When Theta arrived, she found a single red rose on her dressing table. Smiling, she inhaled its spicy sweetness. “Is this for me?”
“Yeah. Special delivery. Oh, you owe me fifty cents. I tipped the boy for you.”
“Thanks, Gloria,” Theta said, handing over the change. Had Memphis sent it? “Where’s the card?”
“Huh. There was one,” Gloria said. “There it is! It fell on the floor.”
Theta spied the small envelope under the makeup table. She picked it up. Miss Theta Knight, it read in neat, curlicued script.
“Who’s your fancy man?” Sally Mae teased. There was a stripe of mean in it.
“Your boyfriend,” Theta shot back, making the other girls laugh.
Theta bit her lip to try to hide her smile as she slid the small card from its cream-colored envelope. In the next second, she uttered a cry.
“Theta? Whatsa matter, honey?” Gloria asked. They were all looking at her.
“Who left this?” Theta whispered.
“I told you, a delivery boy. Kid barely out of short pants. Why?”
Theta didn’t hear the end of it. Nearly upending a stagehand wheeling a rack of Follies finery, she bolted down the hall and burst through the stage door, where her breath escaped in staccato puffs in the icy cold. To her left, cars ambled down the street. To her right was the empty alley. No sign of a delivery boy. The buildings dwarfed her but offered no protection. She felt small and alone. Her hands grew hot. She plunged them into the puddle of rainwater atop a garbage can, melting a bit of the metal.
There had been only four words on the card.
Four words that could tear it all down.
Four words that terrified her.
For Betty—found you.
The country awakens with the dawn.
The citizens rise and wash, shave and brush. They don stockings and dresses, pants, shirts, and suspenders. They button up their need. Affix their aspirations. Tuck histories neatly inside drawers, creating themselves as they go, a rhapsody of reinvention.
In the West, mountains rise like myths. Morning breezes rustle the frost-stiff edges of grass and wheat across the prairies. Cows huff clouds of steam from flaring nostrils and wait for the relief of the farmer’s pail. Rivers bubble with the occasional surprise of a surfacing fish.
Shadow-painted hills play warden to the miners as they trudge toward the shaft’s yawning maw, metal pails clanking against their protective charms—the small cross, the rabbit’s foot, the lock of hair given by a wife—nestled beside company scrip deep in coverall pockets. Lamps stretch on bands around their heads, an illuminated third eye to calm their fears. They load the platform like sailors setting out for a new world, the breaker boys in front, already coughing in anticipation of the dust that fills their small lungs eight hours a day, six days a week. Wives and mothers, their faces sober in the first pink of morning, wave to them with kerchiefs, prayers on their lips in case the charms don’t work, while company guards patrol with clubs to prod the workers and guns to keep the union men at a distance.
From its perch in an iron cage, the canary watches, wary.
The machinery lurches into motion, sending the weary cage of men and boys down to the hidden darkness deep in the heart of the country.
For its heart is rich in dark treasures.
In the scab-tough oil fields of Oklahoma, giant iron derricks peck wounds into the ground. Oil gushes from the broken land like a promise, a baptism in crude hope, fuel for the engines of the nation’s desires. The roughnecks bathe in the sudden shower, and though they will never see its riches, never reap the harvest of its black gold, they celebrate as if it could be theirs at any time—a birthright promised to them, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a race run in perpetuity.
The afternoon sun rises into the wide sky, high and hopeful as a stock market arrow. Frost wears away from the patchy soil, no match for the day’s warm optimism. A few hearty buds poke through on the trees. Already they yearn for spring, a constant striving.
In a clapboard one-room church nestled beneath the barren branches of a magnolia tree, a revival reaches its peak. Faithful arms beseech the sky. Bodies rock forward and back, spines bent into question marks, souls waiting for deliverance from doubt and uncertainty, waiting for a reason to fall to their knees in the sawdust with tear-stained cheeks and sin-purged hearts.
The immigrants pour into the cities, and the edges of the neighborhoods fray, then braid themselves into new American patterns. These new Americans push out into this country one step ahead of ancestors touching spectral fingers to the generations of the diaspora. Go, they whisper, but do not forget us.
Outside a redbrick prison, protestors set up for another day of placards and marches, cries for justice that go unheard by the two Italian anarchists inside—a fishmonger and a shoemaker, seekers of the American dream now appealing their fate in its court while the electric chair bides its time.
The lady in the harbor hoists her torch.
The Gold Mountain twinkles in the early-morning fog hugging the shoreline of California, a pretty mirage.
The atoms vibrate, always on the verge of some new shift.
Shift and the electrons lean toward particle or wave.
Shift and the action requires a reaction.
Shift and the stroke of a typewriter elevates i to I, changes God to god.
Shift and the beast acquires a thumb; the thumb, a weapon.
Shift and rights become wrongs; the wrongs, justification.
It’s all in the perspective.
Dusk approaches now, stealthy.
