Chapter One: The Midnight Screening Never Ended

On the hospital wall Lin saw a blue enamel sign: 14 OAK STREET. Rain erased it in a blink. She ran into the opening and met solid concrete. “Don’t look for the entrance,” a man said behind her. “People who see the street for the first time don’t come back if they enter.” He was the Silver Palace projectionist, tall and thin, developer staining his black cuffs. He offered her a wet sheet of paper. On the back of an evacuation diagram, someone had drawn a road with twelve houses and a lightning-split oak at its end. Number Thirteen stood in the middle of the street rather than beside it. “Who drew this?” “The audience. Forty-seven copies, all identical.” “You asked them to?” “They drew them after they fell asleep.”