Nightmares! the Sleepwalker Tonic

by Jason Segel

  “It’s funny. I don’t feel like I grew up,” Charlotte said, and then she laughed and gave the clown another hug. “But I guess it happens to the best of us.”

  “Hey, lady, enough with all the affection! You trying to smother me or something?” complained Bruce, who was hanging from a baby carrier that was strapped to Dabney’s chest.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Charlotte said. “I didn’t even see you!” She bent down to offer an apology to the counterfeit baby. Her head jerked back when she got a good look at the creature. “Why, aren’t you just the…creepiest…little thing.”

  “You ain’t so bad yourself, toots,” Bruce said, waggling his eyebrows. Apparently Charlotte’s revulsion had been a compliment.

  “That’s Bruce,” Charlie told his stepmother. “He’s a changeling. And the other Nightmare is Ava.” Charlie gestured to the Harpy in disguise.

  Charlotte offered the Nightmare her hand. As Ava shook it, one of her wings popped out from beneath her shawl. Jack laughed, and Charlie saw Charlotte struggle to hide her surprise.

  “So what’s going on, Dabney?” Charlotte asked. “Why are the three of you here?”

  When a fit of giggles prevented the clown from answering, Charlie stepped forward.

  “It’s like I thought, Charlotte. The Netherworld is in serious trouble, just like the Dream Realm. Jack and I saw the evidence. There’s nothing but a giant hole where Orville Falls used to be. The hole swallowed the entire Netherworld town, and it’s growing wider every night. Pretty soon it’s going to reach Cypress Creek.”

  “No!” Charlotte clapped a hand over her mouth in horror.

  “Yep.” Jack had appeared at Charlie’s side, and he looked eager to join the conversation.

  “The Tranquility Tonic must be responsible. It’s the only explanation,” Charlie added quickly before his little brother could steal the show. “And you were right, Charlotte. The stuff couldn’t come from the Waking World. Medusa thinks someone’s smuggling it here from the Netherworld. Then they give it to the man in the shop to sell.”

  “But who could be smuggling it, and how do they get it here?” Charlotte asked in confusion. “The only passage between the two worlds is the portal in this room. And as far as I know, you and Jack are the only people who’ve been through the portal in the last twenty-five years.”

  Charlie watched as his stepmother’s eyes briefly landed on Jack.

  “Why does everyone keep looking at me?” the boy cried. “I’ve never smuggled anything. I swear!”

  “Then how—” Charlotte started to ask.

  “Medusa thinks there may be a second portal between the Netherworld and the Waking World,” Charlie explained. “It’s inside a lighthouse near the goblin territory. We had a look at the place tonight.”

  Charlotte blanched. She pulled the chair out from behind her desk and collapsed onto it. “You’re joking. A lighthouse?” she asked weakly. “Did you go inside?”

  “We couldn’t,” Charlie said, watching his stepmother closely. Her face was as white as a sheet, and her hands were trembling. “But if the lighthouse has a portal, then the whole building will have a double somewhere in the Waking World. That’s why Ava is here.” Charlie gestured to the Nightmares. “She’s going to take to the skies to search for it while Dabney and Bruce check out Orville Falls.”

  Ava shook the shawl off her wings. “I would love to stay here and make human talk with you, but I must begin my journey. Charlie has told me that the Waking World is a very big place. I hope I can find the lighthouse before that terrible hole swallows your town too.”

  “The lighthouse you’re looking for is in Maine,” Charlotte said.

  “What?” For a moment, Charlie couldn’t think of anything else to say. It seemed none of the others could either. A stunned silence filled the room.

  “How do you…,” Jack started to ask.

  “It’s hard to explain how I know,” Charlie’s stepmother replied. She rose from her seat and pulled a battered old book from the shelf above her head. On its spine was written Lighthouses of New England. Charlotte thumbed through the brittle, yellowing pages until she found the picture she was looking for. Then she turned the book around so that the rest of them could see.

  There on the page was a lighthouse that was identical in every way to the one Charlie had seen in the Netherworld, except this one seemed to grow out of the sea. A sliver of wave-battered rock linked it to the mainland. It was hard to imagine anyone using it as a bridge—without getting washed away. The caption below the photo read The Kessog Rock Lighthouse. In Private Hands.

