The Diviners (65 page)

“I took the shoe buckle,” Sam blurted out. “Found it out at the seaport and thought I could make a quick buck off it. There are creepy chumps who pay for that stuff.”

“Sam, don’t,” Evie warned.

He gave her a wan smile. “It’s okay, doll. Let’s call it even on that twenty bucks.”

“Nice little crew you’ve got, Fitz,” Malloy said. He took in the room: the pentacle chalked on the floor. The salt, half-poured. The pendant. “What’s going on here, Will?”

“If I tell you, you’ll think I’ve gone mad.”

“If you don’t tell me here, you’ll be telling me downtown!” Malloy thundered. “I don’t think you understand what sort of trouble you’re in here, Fitz!”

“Detective Malloy, please, what note did you find?” Evie pressed.

“It was written by Mrs. Blodgett just before she died and shoved into the pocket of her robe. Her daughter confirms it’s her handwriting. It names Will as the murderer.”

Will reeled. “What?”

“That’s a load of bunk!” Sam shouted.

“She said we’d find the evidence of it at the museum. Said you’d been asking her about the murders for some time, that you did it to drum up interest in the museum.” Malloy’s beefy shoulders sagged. He seemed to have aged ten years in those few moments spent holding Ruta Badowski’s broken shoe buckle. “Mr. Fitzgerald, you’re going to need to accompany us downtown and answer some questions. Fellas, bring the little thief, too, for good measure.”

“Oh, he’s clever. He’s very, very clever,” Will said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Don’t you see? He knew we were
close! He knew! He got her to write that note. He laid a trap, and we walked right into it.”

“Oh, Unc!” Evie said. “What are we going to do?”

“What are you talking about?” Malloy asked.

“Terrence, this is going to sound like I’ve gone over the edge, but I assure you I am quite sane. The Pentacle Killer isn’t a copycat, and he certainly isn’t me. He’s John Hobbes.”

Malloy’s face remained stony. “John Hobbes, who died fifty years ago? You’re telling me a dead man committed these murders?”

“Through some sort of sorcery, his spirit manifested on this plane, yes. I know it sounds completely mad—”

“But it’s true!” Evie interrupted. “That’s why we had to go to Brethren, to his secret grave, and dig up his body. It’s why we must destroy his pendant—to release his spirit from this world. And if we don’t do it before the comet comes tonight, we’re all in for it.”

Evie realized how ridiculous they sounded. The other officers snickered. Only Malloy didn’t, and he looked very angry, indeed.

“You know, Fitz, I never figured you for believing in that wad of chewing gum you sell here at the museum. I also never figured you for a murderer.” He turned to the other officers and said, “Take him.”

The officers surrounded Will and Sam, leading them out of the museum.

“Murder. Grave robbing. Destroying property. Thievery. And corruption of the young…” Malloy trailed off, but not before Evie heard the full weariness and disgust in his voice. “I guess you just never really know anybody, do you?”

Evie ran after them, her heels clacking against the marble floor. “Please, you can’t take him, Detective Malloy! We have to stop John Hobbes tonight. He’s going to strike during Solomon’s Comet and become the Beast. It’s our last chance!”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but there’s no such thing as ghost killers. There’s no such thing as ghosts, period. There’s no bogeyman raising up some Beast bent on bringing the end of the world. That’s a fairy tale. That’s all. I’m sorry.” Malloy’s jowly face was filled with sympathy.

“Terrence, please listen to me—you’ve got to stop him before he makes his last offering tonight,” Will pleaded as the officers angled him into the back of a waiting police car.

“If he strikes tonight, you’re off the hook, Professor,” a nearby officer snarled before closing the door.

Back inside the museum, Evie paced a path around the library. Jericho watched her. “How are we going to stop him? Think, Evie, think.”

“They took the pendant with them.”

“There has to be another way.” Evie opened the Book of the Brethren, carefully examining each page. When she got to the last page, the eleventh offering, she stared at it. The Beast stood over the prone body of the woman, their hands joined. There was a small altar. Above them, the night sky burned with the comet’s fire.

