Before the Devil Breaks You

by Libba Bray

  “I suppose I thought no one would understand,” Henry said, picking up a small cast-iron bulldog figurine from the desk. He liked the weight of it in his hands, an anchor to keep him from floating away into the ache that gnawed him when he thought of his mother.

  Theta caught Memphis staring at her. Quickly, he looked away, and it registered deep in her gut. Maybe he’d be glad to be rid of her now that he knew what lived inside her.

  “When were you gonna tell us?” Ling asked Theta.

  “Never, if I coulda had my way.”

  “Golly, Theta. All those times we talked, all those nights at the museum. Didn’t you trust us?” Evie asked.

  “I knew,” Sam said.

  “Sam knew?” Memphis said, and it was hard to miss the hurt in it.

  “I knew, too,” Henry said.

  “I see,” Memphis said, turning away.

  “Theta. You knew all about us,” Evie said. “Why—”

  “Don’t you get it? The rest of you got good powers. Memphis heals! Ling and Henry can help people in dreams. Isaiah and Evie can read the future and the past and figure stuff out. Me? All I can do is destroy.”

  Isaiah sidled up to her. “You saved my life. Twice.”

  Impulsively, Isaiah threw his arms around Theta, and she returned the hug, grateful for it.

  “We can sort this out later. Right now we gotta figure out how to get these ghosts to go away,” Sam said. “Who’s got ideas?”

  No one spoke.

  “Don’t all jump in at once. Form an orderly line,” Sam said.

  “Uncle Will said that ghosts used to be human, and that humans want things. The question is: What do these ghosts want?” Evie asked.

  “They don’t want to be dead,” Henry offered. “They won’t accept the finality of death.”

  “’Cause they been forgot,” Conor said. “They’re angry. That’s all they feel all the time. Angry and mean. They want youse to feel it, too.”

  “So… they’re bullies,” Sam said.

  “They’re a mob,” Memphis said. “How do you stop a mob?”

  “With a lot of guns and things that blow other things up?” Sam said.

  “Not for long,” Evie said. “And anyway, it won’t work on ghosts. They’re already dead, remember?”

  Memphis tapped his finger against his lips and stared out the window at the night. “The Forgotten. The Forgotten,” he muttered.

  “Uh, Memphis? You going ghost on us?” Sam asked.

  Memphis turned away from the window and faced the others. He folded his arms across his chest and nodded, as if he were having a private conversation with himself. “Conor just said the ghosts are angry. That they’ve been forgotten.” A thought was fighting to take shape in Memphis’s head. He was thinking of the 135th Street library. All those books, all those stories waiting to be discovered. Stories that needed telling. “Will says that we have to see them ghost by ghost. We need to break up the mob. Draw the ghosts out.”

  “How do we do that?” Evie asked. “There are hundreds of them!”

  “We get them to talk,” Memphis said. “We let them know we’re listening.”

  Sam snorted. “Did you see what they did to that doctor with the ax? What they did to the nurses? They don’t wanna talk; they wanna invade. Take over. They wanna hurt us.”

  “I wish we’d had more training with Sister Walker,” Ling said. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t think they knew what they were doing, either,” Theta said, popping her chewing gum.

  “Look,” Sam said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m just saying, what do we do if they decide to climb inside any of us and take us for a bad ride? What if, while we’re listening to their spooky bedtime stories, the Forgotten get us to act on our worst fears and”—Sam glanced at Evie—“hidden impulses.”

  “Yeah. How will we know if it’s us or a ghost?” Isaiah asked.

  “Preferably before we start eating each other’s faces,” Henry said. “‘Oh, pardon me, I thought you were my pal, Ling. But now that you’re trying to eat my face, I can see I was wrong about that!’”

  Ling grimaced. “If I were going to eat a face, it would not be yours.”

  “I’ll have you know my face is quite edible,” Henry insisted.

  “Anybody in this asylum could be infected. Anybody could be somebody other than who they claim to be,” Theta said. “You can’t be sure that a friend is a friend.”

  “So what now?” Evie asked.