  Charlotte handed the book to Dabney. “I found the lighthouse book at a yard sale a couple of years ago. I started flipping through the pictures, and when I came across the one I just showed you, I nearly fainted.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Because up until then, I’d only ever seen the Kessog Rock Lighthouse in my nightmares,” Charlotte told him.

  Charlie felt a chill, and he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. He’d just returned from the Netherworld, and he was standing beside three accomplished Nightmares, and yet the quaver in his stepmother’s voice scared him far more than anything else he’d seen or heard that night. Charlotte wasn’t easy to frighten, which meant whatever had gotten to her had to be pretty darn bad.

  Charlie almost hated to ask. But he did. “You used to have nightmares about the lighthouse?”

  “We both had them.” Charlotte held Charlie’s eyes for a few beats when she said it. That was how Charlie knew—it wasn’t just Charlotte. His very own mother had dreamed about the lighthouse too. “It was a couple of years after our adventure in the Netherworld. Your mom and I must have been fourteen or fifteen at the time. I’d already moved away from Cypress Creek by then, but Veronica and I still spoke on the phone every day. She was the one who got the first note.”

  “Note?” Jack pressed when Charlotte couldn’t seem to find her voice again.

  Charlotte nodded. “Veronica told me she’d been having a nightmare about school. I can’t remember much about the dream except that it was typical teenage stuff. Something about bullies or boys or geometry quizzes. Anyway, in her nightmare, she was sitting at a desk in a classroom, and at some point she glanced up at the blackboard, and there was a note written there, one that didn’t have anything to do with her nightmare. It said, We’re lonely. Come over and see us. And it was signed ICK and INK.”

  “Ick and Ink?” Charlie asked. When his mom had mentioned them, he’d assumed the words were some kind of code. “Those are names?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said. “But the words were always written in capital letters. I think they may have been initials.”

  “Whose initials?” Jack inquired.

  Charlotte shrugged. “We never found out, and I’m almost glad we didn’t. When I got the second note, it scared me half to death. I was having a nightmare about a dog in my neighborhood that always chased me down the street. I remember running for my life past a house with a message spray painted on the side. We know you’ve been here. ICK and INK. Whoever had painted the message knew about the portal—and knew I was able to visit the Netherworld in the flesh.”

  “But how?” Charlie asked.

  “Beats me. Veronica and I never told a soul about our trips to the Netherworld,” Charlotte said. “We each got a few more notes, and then we both began having the same dream. We’d fall asleep and find ourselves standing together outside a lighthouse. There was always a note, written in sand or spelled out in seaweed, even though there was no ocean nearby. The messages would say We’ve been waiting for you. ICK and INK. Or We want to be friends. ICK and INK. And one time we found a basket with a little blue bottle inside. There was a tag around the top that said We want you to feel better.”

  Charlie shuddered. The tonic. His mother and Charlotte could have been ICK and INK’s first victims.

  “Did you drink the stuff in the bottle?” Jack asked.

  “No,”
Charlotte said. “And we never went inside the lighthouse either. We couldn’t have, even if we’d wanted to. The closer we got to that place, the worse we felt. It seemed like the whole building was surrounded by a cloud of darkness. Whatever was in there wasn’t good. We suspected the notes were some sort of trap. And as it turned out, we were right.”

  “How do you know?” Charlie asked. “What happened?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “That’s a story for another time,” she said sadly. “After a few months, your mom and I stopped getting notes from ICK and INK. I’d almost forgotten all about them until I found this book. That was when I realized that the lighthouse was a real place. It’s in Maine, on a treacherous stretch of coastland where ships often wreck.”

  “Did you ever see it in person?” Jack asked.

  “I was planning to go. But then my grandmother died, and I was called here to take charge of the mansion. I never had a chance.”

  Charlie jumped at the sound of Dabney’s giggle. The Nightmares had been so quiet that he’d almost forgotten they were there. “Ava will go to Maine,” the clown announced. Then he paused. “Where is Maine?”

