Theta let out a long sigh and snuggled next to her best friend, resting her head on his chest. Her sleek dark bob still smelled like cigarette smoke. “Maybe we’re all going crazy.”
“Maybe.” Henry kissed the top of Theta’s head, and she put her arm across his stomach.
“Hen?”
“Yeah, darlin’?”
“Can I sleep in your bed with you?”
“If you can get me there.”
Theta helped Henry to his feet and then to his room, where the two of them fell asleep side by side, arms entwined like two halves of the same whole.
In his dream, George Huang stood under the hazy sun at a late-afternoon party wearing a cream-colored suit and a striped silk shirt with fancy French cuffs of the sort he’d stared at in shop windows where they didn’t welcome people like him. The bright, fast rhythms of a jazz band echoed through the dream. Up on the hill, a sprawling white house loomed, casting sharp blades of shadow across the summer-green lawn.
George smiled, ecstatic. His good dream! Somehow, he’d made it back here.
Men nodded solemnly as George walked by. He was important here. Respected. Photographers took his picture for the papers. As George smiled and posed, he saw the boys who’d bullied him and the customers who ordered him around as if he were barely human huddled together on the other side of a tall picket fence, watching, envying. George raised his champagne glass. How do you like me now? he thought.
“Georgie! Over here! Hey!” Several pretty girls waved to him as they peeled off their stockings and jumped into a champagne fountain, giggling and splashing with abandon. George threw his head back and laughed. Oh, this was the best dream in the world! He never wanted to wake up.
On the edge of the lawn, Lee Fan appeared wearing a red cheongsam, the wind whipping her hair across her rouged cheeks.
“Dream with me…” she whispered. She turned and walked inside the tall white house.
That whisper ignited a new fire in George. He’d never wanted anyone or anything so desperately. His ancestors shimmered on the edges of the party like images fading from a photograph. Some of them seemed to be reaching out, as if they could grab hold of him, as if they wanted to tell him something important, but George didn’t want to lose sight of his dream. So he raced ahead, leaving them behind. He ran past the fountain, where the dripping girls eyed him hungrily. Their voices swirled, a seductive, whispering chorus: “Dream with us, dream with us, us, us, the dream wants you wants you wants you to dream to dream to dream with us.”
Lee Fan stood just inside the darkened doorway of the house in her red dress. She waved her arm, and behind her the dark lit up like a movie screen, showing a film in which the two of them danced close while an orchestra played and a girl singer crooned, “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.…”
On-screen, Lee Fan angled her face toward George’s for a kiss, and his heart fluttered. But just before the actual kiss, it all went dark again, like a nickelodeon cutting out at the good part so you’d keep putting in nickels. In the doorway, Lee Fan crooked a finger, beckoning George as she backed in, letting the gloom swallow her whole. Everything George wanted was waiting there in the dark, so he went inside.
Above him, the ceiling winked with a soft phosphorescence. The shivery coolness was an unwelcome surprise, though. And there were sounds—low growls and scratchings that gave him pause. He glanced back through the open door at the sliver of sunshine he’d left behind, then pressed on, walking deeper into darkness.
“Lee Fan?” he called.
No answer.
Shadows moved across George’s hands, and he looked up toward the flickering ceiling.
No, not flickering.
Moving.
The low growls he’d heard swelled into a bone-chilling chorus, and George had only one thought: Wake up NOW. He ran back toward the hazy circle of daylight. Back to where everything was good. But every time he got close, the sunlight drew farther away.
At last, George pushed free, tumbling down onto the lawn. The summer grass had gone brittle; it twisted with snakes. The champagne fountain ran red with blood. The half-dressed girls slurped up handfuls of the stuff, and when they opened their rotting mouths, they had teeth as sharp as a razor’s edge. “More!” they cried. “More!”
“Promise…” the dream demanded.
“Wake up. Wake up wake up wake up,” George whispered to himself. He shut his eyes, but it didn’t matter; the dream pushed further and further into his mind until his head was filled with the most terrible images: demons eating his entrails, tearing at his neck with their teeth. He couldn’t take another second.
“I promise!” he cried, opening his eyes again.
There was a sharp prick of pain, then an icy cold spreading through him. Far off, Lee Fan waved to him. He could not reach her. He would never reach her.
His lips opened to let out one last cry for help.
But it never came.