He heard Louis’s fiddle sawing away on “Rivière Rouge.” Gaspard ran toward the cabin and Henry followed. Dragonflies floated on the feathered edges of sunflowers. Birds chirruped their June song, for it was high summer. It would always be summer here, Henry knew. The old hickory steps creaked beneath the weight of his feet. He was back. He was home. The door opened in welcome.
There was a bed against the wall, and a small table with two chairs and a stool, where Louis sat, handsome as ever, the fiddle nestled under his stubbly chin. Shafts of sunlight poured through the windows, bathing Louis in a golden shimmer. He smiled at Henry. “Mon cher! Where you been?”
“I’ve been…” Henry started to answer but found he couldn’t quite remember where he’d been or what that other life was like, if it had been important or lonely, wonderful or awful. He had a vague feeling that he was angry with Louis. For the life of him, he couldn’t think why. It no longer mattered. All of it floated away the moment Louis crossed the sun-drenched floor to kiss him. It was the sweetest kiss Henry could recall, and it made him want another and another. Henry pulled Louis down onto the bed and snaked a hand up his shirt, marveling at the warmth of his lover’s skin.
“I will never leave you again,” Henry said.
Outside, the morning glories bloomed fat and purple and spread across the ground in a widening bruise.
“Did you find Evie?” Mabel asked as Sam stormed into the library, tossed his coat on the bear’s paw, and threw himself on the sofa.
“Yeah. Sorry, kid. We have to do this without her.”
“She’s not coming?” Jericho asked. He removed Sam’s coat from the bear and held it out to him, waiting patiently until Sam rose from the sofa, took the coat, and hung it properly in the closet.
“Remind me to give Evie a piece of my mind,” Mabel fumed.
“Save it,” Sam advised. “She doesn’t deserve any piece of you.”
There was a knock at the door, followed by a series of progressively more urgent knocks.
“I knew she’d come!” Mabel hurried down the hall and opened the door not to Evie but to a bedraggled Ling.
“Oh. If you’re here for the party, I’m afraid you’re early,” Mabel explained.
“I’m looking for Henry DuBois. I’m a friend of his. I tried his apartment, but he wasn’t answering. Then I remembered that the Diviners exhibit was opening tonight, and I hoped… Please, may I come in? It’s urgent—”
A taxi screeched to a halt at the curb and Theta jumped out, still in her stage makeup and costume. She tossed money at the cabdriver through the passenger window and shouted, “Keep the change!”
Memphis crawled out from the backseat, holding Henry in his arms.
“What’s the matter?” Mabel asked as they reached the steps.
“It-it’s Henry.” Theta sputtered, wild-eyed. “I came home and the metronome was going. He’s dream walking. But look—” Theta pointed to the faint red blisters forming on Henry’s neck. “I can’t wake him up. I think he’s got the sleeping sickness.”
Henry’s lips were parted; his eyelids twitched. Another mark bloomed on his skin.
“Should I call a doctor? Should I call my parents?” Mabel asked.
“A doctor won’t help. Neither will your parents,” Ling said. “It’s her. She’s got him. You’d better let me in.”
The angry wind howled at the windows and across the roof of the museum as Ling sat in the library among strangers while the dreaming Henry lay on the couch, precious minutes ticking by.
“My name is Ling Chan,” she started. “I’m a dream walker.”
“The other Diviner,” Mabel said.
Ling briefed everyone about her walks with Henry and all they’d seen and experienced there, from the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company to the strange loop they’d seen each time with the veiled woman. She told them, too, about the Proctor sisters’ revelations to Henry, and what she’d learned about the veiled woman haunting the site of her past and the dream machine she’d been building brick by brick, ghost by ghost, a grand architecture of illusion meant to keep painful memory at bay. “Henry is in trouble. He needs help. Our help.”
“I’m confused,” Mabel said. “Your friend Wai-Mae is actually a ghost, the veiled woman—they’re one and the same?”
Ling nodded.
“So she doesn’t even know she’s a ghost,” Mabel said, mulling it over. She looked to Theta. “It’s like what Dr. Jung talked about—the shadow self.”
