Nightmares! the Sleepwalker Tonic

by Jason Segel

  “That’s fifty-nine by my count,” Jack announced as one of his water balloons drenched a Walker less than a block from the tonic shop. “How many more do you suppose we have left?”

  They turned a corner and found the answer. Hundreds upon hundreds of Orville Falls citizens were lined up in the street. None of the Walkers seemed to care about Charlie’s water-gun-wielding army. They were too battered and exhausted to do anything but wait in line for their next bottle of tonic.

  “Whoa.” Charlotte gulped. “I hope we have enough antidote for everyone.”

  “I say we find out,” Ollie said with a crazed smile. His trigger fingers were twitching.

  Spray guns were readied and Super Soakers were pumped. Jack and Ollie had their antidote aimed at the last two Walkers in line, when Charlie heard the sound of a car racing through the otherwise empty streets.

  “Quick!” he shouted at his friends. “Get in line.” It was the only moving car Charlie had encountered in Orville Falls since his first trip to town, and there was no telling who might be behind the wheel.

  Charlotte and the kids all squeezed into the line and did their best to look dazed until the car had passed. It was a black Mercedes with a license plate that read ABCC1.

  The meaning popped into Charlie’s head. “Amalgamated Bank of Cypress Creek,” he muttered out loud. The Mercedes belonged to Curtis Swanson.

  “That car was from Cypress Creek?” Paige whispered back. “Where do you think it’s going?”

  “I know exactly where it’s headed,” Charlie said, turning to his friend. There was only one possible destination—the Shopkeeper’s castle. Swanson was going to see his clients about the purple mansion, and there was a chance ICK or INK might be there. “You still itching to kick some butt?”

  Paige cracked her knuckles. “Absolutely.”

  “Can you guys handle all the spraying without us?” Charlie asked Charlotte, who’d been standing in line behind him.

  “Where are you two going?” she asked, and Charlie realized he’d never told his stepmother about the castle.

  “There’s a weird building just outside of Orville Falls…,” Charlie started to explain, struggling to find the right words to describe one of the creepiest places on earth.

  “We call it Kessog Castle,” Poppy interrupted. “Some crazy hermit built it way back when. The Shopkeeper lives there now.”

  “Kessog Castle?” Charlotte caught Charlie’s eye. It was the first time Charlie had ever heard the castle’s name.

  A lightning bolt streaked through Charlie’s brain. “Wasn’t ICK and INK’s lighthouse in Maine called—”

  “Kessog Rock,” Charlotte confirmed. “If ICK and INK are initials, the K must stand for Kessog.”

  “And I’d bet almost anything that at least one member of the Kessog family is with us here in Orville Falls today,” Charlie said.

  —

  Charlie and Paige left their friends behind at Tranquility Tonight and raced for the castle at the edge of the forest, taking every shortcut they could find. Sure enough, Curtis Swanson’s car was parked in the drive, and they arrived just in time to see the banker knock on the castle’s front door. A Walker let him in with a grunt, and a minute later Charlie and Paige quietly opened the door and tiptoed in behind them.

  The torch-lit foyer was empty. There was no way to tell which direction the banker had gone. The fear was building inside Charlie, and every one of his senses was on full alert. He could hear the crackle of the torches. He spotted a spider climbing one of the walls. Then he caught a whiff of something. With his nose in the air, he tracked the scent.

  “What are you doing?” Paige whispered. “What do you smell?”

  “Curtis Swanson’s disgusting cologne,” Charlie said.

  Paige followed Charlie as he cautiously ventured down the same path they’d taken on their first visit to the castle. When they heard footsteps coming down the hall, Charlie and Paige ducked into the room where they’d first met Poppy and ran for the wardrobe. They clambered inside it and pulled the door shut just as two people entered the room.

  “I hope it’s those evil brats,” Paige whispered. “Just let me know when it’s time to get down to business.”

  But it wasn’t ICK and INK.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Swanson.” The Shopkeeper’s voice creaked like a rusty hinge. “I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

  “I did, thank you,” replied Curtis Swanson. “Though I did see some rather remarkable things on the way here.”

