Lair of Dreams
Henry looked around, but no one else on the train seemed to notice the girl outside the window. He turned back to the window, cupping his hands on either side of his face to cut the glare. The girl’s head snapped up. She saw him, and her jaws opened and shut, her rotted needle-teeth coming together each time in a fierce bite.
The droning hum he’d heard earlier had increased to a fast war cry.
“D-do you see that?” Henry asked the other passengers.
“See what, Henry?” the matron asked.
“That girl on the…” Henry’s heart thundered in his chest. “H-how do you know my name?”
The matron transformed into the veiled woman.
“Dream with me…” she growled.
In the dark of the subway, the wraithlike girl’s mouth unhinged, and from deep in her throat came an inhuman shriek as she sprang toward the train.
“Get away from me!” Henry shouted, jumping from his seat.
A businessman backed away, hands up. “You were having a bad dream. I tried to wake you.”
Quickly, Henry reached out and grabbed the man’s sleeve, testing it.
“You’re not a dream. You’re real,” Henry said and laughed, relieved. His shirt was sweated through.
The other passengers stared. A mother pulled her son closer.
“… Must be drunk…”
“… Or he might be sick…”
The train hissed into the Fulton Street station, and Henry realized he’d slept through his stop. But he couldn’t stay on the train another minute. When the doors opened, he bolted and ran up the steps to the streets, welcoming the cold blast of air that greeted him, hoping the entire time that he was awake.
“Extra! Extra!” a newsie shouted. “Park Avenue Princess Catches Sleeping Sickness! Mayor Orders Crackdown!”
Henry tossed a nickel at the newsie. “Hey, give me a little punch to the gut, will you?”
The newsie blinked. “You tryin’ a get outta work or somethin’, Mister?”
The newsie buried his fist in Henry’s gut and Henry reeled, coughing. “Yep. Definitely awake. Thanks, kid. I owe you.”
By the time Henry made it to the Tea House, he was trembling.
“What happened to you?” Ling said, pouring him tea.
“Bad dreams,” Henry said, warming his hands on the hot cup. “I found out about our mystery woman, though.”
Henry told Ling about his revelatory afternoon with the Proctor sisters.
“Anthony, Orange, and Cross were streets,” Ling said in wonder. “George led me to that intersection, too.”
“Very well. I’m all ears. What does it mean, Mademoiselle Chan?”
Ling tapped her spoon absently against the side of her cup. “Wai-Mae’s ship docks in San Francisco tomorrow. I think George has been trying to warn me that she’s in danger of suffering the same fate. That she needs my help to avoid it.”
“What should we do?”
“I have to tell Wai-Mae. Tonight. She needs to know.”
“I don’t envy you that task,” Henry said, slipping back into his coat.
“Somehow, I think she’s not the only one,” Henry said gently, and Ling felt near tears. She had grown very close to Wai-Mae and hadn’t realized how much she’d been looking forward to having her as a friend in New York. Now it was all in jeopardy.
At the door, Henry stopped. “I still don’t understand what the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company has to do with all of this, though. An old train station? Doesn’t make sense.”
Ling shook her head. “I can’t know everything.”
Henry grinned. “That’s a relief.”
“Henry…” Ling started. She had a terrible feeling of misfortune that she couldn’t place.
“Yes, darlin’?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Same time tonight?”
“Pos-i-tute-ly,” Henry said, enjoying Ling’s pursed-lip annoyance.
In the dream that finally found her, Adelaide was a girl of seventeen, with hair gilded by summer sun. There was the big house and the well and the wagon Papa would use to drive them into town on Sundays. It was all just as she remembered it, when she allowed herself the luxury of remembering. Nostalgia, like morphine, was best in small doses. Drifting through the dream was the sweetest girlish singing she’d ever heard, something exotic to her ears. It was exquisite pain, this song, as if the string of notes had crawled inside her like a long vine, twining itself to her longing. Addie’s heart was full of want. She could burst from it.