Nightmares! the Sleepwalker Tonic

by Jason Segel

  “I doubt all of them think that.” It was the best Charlie could offer. And it clearly wasn’t good enough for Jack.

  “Well, I’m gonna find out,” he said. Before Charlie could stop him, his brother had opened the door.

  Just like the purple mansion in the Waking World, the Netherworld’s black mansion sat on a hill. The first thing Charlie saw when Jack opened the door was the hole that was on the verge of devouring downtown. The second thing Charlie noticed was the ogres stationed near the tree in the mansion’s front yard. There were five in all, and one looked a lot like Shrek.

  “Orog!” Jack called out to the giant. Charlie could hear the relief in his brother’s voice.

  The ogres didn’t turn around at first. Their spines stiffened and they sniffed at the air.

  “He’s here in the flesh,” the one called Orog told his companions. Then he turned and waved to Charlie’s brother. “Jack!”

  Jack was heading for the yard where the ogres were waiting for him. There was something about the way they were standing—so still and so rigid—that made Charlie wonder what they were up to. His brother was almost to the edge of the porch when Charlie spotted the rope. The end was in one of the ogres’ hands. From there, it stretched upward, toward the tree’s branches. It was well camouflaged, and Charlie couldn’t see where it went, but he figured it had to be part of a trap. The ogres weren’t throwing a welcome party.

  A burst of speed helped him catch up to Jack the instant the little boy was about to step off the mansion’s front porch. Charlie snatched Jack’s shirt and pulled him backward, just as a net fell from a tree branch overhead. If Jack had taken one more step, he would have been caught.

  For a moment, it was almost as if he had been. Jack looked at the net. Then he looked at Orog. The confusion on his face made it clear that he was struggling to put the two together.

  The anger rose so quickly in Charlie that he couldn’t stop it from spewing out. “Jack was your friend!” he bellowed at the Shrek-looking ogre. “He helped you, and this is how you choose to repay him? You should be ashamed.” If Charlie had stood any chance against five giant ogres, he wouldn’t have stopped at shouting.

  “He’s a criminal!” the ogre yelled back from across the lawn. “He’s been smuggling stuff through the portal in that mansion!” Charlie could tell that the creature wasn’t particularly bright.

  “If Jack was coming here to smuggle stuff that would destroy the Netherworld, why would he waste so much time teaching a dumb oaf like you how to be scary again? Hmmm?” Charlie demanded.

  “But the prophecy…,” the ogre began. His words trailed off as he worked it out in his head. He no longer seemed to be so certain.

  “The prophecy is a lie,” Charlie said. “My brother and I have been busting our butts to keep that hole from getting any bigger.” He gestured toward the abyss that was now creeping up the side of the hill. “As of this moment, we’re the Netherworld’s best hope.” He put his arm around his little brother. “We’re going back to the other side now to try to finish the job. And unless you really are as dumb as you look, you won’t lift a finger to stop us.”

  The two boys turned and walked back toward the front door. Charlie held his breath, waiting to hear the pounding of footsteps on the floorboards behind them. But they didn’t hear a sound. Only once they were inside the mansion, with the front door closed behind them, did Charlie breathe a sigh of relief.

  Jack stared at the door. “I really thought they liked me,” he said in a small voice. “But they didn’t, did they?”

  Charlie looked down at the boy beside him. He hated to see his brother so low. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “You always act like I drive you crazy,” Jack added. “But you stood up for me.”

  “I’m your brother,” Charlie said. “I was just doing my job.” The instant the words were out of his mouth, he knew it wasn’t the right thing to say.

  “Yeah.” Jack sighed. “And I know it’s a job you don’t like. It’s too bad you had to get stuck with it.”

  Jack started up the mansion’s stairs, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging.

  “Jack,” Charlie called out to him. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

  “I know how you meant it,” Jack said, looking back when he’d reached the landing. The sadness on his face was almost too much to bear.

  “Where have you two been?” Charlotte asked. She looked crazed.

