THE WILD MAN OF BORNEO

The morning’s papers had a field day with the murder of Daisy Goodwin. FINAL BOW! MURDER AT THE FOLLIES! PENTACLE PERFORMANCE! Evie was reading the Daily News’s front-page story when Sam ran in waving a piece of official-looking paper overhead. “I’ve got news!” He trundled quickly up the spiral iron staircase to where Evie stood in the library’s tall stacks and preened like a cat who knows there’s a dish of cream waiting.

“Okay. I’ll bite. What the devil are you so smug about?”

“I found the tax records for Knowles’ End.” He swung his legs over the railing, hopped onto the rolling ladder, and pushed off.

“When did you become wise in the ways of research?”

“Well, I did rely on my charms,” Sam admitted. “You’d be surprised how helpful the girl in the records office can be.”

Evie took the stairs two at a time to the first floor and trotted alongside Sam as he rode the library ladder. “Well? Did you find anything interesting?”

Sam gave the ladder another push.

“And how. For the past thirty years, the taxes have been paid by a Mrs. Eleanor Joan Ambrosio.” He paused dramatically.

Evie rolled her eyes. “And?”

“That name didn’t mean anything to me. So I did a little digging. Ambrosio is a married name. Blodgett is her maiden name. Ring any bells?”

“No.” Evie reached for the ladder and Sam pushed off again, leaving her grasping at the air. He was really enjoying this, she could tell.

“Mary White married a fella named Blodgett. Eleanor was their daughter.”

Evie kept pace with the ladder. “So her daughter kept up the taxes on Knowles’ End? Why?”

“That’s exactly what I said. See? We think alike.”

“Will you come down from there, please? You’re making me dizzy.” Evie stopped the ladder abruptly and Sam leaped down.

“Aw, doll. You say the sweetest things.”

“Sam, I’m warning you. You might be the next victim.”

Sam settled into a chair and placed his boots up on the table. He laced his fingers behind his neck, and his bent elbows stuck out on either side of his head like wings. “It was pretty ingenious of me to think of going after the tax records, if I do say so myself.”

“When you’ve finished congratulating yourself, could you explain?”

“Seemed odd to me. If the daughter inherited the old place, why keep it? Why not just sell it off and make some dough? Why hold on to an old eyesore?” He paused again.

“Will you keep me in suspense all night?”

Sam grinned. “All night?”

“Just get on with it.”

Sam tipped the chair onto its back legs, rocking it just slightly. “I did a little more digging and found a record of an offer from Milton and Sons Real Estate to buy the place. Apparently they thought the spot might be perfect for some fancy housing, and they were willing to pay some cabbage for it, too. But the offer was refused, signed by the rightful owner, Mrs. Mary White Blodgett.” He popped a grape into his mouth and let that land.

“Our Mary White? Former lover of John Hobbes?”

“Yup. The same.”

Evie’s heartbeat quickened. “How long ago was the offer made?”

“Three months.”

“Mary White is alive?” Evie said, wide-eyed.

“Yes she is. Living in one of those shacks out at Coney and still holding on to that house up on the hill.”

“Now why would she do that, I wonder?”

“Maybe we should find out.”

Mary White Blodgett lived on Surf Avenue in a wind-and-salt-battered bungalow with a view of the Thunderbolt roller coaster. Mrs. White’s daughter, Eleanor, met Will and Evie at the door wearing a housedress, her hair set with bobby pins.

“Mrs. Ambrosio?” Will asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“How do you do? I’m William Fitzgerald. From the museum. We spoke on the phone.”

Some spark of recognition showed in the woman’s eyes. “Oh, yeah. So we did. My mother’s an old lady, and she’s real sick. So don’t go agitatin’ her.”

“Of course,” Will said, removing his hat.

Mrs. Ambrosio led them through a sitting room littered with empty Whitman’s Sampler boxes and a collection of Radithor bottles that hadn’t yet made it to the rubbish bin. The place smelled of old beer and salt. “It’s the cleaning girl’s day off,” she said, and it was hard to know if it was a gallows joke or an excuse—or perhaps both. “Wait here in the kitchen a minute.”

