Nightmares! the Sleepwalker Tonic

by Jason Segel

  “Death,” Charlie answered for her. He’d been trying for hours to label the odor. He could detect a note of stale cemetery dirt and a hint of mold, mixed with the pungent stench of rotting things.

  “I smell far more sadness than death,” Charlotte said. “But I can’t place what’s in it. I’m familiar with every plant, seed and fungus between here and Outer Mongolia. I don’t think this stuff is from the Waking World.”

  “You’re saying it’s from—” It was such a scary idea that Charlie didn’t even want to put his hunch into words.

  Charlotte locked eyes with her stepson. “If it came from the Netherworld, we’re in serious trouble. But we can’t say anything for sure just yet. I’ll need to run some tests before I draw any conclusions.”

  “Do you think it might have something to do with ick and ink?” He’d meant to slip the words into the conversation casually. But there was nothing casual about Charlotte’s response. She dropped the tonic bottle like a hot potato, and Charlie had to dive to catch it before it rolled off the table.

  “Did your mom tell you about ick and ink?” Charlotte demanded.

  It took Charlie a few seconds to get back into his chair. “Not really,” he admitted. “She told me to ask you if the tonic might have something to do with ick and ink. I don’t even know what that means.”

  Charlotte looked at Charlie sternly for a moment before she nodded. “And you don’t need to. Not yet.” She turned her gaze to the tonic in Charlie’s hands. “I’ll have to have a full bottle of this stuff if I’m going to study it. Do you think you could get your hands on one?”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said. The thought of the Tranquility Tonight store made him shiver. “But before I go back to Orville Falls, there’s something we should do here at the mansion first.” He turned his eyes upward, as if looking through the ceiling and into the tower high above.

  “You want to open the portal, don’t you?” Jack’s voice came from behind Charlie.

  Charlie spun around. “Have you been spying on us this whole time?” he growled. “You’re such a sneaky little turd, Jack!”

  Jack stuck out his lower lip and showed Charlie his empty ice cream bowl. “I just came in here to put my dish in the dishwasher,” he said, trying his best to sound hurt.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes and smiled. “Yeah, sure you did,” she said, giving the kid a wink. “Never once have you ever put your dish in the dishwasher.”

  A wicked grin flickered across Jack’s face. Then, in an instant, he returned to looking sincere. “If you guys are opening the portal, I’m coming too. I’m one of the guardians. I need to be there.”

  “Why do you need to be there?” Charlie snorted. “You’re eight.”

  “I just turned nine,” Jack reminded him. “And you’re not even a teenager yet.” His stubborn expression was the same one he wore whenever anyone told him to take off the Captain America costume he loved. Charlie knew Jack wasn’t going to give in.

  “Fine, fine, fine,” Charlotte said with a huff. It was a well-known fact that nothing annoyed her more than hearing the Laird boys argue. “You can both be there if one of you can explain to me why the portal needs to be opened.”

  Charlie tapped the blue bottle with his finger. “The people who’ve been drinking this stuff have stopped dreaming, right?”

  “That’s your hypothesis,” Charlotte said. “It hasn’t been tested yet.”

  Charlie ignored the comment. “That means the people from Orville Falls haven’t been visiting the Dream Realm. I’ve seen what’s happening there. Parts of the Dream Realm are fading because nobody goes there anymore.”

  “So?” Jack asked.

  “So if something like that is happening to the Dream Realm, there’s no telling what’s going on in the Netherworld,” Charlie said. “I haven’t had a nightmare in months. It’s been a long time since I was on the other side. Have either of you gone to the Netherworld lately?” Charlotte shook her head, and Jack giggled, which Charlie chose to ignore. “See? That’s why we have to open the portal. We need to find out what’s happening on the other side.”

  Charlotte crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen island. She was silent for much longer than Charlie would have expected.

  “Okay,” she finally agreed. “But not until after your dad’s asleep. We’ll meet in the tower at midnight.”

  “Me too?” Jack asked as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Yeah, him too?” Charlie asked, disappointed. The last thing he needed was Jack tagging along and causing trouble.

