by Jason Segel
“Rocco didn’t tell you?” Charlie asked.
“Tell me what? All he said was ‘Bring Alfie.’ But Alfie’s mother wouldn’t let him go anywhere. Guess he woke up in the middle of the night and polished off all the ice cream in the family fridge. His mom did not sound amused.”
Charlie almost grinned at the thought of Alfie sitting in the Dream Realm ice cream parlor, feasting on a giant banana split. Then a whistle blew behind him, and he was brought back to the soccer game. It was over. The final score was 37–0.
—
Charlie and Paige watched as one of the Comets’ players fell to his knees, clearly exhausted. He stayed there for a moment, his forehead resting on the ground. A short, scrappy-looking kid with dirty-blond hair and freckles, he was one of the two who’d tried their best to keep the game going. Charlie saw Rocco cross the field and offer the kid a hand. Once the boy was back on his feet, the two spoke. Soon, Rocco was leading the Comets player Charlie’s way.
“This is Kyle,” Rocco said, introducing the boy. Then he gave the kid an encouraging nudge. “Go ahead. Tell them what you just told me.”
The boy glanced over his shoulder nervously at the coach from Orville Falls. From a distance, Charlie couldn’t tell for sure, but he had more than a hunch it was Winston Lindsay.
“Come on,” Rocco prompted. “You gotta trust us. We might be able to help.”
The kid was practically trembling with terror. It took him a few moments, but finally he leaned in close and whispered, “Something’s happening to my town.”
“So it’s not just the soccer team?” Charlie asked. “It’s all of Orville Falls?”
“Yeah,” Kyle told them. “Most of my friends are exactly like the guys on the team. My parents are too. That’s them up there.” He pointed to a couple in the bleachers. His mom’s eyes had rolled back in her head, and his dad’s tongue was hanging from his mouth. “They’ve been like that for a week now. It’s like their brains have stopped working or something.”
Paige’s brow furrowed with confusion. “Your parents can’t be brain-dead. I mean, they’re here, aren’t they?” she pointed out. “They’re watching soccer and sitting in the stands. How did they get to Cypress Creek if their brains aren’t functioning? How did they manage to drive?”
The boy shrugged helplessly. “Well, it wasn’t very good driving,” he admitted. “I mean, my dad sideswiped a tree and took out a whole row of mailboxes on the ride here. I kept my eyes closed most of the time.”
“But he still drove,” Paige said skeptically.
Kyle shrugged. “The Walkers do all sorts of things,” he said. “I don’t know how, but they do.”
“The Walkers?” Rocco asked.
“That’s what I call them,” Kyle said. “Because it kinda looks like they’re sleepwalking, except they’re not asleep.”
“Do you have any idea how they got this way?” Paige pressed.
Kyle’s face lost a few shades of color. “Actually, I think I do.”
“You do? How?” Charlie asked, his excitement growing.
“There’s this drink that everyone’s been trying.” The boy leaned closer. He whispered softly as if he were worried that the conversation might be overheard. “They call it a tonic. People started drinking it because they weren’t sleeping well.”
“Were they having nightmares?” Rocco asked.
“Yeah,” said Kyle. “But the nightmares aren’t about monsters or anything. At least, mine aren’t. In my dreams someone’s watching me. And then I get this feeling—” He shivered. “It’s like I’ve been left all alone and no one’s ever going to help me.”
“That sounds awful,” Paige said.
“It is. My whole family was having the same bad dream, so my dad brought home some of that tonic a few days ago. Now my mom gives it to me every single night. She said if I drink it, my nightmares will go away. And if you drink a bottle every day for a month, you’re supposed to feel like a million bucks.”
“But you don’t drink the stuff,” Rocco guessed.
“Nope. I’d rather have bad dreams and feel like crud. I pour the stuff out the window as soon as she’s not watching,” the boy said. “But my brother drank some. And that’s what happened to him.” He pointed across the field to a boy who was about to walk face-first into a goalpost.