Evie kept her hands to herself. She didn’t want to stand in the place, much less sit. On the messy kitchen table, a bottle marked MORPHINE stood dangerously close to one labeled RAT POISON. A dirty syringe lay on a wad of bloodstained cotton.

Mrs. Ambrosio disappeared behind a curtain, but her voice could still be heard, loud and shrill. “Ma! Those people are here to see you about Mr. Hobbes.”

Mrs. Ambrosio reappeared suddenly, moving the bottles hurriedly into a cabinet and shutting the door. “We get rats sometimes,” she explained. “Like I said, she’s real sick. You can have fifteen minutes. Then it’s time for her nap.”

Behind the curtain, Mary White’s bedroom was tomblike. The roller shades had been pulled down, and the bright beach sunshine bled around the edges. The old woman sat propped in bed against a pillow. She wore a sleep cap and a dirty peach silk boudoir jacket. Under the fragile skin of her arms, her gray-blue veins stood up like a knotty mountain ridge drawn along the folds of an old map.

“You want to know about my John,” she said in a voice weak with labored breathing.

“Yes, Mrs. Blodgett. Thank you.” Uncle Will sat in the only chair, forcing Evie to sit on the edge of the bed. The old woman smelled of Mentholatum and something sickly sweet, like flowers dying; it made Evie want to bolt from the house and run toward the hard light of the beach.

“Did you know my John?” Mary White smiled, showing teeth gone brownish-gray.

“No. I’m afraid not,” Uncle Will said.

“Such a lovely man. He brought me a carnation every week. Sometimes white, sometimes red. Or a pink one for special days.”

Evie shivered. From what they knew, John Hobbes had been anything but a lovely man. He’d killed many people and taken body parts from them. He’d terrorized and probably murdered Ida Knowles. And if they were correct, his spirit had come back to finish a macabre ritual and bring forth terrible destruction.

“Yes. Well. Can you tell us about John’s beliefs?” Uncle Will asked. “About the cult of the Brethren and—”

“It wasn’t a cult!” the old woman coughed out. Evie helped her sip water from a grimy glass. “They tried to make it sound diabolical. But it wasn’t. It was beautiful. We were seekers manifesting the spiritual realm on this plane. Jefferson, Washington, Franklin—enlightened men, the founders of our great nation—they knew the secrets of the ancients. Secrets even the Masons in their hallowed halls didn’t know. We meant to free people’s minds, rid them of their shackles. The world we know would die, and in its place a new world would be born. That was our mission—rebirth. John knew that.”

“What about the boarder who went missing? The servant girl?” Will persisted.

“Lies,” Mary spat. “The boarder left without paying his rent. The servant was insolent. She left to see her sister and didn’t bother to say good-bye.”

“And Ida Knowles?”

“Ida?” Mary’s hand fluttered about her mouth and her eyes searched. “Who are you? What do you want?” she said in a raised voice. “I did not say I would receive you!”

Evie took Mary White’s cold, thin hands in hers. “I understand just what you mean about Mr. Hobbes,” Evie started. “The Blue Noses think we flappers are morally indecent. But we’re only trying to live life to the fullest.” Evie glanced at Will, who nodded slightly for her to continue. “Why, I’ll bet if Mr. Hobbes were here today, he’d be celebrated as thoroughly modern.”

Mrs. White smiled. Two of her teeth had rotted away entirely. She laid her damp hand on Evie’s cheek. “He would have liked you. John always did like a pretty face.”

Evie willed the scream in her throat to stay put. “I am just curious, if you don’t mind my asking, why did you hold on to Knowles’ End? I’m sure you could have made a fortune selling it.”

“I would never do that.”

“Of course not,” Evie agreed, nodding vehemently. “I was just curious why not.”

“So that John would have a home to come back to. He said it was very important. ‘Don’t ever sell the house, Mary, or I can’t come back to you.’ ”

Goose bumps danced up Evie’s spine. “But how?”

Mary White laid her head against the worn satin pillowcase and looked toward the light sneaking in around the edges of the window. “Johnny didn’t tell me everything. Only he understood the Almighty’s infinite plan. His body was anointed, you know, just like a work of art—Botticelli’s Venus, Michelangelo’s David. The marks, everywhere. He wore them as a second skin.”

“Why?”

