Conor had been scared of the voices and the ghosts at first. The pictures that showed up in his head when he didn’t want them and made him feel panicked. But he was more afraid of the things regular people could do to one another. He’d run with the West Side Boys. He’d lived in the refuge. He’d seen the way a mess of angry, lost boys could ramp it up for one another. If one cried knuckles another cried sticks and then somebody else had to top that with cries of knives! He’d seen it turn quick as a flash fire. One minute, they were a group; the next, they were a mob. And that was what scared him about the dead things inside the fog: They were the blood-fever of those wild nights on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. They were the dark corners of the refuge where the priests didn’t bother looking.
The lights dimmed down to slivers, plunging the room into shadow. Conor held his breath until they brightened again. He counted until he felt safe. The lady told him to be careful. He heard her talking inside his head as if she were a voice on the radio. Like the Sweetheart Seer. The lady in his head told him there were others like him in the world. Sometimes, when he closed himself off and dove deep into his mind, he could sense them. He could feel their power as if it were connected to his own. It was the lady in his head who told Conor to be afraid of the things in the fog. The things that belonged to the man in the hat.
Conor stole a glance at Luther Clayton. Right now, he was in his chair staring at the wall and living through whatever terrible memories wouldn’t leave him alone. Conor knew about bad memories.
In the corner, Mr. Boschert stared at the checkers board. His memories were leaving him, and as peaceful as that forgetting sounded to Conor, he could see that it wasn’t. Sometimes Mr. Boschert didn’t know where he was. It frightened the old man something awful, and Conor would pretend to be the person Mr. Boschert imagined he was, somebody from long ago. There were ghosts and then there were ghosts.
Outside the room two attendants sat at the desk talking baseball. The season was starting up soon, and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were promising to make it a season to remember. Conor sure missed baseball.
“Pssst. Luther,” Conor hissed.
Luther rolled his head toward Conor.
“You seen ’em, right?” Conor patted his lips with his fingertips in quick, rhythmic bursts until it felt safe to keep talking. “You seen them things in the fog?”
Luther’s eyes were fixed on Conor’s, but Conor couldn’t be sure Luther was really seeing him. But then he said, “The d-door, d-d-door is open. Open. Open your eyes, eye, the Eye … d-draws them. D-draw them.”
“Who are they?”
Luther didn’t answer.
“Say, why’d you try to shoot da Sweetheart Seer?” Conor asked.
“They n-never should have d-done it.” Luther shut his eyes tight. He whispered in his broken voice, “We are the one, four, four. We are the one, four, four. We are …”
“Good evening, Terrence, Joseph,” Dr. Simpson greeted the attendants at the desk, and Conor whipped his attention back to his drawings. Why was Dr. Simpson here so late? “Mind if I have a word with one of your patients?”
“Of course, Dr. Simpson.”
Dr. Simpson made a slow turn of the room. His coat collar was turned up sharply against the threat of rain and wind outside. “Evening, gentlemen.”
From the corner of his eye, Conor could see Dr. Simpson staring at Luther, the doc’s mouth turned down at the corners in disapproval. Dr. Simpson left Luther’s side and stood next to Conor. “And how are you this evening, Conor?”
“Good.” Conor kept his pencil scratching on the paper.
Dr. Simpson sat across from him at the table. He smiled. It was not a warm smile. He wore spectacles that magnified his pupils like an insect’s. Conor began to sweat. He wanted to count. Counting was safety. But he was too frightened to do it in front of Dr. Simpson. What if the doc took him away and he came back like Frances?
“Now, Conor, I’d like to ask you some questions. Would that be all right?”
Conor gave a terse nod.
“It’s about what happened with Mr. Flanagan and Miss Cleary. What Mr. Roland did to them. I understand you saw the whole thing.” Dr. Simpson waited. He was good at that. Waiting. Conor didn’t give him anything, though, so he said, “Is that true?”
“Wadn’t Mr. Roland done that,” Conor mumbled.
“Who was it, then?”
Conor clammed up.
“Now, now, Conor. We all know that Mr. Roland did it. Can you tell me what you saw?” Dr. Simpson barely blinked his big eyes.
Conor wanted to count so badly he thought he could explode from the need. Under the table, he moved his fingers in the same rhythmic rotation, pinkie to thumb. “It was him but not him. Somethin’ got inside ’im.”
“I don’t understand.”
Conor’s voice was soft as dandelion fluff. “Ghosts. They can get inside ya. Make ya do things. That’s why I hafta count. To keep ’em out.”
“Do you see these ghosts often?”
The lady’s voice flitted through Conor’s head, very faint: Don’t tell him anything. He will hurt you if you do. Conor’s eyes widened.
Dr. Simpson’s thin lips turned down again. “Are the ghosts speaking to you now, Conor?”
Keep still, the lady commanded.
Conor’s breathing shallowed. He shook his head slowly. Under the table, his fingers worked quickly through their rotations.
“All right. Just one more question,” Dr. Simpson said, and leaned in so that Conor felt as if the doc’s eyes were everywhere, inescapable, like the voices in his head. “Have you ever seen a man with a tall hat and a feathered coat? Does he ever speak to you, Conor?”
And that was when Conor felt the world fall away.
“I want to help you. You know that, don’t you, Conor?”
Dr. Simpson’s gaze pressed into him like the hot end of a match. Conor tried to swallow. He nearly choked. And then the numbers exploded from his throat: “Onetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfivesevenonetwot’reefourfiveseven!”
“Well,” Dr. Simpson said, as if Conor had disappointed him greatly. He picked up Conor’s drawing and frowned at the broken soldiers flying through the air and a giant sun with an eye in the center. “We’ll speak when I return from my trip. I’m to deliver a speech at a eugenics conference. Do you know what eugenics is, Conor?”
Conor shook his head.
“It’s the future. The promise of a great and unsullied America.” Dr. Simpson rose from the table. “Do let me know if you see the fellow I mentioned, Conor. It’s very important.”
Conor listened to the even click, clack of the doc’s heels receding in the hallway—left, right, left, right, one, two, one, two, steady as a clock, no variation—until there was nothing. He sat at the table for another half hour or so, and then a terrible feeling came over Conor all of a sudden, like an army of ghosts walking across his grave. His skin tingled. The vision was coming down.
“There’s a window open,” Conor said calmly in his other voice, the one he used when he was his other self, the one who saw things. “You hafta shut all the windows so they can’t get in.”