Nightbooks

by J. A. White

  There was writing in the margins.

  Words huddled together in small groups. They had been printed with a pencil; here and there Alex could even see erasure marks where the writer had made a correction. The penmanship wasn’t the neatest, but it was legible enough.

  It looks like it was written by a kid, Alex thought. Maybe someone my age.

  He started to read.

  Shh! I told the witch that I’m in here picking tonight’s story for her. But I want to write some things down first. I don’t have any paper so I’m going to use these books. Different book each time. So the witch don’t find out. If she does I’ll be in BIG TROUBLE!

  How I got here was I was playing in the park and I saw a unicorn walk into this apartment building.

  Raymond was awoken in the middle of the night by scratching noises on the other side of his bedroom ceiling. He lay in bed and listened carefully. Something scampered from one side of the ceiling to the other, a trail of sound.

  “Mouse,” Raymond muttered in disgust. He had lived alone in the old farmhouse for over sixty years, and it wasn’t the first time a rodent had tried to use his attic for a winter home. Well, I’m up now, he thought. Might as well get some traps up there before I have an infestation on my hands.

  I know unicorns aren’t real.

  I’m not stupid.

  He dressed quickly and started a pot of coffee. The scratching noise continued, louder than before. Raymond reassessed his earlier opinion. Could be a squirrel, he thought. Maybe even a raccoon. He pulled down the attic stairs and climbed them carefully, his arthritic knees barking in protest. Sunrise was still a few hours away, and the attic was cold and dark. Raymond ducked his head beneath the low ceiling and shone a flashlight to the left and right, where the spaces between the joists remained exposed. He was looking for rips in the insulation, some kind of sign that he had an unwelcome guest.

  But I have always LOVED LOVED LOVED unicorns so I followed it anyway. Just in case. It went into the elevator which is funny! And I took the stairs and saw it walk into this apartment. I knocked on the door and the witch who lives here trapped me inside.

  And so here I am.

  I know Mom and Dad will find me very soon. I just have to do what the witch tells me to do. She won’t hurt me. I am a good girl.

  Instead, he found a strange lump about the size of a softball.

  She is mean I know but I think she is lonely too. Otherwise why does she want someone to read her a story every night?

  Plus she can do magic which I think is SO COOL.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Raymond slowly got to his knees and parted the fiberglass insulation with his shirtsleeves, revealing a silver, oval-shaped object speckled with red dots. An egg, Raymond thought, struggling to come to terms with the sheer strangeness of it. Some kind of bird get in here, maybe? He swung his flashlight over the rest of the insulation and saw similar lumps evenly spaced throughout the attic: a dozen, maybe two.

  Also her cat can turn invisible!!!!

  The silver egg shook.

  Raymond fell backward in surprise, his hand connecting with something warm and slimy on the floor. It slithered between his fingers and underneath the sleeve of his shirt, moving fast.

  And also also I think there were other kids here but they are not here anymore so the witch must have let them go. If I am a good girl she will

  The writing stopped in midsentence. Alex could imagine the girl hearing footsteps in the distance and slipping the book back onto the shelf. He flipped through the rest of the pages, but there was nothing more.

  Alex stared down at the book, trying to process all that he had learned. A sheen of cold sweat gathered at the nape of his neck.

  Could Yasmin have written this? he wondered—and quickly rejected the possibility. It didn’t sound like her at all, and Yasmin was far too frightened of the witch to deface one of her precious storybooks. It must have been another prisoner. Before me and Yasmin. Alex stared up at the library. I have to keep searching and see if she wrote more in a different book. She might have learned something important! She might have escaped!

  Before Alex could get out of his seat, however, he heard the familiar clicking sound of a bonekey turning in the lock. He slipped the book of novellas beneath his desk and grabbed a pencil, trying to look as though he had been dutifully at work this entire time.

  The door opened.

  8

  Beautiful Darkness

  “Hey,” Yasmin said, stepping into the room.

  “Hey,” Alex said, as naturally as possible.

  Yasmin’s goggles hung around her neck. There were fresh scratches on her arm. Her apron was splattered with some yellow, viscous substance.

  She shook the dirt out of her hair and slipped the Mets cap on her head.

  “Dinner will be ready in like an hour,” she said, “so you should finish up whatever you’re doing.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said.

  “Okay, then.” She turned around as if to leave, and then turned back. “That story you read last night? It didn’t suck.”

  Alex looked down at the desk so Yasmin didn’t see the blush spreading across his face.

  “You really think so?” he asked.

  She gave him a strange look.

  “This can’t be the first time someone said you’re a good writer. Your English teacher must love you.”

  “Not exactly,” Alex said. “I do okay in school with essays and stuff, but it’s not the same. And I’ve never shared my nightbook stories before.”

  “Is it like you said yesterday?” Yasmin asked. “You afraid people will think you’re weird?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that happening with me,” Yasmin said. “I already think you’re weird. You can’t make it any worse.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said, unable to tell from her stone-faced expression if she was joking or not. Maybe that’s just the way she is, he thought. This might be an attempt to befriend me. If so, Alex couldn’t mess it up. He needed Yasmin’s help if he wanted to escape the apartment.