Sam whistled. “That’s some shadow. Mine just makes me look taller.”
“She doesn’t really know what she’s doing,” Ling said.
“Horsefeathers!” Theta’s eyes glimmered. “That lie’s been around since Adam. She knows. Somewhere, deep down, she knows. I want her dead.”
“She’s already dead,” Sam said.
Theta glared.
Sam put up his hands in surrender. “Just making a point.”
“You said the station was for Beach’s pneumatic train? You’re sure?” Memphis asked.
“Yes,” Ling said.
“That mean something to you, Poet?”
Memphis reached into his coat for his poetry book. “Isaiah asked me about it. In fact, he even drew a picture of it. Isaiah’s my brother,” he explained to the others as he opened the book to Isaiah’s drawing of Beach’s pneumatic train and the glowing wraiths crawling out of the tunnel.
“That’s it,” Ling whispered. “That’s where we go each night. How did your brother…?”
“Isaiah’s got this gift. He can see glimpses of the future, like a radio picking up signals,” Memphis said, echoing Sister Walker’s words to him in her kitchen months before. Hadn’t she said she needed to talk to Memphis before she left? How he wished he’d taken her up on that offer. They’d certainly have plenty to talk about when she got back, and Octavia couldn’t stop him this time. “There’s something else I should tell you. You know that lady who survived the sleeping sickness, Mrs. Carrington?”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. Was in all the papers. She took a picture with Sarah Snow.”
Memphis took a deep breath. “I’m the one who really healed her.”
Ling looked up at Memphis. “You can heal?”
“Sometimes,” Memphis said gently. “But I’d never had a healing trance like that one. It was more like a dream than a trance. I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. And… I think I saw her. All I can say is that she had me sucked right in, so I believe you about her power.”
Sam sat up. “I’m trying to understand all this—”
“Don’t strain,” Jericho muttered.
“This ghost, Wai-Mae, or the veiled woman, or whoever she is, she can trap people inside dreams?” Sam finished.
“I think so,” Ling said. “From what Henry and I saw inside that tunnel, it seems that she gives them their best dreams, and as long as they don’t struggle, they stay there. If they fight it, their best dream turns into their worst nightmare.”
“But why does she do it?” Jericho asked.
“She needs their dreams. She feeds off them. They’re like batteries fueling her dream world. That’s why the sleeping sickness victims burn up from the inside. Because it’s too much. The constant dreaming destroys them.”
“What happens to those dreamers when they die?” Memphis asked, and the room fell silent.
“They can’t stop wanting the dream,” Ling said at last. “They’re insatiable. Hungry ghosts.”
“Monsters in the subways,” Memphis murmured.
Sam frowned at Memphis. “I don’t like where that’s headed. ‘Monsters in the Subways’ is not the title of a big, happy dance number.”
“Shut up, Sam,” Theta said. “Memphis, what is it?”
Memphis paced the same section of carpet. “Isaiah kept telling me about this bad dream he was having. About a lady making monsters in the tunnels. About ‘monsters in the subways.’ I thought he was making up a story so he wouldn’t get in t
rouble for drawing in my book. But I got a bad feeling he was telling the truth.”
“The disappearances,” Jericho said. “Missing people. It’s been in all the papers.”
“You think it’s all connected?” Mabel asked.
“I know it is,” Ling said.
Lightning flashed at the windows. A rumble of thunder followed.
“It’s been all around us. We just haven’t been paying attention,” Jericho said.
“Because it wasn’t happening to you,” Ling snapped.
“Yeah? You and Henry were happy to ignore it when it suited you,” Theta said coolly.
“You’re right,” Ling said. “Now that I know, I have to stop her.”
“Yeah? How you gonna do that?” Sam asked. “Ask her pretty please to stop killing people because it’s not nice? Somehow I don’t think she’s gonna be copacetic with that.”
Ling stared at her hands. “I don’t know, but I have to try. I’m going back into the dream world. I’m going to find Henry, and then I’ll face Wai-Mae.”
“What about those things in the tunnel—if they really exist, if Isaiah is right about that—your hungry ghosts?” Memphis asked. “How do we get rid of them?”
