Lair of Dreams

And who had warned them against going inside the tunnel? Wai-Mae. Wai-Mae was the ghost.

But what if some part of Wai-Mae didn’t know that? What if the dream was her way of fighting that knowledge? Ling needed to talk to Henry, desperately. She wished he weren’t drunk. He’d been so upset about Louis… because Louis never showed up.

Louis, too, never appeared aboveground, Ling realized. Like Wai-Mae, he was always waiting for them in the dream world, shimmering in the sun. Shimmering. Ling’s head went light as she realized at last what had been poking at her these past few days. It was Henry’s comment about the hat. She’d thought it was his. But it had been Louis’s first.

She’d told Henry from the start: She could only find the dead.

A chorus of police whistles shrilled in the streets. They were answered by loud sirens. Through the windows, Ling saw a herd of police marching up Doyers Street.

“What’s happening?” Ling asked.

“Shhh.” Uncle Eddie turned off the lights and they kept watch at the windows. Across the way, the police battered down the door of an apartment building. There was shouting as people were forced outside and into police wagons. A truck with a searchlight mounted on its back slunk around the narrow curve. Its white-hot sweep illuminated frightened faces peeking out from behind curtained windows. Two men attempted to escape from an apartment window onto a second-floor balcony. They were met on the fire escape by policemen with clubs at the ready. Police were everywhere in the streets, whistles blowing, as they rounded up the citizens of Chinatown. Many weren’t going willingly, some shouting, “You cannot treat us this way. We are human beings!” A man’s voice came over a megaphone in English telling everyone not to move, that this was a raid.

Ling spied Lucky moving in the shadows. He was making a run for the opera house through the chaos on the streets. Uncle Eddie spirited him inside, and he and Ling waited for the Tea House waiter to catch his breath.

“The mayor has issued a full quarantine,” Lucky managed to tell them. “They’re taking us to a detainment camp.”

“Where are my parents?” Ling pleaded.

“Your father told me to go quickly out the back and come to you. I barely escaped.”

“Is Baba all right?” Ling begged.

Lucky hung his head. “I am sorry, Ling. They took your father. He couldn’t find his papers.”

“I will go to the Association and see what I can find out from the lawyers,” Uncle Eddie said, racing for his coat and hat.

“They’ll take you, too, Uncle,” Lucky said.

“So be it. I won’t wait like a dog.”

Lucky nodded at Ling. “Mr. Chan wanted to make sure they didn’t get Ling.”

Ling was torn. She wanted to go with Uncle Eddie, to be with her mother and father. But she also needed to get to Henry and tell him what she’d come to realize about the dream world.

“Uncle?” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“You must wait here,” Uncle Eddie said, opening the costume wardrobe. “I’ll come back for you once I’ve spoken to the Association.” He helped Ling climb inside. She sat on the floor of the closet, cradling her crutches, hidden under a mound of heavy costumes. “You’ll be safe in here,” her uncle said and shut the door.

But Ling knew she wasn’t safe anywhere. Not when people could hate the very idea of you. Not when there were ghosts in your dreams. Ling shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of her neighbors being taken away in the night. She held her breath as the police broke into the darkened opera house and searched it. They opened the wardrobe but, seeing nothing but a rack of costumes, closed it again and left. For what seemed like an eternity, Ling lay on the floor of the wardrobe, feeling the cramps in her legs. When it was quiet, she let herself out. For a moment she stood, not knowing what to do or where to go. Then, quite decisively, she yanked a pearl and a pheasant feather from the headpiece of the Dao Ma Dan, hoping her uncle would forgive her for it, and shoved both objects deep into her pocket. She peeked through a crack in the opera-house doors and, seeing no one, let herself out, watching for police as she walked the eerily empty streets of Chinatown, which reminded her once more of her dream. Stifling a sob, Ling sneaked into the Tea House, stepping over broken dishes on her way to the telephone directory, where she found the address for the Bennington. She grabbed Henry’s hat, placing it on her head.

Then, keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the El for the long ride uptown.