Lair of Dreams (The Diviners 2)

“We have to get up to the street, Theta.”

The water. It was up to Theta’s chest. She nodded, shivering. The earlier heat had gone, and now she felt as if she would never be warm again. “Sam? Please. Don’t… don’t tell Memphis.”

Sam glanced down at the digger’s hat bobbing in the sewer’s water current. He looked back at Theta. “I didn’t see nothing.”

The way they’d come crackled with light like a dozen gangsters firing Tommy guns from a moving car at night. Shrieks bounced off the walls. More were coming.

“Time to go,” Sam said.

Theta waded through the filthy water and climbed up the ladder, wincing as the pain bit at her burned palms. And then she and Sam were sliding the manhole cover off, pulling themselves up onto the neon-painted puddles of Broadway and running for the graveyard.

Ling found herself on the barren streets of Chinatown. Fog clung to the rippling New Year’s banners and the zigzag fire escapes. There were no lights at the windows, and the businesses were shuttered. Big yellow quarantine notices had been stuck to every door. The windows of the Tea House were dark. The rest of the city loomed as a distant silhouette, shadowy and unreachable.

Where is everyone? Ling didn’t know if she’d thought that or said it aloud. Her mind was as cloudy as the streets. But her body was tense, alert, ready for some impending battle.

A ship’s horn blasted a farewell, and through a clearing in the fog, Ling could see to the harbor and the great big steamer sailing away, her parents and Uncle Eddie at the stern, crowded in among Ling’s neighbors, all of them waving good-bye. Her sorrowful mother fluttered her handkerchief. Her father’s mouth moved, but Ling couldn’t hear what he was saying as the fog swallowed them up.

“Baba! Mama!” Ling cried, and it echoed in the empty streets.

The high shimmer of a gong rattled the windowpanes. Zhangu drums beat out a steady warning of war. The heavy pounding matched the furious rhythm of Ling’s heartbeat. And just under the drums, rising, was a high-pitched, insectlike whine that made Ling’s skin crawl.

Glowing faces appeared at the windows and receded. Ling whirled around. At the bottom of the street, George Huang waited. He seemed carved of chalk. Lips as colorless as new corn twitched around a diseased mouth. Deep fissures erupted on his face, neck, and hands, his skin cracking open as if he were rotting from the inside. George’s mouth opened in a shriek. For a moment, Ling couldn’t think. She could only stare at the pale figure of George Huang, that thing between life and death, as his fingers reached toward her, clutching and straightening like a puppet’s. Then he dropped to a crouch and skittered up the side of the building like a fast-moving beetle.

Run, a voice inside her said faintly. Run. How to run? Why had her body forgotten this simple movement? Run. When she looked down, the street was a river of pitch. Slick hands emerged from the sticky ooze. They grabbed at her ankles. Ling gasped as the braces appeared on her legs, the buckles tightening and tightening. She cried out, and suddenly the dream shifted and Ling lay on a hospital bed, her back arching with pain as spasms ate away at her legs, the muscles dying.

Two neat lines of beds flanked the room, stretching as far as Ling could see, all of them occupied by dreamers. They sat up and turned their rotting faces to her, chorusing, “Dream with us dream with us dream forever dream with us dream dream forever dream.”

Uncle Eddie was beside her, his expression grim as he read her medical chart. “They never should’ve done it,” he said, placing the chart on the bed. The words swam: Subject #28. New York, New York.

Another spasm gripped Ling and she cried out in agony. A nurse swept the curtain around them. She bent her face close to Ling’s. “Would you like the pain to end?”

“Y-yes,” Ling begged.

“Then dream with us.”

Through a parting in the curtain, George appeared, and Ling’s mouth tried to form the words to warn the nurse, to say look, look, ohpleaselook behind you, but the words could only bounce around inside her head.

The hospital lights arced. In the flashes of light, George’s eyes shone bright as a demon’s.

“George. I’m sorry. Please. Please,” Ling whispered.

He looked at her for just a second as if he knew her. Then his mouth spread wide, the muscles of his neck straining as if he were trying to birth something from his throat. His fingers, wrinkled as funeral crepe, reached toward her, lighting first on her medical chart.

Don’t look, Ling told herself. Don’t look and it won’t be real. The insect drone was so loud Ling thought she’d lose her mind. And then there was silence. When Ling opened her eyes again, George was gone.

Words had been scrawled on her medical chart: “Don’t promise. Pearl.”

Ling heard her name being called. It sounded as if it were coming from another room, an adjacent dream.

“Ling! Ling Chan, where are you?”

“Henry!” Ling called.

Henry swept the curtain aside. He clutched the fabric as if it were the only thing holding him up.

“Henry? Are you really here?”

Henry managed a half smile. “It would seem so,” he said, and even his voice was weak.