Lair of Dreams

  Ling did not turn around.

  “Everything will be fine, sister! I know it will,” Wai-Mae said, trotting after Ling. “Please, don’t worry. Here—we can make something wonderful.”

  Ling didn’t want to make anything else. The dream had turned sour. She kept walking.

  “Come back, please!” Wai-Mae called. “You promised! You promised!”

  Ling ran down the hill and through the forest, calling Henry’s name.

  Henry and Louis lay side by side on the dock with their feet in the cool river, enjoying their last night on the bayou. His train was scheduled to arrive in New York tomorrow, and there’d be no need for these nightly visits anymore. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough for Henry.

  “Henri, there’s somethin’ I need to tell you ’bout,” he said, suddenly serious, and Henry’s stomach tightened, like sensing the first drops of rain at a long-planned picnic.

  “Sounds like an awfully serious talk to have without your shirt on,” Henry joked.

  Louis sat up. “I shoulda told you ’bout it before. Concerns you.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re not coming to New York after all?” Henry propped himself up on his elbows and stared out at the sun patches dotting the river. “You got the ticket, didn’t you?”

  “That ain’t it,” Louis said, and Henry was relieved.

  Louis took a deep breath. He twirled a fallen leaf between his fingers, making it dance like a ballerina. “Just before you left town, your daddy tried to get me to go away. He sent a man over to Celeste’s with a fat envelope fulla money and said it was all mine if I’d agree to leave town on the next boat up the river and never see you again.”

  “Bastard,” Henry muttered. His father ruined everything. He didn’t want to be related to a man like that. How did you learn to be a man if the one who raised you was a bully who wasn’t worth your respect? “How much money?”

  “A thousand dollars,” Louis said.

  A sinuous fear wrapped itself around Henry’s heart. “I suppose a fella could live pretty well on that, if he had a mind to.”

  “I reckon he could.”

  Henry pulled up a handful of grass. “Did you take it?” He gave Louis a sideways glance and saw the hurt on his face.

  “That what you think of me?”

  “I’m sorry, Louis. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t really think you’d do that,” Henry said, cursing himself. He wished he could take it back.

  Louis let out a long sigh and blinked up to the sky.

  “Please, Louis. I’m sorry.”

  Louis shook his head. “You know I can’t stay mad at you, cher.” He kissed Henry on the cheek, but it was halfhearted, Henry could tell. Louis was still nursing the wound.

  Gaspard’s bark sounded up on the path. “What manner of trouble that dog got himself into now?” Louis said, hopping up.

  Henry followed, but all he really wanted to do was pull Louis back down on the dock and kiss him. He felt lousy that they’d fought, and he wished he could take back what he’d said.

  Gaspard dug furiously at the morning glories, barking and growling as if he’d cornered an animal.

  “Gaspard!” Louis shouted. “Get away from there right now!”

  “He’s just being a dog,” Henry said. “Probably got a bone there somewhere. After all, it’s his dream, too.”

  “He shouldn’t be digging in there. Gaspard!” Louis whistled, but the dog wouldn’t budge.

  Louis took a step forward onto the morning glories and stumbled. He put a hand to his head, hissing.

  “Louis!” Henry righted him.

  Louis stepped back. “I’m… I’m all right, Henri. Gaspard!”

  Henry marched through the blanket of purple flowers and shooed Gaspard away. The dog bounded over to Louis. The spot where he’d been digging was dirt and nothing more.

  “Henry!” Ling called from the path.

  “Ling, what’s the matter?” he asked as she reached him. “Is Wai-Mae with you? Say, what happened to your hand?”

  Ling’s voice shook. “I want to go back, Henry. I want to wake up.”

  “You want me to wake you up, like last time?”

  “No. Together. We need to go together.”

  Henry looked over at Louis with regret.

  “Go on, cher. I’ll see you soon enough,” Louis said. “You can’t refuse a lady.”

  “Just one more day,” Henry said, hoping he hadn’t ruined everything.

  “One more day,” Louis said.

