by Jason Segel
Charlie gazed at the mess and froze at the sight of a startlingly familiar piece of equipment.
“What are you making?” Paige asked.
“Well, until tomorrow at nine a.m., it’s a secret,” Ms. Abbot joked as she rummaged through her refrigerator in search of the lemonade.
“And what’s this?” Charlie picked up the object he’d been eyeing. It was a blue can with a long metal nozzle that rose from the top. At the base of the nozzle was a plastic knob that twisted from side to side.
Ms. Abbot stuck her head around the fridge door for a look. “You know what a Bunsen burner is?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Paige replied. “It’s a piece of chemistry equipment. It produces a flame that you can use in experiments.”
“Exactly,” Ms. Abbot said. “That’s a portable Bunsen burner. If you turn that nozzle, gas comes out of the can and you can set it on fire.”
“Is this the only one you have?” Charlie asked.
“Nope,” Ms. Abbot said, reaching for the glasses stacked up on one of her kitchen shelves. “I got a bunch of those things lying around. They’re great for warming up leftover pizza and roasting marshmallows.”
Charlie grabbed Paige’s arm and pulled her close enough to whisper in her ear. “This is what INK was using when she nearly burned down my house. She must have gotten it from here.”
Paige sighed. “Or she could have gotten it from our school. Or a store. Or the Internet. Or the college—you know, the one where your dad works?”
But Charlie wasn’t buying it. As far as he was concerned, the Bunsen burner was proof that INK had been inside Ms. Abbot’s house.
The question was—had she been invited?
Ms. Abbot dropped Charlie off in front of the purple mansion just as a van emblazoned with a logo for Cypress Creek Security Systems pulled out of the driveway. Jack was playing with Rufus in the yard, and he stopped when he caught sight of his brother.
“Was that your weird teacher?” Jack asked. “Charlotte said you went to her house after school. How did it go?”
“It was educational,” Charlie said, walking past Jack and stomping up the stairs to the porch.
Charlotte peeked out of the drawing room as Charlie went past, but she didn’t stop him or say a word. The look on Charlie’s face must have told her it was best to let him go. He made his way to the library, where his dad was sitting at his desk, reading through the manual for the mansion’s new security system. Charlie reached into his pocket, pulled out a small item, and placed it in front of his father. Andrew Laird was a professor of history at the local university, and he was the only person Charlie knew who might be able to identify it.
His dad adjusted his glasses and his eyes lit up. “Whoa! Where did you get this?” He snatched the figurine off his desk, held it up to the light, and examined it as if it were a rare gem.
“You know what that is?” Charlie asked.
“Sure,” his dad said. “It’s a toy soldier. And a really cool one too. The uniform is English. It and the gas mask tell me this is from World War One. It was probably made around 1917 or so. Where on earth did you find it?”
“A garden shed,” Charlie said. And he had a hunch he knew how a hundred-year-old English toy could have gotten there.
“Did you just get back from Samantha Abbot’s house?” Charlotte had come into the room behind him. Charlie snatched the toy and shoved it into his pocket.
“Yep,” Charlie said without turning around to look at his stepmother. “By the way, someone forgot to call her and tell her I wasn’t coming. You tricked me.”
“Charlotte,” Andrew Laird groaned.
“Sorry, guys,” said Charlotte, though she clearly wasn’t. “Was it as terrible as you were expecting, Charlie?”
“It was fine,” Charlie said curtly. And that was all he planned to say. “Hey, Dad, do you mind if I grab some food and take it upstairs? I’m really tired after all that work, and I want to go right to sleep.”
Charlotte and his dad traded looks. “Sure, Charlie,” his father said. “Go ahead.”
—
Charlie sat at his desk and ate a ham sandwich and pretzels in silence. As soon as he’d finished, he peeled off his dirty clothes and climbed into bed. He knew he couldn’t stay annoyed at Charlotte forever. In the morning, he’d have to tell her what he’d discovered. But he was hoping to talk to someone else first. He was due a trip to the Dream Realm. He missed his real mother—and he desperately needed her help.
But once again, that wasn’t where sleep took him.
