by Jason Segel
“Did you notice that Jancy was perspiring heavily?” Alfie asked the Dares.
“As a matter of fact, I did. It started Sunday night,” said Mr. Dare. “Jancy and I played a game of ball out in the yard, and even after we came inside she never stopped sweating.”
They were playing a game out on the yard. The words bounced around in Charlie’s head, and suddenly he knew what it all meant. “Something’s been eating your neighbors’ yards,” he said to the Dares.
“Yep, lawn grubs,” Mr. Dare confirmed. “Little white monsters chew up the roots. Whole neighborhood’s infested with them.”
“Except your lawn,” Charlie said. “Your yard is still perfect.”
Mr. Dare nodded proudly. “That’s because I’m the only one willing to put in the time and do the research. I found this new kinda spray called Grasstastic. It sets up a defensive perimeter around the whole yard and body checks any grub that comes within five feet of my grass. It’s expensive stuff, ’cause it comes all the way from China, but I figure it’s worth it. Jancy and I spend a lot of time out there. That girl’s gonna be the first female linebacker in the NFL someday.”
“Not if she’s sick from pesticide poisoning,” Charlie told him.
“Pardon me?” Mr. Dare asked with a horrified look on his face.
Then Ms. Abbot gasped and Alfie began hopping up and down again.
“Charlie! That’s it!” Alfie cried. “You figured it out! You cracked the case!”
Mrs. Dare looked at her husband. “We still don’t understand,” she admitted.
“The spray you’ve been putting on your lawn to kill grubs is making your daughter sick,” Charlie explained.
Mr. Dare shook his head. “But it says on the bottle that Grasstastic is perfectly safe for mammals over fifteen pounds,” he argued. “Jancy weighed more than that the day she was born.”
Mrs. Dare suddenly gasped. “Honey, does it say what happens to the ones that weigh under fifteen pounds?” she asked. “ ’Cause I can’t remember the last time I saw a squirrel in the yard. And remember what happened to the neighbors’ schnauzer?”
“There’s no doubt that Grasstastic is a pesticide, and atropine is a proven treatment for pesticide poisoning,” Ms. Abbot chimed in. “That’s why it cured Jancy.”
“And you say you made this atropine stuff out of a plant from your garden?” Mrs. Dare asked the teacher. “That means you saved our daughter!”
“Well, actually…” Ms. Abbot started to disagree. But with both giant Dares wrapping her up in a bear hug, the teacher could no longer speak.
It was INK, Charlie marveled. She’d cured Jancy Dare. Did that mean India Kessog was a good guy, like Jack had always claimed? Or was she just a mimic—a killer who wanted them to think she was harmless while she patiently waited for the perfect chance to attack?
Charlie didn’t have the answer. But he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Andrew Laird was pulling out of the purple mansion’s driveway when Charlie arrived back at home.
Charlie’s dad rolled down the car window.
“Where you going?” Charlie asked.
“Just running some errands. You know, it’s almost eleven. You sure were gone for an awful long time. Your stepmother was getting worried,” he told his son. “Mission accomplished?”
“Mission accomplished,” Charlie reported happily. Ms. Abbot had faced her fears—and Jancy Dare was recovering from pesticide poisoning. Things couldn’t have gone better.
“Glad to hear it,” Andrew Laird said. “I guess you’ve earned the stack of waffles I left in the kitchen for you. Better find them before Jack figures out there were leftovers.”
“Jack’s still here?” Charlie asked. Usually Charlotte and the boys were at Hazel’s Herbarium by ten on Saturdays, while Andrew Laird seized the opportunity to sleep in.
“Charlotte’s opening the store late today,” his dad informed him. “She said she wanted to wait for you to get back.”
Of course she did, Charlie thought. She knew there was bound to be news.
He found Charlotte and Jack in the kitchen as usual. When he told them about INK and the atropine, Jack began doing a victory dance.
“I told you so! I told you so!” he sang.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Charlie replied. “You might have been right just this once.” He grabbed his little brother and gave him a noogie.
