Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (47 page)

“Gee, I might as well tell the
Daily Mirror
as tell you,” Mabel complained.

“I’m sorry, Pie Face, really, I am. But it’s just Theta, and she’s thrilled for you. Aren’t you, Theta?”

“Sure I am.” Theta flicked a glance Evie’s way. The glance said,
What are you doing? Why are you torturing yourself?
Evie fluttered her lashes in response:
I do not know what you are insinuating. I am above your petty insult.

“No, he hasn’t,” Mabel said, unaware of Evie and Theta’s little exchange. “But we’ve been very busy putting the exhibit together.” Mabel cast a suspicious glance at Evie. “You
are
coming, aren’t you, Evie? You won’t let some radio nonsense keep you?”

“I said I’d be there and I will be there.” Evie sniffed. “Oh, look! It’s started snowing. Isn’t it beautiful?”

The girls stopped at the top of an archway and watched the glistening flakes flutter down over the pathway and rolling lawn. The night held its breath for a moment. In the hush, they could hear jazz and merriment coming from the nearby Central Park Casino, whose lights shone through the gaps in the trees, making Theta think of the lighthouse and Memphis. She’d tried calling his house that afternoon, but hung up with a “Sorry, wrong number” when his aunt answered the phone. Snow melted on the backs of her gloves, and she felt that strange stirring in her gut. In the dream, it was always snowing. Snow everywhere. Henry said dreams were clues, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what her dream wanted her to know.

“Say, Mabel, you find out anything interesting for this Diviners falderal?” Theta asked.

“Oh, all sorts of things. It’s in the exhibit,” Mabel said without elaborating further. It was her private experience with Jericho, and she didn’t want to share it. Especially if Evie was going to blab all of Mabel’s personal information without a second thought.

“The full creepy crawly, huh?” Theta pressed. “People who can
talk to ghosts. People who can see the future and read objects, like Evil here. People who could, I don’t know, burn things, set them on fire.”

“Set things on fire?” Mabel scrunched up her face. “Goodness, no! Nothing like that.”

“Honestly, Theta, and you call me Evil,” Evie said with a laugh. “Where’d you come up with that one?”

The slightest tingle rippled along Theta’s fingertips. “Just making conversation. It’s freezing,” she said and walked faster through the falling snow.

In the quaint lobby of the small, traditional Kensington House, the girls waited, until at last a very tall, white-haired man wearing wire spectacles and a tweed jacket strolled inside. He puffed on a pipe.

Mabel poked Evie and Theta. “That’s him! Come on!” she whispered urgently.

“Dr. Jung?” Mabel said, rushing to greet him. Evie and Theta followed.

“Yes. I am Dr. Jung.”

“Thank heavens! We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Have you?” Dr. Jung’s brows formed a V atop his spectacles. “Forgive me. Did we have an appointment?”

“No, but we’re desperate to talk to you. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

The psychiatrist blew out a puff of smoke, considering. He allowed a polite smile. “Well, then, I suppose you had best come this way.”

After they introduced themselves, Dr. Jung ushered Theta, Mabel, and Evie into a cozy, handsomely furnished office lined with shelves of important-looking books and bade them sit before settling into a chair himself.

“Now, how may I be of help to you?”

“Doctor, what do you know about Diviners?” Theta asked.

“I thought you wanted to know about acting,” Mabel whispered.

Dr. Jung waited for the girls to settle. “Ah. I have heard of them,” he said, his Swiss accent neatly clipping the ends of his words. “So. Am I to understand that you are interested in psychic phenomena and the paranormal?”

Theta cut her eyes at Mabel. When Theta had invited Mabel along to the lecture, she’d had no idea they’d end up talking to Jung himself. There was no way around it. She’d have to let Mabel in on the truth. “I suppose so. See, I have a pal, a Diviner, who can walk in dreams. I mean really walk around inside them, like he’s awake, seeing everything.”

Mabel’s eyes widened. “Who is it?”

“Who do you think?” Theta said.

“It’s Henry,” Evie confirmed.

“Wait a minute—how do you know this?” Mabel swiveled from Evie to Theta. “Why does Evie know?” She swiveled back to Evie. “So you can keep
some
secrets, just not others.”

“Honestly, Mabesie, are you going to make me wear the crown of thorns for long?” Evie said through gritted teeth. “I’m
sorry
!”

Dr. Jung cleared his throat, and the girls quieted. “Lucid dreaming, you say? That is quite a power, indeed. Please. Continue.”

“Lately, my pal Henry and this other dream walker, Ling—”

Dr. Jung’s eyes widened. “There are two?”

“That was going to be my next question,” Mabel said, giving Evie a wary glance.

I don’t know this one
, Evie mouthed to Mabel.

