Don’t you cry or I’ll give you something to cry about.
The undead’s stinking, dangerous mouth was close.
On the bed. Him on top. Her mouth bloody. Blood in her nose. Close to choking.
With a cry, Theta put up a hand, a barrier between herself and the thing that wanted only to infect her with the shared dream, to stay alive any way it could, to break her as it was broken. Its skin was soft and oily against the thin cotton of her glove, like rotting fruit. Theta gagged, vomiting a little in her mouth. The itching under her skin caught, like gas finding flame at a stove burner. The temperature inside Theta rose. Rivulets of sweat poured down her body. The heat raced along her nerve endings, shooting out to her hand. The thing screeched as Theta burned it. It lashed and shook as it burned down to bone.
“Theta!” Sam said sharply. And then, more gently, “Theta, let go.”
She opened her eyes and saw Sam. The fabric of her glove had burned away, and in some places, it was embedded in her flesh. She gripped a scrap of the thing’s shirt. Sam pried it loose and dropped it, leaving it to float on the water. He examined her hands. They were red and blistered.
“Gonna need to see to those,” Sam said. “You hurting?”
“Not yet,” Theta said.
“We have to get up to the street, Theta.”
The water. It was up to Theta’s chest. She nodded, shivering. The earlier heat had gone, and now she felt as if she would never be warm again. “Sam? Please. Don’t… don’t tell Memphis.”
Sam glanced down at the digger’s hat bobbing in the sewer’s water current. He looked back at Theta. “I didn’t see nothing.”
The way they’d come crackled with light like a dozen gangsters firing Tommy guns from a moving car at night. Shrieks bounced off the walls. More were coming.
“Time to go,” Sam said.
Theta waded through the filthy water and climbed up the ladder, wincing as the pain bit at her burned palms. And then she and Sam were sliding the manhole cover off, pulling themselves up onto the neon-painted puddles of Broadway and running for the graveyard.
Ling found herself on the barren streets of Chinatown. Fog clung to the rippling New Year’s banners and the zigzag fire escapes. There were no lights at the windows, and the businesses were shuttered. Big yellow quarantine notices had been stuck to every door. The windows of the Tea House were dark. The rest of the city loomed as a distant silhouette, shadowy and unreachable.
Where is everyone? Ling didn’t know if she’d thought that or said it aloud. Her mind was as cloudy as the streets. But her body was tense, alert, ready for some impending battle.
A ship’s horn blasted a farewell, and through a clearing in the fog, Ling could see to the harbor and the great big steamer sailing away, her parents and Uncle Eddie at the stern, crowded in among Ling’s neighbors, all of them waving good-bye. Her sorrowful mother fluttered her handkerchief. Her father’s mouth moved, but Ling couldn’t hear what he was saying as the fog swallowed them up.
“Baba! Mama!” Ling cried, and it echoed in the empty streets.
The high shimmer of a gong rattled the windowpanes. Zhangu drums beat out a steady warning of war. The heavy pounding matched the furious rhythm of Ling’s heartbeat. And just under the drums, rising, was a high-pitched, insectlike whine that made Ling’s skin crawl.
Glowing faces appeared at the windows and receded. Ling whirled around. At the bottom of the street, George Huang waited. He seemed carved of chalk. Lips as colorless as new corn twitched around a diseased mouth. Deep fissures erupted on his face, neck, and hands, his skin cracking open as if he were rotting from the inside. George’s mouth opened in a shriek. For a moment, Ling couldn’t think. She could only stare at the pale figure of George Huang, that thing between life and death, as his fingers reached toward her, clutching and straightening like a puppet’s. Then he dropped to a crouch and skittered up the side of the building like a fast-moving beetle.
Run, a voice inside her said faintly. Run. How to run? Why had her body forgotten this simple movement? Run. When she looked down, the street was a river of pitch. Slick hands emerged from the sticky ooze. They grabbed at her ankles. Ling gasped as the braces appeared on her legs, the buckles tightening and tightening. She cried out, and suddenly the dream shifted and Ling lay on a hospital bed, her back arching with pain as spasms ate away at her legs, the muscles dying.
