The Lost Lullaby

by Jason Segel

  Books by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

  Nightmares!

  Nightmares! The Sleepwalker Tonic

  Nightmares! The Lost Lullaby

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by The Jason Segel Company

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780385744294 (hc) — ISBN 9780375991592 (lib. bdg.)

  Ebook ISBN 9780385384056

  Illustrations by Karl Kwasny with illustration assistant Stephanie Pepper

  Interior design by Stephanie Moss

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Beasts

  Chapter Two: The New Girl

  Chapter Three: Disappearing Ink

  Chapter Four: The Promise

  Chapter Five: The Deadly Dozens

  Chapter Six: The Ghost

  Chapter Seven: Blah, Blah, Black Sheep

  Chapter Eight: The Poison Garden

  Chapter Nine: It Can Always Get Worse

  Chapter Ten: Night Raider

  Chapter Eleven: The Mystery Box

  Chapter Twelve: The Limeys

  Chapter Thirteen: The Firestarter

  Chapter Fourteen: What Happened in Brooklyn

  Chapter Fifteen: The Secret Rendezvous

  Chapter Sixteen: A Dream with No Monsters

  Chapter Seventeen: Dingleberry

  Chapter Eighteen: Ick’s Army

  Chapter Nineteen: The Witch-Hunt

  Chapter Twenty: The Quarterback Killer Killer

  Chapter Twenty-one: Storming the Tower

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Traitor

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Hiss of Reason

  Chapter Twenty-four: Bait

  Chapter Twenty-five: The Sisters

  Chapter Twenty-six: Silas Speaks

  Chapter Twenty-seven: The Prophecy

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Reunion

  Chapter Twenty-nine: The Scoop

  Chapter Thirty: The Dream

  Chapter Thirty-one: Back to (Somewhat) Normal

  About the Author

  As a boy, Ron Daly survived the bombing of Glasgow. His stories of wartime Britain helped inspire this book. His life inspired everyone who knew him.

  She bent down and peered through the keyhole. On the other side of the door lay a dimly lit hall. She couldn’t reach it, but she knew exactly where it was: on the second floor of a purple mansion in a town called Cypress Creek. Three doors along the hall led to bedrooms, and there were four people asleep inside. She’d been watching them through the keyhole all evening, the two boys and their parents. And she’d been deciding what to do with them when she got to the other side.

  She tried the doorknob for the thousandth time. It twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t just locked. It was barricaded. She knew she was the one they were trying to keep out; there was no doubt about that. The people who lived in the purple mansion had left her a letter.

  The anger raged like a bonfire inside her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists, digging her fingernails into her palms. She had to find a way to control it. One wrong move and the family would burn down the tower, destroying its secret and leaving her stranded. She had only one option: she’d have to wait. Sooner or later, her twin sister would find her.

  At last she left her post at the keyhole and climbed the stairs back up to the tower. The mansion’s owners had boarded the tower’s windows, but moonlight managed to sneak inside. The portal she’d come through was still open. The Netherworld, the land of nightmares, lay beyond it. For decades, she’d been passing back and forth between the two realms. Now the family downstairs was trying to stop her. She’d never imagined that people like them could ever muster the power, but they had managed to foil her last big plan.

  The only piece of furniture in the tower was a giant oak desk. They had left it behind when they’d cleaned out the room. It must have been too bulky to get down the stairs. She climbed on top of it and lay down in the moonlight. Then she picked up the letter she’d found waiting for her when she’d arrived. It was far too dark in the tower for an ordinary human to read. But it had been a long time since she’d been ordinary.

  Dear ICK,

  We are the guardians of this portal, and we know you share our power to pass through it. We cannot stop you from visiting the Waking World, but we can keep you from going any farther than this room. If you try to leave, we will burn down the tower and everything in it. The portal will be destroyed, and you will never see your sister again.

  Hopefully, the Netherworld authorities will find you and punish you for the horrible crimes you’ve committed. Until they do, stay out of our dreams.

  Charlotte, Charlie, and Jack Laird

  Charlotte, Charlie, and Jack Laird. She repeated the names in her head. They belonged to the two boys and the girl who’d grown up. How interesting that only three people had signed it—when four people lived in the house.

  ICK was almost positive she knew what it meant, and she saw an opportunity. Three of the people downstairs knew she’d be coming. But the fourth person wasn’t expecting her.

  Just down the hall from a strange door covered with locks, Charlie Laird was writhing in his sleep. When he’d closed his eyes earlier that evening, he’d been looking forward to visiting the Dream Realm. But that wasn’t where he’d ended up.

  Charlie didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t see anything. It was darker than any place he’d ever been.

  “Don’t panic,” Charlie ordered himself. “Remember—you’re a pro at this stuff.”

