The dream is always the same. It is a room with no doors, only windows made of thick, dirty glass that look out onto a grey nothing. You are sitting on a wooden chair that is too high for you, and your feet do not touch the floor. In the corner stands a figure. It is not a person. It is a shape made of shadow and wet wool, and it is breathing. You know you should wake up. You know that if you wake up, the cold in your hands will be real, and the hunger in your stomach will be worse, but the shadow will be gone. Instead, you stay. You watch the shadow breathe. It feels like holding your breath underwater. You have been holding it for years.

When you open your eyes, the first thing you see is the ceiling of your attic room in London. It is plastered with peeling paint and cracks that look like rivers on a map. The second thing you see is the candle. It is guttering, the wax pooling on the saucer below it. The third thing you see is Thomas. He is sitting on the edge of your bed, his back to the door, his hands wrapped around a mug of tea that has long since gone cold. He is wearing his coat, the one that smells of rain and stale tobacco. He has been there for an hour. You know this because you can hear the tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs, a sound that usually wakes you, but today it is drowned out by the hum in your own ears.

You do not speak. You never speak first. In your line of work, speaking first is a leak in the hull. It lets the pressure out. You sit up. Your joints crack, a sound like dry twigs breaking. Thomas looks at you, and his face is a mask of something that used to be love but has curdled into something harder, something that tastes like iron.

"Margaret," he says. His voice is quiet. He is always quiet. It makes you angry, though you do not know why. You have always been the loud one, the one who shouted at the wind and spat at the mud. But now the wind is inside you, and it has no voice.

"I am here," you say. It is a simple sentence, but it costs you something to say it. It costs you the last of the warmth in your chest.

"You are here," he repeats, as if testing the weight of the words. "But are you here? I don't know. You go into that room, and you come out different. You come out... thin. Like a sheet of paper."

You look at your hands. They are pale, the veins blue and prominent under the skin. You flex your fingers. They obey, but slowly, like limbs in deep water.

"I need money, Thomas," you say. It is the only thing that matters. The money is not for you. It is for the debt. The debt is a living thing, it grows while you sleep, it feeds on your sleep, and if it grows too large, it will swallow you whole. You need money to feed it, or to starve it, you are no longer sure which.

Thomas sighs. It is a long, heavy sound, the sound of a man carrying a stone he can no longer lift. "I gave you what I had. I gave you my watch. I gave you my father’s ring. What is left, Margaret? What is left of us?"

You look at him. You want to touch his face. You want to press your lips to his forehead and whisper the secrets of the dark so that he might understand why you must go into it. But you cannot. If you touch him, you will break. And if you break, the thing in the corner of the room will come for him too.

"I will find a way," you say.

"There is no way," Thomas says. He stands up. He is taller than you, and in the candlelight, his shadow stretches long across the floor, reaching for you. "I am leaving. I am going to stay at my sister’s. I cannot sleep in the same house as a ghost, Margaret. You are becoming a ghost."

He walks to the door. He does not look back. You watch the handle turn, the latch click, and then the silence rushes in to fill the space he left behind. It is a terrible silence. It has teeth.

You are alone. The candle burns lower. The wax drips like tears. You stand up and walk to the window. It is night in London. The city is a sprawl of coal smoke and gaslight, a beast that sleeps with its eyes open. Below, in the street, a hansom cab rattles past, the bells jingling sharply in the cold air. You press your hand against the glass. It is freezing. The cold bites into your palm, a sharp, clean pain that makes you feel more real than you have felt in weeks.

You remember the dream. The room with no doors. The shadow in the corner. You have been telling yourself it is a dream, a trick of the fever, a symptom of the hunger. But you know it is not. The shadow is real. It is the price. Every time you pull a spirit from the dark, every time you sell a memory to a rich man who wants to remember a dead wife, the shadow grows. It eats your years. It eats your name. It eats the light in your eyes.

You have been doing this for ten years. It started as a gift. You could see the threads that connected people to the world. You could cut them, or tie them, or weave them into new patterns. It was easy then. It was like breathing. But the city changed. The people changed. They wanted more. They wanted to cheat death itself. They wanted to bring back the ones they had lost, and they paid with gold, with jewels, with secrets that could ruin lives. And you took their gold, because you had to eat, because the cold in your room was worse than the cold in the dark.

But the price was not the gold. The price was you.

You look at your reflection in the window. The face that looks back is not yours. It is a face of bone and shadow, with eyes that are too large, too dark. You are becoming the thing in the corner. You are becoming the shadow.

A knock comes at the door. It is soft, barely a tap. You freeze. Thomas is gone. No one else knows you are here. No one else should know.

You walk to the door. Your steps are silent. You have learned to be silent. You open the door a crack.

It is the man. The one from the club. The one with the silver hair and the smile that never reaches his eyes. He is standing in the hallway, his hat in his hand. He does not look surprised to see you. He looks sad.

"Margaret," he says. His voice is smooth, like oil. "I wondered if you were there."

"You should not be here," you say. Your voice is thin, reedy.

"I have a proposition for you," he says. He steps closer. The smell of him is cloying, perfume and old paper. "A large one. A very large one."