“It was all part of the plan, you see. He would come back. He would be reborn. A resurrection. And once he was reborn, he would bring the end times. The world would be cleansed in fire. He would rule it as a god. And we would be by his side.” She laughed, a schoolgirl sort of laugh, completely at odds with her sagging face. “He called me his Lady Sun. Oh, he was a prince. Here.” With effort, Mary opened her nightstand drawer and removed a tiny black box. “Open it.”

A fat gold band dulled with age lay against the black velvet.

“It’s beautiful,” Evie said.

“It was his,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I gave it to him. Husband mine, I called him, though we’d not yet married. He wore it nearly till the end, my Johnny.”

Evie’s fingers tingled with the desire to take it, to read it. It belonged to him. To John Hobbes.

“Put it back, if you please,” Mrs. Blodgett commanded.

Reluctantly, Evie closed the box. “Oh, but you can’t be comfortable, Mrs. Blodgett. Dr. Fitzgerald? Could you please help her to a more comfortable position?”

Will looked momentarily flummoxed, but he set about trying to help the old woman, who fought him at every turn. During the distraction, Evie quickly pocketed the ring, then replaced the box and closed the drawer. “Ah. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Yes, thank you,” Mary said, as if she’d been the one to think of it. Then she continued. “But he had to make the world ready. To purge it of sin. To take it on, like a savior. To eat the sin of the world.” Mary White’s eyes moistened with tears. “They murdered him. My Johnny. He was so beautiful, and they murdered him. Philistines! Philistines.” She hacked again, and Evie helped her to more water. “He never hurt a soul! People were drawn to him—women especially.” She smiled and gave Evie’s arm a pat. The mere suggestion of touching John Hobbes turned Evie’s stomach. “I feel pain. Where is Eleanor with my medicine? Stupid girl. Always late.”

“Yes, yes,” Evie soothed. “We’ll have your medicine in just a moment. But I am ever so curious about something: Did Mr. Hobbes ever mention a ritual for binding a spirit, or sending it back into the other realm once it had done its work?”

Mary White frowned. “No. Will you call her with my medicine?”

“Of course I will! And Mr. Hobbes wore a special pendant, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Mary White answered, her voice thinning with pain. “Always.”

“And where is that pendant now?”

“The pendant?” She had a faraway look, and Evie feared they wouldn’t get what they needed in time.

“Did he give it to you?” Evie prompted. “As a lover’s gift, maybe.”

“I told you, he wore it always,” the old woman snapped. “He was wearing it when he died. It was buried with him. Eleanor! My medicine!” Mrs. White called out.

“He was buried in a pauper’s grave. It’s long since gone,” Will said quietly to Evie.

“No, no, no! No pauper’s grave for my Johnny,” Mary White corrected him, her hearing apparently much clearer than her memory.

“I beg your pardon. I thought…”

“We paid a guard to give us the body. In accordance with Johnny’s wishes, we buried him at his home.”

“Brooklyn or Knowles’ End?”

“No,” the old woman said, irritated. “His real home.”

“Where was that?” Evie asked.

“Why, in Brethren, dear. Up on the old hill, with the faithful.”

The room seemed to reel. Evie heard her voice as if from far away. “Mr. Hobbes was from Brethren?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“But there were no survivors of the Brethren fire,” Evie said.

“Only one. Could you hand me that hatbox, dear?”

Evie retrieved the hatbox from the dresser. Mary White reached in and removed a false bottom, revealing a leather-bound hymnal underneath. From inside its tissue-thin pages, she retrieved a smaller, folded piece of paper, which she passed to Evie.

It was a county record of birth for the village of Brethren, dated 6 June 1842: Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode, son of Pastor John Joseph Algoode and Ruth Algoode (died in childbirth).

“Such a sacrifice they made for him, the chosen one.”

The curtain snapped back. In the doorway, Mary White’s daughter held the syringe in one hand and a length of tubing in the other.

“I’ve been waiting,” Mary White barked. “You want me to hurt, don’t you? Oh, my life was so good before.”

“Yeah, yeah. When you lived in the mansion on the hill. I know. If you hadn’t been paying the blasted taxes on that old house, we wouldn’t hafta live in this stinkin’ hole. You ever think about that?”