  “It’s north of here,” Jack said. “I think.”

  “It is,” Charlotte confirmed.

  “Where is north?” Ava asked.

  Charlie sighed. The Nightmares knew nothing about the Waking World. The mission seemed doomed from the very beginning.

  “It’s going to be a long trip,” Charlotte told Ava. “Before you go, I’ll need to find you a map.”

  “What about money?” Jack said. “You know, for snacks and stuff?”

  “If she gets money, I want money too!” Bruce demanded, though Charlie was pretty sure the changeling had no idea what he was talking about.

  Charlie saw Charlotte’s eyes dart down to a pile of papers that were stacked on her desk. Before she answered, she opened a drawer and swept them all inside. “I wish I could give you all the money you want,” she said. “But the truth is, I don’t have much to give right now.”

  “That’s okay,” Jack said without a second’s hesitation. “I’ll go get my piggy bank.”

  Charlie shook his head. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how young Jack was. “A bunch of change isn’t going to help anyone,” he said miserably.

  “It’s mostly bills,” Jack replied innocently. “I’ve been saving up for a while. You think they’ll need more than five hundred dollars?”

  “Where did you get five—” Charlie started to say. Then he remembered it was Jack he was talking to, his magic little brother who always seemed to have an ace up his sleeve. “Never mind,” he grumbled. “Go get your piggy bank.”

  “It’s the big day!” Andrew Laird announced as he came down the stairs. “Where’s America’s next bestselling author? You ready for the trip?”

  Charlie watched nervously as his enormous father lumbered toward the breakfast table, his chunky glasses tucked into the pocket of his pajama shirt. Andrew Laird yawned, ran his hand over his beard, and scratched his butt. He was just about to claim a chair at the table, when he realized that all the seats were taken. Charlie gulped. The glasses were on his dad’s face in an instant, along with a bewildered expression.

  Charlotte jumped up to greet her husband. “Andy, I’d like you to meet my friend Dabney and his little boy, Bruce,” she trilled unconvincingly. “They came by to wish me luck on my trip to New York.”

  Charlie saw his dad’s puzzlement grow as he checked the watch on his wrist. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Jack was fast asleep, and Charlie would have been dozing too, but he had dragged himself out of bed early to do some snooping while the house was quiet. He’d wanted a look at the papers Charlotte had swept into her desk drawer the night before. He’d had a hunch that they were important, and he was right. What Charlie had discovered on those pages had frightened him far more than ICK, INK, or the Netherworld abyss.

  “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Laird,” Dabney offered. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Yeah!” Bruce added, and Dabney shoved a pacifier into the changeling’s mouth.

  “Welcome to our home,” Andrew Laird said with a sideways glance at the unusually talkative infant. “Sorry to greet you in my pajamas. Charlotte didn’t tell me we’d be having guests this morning.”

  “Oh, no worries.” Dabney shoved a heaping forkful of kale pancakes into his mouth. “We’ve seen everyone in Cypress Creek in their pajamas.”

  Charlie didn’t give his father any time to ponder the strangeness of that statement. “Here, Dad,” he said, hopping out of his seat and taking his plate to the sink. “Have my chair. I’m done.”

  Andrew took Charlie up on his offer. Sitting down, he was able to get a better look at the pair across the table.

  “Your baby is so…” He couldn’t seem to find the right word.

  “He’s a little angel, that’s what he is,” Dabney cooed. He bent down and nuzzled the changeling’s snub nose with the tip of his own.

  Bruce issued a low warning growl and bit the end off his Binky.

  “You feeling okay this morning, hon?” Charlotte asked her husband. She’d arrived at the table just in time with a plate of pancakes. “You look a little out of sorts.”

  Andrew Laird seemed grateful for a chance to focus his attention on someone other than the scrawny man and his ferocious child. “I didn’t sleep very well,” he admitted. “I guess I’ve been under a lot of stress. I spent the whole night tossing and turning. Maybe I’ll pick up some of that new Tranquility Tonic.”

  He didn’t seem to notice the effect his words had on everyone in the room. Charlotte went completely pale, and Dabney was doing his best to stifle a giggle.

