Lair of Dreams

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.”