Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (44 page)

A strange noise snapped him back to attention. His skin had bubbled up into gooseflesh for some damned reason.

“Hello?” he called out sleepily. “Is somebody there?”

Nathan hurried to the edge of the platform, cupped a hand over his eyes and peered down the long, curving stretch of tracks. By golly, there was someone on the tracks—a girl!

“Hey—hey you, there!” he called to her. “Miss, you’d better come up from there. You’ll be hit.”

Nathan looked around for help, but there was no one else waiting with him at this late hour. Since they’d gone to the new coin-operated turnstiles, there were no longer any ticket choppers sitting nearby. He was utterly alone—except for the motionless girl in the tunnel. Some trick of shadow and high, stark subway light bathed her in phosphorescence. She glowed, this girl.
Like an angel
, Nathan thought. And she wore a blue dress.

“Miss Hodkin? Nora?” Nathan tried.

The girl’s head jerked up as if she registered the name.

It must be her—had to be! And suddenly, this lost, shining girl waiting for rescue seemed like the answer to Nathan’s desires. She was pretty. Her parents were rich. There was a reward. And when the boys back at the Exchange heard about his heroics, they’d clap him on the back, stick a cigar in his mouth, and say
Attaboy!
He’d be made—a man in full.

All of this buzzed through Nathan’s brain in a matter of seconds as the girl swayed precariously in the gloom. Then she turned and stumbled around the curve, out of sight.

“Miss Hodkin! Wait!” Nathan called to no avail. “Doggone it!”

Nathan was still a little woozy from the Scotch, but the booze also made him brave as he hopped onto the tracks and jogged down the center of the subway tunnel after his damsel in distress, the bright light of the station receding behind him. According to the appeal from her parents, Nora Hodkin had been missing for four days. She had to be weak from hunger, Nathan figured. Yet she was surprisingly quick. His lungs ached from trying to keep up. He was deep into the tunnel now and uneasy. The only light came from two weak work lights set up high, and Nathan slowed, mindful of the electrified third rail. Steel support beams flanked the tracks. In the eerie gloom, they loomed like giants’ legs. It sounded funny down here, too. He heard a high, tight whine—almost like train wheels, but not quite—and here and there, animalistic growling. What
was
that? It was enough to make him want to go back.

Just then, he spied the bright back of the girl’s blue dress as she lumbered across the tracks ahead.

“Miss Hodkin!” he called, closing the distance between them.

To the relief of Nathan’s aching legs and lungs, the girl finally slowed, and as she did, he noticed for the first time that Nora Hodkin didn’t move quite right. Her gait was uneven, and her arms twitched in a strange, quicksilver way, her fingers clutching at air.

She’s drunk or faint.
That was his brain talking. But his gut disagreed. The girl’s movement was purposeful, not drunk; she moved as if driven by strong need. There was something not quite human about her. And just as this thought took form in Nathan’s Scotch-hazed mind, she stopped and turned.

Nora Hodkin might’ve been pretty at one time. But the thing facing him now had a gaunt, bleached face as fissured as a broken vase. Milky-blue eyes fixed on him. Nostrils flared as she sniffed, once, twice. Cracked lips peeled back from sharp, yellowed teeth. Black ooze dripped from the corners of her new smile. And Nathan understood at
last what drove her: hunger. She was hunting. Leading him into a trap, like prey.

She reached out her talonlike fingers. “
Dream…?
” she pleaded in a hair-raising growl.
“Dream!”

If Nathan Rosborough had been able to scream, it would’ve rung through the underground and rattled the windows of the trains passing through. Instead, it was Nora Hodkin whose mouth unhinged in an unholy screech.

“Jesus… oh, Jesus,” Nathan whispered, backing away.

The glowing girl in the blue dress dropped into a crouch, knees wide as she scuttled toward him, brushfire-fast. Nathan turned and ran as fast as he could toward the Fulton Street station. His earlier hopes deserted him. His one overwhelming desire was simply to survive.

Behind him, the thing that had once been Nora Hodkin loosed a second screech that bounced off the walls. Nathan was sober now, his mind sharpened by animal fear. Greenish lights pulsed between concrete subway columns.