Mary White groaned as her daughter plunged the needle into the bruised crook of her arm, then released the tubing. In a moment, the old woman’s eyes gleamed with the morphine. “He’s coming, you know.” Her speech was becoming syrupy. “He said he’d come for me, and I waited. I kept everything as it was for him. He said he’d come, and I knew he would.” Her eyes glazed over. “Such a beautiful man.” Her eyes closed with the morphine and Evie and Will showed themselves out.

Safe again in the bright sunshine, Evie and Will walked quickly through the strolling families.

“Of course!” Will said. He’d stopped to pace before a colorful sign that advertised the Wild Man of Borneo. Just outside the tent, a man in a red circus master’s jacket and top hat tempted the curious to “Come inside and see the savage—part monster, part man!” Behind them, the roller coaster inched up the incline with a steady click-click-click before plunging down and around, the riders screaming with a mixture of fear and pleasure. It was the last ride of the year before the boardwalk would shutter its amusements until the next summer.

“Of course,” Will said again, admonishing himself. “It all makes sense now.”

“Wonderful. Could you explain it to me?”

“Yohanan is the Hebrew name for John. John Hobbeson Algoode. John Hobbes,” Will said. “Naughty John Hobbes was Pastor Algoode’s son—the chosen one. The prophecied Beast meant to rise. He’s come back to finish his father’s work, to bring about hell on earth.”

They were walking again, Will’s words coming as fast as his steps. “Mary said he had to eat the sin of the world. To take on their sins. That why he takes parts of them in accordance with the seals: He ingests parts of them. It’s an ancient magic, the idea that eating parts of your enemies makes you stronger. They can’t defeat you. Two, please—with relish!” Will had stopped in front of Nathan’s Hot Dogs. He fished out two nickels and gave them to the boy behind the counter, taking two hot dogs in return. He handed one to Evie, who held it awkwardly.

“Ugh,” she said, grimacing at the food. “Honestly, Unc.”

Will wolfed his down, still talking. “In John’s case, it is helping him manifest. Giving him strength.”

Evie tried a small bite of her hot dog. It was surprisingly delicious, and she found that even the talk of cannibalism couldn’t keep her from devouring it. “If that pendant is his connection to this plane, his protection, then all we need to do is destroy it, and we destroy his link to this world. Is that right?”

“It stands to reason.”

“But she said it was buried with him.”

“Yes,” Will said, pausing to think. “That will be messy.”

Evie stopped mid-chew. “You can’t be serious.” She stared at Will. “Oh, sweet Lois Lipstick, you are serious.”

Will tossed his hot-dog wrapper in a garbage can. “We’re going upstate, to Brethren. And we’re going to need a shovel.”

Jericho returned to the Bennington from the records department, where Will had sent him. He didn’t even stop to take his coat off. “I found it! The documentation.”

He handed it to Will and nodded grimly at Sam, who was seated at the dining room table with Evie. “Sam. You’re here late.”

“Just keeping Evie company,” Sam said. He smiled triumphantly at Jericho.

Will read aloud from the document. “Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode was taken to the Mother Nova Orphanage, where he was admitted on October 10, 1851. The director’s entries on him are brief, but they document Yohanan Algoode as quiet but ill-humored, a bed wetter, arrogant, and prone to small acts of cruelty. When brought before the director for discipline, he said only, ‘I am the Dragon of Old, chosen of the Lord our God.’ The other children shunned him. He called himself the Beast. After two thwarted attempts, Yohanan successfully ran away in the summer of 1857. No further documentation exists.”

“So we know it’s him. But we still don’t know how we’re going to stop him,” Jericho said, finally removing his coat and hanging it on the rack. “The last page of the Book of the Brethren—the one with the incantation for binding and destroying the Beast—was torn out. You said yourself that we have to dispatch him according to his beliefs. But how are we going to find that information in time? The comet arrives in two days.”

“I need to show you something.” Evie unwrapped the tissue covering John Hobbes’s ring.

“Is that what I think it is?” Will asked. Evie nodded. “This is becoming a habit, Evangeline.”

“Will, if I can see him, understand him, we can be one step ahead of him.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea, doll?” Sam asked. “This fella’s a killer.”