“Where did your dad get the stuff?” Charlie asked.
“He bought it.” The kid seemed reluctant to say any more.
“We figured,” Paige said. “Where did he buy it?”
The boy snuck another peek over his shoulder and gasped. Charlie saw Winston Lindsay shuffling toward them across the soccer field. The large wound on the coach’s forehead made him terrifying to behold. “Look, I really, really gotta go,” the kid pleaded, almost squirming with discomfort. “The coach wouldn’t want me talking about any of this. None of them would. It’s not safe to say anything bad about the tonic.”
Rocco grabbed the boy’s arm before he could bolt. “But you’ve got to tell us where people are buying the stuff!”
“There’s a shop in Orville Falls with clouds in the windows,” the boy said. “Believe me, you can’t miss it. But you’ve got to see it to believe it.” And then he sprinted away.
Charlie’s eyes passed over the crowd that was leaving the soccer stands. A lady Walker staggered toward the exit with her arms held out in front of her. When she reached the edge of the bleachers, she stepped right off—and into the air. Charlie winced when the woman landed in the grass on her rump, but she was up and moving before anyone had a chance to offer her help. “I think the kid was right,” Charlie said. “That tonic is doing something terrible to people’s brains.”
“Are you sure it’s a tonic that’s doing it?” Paige asked. “Before we jump to conclusions, shouldn’t we consider all the possibilities? What if they’ve contracted some kind of rare disease? Or what if there’s something bad in the water up there?” She pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked.
“Solving the mystery,” Paige replied. “My aunt Josephine lives in Orville Falls.”
“You mean the aunt who comes to visit you sometimes?” Rocco asked. It was a nice way of putting it, Charlie thought. Josephine often stayed with the Bretters when Paige’s mother was too ill to take care of her.
“Yep, Aunt Josephine works for the Orville Falls newspaper. If anyone knows what’s going on, it will be her.”
Paige held the phone to her ear, her face darkening as the seconds ticked by.
“No answer?” Charlie asked. “Maybe she’s at work.”
Paige looked at her phone as if certain there had been some sort of mistake. “That’s where I called her,” she said. “Josephine always works on the weekends.”
“Don’t worry,” Rocco assured Paige. “I’m sure your aunt’s just busy.”
“That’s not it,” Paige said. “I called the main line at the newspaper. It’s supposed to be open every day of the week, but nobody picked up the phone.”
The few times Charlie had visited Orville Falls, he’d always suspected it was too cute to be real. The village’s center was filled with shops that sold stuff that no one really needed—like fancy tea towels and embroidered pillows. And the houses that ringed the town center were all revoltingly adorable. Even the people in Orville Falls seemed a little too smiley. The whole town had always struck Charlie as kind of creepy.
But when Charlie and Paige arrived at the bus stop in Orville Falls, the town looked deserted. No one was waiting on the benches out front of the bus station or loitering by the vending machine. The ticket booth stood empty, and there wasn’t a single person strolling down the sidewalk outside.
“Never seen it like this before,” the bus driver told Charlie. He was a burly man with a deep voice, but he sounded spooked. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s around. You kids sure you want to get off here? There won’t be another bus back to Cypress Creek for a few hours.”
Charlie
wasn’t so sure anymore. He stood in the bus door, craning his neck to search Orville Falls for some sign of life. The only movement was a crumpled brown paper bag being dragged down the street by the wind. The slogan on the side read Don’t Dream Your Life Away!
“We’re sure,” Paige answered the bus driver. She squeezed past Charlie and hopped down onto the asphalt. “Don’t worry, sir. I have family in town. And I always keep a bottle of hand sanitizer in my bag.”
The trip to Orville Falls had been Paige’s brilliant idea. Her mother hadn’t been feeling well enough to make the drive, and her father had needed to stay home with her. So Paige and Charlie had hopped onto a bus right after Rocco’s game. Back then, it had seemed like the only possible plan. Paige had spent the entire ride trying to come up with a simple explanation for the strange sickness that had overtaken the town. The flu, perhaps—or maybe an exotic parasite. Charlie noted that all of Paige’s “explanations” were totally treatable. She didn’t want to believe that anything truly terrible might have happened to Josephine.
