Nightmares! the Sleepwalker Tonic

by Jason Segel

  “My aunt would never let her lawn get like this.” Paige sounded as frightened as Charlie felt.

  They rang the doorbell and waited for what felt like a very long time. Then Paige banged on the door. “Aunt Josephine!” she shouted. “It’s me! Are you in there?”

  Then she reached out and grabbed hold of the knob. And to Charlie’s surprise, the door opened. Paige looked up at Charlie, and that was when he saw true terror in his friend’s eyes.

  Inside the house, it was as dark as night and as hot as an Easy Bake oven. “Holy mackerel,” Charlie gasped, pulling his shirt up over his nose. The stench of garbage that wafted out through the front door was overpowering.

  “Aunt Josephine?” Paige called out. The house was terrifyingly silent. Paige took a cautious step inside, and Charlie heard a soft thud and the tinkling of glass. Her foot had hit something. Charlie felt for the light switch on the other side of the door and flipped it, illuminating a long hallway littered with tiny sapphire-blue bottles. Paige knelt down and picked one up. The glittering silver label read:

  Tranquility Tonic

  Never have another nightmare.

  “Can I see?” Charlie asked. Paige passed him the bottle, and he pulled out the cork stopper and peered inside. The bottle was empty, but the scent of the tonic could still be detected. To Charlie, it reeked of mold and dirt. “I’ve never had a dream bad enough to make me drink something that smells like this.”

  “You sure about that?” Paige replied skeptically, one eyebrow raised. Charlie knew she was right. Six months earlier, he would have guzzled a dozen bottles of Tranquility Tonic if he’d thought it would make his nightmares go away.

  Then, from somewhere deep inside the house, they heard snoring. Paige rushed down the hall toward the sound, kicking aside piles of empty blue bottles. When they reached the living room, they found a creature in a filthy white nightgown stretched out on a couch. The pale skin of her legs, arms, and face was covered in blue bruises, and her light hair was so dirty that it was plastered to the sides of her head. She looked nothing like the woman Charlie had met a half-dozen times.

  “What happened to her?” Paige moaned. She dropped down to her knees beside her aunt. Then Charlie saw Paige squint and take a closer look at one of the bruises. She ran her index finger across the surface of Josephine’s skin. “It’s just paint!” she breathed out, relieved. She flashed a bright smile and held up her stained finger for Charlie to see.

  But Charlie had a feeling it was no time for a celebration. Evidence of Josephine’s painting was all around them. Everywhere Charlie looked, large paper signs had been left to dry. They were propped up against the walls and hanging from clotheslines that zigged and zagged across the room. On each sign, Josephine had painted a different slogan for Tranquility Tonic. Charlie watched Paige’s face fall as her eyes passed from one sign to the next.

  Sleep more soundly and wake refreshed!

  Give your nightmares something to fear!

  A deep dreamless sleep for all!

  “It looks like advertising,” said Charlie, stating the obvious. The only real art in the room was a painting of a girl in an old-fashioned dress. She was standing in front of what seemed to be a mirror, and her reflection stared out at Charlie. The girl’s auburn hair was parted on the side, and her dark brown eyes had a glimmer in them that gave him the chills.

  “My aunt must be working for that shop now,” Paige said in a voice that was barely loud enough to hear. “But why would the shop need advertising? Seems like everyone in Orville Falls is already hooked on tonic.”

  “Good question,” Charlie said. He looked around the room and noticed even more posters stacked up in the corners. All told, there had to be hundreds of them. If Josephine really was working for Tranquility Tonight, they had her slaving away night and day.

  “Poor Aunt Josephine,” Paige murmured. “What have they made you do?”

  “Mrumph. Mrrartist,” Aunt Josephine snorted in reply. Her body assumed countless shapes as she tried to find a comfortable position on the couch.

  While her aunt tossed and turned, a smile lit Paige’s face once more. “She just said artist, Charlie! She was talking! Do you think that could be a good sign? Do you think she’ll be okay? Maybe she’s just exhausted from working.”