“And a ghost,” Jericho added.

“What good is it to have this power and not use it?”

“I salute your spunk, but I question your sanity,” Sam said.

Will crouched beside Evie. “Evie, this isn’t a party trick. This ring belongs to the Beast himself.”

“I understand.”

“Get in, get what we need, and then get out,” Will advised. Evie nodded. “I’ll clap three times to help bring you up. If at any time you feel as if you are in danger—”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Do you like the sound of that, Frederick?” Sam muttered.

“You will say a code word. Let’s decide on one now.”

“How’s about no?” Sam said. “Or hooey? Or stop?”

“James,” Evie said. “The code word is James.”

Will nodded. “Very well.”

“Evie, are you sure you want to do this?” Jericho asked.

“Pos-i-tute-ly.” Evie attempted a smile. Her hands shook with both apprehension and excitement; going under was a bigger thrill than a front-row table at the most exclusive nightclub. “Put it in my hand, please.”

“I don’t like this,” Sam grumbled, but he put the ring in her hand anyway.

Evie closed it tightly in her palm and placed her other hand on top, like a seal. It took a moment for her to find her rhythm, and then she was falling through time in her mind.

“I see a town with muddy streets….” Evie said from her trancelike state. “Horses and wagons. I can’t… it’s speeding up….”

“Concentrate. Breathe,” Will instructed.

Evie took three deep breaths and the image stabilized.

“There’s a crowd, and a preacher….”

A tall, heavily bearded man in a black suit stood on an overturned fruit crate as he preached on the edge of a small town. A crowd had gathered. Many ridiculed him. Evie saw their laughing faces as almost satanic. The preacher didn’t stop. If anything, his voice gathered strength. “You must arm yourself that when the day of judgment comes, when the Beast brings forth God’s justice upon the sinners, you will be counted in the Lord’s number and spared. Prepare ye the walls of your houses with his markings to usher in his holy coming and anoint your flesh to bear witness to his glory!” the preacher thundered. At the preacher’s side stood a small boy of no more than nine or ten with a pale face and arresting blue eyes.

The boy held up a leather-bound book. “This be the Word of the Lord! The Gospel of the Brethren!”

Someone threw a tomato. It broke apart on the preacher’s face and slid down, staining his suit with pulp. Everyone laughed. The preacher wiped his face clean with a handkerchief without stopping his fiery sermon. But the boy stared daggers at the tomato thrower, and something in his gaze stopped the man’s laugh cold.

“Evie?” Will asked, for she’d fallen quiet.

“Yes. I’m here,” Evie answered. “It’s changing. I see wagons by a river. It’s cold. The preacher’s breath comes out in white puffs. They’re praying….”

In her mind, she saw Reverend Algoode raising his hands to heaven as he addressed his small congregation. “You are the chosen, the faithful, the Brethren….”

“The angel of the Lord appeared to me in the heavens as a streak of fire and bid me to part ways with the corruption of the old world and build a new Godly body of heaven in this country….” Evie echoed. “The Blood of the Lamb runs in our veins, and in blood will we vanquish our enemies and bring forth God’s true mission on earth.”

The connection became uncertain for a moment, and then Evie was falling again. She concentrated with all her might and saw the boy’s feet as he ran through leaves, heard the huff-huff-huff of his breathing. He lay upon the riverbank and watched lazy clouds overhead, and for a moment Evie felt his loneliness and doubt. A deer ventured out of the trees, sniffing for food. It raised its head, and the boy threw a rock, laughing as the deer startled and broke for the woods.

“Evie, where are you?”

“Inside the church, I think,” she answered slowly as the image in her mind shifted again.

The boy with the blue eyes had been stripped to the waist and strapped to a chair. The faithful surrounded him. He squirmed in the chair, his eyes on the preacher as he turned a brand in the coals of the stove. There were twelve brands in all—a pentacle, and one for each of the eleven offerings.

“Your flesh must be strong. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” the preacher said. He drew the red-hot brand from the fire and approached the boy, who screamed and screamed.

“Oh, god,” Evie said. She was not aware that tears streamed down her face.

“Will, make her stop,” Jericho cautioned.

“I’m with Frederick the Giant,” Sam chimed in.