  Charlie glanced at the clock on the stove. He and Jack had been in the Netherworld for less than thirty minutes. And yet somehow everything seemed to have changed while they’d been gone. Charlie could hear the windows rattling and fists banging on the front and back doors.

  “The Walkers are attacking!” Ollie exclaimed, looking like he might burst with excitement. He and Alfie had raided the cleaning supplies. They’d gathered all of the spray bottles and were dumping their contents into the sink while Charlotte filled the empty bottles with antidote.

  “Good thinking,” Charlie said, taking a bunch of bottles out of the sink and delivering them to Charlotte, who was working by the stove.

  “It was Ollie’s idea,” Alfie said. “The kid’s kind of a genius.” It was the first time Charlie had heard Alfie use the word to describe anybody besides himself. Ollie grinned from ear to ear as he poured a bottle of cleaner down the drain.

  Then they heard the sound of glass shattering in the drawing room.

  “They’re coming through the windows!” Alfie shouted.

  Charlotte slid two spray bottles of antidote down the counter to her stepsons. “Go get ’em, boys,” she said.

  Charlie looked over to see his brother standing by his side. He grabbed a bottle for himself and passed another to Jack. “I’ll get your back if you get mine,” he told the boy. “Deal?”

  “Sure,” Jack agreed halfheartedly, a sad little smile on his lips.

  Together, they marched toward the front lines, prepared to do battle with the drooling Walker mob.

  Shattered glass littered the drawing room floor. Aggie the cat stood in front of the window, her back arched and fangs bared at the Walkers outside. Mrs. Tobias was the first through the window. It was her trusty croquet mallet that had broken the glass. With her lipstick smeared across her face and mascara ringing her eyes, she resembled a rabid raccoon.

  Aggie leaped onto the woman’s back, and her claws dug into Mrs. Tobias’s croquet shirt. But the woman didn’t seem to notice. While the cat continued its attack, Mrs. Tobias pushed Jack out of her path and headed straight for Charlie, her arms stretched out in front of her and her fingers straining to reach his neck.

  It was the antidote’s first test, and there was no guarantee it would work. Charlie lifted his spray bottle with both hands, aimed the nozzle right at Mrs. Tobias’s pointy little nose—and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The bottle had jammed. Mrs. Tobias’s hands were around his neck. Her pink talons were on the verge of puncturing Charlie’s flesh, when her grip weakened and her fingers slipped away. Charlie saw her legs wobble, and then she collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  “Gotcha,” Jack said. He blew imaginary smoke from the nozzle of his spray bottle.

  Charlie dropped down beside the unconscious woman. He pressed two fingers against Mrs. Tobias’s neck and sighed with relief. He could feel the steady beat of her pulse. She was fast asleep. “It worked!” he announced.

  “Sure it did. What were you expecting?” Jack said. He pointed at the nozzle of his spray bottle. “By the way, you have to turn the top here until it says ON.”

  Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but Ollie chose that moment to burst into the room, a spray bottle in each hand. “Ha! You bagged the first Walker! And look at that! It’s my mom!”

  He grabbed one of his mother’s legs. “Help me out here, guys. We gotta get her onto one of the sofas. None of us will ever hear the end of it if Theresa Tobias wakes up on the floor.”

  —

  Charlie and his friends
put twenty-five Walkers to bed that night. When they were done, there were sleeping bodies all over the yard. One by one, all the Cypress Creek Walkers were loaded into Charlotte’s Range Rover and driven home, where they were left to sleep off the antidote in their own front yards. When Charlie and Charlotte finally returned to the purple mansion, the lights were off. It was well past three in the morning, and even Jack had gone to sleep.

  As Charlotte’s car turned into the driveway, its headlights briefly illuminated a dark figure lurking in the shadows on the front porch. Tall, wide, and dressed in black from head to toe, the creature wore a hood that hid most of its face.

  “Do you see that thing?” Charlie asked.

  “Get ready,” Charlotte told him. She threw the car into park and yanked up the emergency brake. “Looks like we have another visitor.”