  “For instance?” asked the Shopkeeper, feigning surprise that anything strange could possibly happen in Orville Falls.

  “For instance, there are people sleeping along the side of the road right outside town.”

  “Sleeping?” The Shopkeeper’s word came out quite gruffly.

  “Yes,” Swanson confirmed. “And I saw a bunch of children with water guns waiting in line at your shop.”

  “Water guns?” the Shopkeeper repeated. He wasn’t amused. “I haven’t been out yet today. I’ll have to pay a visit to town right after you leave. So perhaps we should quickly get to the subject at hand. The DeChant house—is the deal done?”

  Charlie’s stomach fell. Paige must have sensed his discomfort. Charlie felt her hand on his shoulder.

  “It will be,” Curtis Swanson assured him. “The paperwork is all in order. And my sources tell me there’s no chance that the Laird family will be able to find the money to save it. But I’m afraid that the mansion is legally theirs until the end of the month.”

  “That is not fast enough,” growled the Shopkeeper. “My employers say they need the house immediately.”

  “I can’t just give them the mansion, sir,” Swanson said with a nervous laugh. “But the end of the month is only a few days away—”

  “A few days is too long! We won’t get our reward until they have the house!”

  The shriek was so loud that it rattled Charlie’s eardrums.

  “Sir—” Swanson tried to calm the Shopkeeper.

  “I have guests arriving! Lots of guests!” The voice no longer sounded human. It was the screech of an enraged animal. “They won’t be allowed to come until the job is done and the mansion is secured!”

  “I’m sorry—” Curtis started again.

  But the Shopkeeper couldn’t be pacified. “I’m tired of pretending! I’ve been wearing this ridiculous hairpiece for weeks! Do you have any idea how much it itches?”

  “Sir, please…,” Curtis Swanson begged. “Why do you need the mansion so quickly?”

  “Why? I do not ask why! I serve my masters. My masters are wise and my masters are vengeful. My masters want that purple mansion and they want it now! So get me the purple mansion.”

  It was too much for Charlie. He had to take a peek. He opened the door a crack and saw Curtis Swanson. This time the banker wasn’t smiling. He was staring in sheer horror at the angry creature before him.

  The Shopkeeper had torn off his toupee and thrown it onto the ground. His suit jacket had ripped down the seams, revealing a metal back brace that he removed and hurled across the room. Without it, the creature’s spine curved, and a much more obvious hump appeared.

  The disguise had been so simple, and yet so effective, Charlie realized. He should have known from the start that the Shopkeeper was a goblin.

  “Who’s making that racket?” demanded a new voice.

  “What’s the greasy human done now?” asked another.

  “Holy moly,” Paige muttered under her breath.

  There was no longer one goblin in the room. There were three. Charlie remembered the day they’d met Poppy. She’d told them that the Shopkeeper had helpers who kidnapped anyone in Orville Falls who refused to take the tonic. But she’d never seen the bad guys, and now Charlie knew why. All three bad guys looked almost exactly the same.

  “Get out of here!” the first goblin screamed at Curtis Swanson. “And don’t you dare return until the mansion is ours!”

  Charl
ie and Paige sprinted back downtown from the castle on the hill as if they were being pursued by every last one of their very worst Nightmares. As they neared Tranquility Tonight, Charlie saw that his friends were still busy spraying the Walkers lined up outside the shop. In all the time that Charlie and Paige had been gone, fewer than half of the Walkers had been put to sleep. Charlie watched Ollie, Jack, and Rocco give a Walker a thorough dousing. The man collapsed into a heap, his nose buried in another Walker’s armpit. As the boys moved on to the next Walker, Charlotte, Poppy, and Alfie arranged the previous man’s body in a more comfortable and dignified position. There were hundreds of Walkers laid out in a neat row on the ground, but there were hundreds more to go.

  Charlie headed straight for Charlotte, who was looking thoroughly exhausted.

  “Charlie! Did you see ICK and INK at the castle?” she asked as he closed in.

  “Goblins,” Charlie panted. He bent over, hands on knees, to catch his breath.

