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“Not without Memphis and Isaiah!” Theta said.
“Theta! Theta!” Memphis was running toward them, with Isaiah gasping at his heels. “What’s happening?”
Theta nodded toward the murky ghost army headed their way.
“How many you think?” Sam asked.
“Twenty, twenty-five,” Ling said.
Henry shook his head. “We’ve never tried to take out that many before.”
On the steps of the hotel, people screamed. “Do something! Save us!”
The ghosts were getting closer. Figures emerged in the murk, taking clearer shape.
“Slaves,” Memphis said. “The ghosts of slaves.”
The Diviners came together. Electricity sparked off the sides of the buildings and climbed up the front of the Stock Exchange. The people gaped in awe. “Did you see that? What is that? What are they?”
“Get ready. It’s gonna take a lot of energy to blast ’em,” Sam called.
Memphis stared at the iron shackles around the ghosts’ feet and necks. Something shifted inside him. “I… I don’t know if this is right,” he said to the others.
“But, Memphis, everybody’s watching us!” Isaiah said.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s wrong,” Memphis said. He took a step forward, heart beating fast as he addressed the ghosts. “You need to leave these people alone,” he tried. “Go back now. Go back to your graves.”
The ghosts spoke as one: “And if we refuse, Healer?”
“You… you know who I am?” Memphis asked.
“We know much.”
“Memphis…” Theta warned.
“Get rid of them! Destroy them!” the people shouted. Their voices were a frenzy. A bloodlust.
“Then we’ll have to send you back ourselves,” Memphis said to the ghosts.
“Would you send us back without knowing our story? We will speak. We will be heard,” the ghosts whispered in one groaning voice. “We know this street. We built it. There was the auction block where we were bought and sold. Where our children were torn from us. If we were to cry for ourselves, there would be no land, only an ocean of salt. And when we rebelled, they murdered us. They left our heads to rot upon sticks along Wall Street for all to see.”
The ghosts surged forward quickly and reached their hands into Memphis’s chest. He felt the cold spreading as their molecules were joined. His limbs shook like downed wires in a storm.
“Memphis!” Theta screamed, but Memphis was already under, dragged into the world of the dead.
“See,” the ghosts whispered, and their voices swirled inside him. “Feel. Know.”
The ship pitched violently on the rough seas. The dark was all-consuming. It smelled of sick, of vomit and urine and defecation. Above all, it smelled of fear. Memphis could feel the presence of so many others. More chained men beside him, above him, below. One long human chain of misery. Cracked, desperate voices prayed to the gods, begging first for freedom, then for death. Iron shackles chafed Memphis’s wrists and ankles.
The rolling green of farmland and tobacco fields. Men in powdered wigs shot rifles at birds. In the distance, the big house—domed, scrubbed, white—loomed like a predator.
“Release!” the gentleman of the house called.
The birds flew up. The shots rang out. Bloodied feathers fell from the sky and pierced the ground. The slave gathered the dead and dying birds, some still twitching, in a bag. In his study lit by precious tallow candles, the gentleman kept his ledgers. Columns that weighed souls like grains of rice. The slave stood at the ready. At his master’s commands, he could only nod, his tongue having been cut out.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
The auction block loomed, a gateway to misery. The frightened, half-dead and chained, blinking in the light of a new world.