  “You need to wake Louis up,” Ling said, and from her expression, Henry knew not to argue.

  “Louis,” Henry said, “it’s time for you to go on back to the cabin now. And then, in a few minutes, you’ll wake up, and when you do, you can watch the sunrise and have some chicory coffee before you catch your train to New York.”

  Louis laughed. “All right, then, Henri. All right.” He climbed the steps to the cabin with Gaspard wagging along behind. From inside, Louis’s fiddle picked up the strains of “Rivière Rouge,” right where he’d left off, and then it went quiet.

  “What’s got you so spooked?” Henry asked Ling.

  “Not here. I’ll explain later. But I don’t want to be here anymore,” she whispered.

  “But we didn’t set our alarms, darlin’. We’re stuck till we wake up on our own.”

  “Then let’s see if we can find a different dream somewhere else,” Ling said. “Even if we go back to the streets where we come in. If we enter through Devlin’s, maybe we can reverse it.”

  “Sounds reasonable. We just reverse our steps. Which way is the station from here?” Henry asked, looking around.

  Through a gap in the trees, he spied the dark mouth of the tunnel.

  Ling followed his gaze. “We’re not supposed to go in there.”

  “Seems like it’s either through the tunnel or we wait until we wake up.”

  “But one of us could wake up first, stranding the other one here,” Ling said, shivering. A question had been lurking in the depths of her. Only now could it surface. “Henry, what happens if you die in a dream?”

  Henry shrugged. “You wake up.”

  “Even here? Even here, where everything’s real?” she said, feeling the heat from her burn.

  Light pulsed against the velvety dark of the tunnel.

  “It’s happening again,” Henry said.

  The edges of the trees unraveled, as if there was some sort of energy surge.

  “What is that?” Henry said.

  “I don’t know,” Ling whispered, fear stealing most of her breath. Wai-Mae’s words swam back to her: I’m frightened of that wicked place. If we do not trouble her, she won’t trouble us.

  The lights were dimming, as if the dream itself were going to sleep for the night. The hideous growling had returned, though. It made Ling shiver.

  “I want to know what’s inside. I need to know,” she said, despite her apprehension.

  “We’re just reversing our steps,” Henry agreed. He offered his hand, and Ling took it, and together they stepped across the threshold into the dark.

  “Why is it so cold?” Ling whispered, shivering as her breath came out in wispy puffs.

  “Don’t know,” Henry said, his teeth chattering slightly. There was something tomblike about the tunnel, as if he and Ling were trespassing on a private crypt, and Henry was relieved to see the station glowing up ahead. “Not too far.” Henry pointed to the distant circle of golden light. “See? ‘Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.’”

  “What nonsense are you talking now?” Ling tsked.

  “Peter Pan,” Henry said.

  “Just keep walking,” Ling said.

  Ling stumbled over something in the dark, and when she crouched down to see, the old bricks on the sides of the tunnel flickered, then steadied into a greenish glow, like a mercury-vapor lamp warming up.

  “Ling!” Henry whispered urgently, and Ling left whatever lay in the dirt to join him. They
drew closer to the wall and the glowing bricks. Something was happening inside the stones, like watching a little show on a nickelodeon screen.

  “Is there a film projector?” Henry said, looking around, but it was clearly coming from the wall itself. There were all sorts of stories playing out inside the glowing bricks: A little girl having a tea party with her parents. A soldier laughing around a table with his mates. A man waving to an adoring crowd.

  “What is this?” Ling said.

  Henry walked from one brick to another and then another, studying the images. “I think… I think these are other people’s dreams,” Henry whispered.

  Henry stepped back to take in the whole of the wall. It stretched up and up, glowing screens of dreams as far as he could see. From where he stood, the images reminded him of the circuitry in a vast machine, as if the snippets of lives they watched there were powering the entire dream world—the station; the train; the bayou, forest, and village where Ling and Henry played to their hearts’ content each night. But here and there, a brick would fade out, too, as if all the energy had been drained from it. As if those dreams had died and needed to be replaced by other dreams—more circuitry for the machine.