Will hesitated. “Just another moment. We’re close.”

Sam didn’t wait. “Hey, doll? Time to come up for air. Can you hear me?”

“I said just a moment!” Will snapped.

Evie’s mind reeled away from the boy’s fear. For a moment, she tumbled madly through a fast stream of pictures. She willed herself to breathe and stay calm, not to run away. Soon, the pictures settled in her mind again.

“I’m fine,” she said in a calm voice. “I’m fine.”

The boy sat by the river with the Book of the Brethren turned to the last page. Evie’s heartbeat quickened as she tried to see it.

“The missing page. I’ve got it,” she said, and Will rushed to grab a pen. “ ‘Into this vessel, I bind your spirit. Into the fire, I commend your spirit. Into the darkness, I cast you, Beast, nevermore to rise.’ ”

Young John Hobbes ripped the page from the book, tearing it into tiny pieces and floating them on the river.

“We’ve got it, Evie. You can stop now,” Will said.

Evie had never gone quite so deep before. She was only vaguely aware of their voices, like a conversation heard in another room when falling asleep. It was almost like a drug, this feeling, and she wasn’t ready to stop.

“I’m somewhere else now,” Evie said dreamily.

She found herself walking through thick, sodden leaves in a blue-gray wood toward an encampment. Somber-faced men and women in plain clothes left their modest log cabins and walked with their children toward a white clapboard barn painted with the same sigils John Hobbes had scribbled along the bottom of all his notes. And there across the door was the five-pointed-star-and-snake emblem.

“The Pentacle of the Beast,” she murmured.

“Evie, I’m going to clap my hands now,” Will said. He did, and Evie pressed harder. She was beyond his reach now.

In her trance, she followed the others into the church. The women sat on one side in simple chairs, the children at their feet, while the men sat on the other side. His face grim, Pastor Algoode stood at the front with his son by his side. “The time has come. I have heard it in the town that even now the authorities ride to Brethren to take us down. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Yes, the time has come for the chosen one to begin his journey!”

“Hallelujah!” a woman shouted, raising her palms high.

“The time has come for the ritual to begin! For the Beast to rise and bring judgment to the sinners!”

“Hallelujah!” others joined in.

“We are the faithful. We must be strong. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen.” Pastor Algoode opened the book, finding the page he needed. “And I heard the angel’s voice as a voice of thunder saying, ‘None of the faithful shall enter the kingdom of the Lord but that they have purified their flesh with oil and the flames of heaven. Their sacrifice shall be the first, the sacrifice of the faithful, and the Beast will take from them the book and bathe in the smoke of their tithe. Thus will the first offering be made and the ritual begun.’ Hallelujah!”

Pastor Algoode passed around two jugs, which the faithful poured over themselves. Evie could smell the strong kerosene. Her heartbeat sped up. Pastor Algoode slipped his pendant around the boy’s neck and placed a hand on his forehead. “Take of our flesh and make it yours. Thus sayeth the Lord. Go. Do what you must. Find a dwelling and make it holy. Prepare ye the walls of your house. Do not forget to honor us with tribute.”

Calmly and quietly, the boy left the barn, locking it from the outside. On the other side of the door, Pastor Algoode continued praying while the congregation took up a plaintive hymn. Evie smelled smoke. Black wisps curled out from the cracks in the barn. Flames licked at the roof. The boy stood fast, also praying, letting the smoke fill his lungs. “The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” he intoned over and over.

Inside, the children screamed and coughed. The women tried to keep the song going. Pastor Algoode’s voice was choked with pain; it made his prayers into a fearsome cry. Evie wanted to get away, but she couldn’t. She could not command her hand to let go of the ring, nor could she remember the code word. She was too far under, with no idea how to get out or ask for help. The screams had died to isolated moans. The roof caved in. The smoke. Evie coughed; she was smothering. Shouts from the woods—someone was coming up the mountain. The boy opened his eyes quickly. For a second, Evie thought she saw flames reflected in the cool glass of those eyes. The boy walked calmly toward the woods and the sound of a man’s voice calling out. Suddenly, he stopped and turned toward Evie. Something about his face—calm, cold, cruel—made Evie’s heart beat wildly. He was looking right at her!