  Unfortunately, the girl was already turning to go. To keep the conversation alive, Alex asked the first question that popped into his head.

  “Did you live here, in the building? You know, before?”

  Yasmin gave a quick shake of her head.

  “Then how did you get here?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t like to talk about it, okay?”

  She left the library and headed toward the kitchen.

  “That’s cool,” Alex said. He held the door open as he called after her. “I was just curious how Natacha tricked you into coming inside. With me it was a scary movie.”

  Yasmin stopped and looked back over one shoulder.

  “What does that even mean?” she asked.

  “I heard it playing behind the apartment door,” Alex said. “It called to me. I couldn’t stop myself from knocking.”

  “A movie?” she asked in disbelief. “That’s how Natacha got you?”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Alex said, growing angry. “Magic, remember? It brainwashed me.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Well, how did you get trapped, then?” Alex asked. He looked at her cap and scoffed. “Let me guess. You heard the Mets playing on TV. Ninth inning. And you just couldn’t help yourself.”

  Her expression grew cold.

  “You want to know what happened?” she asked, stepping forward. “Fine. My friend Amena lives in this apartment building. On the twelfth floor. Only when I came to see her that Saturday, the elevator stopped on the fourth. Weird, but no big deal, right? I get off the elevator, thinking I’ll just take the stairs, when I smell the most amazing thing. Kusa mihshi.” Yasmin registered Alex’s confused look and added, “That’s rice and lamb—or chickpeas, if you’re a vegetarian like me—all mashed together inside squash, cooked with lemon juice, mint, and a ton of garlic.”

  “Sounds delicio
us,” Alex said, stomach grumbling.

  “It is,” replied Yasmin. Her voice softened. “My sito—grandma—and I used to make it together. As soon as I smelled it, I ran down the hallway, no longer thinking straight. I was convinced that if I knocked on the door to apartment 4E, Sito would answer.” Yasmin looked away. “She didn’t, of course. How could she? My sito’s been dead for over a year. But for that one moment, I was positive that she had been returned to me. And then, finding out it was all a trick? It was like losing her all over again.”

  For a few moments, Alex didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally managed.

  Yasmin wiped away the tears that had begun to fall from her eyes.

  “So what was the movie?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The one you heard through the apartment door.”

  “Oh,” Alex said, wishing that he had never brought it up in the first place. “Night of the Living Dead.”

  Yasmin shrugged her shoulders.

  “Never heard of it.”

  She turned and left. This time, she didn’t look back.

  After dinner, Natacha set up the oil diffuser and settled into her chair. Alex took his place next to her. Despite everything, he was excited to read the story he had picked out.

  Natacha’s right, he thought. I do love an appreciative audience.

  “You able to work better without that disgusting fur ball in the room?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Alex said. “Thank you.”

  “This can be a good home for you, storyteller,” Natacha said as Yasmin took her place on the love seat and primly folded her hands in her lap. “A place where you can be yourself. I was thinking about what you told me yesterday, how you wanted to sacrifice your poor little nightbooks so you could be as boring as other children your age. I’m curious about something. Being different isn’t anything new for you, is it? Truly, you’ve been blessed with these dark thoughts your entire life.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands beneath her chin. “So why the sudden change of heart? What happened?”

  Alex almost told her, but his storytelling instincts again warned him that it would be best to keep the real story of the nightbooks to himself. The witch wouldn’t hurt him, because if she did, she’d never find out the truth.

  Just like Scheherazade, he thought.

  “Nothing specific happened,” Alex said. “It was just time for a change.”

  “Is that so?” asked Natacha.

  She smirked, clearly seeing through his lie but allowing it to pass for now. The meaning in her haughty expression was clear: You’ll tell me eventually. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.

  “I left you fresh paper in the library,” she said, eyeing the nightbook in his hand. “Why are you still using that old thing?”

  “Just used to it, I guess,” Alex said.

  “Give it here.”

  She flicked her wrist and the book flew into her hands. Alex jumped in surprise and Natacha cackled heartily.

  “That was a good spell, no?”

  “Amazing,” Alex said, when it was clear that she was waiting for a response. Compared to creating magical rooms that bent the laws of reality, making a book fly into your hand was pretty small potatoes. Nevertheless, Natacha seemed immensely impressed with herself. Apparently Alex wasn’t the only one who enjoyed an audience.

  She turned the nightbook in her hands.

  “What happened here?” she asked, examining the outside of the book. The back and front covers had peeled away in several sections, exposing raw strips of white. Only a rubber band kept the loose pages from slipping away. “You have a temper tantrum when writing wasn’t going your way?”

  Alex hesitated, not wanting to tell Natacha any more about himself than necessary. When her eyes narrowed, however, he began to talk.

