Nightbooks

by J. A. White

  When Alex’s sighs of dismay grew impossible to ignore, Yasmin dropped the stack of books she was searching and stood over him, arms akimbo.

  “Okay,” she said. “What’s the issue?”

  “I have complete and total writer’s block,” Alex said, plunking his head on the desk. “In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I’m never going to write another sentence again for the rest of my life.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Yasmin said. “You’re probably just thinking too hard. You remember any of the stories from the notebooks that got torn up?”

  “Some of them,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. I can’t write them all over again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wrote them already,” Alex said. “If I do it again, they won’t be the same.”

  “Maybe they’ll be better.”

  “You don’t understand,” Alex said, turning his head away. “Just forget it.”

  Yasmin kicked his foot.

  “You don’t have time to be grumpy,” she said. “Who cares if they’re the same or not? They’re just stories.”

  “They’re not just stories!” Alex exclaimed. “Some of my favorites were in those nightbooks! Like there was this one I was really proud of about this girl who moves into a new house, and there’s this tree in her backyard that promises her it will grant her wish if she hangs up something she truly loves in its branches, and at first the girl is thrilled because she’s getting these awesome wishes in exchange for little stuff, like necklaces and toys, only the tree keeps wanting more valuable things, until finally it asks for her baby brother, and the girl knows it’s wrong but she’s sort of changed with getting all her wishes granted so she goes to the crib one night and—”

  “I’m confused,” Yasmin interjected.

  “Sorry,” Alex asked. “I’m bad at summarizing. The plot would make a lot more sense if you could read it, which of course you can’t, because—”

  “I’m not confused about the story,” Yasmin said. “I’m confused about the nightbooks. You seem really bummed that they’re gone, but weren’t you going to chuck them in the fire anyway? You couldn’t have liked those stories that much.”

  The words hit Alex like a cold splash of water. For a few moments he was too astonished to speak.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I was going to destroy all three of them myself. That’s what got me into this whole mess in the first place. So now that they’re gone, why do I miss them so much?”

  “Beats me,” Yasmin said. “I never understood why you were getting rid of them in the first place.”

  Alex thought about telling her what had happened in school that day, after the math teacher got her phone call, but he was afraid it might change her opinion of him. He told her a lesser truth instead.

  “I wanted to be someone different,” Alex said, “not the weird kid who likes monsters.”

  “But you are weird,” she said. “So what? It’s cool.”

  “It’s not cool,” Alex insisted. “Instead of sports trophies like my brother, you know what’s on my shelves? Stupid plastic models of vampires and werewolves and mummies. When my family and I go on vacation, I beg them to take me on ghost tours instead of amusement parks.” He lowered his voice, as if confessing a great secret. “I have Walking Dead pajamas.”

  “And I can tell you the number of every Mets player all the way back to 2003, even the guys who only had a few at bats,” countered Yasmin. “I spent an entire winter break memorizing them. Don’t believe me? Xavier Nady, number twenty-two! Willie Collazo, number thirty-six!” She shrugged her shoulders. “We all have our things.”

  Alex wondered if she might be right. Was writing scary stories any stranger than memorizing random numbers sewn to the backs of uniforms? It made him feel better, thinking about it like that.

  Maybe it’s not just me who’s weird, Alex thought. Maybe we’re all weird in different ways.

  Yasmin leaned over the desk and spun the nightbook in her direction.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t come up with any ideas,” she said. “There’s a whole list here.”

  Alex snatched the book away.

  “Don’t look,” he said. “They’re awful.”

  “You’re probably just being too picky,” Yasmin said. “Come on—hit me with them.”

  Alex hesitated. He never shared his ideas before a story was completely finished. On the other hand, nothing else was working, and he was growing desperate. If he didn’t think of an idea soon, he’d find himself without a story to tell Natacha in a couple of nights.

  He slid the nightbook across the desk. The list was a pitted battlefield of pencil slashes and erasure marks:

  STORY IDEAS

  Girl who finds out her parents are monsters

  Kids who go to the bathroom during class but never come back

  Mailbox that eats people

  School locker that leads into another world

  Creepy house at Halloween

  Kale

  Ghost that haunts other ghosts

  Nightmarecatcher

  “Let’s see,” Yasmin said, running her finger down the page with a thoughtful expression. “How about this one? ‘Mailbox that eats people.’ I can see that. You reach in for the mail, something bites you. Pretty scary.”

  “As an idea, maybe,” Alex conceded. “But where do I go from there? ‘The mailbox ate Bob’s hand. Bob got an ax and chopped down the mailbox.’ There’s not much to it.”

  “Maybe the mailbox needs to deliver Bob’s hand somewhere.”

  “Eww,” Alex said, impressed.

  “Let’s see what else you have,” she said. ‘Creepy house at Halloween’?”

  “Because that’s never been done before.”

  “You’re not being graded on originality, Alex. You just need a story. Here, I’ll get you started. ‘All the kids were afraid to trick-or-treat at Bob’s house, because . . .’”

  “. . . he had a meat hook instead of a hand, due to a terrible experience with a mailbox.”