A train?

In the dark, there were hungry growls and high-pitched, demonic cries that nearly brought him to his knees.

No. Not a train. More of
them
.

He heard the rapid
click-click-clack
of what sounded like many claws scraping across brick. She’d called them. Dear God! They were gaining on him. Nathan could smell their stench. Suddenly, Nora Hodkin leaped down, cutting off his escape. She was trying to talk. Her voice was a broken gargle, a fire consuming the last of its fuel.
“Must dream…”

The distant lights of the subway train shone far down the tracks, too far to be of any help to Nathan. The night came alive with more like her—sickly, glowing, used-up things crawling from the depths, creeping along the walls and ceiling of the underground, hungry. The demonic drone escalated into a shrieking din as they dropped down like radium-painted rain.

Nora smiled at Nathan and opened wide.

The land of Flushing, Queens, was flat and favorable, with nothing to stand in the way of grasping aspiration. Already, steam shovels hovered on the edge of the proposed fairgrounds, ready to clear the way for Jake Marlowe’s vision of tomorrow. In the center of the field stood a makeshift wooden platform, which held the mayor and the city council, who eagerly awaited Jake Marlowe’s arrival. A huge crowd had turned out to watch their hero break ground on what would become the Future of America Exhibition of 1927. They stood holding small American flags on sticks under a sky so brilliantly blue it seemed wet with paint.

“Is he here yet?” Ling asked as she strained to see around the tall people in front of her.

“Would you like to get closer?” Henry asked.

“Yes, please,” Ling said.

“Mr. and Mrs. Chan,” Henry asked politely, “may I escort Ling closer to the stage?”

“Why, that would be lovely, Henry,” Mrs. Chan said, beaming.

As Henry parted the crowd for Ling, she looked back at her parents. Her father smiled, and her mother waved her flag. “I think my mother is already planning our wedding.”

“Well, if it gets you out of the house more often, I’ll try to look besotted. Prepare yourself, woman!” He stared, moony-eyed, at Ling, then flared his nostrils like a matinee idol in the throes of passion.

Ling curled her lip in disgust. “You look like you have gas.”

“It’s my secret love glance. I call it ‘From the Very Bowels of Love.’”

“Henry?”

“Yes,
mein Liebchen
?”

“Take me to Jake Marlowe.”

“That cad! I’ll see him on the field at dawn!” Henry made a gun of his thumb and index finger, pointing it skyward as if ready to shoot.

“Hurry up. I don’t want to miss this,” Ling said.

Henry let his hand drop. “Very well. I suppose I’ll let him live. This way, m’lady.”

“Did you speak to the crazy woman?”

“Not yet. I was afraid if I went this morning, I’d be stuck there through the afternoon as a special guest at a kitty-cat birthday party or an ancient mummification tutorial and miss this,” Henry said, just as he and Ling made it to the front. He grinned. “And I knew you wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.”

Mayor Jimmy Walker stepped to the microphone, his voice booming out in a long preamble that ended with the heart-quickening words, “A man who needs no introduction, Mr.… Jake… Marlowe!”

The crowd responded with cheers and a waving of flags. The air fluttered with red, white, and blue. With the sun shining behind him, Jake Marlowe stepped onto the platform, removed his hat, ran a swift hand across his slick black hair, and raised the hat to the assembled, a hero’s gesture. Applause erupted. The crowd loved the very idea of him.

“Isn’t this the berries?” Henry asked Ling, but her shining eyes said it all.

The microphone squawked with Marlowe’s first word. He put a hand to his chest in apology and humility, and the crowd laughed and loved this, too. And then his words echoed across the promised land of Queens, as if cast toward the future. “Ladies and gentlemen… men… en… I am pleased to announce… ounce… ounce… a marvelous step forward for American… can… greatness. A celebration of our heritage… age… age… and our great prospects for prosperity…
perity… and progress… gress. The Marlowe Industries Future… ture… of America… ca… ca Exhibition and Fair… fair… fair!”