  “Goblins?” Charlotte’s eyes went wide. “Are you saying ICK and INK are goblins?”

  “No.” Charlie shook his head. “The goblins work for ICK and INK. They’re helping the twins buy the purple mansion.”

  Charlotte looked stunned by the news. “They’re what?”

  “I’m sorry.” Charlie drew in another deep breath. “I should have told you sooner, but I was hoping one of the publishers would buy your book and I wouldn’t have to give you the bad news. ICK and INK are planning to buy the purple mansion as soon as the bank forecloses.”

  Charlotte gasped. “They destroyed their own portal, so now they’re going to take ours!” Her knees seemed close to buckling, and Charlie reached out a hand to steady her.

  “What should we do?” Charlie asked. “If ICK and INK get their hands on the mansion, who knows what they’ll let through the portal. Cypress Creek could end up being goblin central.”

  “There’s only one thing we can do now,” Charlotte replied, her voice cracking. “We’ll have to burn down the mansion before they can buy it. It’s the only way to stop them from using the portal.”

  There were tears welling in Charlotte’s eyes. Charlie could tell that she meant it. She’d burn down her own beloved home before she would let the town be overrun by goblins.

  An idea flickered in Charlie’s mind. His thoughts turned to the girl Ava had seen setting the Waking World building ablaze, and the goblins who’d been waiting on the other side. Had ICK or INK burned the lighthouse down so the goblins would be stuck in the Netherworld? If so, what did that mean?

  The ringing of a phone kept Charlie from finishing the thought. He glanced over to where the other kids were still hard at work, and saw Ollie fish a phone out of his pocket. A look at the caller ID brought a grin to Ollie’s face.

  “Hey, Mom!” Ollie answered. “How ya feeling?” Charlie exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. If Mrs. Tobias was phoning her son, she was the second Walker they knew of to be cured by the antidote. “You’re not going to believe how much fun you had last night.”

  Then Charlie saw Ollie’s impish grin melt into an expression of confusion, then horror. Within seconds the boy was booking it toward Charlotte.

  “Mrs. Laird! Mrs. Laird!” he cried. “My mom’s on the phone, and there’s something really wrong with her. Just listen to this!” Ollie hit the speaker button on his phone.

  “Mmrake murumph mwa mwamff!” shouted a garbled voice on the other end of the line.

  If Charlie hadn’t known better, he would have guessed he was listening to an angry monkey with a mouth full of bees.

  “Are you sure that’s your mom?” Charlie asked. His heart was sinking fast.

  “I’m positive!” Ollie insisted. “What’s going on? I thought she was cured!”

  Charlie looked to Charlotte. Every drop of blood appeared to have drained from her face. “It sounds like the antidote didn’t work for your mother,” she told Ollie. “All the valerian root I put in it may have knocked her out for a while, but when she woke up, she was still a Walker. Everyone we sprayed last night fell asleep, but that doesn’t mean they were cured.”

  But the tonic couldn’t be a total dud, Charlie assured himself. He’d seen with his own eyes what it had done for Paige’s aunt. “What about Josephine?” Charlie asked. “The tonic saved her! So why didn’t it work for Mrs. Tobias?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  She sounded totally defeated, and Charlie understood why. It looked as if all of their work had been wasted. But something told him that the battle wasn’t quite over. Charlotte, however, seemed to have lost the will to fight.

  “I tried my best,” she said. Her voice was flat, and her bloodshot eyes stared off into space. “I really did. But look where it’s gotten me. My book was rejected, the purple mansion is being sold, and now this. I give up. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “Come on, Charlotte—” Charlie started to argue, but there wasn’t time to make his case.

  “Goblins!” Alfie shrieked. Charlie’s eyes instantly darted in the direction of the castle. Three goblins were stomping toward them. They wore the tattered remains of their Shopkeeper suits, but they’d removed the rest of their human disguises. Their backs were hunched, their heads were bald, and one had an index finger jammed up his nose.

  “There were three Shopkeepers?” Poppy screeched. “I should have known!” Charlie could see the little differences between them, but anyone who’d never met a goblin would have assumed they were identical. Identically terrifying.