  He reached out an arm and swept his fingers through the darkness. He felt nothing but the wind pressing against his palm. He took a step forward, and his bare foot made a wet, slurping sound as he wrenched it out of the swampy ground. He was outside, that much was certain. A few more steps followed, and then Charlie stopped and sniffed the air. The warm breeze that embraced him carried the stench of manure. He hoped it wasn’t coming from the muck that squished between his toes. He managed to control his fear, but he couldn’t help being totally grossed out.

  Eager to keep moving, Charlie lifted a leg. Then he froze with his foot still dangling in midair. He thought he’d heard something. Nothing much—just a soft grunt, as if someone close by had been clearing his throat.

  Utterly blind, Charlie spun around in the darkness, listening carefully for the source of the sound. “Hello?” he called. “Is there anyone out there?”

  He stopped moving and held his breath, waiting for—and dreading—a reply. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the wind picked up speed. Not only was he outside, there was also a storm heading his way.

  Seconds passed, and no one answered. But something moved. Charlie heard a slurp of mud and a light splash: a footstep. He stood per
fectly still and heard a second footstep, followed a few moments later by a third and then a fourth. The creature in the darkness was moving slowly, but it seemed to know exactly where it was going. It was making a beeline for Charlie.

  “This is only a nightmare,” Charlie whispered to himself. It had been a while since he’d needed such reassurances. He knew how nightmares worked, and he knew how to beat them. But there was something very different about this dream.

  The creature was so close now that Charlie could smell it. It stank like a toilet crammed with nasty old sweaters. Charlie’s legs twitched as the thing moved closer. He desperately wanted to bolt. But the worst thing you can do is flee from a Nightmare. It makes no difference how fast you run; it’ll always hunt you down in the end. So no matter how scared he was, Charlie had no choice but to stand his ground.

  “What are you and what do you want?” he demanded, hoping he sounded a lot braver than he felt.

  Charlie could hear the beast’s teeth grinding rhythmically. When Charlie wondered what it was chewing, a million horrible images began to flicker in his brain. Then he heard something that brought everything else to a stop.

  It was a song coming from somewhere in the distance. A sweet female voice was humming a lullaby—a lullaby Charlie knew well. His own mother had sung it to him years earlier, when he was little and she was still alive.

  “Mom?” Charlie shouted, his hopes rising. “Mom, is that you? Are you out there?”

  The woman kept humming peacefully, as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “It’s dark! I can’t see you!” Charlie tried again. “Can you find me? Can you help me?”

  His question was answered with a torrent of rain. The storm drowned out the song and crushed Charlie’s hopes—just as he felt an enormous beast brush against him. He yelped and tottered backward, falling with a splat in the mud.

  Charlie held his arms out to brace for an attack, and his mouth stretched wide to scream. Now that he was down, there was no telling what the creature might do. Then a bolt of lightning lit the sky, and Charlie saw that the beast that had been stalking him was far from alone. There were dozens of identical creatures hovering above him, chewing in unison as he struggled in the muck. Each beast was four feet high and almost as wide, with a jet-black pelt and amber eyes that shone in the light.

  They were sheep, Charlie realized. Black sheep, just like the ones from the song.

  —

  Charlie sat bolt upright in his bed. His chest was heaving and his heart racing. Both the covers and his nightclothes were drenched with sweat. He’d never experienced a nightmare like the one he’d just had.

  And as his heart slowed and he caught his breath, Charlie realized why it had felt so unusual. The nightmare wasn’t his. He was absolutely positive that he’d just been inside someone else’s worst dream. And whoever the dreamer was, he or she was very afraid.

  Charlie felt his eyelids growing heavy. He’d woken up at four a.m., and he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. He’d never thought much about sheep before, but now he seemed to be obsessed with them. Eight hours had passed. It was almost noon. Charlie was in the middle of the most important surveillance mission of his twelve-year-old life. And he still couldn’t get those smelly beasts out of his head.

  He peeked through the gap he’d made between some books on a nearby shelf. The girl he was watching was still there. She’d been hogging one of the library’s computers for the last forty-five minutes, but no one had dared bother her. When she’d sat down at the terminal, Charlie’s heart had started racing. He couldn’t even imagine what a real-life supervillain like India Kessog would search for. Where to find explosives at bargain prices? How to breed man-eating rats? Poisons that mix well with cafeteria ketchup? But as it turned out, the girl wasn’t interested in research. It had taken her twenty minutes to figure out what to do with the mouse, and after that all she’d done was watch cartoons. Not even the awesomely weird kind either. She was giggling away at shows that only the lamest toddlers would watch.

  Then the bell rang and the girl stood up and smoothed the old-fashioned outfit she was wearing. It looked like a uniform of some sort, Charlie thought. Beneath a navy-blue pinafore, she wore a crisp white shirt with a red tie poking out from the collar.