The winter sun gathered what small warmth there was in her cold light and tithed it to Jake Marlowe’s shining, smiling face. Fresh cheering erupted as Jake Marlowe exited the stage and made his way to a clearing, where he peeled off his coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and posed with a shovel atop a weedy mound. “Gentlemen, we are like Prometheus, creating a legacy from the clay of the earth.”

His shovel bit into the soft, wet ground and the flashbulbs popped, immortalizing the moment. Balloons were released; they floated up to the sky as if claiming it. The band took up a rousing rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” while Jake Marlowe strode through the crowd, shaking hands and tousling the hair of children as the reporters tried to keep up, their shoes sinking into the grasping mud of Queens.

“Will the fair really open in only three months?” a reporter asked.

“You may bank on it.”

“But that’s awfully fast, Mr. Marlowe. Even for you.”

Marlowe grinned as he offered a peppermint to a ringleted, blue-eyed child nestled in her father’s arms. “
Can’t be done
. My three favorite words—to disprove. We have a thousand Marlowe Industries employees, models of modern efficiency, working to make certain that it does. The American business model is the best model.”

“Only a man as rich and ambitious as you would break ground in the dead of winter.”

“I’m not afraid of the weather, only of not going after what I want.”

“Speaking of that, what do you think about the unions and this business out at the Hibernia mines?”

Marlowe kept walking, working the crowd as he answered. “The notion of the union is fundamentally un-American. At Marlowe Industries, we believe in a fair wage for fair work among fair men.”

“Catchy. That your new business slogan?”

Marlowe winked. “It might be.”

“When are you going to get married?”

“When I find the right girl.”

“I got a sister—in the right light, she’s a beauty!”

Everyone laughed. They were buoyant with good times and hopeful possibility. T. S. Woodhouse pushed his way through, pad and pencil in hand, and sidled up to the great man. “How do, Mr. Marlowe. T. S. Woodhouse of the
Daily News
.” Woodhouse sneezed twice into his handkerchief. “Sorry. Caught a nuisance of a cold.”

“You should be taking Marlowe VitaHealth Tonic. Good for what ails you,” Marlowe advised.

“I’ve been taking Irish whiskey for what ails me. Just one question for you: Will Diviners be included in your Future of America Exhibition?”

Marlowe’s smile wavered. “No.”

“Why not? Aren’t they evidence of the unlimited American future?”

“They’re evidence of something, all right—chicanery. In the greatest nation on earth, we have no need for flimflam or hocus-pocus. We believe in opportunity and the power of the self-made man.”

Fresh cheers went up. T. S. Woodhouse waited for them to subside. “Sure, sure, who doesn’t love a Horatio Alger story? But you’re not a self-made man, are you, Mr. Marlowe? You came from old money.”

“Leave him alone!” a thick-necked man in a Shriners fez growled.

“What’re you, one of those Bolsheviks?” someone else cried and gave Woodhouse a small shove.

Marlowe put out a calming hand. “Now, now,” he admonished. But as he turned to Woodhouse, his anger was evident. “I made my own way. My family money didn’t create those inventions. Nor did they test-fly all those new aeroplanes or run trials on lifesaving medicines. I did.”

“But your family’s money helped finance them,” Woodhouse said, sneezing.

“My family’s fortune was lost during the war, as you well know.
Every last cent of it. I was the one who rebuilt it. In fact, I surpassed it. That’s the American way.”

“For some Americans.”

“Mr. Woodhouse, that may not be a cold you have. You may be allergic to the notion of hard work and success.”

The crowd responded with a round of laughter, applause, and shouts of “Hear, hear!” With the sun streaming down on him like a William Blake painting, Jake Marlowe strode through the pressing masses, shaking hands with the people now calling his name like a wish.

“Hold on!” Henry yelled to Ling as Marlowe moved closer to them. Henry waved wildly. “Mr. Marlowe! Mr. Marlowe! Please, sir!” he shouted. “This is one of your biggest admirers, Miss Ling Chan! She’s a scientist, like you!”

“Henry!” Ling whispered, embarrassed.