  Paige looked so hopeful that Charlie didn’t have the heart to argue. “Maybe,” he said, trying to look like he believed it. But there was nothing okay with the woman on the sofa. Josephine’s cheeks were hollow, and her limbs were as thin as saplings.

  Paige must have seen the horror written on Charlie’s face. Her smile disappeared. “You don’t think so, do you?” she asked. She turned back to her aunt. “Josephine, wake up!” She shook the slumbering woman. “It’s me, it’s Paige. Can you please wake up?”

  “Mrumph,” replied Aunt Josephine.

  Paige shook her even harder. “Aunt Josephine!” she shouted into the woman’s ear.

  Josephine’s eyes suddenly opened. Their irises were just two blue circles in a sea of red. She stared at the ceiling, blinking lazily as a thin stream of drool trickled from the side of her mouth.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Paige gushed, hugging her aunt as the woman sat up. “I was so worried about you. I heard that the stuff you’ve been drinking eats people’s—” Paige stopped short. Josephine had risen from the sofa without so much as a glance at her niece. “Aunt Josephine?” Paige asked, but the woman didn’t seem to hear her.

  Charlie and Paige watched helplessly as Josephine silently crossed the room and plopped down at a table in the corner. Her head flopped back and forth like a rag doll’s as she pulled a large sheet of paper from a cardboard box and laid it flat on the surface of the table. Then Josephine opened a can of sapphire-blue paint and began to work.

  Following cautiously in the woman’s footsteps, Charlie went to watch Josephine paint. Her eyes were empty as she stared at the page. Her right arm seemed to move on its own as she carefully crafted a series of words.

  Dreamless Oblivion Can Be Yours

  When You Try

  Tranquility Tonic

  “Dreamless oblivion. Dreamless oblivion,” Charlie repeated to himself. There was something terrifying about those two words. Fear wrapped itself around Charlie and squeezed him tight. He felt like he could hardly breathe. “Uh-oh.”

  “What is it?” Paige asked frantically. “What does it mean? What do you know? Tell me, Charlie! What’s wrong with my aunt?”

  Charlie could barely bring himself to give voice to his suspicions. “I think I know how Tranquility Tonic turns people into Walkers,” he said. “I think it keeps them from dreaming.”

  “But I don’t get it!” Paige cried. “As long as people sleep every night, what difference does it make if they skip a few dreams?”

  For Charlie the answer was clear. He could feel it, but he couldn’t find the words to explain it. “I don’t know about everyone, but for me, dreaming makes all the difference,” he said. “If I didn’t dream…” He had to stop there. The very thought was too horrible to contemplate. That was when Charlie knew that he had no choice. He had to do something to save Orville Falls.

  She was right where he’d left her the last time he’d visited her in the Dream Realm, sitting on the front porch of his old house.

  “Charlie!” she called out happily when she saw him.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said. She still looked exactly as she had nearly four years ago, before she’d gotten sick. Before she’d died.

  When he took his regular seat beside her, she pulled him close with one arm and gave him a peck on the top of his head. “How are you?” she asked. “It’s been longer than usual since you last came to see me.”

  “I had a few other people here that I needed to talk to,” Charlie explained. “Well, not really people. I guess they used to be people….”

  His mom patted him on the knee. “It’s okay,” she told him. “You don’t have to explain. You’re growing up. I know I may not see y
ou as much anymore.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Charlie argued. He couldn’t even imagine a time when he might have better things to do. His visits to his mom were the most important thing he had. If those visits suddenly stopped…Charlie thought of Paige’s Aunt Josephine and shuddered.

  “What’s wrong, Charlie?” his mom asked.

  Charlie hung his head. “I was just thinking about how awful it would be if I couldn’t dream anymore.”

  His mom laughed and gave him another squeeze. “That’s not going to happen,” she tried to assure him. “Every night, people either come to the Dream Realm or they visit the Netherworld. Sometimes they remember going, and sometimes they don’t. But they always dream. Dreaming is just as important as eating or breathing. Human beings can’t function without it.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked.