  “Seems like whatever we do, we’ve got to take the fight to the source. To the potter’s fields,” Henry said.

  Theta ground out her cigarette. “Swell. Every time I think this night can’t get worse, it does.”

  The lights dimmed and winked.

  “They’re coming back,” Conor said. “We better go now.”

  Henry poked his head out the door. Down by the nurses’ station, the lights were out again. Fog seeped around the window cracks and waterfalled over the windowsill. It circled one of the nurses, who burst into hysterical laughter. “Everything dies,” she said, pulling out strands of her hair. “Oh, our lives are such folly!”

  “Hen? Whaddaya see?” Theta asked. The others were crowded behind him in a clump.

  Henry gave them an awkward smile over his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Let’s ankle.”

  Evie took hold of Isaiah’s hand. “Just keep walking,” she told him.

  Henry pushed Luther Clayton’s wheelchair. Memphis kept a watch on Conor, who moved with feral quickness. Far behind them, the deadly fog advanced.

  “If anything comes at us, Theta, can you keep ’em back?” Ling asked, and Theta knew what she was being asked to do.

  “Gee. That happened fast,” she said bitterly.

  “We need to hurry before this gets any worse,” Memphis said, opening the front door. The clammy air stuck to their skins. The disorienting fog was everywhere. Even the bright lights of the city seemed to have been swallowed up. It was as if they’d been cut off from the rest of the world.

  “Anything could be waiting in this,” Ling warned.

  “Stick close,” Henry said. “It would be easy for us to lose one another out here.”

  Sam turned to Conor. “The lady telling you anything?”

  Conor shook his head.

  “Hurry,” Luther said, so suddenly it made them jump. “Grave… graveyard.”

  They pressed on, keeping alert for anything that might be coming at them in the gloom. Ling wished this were a dream. If it were, she’d be able to speak more easily with the dead. And, if something terrible happened, at least she’d be able to run. The bottom of her crutch met the rise of a grave. The air had grown noticeably colder. The smell of rot returned.

  “I think we’re close,” she said.

  The fog rippled as the wraiths took shape—cold eyes, mummified faces, bared teeth, and, underneath it all, the palpable feeling of rage and thwarted need.

  Henry took a step forward. Theta yanked him back by his sleeve. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?” she whispered.

  “This worked last time.” He inched forward again, his hands up in a placating gesture. “Y-you don’t want to hurt us.”

  The rotted mouths twisted into cruel smiles. “Oh, but we do,” they said as one, and let loose an unholy screech that sent Henry running back to the group.

  “It really did work last time,” he insisted.

  “What do you want?” Evie shouted.

  “Want?” The Forgotten cocked their heads.

  “You must want something. Isn’t that why you came back? We can’t help you if we don’t know.”

  “We are the Forgotten. We want everything,” the ghosts said again.

  “No. You’re not forgotten,” Memphis said, coming to stand beside Evie and Theta. “Tell us. Tell us who you are. We’re listening.”

  The ghosts blinked as if trying to remember something that they’d thought irretrievably lost.

  “Who
are you?” Memphis pivoted, staring directly at one of the ghosts, though it terrified him to do it. The creature’s opalescent eyes showed Memphis’s reflection.

  “Mi… chael,” the ghost answered with considerable effort.

  “Michael. You’re Michael,” Memphis repeated. The ghost’s eyes edged the slightest bit toward brown. The outline of a scar appeared across a faint chin.

  “Michael Donelly. I died in the gutter, stabbed through, with no one to mourn me.”

  The mood of the Forgotten shifted, as if it were a person at war with himself.

