Lair of Dreams

“Yes. I did,” Ling said in wonder, her mind already at work trying to understand how it had happened. She’d located the living inside a dream. This was a first. “Where are we? Whose dream is this?”


Like magic, the noises began: the clop-clop of horses, the distant rattle of an elevated train, the shouts of people hawking wares, and the thin, high squeal of a factory whistle. The bank of fog thinned, revealing the same jumble of worn city streets as in the previous night’s dream walk, but now there was action: Two men fell out of a pair of saloon doors, fighting while a crowd egged them on. Half a dozen street urchins pushed after a hoop with a stick. “Anthony Orange Cross…” Their excited shouts lingered after they’d disappeared like wisps of smoke. A ghostly horse-drawn wagon trotted past. “Beware, beware, Paradise Square! The Crying Woman comes!” the driver called just before he was swallowed by the mist.

Pop-pop-pop! Fireworks exploded over the sketchlike rooftops, and a phantasmic man in an old-fashioned vest and coat flickered against the haze as if he were a motion-picture projection.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” the apparition called. “Come one! Come all for a ride on Alfred Beach’s pneumatic train. See this marvel for yourselves and be amazed—the future of travel, beneath these very streets!” The apparition gestured to his right, and the limestone building appeared.

“Devlin’s! That’s the spot where I heard Louis’s fiddle last night!” Henry ran toward it, listening, but no music drifted out from inside its old brick walls tonight. “But I heard it so clearly last night.”

“I told you there was no guarantee,” Ling said. “This is still a dream, remember?”

“But I know the sound of his playing like my own. It was him. Louis! Louis!” Henry felt like he might cry. Having come so close, he couldn’t bear this new disappointment. With a grunt, he swung at the building, hitting it with a hard thwack.

“Ow!” he cried, shaking out his hand.

Ling’s mouth opened in shock. “You… you just touched that. That’s impossible.” Cautiously, Ling reached out and trailed her fingers across the bumps and grooves in the brick. “Impossible,” she said again. “Have you ever been able to touch something while dream walking before?”

“Until yesterday when I grabbed your hand? No. Never.”

“Me, either,” Ling said.

A piercing scream rang out, sending shivers up Henry’s and Ling’s spines: “Murder! Murder! Oh, murder!”

A ghostly figure broke through the haze, heading straight for Henry and Ling: a veiled woman in an old-fashioned, high-necked gown. She ran as if frightened, as if being chased. As she drew closer, Henry and Ling could see that the front of her dress was red with blood. The woman whooshed past in the space between them, trailing cold in her wake. Then she moved through the facade of the limestone building as if she were made of smoke.

A shimmering hole opened in the wall.

“What was that?” Ling asked, but Henry didn’t answer. He stood at the edge of the hole, which was glowing with whatever energy lay inside. The opening wavered uncertainly, as if it might snap shut at any second.

“There are steps leading down. Come on! We have to hurry!” Henry said, nodding toward it.

“Are you a lunatic?”

“Please. I don’t think I can find him without you, Ling,” Henry pleaded. “It’s just a dream, darlin’. If something bad happens, all we have to do is wake up.”

“I should’ve doubled my fee,” Ling groused.

And with that, they raced inside and down the steps just as the portal closed behind them.

“Ling?” Henry called in the darkness.

“Here,” Ling answered. “Wherever here is.”

Dim yellow lights sputtered on and rippled through the black as if someone had flipped a switch, illuminating a long brick corridor that narrowed into darkness farther on. Pipes ran above their heads. There were no other helpful distinguishing features.

A thread of cool wind drifted toward them.

“It’s coming from up ahead. So I guess that’s the way we go.”

They walked quietly for a while, the silence proving every bit as uncomfortable as the dream walk’s unnerving strangeness.

“What’s it like to speak to the dead?” Henry asked at last, a stab at conversation. “Is it frightening?”

“They don’t scare me. They only want to be heard. Sometimes they have messages for the living.”

“Like what?”

“‘Marry on the eighth day of the eighth month of next year.’ ‘This is not the time to test your luck—you must wait one month.’ ‘Tell him I know—I know what you did,’” Ling said, recalling some of the information she’d carried back from the dead.

“You’re like the Western Union of ghosts,” Henry joked.

Ling shrugged, annoyed. She wasn’t in a mood to explain herself to Henry. All day long, she’d been able to think of little other than George. “Don’t you ever worry about this sleeping sickness when you walk?”

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Do you? That is, would it stop you?”