“It’s a long story,” Theta said. “The point is, they’ve been meeting up in the dream world in the same place every night—a train station. And from there, they go to some magical-sounding place where they can touch things and smell flowers and… well, from what Henry tells me, it’s all very real. Look here, Doc, I know it sounds like we’re lunatics, but it’s true.”

Dr. Jung rubbed his eyeglasses clean with a handkerchief. “Your friend and his compatriot walk freely through the unconscious realm. They are at play inside the psyches of many people, as well as engaging
with the experiences and memories of all humanity—the collective unconscious.”

“Sorry, Doc, you lost me,” Theta said. “What’s this collective unconscious?”

The psychiatrist hooked his spectacles over his ears again. “Think of it as a symbolic library that has always existed, which houses all our personal and our ancestral experiences and memories, shared knowledge that each individual seems to understand on an innate level, like an inheritance. Religion. Myths. Fairy tales. All of it gains its power from the collective unconscious. And dreams are like a library card, if you will, that provides access to this great archive of shared symbols, memories, and experiences.”

“Can it hurt you, though? If you get hurt inside a dream, you wake up. But what about if you’re living inside that dream, like my friend Henry? Could something bad happen to him or to Ling?”

“An interesting question. Have you ever heard of the shadow self?”

Evie and Theta shook their heads.

“It’s a dark side, isn’t it? Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I’m not mistaken,” Mabel said, and she took some satisfaction in knowing this.

“Yes. That is so.” Dr. Jung blew out puffs of spicy tobacco. “Every one of us has a conscious self. This is the face that we present to the world every day. But there is another self, which remains hidden even from our own minds. It contains our most primitive emotions and all that we cannot abide in ourselves, all that we repress. This is the shadow.”

The psychiatrist relit his pipe. At the strike of the match, Theta’s hands began to prickle.

“Is this shadow self evil?” Evie asked, and for a moment, her mind flashed on John Hobbes and his terrible secret room.

“It depends on how fiercely one guards against the shadow self and to what lengths he would go to protect himself from that knowledge. Such a person doesn’t even know he is doing evil. Think again of your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The goodly Dr. Jekyll is, one might
say, possessed by his shadow self, Mr. Hyde, who does unspeakable things. Dr. Jekyll projects—that is, assigns—his intolerable qualities onto the split self, Mr. Hyde. That is an extreme example, of course, but it does occur. That is the shadow’s greatest power over us—that we do not see it. Once we are conscious of our shadow, we can become enlightened.”

“I think my pal Henry has a shadow side—”

“Everyone has a shadow side,” Dr. Jung corrected gently.

“How do we get him to stop and wake up?”

“The only way to correct the shadow is to become conscious of it. To accept it and to integrate it into the whole person. Perhaps your friend will find this solution on his own by exploring his dreams, for our dreams wish to wake us to some deeper meaning. All that is hidden eventually reveals itself, no matter how fervently we fight to keep it locked away.”

Theta thought about her dreams, of the snow and the horses, the burning village. And Roy. Always Roy. How hard she worked to keep her past in the past, where it couldn’t harm her. But now the head doctor was saying she couldn’t keep a lid on it forever. The uncomfortable itching in her palms had progressed to a burning sensation.

“Are you feeling well, Miss Knight?” Dr. Jung said, his brow furrowed. “You seem anxious.”

“It’s, um, awfully stuffy in here is all.”

“Actually, it’s a bit chilly,” Mabel said.

“I-I just need some air. We’ve already taken up too much of your time, Doctor. Thanks. You’ve been swell.”

Panicked, Theta sprang from her seat. As she did, a book fell from a shelf behind the psychiatrist, knocking over a candle. The flame lit a section of Dr. Jung’s coat sleeve, but the psychiatrist snuffed it out before it could truly catch.

“Gee, I’m awful sorry,” Theta said, horrified. “I shouldn’t’ve jumped up so quick.” She tried to conjure cool thoughts—ice cream, winter wind, snow. No. Not snow.

“All fine,” Dr. Jung said, examining his scorched sleeve. He retrieved the book from the spot on the rug where it had landed, spine up, pages fanned, and examined the page. “Hmm. Curious, indeed. Didn’t you say you felt too warm, Miss Knight?”

“Yes,” Theta whispered.

“What is it?” Evie asked.

“A meaningful coincidence. A powerful symbol from the collective unconscious.” Dr. Jung held the book open for them to a drawing of a grand bird consumed by fire. “The Phoenix rising from the flames.”

The book was open to page number one hundred forty-four.

