Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray
“Guillaume LeRoi Johnson.”
At the sound of his voice, Bill whirled around. There was a table and a deck of cards. Seated at the table was a strange creature, a thin gray man whose skin was as mottled as a moth’s wings. He wore a magnificent blue-black coat of oil-shine feathers, and on his head was a tall black hat. His long fingers ended in curved, yellowed fingernails caked in dirt, and Bill had a feeling of this man using those fingernails to dig himself out of a grave so deep it led to another world. The man in the hat shuffled a deck of tarot cards, cutting them into neat piles. His hands moved so fast it was like a bird’s wings fluttering.
“Guillaume LeRoi Johnson,” the man repeated. “Bastard son of rape, grandson of a slave mother and the master of the house. Born of violence and despair. Diviner.” And something about the way the man said it, slow and awestruck and menacing, goose-pimpled Bill’s skin. “Do you know who I am?”
Bill shook his head.
“I am also a bastard son. Born of this nation’s dreams and greed. Its idealism and its ignorance. Its hope and its violence. Would you like to be free of the shackles those men have placed upon you?”
“I surely would, sir. Yes, I would.”
The man in the hat smiled. “Make a bargain with me.”
Bill made the bargain under the yellow moonlight in that strange, dark forest where skeleton birds cawed toward the starless night. Where the dead watched and waited for you to fall.
When he came to, he was squeezing the broken neck of prisoner number twelve.
And then it was done. Again and again, he performed his duty without question. Men. Women. One as young as thirteen. Another as old as seventy. Each time took more of him with it. He was no longer Guillaume or Bill. He was no man. He was death. After one year, he looked forty. After two years, he barely recognized himself. His body ached like the devil. The skin of his hands was paper-thin and wrinkled. Veins popped up like tree roots. Two of his teeth rotted. Bill dug them out with his fingers and spat the bloody slivers into the sink. He hobbled to the mirror, but the reflection that greeted him was an old man’s.
And then his vision darkened and disappeared.
“What’s happening to me?” Bill asked. He begged for help. But there was nothing to be done. He was washed up and used. His talents gone for good.
“Thank you for your service to this country, Mr. Johnson. You’re free to go,” the Shadow Men said.
That was it. No money. No care for his blindness. Not even a medal. They left him on the side of the road like an unwanted dog.
Just like the man in the hat had promised, he was free of the Shadow Men. At a price.
And there was Memphis Campbell, walking around with his friends, not paying a price at all. Out there healing up white gangsters—yes, Bill had heard the rumors—but he wouldn’t even spare some for a friend. For one of his own. Every day, Bill swallowed down his bitterness. Now it came burning up inside him. To hell with Memphis Campbell.
While the house slept, Bill treaded carefully down the hall. He’d walked it so many times he could feel it. He was inside the boys’ room now—he knew by smell. He could hear Isaiah snoring. Carefully, he lowered his hand, placing it on the boy’s arm, hoping Isaiah would not wake. Easy, Bill. Easy, now, he said to himself, just like he used to say to Samson all those long years ago. But he couldn’t quite draw it out. Something wouldn’t let him. He wanted to howl. Rage. Tear something down. “Take,” he muttered. “Take, take, take.” The connection seized Bill like a pair of strong hands. Bill knew in his gut that wherever this was pulling him was a bad place. A feeling crawled over his skin like biting fire ants. And then a familiar face loomed before him.
“Hello, old friend,” the King of Crows said. His dark eyes were bottomless wells of terrors beyond imagining. They were in that forest again. The sick moon bled into the empty black night. When the King spoke, his razor-sharp teeth gleamed. “Do you think you can take what’s mine? You, of all people, should know better. Have you forgotten me so soon? I will colonize your soul with fear until, in your despair, you’ll think my yoke a boon. So you wish to see, do you? Very well. I shall grant your wish.”
Inside that world between worlds, the King of Crows raked his sharp fingernails across Bill’s face. Bill fell back as if burned, breaking the spell with Isaiah.
“My eyes!” he gasped. When he blinked, he saw terrible things: A husband slitting his wife’s throat. A band of white rangers taking the scalps of Indian children as they tried to run to safety. The hungry dead winking from a cornfield where they feasted on the mutilated carcass of a fly-ridden cow.
“Uncle Bill?” Isaiah said sleepily from his bed. “That you? Whatsa matter?”
Bill hurried from the room, tapping his way back to his own. He sat on the cot breathing heavily. He shut his eyes and the terrible scenes got worse—hangings and lynchings and men blown apart by war. So he stayed awake, fearing each blink until finally, by morning, the spell was done. Nothing permanent, then. Just a reminder of the King’s power. Of what he could do.
THE DEAD
The history of the land is a history of blood.