The moment he closed his eyes, he was back in the same old dream. It wasn’t completely dark this time, but it was far colder than it had been before. The sheep didn’t seem to mind. They were huddled together in their thick black coats. Charlie watched his fingertips turn blue. It was only a dream, so he knew he wouldn’t die. But that didn’t mean that the next eight hours couldn’t be extremely unpleasant. So he pinched his nose and began to squeeze in between two smelly sheep sitting side by side in the muck.
“A bit nippy, isn’t it?”
Charlie’s head snapped up at the sound of the voice. There, standing in front of him, was a girl in an old-fashioned uniform, her auburn hair parted primly on the side. She’d had time to calm down since Charlie’s last visit to the dream. While she didn’t exactly look thrilled to see him, at least she’d stopped flinging poo.
Charlie tried to respond, but his teeth were chattering too hard. All he managed was a single grunt. “ICK.”
“I prefer Isabel, if you don’t mind.” The girl crossed her arms and glared at him. “And your name is Charlie Laird. You live in the purple mansion.”
Charlie stared right back at her, clenching his teeth so they wouldn’t rattle.
ICK walked in his direction. With each step, she sank halfway to her knees in muck, yet she didn’t seem to care—or even really notice.
“Well, Charlie Laird, welcome back to my world. I imagine you’re thinking that things couldn’t possibly get any worse than they are right now,” the girl told him. “But you’re wrong. Take it from me. Things can always get worse. And after what you did to my tonic, I’m going to make sure things get much worse for you.”
With his body wedged between the two sheep, Charlie was finally warming up enough to speak—just in time to give ICK a taste of her own medicine. “So I guess this is your nightmare? Funny, I never took you for the kind of girl who’d be scared of a bunch of sheep.”
“Do I look scared to you?” she snarled. ICK and INK may have been twins, but ICK didn’t sound like her sister at all. “The Netherworld is my home. I’ve been to your home too. Do you really imagine that a few little locks are going to keep me out of the Waking World?”
“Yep,” Charlie said. “Because your sister isn’t going to be able to break into our house anymore. My parents have installed a security system.”
Isabel’s lip curled into a snarl. “I don’t know what a security system is, but it won’t stop India. She’ll never give up. She’ll never leave me behind.”
“Maybe not,” Charlie said casually. “But are you sure you want INK to come to your rescue? The last time she tried, she almost burned my whole house down. And do you know what would happen if the purple mansion ever burned down? The portal would be destroyed and you’d be stuck here with these sheep forever.”
“India made a mistake,” ICK growled. “She won’t make the same one again.”
“You sure it was a mistake?” Charlie asked. “I think INK may be a bit of a pyromaniac. She torched your lighthouse, after all.”
For a fleeting moment, Charlie saw something remarkable on ICK’s face—surprise. She obviously didn’t know that her sister had burned down the lighthouse. Maybe it hadn’t been part of their plan. Maybe INK had acted on her own for some reason. But why?
“The lighthouse fire was an accident. You’re lying,” ICK said. “That’s what people like you do. They lie.”
“Nope,” Charlie
said. He saw a chance to make trouble for the twins and he couldn’t resist it. “If you don’t believe me, go find a Nightmare named Ava. She was watching your lighthouse in Maine when the building went up in flames. She told me your sister walked out and just let the place burn. It was like she wanted to destroy the lighthouse’s portal. So who’s to say INK won’t try to destroy the portal in the purple mansion too? Maybe after eighty years, she just doesn’t want to hang out with you anymore.”
ICK didn’t say a word. She just stood in the muck, staring at Charlie. He’d gone too far. He’d said something cruel. It was a feeling he knew well—and one he hated.
Finally her cold blue lips parted and she spoke. “Get out of my nightmare, you horrid little boy,” she ordered.
“Believe me, I’d love to,” Charlie told her. “But I can’t. You keep dragging me here, and I haven’t found a way out yet.”
“I didn’t bring you to the Netherworld!” ICK shouted. Her pale face began to burn bright red. “I don’t want you here! I want to be by myself!”
