Lair of Dreams

  The room seemed to come to a point on the stage. Ling’s chest squeezed tight, as if someone were wringing the air from her lungs. She stared at the painted scene, barely comprehending what she saw: Golden hills. A meadow of colorful flowers. Bright sunshine. The red roofs of a Chinese village and a mist-shrouded forest.

  Just as Ling had seen them every night in her dream with Wai-Mae.

  They had the most beautiful opera there. I escape to it in my mind whenever I need to.

  All of Ling’s uneasy questions shifted into chilling answers: Wai-Mae was waiting for them when they arrived each night. She was never in the station or up above on the streets outside Devlin’s, as Ling and Henry were. When Ling had asked about the dreamscape, what had Wai-Mae said? I made it. She’d talked about Mulberry Bend and Bandit’s Roost, which were nothing more than blighted memories of Five Points, a slum wiped away and replaced by the greenery of Columbus Park. And then there were O’Bannion and Lee. The matchmakers who Wai-Mae insisted were bringing her over had been dead and gone for fifty years. Murdered in 1875. Murder! Murder! Oh, murder! They’d been murdered by the girl in the veil.

  The clues had been there for them all along. George had tried to make her see them. In the tunnel, he’d told her to wake up. He’d wanted her to know about the ghost, to see who it really was.

  And who had warned them against going inside the tunnel? Wai-Mae. Wai-Mae was the ghost.

  But what if some part of Wai-Mae didn’t know that? What if the dream was her way of fighting that knowledge? Ling needed to talk to Henry, desperately. She wished he weren’t drunk. He’d been so upset about Louis… because Louis never showed up.

  Louis, too, never appeared aboveground, Ling realized. Like Wai-Mae, he was always waiting for them in the dream world, shimmering in the sun. Shimmering. Ling’s head went light as she realized at last what had been poking at her these past few days. It was Henry’s comment about the hat. She’d thought it was his. But it had been Louis’s first.

  She’d told Henry from the start: She could only find the dead.

  A chorus of police whistles shrilled in the streets. They were answered by loud sirens. Through the windows, Ling saw a herd of police marching up Doyers Street.

  “What’s happening?” Ling asked.

  “Shhh.” Uncle Eddie turned off the lights and they kept watch at the windows. Across the way, the police battered down the door of an apartment building. There was shouting as people were forced outside and into police wagons. A truck with a searchlight mounted on its back slunk around the narrow curve. Its white-hot sweep illuminated frightened faces peeking out from behind curtained windows. Two men attempted to escape from an apartment window onto a second-floor balcony. They were met on the fire escape by policemen with clubs at the ready. Police were everywhere in the streets, whistles blowing, as they rounded up the citizens of Chinatown. Many weren’t going willingly, some shouting, “You cannot treat us this way. We are human beings!” A man’s voice came over a megaphone in English telling everyone not to move, that this was a raid.

  Ling spied Lucky moving in the shadows. He was making a run for the opera house through the chaos on the streets. Uncle Eddie spirited him inside, and he and Ling waited for the Tea House waiter to catch his breath.

  “The mayor has issued a full quarantine,” Lucky managed to tell them. “They’re taking us to a detainment camp.”

  “Where are my parents?” Ling pleaded.

  “Your father told me to go quickly out the back and come to you. I barely escaped.”

  “Is Baba all right?” Ling begged.

  Lucky hung his head. “I am sorry, Ling. They took your father. He couldn’t find his papers.”

  “I will go to the Association and see what I can find out from the lawyers,” Uncle Eddie said, racing for his coat and hat.

  “They’ll take you, too, Uncle,” Lucky said.

  “So be it. I won’t wait like a dog.”

  Lucky nodded at Ling. “Mr. Chan wanted to make sure they didn’t get Ling.”

  Ling was torn. She wanted to go with Uncle Eddie, to be with her mother and father. But she also needed to get to Henry and tell him what she’d come to realize about the dream world.

  “Uncle?” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “You must wait here,” Uncle Eddie said, opening the costume wardrobe. “I’ll come back for you once I’ve spoken to the Association.” He helped Ling climb inside. She sat on the floor of the closet, cradling her crutches, hidden under a mound of heavy costumes. “You’ll be safe in here,” her uncle said and shut the door.