In this history, someone wins and someone loses. There are patriots and enemies. Folk heroes who save the day. Vanquished foes who had it coming.
It’s all in the telling.
The conquered have no voice. Ask the thirty-eight Santee Sioux singing the death song with the nooses around their necks, the treaty signed fair and square, then nullified with a snap of the rope. Ask the slave women forced to bear their masters’ children, to raise and love them and see them sold. Ask the miners slaughtered by the militia in Ludlow.
Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness.
Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.)
The history is a hungry history. Its mouth opens wide to consume. It must be fed. Bring me what you would forget, it cries, and I will swallow it whole and pull out the bones bleached of truth upon which you will hang the myths of yourselves. Feed me your pain and I will give you dreams and denial, a balm in Gilead.
The land remembers everything, though.
It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting.
The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood.
Blood on the plains. In the rivers. On the trees where the ropes swing. Blood on the leaves. Blood under the flowers of Gettysburg, of Antioch. Blood on the auction blocks. Blood of the Lenape, the Cherokee, the Cheyenne. Blood of the Alamo. Blood of the Chinese railroad workers. Blood of the midwives hung for witchcraft, for the crime of being women who bleed. Blood of the immigrants fleeing the hopeless, running toward the open arms of the nation’s seductive hope, its greatest export. Blood of the first removed to make way for the cities, the factories, the people and their unbridled dreams: The chugging of the railways. The tapping of the telegram. The humming of industry. Sound burbling along telephone wires. Printing presses whirring with the day’s news. And the next day’s. And the day after that’s. Endless cycles of information. Cities brimming with ambitions used and discarded.
The dead hold what the people throw away. The stories sink the tendrils of their hope and sorrow down into the graves and coil around the dead buried there, deep in its womb.
All passes away, the dead whisper. Except for us.
We, the eternal. Always here. Always listening. Always seeing.
Oh, how we wish we could reach you! You dreamers and schemers! Oh, you children of optimism! You pioneers! You stars and stripes, forever!
Sometimes, the dreamers wake as if they have heard. They take to the streets. They pick up the plow, the pen, the banner, the promise. They reach out to neighbors. They reach out to strangers. Backs stooped from a hard day’s labor, two men, one black, one white, share water from a well. They are thirsty and, in this one moment, thirst and work make them brothers. They drink of shared trust, that all men are created equal. They wipe their brows and smile up at a faithful sun. The young run toward the horizon, proclaiming their optimism to the blue skies: “I am working toward greatness.”
The girl told no starts the engine of her brother’s abandoned plane: “I am working toward greatness.”
The family steps onto the planks of Ellis Island, hearts turned toward Liberty’s torch: “Kaam kar raha hoon.”
The boys draw water from the well and plant their seeds: “Estoy trabajando hacia la grandeza.”
During these times, the dead hold their breath. The heart of the land beats with fresh hope. That we will hold these truths to be self-evident, and crown thy good with brotherhood. Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
In our shrouds, we look up and watch you.
You, milking the cow. You, dreaming in the field. You, who look to the stars and proclaim yourselves. You, who fall in love and marry, who birth and plot and strive. You, who blow yourselves apart with war. You, who mourn your losses and curse those same skies. You, who bury your dead. You, who ask, “Am I enough?” You, who pray to leave a mark. You, so full of life. You, capable of such moments of transcendent beauty that it shifts the atoms of history into an ecstatic sigh. You, who erect the monuments so that you’ll remember, for a time. You, who will also wither and die.
We marvel at your endless capacity to dream and create and, yes, even to love. To keep inventing yourselves. To ignore history’s lessons. To rewrite the story again and again.
We wish you love. And dreams. And hope.
We wish we could keep you from making the same mistakes.
We wish we could extinguish your hate.
We wish we could walk among you just to be close to the living.
Sometimes, we do.
We watch the sun rise and sink, day after day after day, faster and faster, until time is a string moving so swiftly it appears not to move at all.
We, the ancestors.
The ones who came before with the same dreams.
The same false inheritance.
The people are afraid now. Too much history rises from the graves.
Ghosts take shape in the cornfields. Behind the factories. Along the rivers. At the creeping edges of the cities and towns. They burn brightly like a secret revealed. The night is illuminated by truth so sharp it scrapes breath from the lungs of those who finally see. The people are anxious for vague reassurances.
But this is the history: blood.
We are the dead.
We are the keepers of the stories.
We hold the history of blood and promises.
We are speaking.
Are you listening?
Will you hear?
PART TWO
GHOSTS IN GOTHAM
The Daily News
EXTRA! GHOSTS IN GOTHAM!