  But then, one by one, they began to speak:

  “My name was Josiah Stelter. I had a family, but they didn’t look for them, just buried me alone in this cold, hard ground, as if I were no man a’tall but an animal.…”

  “Thomas Kincaid. I couldn’t give up the drink. Died in the inebriate house with my guts bleeding…”

  “Old Bess, they calls me—and they calls me to midwife. Consumption put me here, in the refuge. Died there, too. But the babes I delivered, most grew up fine and strong.…”

  “… My crime? ’Twas to be poor…”

  “… Worked for that family till my fingers bled and what did it get me? Nuttin’ but…”

  “… Erased…

  “Erased…

  “Erased…

  “Erased…

  “Erased…

  “We have been erased, erased, erased…”

  The ghosts were becoming much more distinct. A touch of bloom on a cold cheek. Wire spectacles perched at the end of a nose reddened by drink. Faces thinned by constant hunger. Skin bruised or pitted with smallpox scars.

  Names filled the night:

  “My name was Emily Cousins…”

  “… Raphael Munoz…”

  “… Anthony Esposito…”

  “… Rebecca…

  “… Charlotte…

  “… Big Sal…”

  “… They called me Silver Tongue, for I could charm any lady I fancied.…”

  “… They called me No-Name, for I was stolen from my people.…”

  “… Was was…

  “… Was was…

  “I am…

  “I am…

  “We were the Forgotten. Do not let us be forgot.”

  “We won’t,” Memphis assured them. “It’s okay. You can move on now. You can be at peace.”

  “You lie!” The accusation came from a man at the end. “He has told us the truth of you! You will lie and lie and lie to keep us from our power!”

  The Forgotten began to lose shape again, speaking with one voice: “We will eat you down to the bones. We will suck the magic from your souls and have it for ourselves!”

  “What’s happening?” Ling asked. “What did we do wrong?”

  “It’s him,” Conor said. “He’s doing it.”

  There was a slight wobble in the air, as if the night were made of water. The wraiths shrank back.

  “What just happened?” Evie asked.

  “Wait! Do you remember the day at the museum when we created an energy field and nearly melted the credenza?” Ling asked.

  “Odd time for a trip down spooky memory lane, Ling!” Sam said.

  “We need to try to do that again.”

  “How? We don’t know how we did it the first time,” Theta said.

  “It’s that or be eaten by those things in the fog.”

  “When you put it that way…” Henry said. “What did we do then?”

  “Stand together,” Ling said.

  “The Diviners must stand or all will fall,” Evie said, Liberty Anne’s words suddenly making sense.

  “The time is now. The time is now!” Luther cried.

  The Diviners quickly joined hands. The steady pounding of the rain gave way to a sinister drone, like the massing of a million flies hovering above a battlefield of screaming wounded.

  “Oh, god…” Theta said, shaking her head as if she could shake the sound from her ears.

  “Concentrate!” Ling shouted above the din. “Think of… think of sending them back.”

  “Here goes…” Sam said.

  He could feel the others, then, as if they moved with one body, one mind. The air rippled again. It pressed against the Diviners like a storm moving in, till they felt they might be ripped apart. And then the edges of the night peeled back, as if reality were nothing but a dream. The Forgotten screeched. “But he has promised—no!” There was a thunderous boom. And then there was nothing. The fog had cleared. The graveyard was quiet except for the soft, steady patter of rain and wisps of light falling like incandescent ash.

  “Everybody okay?” Memphis asked, pulling Isaiah into a tight hug.

  “Yes,” Evie managed. They’d destroyed the ghosts. They’d saved people. But she couldn’t deny that there had been something darkly exciting about the incredible power of that moment. Her skin still hummed. She felt slightly euphoric, as if she’d drunk the perfect amount of champagne.

  “They’re gone. We got rid of ’em,” Sam said.

  “But where did they go?” Ling asked, mostly to herself.

  “Onetwot’reefourfiveseven. Onetwot’reefourfiveseven…” Conor repeated. Except for his mouth, he’d gone as still as a cornered rabbit.

  “No. No!” Luther cried out. His head rolling right and left. “Don’t let him in!”

  Evie took Conor by the arms. “Conor? Conor!”

  Conor tapped his fingers nervously against Evie’s arm in a counting sequence. “It was a test,” he said. “He… he set up the Forgotten. He wanted… he wanted to see what you can do. Now he knows. He knows!”