  His mom took a deep breath. “Let me see if I can explain this. I suppose you could say that nightmares and dreams help you clean out your brain. Every day you pack it full of thoughts and fears and hopes. At night, your dreams help you sort through the mess. Even when they don’t seem to make any sense, dreams and nightmares are helping you figure things out. That’s why the Waking World always seems so much brighter in the morning.”

  Charlie felt the dread building inside him. “And if somebody ever stopped dreaming, what do you think would happen to them?” he asked.

  “Well, I imagine their minds would get clogged.”

  “Like a toilet?” Charlie offered, thinking of the time when Jack had tried to flush a teddy bear that he’d covered in Nutella.

  “That’s a rather disgusting example,” his mom said with a grin. “But sure. It would be like a toilet that isn’t able to empty. If a person wasn’t able to clean out his head every night, after a while, there would be so much stuff crammed inside it that his brain wouldn’t be able to function.” She paused to give Charlie a playful peck on the top of his head. “But you don’t have to worry about these things, Charlie. Like I said, nobody has ever stopped dreaming before.”

  “They have now,” Charlie told her.

  His mom’s grin vanished. “Who?” she asked, a worried look on her face. “Not Jack or your dad? Or Charlotte?”

  “No,” Charlie assured her. “They’re all fine. But I was just in Orville Falls. Almost everyone there has been drinking this stuff called Tranquility Tonic. It’s made them stop dreaming, and now they’re stumbling around like a bunch of sleepwalkers. And because the people of Orville Falls aren’t dreaming, their part of the Dream Realm is fading.”

  “And you think a tonic is responsible?”

  “Yeah. It comes in these little blue bottles. It says on the label that it’s supposed to stop nightmares. But I think it stops dreams too.”

  “It comes in blue bottles?” The words seemed to have triggered something inside his mom’s mind.

  “Yes. Is that important?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Have you told Charlotte?” his mom asked.

  “Not yet,” Charlie said. “I will the next time I see her, though.”

  “Do,” his mother urged him. “And when you talk to her, see if she thinks this might have something to do with ick and ink.”

  “Ick and ink?” Charlie repeated, but the Dream Realm was growing hazier, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by the scent of strawberries.

  “What on earth are you talking about, Charlie?” someone asked.

  Charlie tried to speak and got a mouthful of strawberry-scented hair. He’d fallen asleep with his head on Paige’s shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw the lights of a town outside the bus window. The trip back to Cypress Creek had nearly reached its end. He could hear the empty bottles of Tranquility Tonic rattling in Paige’s bag. He and Paige were lugging them back to Cypress Creek in the hope that Charlotte could come up with an antidote that would save Paige’s aunt and the other people of Orville Falls.

  “Sorry,” Charlie told his friend. “Didn’t mean to pass out on you.”

  “No worries,” she replied. “You were talking in your sleep, though. Must have been quite a dream. You kept repeating the words ick and ink. Are they supposed to mean something?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Charlie said. “But I have a hunch that Charlotte does.”

  “Who knew fake meat could be so darn delicious?” Andrew Laird pushed his chair back from the dinner table, and a gigantic orange feline blob landed with a thud next to Charlotte’s half-eaten Tofurky casserole. Before anyone could stop it, the beast stuck its entire head inside for a taste.

  “Aggie!” Charlotte screeched, picking up the evil cat and depositing it on the floor.

  “So much for leftovers,” Charlie said. He took the casserole and scraped what was left of the family’s dinner into the dog’s bowl. Aggie was watching when he opened the back door. Rufus, the Laird family’s dog, came running. “Good boy,” Charlie said as the hungry dog devoured the casserole.

  Aggie narrowed her yellow eyes and hissed. Charlie closed the door and responded with a snarl.

  “So, what did you get up to today?” he heard Andrew Laird ask Jack. “Anything fun?”