  “All of us,” Charlotte confirmed. “We’re a family. We’re in this together.”

  —

  It had been ages since Charlie had stayed up so late. The hour before twelve may have been the longest sixty minutes of his life. As soon as his alarm clock confirmed it was midnight, he was up and out of bed, tiptoeing through his bedroom door. He’d lived in the purple mansion for more than six months, but the second-floor hallway still felt as eerie as it had the day he’d moved in. Portraits of Charlotte’s weird redheaded ancestors lined the walls. Some of the DeChants seemed to be glaring at the artists who had painted their pictures. Others appeared to be desperate to escape their framed prisons. And in the background behind them all was the purple mansion. These members of the DeChant clan had been its guardians. It was clear that not all of them had relished the job. But it hadn’t mattered whether or not they’d loved their life’s work. They had accepted the position because they hadn’t been able to refuse.

  Charlotte was the last of the portal-guarding DeChants. For almost two centuries, the DeChant family had watched over the entrance to the Netherworld. Now they had passed the torch to a new generation—and a new family. The mansion’s latest guardians were Charlie and Jack Laird.

  The boys were both still figuring out how to use their power. Even for Charlie, the portal wasn’t always so easy to see. It was set in one of the eight walls of the octagonal tower, but it was well disguised. When the portal was closed and locked, there was nothing to suggest that the wall was anything but ordinary. When the portal was unlocked, Charlie could detect a faint shimmer that came through the cracks in the old plaster. And when the portal was open, the wall disappeared entirely, and Charlie’s own worst nightmare lay on the other side.

  —

  Charlie was the last one up the tower stairs. At one time the little octagonal room at the top had terrified him. Now Charlotte’s office—with its cluttered shelves, messy desk, and secret portal—was the part of the mansion that Charlie loved most. It felt so safe and cozy that it was easy to forget just how dangerous the room could be.

  When Charlie reached the chamber at the top of the stairs, he found Charlotte and Jack staring at the bare plaster wall that hid the Netherworld portal.

  “It’s still locked,” Jack announced.

  “Really?” Charlotte sounded frustrated. “How do you know?”

  Jack shrugged. “I dunno. I can just tell.”

  “He’s right,” Charlie said. He felt a bit annoyed that they’d started without him.

  Charlotte turned around. “Oh, hey, Charlie,” she said. “I was just giving it one more go for old times’ sake. But no dice.” Ever since the boys had moved into the mansion, Charlotte had been having trouble seeing the portal. And her efforts to unlock it had apparently met with failure. The trick was to imagine the thing that frightened you most. Fear was the only force that could open the portal door. It took a very special person to summon a fear strong enough—and then manage to face it down.

  “Maybe you weren’t imagining something scary enough,” Charlie offered. “What were you thinking about?”

  “Nothing all that interesting,” Charlotte said. But Charlie saw her eyes dart toward her desk and to a pile of official-looking papers that were stacked on top. “Do you want to give it a try?”

  Charlie searched his brain for the last thing that had scared him. Paige’s aunt Josephine popped into his mind. But
it wasn’t the woman herself who was terrifying. It was the thought of never dreaming again. For Charlie, never dreaming again would mean never seeing his mom. He shuddered at the thought. Then closed his eyes, set his jaw, and let the fear grow inside him. He dreaded what he might find when the portal appeared.

  He opened his eyes when he heard Charlotte yelp. The wall had vanished, and in front of them a steep road cut through a forest. The only light came from the moon. It lit up the trees with a haunting glow that was bright enough to make it clear that they’d left civilization behind.

  Charlie immediately knew it wasn’t his nightmare. His worst dreams had once taken place in the woods, but he’d conquered those fears months before. Someone else had just opened the portal. There was only one other person who could have done it, and he’d done it faster than Charlie had ever managed. “Jack?” he marveled.

  “Was that you?” Charlotte asked, looking down at the kid in awe.

  “Charlie was taking too long,” the little boy complained. “I gotta get to sleep soon. I have chores to do in the morning.”

  “Oh really? When was the last time you did any chores?” Charlie scoffed. “And how did you get the portal open so fast on your first try?”