"I do not do large ones," you say. "I do not do the ones that cost too much."

"This one is different," he says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, velvet pouch. He holds it out to you. It is heavy. You know what is inside without opening it. It is a lock of hair. A child’s hair.

"A boy," he says. "Seven years old. He died last week. A fever. His parents are broken. They will pay anything. Anything at all, to hear his voice one more time. To see his face one more time. Just for a moment."

You look at the pouch. You know what he is asking. You know what you must do. You must go into the dark. You must find the boy’s spirit, which is already drifting, already dissolving into the mist. You must hold it. You must give it a shape, a voice, a life, however brief. And in doing so, you must give up a part of yourself. A year. Two years. A piece of your memory. A piece of your soul.

"I can't," you say.

"You can," he says. "You have to. Look at you, Margaret. You are wasting away. You are eating yourself from the inside out. This is a chance to stop. To take a large payment, and to step back. To retire. To be free."

Free. The word hangs in the air, heavy and sweet. You think of the dream. The room with no doors. The shadow. You think of Thomas, walking away into the night. You think of the hunger, the cold, the endless, grinding poverty that has defined your life for so long.

"I will do it," you say.

The man smiles. It is a cold smile. "Tomorrow night. The club. Be ready."

He leaves. The door closes. The silence rushes back in, but it is different now. It is expectant.

You sit on the edge of the bed. The candle is almost out. A small blue flame flickers at the wick. You watch it. You think about the boy. You think about his face, which you have never seen, but which you can imagine. Bright eyes, messy hair, a gap where a tooth should be. You think about the parents, the grief that is a physical weight, a stone in the chest. You think about the price.

You reach for the pouch. It is on the floor, where he dropped it. You pick it up. It is warm. It feels like a pulse.

You close your eyes. You let yourself fall.

The room dissolves. The cold disappears. You are in the dark. It is not a dark of absence, but of presence. It is a thick, velvet darkness that touches your skin, that wraps around your limbs. You feel the weight of it. You feel the hunger.

You walk. You do not know where you are going, but you know it is coming. The air is thick with the scent of lilies and rot. You hear a sound, a small, faint cry. It is like a bird trapped in a jar.

You follow the sound.

It leads you to a light. A small, pale light, flickering in the dark. You move toward it. As you get closer, you see the shape. It is small, huddled in the corner. It is the boy.

He looks up at you. His eyes are wide, filled with a terror that is so pure it makes your heart break.

"Who are you?" he asks. His voice is small, clear, like a bell.

"I am here to help you," you say. Your voice is strange, deep, echoing. "I am here to give you back to them."

He shakes his head. "I am cold," he says. "I am so cold. I want to go home. But I don't know the way."

You kneel down. You reach out to him. Your hand passes through his shoulder. It is like touching ice. It burns. You feel a part of yourself tear away. A year of your life. The memory of your first kiss with Thomas. The memory of the day you bought your first coat. The memory of the smell of the rain in the summer. It is gone. It is in him now.

"Follow me," you say.

He stands up. He is smaller than you remember. He is fading. You see it happening. The edges of his form are blurring, dissolving into the dark. You must be quick. You must be strong.

You take his hand. It is solid. It is real. You pull him toward the light. The light is growing brighter, but the dark is fighting back. It is reaching out, grabbing at your legs, at your arms. It is hungry. It wants you.

You push through. You push with everything you have. You push with the anger, with the pain, with the love you have left for Thomas, for yourself, for the life you are losing.

You burst through the light.

You are back in the attic room. The candle is out. The room is pitch black. You are on the floor, on your hands and knees, gasping for air. Your body is shaking. It is a violent, uncontrollable tremor.

You sit up. You look at your hands. They are trembling. You flex your fingers. They do not move. They are stiff, locked in place.

You try to stand. You cannot. Your legs are weak, like water. You crawl to the bed. You pull yourself up. It takes all your strength. You collapse onto the mattress.

You are free. You have done it. You have given the boy back to his parents. You have taken the payment. You will have money. You will have food. You will have warmth.

But you are not free.

You look at the corner of the room. The shadow is there. It is larger now. It is standing. It is looking at you. It is smiling.

You know what you have done. You know what the price was. It was not just a memory. It was not just a year. It was your ability to feel. It was your ability to love. It was your ability to be human.

You are the shadow now. You are the thing in the corner. You are the hunger.

You close your eyes. You wait for the cold to take you. You wait for the dark to swallow you whole. But it does not come. Instead, you hear the sound of the clock in the hallway. Tick. Tick. Tick.

You are still here. You are still you. But you are empty. And the emptiness is a space that will never be filled.

You open your eyes. The room is grey with the light of dawn. The sun is rising over London. It is a beautiful morning. The air is crisp and clean.

You stand up. Your legs are strong. Your hands are steady. You feel nothing. You feel no pain. You feel no joy. You feel nothing at all.

You walk to the door. You open it. You walk out into the hallway. You walk down the stairs. You walk out of the house.

You walk into the city. You walk into the life that is yours. You are free. You are free from the hunger, from the debt, from the love.

You are free.

And you are alone.

The shadow follows you. It is always there. It is you. You are it. And you will never, ever get it out.