“At Knowles’ End, once Evie banished John Hobbes’s spirit, the ghosts of the Brethren disappeared, too,” Jericho said, breaking his silence on that topic. “Like they were an extension of him.” The room fell silent for a moment.
“You know for sure that’s the case here?” Sam asked at last.
“No,” Jericho admitted.
“Swell. Isn’t there some kinda ghost primer in this joint: Reading, Writing, ’Rithmetic, Ridding Yourself of Soul-Stealing Demons for Fun and Profit? Why isn’t there ever anything useful around here?”
Mabel handed Sam a watercress sandwich.
“Thanks, Mabes.”
“Bad death,” Ling murmured.
“What? Wha’ bad deaph?” Sam said around a mouthful of sandwich. “Don’t like the sound of that, either.”
“Wai-Mae said the ghost had a bad death. But we don’t know how she died. All we know is that our dream walk starts the same way each night: Wai-Mae runs past us toward Devlin’s Clothing Store. Beach’s pneumatic train station was built under Devlin’s Clothing Store on Broadway and Warren, near the City Hall station. There’s got to be something down there that’s important to her. But I don’t know what.”
On the Chesterfield, Henry’s fingers stiffened as he was caught in the net of dreaming. Two new burn marks appeared on his neck.
“Whatever you’re gonna do, let’s get started,” Theta said. “Please.”
Memphis put a hand on Henry’s arm. “I could try to heal him.”
Theta reached over and slipped her hand into Memphis’s. “She almost killed you last time.”
“But this time I won’t fall for her tricks.”
“No,” Ling said sharply. “You can’t protect yourself once you’re inside a dream. Anything can happen. You’ll be caught, just like Henry. It has to be me. I’m awake inside the dream. It’s different. I’ll go after Henry.”
“And what if that doesn’t work?” Jericho asked.
“It has to work.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” Jericho persisted.
Ling looked over at Henry. “We go into the tunnels. Find what’s so important to Wai-Mae that it keeps her here.”
Loud, haphazard pounding reverberated through the museum, as if someone was knocking and kicking the front door at the same time. And then a muffled voice yelled, “Hey! Lemme in! ’S freezing out here!”
“Evie!” Mabel said.
They opened the front door to see Evie leaning against the doorjamb. Her mascara was smudged and she reeked of gin.
“As promised, I should like to offer my services to the cause of this swell creepy-crawly party,” she said and gave a flourish of a bow, smacking her head. “Ow! Whennid you put in that wall?”
“Evil, are you blotto?” Theta demanded.
“Cerrrtainly not,” Evie mumbled. She blew out a gust of boozy air, lifting a curl from her forehead. “Well. Perhaps a soooo-sahn. That’s French. I know some French… avous.”
“Holy smokes,” Theta said, throwing her hands in the air. “Just what we need.”
Evie barged in, knocking a tray of poppet dolls from a side table onto the floor. “Uh-oh. Your poppets are pooped,” she said, giggling.
“Go home, Evie. We got enough trouble here,” Sam said, directing her back toward the door.
Evie wobbled around him. “Unhand me, fiancé!”
“I am not your fiancé. It was a publicity stunt, remember?”
“Right,” Evie said, nearly swallowing the word.
“Your engagement isn’t real?” Jericho said.
Evie peered up at Jericho and quickly averted her eyes. “I can assure you that the feelings Sam Sergei Lloyd Lubovitch has for any girl are nothin’ but an act.”
Evie stumbled a bit, and Jericho caught her. He kept his arm around her shoulders. “I’ve got you.”
Mabel took it all in, a weight in her stomach. “I’ll make coffee,” she said dully and walked the long hall back to the kitchen.
“I have not missed this joint,” Evie announced as she tottered down the hall toward the library. She swilled from her flask, dribbling gin down her chin and onto the front of her dress. “Oops. The Sweetheart Seer did not see that coming.”
Sam replaced her flask with a cup. “Drink this.”
Evie turned doleful eyes to him. “Why you do this? What’d I ever do to you?” She took a sip and grimaced. “Tastes like water.”
“It is water.”
