“As long as you promise it doesn’t involve small children or yodeling.”
“Neither. But I do need you to come with me downtown. Unless you’re afraid?”
“Darlin’, I’m only afraid of bad reviews,” Henry said and flagged down a taxi.
On the ride downtown, Ling told Henry of her haunting dream about George Huang, and about her curious finding in the library on the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company.
“It was a real place—the first New York City subway. It opened in 1870, they stopped using it in 1873, and then it was sealed for good in 1875,” Ling said. “And Henry, the drawings of the station were remarkably close to what you and I see each night in the dream world.”
“The fountain? The piano?” Henry asked, and Ling nodded. “The goldfish?”
“Even the goldfish. And it was built beneath Devlin’s Clothing Store! So why is an old train station showing up each night in our dream walks?”
“You know how dreamscapes are—they’re a jumble of symbols, odd bits of mental string collected from our daily lives, and other people’s as well.”
“Yes, and like a river, they change constantly. But you asked the question first: Why do you and I keep returning to the same place, where the same sequence of events plays out in the same order, each night, like some sort of loop?”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Henry mused, rubbing his chin. “That was very smart. I feel much better about my standing as a member of the imaginary science club now. All right—why? And what does it have to do with George, and with us?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
The taxi stopped at City Hall Park. Henry paid the driver, and Ling showed Henry the grate by the water fountain. “This is where George took me that night. He led me here, very deliberately. And then he pointed to those buildings across the street. Do they seem familiar?”
Henry cocked his head and squinted at the block of Broadway between Murray and Warren. “If I’m not mistaken, it looks a bit like the street where we start our dream walk each night.”
“I believe it is.” Ling eased onto the park bench and loosened the straps on her braces, rubbing the soreness from the spots where the leather chafed. “That building on the corner of Warren and Broadway was where Devlin’s stood before it burned down.”
Henry sat beside her on the bench and stared at the new building occupying the corner now. It bore no resemblance to the one in their dreams. “So this spot is somehow connected to our dream each night, but we have no idea why, and George wants us to know… something about it.”
A whistling park custodian cleared soggy missing-persons signs from the lampposts. Ling waited until he’d moved on.
“Remember when I told you that the dead appear when they have a message to deliver? And that they almost always choose a dream scene that reminds them of a favorite place—like my auntie standing in a garden she loved, or Mr. Hsu in the Tea House, where he ate every single day?” Ling took a deep breath. “Well, sometimes the dead come back instead to a place where they have unfinished business. They can’t leave until it’s resolved.”
“You think there’s some unfinished business George has to take care of here in City Hall Park?” Henry said, gesturing to the pigeons strutting across the stones.
“Not George. The woman in the veil.” Ling gave Henry a sideways glance. “What if I told you the people in my neighborhood think that this sleeping sickness in the city isn’t a sickness at all, but a haunting? They say it’s the work of a restless spirit.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m starting to wonder if it might be true.”
“I thought you were a scientist.”
“Just because I believe in science doesn’t mean I ignore superstition. Sometimes there’s a basis for those superstitions. And anyway, I’m not the only one who’s wondered. You did. And Wai-Mae warned us about the tunnel. She said she could feel the ghost, and that the ghost frightened her—‘She cries’ is what she told me.”
“The Crying Woman comes,” Henry intoned. “Well, hold on to your hat; here’s where it gets even more interesting: Last night, after I woke you up from inside the dream… by the way, I had planned to hold that impressive skill over your head, but now I fear it’s not appropriate.”
“Just tell me what happened,” Ling growled.
“The moment you left, the dream world went dark.”