Charlotte was sitting in her favorite spot at the kitchen island. She’d been cooking up a batch of her popular body odor reducer. The ingredients were organized in piles on the counter, and scraps covered the floor. “That’s all really great, Charlie. But here’s what I don’t understand,” she said. “How would INK recognize the symptoms of pesticide poisoning? She’s been hiding away in a lighthouse for eight decades. The stuff Jancy’s dad was spraying on the lawn was probably invented in the last year or two—in China.”
“I don’t know how she figured out what was making Jancy sick,” Charlie said, setting his little brother free. “But I think I know how she came up with the cure. She told Jack the stuff was her father’s formula. And the old man Dad and I met in Orville Falls told us that ICK and INK’s father was some sort of chemist in England.”
“Why are we guessing about all this?” Jack asked. “Let’s just ask her when we find her! Hey, Charlotte, now that we know she’s not some crazy killer, can India come stay with us?”
Charlie saw his stepmother chew on her lower lip the way she did whenever she got nervous. She seemed to be undecided on the subject of INK—but Charlie wasn’t.
“No,” Charlie told his brother. “INK still isn’t allowed in this house.”
“Why not?” Jack asked.
“Because even if it turns out that she really is some kind of saint, her crazy sister is on the other side of the portal recruiting Nightmares to help her take over the Waking World,” Charlie explained. “Come on, Jack! You were there! You saw ICK’s army! We can’t run the risk. If INK helps her sister escape from the tower, we’ll all be dead meat.”
But Jack refused to listen to reason. “What if India is the one who can stop Isabel from doing bad things? Remember what the prophecy says, Charlie? It says there will be one child with the power to destroy the Netherworld—and one with the power to save it. If Isabel is the first one, maybe India is the second!”
“Or maybe it’s all a big trick,” Charlie replied. “What if INK saved Jancy so that we’d let down our guard and invite her into the mansion?”
Jack stared at Charlie as if he barely knew him. “Wow, that’s cold! You really think India would do something like that?” He turned to appeal to his stepmom. “Charlotte!”
“I’m afraid Charlie’s right, Jack,” Charlotte said, finally choosing a side. “It’s too big a risk.”
Jack was shocked. “So you guys are going to let India keep sleeping in garden sheds or out in the woods?”
Charlotte winced. “Well, when you put it that way…,” she started.
“India Kessog is not a real girl!” Charlie shouted. “Maybe she doesn’t have anything to do with ICK’s army, but she’s not an innocent kid, either! She’s almost a hundred years old, and she helped invent a tonic that turned people into zombies. We are not letting her into this house!”
Charlotte sighed. “I’ve got to agree with Charlie on this. For now, keeping INK out of the mansion is the only logical thing to do,” she told the younger boy.
Jack’s shoulders sagged. “Maybe. But it’s not the right one,” he answered. His voice was small and he sounded disappointed, as if his brother and stepmother had failed some sort of test. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room.”
“Hey, now,” Charlotte said, rushing to catch up with the boy as he made his way to the stairs. “Don’t be like that, Jack.”
“You’re wasting your time, Charlotte. Let him go sulk if he wants to,” Charlie said, stomping out of the kitchen after them both.
Jack had reached the landing between the fir
st and second floors when they heard the first thump come from above. Charlie saw his brother pause in front of the portrait of Silas DeChant, cock his head, and listen. The second thump was louder, and the third shook the entire house.
“Oh no,” Charlotte moaned.
“It’s happening,” Charlie said. “ICK is coming.”
“What are we going to do?” Jack asked. None of them had expected ICK to launch an attack so quickly.
Charlotte ran back to the kitchen and returned with a hammer and a box of nails. “I bought these yesterday in case we needed them,” she said. “All right, guys, come with me.”
The pounding continued as they hurried toward the second floor. Something big was beating its fists (or paws or tentacles or flippers) against the tower door. Thankfully, the staircase on the other side of the door was too narrow to fit more than one large Nightmare at a time; otherwise, the barricade might have fallen in seconds. Even now the locks were rattling and plaster was raining down from the ceiling.
