Theta.”

  The vase cracks open on the floor. He falls beside it, hands to his face, still screaming. Inside, the universe keeps exploding. Flames crawl up the wall behind the headboard. The bedsheets are blackened, like the horses, the trees, the cabins, the bodies.

  The voice again: “Time to leave, Theta. You don’t want to stay here.”

  You look over. He’s standing in the doorway. Henry is talking to you here inside your dream. “Theta, darlin’. You don’t have to stay here.”

  “Yes. I do. It’s my fault.”

  “No. It’s not. You can leave, Theta. Why don’t you get out?”

  “I can’t. Fire. Fire will get me.”

  “There’s a door.” He nods
to something you can’t see, just over your shoulder. You look, and there it is, shining through the flames, a door. “Go on, darlin’. No reason to stick around here.”

  You walk through the door. And then you are running.

  Running from the burning house and the beating man.

  Running from the broken vase and the broken screams.

  Running onto the bright stage, where applause greets you like wildflowers scattered on the wind. But you can never outrun the coiled fever hiding inside you, and the fear that it will return and burn through everything you love.

  Theta woke from her dream drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. She threw off her damp sleep mask and looked around wildly, relieved to see that she was in her bedroom in the Bennington and not that other place. Her pajamas were soaked through, but she was burning up inside, so she stumbled to the bathroom and splashed her face and hands with water until her skin cooled. It wasn’t until she returned to her bedroom that she noticed the faint, scorched outlines of her hands imprinted on the sheets: black and white.

  Sleep would be impossible now, so Theta made a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and sat by the window overlooking the rain-ravaged street. Henry was with David downtown. How she wished he were home so that she could crawl into bed with him, rest her head on his chest, and hear him say, “It’s just a dream, darlin’.” It was like a monster lived inside her, and with each night, it was getting closer to breaking through her skin. Theta couldn’t shut down the worry buzzing around her brain:

  What if the monster came out when she was onstage or talking to reporters?

  What if it came out during her screen test at Vitagraph in a few hours?

  What if her friends knew about the destructive power coiled inside her? Would they feel safe around her anymore?

  Would Memphis? What if she hurt Memphis?

  Theta pressed her cheek to the window. It was cold from the rain and felt good. It was those threatening notes that had made things so much worse. There was nothing familiar about the handwriting. After the first one, Theta had paid a visit to the florist’s shop, but no one remembered who had bought the flowers. “It was a telephone order,” the florist recalled. “That’s all I know.”