Exclusive to T. S. Woodhouse
The days are numbered for the creepy crawlies allegedly lurking in the city’s dark alleys, making a nuisance of themselves in swanky hotels, and spooking the speakeasies. Manhattan is giving up the ghost, thanks to the combined efforts of a dedicated team of Diviners. Led by the Sweetheart Seer herself, comely Evie O’Neill, who only so recently braved the fire out on Ward’s Island to save the lives of the poor souls housed there, a fire started, they say, by malevolent spirits from beyond, these Diviners are making the city safe again. Woe unto the things that go bump in the night, for it’s hip, hip, boo-ray for this brave ghost-banishing team.
Theta lowered the newspaper and lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Led by comely Evie O’Neill? Oh, brother.”
“What are the rest of us, chopped liver?” Sam said.
Evie’s eyes were wide and innocent. “Can I help it if Woody put me first?”
“Yes!” everyone said at once.
Evie pretended to be miffed, but she was thrilled that Woody had singled her out and called her comely to boot. Her only objection was that the story had been buried on page six in the “Seen and Overheard” section. Hopefully, that would change, and soon. She’d have to talk to Woody about it. They needed more attention if they were to find ghosts, solve the mystery of the Eye, and get Conor back, too.
“Any calls yet?” Evie asked Mabel.
“A few,” Mabel said, passing over her notes. They were gathered in the tiny Tin Pan Alley room where Henry and David composed music. The building was noisy but it was cheap, and Mabel, David, and Alma had promised to come in a few hours each day to answer the telephone they’d installed, which, so far, was not ringing as often as Evie would’ve liked. That morning, they’d scoured the papers for mentions of ghost sightings, finding one or two worth looking into.
Evie read through Mabel’s notes. “Drunk. Not credible. Drunk. Thought I saw a ghost but it might have been my brother in his underwear. Drunk. Are there any naked ghosts and do they touch you in your naughty…” Evie paused, frowning.
“I hung up on that one,” Mabel said, blushing.
“We’ve got a tough road to hoe to get people to believe us,” Theta said.
“And to get off page six,” Evie grumbled, tossing the useless notes into the wastebasket.
“Just remember to keep Isaiah and me out of the papers,” Memphis said.
“I don’t need that kind of publicity, either,” Theta said. She smiled at Memphis, but he looked away, as if he hadn’t seen her at all, and Theta called on her acting skills to make it seem as if she weren’t broken inside.
The phone rang and Mabel pressed the receiver to her ear with one hand as she scribbled notes with the other. “And where did you say you saw these ghosts? At your mother-in-law’s house? You think she’s possessed by an evil spirit? Uh-huh.”
Mabel looked to Evie with a help expression. Evie grabbed the phone and put on her brightest radio voice, all elocution-shaped vowels. “An evil spirit in your mother-in-law, you say? Well, I’m afraid there’s only one cure for it, sir. Yes, you’ll need to spend all of your time with her. Yes, every blessed minute. Constant watching. Ask her to dinner and to be a fourth for your bridge party. That’s what these ‘evil spirits’ demand. Do whatever she asks of you. You don’t want to be cursed for life, do you?” Evie held the receiver out. “Huh. He hung up, the chump.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Alma said from the piano where she had been sitting with David, singing along softly to a new tune he was working on. “How many real calls have you gotten today?”
“Five,” Evie said.
“Mm-mm-mm. And were any of ’em on the level?” Alma asked.
“Not yet. But we will get them!”
“You know, not all the newspapers are so enthusiastic about your ghost-hunting activities,” David said, scribbling lyrics on staff paper. “They want to know why Luther Clayton died—and why he was last seen with you when it happened.”
Evie sobered. “All the more reason to hunt down ghosts and get the answers we need.”
“Any clues from last night’s dream walk?” Sam asked.
Henry shook his head. “We couldn’t find Conor anywhere.”
“Isaiah? Any visions?”
“Sorry,” Isaiah said glumly.
“Memphis, Ling, have you found anything at the libraries?” Evie asked.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to go,” Ling admitted. “My parents need me in the restaurant.”
“I managed an hour yesterday.” From his knapsack, Memphis pulled out
“Why so many names?” Theta asked, hoping Memphis would direct the answer to her. But he didn’t look at her once.
“I think it’s to confuse people. Some of those Diviners talked about him like he’s a god. Others say he likes sowing confusion and chaos, that he likes playing games.”
“Which is why we’re not gonna trust him blindly,” Sam said.
“We have to trust him a little if we’re going to find this Eye,” Ling said.
“The only other curious thing I found was a mention of the man in the hat keeping a messenger, some poor caged spirit who can go back and forth between his world and ours.”
“Like Western Union?” Alma asked.
“Telegram from the dead,” Henry mused. “Gee, I really hope it’s a singing telegram.”
“Why does he need a messenger?” Alma asked.
“Don’t have the answer to that yet,” Memphis answered.
“How come we haven’t ever heard any of this before?” Henry asked. “None of this is in our history books.”