“You know what the trouble with this water is? There’s no gin in it,” she said, shoving the cup back at him. “Say, I thought this was a party! Where is everybody?” Evie said, twirling around unsteadily. She stopped when she saw Ling. “How do you do,” she said, moving toward Ling, her hand outstretched. “I’m Evangeline O’Neill.”
“I know who you are,” Ling said.
“Evie, this is Henry’s friend Ling Chan, the other dream walker I told you about,” Theta said.
“Right. Dream walker.” Evie slapped the chair. “Ever’body an’ his uncle’s a Diviner! ’S gettin’ crowded.”
“Pipe down, Evil, or I swear I’ll deck you,” Theta said.
“We have to do it tonight. At once,” Ling warned them, steering them back to the crisis at hand.
“Tonight?” Mabel said.
“We can’t wait,” Ling said. “It has to be now, before she draws him in any deeper.”
“What’s goin’ on?” Evie asked. “’S this a party game?”
“We got ghost trouble,” Sam said. “That sleeping sickness? It’s caused by a ghost.”
Evie shook her head vehemently. “No. Not again. Can I tell you a secret? I don’t like ghosts very much. They are terrible people.”
Memphis let out a low whistle, shaking his head.
Theta’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s got Henry, Evil.”
For the first time, Evie noticed Henry lying on the Chesterfield, still and pale. “Henry. Sweet Henry.”
“We’d better get started, Freddy,” Sam said.
Jericho ripped a piece of bedsheet from part of the exhibit and painted a sign in thick letters—CANCELED—then hung it across the museum’s front doors. “Getting awfully windy out there,” he said.
“Ling, how long should I set the alarm for?” Theta asked, adjusting the clock’s arm.
“Two hours. I don’t think it’s wise to be under longer than that. And I’ll need Henry’s hat,” Ling said.
Theta put Henry’s weathered boater in Ling’s hand, then sat down beside Henry, stroking his forehead. “We’re coming for you, Hen.”
Ling began removing her braces so that she could be comfortable. She noticed Jericho watching her intently, and her cheeks flamed. “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t stare.”
Jericho blanched. “
It’s not what you think.”
“Infantile paralysis,” Ling said brusquely. “Since you seem so curious.”
“I know,” Jericho said, so low and quiet he could barely be heard above the thunder. He draped a blanket over Ling. “Comfortable?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Go get our boy, Ling. Bring him back safe,” Theta said.
Ling nodded. Mabel put the clock on the table, and Ling listened to its steady tick-tock , wishing it were a comfort. She cradled Henry’s hat to her chest. With her other hand, she gripped the feather, a reminder of the battle to be fought. Then she inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and waited for the most important dream walk of her life.
Ling woke on the now familiar streets of old New York. But this part of the dream no longer had the same energy and color as before. When the wagon clopped past, it was little more than a suggestion of a man and a horse. Alfred Ely Beach’s voice ebbed in the fog: “Come… marvel… be amazed… the future…”
The entire scene was like a worn memory fading away to nothing.
For a moment, Ling worried that she wouldn’t be able to reach Henry at all. There was a muffled cry—“Murder!”—and a few seconds later, the veiled woman sprinted past, her presence so minimal it opened just the slightest wobbling space in the wall. Ling dove in quickly after her, praying it wouldn’t close as she attempted her pass. Without Henry at her side, the walk through the ghostly underground was dark and lonely and frightening. But Ling couldn’t waver now. At last, she reached the train station. It was aglow and welcoming, as if expecting her, but Ling took no comfort from it now that she knew the source of its making. Ling plinked a key on the piano.
“Henry?” she called. “Henry? It’s Ling. I’m coming for you.”
The train’s lamp blazed in the dark, announcing its arrival, and then Ling was on board, alone, traveling back to the private dream world and Wai-Mae.
When Ling arrived in the meadow, she found Wai-Mae sitting in the grass near the dogwood tree they’d made, singing happily to herself, and for just a moment, Ling’s resolve ebbed. Wai-Mae wore the jeweled headpiece of a royal concubine, like one of her beloved romantic opera heroines. Seeing Ling, she smiled. “Hello, sister! How do you like it?” she said, turning her head left and right to show off the headpiece with pride.