  Charlie grabbed a spray bottle that was filled with antidote and slid out of the car. As he drew closer to the figure on the porch, he saw two bright yellow eyes watching him from beneath its hood. Then a clawlike hand reached out and snatched up a field mouse as it scampered across the floorboards. Soon, Charlie heard the crunching of bones. He let out a sigh. No human being could move so quickly—or chew so loudly.

  “Ava?” he called out.

  “Yepth,” the Harpy replied with her mouth still full.

  Charlie dropped the bottle of antidote to his side. He’d almost forgotten that there was still one Nightmare creature in the Waking World. Then Charlie heard the Harpy swallow. “Pardon me. I’m famished from the flight.”

  “Ava!” Charlotte hurried up the porch stairs to greet her. “Come inside and tell us everything you’ve learned while I fix you something to eat.”

  “Don’t make a fuss over me,” Ava said shyly. “There’s plenty of fresh food running around tonight.”

  Charlie would much rather have moved indoors, but he couldn’t wait to hear the Harpy’s report, even if it meant listening to the chomping of rodent bones. And Charlie had updates for the Harpy too. Thanks to Charlotte’s antidote for the tonic, the Walker invasion would soon be over, and hopefully the Netherworld hole would disappear. The tonic’s creators were at large, though, and if they had the ability to pass through portals, they remained extremely dangerous. As soon as all of the Walkers were cured, finding ICK and INK would be Charlie’s top priority.

  “So did you locate the lighthouse?” Charlotte asked Ava as she took a seat on the porch railing.

  “Yes,” Ava said. “You were right. It was on a bleak rocky beach in Maine, miles away from the nearest town. There were no trees to perch in, or buildings that could shelter me. I had nowhere to hide during the day, so I was able to visit only at night.”

  “And did you see anyone?” Charlie pressed, his excitement growing.

  “It took a while, but I finally did,” Ava said.

  “ICK and INK,” Charlotte whispered.

  Ava shook her head. “There was only one human inside,” she said. “The night I arrived, I flew past the windows, but I couldn’t see into the shadows. The next night, the clouds cleared for a few minutes, and the moon was out. I passed by the bottom window and I saw her.”

  “Her?” Charlie asked.

  Ava nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It was a young girl. Around the same age as you.”

  Charlotte gasped, but for some reason Charlie wasn’t surprised. It was almost as if he’d been expecting to hear it.

  “ICK and INK must have kidnapped a child,” Charlotte said.

  Ava looked confused. “No. The girl wasn’t guarded. She lived there, alone in the lighthouse. If she’d wanted to escape, she could have done so at any time.”

  Charlotte’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If the only person in the lighthouse was a little girl, where were the people who’ve been smuggling the tonic into the Waking World?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Ava said. “Then last night, a truck arrived. The girl opened the lighthouse door for three men, who loaded the truck with crates that had been stored inside the building. Each of the crates was filled with little blue bottles.”

  They’d thought all along that the tonic was being smuggled into the Waking World through the lighthouse, and now they had irrefutable proof. But that didn’t answer the questions that had been bothering Charlie—where were ICK and INK? Who was the girl all alone inside? And why was she helping the smugglers?

  A disturbing idea was forming in Charlie’s head. He couldn’t stop thinking about the girl who’d appeared in Ollie’s and Poppy’s nightmares. The girl Meduso hadn’t been able to rescue from the lighthouse. The girl Curtis Swanson had seen with the Shopkeeper—and the human presence Charlie had sensed in his last bad dream. “Ava, did the girl you saw in the lighthouse have auburn hair?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said the Harpy. “I don’t know this word…auburn.”

  “Hold on for a second.” Charlie rushed into the house and returned with a sheet of paper and a fistful of Charlotte’s markers. He handed the art supplies to his stepmother. “Draw the girl again, the one Ollie and Poppy described,” he said. “The one they say they saw in their nightmares.”

  “What?” Charlotte asked in confusion.

  “The picture you drew earlier fell into a puddle. Can you draw her again? Please?”

  Charlotte sighed and got to work. As soon as she had a rough sketch to share, Charlie took the paper and held it up for Ava to see.