  But Ling knew she wasn’t safe anywhere. Not when people could hate the very idea of you. Not when there were ghosts in your dreams. Ling shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of her neighbors being taken away in the night. She held her breath as the police broke into the darkened opera house and searched it. They opened the wardrobe but, seeing nothing but a rack of costumes, closed it again and left. For what seemed like an eternity, Ling lay on the floor of the wardrobe, feeling the cramps in her legs. When it was quiet, she let herself out. For a moment she stood, not knowing what to do or where to go. Then, quite decisively, she yanked a pearl and a pheasant feather from the headpiece of the Dao Ma Dan, hoping her uncle would forgive her for it, and shoved both objects deep into her pocket. She peeked through a crack in the opera-house doors and, seeing no one, let herself out, watching for police as she walked the eerily empty streets of Chinatown, which reminded her once more of her dream. Stifling a sob, Ling sneaked into the Tea House, stepping over broken dishes on her way to the telephone directory, where she found the address for the Bennington. She grabbed Henry’s hat, placing it on her head.

  Then, keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the El for the long ride uptown.

  The wind had picked up in advance of the predicted nor’easter. It whipped at the hand-painted banner Mabel and Jericho had hung above the museum’s front doors so that it appeared to spell out TIGHT! DIVERS BIT! Inside, Jericho and Mabel put the finishing touches on the Diviners exhibit. Mabel arranged the small triangles of watercress sandwiches she’d made on silver trays she’d borrowed from the Bennington’s dining room while Jericho put the last of the exhibit’s cards in place.

  “Looks nice,” Mabel said, coming to stand beside him.

  “It does at that,” Jericho agreed. “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Mabel. Thank you.”

  You’re right, she thought. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Sam arrived, shaking the damp from his coat. “Getting ugly out there.”

  “I hope it doesn’t keep people away,” Mabel fretted. “You look swell, Sam.”

  “Thanks, Mabel. So do you. Where’s Evie?”

  “I thought she was coming with you!” Mabel said.

  Sam was half out of his coat. With a sigh, he shrugged it back on and buttoned up. He swiped a sandwich triangle from a tray and stuffed it into his mouth. “Keep the exhibit on ice. I’ll be back with the guest of honor.”

  “You know where she is?” Mabel asked, rearranging the hole left by Sam’s sandwich grab.

  “I got a pretty good idea.”

  A short while later, Sam burst into the speakeasy beneath the Winthrop, threading quickly through the crowd. A knot of soused revelers bent over a fountain where someone had dropped a small hammerhead shark into the water. It lurked in the shallows, lost, as the partiers pointed and laughed. Evie held court at a table full of fashionable swells, men and women of facile smiles and fickle allegiances who seemed to be eating up every elocution-perfected word out of her mouth. The man sitting too close to her interrupted, spinning out a story that Sam was certain was a bore. He marched over and tapped Evie on the shoulder.

  “Why, hello, Sam,” Evie said too brightly, and Sam knew she was halfway to drunk already.

  “Evie, can I have a word?”

  “See here, old boy, can’t this wait?” an older man with a thin mustache broke in. “Bertie w
as just telling us the most amusing story about—”

  “I’m sure it’s a real knee-slapper, pal. I might need to go make out a will in the event I die of laughter. Evie, a word?”

  “Well, I never,” one of the girls tutted.

  “Doubtful,” Sam shot back.

  Sensing trouble, Evie hopped up with a blithe “Keep my seat warm and my drink cold, darlings!” and followed Sam to a corner. Her beaded dress had come unstrung and she trailed tiny glass beads like an exotic, molting bird. “What’s the big idea, Sam? Why were you so rude to my friends?”

  “Those are not your friends. Your real friends are wondering where you are. Did you forget?”

  Evie’s blank expression told him that she had.

  “The Diviners exhibit party at the museum. It’s tonight. You’re the guest of honor.”

  Evie bit her lip and rubbed at her forehead. “Honestly, Sam. I can’t tonight.”

