Lair of Dreams
In her dream, George had led her to a drinking fountain, so Ling set off in that direction until she found it. She took a sip and watched governesses pushing baby carriages down the tree-lined path. What, precisely, was she hoping to discover here? Beside the fountain was the grate. Ling stood over it, looking down through the old metal bars into the underground, feeling the breeze coming from below.
“Spare a penny, young lady?” a vagrant asked from a park bench.
He reeked of urine. Ling moved just slightly upwind. She stared out at the symphony of movement on Broadway—cars and trolleys and people rushing everywhere without stopping. Last night in the dream, as Ling stood in this very spot, George had been pointing to something behind her. What had he wanted her to see? Ling scrutinized the row of office buildings until she realized that this was the very corner she and Henry saw each night in that strange, repeated dream loop at the beginning of their walk—just from an earlier era. It was as if she and Henry were being visited by a ghost city lost to the pages of history.
“Hard on the streets in the cold, Miss,” the vagrant said, and this time, Ling dropped a penny into his palm.
“Thanks, Miss. Yes, cold, cold, cold. Used to sleep down there, in the tunnels,” he said, nodding at the grate. “But I don’t go down below no more. Bad dreams there. You can hear it calling you. Bad dreams was what got Sal and Moses and Ralph. And I ain’t seen hide nor hair of old Patrick and his wife, Maudie, neither.” His eyes widened and he dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “Somethin’s down there, Miss. Ghosts,” he said, looking up at the spectral spires of the foggy skyline. Then he leaped up from the bench and toddled off, palm outstretched, toward a passing couple, calling, “’Scuse me, kind sir, dear miss, spare a penny?”
The air smelled of coming rain, so Ling left City Hall Park and took the bus back to Chinatown. On the edge of Mulberry Street, people crowded into Columbus Park, where a man with a bullhorn who was accompanied by a Chinese translator explained that there would be mandatory health screenings starting immediately.
“All residents must report with documentation,” the man barked.
“You can’t treat us this way! We have rights!” Thomas Chung called. He was twenty-eight, a lawyer who’d graduated from Princeton. Watching him there in the park beside his mother and father, Ling thought he looked as much a hero as Jake Marlowe.
“Citizens have rights,” the man with the bullhorn shouted back.
“I was born here. I am a citizen. But we have rights as human beings,” Thomas said. Others joined his protest—not just people from Chinatown, but neighbors she recognized from over on Orchard and Ludlow Streets and Little Italy, too. The man with the bullhorn was shouting, “If you do not comply, we will be forced to put you all in quarantine camps!”
“Ling!”
“Ling! Did you hear? Isn’t it awful?” she said once she’d reached her.
“It’s George!”
Ling went cold. “What about George?”
Gracie burst into tears. “Oh, Ling. He died!”
Everything in the park narrowed to a point. Ling could scarcely breathe.
“That’s why they’re here now,” Gracie said, pointing toward the man with the bullhorn. She wiped away her tears. “His mother found him this morning. His entire body was covered in blisters, like he’d been eaten up from the inside, and there was nothing left. And when they went to move him, his bones…” Gracie choked back a sob. “His bones crumbled like ash.”
Ling remembered the very end of her dream. Something terrifying had been closing in on George, and he already looked dead, like a man who knows his executioner waits. Ling Chan—Wake. Up, he’d said, a command.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight, Miss Chan,” Henry said from his perch at the piano as he and Ling waited for the train into the dream world. Down below, Ling sat on the edge of the fountain, her fingers trailing absently through the water.
“My friend George died today,” Ling said numbly. “He had the sleeping sickness.”
She watched the goldfish zipping through the water, an agitation of orange.
“Oh, Ling. I’m awfully sorry to hear it,” Henry said, coming to sit beside her.
“Thank you,” Ling mumbled. “I dreamed about him. Last night.”