Lair of Dreams

“‘My Darling Rotke… I miss you like the flower misses sun…’” Sam read aloud. He whistled long and loud. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Have some decency, Sam,” Jericho growled, snatching the letter away.

Sam put his hands up. “Okay, okay. Don’t get hot. Who’s this Rotke tomato?”

“She’s not a tomato. Rotke was Will’s fianceé. She died during the war,” Jericho said, tucking the letter back into the crate. “This doesn’t feel ethical.”

“Ethics don’t pay the taxman, Freddy. Listen, we’ll just have a look. If we don’t find Liberty Anne’s unholy correspondence, we’ll put the whole mess back in the cellar and forget about it, and nobody’ll be the wiser. Deal?”

“Yes. Okay. Fine.”

“We’re gonna need a crowbar to loosen those others,” Sam said, sneezing again. “Don’t suppose there’s one around here?”

“Somewhere,” Jericho said, wiping his hands on his trousers. “I’ll be right back. Don’t steal anything.”

“Who’d wanna steal this bunk?” Sam muttered, rummaging through the books. He opened one and saw Rotke’s name scrawled on the inside cover. Pictures had been sandwiched between its pages: one of a younger, blonder Will holding a tennis racket; one of him posing with an old Negro woman above a handwritten note—Will and Mama Thibault, Diviner, New Orleans, 1906; a grainy photograph of some fancy estate. Sam flipped the page and came to a few yellowed newspaper clippings of the sort Will liked to collect: articles about small-town mediums or people who could bend spoons with their thoughts; an odd mention of an Indian village that burned to the ground, killing everyone, after a stove blew up.

A paper slipped to the floor and Sam bent to pick it up. It was an aged envelope, slit across the top and emptied of its contents. Rotke’s name and a return address were on the back. He flipped over the envelope and stared, dumbfounded, at the addressee:

Miriam Lubovitch

122 Hester Street

New York, New York

“Sam?” Jericho was calling to him, but Sam could barely register it. “Did you get swallowed up?”

“Yeah. Big ghost came and got me. Forward all my mail to the spirit world,” Sam said hollowly.

The letter was postmarked September 1914. Sam tore through the book’s pages for the envelope’s missing contents but found nothing. He took everything out of the crate, but the letter wasn’t in there, either. Sam examined the envelope again. Across the front, someone had scrawled Return to Sender. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t his mother’s. Who had written it? Whoever it was, Sam needed to find him.

It was time for Evie to make good on her end of their deal.

Jericho appeared on the second-floor landing. “Sam!”

“What?”

“I’ve been calling you. Did you find something?”

“Nah, just a bunch of dusty books,” Sam lied, surreptitiously tucking the envelope into his trousers pocket.

“Well, unless they’re haunted, they’re not going to help with the exhibit. What’s the matter? You look funny.”

“Oh. It’s, ah, it’s just that I should probably go clean myself up,” Sam said. His heart was pounding. “I hate to leave you like this, Freddy, but I got a date on the radio.”

“Right. Guess you’d better go, then,” Jericho said coolly.

“Listen, Freddy, I could come back a little later—”

“No need. I’ve got it. As usual,” Jericho said, disappearing into the stacks. “And don’t call me Freddy.”

Ling grimaced against the blustery wind as she made her way to the opera house carrying a knapsack with a basket of dumplings for Uncle Eddie. Steam rose from the slatted bamboo top, and she welcomed both the warmth and the delicious smell of fried pork.

The bustling streets of Chinatown were much quieter than usual—the fear of the sleeping sickness kept most people away. Business in the restaurants and shops was down. The hardworking men and women who came in droves for chop suey on their lunch hours were now heading to Automats and diners far from Doyers, Pell, Mott, and Mulberry Streets. Even the bane of the neighborhood—the white tour guides who brought in buses of “slumming” tourists to hear their lurid, deeply embellished tales of Chinatown’s bloody Tong Wars, opium dens, and “slave girls”—were noticeably absent.

The health department had been out testing the water and food; dirt from the streets; dung from the horses, insects, and rodents—anything they thought might give clues as to where the sickness was coming from and how it was transmitted. Ling had even made a special trip to the library to read up on sleeping sicknesses, hoping to find something helpful. She now knew more than she’d wanted to know about parasites, tsetse flies, and encephalitis. None matched what was happening in Chinatown and on the Lower East Side. There were no presenting symptoms, no fevers, aches, or cough.