Lair of Dreams

The passageway took on water as they walked. It smelled of sulfur and rot. They covered their noses, breathing through their mouths.

“Sam,” Evie said a moment later, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“How drunk are you?”

“No. I mean… I mean ’bout any of this. About the dead and John Hobbes. Will. Rotke. Those cards we found. Project Buffalo,” she said, the last word tripping off her booze-thickened tongue. “I need to tell you something, Sam. It’s about tonight and what happened at the show.”

Sam gestured to the dark underground, his flashlight beam bouncing off the metal and earth. “You want to have this conversation now? Here?”

“Shhh, listen. This fella brought a comb for me to read. Sam, it was James’s comb,” Evie said, keeping one hand on his back to steady herself.

“What are you talking about?”

“The comb. He said it belonged to his pal, but he was lying. That comb belonged to my brother. When I was under? I saw James.”

Sam kept the flashlight trained on the path ahead as he took in what Evie was saying. “Did you know this fella?”

“Not from Adam. I swear.”

“So how’d this Abe Stranger get your brother’s comb?”

“He told me these men paid him to bring it to me. Men in dark suits.”

“You think they’re the same guys who busted in while we were in the post office?”

“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know anything anymore.” Evie swallowed. “Like you and me, for instance.”

“There is no you and me. You made that pretty clear tonight,” Sam muttered. “Listen, you asked me to play a part, and I did. From now on, I travel solo.”

“Now who’s lying? You forget. I read your personal effects. I know you.”

“You know bupkes.”

But the gin had loosened the last of Evie’s restraint. “I’ve seen you. The true you. I’ve held your secrets in my hands. You’re scared, Sam. You pretend you’re not, but you are. Just like the rest of us.”

Sam whirled around. “All you know about are parties, good times, and telling people what they wanna hear on the radio. And breaking hearts.”

Sam pushed on, shining his flashlight ahead of them in the darkness. He hated that Evie had unsettled him like this. That was the trouble with letting people in—once you’d taken off the armor, it was hard to put it back on.

Evie stumbled after him. “Right! I forgot. I’m just a girl on the radio. Well, I only read what people choose to give me, Sam. You steal whatever you like and never think about what it costs anyone,” Evie said, eyes brimming with tears.

“Don’t cry,” Sam said. He was all balled up inside. “Please don’t cry. I got no defenses against girl tears.”

“You can’t have my tears, Sam Lloyd. I revoke them,” Evie said through chattering teeth. “But don’t go tellin’ me what I know. ’Cause you don’t know.”

“I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore.”

“Let’s just put the ghost to bed. I want a bath. I want twelve baths. And then, tomorrow, we can announce the tragic end of our engagement. You wanna be alone? Be alone,” Evie said, and she and Sam walked on in silence.

The water was now shin-deep. It sluiced up the sides of the tunnel as they walked and splashed up onto their clothes, chilling them through. Evie glanced through the arched steel supports of the subway tunnel toward the other side of the tracks and the platform heading in the opposite direction. The dark lit up for a second, revealing the bleached form of a man wearing a miner’s hat. But there was something not quite right about him. He fell into a squat, his mouth opening and closing, opening and closing.

Evie gasped.

“What’s the matter now?” Sam asked.

“Did—did you see that?” Evie whispered.

“See what?”

Evie pointed through the archway to an empty space. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Hey! I think I found it!” Memphis called. He stood in front of an old gate adorned with gilded flowers, markers of an age long past. The rust couldn’t obscure how beautiful it had once been. Memphis and Sam tugged the gate open against the tide of water, the hinges protesting the sudden use after so many years asleep.

“We’re in,” Memphis said.

The flashlights weren’t much help in the deep, velvet darkness of underground, but eventually everyone’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. Memphis swept his flashlight beam around the forgotten station, briefly illuminating its decayed beauty.

“Holy smokes,” Sam said, angling his head back to take in the high, arched ceilings. The stained-glass window was caked in decades of dust. A tarnished chandelier dangled precariously from its broken chain. Sam cleared cobwebs from the chipped piano keys. He plinked one, but it made no sound. It was like being inside a shipwreck on land. Down below lay the rotting remains of New York City’s very first subway train.