Charlotte seemed to have a plan. “Come with me,” she ordered. “We need to get the headboard out from behind my bed.”
Together, the three of them dragged the heavy oak piece out of the master bedroom and into the hall. They shoved it in front of the tower door just as the wood began to splinter. Charlotte quickly sank two nails into each side, and she’d begun to add more when they heard the Nightmare break through the tower door and hit the back of the headboard. A roar of rage filled the mansion.
“I bet that’s the Cyclops,” Jack said.
Charlie remembered the one-eyed monster they’d seen in the cavern with ICK. If that monster wanted to get through the tower door, there was no way the three of them were going to stop him.
“I’m going to need another headboard in a second,” Charlotte said. “You guys go grab the one from Jack’s room.”
Charlie and Jack raced to Jack’s bedroom. As they slid the wooden headboard out from behind the bed, they heard something crash outside. Boards were flying out of the tower windows and landing on the lawn.
“They opened a window,” Jack said. “There’s no way to stop them now.”
“Actually, there is,” Charlie told his brother. The idea had come to him in a flash.
He left Jack in his bedroom, sprinted past Charlotte, and headed down the stairs. “Where are you going?” his stepmother shrieked. “I need your help!” She had thrown her own weight against the barricade, as if her skinny body could keep a Cyclops from breaking through. With every thud from the other side, she shook like Jell-O.
“I’m going to put a stop to this,” Charlie said.
In the kitchen, he pulled open a drawer and took out his weapon. Then he walked outside to the yard. The grass was already littered with debris, and a wooden board whizzed past his head.
“Isabel Kessog!” he shouted up at the tower. “ICK!”
The pounding suddenly stopped and all was quiet. A sweet-looking face appeared at one of the tower windows. Its skin was milky white and its cheeks were rosy pink. No one would have guessed it was the face of a monster.
“Charlie Laird,” ICK called down. “Are you prepared to surrender?”
“No,” Charlie said. “I’m ordering you to leave.”
ICK cackled. “And why on earth would I do that? In a few seconds, we’ll be through the door and the mansion will be mine.”
“You won’t leave the tower today, Isabel,” Charlie told her as he pulled out the weapon he’d brought with him from the kitchen: a little box with a few tiny sticks inside. “And the mansion will never be yours. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it.” He took out one of the little sticks and dragged its end against the side of the box. The match promptly burst into flames. “Even if protecting the mansion means burning it down.”
ICK leaned out the window. “You wouldn’t dare,” she sneered.
“Oh yes, I would,” Charlie told her truthfully. “I will do it right now unless you and those creatures return to the other side. We both know what will happen to you if the portal is destroyed. Being stuck in the Netherworld for eternity doesn’t seem like a lot of fun to me. Especially when your twin sister is here in the Waking World.”
ICK stared at Charlie. He could see the rage in her big brown eyes—and behind that, something else he recognized as well. Then she smiled at him. “Oh, well. If you insist,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind spending a little more time in your nightmare, anyway. There’s something about it that makes me feel…stronger.”
Charlie grimaced. He hated the idea of ICK lurking inside his head. “Stay out of my dream,” he growled.
“Or what?” ICK demanded. “What will you do about it, Charlie Laird? You see, if the portal is destroyed, your body will be stuck here in the Waking World. I’ll be able to do whatever I want in that cellar where you hide your deepest, darkest fears—and you won’t be able to come through the portal and stop me. So toodle-oo.” She gave a sweet little wave. “My friends and I will be seeing you soon.”
ICK stepped away from the window, leaving Charlie perplexed. The match between his fingers had gone out, so he dropped it to the ground. Maybe his threat really had done the trick, but he had a queasy feeling in his stomach. It had all been too easy. He looked up at the tower. It seemed to be quiet now, as if all the Nightmares had passed back over to the other side.
Then he noticed that ICK had left something behind on one of the windowsills—it looked like a small stone sculpture. It was a trick, Charlie realized at once. There was no way to get a good look at it without unsealing the tower door. And that was exactly what ICK wanted.
