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Evie read the late-edition article about the reports of HAUNTED HOSPITAL! and realized that she still hadn’t heard from Woody about a trip out to see Luther Clayton at the asylum. She rang the Daily News. “Woody? Evie O’Neill. Say, have you had any luck getting us in to see Luther Clayton?”
“Not so far, Sheba. What with the murder out there, they’re leery of newsboys like me trying to…”
As Woody talked, Evie flipped through the newspaper, stopping when she came to a picture of Sarah Snow serving porridge at the Salvation Army: SAINTLY SARAH DISHES UP A BOWL OF KINDNESS.
“You’ve just got to make it happen, Woody!”
“I got other stories to chase down, Sheba. There’s a murder every day on this island. Why don’t you decide to forgive Lucky Luciano or Legs Diamond instead?”
“Hahaha. They didn’t try to shoot me.”
“Give ’em time.”
“Woody, are you going to help me with this or not?”
“I’ll try again with the warden over there, but it may be a lost cause, Sheba. I’m telling you, they’re not letting anybody over to Ward’s except crazy people. Say, on second thought…”
“Good-bye, Woody,” Evie said, and hung up.
A CRAZY DREAM
1916
Department of Paranormal
Hopeful Harbor, NY
“Will, hurry! They’re waiting!”
Margaret “Sister” Walker paced impatiently at the door to the office of her friend and colleague, Will Fitzgerald. At his desk, Will laid down his pen and closed his notebook. He yanked up his suspenders, slipped on his suit jacket, and slicked a hand through his unruly hair, and then he and Margaret were moving quickly down the maroon-carpeted staircase and through a ballroom aglow in sparkling prisms of chandelier light.
“It’s transmitting, Will. Do you realize what this means?”
“I… I didn’t hope to imagine,” Will said as they bustled into the estate’s wood-paneled library. “I thought it was just a crazy dream.”
“Not anymore.”
Will rushed to the middle bookcase and pulled down two books in the center of the third shelf, and the bookcase swung open, revealing a private elevator. Margaret pushed a button marked S, and the lift rattled upward. With a shake of her head and a laugh, she reached over and adjusted Will’s off-kilter glasses. “I have never met anyone whose spectacles simply refused to stay put. It’s a wonder you can see at all.”
“That’s why I’
m lucky to have you as a friend.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
The elevator stopped and the door opened. Sunlight poured in from a glass panel in the roof. It glinted off every shiny surface of the top secret laboratory. A metallic hum filled the room and, under that, the steady scratching of some instrument at work.
“There you are!” Rotke called. She hurried over, grabbing Will by the hands. “This way.”
“Don’t mind me,” Margaret muttered, and followed, head held high.
“Will! Come quickly! You must see this,” Jake called to his best friend, grinning. He was talking without punctuation, as if his mouth were a harried stenographer racing to keep up with the dictation of his busy thoughts. “Electromagnetic… boosted the signal… necessary energy field… recalibrated the gyrometer and bam! There it was.”
“There what was?” Will asked, pushing up his wayward glasses once more.
“This.”
Jake positioned Will in front of one of the many machines he’d been toying with over the past few months. It was a cube with a whirring gyrometer on top and, in the center of the cube, a large glass tube alive with an erratic, pulsing light. Coming out from the bottom of the cube was a stylus. Its mechanical arm scratched excitedly over a roll of paper that had spooled inches thick on the floor.