Two neat lines of beds flanked the room, stretching as far as Ling could see, all of them occupied by dreamers. They sat up and turned their rotting faces to her, chorusing, “Dream with us dream with us dream forever dream with us dream dream forever dream.”
Uncle Eddie was beside her, his expression grim as he read her medical chart. “They never should’ve done it,” he said, placing the chart on the bed. The words swam: Subject #28. New York, New York.
Another spasm gripped Ling and she cried out in agony. A nurse swept the curtain around them. She bent her face close to Ling’s. “Would you like the pain to end?”
“Y-yes,” Ling begged.
“Then dream with us.”
Through a parting in the curtain, George appeared, and Ling’s mouth tried to form the words to warn the nurse, to say look, look, ohpleaselook behind you, but the words could only bounce around inside her head.
The hospital lights arced. In the flashes of light, George’s eyes shone bright as a demon’s.
“George. I’m sorry. Please. Please,” Ling whispered.
He looked at her for just a second as if he knew her. Then his mouth spread wide, the muscles of his neck straining as if he were trying to birth something from his throat. His fingers, wrinkled as funeral crepe, reached toward her, lighting first on her medical chart.
Don’t look, Ling told herself. Don’t look and it won’t be real. The insect drone was so loud Ling thought she’d lose her mind. And then there was silence. When Ling opened her eyes again, George was gone.
Words had been scrawled on her medical chart: “Don’t promise. Pearl.”
Ling heard her name being called. It sounded as if it were coming from another room, an adjacent dream.
“Ling! Ling Chan, where are you?”
“Henry!” Ling called.
Henry swept the curtain aside. He clutched the fabric as if it were the only thing holding him up.
“Henry? Are you really here?”
Henry managed a half smile. “It would seem so,” he said, and even his voice was weak.
“How did you find me?”
“If I were guessing, I’d say you came after me.” Henry took several shallow breaths. “I’d say you’re somewhere right now, sleeping with my hat in your hands.”
“Yes,” Ling said, remembering. “Yes.”
Henry stumbled to the bed. Red marks dotted his neck. “Ling. It’s time for a different dream now.”
“I can’t. I can’t. The pain.”
“You’re not feeling any pain, darlin’. That’s just a bad dream. You can wake up in your bed anytime you like.”
“No. We have to go back. Back to the tunnel. Wai-Mae. We have to end it.”
“All right, then.” Henry took Ling’s hand. “Why don’t you dream about the tunnel, Ling? You know the one I mean. And you and I are both there. We are both there.”
Henry’s words swirled through Ling’s head. She relaxed, and the hospital dream fell away. Ling was back inside the tunnel. The bricks glowed brightly with dreams trapped in service to the great machine of forgetting. Henry lay on the ground, weak and pale.
“Henry?” Ling whispered.
Bells. The lilting notes of a tinny music-box song. The rustle of blood-stiffened skirts. She was coming.
“Do it,” Henry said.
Ling’s body still ached. She hadn’t much strength. If she was going to defeat Wai-Mae, she needed to get on top of the pain and change the dream as she had learned to do under Wai-Mae’s tutelage.
Breathe deeply.
Concentrate.
One thi
ng at a time.
Wai-Mae blazed in the dark. “What are you doing, Little Warrior?”
Ling didn’t answer. She directed every bit of her mental energy to changing her legs back. But it wasn’t working.
“Do you think it was you who changed the dream all those times? No. That was my power, not yours.”
“No. I did it. I felt it.”
“I only allowed you to think it was your doing. So you would be happy. So you would come back to me.”
The courage Ling had carried into the dreamscape ebbed. It was like the day she learned she would never run again, never walk without those ugly braces. Once again, her choices had been taken from her without her consent. She felt the unfairness of it like a punch.
“You can choose to be happy.” Wai-Mae moved a hand across the entrance to the tunnel, and the surface came alive with new wonders: Ling in a beaded gown, dancing the Charleston on strong, sturdy legs. Ling standing before a mesmerized crowd at Jake Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition as he demonstrated her advance in atomic science. Ling shaking hands with Jake Marlowe himself while her parents looked on, so proud—all of it so close Ling felt she could reach out and grab these dreams in her fist.