  Jack’s face was a portrait of puppy dog innocence. With his floppy brown hair and freckles, it was a look he wore well. “I dunno. Luck?” Jack shrugged.

  That was all Charlie needed to realize the truth. “You’ve opened it before, haven’t you?”

  “Who, me?” Jack asked, looking around the room as if Charlie couldn’t possibly be talking to him.

  “You have!” Charlie turned to their stepmother. He was furious. The Netherworld was dangerous. It was no place for a nine-year-old kid. But more important, though Charlie wouldn’t have said so, the Netherworld was supposed to be his. “Charlotte, Jack’s opened the portal before!”

  Charlotte looked worried. “Jack, have you been visiting the Netherworld by yourself? Tell us the truth.”

  Jack studied his shoelaces while he struggled to hide the smile that was spreading across his face. “Okay, maybe I’ve been there a few times, I guess.”

  “A few times?” Charlie demanded. “How many is that?”

  “Ten?” Jack said when he looked back up. “Twelve at the most.”

  That was far more trips through the portal than Charlie had taken. “What have you been doing…,” Charlie started to ask, but he stopped as he caught sight of something hovering in the Netherworld sky just on the other side of the portal. It was a silver spaceship with multicolored lights. A long, blinding beam shot straight from the hull of the craft to the ground.

  “What the heck is that?” Charlie heard Charlotte mutter behind him.

  “I think it’s a UFO,” Charlie said. He looked down at Jack. “Is this your worst nightmare? You’re afraid of aliens?”

  “Not really,” Jack said. “I guess I’m just good at pretending. I imagined that aliens had landed in the forest between Cypress Creek and Orville Falls and that I was really, really scared.”

  “But you’re not really scared?”

  “Nope. Why would aliens travel all the way to Earth just to hurt us? They have better things to do with their time.” Jack stepped through the portal and called for the others to follow. “Come on. This is gonna be a blast. Let’s go say hi.”

  Charlie gaped at the boy on the other side of the portal. He had been scared senseless on his first trip to the Netherworld. But his brother acted as if the land of nightmares were his second home.

  “Interesting,” he heard Charlotte murmur to herself.

  “The kid’s always been nuts,” Charlie grumbled.

  The temperature dropped the moment he stepped through the portal, and Charlie shivered in his shorts and T-shirt. It was cold in Jack’s nightmare. Why hadn’t Jack imagined a summertime alien invasion? “Hold on,” Charlie ordered his brother, who was already making a beeline for the spaceship. “We gotta wait for Charlotte.”

  But his stepmother was still stuck in the Waking World. An invisible barrier seemed to be keeping her out of the Netherworld. “I can’t get through!” Charlotte called out to Charlie. “Something’s blocking the way. You and Jack need to come back. We have to postpone the trip until I can figure out what’s wrong.”

  Charlie groaned and turned to tell Jack, but his brother was too far ahead to hear. Charlie saw the boy step into the column of light beneath the spaceship. A second later, his brother had been beamed aboard.

  “Jack!” he shouted.

  “Oh no!” Charlotte cried. She’d clearly been watching as well.

  “Don’t worry,” Charlie tried to assure her, hoping this would be the last time he was forced to take his little brother on a mission to the Netherworld. “I’ll go get him.”

  —

  It wasn’t a very large spaceship, Charlie thought. In fact, it was barely bigger than a standard RV. And the beam of light that hit the ground was only just wide enough to surround him. As he stepped into it, Charlie felt a strange tingling sensation, and when he glanced down at his body, he could see right through it, as though his molecules had come unglued. Thankfully, he didn’t even have time to scream. Before he knew it, he was aboard the ship, hanging suspended in the air, and then, thunk, on the ground.

  “Ouch!”

  Charlie scrambled to his feet, rubbing his bruised butt as he took in the interior of the spacecraft. The circular room was decorated in standard UFO décor—stainless steel walls, neon green glowing screens, and an examination table in the center of the space. Jack hadn’t wasted too much imagination on the design, Charlie thought bitterly as six small gray creatures with giant black eyes formed a circle around him. The alien with the largest eyes spoke. “Prepare the probes. We must examine the earthling.” Its voice was high-pitched and robotic.

