Henry walked from one brick to another and then another, studying the images. “I think… I think these are other people’s dreams,” Henry whispered.
Henry stepped back to take in the whole of the wall. It stretched up and up, glowing screens of dreams as far as he could see. From where he stood, the images reminded him of the circuitry in a vast machine, as if the snippets of lives they watched there were powering the entire dream world—the station; the train; the bayou, forest, and village where Ling and Henry played to their hearts’ content each night. But here and there, a brick would fade out, too, as if all the energy had been drained from it. As if those dreams had died and needed to be replaced by other dreams—more circuitry for the machine.
Something caught Ling’s eye, and she put her face close to the brick to get a better look. Wide-eyed, she turned to Henry, motioning him over. “Do you see it?”
“What am I looking for?”
“Her,” Ling whispered on a puff of cold breath.
Henry got right up on the tunnel wall. In the corner of the flickering image was the veiled woman, watching the dream. She walked from brick to brick, from dream to dream, like a night watchman making sure the factory was safe. The surface of one of the bricks wobbled, as if there were a snag in the film. And in those shards of dark, Ling and Henry saw the nightmare twin of the man’s good dream. In it, he ran from a pack of inhuman creatures through the subway tunnels.
“Hungry ghosts,” Ling said, looking at Henry with frightened eyes.
Suddenly, all the bricks lit up, showing the same image: the veiled woman running into the tunnel, terrified, the bloody knife in her hand, as she crawled into the silent train car. And then there was nothing but darkness.
A shrill, bestial scream echoed the length of tunnel.
“What was…” Ling couldn’t finish. For down at the spot where they’d entered, a figure now appeared, a dark silhouette in a dress, drawing closer.
“Henry…” Ling whispered.
He nodded. “Start walking. We’re just reversing our steps.”
Hand in hand, they walked toward the ring of light and the promise of the station at the end of it. But no matter how fast they walked, the station stayed just out of reach.
“It keeps getting farther away,” Ling said. “Like it wants to keep us here.”
Behind them, there was snarling and scratching in the dark.
“I can wake you up. You know I can.”
“Don’t you dare! We go together or not at all,” Ling said.
“All right. I’m going to give you a suggestion, then. Let’s see if you can imagine us someplace else, in a different dream. Ling, why don’t you dream about… about…” His mind was blank. “Dream about the New Year! Dream about the lion dancers and moon cakes and fireworks.”
Ling shut her eyes tight, but she was too frightened. Her mind couldn’t think of anything but those terrible sounds. It was like a swarm approaching. But a swarm of what?
Henry cried out.
“Henry?” Ling opened her eyes. Henry was nowhere to be seen. “Henry!”
Ling was alone with whatever lurked in the dark.
Henry came to on the floor of his room in the Bennington, the sheets tangled around his ankles, his heart pounding. He’d fallen out of bed, and it had been enough to wake him. Ling was still there in that terrible place. From where he lay, he could see the telephone on the side table in the hall, but the post-dream paralysis kept him anchored to the floor, counting down the seconds until he could move again.
The swarm in the dark grew louder.
Ling tried to run but stumbled, putting a hand to the wall to steady herself. The picture inside the stone was disrupted. One by one, the bricks showed the same image of the veiled woman’s face. Serrated teeth glinted beneath the netting. But it was the ghost’s dark eyes that unsettled her most—they were fixed on Ling’s.