  “Yeah!” Jack exclaimed. “Me and Topher were hanging out at his pool, and his big brother, Frank, kept dunking us, so we got out of the pool and filled up all these balloons with shaving cream and pickle juice and other gunk. Then we got up on the roof and waited until it was time for him to go see his girlfriend. Then we dropped all the balloons on him and Frank was covered in all this nasty stuff, and he was shouting that he was going to kill us, but then their mom came home and told Frank he probably deserved it.”

  Charlie saw Andrew Laird stare at his youngest son for a moment as if he wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  “Well, that certainly sounds exciting,” he said at last. “And you, Charlie? What happened after you ran out to see to that ‘emergency’ this morning?”

  “Nothing much,” Charlie muttered as he began to clear the rest of the dishes off the table. “Just hung around with Paige.”

  “Oooooooh.” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Paige.”

  “Shut up,” Charlie said a little too sharply. “Everybody knows Paige has been one of my best friends since kindergarten.”

  “Charlie and Paige, sittin’ in a—” Jack started to sing.

  “Okay, Jack, that’s enough,” Charlotte announced, hauling the little boy out of his chair by his arms and launching him toward the door. “You and your dad go to the living room and pick out a movie. I’ll bring you guys some ice cream.” She seemed to know that Charlie had something he was dying to tell her, something that would have to wait until they were alone.

  Jack’s eyes flicked back and forth between his brother and his stepmother. “Suuuure,” he said. “Whatever you say.” The kid was way too smart for his own good, Charlie thought. He always knew when trouble was brewing.

  As soon as the others were gone and the ice cream had been delivered, Charlotte sat back down at the table and pointed to the chair across from her. “Take a load off,” she told Charlie.

  Sometimes it was hard to believe how much everything had changed, Charlie thought. Six months earlier, he would have done almost anything to avoid a heart-to-heart with Charlotte. Now the first place Charlie went with his secrets was Charlotte’s favorite spot at the kitchen table.

  “So what’s up with you?” Charlotte asked once her stepson was sitting. “You look like you have so many beans to spill that you’re about to explode.”

  Charlie didn’t need to be pressed. “Remember the guy I saw yesterday? The one who walked like a zombie? Well, I saw him again this morning at Rocco’s soccer game.” He filled Charlotte in on Winston Lindsay and the Comets and then started on the trip to Orville Falls.

  Charlotte leaned across the table, her green eyes flashing. Two locks of her curly orange hair broke free from their bun and sprung out in coils on either side of her face. “Charlie Laird! You went to Orville Falls by yourself?” she whispered an
grily.

  “Of course not. I went with Paige,” Charlie countered. “She has an aunt who lives there. Besides, I went to the Netherworld by myself, and you never bothered to give me a lecture.”

  “Like that makes any difference!” Charlotte scowled as if Charlie’s response were ridiculous. “Do you know what your dad would do if he found out you and Paige left town together this morning?”

  “There are a lot of things Dad doesn’t need to know,” Charlie pointed out. “Besides, we took hand sanitizer.”

  “Still!” Charlotte whispered. Then she shook her head and sighed. “Okay. That’s enough parenting for one night. I’ll let your own mother tell you what she thinks. Did you find anything out?”

  “Yeah, we found this.” Charlie reached into the pocket of his hoodie and produced one of the little blue bottles with the shimmering silver label.

  Charlotte took it from Charlie and examined it closely, reading the fine print. “Never have another nightmare? Who do they think they’re kidding?” She laughed nervously. “Nothing stops nightmares.” Charlotte looked up at Charlie. “You and I know that better than anyone else.”

  But Charlie wasn’t laughing. “I think this stuff can stop more than just nightmares. I think it stops all dreams.”

  The remains of Charlotte’s smile were still on her face, but her eyes told a different story. “That’s not possible,” she insisted. “I’ve been working as an herbalist for more than fifteen years now, and I’ve never even heard of anything that could stop all dreams.” Charlotte pulled the cork out of the tonic bottle and held the vessel’s rim to her nose. Her head jerked back as she got a whiff of the remains of the substance that had once been inside.

  “Whoa.” She leaned in hesitantly and took a second sniff. “I’ve never come across anything like that before. It smells like…”