  “Don’t bother,” a voice called out. “That’s my big brother, and he’s not scared of you either.” Jack was twirling around in a weird chair shaped like a sideways cup in what appeared to be the command center of the craft.

  “Are you kidding me?” the head alien dropped his probe to the floor and angrily threw his arms up in frustration. “Do you know how hard it was to get all this stuff together? The uniforms and the ship and these guys?” He pressed a button on the cuff of his space suit, and the five smaller aliens deflated like balloons.

  “Sorry,” Jack told him. “I had to dream up somebody who could give us a ride.”

  “A ride?” the alien snorted angrily. “Do I look like a taxi service to you?”

  Charlie stepped forward and offered the alien his hand to shake. “I apologize for my brother. He’s new to all this.”

  The alien reluctantly reached for Charlie’s hand. “Could have fooled me,” he grumbled. Then his eyes narrowed and he sniffed the air through the two holes that appeared to function as his nose. “You stink,” he observed.

  “I do?” Charlie replied. He was pretty sure he’d had a shower that morning.

  “Your kind shouldn’t smell like anything.” The alien eyed him suspiciously. “Unless—” Then he reached out and poked Charlie with a long gray finger. His eyes widened and he stumbled backward in terror. “You’re here in the flesh. I’ve heard rumors about little humans who’ve been causing trouble in the Netherworld. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Charlie knew it was critical to stay cool and calm. Though visiting the Netherworld in your sleep was scary, it wasn’t actually dangerous. But being there in the flesh meant that Charlie and Jack could be injured—or worse. “My name is Charlie Laird. That’s my brother, Jack.” Charlie pointed to Jack, who was still spinning around in the captain’s chair. “We’re sorry to have bothered you. We’re going to leave now. Will you please beam us back to the ground?”

  “Beam him down if you want,” Jack yelled. “I’m not going anywhere!” He stopped spinning, folded his arms across his chest, and sat back in a huff.

  “Yes. You. Are,” Charlie snarled through gritted tee
th. If he had to drag Jack’s butt out of the chair himself, he would. In fact, the idea was beginning to appeal to him. “Charlotte couldn’t get through. We need to go back.”

  “But we’re already inside the UFO!” Jack cried. Then he turned to the alien. “This thing flies, doesn’t it?”

  The extraterrestrial bristled at the question. “Of course it flies,” he snapped. “It’s not called a UO, is it?”

  “That’s right! It flies!” Jack told Charlie. “So he can take us to see it.”

  “See what?” Charlie demanded. The hijacked alien might have been annoyed, but Charlie was on the verge of completely losing his temper.

  “Orville Falls!” Jack shouted. “We can fly right over it!”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Jack was right, Charlie suddenly realized. The UFO wasn’t just some crazy stunt. The kid had actually dreamed up the perfect way to survey the Netherworld. It was certainly the fastest and safest way to see what kind of problems the Tranquility Tonic had caused.

  The alien was the first to break the silence. “What do you humans know about Orville Falls?” he asked in a strange, steady voice.

  “We come from the Waking World,” Charlie confessed. “Our town is close to Orville Falls, and something terrible is happening there. People have been drinking a tonic that prevents them from dreaming. It’s done bad things to their brains, and now the whole town acts like it’s sleepwalking. And because no one in Orville Falls is dreaming, the Dream Realm is suffering. Parts of it are already vanishing. But the tonic doesn’t just stop good dreams. It stops nightmares too. Which means it must be harming your world as well. So we came here to the Netherworld to check out the damage.”

  “You’re here to help?” the alien asked skeptically. “Why would two humans want to help Nightmares?”

  Jack leaped out of his chair with the answer before Charlie had a chance to respond. “Because humans need Nightmares! You show us how to face our fears!”

  The alien’s thin gray lips appeared to form a smile. There seemed to be no one that Jack couldn’t win over. “You’re familiar with our leader’s teachings?” the creature asked warmly.