  “Why? You sick?”

  Sam pressed his lips to Evie’s forehead, and Evie’s stomach fluttered.

  “No. But I… it was a bad show, Sam. Very bad.”

  “You’ll have a better show next time.”

  “No. You don’t understand,” Evie mumbled.

  “I understand that you promised, Evie.”

  “I know. I know I did. And I’m sorry. Truly, I am. But I—I can’t.”

  Sam crossed his arms. “Why not?”

  “I just can’t. That’s all. Oh, excuse me!” Evie called, flagging down a passing waiter. “Could you be an absolute darling and get me another Juice of the Venus de Milo?”

  “Certainly, Miss O’Neill.”

  “Do you know why they call it that? Because after two, you can’t feel your arms,” Evie said, trying for a smile though her head ached and her soul was weary. And now she was letting everybody down. Well, they’d get past it. It would all go fine without her. She couldn’t face all those people at the museum, not after tonight’s show. She could barely face Sam. He was staring at her with something bordering on contempt that pierced through the alcoholic fog she’d been sinking herself into for the past few hours.

  “Is this all you want?” Sam asked bitterly. “A good time?”

  “You’re one to talk!”

  “I like a good time. But not all the time.” He held her gaze.

  Evie blushed. “If you came here just to get a rise out of me, mission accomplished. You can scram.”

  “Your friends are counting on you.”

  “Their mistake,” Evie whispered. “You want me to go back to that museum? To talk about ghosts? You weren’t there in that house with that… that thing. You don’t know how it was!” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she spat out the words. “Ask Jericho. He knows. He understands what it was like.”

  She wanted to wound now, and Sam’s flinch registered as one more sin she’d hate herself for come morning, but now that her tongue was loose, she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out.

  “I can see those… hideous beasts coming out of the burning walls. I hear Naughty John telling me—warning me—about my own brother! He knew about James, Sam. When I stand still, I see all of it. So I don’t stand still, and I certainly don’t go looking for more. And every night before bed, I pray for those pictures to go out of my head. When the prayers don’t work, I ask the gin to do it.”

  Evie could feel a headache threatening. She’d let Sam lead her to this. That was her mistake.

  “I’m sorry I’m not Jericho,” Sam said coolly.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” Evie mumbled.

  “That include last night?”

  Evie didn’t answer.

  “Evie, my dear!” a mustachioed gentleman called to Evie from the periphery. “You’re missing all the fun!”

  “Don’t you dare start without me!” she shouted, wiping away tears with her knuckles.

  With her smudged eyes and her dainty red Cupid’s bow lips, Evie reminded Sam of a sparkling party favor on the cusp of New Year’s, just this side of discarded. The comment about Jericho had hurt. Badly. He tried to swallow it down. “Evie,” he said, taking gentle hold of her hand. “The party can’t go on forever.”

  Evie looked up at Sam, defiant but slightly pleading, too. Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Why not?”

  She pulled her hand free of Sam’s grasp, and he let her go, watching as she ran headlong toward the hedonistic throng.

  As Henry stepped into the tunnel, he was aware of vague shapes in the dark above, and he knew these creatures traveled between worlds—supernatural and natural, dream and reality. Glowing eyes watched his every step. Those same shapes sniffed the air around him, taking in his scent, but for some reason they didn’t follow, and Henry stepped out into the forest and made his way to the bayou, calling Louis’s name. But when he got to the cabin, everything was gray and dull. No sunlight on the river. No smoke coming from the chimney. No sweet music to greet him. He peeked into the cabin’s windows, but it was too dark to see. When he tried to open the door, his hand moved through it like water. A thread of panic wove itself into Henry’s heart.

  “Louis Rene Bernard—you better answer me, dammit!” Henry kicked at a tree, but it was like kicking at air. He slumped down on the still-solid ground and let himself cry angry tears.

  “Henry?”

  At the sound of Wai-Mae’s voice, Henry startled. She stood just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Her dress wavered between states, shifting from an old-fashioned gown to her usual plain tunic. Everything about her seemed ephemeral.