Far below the surface of the city, Vernon “Big Vern” Bishop and his men tried to keep warm while they waited for the bootlegger who’d hired them to store a shipment of hooch. The job was simple: Canadian whiskey came in by boat. Before the boat docked, Vernon and his men rowed out, picked up the barrels, rowed back, and hauled the booze into the cavernous old stone tunnels that snaked below the Brooklyn Bridge. For his crew, Vernon had chosen Leon, a big Jamaican who did a little amateur boxing now and then, and a Cuban named Tony whose English was limited, but Vernon got on with the Cubans okay because his wife had come from Puerto Rico and spoke Spanish. From her, Vernon had picked up words and phrases here and there, enough to make small talk.

It was very dark here. The only light came from the lamp on Vernon’s digger’s helmet, Leon’s lantern, and the flashlight Tony gripped tightly.

“¿Cuánto tiempo más?” Tony asked, pacing to keep warm.

Vernon shrugged. “Till the boss man comes.”

“Don’t like it here,” Leon grumbled, his breath coming out in smoky puffs that evaporated in the lantern light.

Vernon was comfortable in the tunnels. As a sandhog, he’d built some of them. That was dangerous work—deep underground, where a man could only dig a certain number of hours a day or else the pressure could get him. But he took pride in knowing that he was responsible
for digging out to make way for the city’s future—the subways, bridges, and tunnels of tomorrow.

“Telling you, it doesn’t feel right,” Leon said.

“Don’t be bringing that island superstition into it,” Vernon chided, borrowing a phrase from his cousin Clyde.

Clyde had served in the all-black 92nd Division during the big war. After it was over, he walked into Harlem decorated and proud, despite the fact that he’d lost a leg to a bullet wound gone to rot. They’d smoked cigars and rolled craps in the back of Junior Jackson’s grocery till the wee hours, laughing and drinking whiskey, listening to two fellas cutting each other on stride piano. But Clyde looked haunted. Later, under the yellow-tinged moon, he’d said, “I saw things in that war that a man shouldn’t ever have to see. Things that make you forget we’re human and not just a bunch of beasts crawling out of the sludge somewhere. And the damnedest part of it all is, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what we were fighting for in the first place. After a while, fighting just got to be habit.”

Five months later, Clyde had gone down to Georgia to visit relatives. He’d walked into town for a cold drink. The local folks hadn’t taken too kindly to Clyde wearing his uniform with its shiny medals and told him to strip it off. Clyde refused. “I fought for this country in this uniform. Lost a leg doing it, too. Got a right to wear it.”

The good folks of Georgia disagreed. They dragged him through town tied to the back of a truck, set him alight, then strung him up from the tallest tree. Somebody said you could hear his screams clear over to the next town. His family never even got his medals back.

Funny that Vernon remembered Clyde just now. For the past few nights, he’d dreamed about his long-gone cousin. In the dream, Clyde had no crutch, and his uniform was crisp and clean. He’d waved to Vernon from the front porch of a house with a garden in front and a fine peach tree in the yard, the very sort of place Vernon had dreamed of running himself. Beside Clyde was a pretty girl in an old-fashioned bridal gown and veil. “
Dream with me…
” she’d whispered in Vernon’s head.

He’d taken it as a sign that everything was going right, that this job for the bootlegger and the extra money might mean a piece of the pie for Vernon at last. But now something about the dream crawled under Big Vern’s skin like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He couldn’t say why.

Down the long cannon of tunnel, he heard a sound. The men jumped up, alert.

“That them?” Leon whispered.

Vernon held up a hand for quiet and stared into the dark, waiting. “No signal.”

The bootlegger always shined his flashlight in code: three short blasts. But whoever lurked down in the tunnel wasn’t doing that. Vern’s muscles went tight. It could be cops. Or rival bootleggers with guns drawn in an ambush.

Vernon strained, listening. What he heard was faint but persistent—a whine like bees trapped inside a house and trying to get out. But deeper. Almost human. It made his skin prickle into gooseflesh. Instinctively, he stepped back.

“What is that?” Leon asked. He raised the lantern. His eyes were huge.

“Shhh, quiet now,” Vernon whispered.

They waited.

“You hear it still?” Vernon whispered.

“No,” Leon whispered back, but just then, it came again, a little louder. “Told you I don’t like this. Let’s get out of here.”

Vernon gripped Leon’s arm. “Can’t go till the boss say go.”

“Hang the boss! He’s not down here with whatever that is.”

“You don’t just walk off the job with these Sicilian fellas,” Vernon warned. “We wait with the booze.”

A loud screech reverberated in the tunnel. The men felt it in their teeth.

“Dios mío,” Tony whispered.

“Boss or no boss, I’m gone,” Leon said.

Tony nodded.

“We go,” Vernon agreed.

The men ran. The lantern’s wobbly light threw their shadows up the old brick walls in looming, macabre waves. Suddenly, the lantern went out, plunging them into near darkness. There were only Vern’s miner’s hat lamp and Tony’s flashlight now, and they weren’t enough. Their frantic breathing was loud in their ears. Vern knew he should calm down, slow his breaths so that he didn’t faint. They all knew this. It didn’t matter. Whatever lurked in that corridor had them panting like trapped dogs.