“Is that so?” Mr. Marlowe said.

Ling’s heart beat quickly as the spectators cleared the way and Jake Marlowe came closer. Unlike other people, his gaze didn’t go automatically to her braces and crutches. He looked her straight in the eyes as he bowed.

“Well, then. I am pleased to meet you, Miss Chan. Will you be coming to the fair, then?” Marlowe asked.

“I… I hope so. Sir.”

Marlowe laughed. “You don’t sound too sure about it. Here. Let me make it easier.” He reached into his pocket and wrote something on a sheet of paper, then handed it to her.

“Excuse me, can we get a picture for the papers?” T. S. Woodhouse asked and gestured to the news photographer in the clearing.

“Hold it!” the photographer shouted from behind the curtain of his camera. The flash erupted with a puff of gray smoke, immortalizing Henry, Ling, and her hero in silver gelatin. “Thank you.”

“See you in the spring, Miss Chan,” Mr. Marlowe said and moved on.

“What’s it say? What’s it say?” Henry asked, angling for a better look at the paper in Ling’s hands.

“‘IOU Miss Ling Chan—two free tickets to the Future of America Exhibition,’” Ling read. At the bottom was Marlowe’s signature. She now had Jake Marlowe’s autograph.

Ling looked ready to faint or vomit. “I talked to Jake Marlowe,” she said, incredulous. “This is his signature.”

“Well, it was nothing, really,” Henry said. “No, please! No more gratitude! Your happiness is thanks enough.”

“Thank you, Henry,” Ling said.

“Shucks. ’Tweren’t nothing.”

Ling beamed, holding the piece of paper like a sacred object. “Jake Marlowe touched this!” she said, and it was as close to a squeal as she’d ever come.

“Why, Miss Chan,” Henry drawled. “I believe you are pos-i-tute-ly smitten.”

T. S. Woodhouse turned and squeezed his way through the throngs of smiling, optimistic people happy to have something to be happy about.

On the way across the muddy field, he was surprised to see Dr. Fitzgerald’s assistant, Jericho Jones. He vaguely remembered hearing some scuttlebutt that Will Fitzgerald and the inventor had been friends at one point, past tense. If he’d sent Jericho to mend fences, Marlowe’s comments about Diviners surely wouldn’t do anything to help.

At the edge of the park, white-capped nurses in starched uniforms passed out flyers to the people coming to hear Jake Marlowe paint a bright future for them. “Examinations today in the Fitter Family tent,” they called. “Free of charge.” A Negro couple walked in, but no one handed them a flyer. In fact, the nurse pretended not to see them at all, passing one to the white family behind them instead.

Woodhouse sneezed into his handkerchief again.

“Gesundheit,” said a pretty nurse.

Woodhouse smiled at her. “Gee, thanks. I feel cured already.”

“Here. Have one.” The nurse handed him a pamphlet:

There was an address at the bottom.

Woodhouse knew he was anything but exceptional, unless there was a test for cleverness. Or survival.

“I’ll pass this along to any likely candidates,” he said, tipping his hat. He passed through the Fitter Family tent, smiling at a couple of siblings squawking over who got to go first until they saw the nurse holding the syringe, and then they fell quiet. He peeked through the crack of a curtain at a table where a pretty nurse asked a woman and her teenage daughter a series of questions. “… I see. And have you ever seen in your dreams an otherworldly being, a tall man in a stovepipe hat, perhaps accompanied by a host of crows?”

Woodhouse wrote it down on his pad, sneezed again, and moved out into the crowd. He bumped hard into a young man, knocking off his cap.

“Apologies,” Woodhouse said, brushing dirt from the brim as he handed it back.

“No trouble,” Arthur Brown said as he donned his cap once more. He leaned against the hot dog stand, watching Jake Marlowe move through the crowd clean as a newly made promise. His eyes scanned the whole of the fairgrounds, taking in everything.

“This exhibition’s gonna be the biggest thing to hit this city in a long time,” Woodhouse said, nodding briefly toward the adoring crowds before scribbling more notes on his pad. “Gonna make a big bang.”