Their prayers done, the faithful collapse in an exhausted heap. The preacher’s white shirt has gone transparent with sweat. The cicadas raise their collective hymn. Pressed by wind and the weight of unanswered prayers, the trees bend their arms low, brushing the first hope of spring across heads weary with belief.
In another part of town bordering the cotton fields, where three small girls sleep cheek to jowl on a cot at the back of a sharecropper’s shack, a fleet of Model Ts and trucks creep forward with headlights off. Men in hooded white robes unfold themselves from these silent vehicles and lumber forward, lugging their own cross and a can of kerosene. Fathers and brothers, uncles and cousins are dragged from the shacks and down the front steps while the women scream—for mercy, for hope, for naught. The rope is hoisted. The kerosene poured. The match is struck against the cross, setting the night on fire, a false light in the dark, and the screams pitch into keening.
Through the radios of the nation, a lady preacher calls out to the lonely: “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”
In a tent at a winter’s fair, smiling nurses ask questions and gather information from volunteering families. They ask, Have you ever demonstrated special abilities? Have you ever seen in your dreams a funny man wearing a stovepipe hat? Would you care to have a simple blood test? No, it won’t hurt—just a small stick, we promise. At the end, after the tears and blood, they bandage the children’s tiny wounds and deliver to the proud parents a bronze medal: Yea, I have a goodly heritage. Something to crow to the neighbors about.
Another boastful crop in the land of plenty.
The dusty road cuts through sleeping fields, which wave golden with corn in the summer. An old farmhouse sits not far from a weathered barn and a lone, gnarled tree. The tractor and plow are idle. Though it is late, the mailman’s truck rattles down the bumpy, mud-swollen road. He parks beside the mailbox, digs inside his pouch, retrieves the letter. After a last check of the address to be sure—number 144—he pushes it inside the mailbox, shuts the door, and lowers the small metal flag.
Night falls on the white-picket fences and red barns. On the Burma Shave signs and billboards for Marlowe Industries reassuring sleepy roadside travelers that all is as it should be. On the searchers, the seekers, the strivers, the dreamers—indefatigable adherents of a can-do spirit. On the unremarkable sedan of the Shadow Men folding into th
e seams of a night already unfurling its blanket of forgetting across the country as it ushers them into dreams.
The ghosts watch these ministrations. They remember and yearn; some remember and regret. But they remember. They wish they could tell the citizens the secrets they know about the past, about mistakes, about love and desire, hope and choice, about what is important and what is not.
They wish, too, that they could warn them about the gray man in the stovepipe hat, about the King of Crows.
For not all ghosts remember, and the citizens have need of warning.
The Shadow Man walked through the echoing corridor and stopped before the thick steel door bearing the symbol of a radiant eye shedding a lightning-bolt tear. He adjusted his tie, unlocked the door, and entered. The room was simple, rustic in its comforts: A single cot. A nightstand. A toilet and washbasin. The only light came from a ceiling fixture, which was regulated by a man at a switchboard each evening and a different man in the mornings. The right side of the cell was anchored by a simple wooden table and the type of large upholstered chair one might find in any American sitting room. It was the one thing of comfort in the dank room, and the woman sat in it, her eyes closed. The woman was of average height but too thin, and this lack of substance made her nearly into a ghost.
Tonight’s dinner sat untouched on its tray. “Mmm, Salisbury steak. My favorite,” said the man, whose name was either Hamilton or Washington, or, possibly, Madison.
The woman didn’t answer.
“Mashed potatoes. And peas and carrots. Delicious.” He slid the fork through the potatoes and circled the utensil near her face. “Open wide.”
The woman didn’t move. The man dropped the fork back on the tray. “Now, Miriam, if you don’t eat, we’ll be forced to give you a feeding. You remember how unpleasant that was, don’t you?”
The woman’s skin twitched along her jawline, assuring the Shadow Man that she did, in fact, remember.
“What, no smile for me?”
Her expression did not change.
“Wouldn’t you like to see your family again?”
“I have no family,” she whispered.
“All you have to do is find the others and give us the names. Tell us where they are.”
The man moved about the room as if accustomed to its contours. He ran a finger along the desk, examining the layer of dust there before rubbing it away. “Afterward, you’ll take a nice walk in the woods. You’ll like that, won’t you, yes? To smell the fresh air? Does it remind you of the birch trees bordering Moscow? Does it smell of home?”
Her reply was feathery light. “This is my home.”
“Then it should be no trouble.” The Shadow Man placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and she flinched. “Tell us: Where are the Diviners, Miriam? Where are our little chicks who should come home to roost?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see.”
“Would you like to go under the water again?”
The woman’s eyes widened in fear but she did not answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed in and out, faster and faster. She meant to run away inside her mind, far from their methods. The Shadow Man meant to stop her.
“Your son is out there, Miriam. Your Sergei.”
Her eyelids fluttered. Good. He was getting through.
“We know you managed to send a postcard to him.”
“He has no power. It didn’t work.”