“But you’re not here by yourself,” Charlie said, remembering his first visit to the dream. “There’s someone else too. She hums. I’ve heard her! It sounds like…”
ICK’s entire body seemed to freeze. “No,” she whispered.
But Charlie’s lips were already pressed together, and the first three notes were on their way out.
ICK screamed—but not in anger. Her scream of sheer terror was so awful that Charlie almost began to scream too. He’d found the source of ICK’s worst fear. It wasn’t the sheep, he realized. It was the lullaby.
—
Charlie woke up in the dark. Sweat was pouring from his body, and he heard the sound of bare feet on the floorboards as Charlotte raced toward his room.
Charlotte was sitting at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee when Charlie came downstairs the next morning with the toy soldier hidden in his fist.
“You okay?” she asked, eyeing him warily.
“Yep,” he said.
“Good,” Charlotte said. “Are you ready to talk about your dream yet?”
“Nope,” Charlie replied. He wasn’t going to say anything about the dream until he knew how he kept ending up in ICK’s nightmare. It wasn’t an accident; he knew that much for certain. It meant something—and he needed to figure out what. “But there is something I’ve got to tell you. INK was at Ms. Abbot’s house. I have proof.”
Charlotte looked startled. “What?”
“Remember I told you guys that INK was carrying some kind of little torch when she nearly burned down our house? It was a portable Bunsen burner. I saw one just like it in Ms. Abbot’s kitchen. And this was in Ms. Abbot’s garden shed.” He showed Charlotte the toy soldier. “Dad says it’s from England. From 1917.”
“No.” Charlotte shook her head, refusing to believe it. “There can’t be any connection between INK and Samantha Abbot. This is all just a coincidence.”
“Hasn’t this family been through enough to prove that nothing is ‘just a coincidence’? How well do you know Ms. Abbot?” Charlie asked.
Charlotte seemed to bristle at the question. “Samantha’s spent a lot of time in my shop. I’d say I know her well enough to be pretty darn confident that she’s not in league with two evil twins from the Netherworld,” she replied.
“Has she told you her secret?” Charlie asked. He was just fishing, but from the look on Charlotte’s face, he’d caught something big.
“No,” Charlotte said, clamming up.
“But you know something, don’t you?” Charlie said.
Charlotte’s lips didn’t budge.
“Okay, fine,” Charlie said. “Don’t tell me. But I have proof that INK has been hanging out at Ms. Abbot’s house. The same house that’s completely surrounded by poisonous plants. Come on, Charlotte! You know what she has in her greenhouse! You sold most of it to her! She’s growing stuff like white snakeroot and monkshood. And she’s got enough of it to kill the whole town. Do you want INK getting her hands on plants like that?”
Charlotte leaned forward and looked her stepson in the eye. “Charlie,” she said. “Do you trust me?”
Charlie huffed and crossed his arms. It was clear that he wasn’t going to get a straight answer from her.
“Do you?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Then trust me when I tell you that Samantha Abbot isn’t helping INK, and she’s not planning to kill the whole town. Got it?”
“Got it,” Charlie said, though he wasn’t sure he believed it.
—
That afternoon, Charlie took his seat beside Paige at the lab table they shared in science class. At the front of the room, Ms. Abbot was busy putting together the glass beakers and tubes that had been lying on her kitchen table the previous evening. When clamped together, they formed a tall apparatus with a round beaker at the bottom and several long glass cylinders on top with plastic tubes sprouting from the sides.
As soon as she’d finished assembling the equipment, Ms. Abbot straightened and addressed the class.
“We’ll get back to our study of mimicry tomorrow, but I’m having a little problem at my house, and I’m hoping you guys can help me out,” she said. “A raccoon has been breaking into my garden shed and going through my trash cans for food. And he’s a smart little thing too. I can’t seem to keep him out. So today we’re going to make raccoon repellent. But here’s the tricky part: it needs to work on raccoons, but I don’t want the stuff to keep birds away too. My garden needs birds. So what do you guys think I should use?”
“A BB gun,” a kid on the far side of Paige called out.