“I see you,” he said, and his voice was not the voice of a boy; it was a terrible thing, more bestial than human. “I see you now.”

“J-James,” Evie whispered, suddenly remembering the code word. “Help. James.”

The next thing she knew, Jericho was shaking her. Her fingers were cramped but the ring was gone; Sam had taken it from her. “Evie!” Jericho shouted. “Evie!”

She gulped in a huge breath, like a drowning woman breaking a lake’s surface. “Oh, god, oh, god!”

“We should have stopped, Will!” Jericho growled.

“It’s all right,” Will said rather automatically.

“I saw him—I saw the Beast! Horrible, horrible!” She gagged but did not vomit. Her head began to throb and her vision swam.

“I’ll get her some water,” Sam said, running for the kitchen.

Evie held on to the edge of the desk even though she was sitting. Her cheeks were pale and her forehead bathed in sweat. The room spun. “He… he looked at me! Right at me! He said, ‘I see you, I see you’!”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sam asked. He’d returned with the water and tried to get Evie to drink, but she couldn’t.

“It’s all right,” Will said, shaken.

“It’s not all right! You can’t do this to her. She’s not an experiment,” Jericho snapped at a stunned Will. He gathered Evie in his arms, carried her to her room, and placed her on the bed.

Evie had never felt so sick. Her head pounded and her stomach roiled as she lay on sweat-drenched sheets in the dark room. Every sound echoed in her skull. She was vaguely aware that she was having the dream about James again, but it kaleidoscoped in and out of the images she’d pulled from John Hobbes’s ring till she couldn’t be certain what was happening anymore. At one point, she saw Naughty John playing chess with James on the battlefield, the Victrola playing so fast it made a mockery of the song. She saw Henry, too, running through the trees, calling for someone named Louis. A woman stood at the edge of the forest in her nightgown and a gas mask. When she raised the mask, Evie saw that it was Miss Addie. “Such a terrible choice,” she said as the sky lightened and the first waves of the explosion came toward them all.

At half past nine in the evening, Evie woke with a desperate thirst. She wobbled to the kitchen for water and saw that Uncle Will’s light was on. The door was ajar, but she knocked softly anyway.

“How are you feeling?” Will greeted her.

“Better.” Evie settled into an uncomfortable chair. It seemed to have been designed so that a visitor would not stay long. “What happened today, at the end?”

“You established a psychic link with him. You could see him, but he could also see you. That is the danger of your gift: You may open yourself up to the other side.” Will templed his fingers and bounced them gently against his chin. “Are you familiar with the story of the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York?”

“Are they a radio quartet?”

A smile flickered briefly on Will’s lips. “There was no radio in the mid–eighteen hundreds. The Fox sisters lived in Hydesville, New York, in a house that was rumored to be haunted. The youngest Fox sisters, Maggie and Kate, claimed to be in communication with the spirit world. They would ask questions and the spirit, whom they called ‘Mr. Splitfoot,’ would answer by rapping.” Will knocked on the desk for effect. “They became a sensation during the Spiritualism movement, conducting séances for many famous people.”

“This is what happens when there’s no radio,” Evie said.

“Yes, well, later on, the girls had a change of heart. They became religious and confessed that their communication with spirits was all an elaborate fraud, that they had produced the raps by the cracking of their toes. The sisters fell on hard times. They became drunks; some said they drank to dull the phenomena.”

Evie stared at her big toe as it noodled a spot in the rug. “Is there a point to this tale?”

“A year later, Margaret Fox recanted. She had a change of heart. She told everyone that it had all happened just as they’d said. I believe her. I think the sisters were frightened, and so they stopped and renounced it all. It was as if they said to the restless spirits, ‘Be gone. We are closed to you.’ And long after the girls had died, a human skeleton was found in the basement of their home in Hydesville.”

Will shuffled the newspaper clippings on his desk. He’d probably been looking at them for hours, Evie guessed.

“Why is this happening now?” Evie asked.

Will templed his fingers again. “I don’t know. Something is drawing the likes of John Hobbes. Some energy here. Spirits are attracted to seismic energy shifts, chaos and political upheaval, religious movements, war and invention, industry and innovation. There were said to be a great many ghost sightings and unexplained phenomena reported during the American Revolution, and again during the Civil War. This country is founded on a certain tension.” He pressed his fists against each other. “There is a dualism inherent in democracy—opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy—and, as I’ve said, spirits are attracted to energy.” He let his hands rest on the desk.