“Why would he ask Mary White to keep the house?” Evie mused.

“He needed a place to come home to,” Jericho said. “He needed someplace safe.”

“But he’s left the bodies in very public places. So he could have gone anywhere. Why there? What does he need from it?” Evie was on the move again and traveling the room.

“You’re beginning to remind me of your uncle,” Jericho said. “And you’re making me a bit dizzy.”

“Sorry.” Evie sat at the long table with its perilous stacks of books, thinking. She took Ida Knowles’s diary in hand. “Ida
Knowles’s last entry was made just before she went into the cellar, presumably. What was down there?”

“The police never found anything other than a basement full of bones.”

“ ‘Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses….’ ” Evie recited. She thought back to the day she and Mabel had gone to Knowles’ End. She’d noticed a fat chimney from the outside of the house but couldn’t seem to find the corresponding fireplace inside. And then later, in the basement, she’d felt a draft.

Evie was suddenly up and scurrying about the library, pocketing matches, gathering flashlights.

“What are you doing?”

“I think there’s some sort of secret room, a place that is special to him, and that is where he’s hiding whatever it is that’s keeping him alive.” Evie glanced at the clock. It was ten thirty. “We’ll need to hurry if we’re to make it in time.”

Jericho got to his feet, wincing at the pain from his wound. “Where are we going?”

“We’re not going to wait for John Hobbes to take his last victim. We’re taking the fight to him. We’re going to Knowles’ End.”

How do you stop a ghost? How do you sever a thread of evil once it has woven itself into the world? Those questions coiled tightly in Evie’s mind as she and Jericho drove Will’s car through streets crowded with revelers ready to welcome Solomon’s Comet. Flappers performed an impromptu cancan as they staggered along to the next party. Just ahead, a stilt-walker wobbled on long, spindly legs, blocking the way. Through the window, a drunken man in a harlequin hat blew a paper horn at Evie rather suddenly, startling a scream from her. “Got ya!” He cackled and reeled away, laughing like a devil. She honked the horn furiously at the stilt-walker until he clambered aside. A path opened and she honked the car’s horn as a warning to everyone else.

Farther north, the crowds thinned. Above them, shadows from the great metal cage of the elevated tracks washed over the hood of the Ford,
light, dark, light, dark
. Soon they were driving along the desolate banks of the Hudson, their headlights the only illumination. At last they came to the old Knowles house. It looked down on the street like a forgotten god, the moon fat and white behind it.

Evie slipped around to the broken servants’ entrance on the side where she’d gotten in before. The door swung open with a loud creak. The last time she’d been at the house, it had been in the full light of day, bright with sunshine. Now it was very dark, and every shape seemed menacing. Evie turned on her flashlight. The pale beam fell across a broken icebox, a Hoosier cabinet, a sink apron. It illuminated the hunchbacked form of a rat on a counter. The rat swiveled its pointed nose toward the light before skittering away into the comforting dark.

“This way,” Evie said.

She led Jericho to the butler’s pantry, and tried not to think about John Hobbes waiting inside one of those tall cabinets, ready to leap out as she walked past. She hurried into the hall that connected the kitchen with the rest of the house. “Careful,” Evie whispered. “There are traps throughout.”

There were many doors, and she couldn’t be certain which would lead to the cellar. She certainly didn’t want to go down the way she had the last time.

“What could be keeping him alive? What’s his conduit into this world?” Jericho asked.

“I don’t know, but it must be hidden somewhere in this house. I’ll tear down every wall looking for it if I have to,” Evie said. “What time is it?”

Jericho put down the cans of kerosene he carried and angled his wristwatch under Evie’s flashlight. “Twenty past eleven.”

“We don’t have long.”