Charlie locked eyes with the bus driver for a moment while Paige squirted a dollop of hand sanitizer onto her palm. The man raised an eyebrow, and Paige must have caught his bemused expression.
“Oh no, I’m not sanitizing my hands because of you!” she insisted. “It’s the bus. It’s just, public transportation can get germy and…it’s important to stay—”
“I get it, I get it,” the bus driver said mercifully. He looked at Charlie. “You gonna be okay, kid?”
Charlie swallowed the lump that had risen into his throat. Then he nodded and reluctantly stepped off the bus.
“Good luck,” the driver said before he closed the door and drove off.
A perfect, eerie silence followed the bus’s departure.
“What now?” Charlie asked.
“Now we find my aunt.” Paige pointed up at a sign on the corner. FRANKLIN AVENUE, it read. “She lives on this street. I don’t know the exact address, but this town isn’t all that big, and I’ll recognize her house the second I see it.”
Paige took off down the sidewalk as if she didn’t have a concern in the world. Charlie swallowed again and rushed to catch up with her. Orville Falls may have been the kind of town you’d see on a Christmas card, but it was the middle of summer and there was no one around.
“Aren’t you even a little creeped out?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Paige looked up at Charlie with a befuddled expression.
Charlie gestured to the storefronts and other buildings that lined both sides of the street. “For starters, all the lights are on, but there’s no one inside.” Then he stepped out into the street. “And when was the last time you saw a car drive by?”
Paige shrugged. “Maybe they’re all at the hospital waiting to get flu shots or something.”
Determined to prove his point, Charlie marched over to a jewelry store in the middle of the block. Gold and diamonds glittered in the sunlight that streamed through the shop’s front window. Charlie threw open the door. The place was empty. “Hello!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. But there was only dead silence. “You guys mind if I help myself to a few of these things?” Charlie yelled even louder. And again, there was nothing. “See what I mean?” he told Paige. “Totally creepy.”
Paige frowned as she looked around the store. Charlie could see that he’d finally made an impression. Then something out the window seemed to catch her eye. She hurried out of the shop, with Charlie right on her heels.
“Look!” Paige was pointing down the street. Charlie saw three teenage girls shuffling across the road two blocks away. Even from a distance, Charlie could tell that none of them had come in contact with a hairbrush for a while. Within seconds, they had disappeared from view. “They just went down Livingston Street,” Paige noted. “Let’s find out what’s going on over there.” She and Charlie took off running.
They rounded the corner onto Livingston Street and came to a sudden halt. They’d found the people of Orville Falls. Hundreds upon hundreds of townsfolk were standing single file along the sidewalk. The line stretched for as far as Charlie and Paige could see, across intersections and around fire hydrants. And right at the end of the line were the three teenage girls.
Charlie turned to Paige. The look in her eyes said she shared his suspicions. Something big was happening—and it definitely wasn’t good.
Paige was the first to act. “What’s everyone waiting for?” she asked one of the teenagers.
The girl slowly turned to face them. Paige took one look and gasped, stumbling backward into Charlie. He put a protective arm around his friend to steady her, though he was shaken too. The girl in front of them had probably been pretty once. Now her skin was blotchy and her face bloated. Dark purple bags hung beneath her bloodshot eyes, and the girl’s tongue stuck out from between her lips, as if it were too large to stay inside her mouth. She blinked, wobbled a bit, and then returned to staring blankly at the back of the person standing ahead of her in the line.
“Oh, my…,” Paige sputtered. “They’re all Walkers!”
“Now are you creeped out?” Charlie whispered.
“Totally,” Paige answered. “We should have listened to that bus driver.”
Charlie rolled his eyes, but he didn’t bother to point out that he had. “Well, I guess we can’t go back to Cypress Creek at this point,” he said with a sigh. “Now that we’ve seen this, we have to find out what’s going on.”
