“And stop making jokes,” Ling chided. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Here goes: Henry. It’s time to wake up,” Ling said. Nothing happened. “Wake up, Henry!” Ling said again, louder this time.
“Try shaking me awake,” Henry suggested.
Ling grabbed Henry by the shoulders and shook him, softly at first, then more violently.
“Whoa there! Don’t want to scramble my brains!”
“Huh.” Ling reached over and pinched Henry’s arm.
“Ow! Is this science or just an excuse for you to beat me up?”
“Sorry,” Ling said sheepishly. She stood back, thinking. “There’s got to be a way.…”
“Maybe I should try to wake you up,” Henry said.
Ling scoffed. “I am not very suggestible.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“No,” Ling said. “Just a fact.”
Henry arched an eyebrow. “Care to put that to the test? For science?”
“It will be a waste of your time, but be my guest.”
“All right, then.” Henry raised his hand like a sorcerer. “Oh, Ling Chan, Madame Curie of the dream world,” he intoned dramatically, barely keeping a straight face. “Sleep hath released thee! Now is the time thou must waketh!”
Ling rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”
“Fine. I will be pos-i-tute-ly serious.” He cleared his throat and stared at Ling. “Wake up, Ling.”
After several long seconds, Ling smirked. “I told you so,” she said, breaking off a sprig of pine from a nearby tree and inhaling its fragrance.
Henry had been kidding before, but now he wanted to rise to the challenge. If there was a way for them to wake themselves inside the dream, there’d be no need for alarms. Theta wouldn’t be angry with him, because she wouldn’t know he was dream walking. He thought about it for a minute. How had he helped Theta change her nightmares?
Henry turned to Ling once more. “Darlin’, you’re tired and you need your sleep. You’d really like to wake up now, back home in your bed, so why don’t you?”
Ling’s mouth went slack, and her face settled into a peaceful expression. And then, with the briefest sigh, she vanished from the dream world. For a moment, Henry was too stunned to move.
“Ling?” He swiped a hand through the air where Ling had stood. “Huh. Well, what do you know ’bout that?” he said, feeling quite pleased with himself. He couldn’t wait to lord it over Ling tomorrow.
Just then, crackling light appeared inside the tunnel like fireflies on a hot July night, and then the bayou began to darken, the gray sky eating up the last of the shining color as if shutting down for the night. The edges of the dream world wavered and curled up like someone had pulled the thread, unraveling the fabric of it till the cabin, the trees, and the flowers lost their rich detail.
Henry heard soft crying inside the tunnel.
“Hello?” Henry said, approaching.
A song drifted out, and Henry recognized it as one his mother used to play on their piano in New Orleans, back when she could do such things. He’d always sort of liked the old tune.
“Beautiful Dreamer, come unto me…” he sang softly, a calming habit, because he was uneasy. Just under the music was that unsettling growl he and Ling had heard once in the station.
“Hello?” he said again.
A gust of wind blew from the tunnel, and with it, a thick whisper that surrounded Henry: “Dream with me.…”
The whisper made Henry feel warm and loose, as if he’d had a strong drink. He drew closer to the tunnel. Something was moving in the dark. Briefly illuminated by the short bursts of light was a girl.
“Wai-Mae?” Henry called.
There was another pop of light and Henry saw the outline of a veil. He blinked, and in the afterimage, he saw disquieting things that made him wish that he weren’t there alone, for the figure in the tunnel was coming slowly toward him.
In the next second, his alarm rang. And then Henry was waking, his body immobile as he lay in his bed at the Bennington.
When Ling woke from her dream walk, her body ached and the back of her mouth tasted of iron. She wiped away blood from where she’d bitten her lip on the way back. But it didn’t matter, because Henry had done it. He’d woken her up, and Ling smiled despite the split lip.
“Eureka,” she murmured, exultant but also exhausted, just before she fell into a true, deep sleep in which she was only a mortal, not a god. Come the morning, she would barely remember her dreams of George Huang, his pale, glowing skin cracking open in fissures as if he were rotting from the inside, as he lurched through the subway tunnel with fast, jerking, puppetlike movements, hands reaching and clutching, as he approached the sleeping vagrant taking shelter between the concrete archways. Nor would she remember the unholy shriek torn from George’s throat as he descended upon the screaming man and the underground was filled with the lightning-flash phosphorescence of the hungry, broken spirits answering George’s call.