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“Go this way,” Isaiah said, pointing to a dirt road off to the right that carved through seemingly endless fields of old, dead corn without even a Burma-Shave sign to break it up. They’d been driving for hours and seen nothing but sky, wheat, cows, and corn.
“That way? You’re sure, kid?” Sam asked from behind the wheel.
Isaiah wasn’t entirely sure of anything. But it felt right, and Evie was sick. They had to get to Sarah Beth. “Yes.”
“All right. I trust you,” Sam said grimly and banked a sharp right.
In the back of the truck, Evie was pale and sweaty. Theta and Henry watched her nervously. The truck careened across some railroad tracks, and up front, Ling told Sam to be careful. Corn leaves slapped the sides of the roadster. Memphis worried they’d be lost in that leafy maze. And then they reached the end of the field, and there it was, just as Isaiah had seen it in his visions: The weathered farmhouse with its sagging porch and the red barn. The old oak tree and the tire swing hanging on a rope from one of its massive branches. There was a tall silo, and a windmill, and land for as far as a body could see. And when they got closer, a rusty mailbox with the name Olson and a number on the side: 144.
Isaiah looked up at the drawn curtains of the second-story windows. “We’re here.”
Theta stepped out of the truck and rubbed the feeling back into her legs. “Hello? Can anyone help us?” she called.
No one seemed to be home. Out here on the plains, the air was sticky with rain that wouldn’t come, and Henry thought about all that water drowning Mississippi while this part of the country looked to be in a drought. The crops drooped on their stalks, their leaves eaten through by bugs.
Sam rushed up the steps of the porch and knocked at the door. “Hello? Is anybody home? We need a doctor!”
A sandy-haired man in coveralls came out from the barn, mopping his neck and brow with a bandanna. The front of his shirt was sweated through. “You folks lost?”
Memphis looked around at the lot of them: Dirty. Scared. Half-crazed, with a very sick girl lying dead to the world in the back of their truck. He wondered if that farmer would reach for a gun soon. Once he knew who they were, Memphis couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t.
“Our friend is hurt, mister,” Theta said. “She needs help.”
“There’s no doctor here. You’d be better off driving into town. It’s about five miles thataway,” the farmer said and pointed right, toward a seemingly endless road bordered by fields of yellow-brown grass.
“She won’t make it,” Sam said, his voice breaking.
“Well, son, I’m real sorry, but we can’t help you.”
“Are you Sarah Beth’s daddy?” Isaiah asked.
The farmer’s eyebrows shot up. “How do you know my Sarah Beth?”
“She comes to me in visions,” Isaiah said. “That’s why we’re here. To keep her safe. We’re the Diviners.”
The farmer’s surprise slid into suspicion. His mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. You’re trespassing on private property.”
“Please,” Ling said. “We’ve come all the way from New York City. Your daughter called us here.”
“My daughter can’t call nobody. Don’t make me go for my gun,” the farmer said.
The screen door creaked open and snapped shut behind a small, barefoot girl with startling gray eyes. Her pale blond hair hung down her back in two slim braids already coming loose from their peach ribbons. One half of her face drooped as if from palsy.
“Sarah Beth. Go on back inside,” her father commanded.
Sarah Beth ignored him. She leaned against the peeling porch railing and stared out at the Diviners until her eyes found Isaiah.
She smiled with one side of her face and waved. “Hey, Isaiah. You made it.”
Isaiah gave a small wave back. “Hey, Sarah Beth. We came. Just like you asked.”
Jericho carried a shivering Evie upstairs and placed her on a bed in a shaded room. She was pale as new milk. Sam covered her with a wedding-ring quilt, tucking it carefully around her. The farmer’s wife, Mrs. Olson, touched the back of her hand to Evie’s forehead and frowned. “Lands’ sakes, she’s burning up.” Mrs. Olson hurried away and returned with an enamelware bowl half filled with water. She soaked a cotton rag, wrung it out, and pressed it against Evie’s flushed cheeks. In the doorway, Sarah Beth watched, sucking on the end of her braid.
“What happened to her?” Mrs. Olson asked.
“The dead got to her, didn’t they?” Sarah Beth said from the doorway.
“Sarah Beth!” Mrs. Olson scolded.