—
No one so much as glanced at Charlie and Paige as they followed the line to its source. The people all stood completely motionless, their eyes fixed on the back of the person in front of them, in total silence. There was no talking, or coughing or sneezing. The citizens of Orville Falls were as still and silent as statues. If Charlie hadn’t known better, he’d have wondered if the people had been frozen in stone by a gorgon. The whole scene was like something right out of the Netherworld.
Charlie shivered and kept going. He and Paige walked five more blocks until they reached the start of the line. The very first person was standing outside the door of a humble little shop. The exterior of the store had been painted a peaceful pale blue, and puffy clouds of white cotton filled the window display. A sign hung above the door. Written on it were two simple words with fancy lettering.
Tranquility Tonight
“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is what they’re all waiting for?” Paige scoffed. “I know that soccer kid told us to find a shop with clouds in the window, but I was expecting something a little more sinister. This place looks like a pillow store.”
Before Charlie could answer, a bell chimed, and the store’s door opened. A man came out with a small brown paper bag in his hand. The next person entered the shop, and everyone in line took a step forward in unison.
“I don’t think that guy had a pillow in his bag,” Charlie said. “It had to be the tonic.”
“Let’s have a peek,” Paige said. She slipped between the first person in line and the door, and the man didn’t even appear to notice. Paige waved Charlie over, and he squeezed in next to her. He had his hand on the knob, ready to turn it, when he noticed a small handwritten note taped to the door. Please wait here, it read. We serve one customer at a time.
“Wow, get a load of these letters,” Paige marveled, running her finger across the elegant script. “Who writes in cursive anymore?”
Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but the bell over the door chimed again, and a woman emerged with a brown paper bag in her hand. This time, though, as the door swung open, Charlie got a glimpse inside the store. Shelves lined the walls, but they seemed to be stocked with nothing but little blue bottles. If that was the tonic, Charlie realized, it seemed to be the only thing in the shop for sale.
Behind the counter was a short man with a long pointy nose and a rather unfortunate toupee. For the briefest of moments, Charlie and the man caught each other’s gaze. The man’s eyes were black, beady, and unusua
lly cold. There was something about them that made Charlie’s skin break out in goose bumps. Then the door swung shut, and before Charlie could even reach out for the knob again, he heard the sound of a lock turning. And then just as quickly, a gnarled hand flipped the OPEN sign in the window to CLOSED.
“Did you see that?” Charlie marveled.
“Did we just get locked out?” Paige asked, astonished.
“Guess the guy didn’t like the look of us,” Charlie said, a chill trickling down his spine. The man in the shop was no good, and Charlie could feel it. “And from what I just saw, I don’t think I liked the look of him either.”
Charlie and Paige stepped out of line, but none of the Orville Falls people moved a muscle. “He closed up the shop,” Paige told the guy at the front of the line. “Maybe you ought to come back later.”
The man replied with a grunt and an exhausted blink, and then returned to staring at the door.
“This whole town is really screwed up,” Paige said nervously. “I think we need to go find my aunt.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “Save our place, would you?” he jokingly asked the guy at the front of the line. But not even Charlie could find himself funny.
—
Charlie’s spirits sank even further when they reached the house where Paige’s aunt lived. The front lawn was in desperate need of a weed whacking. Foxtails that reached higher than Charlie’s waist hid the path to the front door. The stalks shook as little creatures moved between them. A rat peeked out and didn’t rush for cover at the sight of Charlie and Paige. Instead it glared at the two as if warning them not to invade its territory. Charlie would have preferred to stay on the sidewalk, but he followed Paige as she waded through the grass. Something with thorns snagged his jeans, and by the time they reached the porch, Charlie’s shirt was covered with burrs.
“Looks like your aunt hasn’t done much gardening in the past couple of weeks,” Charlie said. A feeling of dread was creeping over him. He had a hunch that he didn’t want to see what was inside the house.