“Or you can choose to be unhappy.” The surface clouded. The image disappeared. In its place was a new picture, of Ling struggling to walk over New York’s bumpy streets while people stared. Ling sitting at the back of her father’s restaurant behind the teak screen, alone.
“Turn away from the world, sister,” Wai-Mae said gently. “Stay and dream with me. If we take that one”—she nodded toward Henry—“we will have so much power. Enough for many, many dreams. Soon, the other world will open for us. The King of Crows is coming. He will—”
A loud thwack reverberated in the tunnel as Henry smashed a rock against one of the brick screens. His whole body trembled, but he reached down deep, and with a cry, he smacked the rock against the wall again, cracking the screen. The energy inside it swooshed out on a tail of light that swirled around, then dispersed into the dark. Wai-Mae faltered a bit. Henry went to smash another, but he could barely lift his arm.
“You have no honor!” Wai-Mae grasped Henry’s head between her palms. “I will make you suffer as I suffered.”
“Wai-Mae, stop! Stop and… and I will dream with you,” Ling promised.
Wai-Mae released Henry, and he again fell to the ground. Sick and hurting, he made a feeble swipe at Wai-Mae’s ankle, but she stepped easily out of the way.
“Will you dream with me?” Wai-Mae trailed fingertips lightly down Ling’s arm, and in the gesture were both terror and desire, a coin twirled on a bargaining table the moment before coming to rest in judgment. “Will you promise?”
Don’t promise. Pearl.
Ling reached into her pocket. Nothing.
Pearl, she thought. Pearl. A spark flared at her fingertips. It tripped up her hand. She could feel the pearl taking shape, round and hard and real.
“Will you dream with me?” Wai-Mae asked, more insistent. “Will you promise?”
“Ling…” Henry warned. “Don’t.”
Ling brought her hands to her mouth as if in prayer. Then she motioned Wai-Mae closer with a finger. Wai-Mae dropped down; her face hovered near Ling’s.
“I. Will.” Ling brought her mouth to Wai-Mae’s. “Not!”
Quickly, Ling pressed her lips to Wai-Mae’s. She loosed the pearl she’d just slipped beneath her tongue. Wai-Mae’s eyes widened in surprise. Her fingers fanned at her throat.
“Take… it… out,” Wai-Mae growled.
Ling shook her head. Henry crawled to Ling’s side. The tunnel wobbled, erasing itself. As it did, the dream world also began unraveling. Pine needles browned and fell. The forest thinned to sticks. The flowers of the meadow sank back into grass that flattened to nothing. For a moment, they were aboveground, on the streets of Five Points. Firecrackers exploded in the sky, brief pops of hope above the sagging rooftops.
“No,” Wai-Mae croaked, trembling. She struggled to breathe. Two tears streaked down her cheeks. “This… will all die with me. No more. Without dreams is to die twice.”
They were back in the old train station. Light crackled up the walls and along the expanse of ceiling like shorted electrical wires. And then the station began to curl in on itself, a dream unwritten, something to be forgotten by the banal blur of morning.
“Please…” Wai-Mae begged.
For a moment, Ling’s courage wavered. She looked to Henry. “Can’t we save her?”
“We are saving her,” he reminded her.
Wai-Mae glowed, a star brightening before death. Bright rays fractured her body, a violent birth, an inevitable collapse. And then there was an explosion of white light, shooting out across the dreamscape. Henry and Ling shielded each other and shut their eyes against its brilliance.
In the graveyard of Trinity Church, Memphis and Evie dug at the muddy earth to make a shallow grave. She swiped a filthy, wet arm across her equally sopping brow.
“Where are they?” she called over the rain.
“I’m sure they’ll be here any second,” Memphis answered, but he sounded nervous. “Best thing we can do is to keep digging.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Evie groused.
“Memphis!” Theta came tearing around the corner of New York’s oldest church with Sam right behind her.
Memphis leaped up and embraced her. “I was so worried about you.”
“We ran into a little trouble with a fella who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Sam said.
“One of those things had you cornered?” Memphis said.