  “Is Ling with you?” Wai-Mae asked.

  “No. I came by myself. I needed… I need to find Louis. To ask him why he didn’t come to the station today. I waited all day. He never showed.”

  Wai-Mae stepped over the threshold into the dead grass. Her cheeks were pale, but her eyes sparkled. “Poor Henry. You want to be with him very much, don’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s all I want.”

  Wai-Mae put her hands on the lifeless Spanish elm. Where she touched the tree, it blossomed. “It takes so much energy to make dreams.”

  She ran a hand through the grass. It sparked with color and spread all the way to the river, a rippling carpet of green. “To make things the way you wish.” Wai-Mae exhaled—three short, fierce breaths—and the air filled with birdsong and dragonflies and blue sky. Slowly, the bayou dreamscape came to life, like a carousel starting up. “To keep the hurt out.”

  Wai-Mae stared back at the tunnel, frowning. “Sometimes, I—she—remembers. She remembers that they promised her everything—a husband, a home, a new life in a new country—only to break her heart. But they can’t stop her dream now. She wants to help you, Henry. Yes,” Wai-Mae said, blinking, as if she’d just remembered something very important that had been lost for some time. “She wants me to help you be with Louis. Do you want to see him?”

  Henry felt woozy. The dream blurred around the edges. “Yes,” he said.

  From inside her dress, Wai-Mae took out a music box. “What would you give to see him again? To have your dream?”

  Dreams. That was what Henry had been living on for most of his life. Never really here, always somewhere in his mind. He was as much of a dream walker awake as he was asleep. He didn’t want to think anymore.

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then dream with me,” Wai-Mae said, offering the music box.

  Henry turned the little crank of the music box. The tinny song drifted out and Henry whisper-sang along. “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. Starlight and dewdrops are waiting… f-for thee.…”

  The alcohol and the exhaustion took hold. As the song played, Henry thought of all he had lost: The loving, strong parents he’d longed for but knew were nothing more than a child’s wish. The easy way things used to be with Theta. The music inside him that he’d never finish, never put out into the world as his story. He cried for poor, sweet Gaspard and those summer-still nights at Celeste’
s, the boys with their arms flung carelessly over each other’s slender shoulders. Most of all, Henry cried for Louis. How could Louis have left him like that? How were you supposed to go on if you knew love was that fragile?

  “Forget.” Wai-Mae kissed Henry’s cheek. “Forget,” she said, and kissed the other. She raised the dagger high. “Forget.”

  Sweetly, she kissed his lips, and then she plunged the slim blade into Henry’s chest, just above his heart. Henry gasped from pain, and she breathed her dream into his open mouth. It flowed into Henry, siphoning away his memory and cares and will, along with his life. For a moment Henry thought about fighting back, but it all seemed inevitable, like finally giving in to drowning after a fruitless, exhausting swim. Already the iciness was spreading through his veins, weighting his limbs, filling him with an aching hunger that could only be fed by more dreams. Henry felt as if he were falling into a deep, deep well. The music-box song came to him, distorted and slow. As his eyes fluttered, he could see glimpses of those radium-bright, broken creatures watching him from the dark.

  They opened their mouths—“dreamwithusdreamdreamdream”—and their din swelled as it joined the song, a discordant lullaby.

  The fight left Henry. The dream army advanced. Henry closed his eyes and fell deep.

  A dog’s insistent barking woke him. Henry opened his eyes to blue skies sponged with shimmering pink-white clouds. He felt as if he’d been sleeping for ages. The prickly points of grass blades scratched against his arms and neck where he lay; his surroundings smelled of warm earth and river, sweet clover and Spanish moss. Another bark caused him to turn his head to the right. In the tall green grass, an excited, puppyish Gaspard snuffled closer. He smeared Henry’s cheek with his slobbery tongue.

  “Gaspard. Hey, boy.” Henry sat up and buried his face in the dog’s velvety fur. Down the dirt path, smoke puffed from the cabin’s chimney. Henry could smell it now. Woodsy and sweet, it burned the back of his throat just right. A pot of jambalaya was on. Henry could almost taste the spicy roux.