Before the Devil Breaks You

by Libba Bray

  Miriam shrugged off his touch. “Aren’t you?”

  The Shadow Man sighed like a weary parent. “Miriam—we’re on the same side. You help us, and we’ll see to it that you’re reunited with your son.”

  “What will you do to him first?”

  “Just a few tests, that’s all. I’m sure he’s a patriot who’d like to do his duty.”

  Miriam narrowed her eyes. “Patriot,” she sneered.

  “Everybody wants freedom. No one wants to pay for it. Or to think about who has to do the ugly work to secure that freedom,” he said quietly.

  Miriam put her book on the table and stood. She was considerably smaller than the man, but on instinct, he took a step back. “You promised me something if I help you. So. I did. I help you. I cannot help Anna anymore,” Miriam said, and watched the Shadow Man grow uncomfortable. “I want to walk. Outside. In fresh air.”

  “Now, Miriam. That wouldn’t be wise of us, would it? Keeping you underground keeps a lid on that Diviner power of yours. I still remember when you managed to get that poor secretary to give you a postcard. And then you had her mail it for you, convinced her it was her idea all along.” He tutted.

  Miriam kept her eyes trained on the wall. “Could I at least go to the solarium to see the trees?”

  They chained her, of course. Iron to contain her gifts. Shackled, she shuffled across the observation deck’s slate floor. Slate was good. Natural. Grounding. She curled her toes against its ancient power. It was a good antidote to the iron. The sun was just setting. The solarium’s tall windows looked out on acres of orange-painted trees, centuries old, and the snow-dusted mountains beyond. There was great power in them, too. But the men didn’t need to know that. Underground, it was much harder for her gifts to travel.

  But not here.

  The chains on her mind were loosening. The men had made the mistake of giving her a reason to live. They’d made the mistake of going after her son.

  Miriam smiled at the scenery. “Pretty.”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” the Shadow Man said.

  In answer, Miriam presented her shackled hands. The Shadow Man smirked. Miriam turned back to the fading sun. Her smile disappeared. The experiments performed on her during the war had yielded interesting results. When the Shadow Man had asked for locations of Diviners, he hadn’t said they had to be living. Miriam appealed to them now, to the dead. Help me.

  The slate, the trees, the mountains beyond, and the dead: Their combined power thrummed softly inside her. And then, something like a great switchboard lit up in her mind. Like that infernal radio that played through the floor grate, she was transmitting, sending out a mental SOS in the hope it would reach some Diviner out there.

  In the dark of the Underground Railroad tunnel, Bill and Memphis slept. Isaiah woke, trembling with visions. His hand reached for the charcoal in his pocket. “Yes. Yes, I see you,” he said softly as he drew what he saw on a patch of flat earthen wall.

  In her sleep, Theta stood on the edge of that forest. An eagle soared overhead. A brave emerged from a redwood hollow. But Theta couldn’t understand what he said. “West,” Ling said, suddenly beside her. “He’s saying, ‘Go west.’”

  “Did you feel that?” Henry asked David. They lay together in Henry’s single bed, their bodies still slick with sweat.

  “What?” David said, still half dreaming.

  Henry sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The room was still. “Like somebody calling for help.”

  Under a moon waxing toward full, roustabouts hammered posts into spring-soft ground and raised the tents for the next day’s show. Full-bellied and exhausted, the animals gentled onto their hay and went to sleep. In a bright red-and-white-striped circus wagon warmed by the glow of a lantern, the Great Zarilda, Seer of Fortunes, shuffled her tarot deck and laid down her cards, frowning.

  Johnny the Wolf Boy brought her a cup of tea. He scratched at the dark, downy hair along his neck. “What is it, Zarilda?”

  The Great Zarilda turned over another card. Three of Swords. Betrayal, lies, turmoil. “I believe our old friend Sam Lloyd is in terrible danger.”

  In a pale yellow bedroom on a farm in the Heartland, the girl shook violently.

  “Jim, get the strap!” her mother cried, and the girl’s father wedged the thin belt between her molars seconds before the edges of her teeth bit hard into the soft leather, adding to the constellation of puncture wounds already there. After a moment, the trembling subsided. The girl lay still.