  Something caught Ling’s eye, and she put her face close to the brick to get a better look. Wide-eyed, she turned to Henry, motioning him over. “Do you see it?”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Her,” Ling whispered on a puff of cold breath.

  Henry got right up on the tunnel wall. In the corner of the flickering image was the veiled woman, watching the dream. She walked from brick to brick, from dream to dream, like a night watchman making sure the factory was safe. The surface of one of the bricks wobbled, as if there were a snag in the film. And in those shards of dark, Ling and Henry saw the nightmare twin of the man’s good dream. In it, he ran from a pack of inhuman creatures through the subway tunnels.

  “Hungry ghosts,” Ling said, looking at Henry with frightened eyes.

  Suddenly, all the bricks lit up, showing the same image: the veiled woman running into the tunnel, terrified, the bloody knife in her hand, as she crawled into the silent train car. And then there was nothing but darkness.

  A shrill, bestial scream echoed the length of tunnel.

  “What was…” Ling couldn’t finish. For down at the spot where they’d entered, a figure now appeared, a dark silhouette in a dress, drawing closer.

  “Henry…” Ling whispered.

  He nodded. “Start walking. We’re just reversing our steps.”

  Hand in hand, they walked toward the ring of light and the promise of the station at the end of it. But no matter how fast they walked, the station stayed just out of reach.

  “It keeps getting farther away,” Ling said. “Like it wants to keep us here.”

  Behind them, there was snarling and scratching in the dark.

  “I can wake you up. You know I can.”

  “Don’t you dare! We go together or not at all,” Ling said.

  “All right. I’m going to give you a suggestion, then. Let’s see if you can imagine us someplace else, in a different dream. Ling, why don’t you dream about… about…” His mind was blank. “Dream about the New Year! Dream about the lion dancers and moon cakes and fireworks.”

  Ling shut her eyes tight, but she was too frightened. Her mind couldn’t think of anything but those terrible sounds. It was like a swarm approaching. But a swarm of what?

  Henry cried out.

  “Henry?” Ling opened her eyes. Henry was nowhere to be seen. “Henry!”

  Ling was alone with whatever lurked in the dark.

  Henry came to on the floor of his room in the Bennington, the sheets tangled around his ankles, his heart pounding. He’d fallen out of bed, and it had been enough to wake him. Ling was still there in that terrible place. From where he lay, he could see the telephone on the side table in the hall, but the post-dream paralysis kept him anchored to the floor, counting down the seconds until he could move again.

  The swarm in the dark grew louder.

  Ling tried to run but stumbled, putting a hand to the wall to steady herself. The picture inside the stone was disrupted. One by one, the bricks showed the same image of the veiled woman’s face. Serrated teeth glinted beneath the netting. But it was the ghost’s dark eyes that unsettled her most—they were fixed on Ling’s.

  A soft ringing sounded in the tunnel, but it was drowned out by the hideous guttural whine. Glowing fingers pushed through the walls as if the tunnel were giving birth to a dozen nightmares at once.

  “Who dares disturb my dream?” The veiled woman drew closer. In her hand, a knife shone.

  Ling shook. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t tear them away from the things slithering out of the tunnel walls, and the queen leading them.

  Wake up, Ling thought. Please let me wake up.

  The soft ringing was mingled with the bestial noise. And then it rose above the din, becoming a brash, insistent alarm that surrounded Ling, capturing her full attention. Her body went heavy as the dream faded into a gray blankness.

  “Ohhh,” Ling moaned in her bed. Her body ached horribly, but she didn’t care. She had never before been so grateful to be awake.

  Through her closed bedroom door, she heard her mother complaining angrily. “A wrong number. I’d like to see whoever that was have his sleep ruined.…”

  Ling managed a weak smile. The telephone. That’s what had brought her back. Henry. Henry hadn’t left her.

  She looked down at her hand.

  The angry burn was still there.