  The rain reversed, sucked back up into the night. There was a roar in their ears, as if they stood at the top of a mountain. The sky flashed with strange blue lightning, and in it, they could see the imprint of a great wound-like gash that flared and faded. And then it felt as if they were falling through time, and when they landed at last, they stood in a denuded circle surrounded on all sides by a nightmarish wood where a silent army of the dead waited. A cold moon bled its glow into the thready gray clouds of a starless night sky.

  A sudden breath of wind rustled the brittle leaves on the ground. The dead things in the dark whispered with reverence: “He comes! The King of Crows!”

  A creature emerged from the woods, a sticklike man, with the air of a praying mantis, but the enormous blue-black feathered coat he wore gave him the bearing of a usurper king. On his head was a stovepipe hat that swirled with shadows. Lightning crackled all around him. A Gordian knot of black silk rested at the stiff, rounded collar of his shirt like an undertaker’s tie. The center was stuck through with a shining gold pin, a radiant all-seeing eye shedding a lone lightning bolt tear. There was an agelessness to the man. He might’ve stepped through any door in time. He had skin like a drought, gray and cracking. In some spots, the flesh was almost threadbare, with a diseased shine to it. Faint red veins moved across that flesh, borders shifting constantly. His fingers were long, his nails sharp and yellowed. His eyes were black as a bird’s and utterly soulless. To look into them was to feel as if you were standing at the edge of a tall cliff. Vertiginous.

  He smiled. “Greetings, Diviners. We meet at last.”

  THE KING OF CROWS

  The night seemed to move with the frantic rhythm of an impaired heart.

  Not one of the Diviners could look away from the man in the stovepipe hat. His shiny blue-black coat squawked and fluttered as if fashioned from an endless stream of furious birds pecking for dominance. As he moved toward them, he seemed to grow taller, his shadow falling across more of the land.

  “Here you are: The thief. The fire starter. The object reader. The dream walkers. The clairvoyant. And the healer. Do you know who I am?”

  “The man in the stovepipe hat,” Evie whispered, frightened.

  “I prefer the King of Crows,” he answered. “After all, why be a man when you can be a king?”

  Where the man walked, beetles pushe
d up from the ground and scuttled toward the cover of mulch. “The moment your country first sinned, I emerged, slick and formless. Born of your restless ambition. Your greed, and hunger. You, who tell yourselves a story of yourselves. Do you imagine you can rid yourselves of me? You have created me! I am you, incarnate—a new god for a brave new world. I am written into your history now. I am written into you. And oh! What a nation of glorious dreamers and devourers!”

  He opened his coat. In its lining, one could see the soul of the nation: The first ships sailing into Plymouth Bay watched by wary eyes. The longhouses, buffalo hunts, and rain dances. The magnificent trains belching smoke across the miles of prairie. The pages of broken treaties fluttering down over the stolen land where those trains steamed ahead. The battlefields—redcoats and tricornered hats, the Blue and the Gray, West Point lieutenants on horseback charging braves with faces painted in symbols of black and red. There were mountains and rivers begging to be explored, and mighty oceans lapping at the rocky shores of promise. There were fences and guns, forts and reservations. The missions rising in the scrub of California. The clapboard churches springing up like kudzu. The synagogues and temples. A people in need of salvation. There were fields ringing with the call and response of slaves clapping out prayers and songs of survival, defiance felt in every stomp and shout. Dust flecking mail-order brides trussed in trousseau finery seated beside stranger-husbands on a wagon west; those same frontier women, faces creased by sun and hardship, as they worked the farm, fed the hired hands, screamed in childbirth, and sewed their dreams into the squares of quilts and hems of wedding gowns. Oil wells breaking open the earth till it bled. Town squares held together by the ley lines of polite smiles, whispered gossip, and simmering resentments. Cities humming with noise. Birth and death. Song and dance. Industry and invention. Science and magic. Greed and want. Faster and faster it swirled, blurring into a history stitched with bloody thread. It was much too bright to bear, and the Diviners blinked against its terrible light. The creature closed his coat, but what was inside still shimmered around the edges, begging to be let out.