“Isaiah’s got this gift. He can see glimpses of the future, like a radio picking up signals,” Memphis said, echoing Sister Walker’s words to him in her kitchen months before. Hadn’t she said she needed to talk to Memphis before she left? How he wished he’d taken her up on that offer. They’d certainly have plenty to talk about when she got back, and Octavia couldn’t stop him this time. “There’s something else I should tell you. You know that lady who survived the sleeping sickness, Mrs. Carrington?”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. Was in all the papers. She took a picture with Sarah Snow.”
Memphis took a deep breath. “I’m the one who really healed her.”
Ling looked up at Memphis. “You can heal?”
“Sometimes,” Memphis said gently. “But I’d never had a healing trance like that one. It was more like a dream than a trance. I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. And… I think I saw her. All I can say is that she had me sucked right in, so I believe you about her power.”
Sam sat up. “I’m trying to understand all this—”
“Don’t strain,” Jericho muttered.
“This ghost, Wai-Mae, or the veiled woman, or whoever she is, she can trap people inside dreams?” Sam finished.
“I think so,” Ling said. “From what Henry and I saw inside that tunnel, it seems that she gives them their best dreams, and as long as they don’t struggle, they stay there. If they fight it, their best dream turns into their worst nightmare.”
“But why does she do it?” Jericho asked.
“She needs their dreams. She feeds off them. They’re like batteries fueling her dream world. That’s why the sleeping sickness victims burn up from the inside. Because it’s too much. The constant dreaming destroys them.”
“What happens to those dreamers when they die?” Memphis asked, and the room fell silent.
“They can’t stop wanting the dream,” Ling said at last. “They’re insatiable. Hungry ghosts.”
“Monsters in the subways,” Memphis murmured.
Sam frowned at Memphis. “I don’t like where that’s headed. ‘Monsters in the Subways’ is not the title of a big, happy dance number.”
“Shut up, Sam,” Theta said. “Memphis, what is it?”
Memphis paced the same section of carpet. “Isaiah kept telling me about this bad dream he was having. About a lady making monsters in the tunnels. About ‘monsters in the subways.’ I thought he was making up a story so he wouldn’t get in trouble for drawing in my book. But I got a bad feeling he was telling the truth.”
“The disappearances,” Jericho said. “Missing people. It’s been in all the papers.”
“You think it’s all connected?” Mabel asked.
“I know it is,” Ling said.
Lightning flashed at the windows. A rumble of thunder followed.
“It’s been all around us. We just haven’t been paying attention,” Jericho said.
“Because it wasn’t happening to you,” Ling snapped.
“Yeah? You and Henry were happy to ignore it when it suited you,” Theta said coolly.
“You’re right,” Ling said. “Now that I know, I have to stop her.”
“Yeah? How you gonna do that?” Sam asked. “Ask her pretty please to stop killing people because it’s not nice? Somehow I don’t think she’s gonna be copacetic with that.”
Ling stared at her hands. “I don’t know, but I have to try. I’m going back into the dream world. I’m going to find Henry, and then I’ll face Wai-Mae.”
“What about those things in the tunnel—if they really exist, if Isaiah is right about that—your hungry ghosts?” Memphis asked. “How do we get rid of them?”
“At Knowles’ End, once Evie banished John Hobbes’s spirit, the ghosts of the Brethren disappeared, too,” Jericho said, breaking his silence on that topic. “Like they were an extension of him.” The room fell silent for a moment.
“You know for sure that’s the case here?” Sam asked at last.
“No,” Jericho admitted.
“Swell. Isn’t there some kinda ghost primer in this joint: Reading, Writing, ’Rithmetic, Ridding Yourself of Soul-Stealing Demons for Fun and Profit? Why isn’t there ever anything useful around here?”
Mabel handed Sam a watercress sandwich.
“Thanks, Mabes.”
“Bad death,” Ling murmured.