Lair of Dreams

“Hey—hey you, there!” he called to her. “Miss, you’d better come up from there. You’ll be hit.”


Nathan looked around for help, but there was no one else waiting with him at this late hour. Since they’d gone to the new coin-operated turnstiles, there were no longer any ticket choppers sitting nearby. He was utterly alone—except for the motionless girl in the tunnel. Some trick of shadow and high, stark subway light bathed her in phosphorescence. She glowed, this girl. Like an angel, Nathan thought. And she wore a blue dress.

“Miss Hodkin? Nora?” Nathan tried.

The girl’s head jerked up as if she registered the name.

It must be her—had to be! And suddenly, this lost, shining girl waiting for rescue seemed like the answer to Nathan’s desires. She was pretty. Her parents were rich. There was a reward. And when the boys back at the Exchange heard about his heroics, they’d clap him on the back, stick a cigar in his mouth, and say Attaboy! He’d be made—a man in full.

All of this buzzed through Nathan’s brain in a matter of seconds as the girl swayed precariously in the gloom. Then she turned and stumbled around the curve, out of sight.

“Miss Hodkin! Wait!” Nathan called to no avail. “Doggone it!”

Nathan was still a little woozy from the Scotch, but the booze also made him brave as he hopped onto the tracks and jogged down the center of the subway tunnel after his damsel in distress, the bright light of the station receding behind him. According to the appeal from her parents, Nora Hodkin had been missing for four days. She had to be weak from hunger, Nathan figured. Yet she was surprisingly quick. His lungs ached from trying to keep up. He was deep into the tunnel now and uneasy. The only light came from two weak work lights set up high, and Nathan slowed, mindful of the electrified third rail. Steel support beams flanked the tracks. In the eerie gloom, they loomed like giants’ legs. It sounded funny down here, too. He heard a high, tight whine—almost like train wheels, but not quite—and here and there, animalistic growling. What was that? It was enough to make him want to go back.

Just then, he spied the bright back of the girl’s blue dress as she lumbered across the tracks ahead.

“Miss Hodkin!” he called, closing the distance between them.

To the relief of Nathan’s aching legs and lungs, the girl finally slowed, and as she did, he noticed for the first time that Nora Hodkin didn’t move quite right. Her gait was uneven, and her arms twitched in a strange, quicksilver way, her fingers clutching at air.

She’s drunk or faint. That was his brain talking. But his gut disagreed. The girl’s movement was purposeful, not drunk; she moved as if driven by strong need. There was something not quite human about her. And just as this thought took form in Nathan’s Scotch-hazed mind, she stopped and turned.

Nora Hodkin might’ve been pretty at one time. But the thing facing him now had a gaunt, bleached face as fissured as a broken vase. Milky-blue eyes fixed on him. Nostrils flared as she sniffed, once, twice. Cracked lips peeled back from sharp, yellowed teeth. Black ooze dripped from the corners of her new smile. And Nathan understood at last what drove her: hunger. She was hunting. Leading him into a trap, like prey.

She reached out her talonlike fingers. “Dream…? ” she pleaded in a hair-raising growl. “Dream!”

If Nathan Rosborough had been able to scream, it would’ve rung through the underground and rattled the windows of the trains passing through. Instead, it was Nora Hodkin whose mouth unhinged in an unholy screech.

“Jesus… oh, Jesus,” Nathan whispered, backing away.

The glowing girl in the blue dress dropped into a crouch, knees wide as she scuttled toward him, brushfire-fast. Nathan turned and ran as fast as he could toward the Fulton Street station. His earlier hopes deserted him. His one overwhelming desire was simply to survive.

Behind him, the thing that had once been Nora Hodkin loosed a second screech that bounced off the walls. Nathan was sober now, his mind sharpened by animal fear. Greenish lights pulsed between concrete subway columns.

A train?

In the dark, there were hungry growls and high-pitched, demonic cries that nearly brought him to his knees.

No. Not a train. More of them.

He heard the rapid click-click-clack of what sounded like many claws scraping across brick. She’d called them. Dear God! They were gaining on him. Nathan could smell their stench. Suddenly, Nora Hodkin leaped down, cutting off his escape. She was trying to talk. Her voice was a broken gargle, a fire consuming the last of its fuel. “Must dream…”

The distant lights of the subway train shone far down the tracks, too far to be of any help to Nathan. The night came alive with more like her—sickly, glowing, used-up things crawling from the depths, creeping along the walls and ceiling of the underground, hungry. The demonic drone escalated into a shrieking din as they dropped down like radium-painted rain.

Nora smiled at Nathan and opened wide.