“Can we stop him?”

“I believe we can.” Will offered a hint of a smile. “In the morning, we’ll drive to Brethren and exhume his body and take the source of his power on this plane—the pendant.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll bring it back to the museum, where we can create a protective circle. Using the incantation, we’ll trap his spirit in the pendant and then destroy the pendant before Solomon’s Comet passes through.”

Will was looking at her with a new appreciation, Evie felt.

“You were very brave today, Evangeline.”

“I was, wasn’t I?”

“The bravest. Family trait, you know.”

Evie felt much better for Will’s reassurance. Her stomach had settled and her head was lighter. She found her gaze drawn to the only photograph on Will’s desk—the mystery woman she’d seen when she’d held Will’s glove that day, just over a week ago. Was it only a week? It seemed like years.

“Who is she, Unc?”

Unconsciously, Will stroked a finger across the woman’s face. “Rotke Wasserman. She was my fiancée for a time.”

“Why didn’t you marry her?” Evie asked, and immediately realized her mistake. What if the woman had jilted Will at the altar? What if she’d left him for a man with more money and position?

“She died,” Will said softly.

“Oh.”

“It was many years ago,” Will said, as if that should soften it. “I haven’t been able to keep up with that other glove since. It’s always… lost.”

For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a pause.

“Yes. Well. We’ve both lost someone, I suppose.” Will turned the picture toward the wall.

Evie’s hand sought the comfort of her coin talisman. There was something she wanted to ask Will, had wanted to ask him since she’d first discovered ghosts were real. Only now did she feel brave enough to do so. “These stories about people communicating with the spirits of the dead, mediums… Could you really contact someone from the other side if you wanted to?”

Will’s gaze followed Evie’s hand as it held fast to the pendant at her neck. “It’s best to let the dead lie in peace,” he said gently.

“But what if they aren’t at peace? What if they seem to need help? What if they show up in your dreams again and again?” Evie felt tears threatening again. She’d turned into a regular waterworks lately. She fought it. “What if they’re trying to get through to you and tell you something, only you’re not quite on the trolley?”

“What if they’re trying to harm you?” Will said. “Did you ever think of that?”

No. She hadn’t. But James? James would never hurt her. Would he?

“People tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,” Will said. “There are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories.”

“Unc, if you believe in ghosts and goblins—”

“I do not believe in goblins….”

“The goblinesque,” Evie said, rolling her eyes. “Why is it you have such trouble believing in God?”

“What sort of god would let this world happen?” he said, holding her gaze a moment too long before checking his pocket watch. “I believe it’s just time for Captain Nightfall and the Secret Brigade. Shall we catch it?”

“Sounds swell.”

Will flipped on the radio. Ominous music swelled. “Wherever evil lurks, wherever shadows gather, there will you find Captain Nightfall and his Secret Brigade as they fight the forces of iniquity and keep the citizens of this country safe from all manner of villainy….”

The shadow-painted living room filled with sound effects and music and the well-modulated voices of actors pretending to put the wicked in their place.

But it wasn’t enough to chase away the ghosts.

Rain beat gently against the windows. The trees of Central Park bowed with wind. And on the street in the dark, a whistling could be heard as John Hobbes walked the sodden blocks to the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. He passed easily into the old mansion, with its collections of gris gris bags, witches’ letters, and spirit photographs. Mere trifles. Child’s play. Umbrellas opened against a typhoon. In two days’ time, none of it would matter, anyway. But first, there was work to be done. Whistling, John Hobbes visited the old library. It was cloaked in night’s gloom, but he could see the untidy desk with no trouble. He saw very well in the dark now. First he slid open the drawer and left a small present. But he would also need something. There on the desk he saw it, winking out from under a stack of newspaper clippings. That would do. Yes, that would do nicely. He dropped it into his pocket and left the museum, singing softly, “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on….”

Upstairs in his bedroom, Sam woke briefly, thinking he heard someone singing, but all was quiet now, and so he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 677