“What if this doesn’t go nowhere?” Isaiah asked. He had no idea how long they’d been down here. Felt like days.
“Doesn’t go anywhere,” Memphis corrected, more of a mumble, though, and Isaiah didn’t even have it in him to be properly annoyed by his brother’s habit of fixing his words, which, to Isaiah’s mind, didn’t need fixing.
“Don’t like it down here.” Isaiah glanced over his shoulder. The way back was just as dark as the way ahead. “I’m tired.”
“It’s a’right, Little Man. Plenty’a slaves got to freedom out this passage. We gonna be fine,” Bill said in his deep voice. “Ain’t got much choice, anyhow. Not with them Shadow Men after us. Just watch your step.”
Isaiah kept his eyes trained on the uneven ground announcing itself in Memphis’s lantern light and wondered if the Shadow Men had shown up at Aunt Octavia’s house looking for them. The idea that those men might’ve hurt his auntie made Isaiah’s heart beat even harder in his chest. Maybe the Shadow Men had gone straight to the museum, to Will Fitzgerald and Sister Walker. Maybe the Shadow Men had found the secret door under the carpet in the collections room and were down here even now, following quietly, guns drawn.
Isaiah swallowed hard. Sweat itched along his hairline and trickled down between his narrow shoulder blades under his shirt, which was getting filthy.
“How much longer?” he asked for the fourth time. He was thirsty. His feet hurt.
Memphis’s lantern illuminated another seemingly endless curve of tunnel. “Maybe we should turn back.”
Bill rubbed the sweat from his chin. “Not with those men after us. Trust me, you don’t want them to catch ya. Around that curve could be a way out.”
“Or another mile of darkness. Or a cave-in. Or a ladder leading up to a freedom house that hasn’t been that since before the Civil War,” Memphis whispered urgently. “A house that’s home to some white family now who might not welcome us.”
“Rather take my chances goin’ fo’ward.”
They pressed on. Around the bend, their tunnel branched into two. A smell like rotten eggs filled the air and Memphis tried not to gag.
Bill coughed. “Look like we just met up with the sewers.”
Isaiah pinched his nose shut with his fingers. “Which way should we go?”
“I don’t know,” Memphis said, and that scared Isaiah, because if there was anything his brother was good at, it was acting like he knew everything. “Bill?”
Bill held up a finger, feeling for air. He shook his head. “Ain’t no way to know.” He took out a nickel, tossed it, and slapped it down on his arm. “Heads we go left; tails, right.” Memphis nodded. Bill took his hand away. “Tails,” he said, and they entered the tunnel to their right.
“Maybe those Shadow Men left Harlem and went back to wherever they come from,” Memphis said. Water swished over their shoes and trickled down the narrow brick walls. It stank.
“Doubt it,” Bill panted. “They never stop. I know ’em.”
“I didn’t even get to tell Theta good-bye. What if they went to her apartment to find me? What if… what if they hurt her?”
“Only thing we can do is keep going,” Bill said. “Soon as we get somewhere safe, you can put in a call to her, and to your auntie.”
Memphis snorted. “Somewhere safe. Let me know where that is.”
Isaiah chanced another look over his shoulder. Tiny motes of light fluttered in the vast dark. Isaiah blinked, wiped at his eyes. The muscles from his neck to his fingers twitched. Suddenly, his feet wouldn’t move. Isaiah felt as if a giant were squeezing him between its palms. The spots of light came faster, and then Isaiah knew.
“Memphis…” was all Isaiah managed before his eyes rolled back and he was falling deeply into space as the vision roared up inside him, fast as a freight train.
Isaiah stood on a ribbon of dirt road leading toward a flat horizon. To his left, a slumped scarecrow guarded over a field of failing corn. To his right sat a farmhouse with a sagging front porch. He saw a weathered red barn. An enormous oak whose tire swing hung lax, as if it hadn’t been touched in a good while. Isaiah had seen this place once before in a vision, and he had been afraid of it, and of the girl who lived here.
He heard his name being called like a voice punching through miles of fog. “I, I, I, IsaiAH!” And then, close by his ear: “Isaiah.”
Isaiah whirled around. She was right there. The same girl as before. A peach satin ribbon clung to a few strands of her pale ringlets. Her eyes were such a light blue-gray they were nearly silver.
Who are you? he thought.
“I’m a seer, a Diviner, like you.”
She’d heard his thoughts?
The girl curled in on herself like she’d just stepped into a bracing wind. “Something awful has happened, Isaiah, just now. Like a fire snuffed out, and it’s so, so cold. Can you feel it?”
Isaiah couldn’t, and that made him jealous of this strange girl. He was fixated on the horizon, where an angry mouth of dark storm clouds gobbled up the blue sky. The clouds cracked like eggshells, letting out a high, sharp whine, a sound so full of pain and fear and need that Isaiah wanted to run away from it. What is that?
“The King of Crows and his dead,” the girl answered as if Isaiah had spoken. “He’s come, like he promised he would. He’s come and we’re in terrible danger.”
Wind snapped the corn on its stalks. Birds darted out from the roiling, dark sea overhead. Their cawing mixed with the gunfire bursts of screaming. The noise stole the breath from Isaiah’s lungs. So much hatred lived inside that sky. He could feel the threat trying to gnaw its way out into their world.
The girl reached for Isaiah’s hand. Her hands were small and delicate, like a doll’s. “He tells lies, so many lies, Isaiah. He’s been lying to me this whole time, pretending to be my friend. But I had a vision. A lady named Miriam told me the truth. She told me what he did to Conor Flynn. He wants all of us, Isaiah. He wants the Diviners.”
Why?
“Because we’re the only ones who can stop him.” The girl kept her unearthly eyes on the unholy sky. “I know how to stop the King of Crows, Isaiah.”
Where are we? Isaiah asked. He didn’t know why he couldn’t speak here.
“Bountiful, Nebraska. That’s where I live.”
Isaiah saw a mailbox bearing the name “Olson” and the number one forty-four. That number came up a lot. He remembered Evie saying it was the number of her brother’s unit during the war. But her brother and his whole unit had died, and it had something to do with Will and Sister Walker and Project Buffalo and Diviners.
“Where are you?” she asked.
In the tunnel under the old museum. But we’re lost. There’s people after us.
“I’m afraid, Isaiah,” the girl said. “We’re not safe. None of us are. You’ve got one another, but I’m all alone. I can’t fight him and his army by myself. None of us can. We need each other.”
The last time Isaiah had seen this vision, his mama had been here, telling him to get out quick. She had fussed at this girl, told her to hush up. He looked for his mother now but did not see her.