  “Just lie back easy now, Sarah Beth,” the girl’s father said.

  The farmer closed the door. In the small kitchen, his wife went back to scrubbing out the cast-iron pot. On the table, the Sears, Roebuck catalog lay open to a page of shiny new Singer sewing machines they couldn’t afford. The farmer lit the lantern. “Gonna see to the cows,” he said, not expecting an answer.

  In the soft evening light, the farmer looked out at the long, flat line of the horizon, broken only by a lone telephone pole in the distance, the future edging closer. He surveyed the yellowing acres of failing corn, the gnarled hickory tree, the pigs rooting for scraps in a pen bordered by a rotting split-rail fence, and the sagging porch of the old house that had been built by his grandfather’s hands as a legacy to his children. Promising black soil had gone to scrub and dust in places now that the farmer and his wife had been forced to let the hired hands go. And anyway, most of them were wary of Sarah Beth, who stared into space and babbled about strange visions that frightened the farmer and his wife.

  Sometimes those visions came true.

  That scared them more.

  From his pocket, the farmer took out the sheriff’s notice: foreclosure on the family farm at 144 Benedict Road, Bountiful, Nebraska. Without some miracle, the little that was left would all be lost. And where would they go then? How would they care for Sarah Beth?

  “The land is old, the land is vast, he has no future, he has no past, his coat is sewn with many woes, he’ll bring the dead, the King of Crows.”

  The farmer startled. A moment ago, his daughter had been lying on her bed, eyes closed. Now she was a few feet away.

  “Sarah Beth. What are you doing out here?”

  The girl had that icy stare. The one her mother feared might belong to demons.

  “They’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming, honey? Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Roscoe are over to Omaha this week.”

  The girl rocked back and forth. “The Diviners.”

  Sudden anger rose in the farmer. “Sarah Beth. Go on back to your mama now. Hey-oh! Ada!”

  “Storm’s coming. And with it come the dead,” the girl said, urinating into the parched earth.

  The farmer was a good man, but even good men have a breaking point. “Ada! Ada! Doggone it, come out here and get Sarah Beth right now!”

  Dutifully, the farmer’s wife bustled out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Mercy me, only had my back turned for a minute. Come on back in the house now, Sarah Beth, ’fore you catch your death.”

  “The King of Crows is coming for the Diviners,” the girl repeated, smiling. “Ghosts on the road! Ghosts on the road! Ghosts on the road!”

  She shrieked, and a plume of black birds raced up to meet night’s descent.

  Adelaide Keziah Proctor lay quietly in her bed. Through the open window, she smelled honeysuckle. She was sure of it. Summer. Summer would come soon. She was tired, though, and so she shut her eyes and dozed.

  In her mind, she rode swiftly through Virginia grasslands on the back of a white horse. She enjoyed the feel of the wind on her face as they raced up a hill. At the top, Addie could see quite far—into the green-gold valley and to the hunched backs of the blue-gray mountains just beyond. The fields below bloomed with every color of wildflower imaginable. The air was perfumed with their sweetness. Addie patted the horse’s neck and took in a breath. Her heart beat fast from the ride and she needed rest.

  Down in the valley, she could see a little clapboard ch
urch. She spurred the horse toward it. Inside the church’s steepled tower, a bell tolled loudly. The church doors swung open. Six men in black coats carried out a coffin. Their sharp-toed shoes disturbed the dust on the road like beaks biting into earth. The silk veils of their black top hats fluttered behind them in the breeze. The wind had grown fierce. Heavy clouds moved in, a storm approaching. Addie slipped off her horse and led him toward the church for shelter. Just till the storm passed.

  It was very dark inside the church, and the horse arched its head and refused to go any farther, so Addie left it and continued alone. Her foot caught under something unseen and she went flying, landing with a thud. Her hands met with dirt. She had tripped over a long, thick vine. She heard slow, measured footsteps drawing near and saw a pair of those sharp shoes. They’d been polished to a shine as high as new pennies placed atop a corpse’s eyelids.