  When she pushed her chair beneath the table, no one else budged. Even for a library, the room was oddly quiet. There were two dozen kids nearby, but none were talking. Their eyes were all glued to the girl. They weren’t gawking because they found her appearance unusual. They were staring in horror. They’d all seen India Kessog before. And not at Cypress Creek Elementary.

  Either the girl didn’t notice or she didn’t care. After the bell rang, she gathered her things and blithely skipped toward the door. The other kids wisely stayed put, while Charlie cautiously followed behind her.

  As she walked down the school’s main hall, India never stopped moving her head. She was obviously taking everything in. She paused to laugh at a vending machine that sold bottles of water for a dollar apiece. A few steps later she plucked a purple combination lock right out of another kid’s trembling hand and studied it as if it were some kind of rare gem. The girl was gathering information, Charlie concluded. If only he knew what she planned to do with it.

  The crowds parted as India made her way through the school. Wide-eyed kids stood with their backs pressed against the walls. Others ducked into nearby classrooms, and Charlie saw a seventh grader stuff himself into an open locker. He didn’t blame his schoolmates for acting totally petrified. Their worst nightmare had appeared in real life and was walking through the halls of their school.

  Charlie squatted behind a janitor’s cart as India stopped to gaze in wonder at a digital clock on the wall. It had just turned noon. It was hard to believe that only four hours had passed since Charlie’s eighth-grade year had begun. The first day of school already seemed destined to become the longest day of his life.

  Which was a shame, Charlie thought miserably, because aside from the lack of sleep, it had all gotten off to such a wonderful start. His stepmom, Charlotte, had fixed regular pancakes for breakfast. Golden brown and delicious, they hadn’t contained a single fleck of kale. Then Charlie’s little brother, Jack, discovered he’d outgrown his beloved Captain America costume—and had gone to school dressed like a normal human being for once. And on the drive to Cypress Creek Elementary, Charlie’s dad, Andrew Laird, had kept them in stitches with a story about his own first day of eighth grade, when the seam of his new pants had burst in front of the cutest girl at school as he bent over for a sip at a water fountain.

  When Charlie had taken a seat in homeroom, his mood couldn’t have been better. And then everything went horribly wrong. He heard a sweet voice with an English accent coming from a girl seated at the front of the room. She was new to Cypress Creek Elementary, she told the class, and her name was India Kessog. But it didn’t matter what the creature called herself. Charlie would always know her as INK.

  —

  India Nell Kessog (INK) and her sister, Isabel Cordelia Kessog (ICK), looked like ordinary twelve-year-old twins. But thanks to a black-and-white photo of the girls dated 1939, Charlie knew they hadn’t aged a day in almost eighty years. At some point in time, the girls had simply stopped growing older. Charlie had no idea how they’d managed the feat—but he suspected it had something to do with the desolate lighthouse where ICK and INK had dwelled for almost a century. Located on a dreary, windswept beach in Maine, the twins’ home possessed a powerful secret. Just like Charlie’s purple mansion, the lighthouse held a portal to the land of Nightmares.

  Charlie had always believed that he, his little brother, Jack, and his stepmother, Charlotte, were the only humans who were able to pass between the Waking World and the Netherworld. Then he’d discovered that ICK and INK had been traveling back and forth between the two worlds for decades. Perhaps the twins had been regular kids when they’d first begun making the trip, but the time they’d spent in the Netherw
orld must have changed them. After they’d stopped aging, ICK and INK started plotting against mankind. Just this last summer, the girls had hatched an astonishingly evil plan. Joining forces with the Netherworld’s goblins, they’d invented Tranquility Tonic, a potion with the power to stop humans from dreaming—and turn people into zombielike Walkers.

  No one could figure out why ICK and INK had chosen the neighboring town of Orville Falls as the first place on earth to sell their tonic. But once the vile potion had the people of Orville Falls drooling and shuffling like the walking dead, the twins had turned their attention to nearby Cypress Creek. They started appearing in the nightmares of Charlie’s schoolmates and neighbors, and as soon as the town’s residents were all too scared to sleep, ICK and INK opened a store on Main Street in Cypress Creek and advertised their tonic as the cure for bad dreams.

  The tonic worked as promised. But it prevented more than nightmares—it stopped good dreams too. And when people stop dreaming, bad things start happening. With no dreamers to rebuild it every night, the Netherworld began to collapse down a giant hole—and a cloud of pure Nothingness threatened to swallow the Dream Realm.

  If Tranquility Tonight hadn’t been put out of business, three entire worlds could have perished. Charlie and his friends had managed to prevent that disaster, but ICK and INK remained at large. A fire that INK started had destroyed the twins’ lighthouse, leaving the sisters stranded on different sides of the portal. ICK was still in the Netherworld, but Charlie and his friends had lost track of INK. After the fire, she’d vanished into the Waking World.