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Mrs. Langford’s face went stony with wounded dignity. “Everybody needs a little help now and then, young man.”
“You shouldn’t’ve been so mean,” Isaiah said after the nurse had escorted Mrs. Langford back to her room.
“Aw, come on. I was just making a little joke,” Sam scoffed. The others stared at him.
“It wasn’t funny,” Henry said.
“Gee, this is fun,” Sam grumbled. “Anybody else having a swell time here at the old asylum?”
“Just call in the next person,” Theta said. “I want to get out of here as soon as we can.”
They interviewed a nurse named Molly next.
“I was here the night Mrs. Bennett…” Molly looked away. “The night she killed Miss Headley and herself.”
“Gee, I’m sorry. That musta been awful,” Theta said, patting Molly’s hand.
“That’s how you behave like a human,” Evie whispered to Sam. “Take notes so you can remember.”
“Did you know the nurses very well?” Theta asked.
“Oh, yes. Neither one of them would’ve hurt a fly! We’re all terrified now. We won’t go anywhere alone. That fog comes around most nights—you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. The patients say there’s ghosts inside it. I’ve heard noises late at night when I’m trying to sleep. The lights blink on and off and the warden says it’s the blasting, but who can say?”
“Have the patients said or done anything out of the ordinary?” Ling asked.
“The drawings,” Molly said. “They all draw the same thing.”
“Could we see those drawings?”
Molly led the Diviners to the art therapy room and opened a drawer, taking out a batch of patients’ sketches. The scenes were eerily similar: They all showed the man in the stovepipe hat leading an army of the dead. Above him, the sky crackled with lightning.
“Okay. Now I’m really scared,” Theta said.
“There is one patient…” Molly stopped. “Oh. I don’t know if I should say.”
“Oh, you should say! You should pos-i-tute-ly say,” Sam cooed. “I mean, a girl as pretty as you? If I can do anything to keep worry from your door.” He grinned and took Molly’s hand.
“Charming,” Ling muttered.
Molly blushed. “There’s a patient. A very disturbed young man, but he’s quite a talented artist. Conor Flynn.”
“Conor Flynn,” Isaiah said. At Memphis’s silent urging, he lowered his voice. “Memphis, that’s who Mama said we had to protect.”
“Tell us about Conor,” Evie said to Molly.
“Conor was there in the room when Mr. Roland killed Big Mike and Mary—drew the whole thing even though he said he never turned around once. And he drew what happened with Mrs. Bennett and Miss Headley, too, even though he was upstairs when the murders took place. He’s always drawing frightening things. I put some of them away for the doctors to see,” the nurse whispered.
“We’d better take a look at those,” Evie said.
From deep inside a locked cabinet, Molly retrieved a shirt box. Inside were an array of drawings. Conor was indeed quite talented. He’d drawn a detailed view of the Hell Gate Bridge as seen from a barred window and a study of a chair where the wood grain was so finely rendered it practically leaped from the page. But there were other, more disturbing pictures. In one, a great cloud with the face of an angry skull bore down on the island. In another, he’d captured the ghoulish moment with the two nurses. One of the nurses held a hook, and it seemed as if several bodies fought inside her at once. Evie paused at a drawing of the all-seeing eye symbol. It loomed in the sky like the eye of a god, and all around, floating in its beams, were the bodies of soldiers. There were also several drawings of Luther, and Evie had to wonder: Why was Conor Flynn so interested in Luther Clayton?
“Memphis!” Isaiah said, picking up one of the drawings, a sketch of an old farmhouse with a sagging porch. “I’ve seen this before. In a vision.”
“Excuse me, but could we speak to Conor Flynn?” Evie asked.
Molly shook her head. “I wouldn’t recommend it, Miss O’Neill.”
“Why not?”