  Addie looked up. The King of Crows towered over her, smiling his mirthless grin. “Did you think you could best me, Witch?”

  His voice echoed in the forest. The crows answered in squawking chorus.

  Addie struggled to her feet. The fall from the horse had winded her—she could barely catch her breath. Her heart beat out a warning. She tried to turn back, but the way was no longer clear. She stood now in a dark forest thick with slithering brambles. Along the branches of the bitter-frost trees, a murder of crows fluttered like blue-black leaves in a breeze. The dead rustled in the spaces in between, and above, the sky was a vast and starless night. This was his place. The land of the dead.

  Far behind her, Addie saw a rectangle of daylight narrowing to nothing as the pallbearers sealed the church doors.

  “A debt must be paid.” The King of Crows held a daisy in the scarred palm of his gray hand.

  Adelaide Proctor’s heart thumped like a herd of wild mustangs.

  “Good-bye, Adelaide Keziah Proctor.” The King of Crows closed his fingers one by one over the daisy. And then he squeezed.

  Blood and petals slipped through his shaking fingers.

  Addie shut her eyes and clutched at her chest, gasping in pain.

  The crows screamed and screamed.

  When Addie opened her eyes again, she saw the coffin lid sliding over her face. She pressed frantic hands against her wooden prison.

  “No!” she cried.

  The hammers were already at work; Addie could hear them pounding in the nails that sealed her inside. Clumps of dirt splattered against the top of the pine box like heavy rain. In her mind, she could see bloodied daisy petals falling slowly over her new grave.

  As her heart slowed, Adelaide Proctor took in a shuddering breath.

  But it was not enough for a scream.

  Whispers coiled about the graveyards. Sins bubbled up from the dirt and confessed over tombstones in a chorus of regret:

  “… I once killed a man for spite.…”

  “… Butchered the women and children as they ran from their teepees and took the land for our own…”

  “… All that good love thrown away, oh, what a fool I was…”

  “… No, no, please, she said, but I did it anyway.…”

  “… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.…”

  But some sins were boasted still:

  “… It was mine—mine!—and I’d have it no matter what.…”

  “… So we gave ’em the blankets. What’s one less Indian in the world…?”

  “…’Twas Mercy Good turned the milk sour. And thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.…”

  The confessions swirled around the tall, dark hat of the King of Crows. He smiled. “Yes. Oh, yes,” he murmured, as if listening to sweet chamber music. “More. Give me more.”

  Strings of hot blue energy crackled along the tips of his fingertips. He bared his teeth. “I hunger.”

  The dead brought forth a young doe they’d found. It had been separated from its mother. They fell upon it, feasting, and then the King of Crows sucked the power from the dead.

  He scowled. “Not. Enough.”

  In the cold of the graveyard, Conor Flynn shivered in his filthy nightclothes. The King of Crows fixed his soulless gaze on the young Diviner. “What is it to see the world? To see beyond death and destruction into the heart of humanity? Tell me my future, young Conor Flynn, and if it pleases me, I might spare you.”

  Conor wished the lady were in his head now. But she could not reach him where he was. All around, the dead waited. Conor could feel their hunger. Their need. It all came from the man in the hat. His very presence sowed discontent. Oh, yes, Conor could feel it now, the way the man joined to the dissatisfaction and petty old hurts the spirits had carried with them to the grave. Human. Human till the end and beyond. The man made them believe they should not end but have more. Made them crave it: We would have everything! It is our due! Oh, this world is not enough, not enough, not enough!

  Conor had a bad feeling in his gut, like on the day Father Hanlon asked Jimmy if he wanted to go for ice cream. There were terrible things in the world, and nobody seemed to care. But Conor did, despite everything. He’d saved Jimmy, hadn’t he? He heard that a nice family adopted him, and now Jimmy lived in a house with a mom and a dad and a dog named Teddy. Conor’s legs shook as he tried to imagine it: Jimmy on the front porch of that nice house, his fingers in Teddy’s fur while the dog licked at his face and made him laugh. A good life. The lady, Miriam, had told Conor something once as he lay on his cot in the asylum, rocking himself to sleep. Just before he’d drifted off, she’d spoken to him like a mother. “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved an entire world,” she’d told him. That had stuck with Conor. The idea that anybody, even a kid like him, could make a difference.