Ms. Abbot frowned. “I suppose that might work, but I’m not a very good shot. Anyone else have a suggestion?”
“Poison,” another kid suggested.
Charlie saw Ms. Abbot’s worried eyes dart in his direction for a second, as if he’d let her secret slip.
“Well, there are two big problems with using poison as a repellent,” she continued nervously. “First of all, I don’t want to hurt the raccoon; I just want to keep him away. Second of all, if I poison the raccoon, I could end up poisoning the birds that come to my garden, and the soil that my garden grows in, and then maybe even myself.”
“Perhaps you should try capsaicin.” The voice was muffled and seemed to be coming from the closet at the back of the room.
“Excuse me?” Ms. Abbot called. “Would the gentleman hiding inside the supply closet mind stepping out?”
Charlie spun around in his seat in time to see Alfie emerge, looking simultaneously sheepish and thrilled.
“Well, hello there,” Ms. Abbot said. “Are you in my class? Or were you sent here as a spy?” She may have been smiling, but there was an edge in her voice that Charlie hadn’t heard before.
“He’s not a spy,” a girl said with a smirk. “He’s a geek. Only a geek sneaks into a science class.”
“Frankie!” Ms. Abbot admonished the girl.
“No, ma’am, she’s right,” said Alfie. “My name is Alfie Bluenthal, and I’m proud to be a geek. I was walking past your classroom this morning, and I saw you unpacking that sweet Soxhlet extractor, and I wondered what you were doing, so I thought I’d hang around and find out. I have PE this period, and now that I’m the football team’s water boy, the coach lets me do whatever I like.”
Charlie saw Ms. Abbot’s guard come down in an instant. “How did you learn about Soxhlet extractors?” she asked in amazement. “Are you really a kid—or are you some kind of chemistry whiz in disguise?”
“What if I told you that I happen to be both?” Alfie asked.
Ms. Abbot grinned. “Then I’d say come on up to the front of the class,” she told him. “It sounds like you know what’s in store for my raccoon. Would you like to help me prepare it?”
“But he’s not even part of our class!” Charlie heard Paige complain bitterly. Everyone else ignored her.
“I’d love to help!�
�� Alfie replied. “I never get to do stuff this fun in my science classes. I have to wait until I’m at home in my private lab.”
“You have a private lab?” Ms. Abbot asked.
“Sure!” Alfie said as he strapped on a pair of eye-protecting goggles and pulled on gloves. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, but do your parents really let you—” Ms. Abbot began.
“Excuse me!” Paige shouted. She clearly couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Now that you’ve taken over our science class, Alfie, do you mind telling us poor non-geniuses what you’ll be making?”
Alfie adjusted his goggles nervously. Charlie could hear the jealousy in Paige’s voice, and he was sure Alfie heard it too.
“My apologies, Paige,” Ms. Abbot said. “Today we’re going to be studying one of the wonders of the natural world. You’ve all experienced it, but who besides Alfie has ever heard of capsaicin?”
Charlie had, but he didn’t think it was wise to raise his hand. He glanced over at Paige, who looked totally stumped—and completely furious.
“Capsaicin is a chemical that produces a burning sensation. It isn’t poisonous, and doesn’t bother birds at all, but just a teensy little bit of it can drive pests like raccoons away. And fortunately for us, capsaicin comes from one of the most common plants around.” Ms. Abbot reached into her lab coat and pulled out a handful of bright red seedpods. “Today we’re going to make a raccoon repellent spray by extracting capsaicin from these—ordinary chili peppers.”
—
Alfie put his lunch tray down across from Charlie. “Your teacher is amazing,” he said, still swooning from his encounter with Ms. Abbot. “Beautiful, brilliant, totally unafraid of raccoons.”
Charlie watched Paige pop a tater tot into her mouth. He could have been wrong, but he was pretty sure her lips formed the word show-off as she chewed.
“Hey, guys!” Rocco dropped into a seat beside Charlie. “You never called me after football practice. What’s the latest on INK?”
“Still missing,” Charlie said. “Paige and I found a couple of clues, but we didn’t get a chance to search for her. How was practice with the Quarterback Killer?”