  The sedan carrying the two men crept steadily along rain-drenched roads. Both men were of roughly the same height, neither too tall nor too short, too fat nor too slim. They were dressed in the same dark suits, pressed white shirts with starched collars, and deep gray fedoras pulled down snugly on heads of closely cropped hair that fell on the color spectrum somewhere between dun and dirt. They were unremarkable in appearance, men meant to disappear into their surroundings, leaving no trace of their ever having been. When they stepped into a store or a roadside cafe, the owners of these establishments would be hard-pressed to remember any details about them. The men were courteous. Kept to themselves. Paid the tab, left a tip, and did not make a mess. For the men were well acquainted with messes and the cleaning thereof.

  The men drove. Sometimes their drives took them to small towns in the middle of the country, to houses where anxious mothers listened to their questions and patted the hems of aprons gone gray with the years and from a lack of coins in the cookie tin.

  We’re simply following up on this article in the local paper about your neighbor’s son, the Diviner? When did he first exhibit these Diviner talents, as you say?

  Did you or anyone else see these ghosts?

  Have you ever heard him make mention of seeing a funny gray man in a stovepipe hat?

  No, I’m sure you’re not in any danger, but such people should be watched. You needn’t worry. We’ll take care of that. Just go on and live your normal life.

  But remain alert.

  Report anything suspicious.

  The windows of a roadside cafe smiled a golden welcome into the night.

  “Pie sounds good, Mr. Adams,” the driver said, angling off the road.

  “I do like pie, Mr. Jefferson,” the passenger replied.

  Inside, it was warm. A few locals bent their heads over plates of eggs and sandwiches, just a few islands of humanity, together in their aloneness. The men took their seats and blended in. The waitress poured two cups of hot black coffee and brought out plates of apple pie, and the men finished both. The cafe had a radio. A program burbled from the speakers, some girl preacher leading sinners to Jesus: “Let the Holy Ghost be your senator and your congressman.…”

  “You fellas from around here?” the waitress asked, clearing the empty plates and leaving the bill.

  “Not far.”

  “What line of work you in?”

&n
bsp; “We’re salesmen…” Mr. Adams glanced at the waitress’s name tag. “Hazel.”

  “Oh? Whatcha selling?”

  He smiled. “America.”

  “Would you fellas like more coffee for the road?” Hazel the waitress asked.

  Mr. Adams gave an apologetic smile. “I expect we should be moving on,” he said, taking on the vocal inflections of the locals in the cafe. Even speech patterns could give one away. “Thanks for the pie.”

  He paid the bill, tipped a dime, and stepped out into the brisk air with his partner. Dusk hung gnarled garlands of winter clouds over the rolling hills.

  “Telephoned Mr. Hamilton. He’ll confer with the Oracle,” Mr. Jefferson announced. He worked at his teeth with a toothpick.

  “Nifty. Let’s tend to that other business.”

  They drove the sedan to a less friendly part of town, down into a ravine where the long fingers of neon barely reached. The driver opened the trunk and hauled out the hog-tied girl, forcing her to her knees in the dirt. He removed her hood, and she took in shaky gulps of air, blinking at the unfamiliar surroundings. Her face was snot-and tear-streaked.

  “Wh-where are we?” she asked.

  Mr. Adams leaned against the back of the sedan. “We’re going to ask you again: Have you ever spoken to a creature of immense power, a gray-faced man in a stovepipe hat?”

  The girl shook her head. Fresh tears slid down both cheeks. “P-please, Mister. I was just playing at that card-reading business. I’m not a Diviner. I d-don’t know n-nothin’ about that.” She sniffled, unable to wipe her nose, and the snot ran free. “I just wanted somebody to pay attention to me.”

  Mr. Adams smiled. “And here we are. Attentive.”

  The girl started to sob. Sobs were an annoyance.

  “You’re absolutely certain you’re telling us the truth now?”

  The girl nodded violently.

  Mr. Adams let out a long, weary sigh. “Pity.”

  In the blinking white light of the roadside arrow—THIS WAY TO PARADISE!—the Shadow Man was rendered nearly gray, a shadow’s shadow, as he pulled on his leather gloves. He opened his case and selected a length of wire.