Charlie grinned. He’d show ICK what he thought of her latest game. He searched the yard until he found an old tennis ball that Rufus had abandoned near the hoary mugwort bush. Then he took careful aim and hurled the ball at the sculpture. He hit it squarely, but the thing didn’t fall off the sill as he’d hoped. Instead, it stretched out a pair of granite-colored wings and took flight. It was a small gargoyle, Charlie could see now, with the head of a frog and the body of a dragon. Tied to one of its legs was a little metal cylinder that glinted in the sunlight. Screeching like a demonic bird, the monster soared in circles above Charlie’s head before launching a missile of its own. A squirt of gargoyle guano splattered the ground just to Charlie’s right side. Then the little Nightmare flew off above the trees. It had a delivery to make, Charlie realized. Whatever was in the cylinder strapped to its leg was almost certainly meant for INK.
Charlie raced into the mansion to tell Charlotte and Jack what he’d seen. They’d need to catch the escaped Nightmare quickly. He found Charlotte on the floor in front of the tower door, so exhausted she couldn’t stand up. Jack was squatting by her side.
“Is it over?” Jack asked Charlie.
“For now,” Charlie said.
“She’ll be back,” Charlotte said. “We’re just lucky we were here in the house when she tried to get through this time. She’s been paying attention to our schedules. She knew the three of us are usually gone on Saturday mornings. On an ordinary weekend, your dad would have been here on his own.”
Charlotte was right, Charlie realized with horror. ICK had scheduled her invasion for a time when his dad would be by himself in the mansion. Somehow she knew that Andrew Laird wouldn’t be expecting her. If Charlie hadn’t decided to ride out to Ms. Abbot’s house—and if Charlotte hadn’t decided to wait for him to come home—the Waking World would have been overrun by Nightmares.
“I guess we’ll just have to make sure we never leave Dad alone in the house,” Jack said.
“No,” Charlotte told them. “That’s not enough. We were foolish to think we could keep ICK out of the Waking World with locks and barricades. We’re going to have to destroy the portal.”
“We can’t!” Jack cried. “Then ICK and INK will be trapped on different sides. They’re sisters. They need to be together!”
“And that’s the last thing any of us need,” Charlotte said. “Jack, do yo
u understand how much danger the Waking World is in right now? We can’t risk it anymore. We need to burn the tower down.”
“Please,” Jack begged. “Just give me a chance to talk to Indy. If we’re going to destroy the portal, we should let her choose which side she wants to be on.”
Charlotte was about to tell him no again when Charlie cut in. “We need to burn down the tower as soon as possible—but we can’t torch it right away,” he informed his stepmother. “There’s a flying gargoyle loose on our side. We have to catch it and send it home.”
“WHAT IN THE HECK IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?”
Charlie grimaced at the sound of Andrew Laird shouting in the hallway. He hadn’t even heard his dad come in, and he and Jack had been hoping to get out of the house before they were forced to deal with him.
“CHARLIE AND JACK, COME OUT HERE THIS INSTANT!”
Charlie and Jack rushed out of their rooms at the very same time and almost slammed right into each other. Their father was standing by the door to the tower. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his dad so angry.
“What did you do to this headboard?” he demanded. “Why is it nailed to the wall?”
“Ummmm,” said Jack. Usually he was the one with the clever excuses, but this time he’d apparently drawn a blank.
“Jack and I heard a ghost in the tower,” Charlie said.
“And we got scared,” Jack added quickly. “It sounded like a really big one.”
“You heard a big ghost?” Andrew Laird scoffed. “So you decided to destroy an expensive piece of furniture? Haven’t you guys ever watched a haunted-house movie? Ghosts can walk through walls! What makes you think they can’t get past a headboard?”
It was an excellent question, Charlie had to admit.
“Where is your stepmother?” Andrew Laird demanded.
“She went out to pick up a few things in town,” Charlie said. Those things were Alfie, Rocco, and Paige. The six of them were going on a gargoyle hunt.
“Do you have any idea what she’s going to do to you when she sees what you’ve done?” Andrew Laird asked. “This headboard is a DeChant family heirloom. It belonged to Silas DeChant himself!”