The man whispered directly into her ear, making her skin crawl. “We’ve seen his power, Miriam. We know you’re lying.”
The Shadow Man unfolded the newspaper and placed it in front of her. Her eyes darted to the picture. She scooped it up in eager, shaking hands.
DIVINER AND DIVINER!
Sam Lloyd Saves His Sweetheart Seer from
Crazed Gunman in Times Square, Reveals
Diviner Power to Amazed Crowd
“He looks an awful lot like you, your Sergei. Same caginess around the eyes. It would be a shame if something were to happen to him. Wouldn’t you agree, Miriam?”
“That is not my son. It is someone else,” she said at last. Her voice trembled.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, shall we? We’re far beyond that now. It’s him. And he’s in danger. They’re all in danger, Miriam.” The Shadow Man’s shoes made a soft, hollow sound as he circled her chair. “Wouldn’t it be nice to see him again?”
Again, she refused to answer.
“Miriam, we face threats to our freedom from within and without. Security is our priority. This is the home of the free and the brave, and it must remain so. But if we don’t know where they are, we can’t protect them.”
He stopped in front of her, forcing her to look up.
“Let’s try again.”
With a last glance at the front page of the New York Daily News, the woman closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander toward the other world.
“What do you see?”
“Their energy draws him,” Miriam said, her voice faraway. Her body shuddered slightly with her efforts.
“Who?”
“The man in the stovepipe hat. The King of Crows.”
“Good. What else?”
The woman’s shuddering had progressed to shaking as her mind flooded with terror.
“No! You can’t let it happen. You mustn’t. Not again.” With a cry, she broke off and fell against her bed, sweating and crying.
“You must tell us where they are, Miriam.”
“N-no.”
The Shadow Man sighed. “Very well. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
The woman wept into her palms. “We never should have done it.”
“What’s done is done,” the Shadow Man said. “You have the thanks of a grateful nation.”
Fear showed in the woman’s eyes, followed quickly by hate, and then she spat in the Shadow Man’s face. The man removed a neat pocket square and calmly wiped the insult from his cheeks. With the same air of calm, he pulled a wrench from his pocket. The woman fell onto her cot, backing into a corner, hands up. The man walked to the other side of the room. He arced the wrench around the knob to the radiator, cutting off the heat.
“It gets rather chilly at night here, I’m afraid,” he said, yanking the blanket from her bed. “When you’re ready to cooperate fully, Miriam, do let us know.”
The man closed the steel door behind him. The lock slid into place. A moment later, the loud babble of a radio flooded the quiet of the small room, growing louder and louder until the woman curled up into a ball and cupped her hands over her ears. But more than the radio, it was what she had seen in her trance that would make sleep impossible tonight.
The Shadow Man had left the newspaper. Miriam smoothed out the front page and placed a hand on the picture of her son and Evie O’Neill.
“Find me, Little Fox,” she whispered. “Before it’s too late. For all of us.”
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Author’s Note
While Lair of Dreams is steeped in actual history, it is also a work of fiction and, as such, some liberties have been taken for dramatic license. (“Stand back, everyone! She’s got a license for fictional drama!”) The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult is a creation from my imagination, just in case you tried to find it on TripAdvisor. And as far as I know, there are no carnivorous ghosts haunting the subway tunnels of New York City. I’m pretty sure. Well, mostly sure. Okay, not at all sure. You know what? Ride at your own risk.
The Beach Pneumatic Transit Co. really did exist—though, sadly, the little fan-powered train only ran for a few years. Alfred Ely Beach’s subway prototype was long gone by 1927, but with plenty of abandoned tunnels and stations in New York City’s underground, it’s fun to imagine that some ghostly vestige of that old subway station could
have existed for our Diviners. If you’d like to know more about Beach Pneumatic, I recommend reading Joseph Brennan’s excellent publication on the topic at columbia.edu/~brennan/beach.
Sadly, the Chinese Exclusion Act was all too real. Passed in 1882, it sharply restricted immigration to the United States from China. Even more restrictive legislation followed, and these discriminatory, xenophobic laws stayed on the books for decades. If you’d like to read more about the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact, I highly recommend Erika Lee’s At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). If you’d like to read a personal family history of Chinatown, I also recommend Bruce Edward Hall’s Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). And if you find yourself in New York City, please do visit the wonderful Museum of Chinese in America (mocanyc.org).
The story of America is one that is still being written. Many of the ideological battles we like to think we’ve tucked neatly into a folder called “the past”—issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity, civil rights, justice, and just what makes us “American”—are very much alive today. For what we do not study and reflect upon, we are in danger of dismissing or forgetting. What we forget, we are often doomed to repeat. Our ghosts, it seems, are always with us, whispering that attention must be paid.
Acknowledgments
This was a Busby Berkeley production of a book, and over the past few years, quite a few folks have seen me through it all. (Thanks for the kaleidoscopic legwork, y’all.) I owe a debt of gratitude, a fruit basket, and a One Direction lunch box to the following lovely people: