Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  He drove carefully on the narrow dirt road that connected the front of the track to the stables. I spotted something red gleam on the other side of a row of bushes and trees. “That’s Henry’s motor car,” I said. “Why park it there?”

  Lieutenant Pellegrino drove to a spot near the bushes and turned off the motor car engine. He patted the pocket of his police uniform coat. I realized with a start that he was checking for his pistol.

  About twenty feet from Henry’s car yawned the mouth of the stables, straw on the floor. As we sat there, Lieutenant Pellegrino preparing to get out, a man appeared, walking toward Henry’s motor car. He didn’t see us, but I recognized his weasel face.

  “That’s the other servant of Henry’s,” I whispered. “Not Jim. Francois. He lived in France.”

  Lieutenant Pellegrino pushed open his car door and got out. “Hello, Sir,” he boomed. “I’m Lieutenant Pellegrino with the Brooklyn police. Can you take me to Henry Taul?”

  Francois stood stock still, his mouth falling open. He took one step toward us, and then whipped around and ran, not back into the stable but streaking to the side of it, a path plunging deeper into Brooklyn.

  “Stay in the motor car,” Lieutenant Pellegrino shouted, and then took off after Francois. Within seconds, they’d both darted beyond a building and disappeared. The entire area returned to silence, except for the faraway fluctuating roar of the park, of Dreamland and Luna Park and Steeplechase.

  I pushed down on the handle and stepped out of the police motor car. I couldn’t sit here while the possibility existed of Lydia being kept inside. Time could be running out. Henry’s mother said that this Doctor Schepard would “fix” everything. But how could her faked kidnapping be explained away by any doctor? I feared that in a panic, Henry would hurt my sister more than he already had. Lieutenant Pellegrino had seen movement in an upstairs window. I had to search for her.

  I stepped into the stable, my heart beating so fast it sang in my ears.

  “Lydia?” I called out.

  There was no answer.

  Halfway down the length of the stable, I was at first comforted by the sight, smells, and sounds of thoroughbred horses in their stalls, three of them. These must be Henry’s. At least that part was real. But where were the trainers, the jockey, the help I knew he brought with him? They had apparently all left. I found that as ominous as anything.

  I spotted stairs at the end of the row of stalls and toward the left, leading to those upstairs rooms. It wasn’t dark, thanks to the widows in the main part of the stable down here – I could see everything in every stall so far. I made it to the last one: flattened straw was all that remained of some long-ago equine champion.

  The stairs frightened me. I stood at the bottom, working up my courage. Was Henry up there with Lydia, preventing her from answering me? A long stick lay in the straw; picking it up, I spotted rusty nails sticking out. This would have to serve as my weapon.

  I put one foot on the stairs, then another.

  Lydia needs me. Another step.

  I should have warned her, better protected her. Another step.

  If you’ve hurt her, Henry… I tightened the grip on my stick.

  At the top of the stairs an open doorway yawned, darkness beyond it. Not as many windows up there affording light. But the lieutenant said he saw movement. I had to keep going. I pushed myself to the second-to-top step – and a hand grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the top, slamming me onto the floor, flat on my back.

  I lashed out with my stick, but it was knocked out of my hand, and a shoe pressed onto my right wrist. It hurt, badly.

  I stared up at the face of Jim, Henry’s other servant.

  “Hello, Peggy,” he said, pointing a pistol at me head. “I don’t want to hear a single scream.”

  “Miss Batternberg to you,” I hissed.

  “Ah, no, I don’t think so. I’m the one who’s been watching you whore yourself all over Coney Island.”

  He was the spy not just of Lydia but of me too. Jim must have been the one who followed me and Stefan that first night.

  “You’re a sneaky slut too,” he said. “You gave us the slip and made it to Manhattan.”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “My question first. I thought I heard a car. Who drove you?”

  “Lieutenant Pellegrino of the Brooklyn police.”

  He made a face and swore. “Where the hell is he? Why would he send you up here alone?”

  “He’s chasing Francois. But he’ll be back any minute. Where is my sister? If you’ve hurt her…”

  I heard something move behind Jim, far behind him. I peered in that direction, but it was dim, and from a position flat on my back, I couldn’t see.

  “You’re the one who’s hurt Lydia,” said the voice of Henry Taul. “It’s your fault.”

  “Henry, what have you done?” I shouted.

  Jim pressed harder on my wrist; the pain was terrible. “I said no screaming,” he said, and smiled. His eyes shone. Hurting me was pleasurable.

  “Henry, you’re… a coward,” I managed to force out through waves of pain. “You don’t have… the…. guts to face me?”

  Jim said to Henry, “We have to get out of here before that cop comes back. We’ll take both the girls.” The way he spoke to him; they were more like partners than employer and servant.

  “Let her up,” Henry said.

  “Henry, we don’t have time.”

  “Is he the boss, Henry?” I shouted. “Does he tell you what to do?”

  Through my back, I could feel the wooden planks bend on the floor as Henry walked toward me. I tried to fight down my terror over the coming confrontation with a tall, muscular athlete who had lost his mind, almost certainly killed more than one woman – and who hated me. Jim finally took his foot off my wrist and backed away. Using my other hand, I pushed myself up, so I was at least sitting up.

  Henry did not look good. His round face was wet with perspiration, dampness circled his armpits. His mouth twitched in both corners. He had crossed some sort of line while here, and it left wreckage where there had once been the confident Henry Taul. He was a confused, sick boy, not a man.

  “Oh, God, what have you done, Henry?” My voice broke, and in response his eyes glittered.

  “You did it,” he said. “You turned her against me.”

  “Take me to Lydia, please,” I begged. He reached down and took me by the left hand, pulled me to my feet as easily as he did when I’d fallen on the beach. And then he led me down the hall. I was so filled with dread – and the pain from my wrist – that I began to weep.

  Lydia lay on a cot in a small room, lit by a single white candle on the floor. She wore the dress I last saw her in, with her blonde hair spread over her shoulders, so long it had pooled on the dirty floor. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. It was horrible, like she’d been laid out for her coffin.

  “No, no, no,” I sobbed.

  “She’s alive,” Henry said behind me. “We just gave her a shot.”

  “Why did you do this? Is it because she broke off the engagement?”

  Henry came around to my side, staring at me. His confusion and weakness were not as apparent now. “She loved me before – she did. She worshipped me. You told her bad things.”

  “I never told her about Saratoga.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice growing stronger.

  “She read that blind item in the magazine all by herself, and she knew it was you in Paris, Henry. Don’t blame me.”

  He began to tremble, and I wondered if Henry would disintegrate completely before me. Then I’d only have Jim to worry about.

  “I figured it out,” he said, rallying again. His moods fluctuated minute by minute. He pointed at me accusingly. “It was your cousin Ben who spoiled you. You’re degenerates, your family. Only Lydia was pure.”

  “I am a degenerate? How many people have you killed?”

  “But that’s your fault, Peggy
. All yours! When Francois listened outside the door of that medical room, he heard you talking to the cop who was investigating the murder on the beach, looking into things. We had to steer him toward the man he conveniently already suspected: your lover, that Serb. We had to set him up for the crimes.”

  I was so horrified I found it hard to speak. “Henry, why?” I forced out. “My God, why did you even want me here this summer? You were the one who insisted on it, not your mother, right? She barely knew who I was.”

  “I wanted to correct you. No one else has. No one else could.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “Were your men following me all the time?” I whispered.

  “Of course. Jim saw you have dinner and dance with the Serb, and then, on the beach, you were disgusting, disgusting, just like you were with me once. I had to scare you, punish you, try to correct you, but you wouldn’t learn, ever. You kept seeing him, letting him touch you, walking around half naked in front of every man… I had to make you stop.”

  Henry stepped closer to me, his hands clenching and unclenching. He didn’t look weak now. The women had been strangled. Was I moments away from being strangled by Henry Taul? I should have tried to calm him, but instead I asked, for I had to know, “Did you have chloral hydrate put in my drink that day?”

  He nodded and took a step even closer. I saw his hands rise.

  Jim said from the doorway, “Henry, I’m telling you, we have to get out of here. I’ll take this one down to the motor car first, gag her and tie her up. You carry Lydia.”

  Henry nodded, mutely.

  Jim grabbed my arm, making me cry out with pain, and dragged me out of the room. The pistol was shoved in his belt, I saw. But at the top of the stairs he took out the pistol and cocked it. “You first,” he said.

  I made my way down the stairs. It was drawing closer to sunset, so the stalls were bathed in dark shadows. But it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see Lieutenant Pellegrino crouched in the straw, off to the side. He put his finger to his lips. Two steps behind me Jim was coming down.

  I walked the rest of the way down to the main stable floor without reacting or saying a word.

  “Freeze!” shouted Lieutenant Pellegrino, his feet wide apart, both hands on his pistol. “Drop your weapon.”

  I dove to the side, rolling in the straw.

  Two gunshots exploded in my ears, and a cloud of white smoke blinded me. When it cleared, Jim lay crumpled in the straw, a spreading wet circle in his chest. Lieutenant Pellegrino remained where he was, unharmed.

  A second later, the shattering of glass above made me jump. “Lydia!” I screamed. The lieutenant and I ran up the stairs. Lydia lay, still unconscious, on the cot. But the window was pierced with a huge hole, broken glass everywhere.

  Henry had escaped out the window.

  Lieutenant Pellegrino stuck his head out. When he pulled it back in, he looked at me and said, “Taul’s gone.”

  The lieutenant did not give chase after Henry Taul. He organized the summoning of help. Francois was already handcuffed to Lieutenant Pellegrino’s motor car. A fleet of police cars and one long white vehicle appeared at the racetrack. Two nurses and a doctor jumped out. As the police officers fanned out, beginning the search for Henry, the medical workers carried Lydia down with great care and put her on a stretcher. “We will examine her here briefly and then take her to the hospital,” the doctor said.

  “Not the hotel, right?” I asked. “I don’t want a hotel medical suite, I want a real hospital for her.”

  “We’re taking her to a real hospital,” the doctor reassured me. “Just one year old – we have everything there she will need.”

  Suddenly a new police motor car came careening down the drive. Two officers burst out the doors and ran to Lieutenant Pellegrino. I heard the word “fire.”

  After consulting with them, the lieutenant hurried over to me. “The search for Taul is gonna get tougher. There’s a major fire at the amusement park. Every fireman in Brooklyn is gonna end up there, and they need police too. I was going to take you to the hotel, tell your family the situation, but…”

  “Go,” I said. “I’m staying with Lydia. I’ll use the telephone at the hospital.”

  He nodded but did not go at once. The lieutenant stared at me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t stay in the motor car,” I said. “I couldn’t.”

  “It would have been tough to take both of them, armed,” he said. “If it hadn’t been your coming down the stairs like that, keeping your head, I don’t know how this would have played out.”

  Once we were in the hospital I held off the doctors’ efforts to treat my wrist. I telephoned the Oriental Hotel, asking for Ben Batternberg. I told him enough that my entire family, including three of my uncles, and several of our lawyers rushed over to Coney Island Hospital. When Lydia was revived, in deep disorientation, I was sitting by her bed with Mother and Lawrence. She remembered nothing that happened to her since the fireworks.

  Only then did I allow a doctor to examine my wrist and treat the swelling with ice bags and aspirin. The wrist was not broken, and their treatments dulled the pain. I only wished I could erase the memory of Jim grinning sadistically as he ground his foot into me.

  It was late when I agreed to stay in the hospital overnight. I heard the word “shock” murmured by someone in the family who thought I wasn’t listening.

  “I’m not in shock,” I announced. “I’m only agreeing to this to be near Lydia in case she needs me.”

  The hospital was nine stories high. The nurse who led me into the room I’d been assigned, on one of the higher floors, fussed with the electrical light by the bed. But it wasn’t necessary, for it was not dark in there. Orange light flickered in the room, many hours after sunset. I walked to the window and drew a loud gasp. It was the fire in the distance, the flames soaring skyward. It wasn’t a couple of buildings. It was a dozen of them. More. Acres and acres of land, all incinerating.

