The Diviners

Bill listened to Memphis Campbell’s footsteps fading away. He wanted to tell Memphis how lucky he was that the gift had left him when it did. What a mercy that was. How grateful he should be that the wrong people hadn’t found out about it. Bill felt in his pocket for some money for a bite to eat. He rubbed the dime and nickel between his fingers. Not much. If only he could stop gambling. But that was his curse; he couldn’t stay away from risk and chance, whether it was cards, the numbers game, craps, cockfighting, or horse racing. But he kept seeing that house in his dreams with the clouds and crossroads. He hadn’t worked out the gig for any of it yet, but he would. There was a number on the side of the house’s mailbox. If only he could see it, he felt sure, that number would be the key to winning big. And once he had his money, he could set about getting revenge.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

The house sat on the windswept hill like a sentinel. Ivy sprawled across the exterior, spreading like a stain. The windows were shuttered and nailed closed. The engraved cherrywood doors were a dull brown. If anyone could have seen inside, they’d have noted that cobwebs draped from doorways and spiders secreted their web-wrapped prey into crevices. Warped floorboards bowed dangerously in spots.

In its day, the house had been magnificent. There had been celebrations and dances. On Sundays, carriages had passed by to admire the house’s commanding presence, a symbol of everything that was right and good and hopeful about the country. The house was a dream realized. The man who had built the house, Jacob Knowles, had made his fortune in steel, the very steel used to build the city. He and his wife had only one surviving child, a daughter named Ida, who was their greatest joy. Ida was small and prone to colds, and for this reason, her anxious parents indulged the girl’s every whim. There were piano lessons and pony rides and a small spaniel named Chester. When Ida played tea party on the lawn, servants waited nearby to pour tea for her dolls. Many were the days she pretended to be an Arabian princess surveying her kingdom. She would climb the stairs to the very top room of the house, an attic room with a small terrace. In 1863 she watched the smoke from the Draft Riot fires from there, daydreaming that she looked upon the lairs of distant dragons and not the simmering frustrations of a class and race war erupting into brutal mob violence. While the Civil War raged on, Ida grew into a young woman. She dreamed of marrying some handsome officer so that they might become the next master and mistress of the grand house. Months after the Civil War ended, Union soldiers joined General Grant himself for a party at the house that spilled out onto the lawn for fireworks as the strains of a waltz echoed along the rafters. But Ida had a cold and was confined to her bed with a mustard plaster on her chest, sobbing at her misfortune though her mother patted her cheek and told her not to worry, that there would be another ball and a young man waiting for her, and besides, they were not ready to have their only daughter, their dear Ida, leave them just yet.

But it was Ida’s mother who was to leave. A year after that ball, Mrs. Knowles fell sick with dysentery and was buried within a week. One year later, Jacob Knowles died of a sudden brain hemorrhage. It fell to twenty-year-old Ida to maintain Knowles’ End. Running a household was a far cry from playing princess, and though a distant cousin admonished Ida to be prudent with her spending, she did not heed his advice. Grief-stricken at the loss of her parents, Ida turned to the new Spiritualism for comfort. She opened Knowles’ End to Theosophists, card readers, and spirit mediums. The most gifted of these mediums was a wealthy widow named Mary White, who had an uncanny ability to put Ida in communication with her relatives on the other side. There was no rapping of the table, nor cheap levitation tricks, as so many attempted. No, Mary White had a genuine gift and a warm demeanor, and Mary and Ida became quite close, with Ida calling her “sister.” Once again, the house was filled with activity, and Knowles’ End became a place for spiritual meetings, card readings, séances, and all sorts of esoteric and occult gatherings. Ida felt certain it was only a matter of time before Knowles’ End was restored to its former glory. Mary had all but told her that the spirits assured it.

Mary had a companion in these endeavors, a most charismatic man with transfixing eyes, a Mr. Hobbes. He was, she promised, a prophet. A holy man. Certainly, he spent many hours alone in the library reading, and sometimes, during their séances, he fell into strange trances and spoke in words Ida did not comprehend—proof, Mary told her, of his connection to the spirit realm.

But Ida’s expenses were many—spirit mediums were costly—and the Knowles fortune dwindled quickly. Ida would be socially humiliated if her debts were to become known. It was Mary who offered to buy Knowles’ End and take Ida on as a boarder in order to spare her reputation. Mary agreed to let Ida have her favorite room, the attic room with the view of the city, and told her not to worry, that she would pay the back taxes and Mr. Hobbes would take on the hard work needed to make Knowles’ End, which had fallen into disrepair, beautiful again.