  Conor slipped into his vision. He could hear the souls of those poor soldiers crying out to him to be set free at last. He wished he could save them, but they were beyond his reach. He waited, and the voices quieted. The vision took hold. The sun was the color of an old dog’s pus-smeared eye. Conor stood at a crossroads under that dodgy sun. Two possible futures stretched out before him. He could not say which path would win. But he feared for his friends.

  “What do you see? I would know,” the King of Crows demanded.

  If Conor told, his friends would be in even greater danger. He would tell the man just enough to appease his appetite.

  “There’s a girl,” Conor said. “She’s a seer, too. Sarah Beth.”

  “And what of our Diviner friends, hmm?”

  “Didn’t see nothing,” Conor lied, tapping his fingers one, two, three against his skinny thighs, again and again.

  The King of Crows’s dead stare bored into Conor’s until he nearly fell down weeping. “I ask for more and you give me nothing,” he said. The man in the hat rested his dirt-caked fingers around Conor’s slim neck. Beetles crawled from the demon’s pointed sleeves and scuttled up his arms till he seemed sewn from them. “I’m bored with you,” he said. “I would have new thrills. More. More, more, more.”

  Conor looked to the woman in the black-feather cape. Her eyes held the grief of the whole world. Those eyes more than anything made Conor afraid.

  “Shut your eyes, baby,” the lady said, and he’d never heard a sadder voice in all his brief life.

  The King of Crows released Conor, pushing him toward the hordes of hungry dead. “Do as thou wilt!”

  The dead began to advance.

  Conor trembled. “Onetwot’reefourfiveseven. Onetwot’reefourfiveseven. Mother Mary, full of grace… No! No! No!”

  Conor’s last desperate cry was ripped from his throat as the dead fell upon him with their greedy hunger. Viola Campbell could not stop it, but she would not look away. She screamed, and her screams sounded like frightened birds.

  “Feed me!” the King of Crows demanded as Conor’s screeches dwindled to gurgling and then nothing. Dutifully, the dead approached and opened their terrible mouths. Lightning crackled around the man in the hat. His head tipped back as he sucked up the energy from his army
of dead. He licked his lips. The scar-like veins pulsed with new blood. His eyes shone, cold and dead as black diamonds.

  “Yes. Yes. The time is now,” the King moaned, and laughed up to the starless sky.

  Viola Campbell buried her eyes in her hands. “Oh, my son, my son. Would God I had died for thee…” she said, and hung her head and cried.

  The glow of the electric lamps backlit Jake Marlowe as he sat in his bedroom, cradling his bruised head in his hands. Several days’ beard growth darkened his cheeks. The secretaries had been fielding calls every day from the newspaper boys who wanted Jake’s comments for the morning hot sheets. They had been informed that Mr. Marlowe wasn’t speaking.

  Jake poured out more of his family’s one-hundred-year-old Scotch from the old cellar. He didn’t usually drink, but he’d been at it for several days now. Time blurred. He stank. He didn’t care. On the table was the model for Marlowe’s utopian American exhibition. “Here’s to the future,” Marlowe said, and poured his Scotch over the whole thing.

  Down the hall, fast footsteps rang out.

  “Mr. Marlowe! Mr. Marlowe!” One of the scientists. He rattled the locked doorknob.

  “I’ve told you, I don’t want to be disturbed,” Marlowe said flatly. Everything he’d built lay in tatters. He didn’t think he could take another blow.

  “Mr. Marlowe! Please, may I come in?”

  Reluctantly, Marlowe left his chair. He staggered to the door and unlocked it, leaving it open as he moved back to his chair and sat with a plop. “What is it?”

  The excited man stopped to catch his ragged breath. “The machine, sir. It’s switched on. It’s receiving.”

  Marlowe was suddenly alert. “Is there any word from him? Any new message?”

  The young man nodded.

  “What does it say?” Marlowe asked.

  “‘I am ready. The time is now.’”