  “Tranquility Tonic?” Charlie asked weakly.

  “Yeah,” Andrew Laird said between bites of pancake. “Don’t know what it is exactly, but I saw a man putting up a big sign for it on my way home last night. Says it helps you sleep more soundly.”

  “You saw a sign for Tranquility Tonic in Cypress Creek?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yep, down by the gas station,” said Andrew. “Guess there’s a store opening up on Main Street in a few days. But I heard there’s already one in Orville Falls. I was thinking of driving up there—”

  “Don’t drink it!” Charlie blurted out. He couldn’t help himself. The thought of his dad turning into a Walker was too much to bear. “It does terrible things to people! It stops their dreams and clogs their brains.”

  The outburst got Andrew Laird’s attention. He froze, staring at his older son. His mouth was hanging open wide enough for Charlie to see the half-chewed pancake inside.

  “Plus that shop’s sort of our competition, you know,” Charlie added quickly, trying to cover his strange reaction. “If you need something for sleep, let Charlotte make it. You don’t need that tranquility stuff.”

  “I’ve heard that the tonic makes your breath smell like kitty litter,” Dabney offered casually. He took a bite of pancake to muffle the giggle that followed.

  “Really?” Andrew said. He grimaced and resumed chewing. “Then I think I’ll just stick with valerian root. Thanks for letting me know.”

  The doorbell rang, and Charlie leaped at the opportunity to flee the odd little gathering. He found Paige standing outside on the front porch beside a milk thistle plant. Charlie had been neglecting his plant-tending duties, and the thistle was looking quite sickly. But Paige seemed like she could have used a little help herself. She was panting as if she’d run all the way across Cypress Creek. There was a five-dollar bill clenched in her fist and a look of sheer horror on her face.

  “Has Charlotte made the antidote yet?” The words spilled out of Paige’s mouth so rapidly that Charlie guessed she’d been holding them in for blocks.

  Charlie shook his head gravely, and Paige groaned. “There wasn’t enough tonic left in the bottles we brought back last night,” he explained. “She needs a full bottle of the stuff so she can try to figure out what’s in i
t. Why? What’s going on?”

  “I went out to buy orange juice this morning, and…” Paige stopped and struggled to catch her breath. “My aunt Josephine’s ads—they’re all over town. And there’s a Tranquility Tonight store opening on Main Street.”

  Why did everything have to happen all at once? Charlie was working on zero sleep, and things were rapidly getting out of control. “My dad was just talking about it,” Charlie said. “Sounds like we’ve only got a few days to keep the store from opening.”

  “No.” Paige shook her head. “We don’t have a few days. The signs say the shop’s opening tomorrow. We have to do something now. Rocco’s away at a soccer match, but I called Alfie and told him we’d pick him up on our way downtown.”

  Charlie’s heart skipped a beat. Paige was right. Something had to be done immediately. “Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll get my stuff.”

  Charlie ran back into the mansion to grab his backpack and found his stepmother making awkward conversation in the kitchen. Her husband couldn’t understand why he’d never met her good friend Dabney before. Charlie took Charlotte’s arm and pulled her into the drawing room. A fat orange blob darted out from beneath a purple chair and disappeared down the hall, hissing at Charlie along the way. Aggie had taken one look at Bruce and gone into hiding that morning. If having a changeling in the house was what it took to keep Charlotte’s evil cat out of everyone’s hair, Charlie might have been tempted to ask Bruce to stay.

  “Charlie!” Charlotte whispered frantically. “I can’t talk right now. It’s really not a good idea to leave those Nightmares alone in the kitchen with your father!”

  “Paige is outside.” Charlie struggled to keep his voice down. “She says there are ads for Tranquility Tonic all over town. The Cypress Creek store is opening tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Charlotte repeated, as if the word made no sense to her. “But I’m supposed to be flying to New York in four hours! I won’t be back until tomorrow evening!” Then she drew in a long, deep breath. “That’s it,” Charlotte said as she exhaled. “I’ll just have to cancel my trip. If the publishers really want my book, they’ll be willing to wait.”