  “That started as my writing journal when I was in the fourth grade,” he said. “My teacher told us to cover it with pictures of things we liked, so the journals would be more personalized. I went online and printed out all my favorite things: zombies, monsters, killer dolls . . . it was really hard to fit them all on the notebook, but I worked at it, cutting each picture exactly right so it all fit together like a puzzle. Took me the entire weekend, but it was worth it. I couldn’t wait to start writing.” The smile that had blossomed on Alex’s face suddenly faded. “And then I brought it to school. I saw how different mine was from everyone else’s. They had all printed out pictures of athletes, cute animals, boy bands, photos of friends and family. We had to leave the notebooks out on our desk that first day, like a museum, and the other kids kept staring at mine and giving me weird looks. I took the journal home that night and tore all the pictures off. It became my first nightbook.”

  Natacha stared at him for a long time and sighed deeply.

  “I am all kinds of mystified by you, boy,” she said. “The beautiful darkness that dances through your brain is a cause for celebration! And yet, for some strange reason, you run from it. Why is that?”

  “I just want to be like everyone else,” Alex said.

  Natacha laughed.

  “What makes you think you have a choice?” she asked. She handed him the nightbook and pressed a button on the oil diffuser. The air shimmered as the misting room came into being. “You’re not like everyone else, and there’s nothing you can do about it! We are what we are. These stories, they’re just the real you bubbling to the surface: weird and dark and twisted.”

  Alex felt his face growing warm. Natacha was saying everything that he had always feared.

  She’s right, he thought. There’s darkness running through me. Why else would I have all these terrible ideas in my—

  “Oh, goodness,” Natacha said, her face cloaked by blue mist. “Now you’re all sad and misty-eyed. Hey—you know what always cheers me up? A story. So get to it.”

  The Shape in the Mirror

  Katie loved vampires. She had read all the books and watched all the movies. She knew all the rules. A vampire couldn’t enter a house without being invited first. They didn’t cast a reflection. You became a vampire by getting bitten or drinking vampire blood. Sometimes Katie thought it would be cool to be a vampire. She made the mistake of telling this to some kids at lunch. They decided that Katie was weird and started to bully her. It spread like wildfire throughout the school. It got so bad that Katie and her family had to move to a different town.

  Their new house wasn’t as nice as their old house. There was a musty smell that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times her parents scrubbed the floors. Even weirder, the former occupants had abandoned some of their furniture, as though they had left in a hurry. An old sofa. Several bookcases.

  The mirror in Katie’s room.

  It was really old, with strange symbols carved into the wooden frame. Katie’s dad offered to move it to the basement, but Katie told him no. She liked creepy things.

  The next morning, Katie saw something unusual.

  Her room was on the first floor, and the way the mirror was turned you could look into it and see through her bedroom window all the way to the house across the street. Behind her reflection, she saw a dark shape in her neighbors’ front yard. Katie turned around and peeked through her window, thinking that it must be a dog or something. The front lawn was empty. When Katie looked back in the mirror, however, she could see the shape again. In fact, she thought it had gotten a little closer.

  She checked again.

  Through the window? No shape.

  In the mirror? Shape.

  It was impossible! Katie called her big brother to show him, but the shape had completely vanished. Her brother shook his head and called her a freakazoid like he always did. He missed his friends and blamed Katie for the sudden move.

  The shape didn’t appear for three more days. When it finally returned, there was no doubt that it had gotten closer. Instead of sitting on her neighbors’ front lawn, the shape had crossed to the middle of the street.
Katie still couldn’t tell what it was. The reflection was blurry, as though that part of the mirror was smudged. She thought it might have been some kind of animal.

  Katie didn’t see the shape for a very long time after that.

  Eventually she figured that it had all just been a figment of her imagination. But then she looked in the mirror one night and saw the shape peeking through her window. She could see it clearly now. It had bat-like wings folded around its body like a black robe and eyes as red as blood. A single claw reached up and scratched the glass.

  Katie covered the mirror with a blanket.

  She told her parents what she had seen. They exchanged a worried glance and said they would get rid of the mirror first thing in the morning. Her father told Katie to sleep in the guest room. She was trying to do just that when her brother walked in. He said that he had overheard their parents talking. They didn’t believe that there was really a shape in the mirror. They thought Katie was crazy and tomorrow some men in white coats were going to come and take her away forever.

  Katie decided that there was only one way to prove that she was telling the truth so her parents didn’t send her away. When she was sure that everyone was asleep, she snuck up to her room and pulled the blanket off the mirror.

  The shape was standing right behind her reflection.

  Its ancient, scrunched-up face was covered by a thin layer of fur. It reached down and wrapped its long talons around mirror Katie. Then it unfurled its massive wings and rose out of sight, taking the reflection with it.

  Katie stared into the mirror. She saw nothing but the empty room behind her. The shape was gone. Her reflection was gone.

  She fainted.

  Katie woke up the next morning hating sunlight. By nighttime, two long fangs had punched through her upper gums. It turned out that she wasn’t such a vampire expert after all. She had always thought that people lost their reflection after they became vampires. Now she knew it was the other way around. First your reflection was stolen. Then the change began.