  “Funny,” Yasmin said, with just a hint of a smile. “What about this one? ‘Ghost that haunts other ghosts’? That’s different.”

  “Same problem with the mailbox one,” Alex said. “It sounds good on paper, but there’s no way to make it into a story. Why would a ghost haunt another ghost?”

  “I don’t know,” Yasmin said. “Why do they haunt people?”

  “Revenge, usually,” Alex said. “They could have been murdered. Or someone moved into the house they used to live in and they still think of it as their house.”

  “Sounds like they’re just jealous because they’re not alive anymore.”

  “Hmm,” Alex said.

  He picked up his pencil and added “jealous ghost” to the list. It wasn’t enough to start a story, but there was something there, something he could use—he could feel it. Ms. Coral had taught him that good writers didn’t necessarily come up with better ideas than other people; they simply recognized the good ones.

  “Jealous ghost,” Yasmin read, nodding her head in consideration. “That could work.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said. “Let me think about it.”

  “Do your thing,” Yasmin said. “I’ll keep searching the books. I have to tell you, though—I’m starting to wonder if this is all a wild-goose chase. Maybe you already found everything this girl has written.”

  She was wrong.

  14

  The Missing Ingredient

  Alex woke up early the next morning and trudged back to the library. He hadn’t made any headway with his “jealous ghost” story the day before, but his ideas grew best in the soil of sleep and he felt on the verge of a breakthrough.

  The story’s almost loose, he thought. I just have to pry it out.

  He sat in his chair and got straight to work.

  The first story he wrote was called “Quarters.” It was about a dead kid who misses video games and haunts this retro arcade. He gets jeal
ous since all he can do is watch the living kids play, so he messes up their games, making the screens flicker and bug out at inopportune moments. Alex got about two pages into the story and stopped. It wasn’t working. He couldn’t say exactly why. It was like a potential friendship that had all the right ingredients but no chemistry.

  As Yasmin entered the library and started searching the shelves, Alex flipped to a new page.

  In his second story, a recently deceased girl grows envious of the ghost next door, who haunts a much nicer house. Alex got a little further into this one, close to four pages, before giving up. It’s no good! he thought, slapping the can of pencils off the desk. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. After reading to Natacha last night, he was down to his final story. The pressure was making it hard to concentrate.

  Yasmin shouted in jubilation.

  “I found another entry!” she exclaimed, holding a book aloft. Or, at least, Alex assumed that was what she was holding. Yasmin had climbed past the midway point of the tower and was little more than a small figure in the distance.

  “Don’t read it!” Alex shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Wait for me!”

  “Okay! I’m heading down!”

  The stairs shook beneath Yasmin’s feet. Alex, too excited to wait, started toward her. They met somewhere in the middle and huddled together on the stairs, their backs pressed against a bookcase.

  “She wrote a lot this time,” Yasmin said.

  “Good,” Alex said, out of breath. “The more we know, the better.”

  Yasmin propped the book, titled Stories That Watch You Sleep, against her bent legs. She opened it to the page she had been holding with her index finger. Handwritten words covered both margins. There were no cute pictures of unicorns, no bubbly little hearts above the i’s. Instead, letters were slashed into the page like paper wounds.

  “Whoa,” Alex said. “Is this even the same girl?”

  “Only one way to find out,” replied Yasmin.

  They read it together.

  The witch thinks I’m stupid. But she’s stupid. She don’t know what I’ve been up to. She don’t know how good I’ve got with the plants. night fell, the princess realized that she was completely lost. With the first stirrings of true panic, she lifted her lantern and followed the path, praying that it would lead back to the castle.

  I figured out how to make a sleeping potion.

  In moments, she found herself surrounded by mist-shrouded trees, their skeletal branches perfect for princess snatching. She increased her pace, no longer caring that the hem of her beautiful gown was getting splattered by mud. For the first time in her life, she realized that there were places in the world where not even a princess was safe.

  Well. Almost figured out.

  I tried to put a few drops in the cat’s water but the cat won’t drink it because it smells so bad so I forced myself to drink some.

  SLEEPING POTION

  1 part suckleweed

  2 parts Gretchen’s fury

  4 parts yellowglass

  pinch of demon’s mane

  In time, she came to a stone bridge that spanned a narrow stream.

  A shadowy figure waited on the other side. The princess thought that it might have been a man, but it was hard to tell. Every time she looked directly at it, her eyes blurred and went out of focus.

  “Hello?” the princess asked.

  Slept for a long long time. See witch! ANYONE can do magic!

  “Hello,” the shadow replied.

  The beauty of the shadow’s voice surprised her. (Its singing voice was even lovelier, though the princess would not have recognized any of the songs.)

  I can’t put it in the witch’s drink, if she smells it she will know. There must be something I can use to hide it. I will keep trying. Close so close. Then when the witch is asleep I am going to steal her keys and go home.

  But. What if she finds me again? What if she drags me back here?

  “I think I’m lost,” the princess said.

  “So it seems.”

  “I’m looking for the castle.”

  “That’s a long way off.”

  “Could you take me there?” she asked. “I’m a princess.”