The house felt different to her. She struggled to pinpoint what, exactly, had changed.
Alive. Awake. Ready.
Those were the words that came to mind, as if the house were a living organism, a great womb on the verge of some terrible birth. The beam of her light skimmed over the moldy wallpaper. The walls were slick with
condensation. Sweat dripped down Evie’s back as well. The chill of her last visit had been replaced by an almost stifling heat. She opened a door and found only a shallow closet. The inside of the closet door was damp. They tried other doors and found a bedroom, an office, and a water closet.

“Why can’t we find it?” Evie asked. “I don’t understand why I can’t find the entrance. It was here before. It’s almost…”
It’s almost as if the house is hiding it from us
, she’d started to say. “Let’s keep looking. I’m sure I must be remembering it wrong. There’s a parlor to the right.”

They came to it, but the parlor’s pocket doors were closed. “These were open before.”

With effort, they slid them open. Jericho’s flashlight moved slowly around the room. But it was different, too. The sheets had been removed from the furniture.

“It wasn’t this way before,” Evie whispered.

“It’s like it was expecting us,” Jericho said quietly.

“Why did you say ‘it’?” Evie asked. Jericho didn’t answer, but they were both feeling it—the house. The house was waiting.

Evie’s flashlight beam crawled across the walls. They seemed to bow outward just slightly.
Like lungs, breathing
, she thought, and then chased the thought away. It was hard to see anything in the gloom. Her beam traveled to the broken mirror, blinding her with the reflection. She blinked, and in the afterimage she could swear she’d seen somber, ghostly faces. Gasping, she swung the light around, but there was nothing behind her. The house groaned and creaked.

“I don’t like this,” Jericho said.

“What choice do we have? If we don’t stop him now, tonight, he’ll manifest fully. And then we
can’t
fight him.”

“But we don’t have the pendant anymore. How are we…” He
lowered his voice, as if the house might be listening. “How are we going to bind his spirit?”

“We’ll find something else,” Evie whispered back. “Or we’ll burn this place down if we have to.”

Jericho moved his hand up and down. “Do you see that light?” He followed the thin beam to a rosette carved into the fireplace. “I think there might be something behind this.” He put his face close, trying to see.

“Jericho, don’t!” Evie called suddenly.

A gust of dusty air blew into Jericho’s face. He coughed and sputtered and waved it away. It had a sickeningly sweet smell, like dying flowers. Jericho blinked and shook his head.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Fine,” he said, but his voice shook.

The fireplace flared to life, and Evie and Jericho both jumped.

“He knows we’re here,” Evie whispered.

“How can he know that?”

“I think… I think the house is telling him. We have to hurry. What time is it?”

Jericho checked his watch again. “Eleven twenty.”

“You said that last time I asked.”

Jericho moved his watch into the beam of Evie’s flashlight again. The second hand wasn’t moving. “It’s not working. It was working fine before we…”

Entered the house.
He didn’t need to say it.

“I don’t like this,” Jericho whispered, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead. He was a bit glassy-eyed, and Evie wished that he had his full strength. “You think that whatever is keeping his spirit alive is hidden somewhere inside this house?”

Evie nodded.

“Then I say we waste no time. Let’s burn it. Burn it and run.”

The wind gusted against the house and it groaned. Will had been very clear that they needed to dispatch the ghost of John Hobbes on his own terms: They should bind him to the pendant and burn it. But the police had the pendant, and Will was in custody. It was up to Evie and Jericho.

“Burn it and run,” Evie agreed. She grabbed one can of kerosene. There was an awful lot of house to cover. “We have to destroy it utterly. I’ll take the upstairs. You work down here.”

Jericho shook his head. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Jericho, be reasonable.”

“No. We stay together.”

“Let’s get to work, then.”

They moved quickly from room to room, splashing kerosene over anything that might burn. Evie crept up into the attic room that had once belonged to Ida Knowles. Through a crack in the boards nailed to the window, she could see the city in the distance. People were out there, reveling, dancing, celebrating the comet’s return, with no idea what it signified. From downstairs came the faint, dull thrum of music. It sounded vaguely like voices raised in the singing of a hymn. She motioned Jericho to stop sloshing the kerosene and stand still, but she no longer heard it.