“You hear that?” Leon asked, panicked.

The sound was moving closer. They could pick up the individual guttural growls buried inside the collective clamor. What was it? How many?

“It’s coming from behind us,” Vern said. “Where’s the lantern? Leon, get it lit!”

Another screech.

“Leon!”

“Trying, aren’t I?”

A screech came from their right and the men went still. It was very close.

“Thought you said it was behind us,” Leon whispered urgently.

Vernon swallowed hard. “It was.”

“Let’s go back!” Leon said and took off running back toward the vault under the bridge.

“Leon! Wait!” Vern called seconds before Leon’s scream rang out, then stopped abruptly.

Vernon had always wondered what his cousin Clyde had seen in the war that was too terrible to mention. Just now, he thought he might find out.

“Dios mío,” Tony said again. He dropped the flashlight and slid down the wall, putting his hands around his neck. “Ayúdame, Santa María!”

Vernon grabbed the flashlight. “Get up, Tony! We’re moving.” He hauled the terrified Tony to his feet, half dragging him down a set of darkened stairs leading deeper into the underground. A series of twists
and turns later, they came out in an abandoned, partially flooded subway station. High above them, once-magnificent brick ceilings arched down into columns striated with years’ worth of water marks. The water was up to Vernon’s waist, but he was well over six feet; Tony, on the other hand, was only five and a half feet tall. The water reached his chest as he prayed fervently.

“Not far now,” Vernon said. He had no idea how far it was, but he needed Tony beside him.

The water rippled from below. In the distance, a splash bubbled up.

“¿Qué es eso?” Tony whispered, his voice filled with terror.

With a shaking hand, Vernon swept the flashlight’s insufficient glow across the wide expanse of the flooded station: The illuminated walls slimed with years of mold and neglect. An abandoned ticket booth sitting like a small mausoleum. Vernon had been in a lot of subway stations, and he knew there had to be stairs leading up and out.

He swung the flashlight beam to the right of the old ticket booth.

A wall.

To the left.

There it was—a corridor!

“Tony!” Vernon whispered. He showed him the corridor in the grainy white light. “Ahí.”

Tony nodded. “Sí.”

The flashlight winked out. Vernon smacked it against his hand, but it was no use.

The sound was back and no longer confined to the distance. It was all around them.

“Move!” Vernon shouted.
“¡Vámonos!”

It was hard to run with the weight of water pressing against their bodies and only Vernon’s headlamp to show the way. Vernon bumped into the wall. He gritted his teeth to hold back his scream and plunged his hands under the murky water, searching for the ladder he knew had to be there. His fingers were rewarded with the feel of metal rungs.

“It’s here,” Vern assured Tony. “Ladder.”

The water rippled again with a long and powerful swoosh. Trembling, Vernon swung his head in the direction of the movement, out where the old tracks had been, where only a skeletal fretwork of steel beams now stood.

Just last week, Vernon had celebrated his birthday—twenty-one—in a little joint under the stairs of a brownstone on the West Side. He very much hoped to do the same for his twenty-second. Or maybe he’d gather his small family—his wife and their new baby—and find another place, a better place. Move out to New Jersey or down to Baltimore, where his sister was a teacher. There was a lot of country; he didn’t have to spend his years breathing in dirt and gas, hauling whiskey, gasping for air when he got topside, so thirsty he could never get his fill of water. Yes, they’d go—out like the pioneers, questing for their stake, for what the land had been holding in trust for them.

Clack-clack-clack-clack.
The terrible sound echoed in the watery chamber as the glowing green things streamed out of the tunnel and down the walls, burning against the dark. Pointed teeth glinted from the mouths that opened to emit those terrible sounds.

Behind him, Vernon heard Tony’s screams.

“Tony!” he called, whipping his light around. “Tony!”

But Tony was gone. Only Vernon remained—Vernon and those things in the dark, getting closer. With a shout, Vern was up the ladder and onto the platform, and then he was running. Running like the settlers on the prairie racing to pound their stake into the hard, fertile ground of the heartland, securing their place and their children’s places, the generations springing up under the blue sky. Vernon ran toward the faulty light of his headlamp as it bounced across the darkness.

The corridor curved up and to the left. Vernon followed the bend, the terrible guttural screeching filling his ears. Vernon remembered what it was in the dream that had unsettled him. In the dream, Clyde had stood under a lightning storm.

“It’s coming,” he’d said, and looked off in the direction of a skinny gray man in a tall hat, who laughed and laughed.

Vern’s headlamp shook as it illuminated the corridor and what waited for him there. He’d staked his claim in the wrong spot.

“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered as the corridor was filled with an angry green light from which there was no escape.