  “I’m a shadow,” said the shadow. “Why don’t you cross the bridge?”

  “Is that the fastest way to the castle?”

  “Cross the bridge and I’ll whisper the answer in your ear.”

  The princess, mesmerized by the shadow’s voice, found herself walking across the bridge. As she passed the midway point, she was able to see the shadow more clearly. Its shape kept changing. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman. Sometimes it was something else altogether.

  The princess tried to stop walking but the voice lassoed her forward.

  “Come on, little princess,” the shadow said, opening its arms wide. “Just a few steps more.”

  I wish I had magic. Then I could turn her into a toad or a snail and laugh at her all day long. But I don’t have magic. All I have is this knife.

  I HATE HER HATE HER HATE HER

  It is not sharp. But it is sharp enough.

  Yasmin closed the book.

  “Unicorn Girl got dark,” she said.

  “It sounds like she’s planning to kill Natacha in her sleep.”

  “Except obviously she didn’t,” Yasmin replied.

  “That doesn’t mean the other part of her plan didn’t work. She still could have escaped.” He considered this for a moment. “Maybe she just chickened out on the actual stabbing part. Saying it is one thing. Doing it is another. I hate Natacha, but I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. You?”

  Yasmin thought about it and then shook her head.

  “We’ll never know what happened for sure,” Alex said, “but the important part is that we now have the recipe for a sleeping potion! Do we have those ingredients?”

  “Yes,” Yasmin said. “They’re pretty common, actually. But—”

  “So you can make it?”

  “Listen, Alex. This girl must have been here a long time ago if Natacha was still making potions. Even if I knew how to make the liquid base I’d need, we don’t have the right equipment anymore. Natacha said she got rid of it all when she switched over to essential oils.”

  “Does it matter?” Alex asked. “Wouldn’t the ingredients be the same?”

  “I don’t know,” Yasmin said. “I guess it might work. These magical recipes usually have to be just right, though. If not, bad things happen, like with the danglers.” She twisted the brim of her cap in her hands, thinking it over. “Still, as long as I keep the ratios the same . . . and it’s not like Natacha would miss any of the ingredients.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s worth a try, I guess.”

  “You can do it,” Alex said. “I know you can!”

  “Even if I do,” Yasmin said, “there’s still a problem. The smell. It must be from the suckleweed. That stuff stinks something awful, and I have no idea what we could use to mask it. Without that missing ingredient, the oil is useless.”

  “So we keep looking,” Alex said. “Unicorn Girl must have written it down somewhere.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Yasmin said. “At this point she seems more in action mode than writing mode. The moment she discovered the missing ingredient I think she’d just move ahead with her plan.”

  “We have to at least try.”

  “I have to try,” Yasmin said. “You have to write a story. You only have one left, Alex! Who knows what Natacha will do if you don’t—”

  Alex grabbed her forearm in excitement.

  “A story!” he exclaimed. “That could actually work. You’re a genius!”

  “Huh?”

  “We need to find out the missing ingredient, right? And we know—”

  A piercing yowl cut off his sentence.

  It was coming from far below them. Alex looked over the railing and saw Lenore materialize on top of the desk.

/>   She looked up at them and yowled again.

  “No!” Yasmin exclaimed. “How long has she been down there?”

  “The whole time, I bet,” Alex said, cursing himself for forgetting about the cat. “She probably heard everything.”

  “She’s going to tell Natacha! We have to stop her!”

  They ran down the stairs as fast as they could. Lenore didn’t turn invisible as Alex figured she would. Instead, she was doing something to the books they had left on the desk. He couldn’t see exactly what without slowing down, and he wasn’t sure it mattered. The most important thing was to keep the little spy away from her master.

  But why make such a dramatic appearance? he wondered. Why not just remain invisible and tell Natacha later?

  He had no idea.

  “Lenore,” Alex said as he finally reached the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t know what you heard, but it’s not what you think. I was just running story ideas by Yasmin, okay?”

  Lenore gave him a look of insulted disbelief: Just because I’m a cat doesn’t make me stupid.

  As Alex moved straight ahead, Yasmin circled around to the back of the desk. The idea wasn’t to sneak up on Lenore, who clearly knew she was coming. They were just trying to cut off any exit paths. Then again, Alex wasn’t convinced that either one of them would be able to stop Lenore, even if they tried. She might have looked like a lazy housecat, but she was a fierce fighter.

  “Lenore,” Yasmin began, her voice gentle. “Please. We helped you, remember? Let’s be friends.”

  Behind Alex, the door handle rattled. He spun around just as Natacha burst into the room.

  She eyed the two children with triumph.

  “Why the guilty looks?” the witch asked.

  That’s why Lenore started yowling, Alex thought. She heard Natacha come home. She was calling her to the library, so we would be caught red-handed.

  “We’re not doing anything,” Yasmin said weakly.

  “True,” Natacha said, picking up a pencil from the desk. “You’re not in the nursery tending to my plants.” She leveled her gaze on Alex. “And you’re not writing. So what, exactly, are you two doing?”

  The pencil in Natacha’s hand transformed into a yellow snake that slithered between her fingers.