  The grizzled, potbellied creatures approached, and Charlie and his friends drew in closer around Charlotte.

  The goblins kept coming. They didn’t stop until the one in the lead was nose to nose with Charlotte. “We heard we had visitors,” he snarled. “What do you think you’re doing in our town?”

  Charlie and his friends waited for Charlotte’s answer. If anyone was going to show a goblin who was boss, it would be her. But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out but an exhausted sigh.

  “We’ve been curing your victims!” shouted Jack, who hadn’t heard the news about Mrs. Tobias. “It’s not going to be your town anymore.”

  The goblin peered down at the boy. “Curing them?” He laughed. “These humans aren’t ill. They don’t need a cure.” He walked over to one of the Walkers—a large, hairy man in lumberjack plaid—and playfully pinched the gentleman’s cheek. “Just look at this one. He’s perfectly content! Do you see any suffering? Do you see any tears? No one in this town feels bad.”

  Charlie’s eyes passed over people in the Tranquility Tonight line. The goblin was right. “They don’t feel bad, because they don’t feel anything at all,” he said.

  “And they have our employers to thank!” the goblin said.

  “The tonic is evil,” Paige spat. “And so are ICK and INK.”

  “Ignorant brat! The tonic is bliss!” the goblin yelled, his anger growing. “You would understand that if you’d been forced to live your entire life underground as we have—or if you’d been abandoned in a lighthouse at the end of the world. If any of you spoiled humans had ever known true fear, you’d welcome the oblivion the tonic brings!”

  “It’s destroying the Netherworld,” Jack argued back. “All the Nightmares are in danger.”

  “Why should we care?” the goblin said. “They’ve tortured ICK and INK for years, and they banished me and my fellow goblins from their land. Being swallowed by a giant hole is exactly what the Nightmares deserve!”

  “And do ICK and INK know that the tonic isn’t just destroying the Netherworld, that it’s destroying the Dream Realm too?” Charlie asked, and the head goblin smirked.

  “Of course they know!” the goblin replied. “The hope humans find in the Dream Realm is worse than the Netherworld’s fear! What could be crueler than hope? You wait and you wish and you dream, and nothing ever happens. That’s why ICK and INK made the tonic, to rid the Waking World of hope and fear. We g
oblins helped them produce it. We were the only ones who were strong enough to visit the lighthouse. And as a reward we shall rule the Waking World.”

  Charlie suddenly understood. In return for the goblins’ help, ICK and INK had promised to let them pass through the portal. But the twins hadn’t held up their part of the bargain. “You’ve been tricked,” he told the goblin.

  “What are you talking about?” the goblin snapped.

  “The goblins who’ve gathered at the Netherworld lighthouse will never make it to the Waking World,” Charlie said. “One of the twins burned down the lighthouse on this side. The portal is gone. ICK and INK were never going to allow your kind to rule our world.”

  Anger flashed in the head goblin’s eyes, and he turned, falling into a huddle with his comrades. Their voices rose and fell as they argued in their horrible language, until at last the head goblin turned back to Charlie. “The lighthouse is not the only portal,” he said. “Surely our benevolent masters have simply, as you humans say, changed the location of the party.”

  The lightbulb that went off in Charlie’s head at that moment was as powerful as the lighthouse lantern. When he started to laugh, everyone gaped at him as if he’d gone mad. But the goblins had given him the clue he’d been looking for. He knew what would cure the Walkers.

  “You just found out that you’ve been double-crossed,” Charlie said. “But you still have hope! No matter what happens, you can’t get rid of it!” He marched over to the Walkers who were still obediently waiting in line. “It makes no difference what ICK and INK put in that tonic. It couldn’t possibly destroy all hope. There’s still a tiny piece inside all these people. And soon it’s going to spring back to life.”

  “Ridiculous,” the goblin snorted. “These humans have been drinking the tonic for weeks now. In a day or two, its effects will be permanent. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

  “You’re wrong,” Charlie said confidently. “I’ll make their hope grow, and they’ll all be cured. All I have to do is figure out the magic words.”

  “Magic words!” The goblins cackled.