  I put on the hospital gown the nurse gave me, but I didn’t get into bed. I sat curled up in a chair by the window and watched and listened. There were screams in the night, but not of excitement or the fear of someone who knows the experience isn’t real. It was all real.

  When Ben came by he said, “We heard from the police that they can’t put out the fire, there is not enough water pressure. When the fire started in one park, the other competing parks, the businesses in Coney Island, all tapped into the water. So they couldn’t get enough water to put out the fire in the first park – and now it’s burning right down to the ground.”

  “Which park?” I asked.

  “Dreamland.”

  I nodded.

  “They say it started in Hell Gate,” he said. “Some electrical problem.”

  Ben pulled up a chair next to me and we watched the fire in horror. All of those attractions, the buildings and rides and audacious curiosities, were disappearing. The screams wailed on, and the endless sirens of fire trucks and police vehicles. The smell of smoke filtered into the room, but I wouldn’t let my cousin close the window completely.

  “Peggy, we should have listened to you earlier,” said Ben. “About a lot of things. We were wrong. Stefan Chalakoski will be released – I’ll see to it myself. I’ll help him. I’ll help you both.”

  I didn’t say anything; my eyes were fixed on the fire.

  “They haven’t caught Henry yet,” he said. “But the hospital is on alert. We’ll protect you and Lydia.”

  “Henry won’t come here; he’s in there,” I said, pointing. “He’s in Dreamland. I feel it.”

  He had always been drawn to Coney Island; it must have been Henry’s idea, not his mother’s, to stay at the most luxurious hotel of them all because he knew how close it would be to the streets and the people who called to him. At night, he could slip out and roam those streets. Henry’s voiced disgust of “Sodom by the Sea” was what he wished polite society to think he felt. It was the vice of the Bowery, the lure of the brothels,
that Henry could not resist. But such is the case with many rich men of New York. I believe what led to his disintegration was the disappearing boundary between the classes and the sexes – he desperately needed to feel that the workers could never challenge the wealthy, and the women could never dare to defy the men. The unforgiving heat, his use of drugs, the strain of being so close to me and to Lydia, he had lost himself. Now, tonight, with his worship of spectacle, of disaster, he’d also be drawn to the epic fire that raged. Would he try to put out the fire or immolate himself? That I did not know.

  Ben returned to silence, and a while later I heard his breathing change. He’d fallen asleep in the chair. But I couldn’t sleep. I watched the flames move up and devour the 275-foot Italian tower, the tallest in Dreamland. It slowly turned red and orange and white, flames licking.

  Finally, at three in the morning, the Dreamland tower collapsed, plunging onto the park grounds with a sound louder than the crack of ten thunderbolts.

  Only then did I crawl into the bed and pull the sheet over my head, willing myself to oblivion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  They discovered Henry Taul’s body in the smoldering rubble of Dreamland the following day. No other people died in the fire, which all the newspapers called a miracle. There were deaths: some of the animals of the circus. The workers managed to herd many of Joseph Ferrari’s lions, pumas, bears, wolves, and leopards into cages, or put blindfolds on them and lead the animals to safety. But Little Hip, the elephant I adored, refused to budge without his trainer and could not be dragged out in time. In the end, Ferrari himself was among the weeping workers who tried to shoot the large, panicking animals as the flames closed in on them. In other parts of the park, Dr. Couney and his nurses wrapped the premature babies in blankets and evacuated them, and all three hundred inhabitants of Lilliput made it out alive.

  But within two days of the fire, the news spread that the financially challenged owners of Dreamland hadn’t paid for insurance, and there was not enough money – or will – to re-create it. The year 1911 was the last one that the world experienced Dreamland. For those who witnessed the fire, it was something they could never forget. Many, many people saw it: even the ocean liners moving through the dark, cold Atlantic Ocean saw the flaming tower from miles away. The Brooklyn firemen could not put it out, and when they were needed in the real world, the play-acting firemen of the Dreamland nightly attraction were of no use. The fire didn’t stop until it burned itself out.