  “Is this what she looked like, the girl in the lighthouse?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The Harpy nodded emphatically. “That’s her.”

  Charlie spun around to face Charlotte. “I don’t know which one it is,” he said, tapping the paper with his finger. “But the girl you just drew is either ICK or INK. I think there are two of them, and I think they’re twins. That’s why it seems like they’re everywhere—at the lighthouse and in people’s nightmares. Ollie even thought he saw one of them here in Cypress Creek.”

  “But how can ICK and INK be a couple of kids?” Charlotte asked. “They stalked me and your mother twenty-five years ago.”

  Charlie didn’t know the answer, but he suspected that ICK and INK were far older than they looked. According to Medusa, the lighthouse they’d built in the Netherworld had been around for at least eighty years. ICK and INK might have been children once, a long time ago, but the twins were no longer young.

  They also kept some unusual company, Charlie thought, remembering the last time he’d seen the Netherworld lighthouse. He’d looked through the telescope in Medusa’s cave and seen the building surrounded by goblins who’d broken the laws of the Netherworld by crossing the border.

  “Did any goblins come out of the lighthouse in Maine while you were watching?” he asked Ava.

  “Goblins?” Ava and Charlotte both repeated in surprise.

  “The last time I saw the Netherworld lighthouse, there were thousands of goblins gathered outside it,” Charlie explained. “Medusa thought they were waiting for ICK and INK to open the door so the goblins could pass through the lighthouse’s portal and into the Waking World.”

  “Does that mean Maine is about to be invaded by goblins?” Charlotte gasped.

  “No,” Ava assured her. “Maine is safe.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Charlie asked. “How do you know that ICK and INK won’t open the lighthouse door?”

  “The door won’t open because the lighthouse burned down,” Ava said. “It happened last night. There was nothing left.”

  It took a few beats for the horror to sink in. Charlie looked over at Charlotte, who seemed to be stunned speechless. “So the portal in the lighthouse is gone?” Charlie asked.

  “Everything is gone,” Ava replied.

  “What about the little girl?” Charlotte asked.

  “She escaped,” Ava said. “Right after she set the building on fire.”

  It didn’t make any sense. Why had ICK or INK burned the lighthouse down? Charlie lay awake in the dark, turnin
g the question over in his mind. He was completely exhausted. Sleep should have arrived the instant his head had hit the pillow. Instead, he kept thinking about the sisters.

  Charlie had pieced together parts of their story. The twins must have smuggled the tonic into the Waking World. No matter how old they really were, they looked like a couple of kids, which meant ICK and INK couldn’t just open a shop themselves. So they’d teamed up with the Shopkeeper and made him the face of the business. Then ICK and INK must have spent weeks building demand for Tranquility Tonic by terrorizing the citizens of Orville Falls in their dreams.

  Now the twins were after the purple mansion. With the lighthouse gone, they needed the mansion’s portal to go back and forth between worlds. And there was no doubt that ICK and INK knew about the portal in the tower upstairs. Charlie was convinced that they’d already been using it.

  But why burn down the lighthouse before they got their hands on the purple mansion? And why disappoint all those goblins who’d been waiting to cross over into the Waking World? Was destroying the lighthouse all part of some plan? Charlie wondered. And what was that plan? Why were the twins doing their best to destroy three worlds?

  When sleep finally settled upon him, Charlie found himself back in the Netherworld, standing on the lip of the giant hole that had swallowed part of his town. As he stared into the abyss, Charlie thought of the despair that filled every bottle of Tranquility Tonic. That was what had eaten everything away, leaving only a bottomless pit. As he stood there, Charlie realized that he knew exactly what it would feel like to fall inside. In the months after his mother had died, he’d been consumed by that same darkness and despair. It was like there had been a pit of sadness in his heart.

  What had happened to ICK and INK? In order to make the tonic, they too must have known unspeakable sorrow. Which meant that, as wicked as they were, they deserved Charlie’s pity. If their despair was powerful enough to spawn an abyss, it must have been too much to endure.