Theta nodded.
“How’d you get away?” Memphis reached for Theta’s hands and she cried out. Memphis saw the weeping flesh there. “Theta! How’d you get these burns?”
“I-I…”
“It was a steam pipe,” Sam said with a quick glance at Theta. “Let’s just get these bones into hallowed ground and give ’em a proper burial.”
Sam, Evie, and Memphis dug furiously until they’d managed a decent hole.
“Good enough, you think, Memphis?” Sam asked.
“I say it’s good enough,” Evie insisted.
“Then here goes nothing,” Sam said, rocking back on his heels and breathing heavily.
Memphis and Theta lowered Wai-Mae’s skull and remaining bones into the shallow grave, then Memphis packed the dirt over it with hands made cold by the wet and the chill in the air.
“I don’t know about Chinese rituals. But it seems as if we oughta say a prayer of some kind,” Memphis said.
“What kinda prayer do you say to get rid of a ghost?” Theta asked.
“I surely don’t know. But I expect a prayer of any kind is better than none.”
All of them bowed their heads except for Sam.
“Sam?” Evie nudged him with an elbow.
“Trust me: If God exists, he’ll know I’m faking it.”
Memphis kneeled in the mud. He placed one hand on the grave. “Be at peace, restless spirit,” he whispered. He felt the tiniest jolt, a fraction of connection, and then it was gone.
“Is that it? Did we do it?” Theta asked.
Sam shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the ghost expert. Is anything trying to kill us?”
Under the shadow of Trinity Church’s great gothic spire, they huddled together in the rain, listening for the hungry wraiths and hearing nothing but the drops and the sudden comfort of the city’s horns and irritable shouts and constant hum of noise.
“I think we did it,” Memphis said with both relief and awe.
“Let’s go back to the museum,” Theta said, teeth chattering. “I want to know if Henry’s all right.”
“Let me see those hands first,” Memphis said.
“Poet…”
“Theta.”
Reluctantly, Theta held out her raw palms. Memphis took them in his own hands.
Theta winced.
“Sorry,” Me
mphis said. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Memphis shut his eyes. The spark when it caught was gentle, like being sweetly cradled in the healing trance. He heard drums and the joyful noise of ancestor spirits singing, and up above was blue, blue sky forever. His body warmed. He heard Theta’s voice calling, “Memphis?”
Theta stood in front of him, grinning like somebody seeing happiness for the first time. “I can feel you,” she said without actually speaking aloud. “And I’m not afraid.”
Her head dipped back and her eyes closed. A rush came over Memphis; he felt made of light. The singing was everywhere, and for just a moment the two of them were joined, one body, one soul, as if they’d jumped a broom and landed on the other side in a place of sunshine.
Memphis’s eyes fluttered open. Theta’s eyes were wide, and she was crying.
“Did I hurt you?”
She laughed through tears. “You could never hurt me.”
Her hands lay in Memphis’s, the last of the burns fading to nothing.
In the rain-swollen tunnels, the wraiths vanished with a long sigh. The subways scattered the last of their essence as they rattled through, carrying sleepy passengers eager for bed, ready for sleep. Tonight, their dreams would be safe.
In the dreamscape, the shining lair had begun its final unwinding. Henry and Ling watched it go, its memories lost to whatever archive held such passions.
“Louis?” Ling asked after a moment. The lights were winking out, one by one.
Henry shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Henry.”
Henry looked up at the ceiling, where the herringbone pattern lost its glorious detail. “I think it’s time we woke up, don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
“You know what to do?”
“Don’t worry,” Ling assured him.
“I’m not,” Henry said. “Ling, darlin’, it’s been a long night. You’ve done well. You can wake up now, anytime you like. Wake up, Ling Chan.”
Ling’s face went slack. Her eyelids fluttered. And then she was gone from the dream world, leaving only the vaguest sense she’d ever been there at all, just another shifting of atoms. And just before she woke, she thought she saw George, shimmering and golden, smiling at her from the bend in Doyers Street on a New Year’s Day, fireworks exploding with color high above his head, a moon cake in his hand, as if he had all the time in the world to enjoy it.