Blair’s Nightmare

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “There he comes,” Blair whispered, just as a shapeless shadow, caught in the beam of the flashlight, darkened and thickened, and transformed itself into a monstrous form. David gasped—he still wasn’t used to the size of Nightmare. A second later he was saying hello, beating them with his wagging tail and licking their faces.

  He was almost through eating when Amanda nudged David. “You try it,” she said. “I guess you’d sound most like a man.”

  David backed off a few steps and then, in a deep voice, said, “Jaws! Here Jaws!”

  Nightmare’s head jerked up and he spun around, tail tucked and lips lifted in a snarl.

  “Good dog, Nightmare,” David said quickly.

  Tail wagging sheepishly, Nightmare bounced over to him and licked his face, as if apologizing for making an embarrassing mistake. Some of the others tried calling him Jaws, but after that first time he stopped reacting so violently. Instead he hung his head and looked mournful, as if they’d said “no” or “bad dog.” There was no doubt about it—the word Jaws meant something to Nightmare.

  Although what Janie had found out solved a lot of the mystery about where Nightmare came from and why he did some of the things he did, it didn’t solve any of the problems. As a matter of fact, in some ways, it only gave them more things to worry about. Like, what might happen if Nightmare were discovered. If Dad insisted on turning him over to the pound, he would probably be traced to his former owner—who could either decide that he wanted him back or that he was vicious and demand that he be killed.

  And there was another problem that occurred to David. What might happen to Dad if he suddenly came face-to-face with Nightmare? Dad was obviously a man, and a pretty big one, too. Nightmare couldn’t be expected to know that he was not like Sam Plenty. David thought about that possibility when, with Nightmare padding along beside him, he crept back up the stairs—and down the hall right past Dad and Molly’s door. When he and Blair and Nightmare finally got to their room and closed the door behind them, David found himself gasping for air—and realized that he hadn’t been doing much breathing for quite a long while.

  As soon as they got in the room, David locked the door. He hadn’t locked it before because he realized that if Dad or Molly came to the door while Nightmare was in the room it was all over anyway. They would, of course, want to come in and find out why the door was locked, and that would be that. Having the door locked wouldn’t make it any safer for Nightmare. However, David now realized, it might very well make it a whole lot safer for Dad or Molly—particularly Dad. At least with the door locked there would be time to warn Dad to come in slowly and quietly and to explain to Nightmare that Jeffrey Stanley was “good” and a very different kind of man from Sam Plenty.

  David explained it all to Blair, and it was clear that he understood and agreed that it was the only thing to do. So David started locking the bedroom door at night—and it was only a couple of nights later that it happened, just as he’d been afraid it would.

  That night there’d only been three of them down to feed Nightmare and play with him and bring him upstairs to sleep. Amanda had told David ahead of time not to wake her up. When he had gone upstairs to bed, she said she still had a lot of homework to do, and she was going to get to bed late, and she’d need all the sleep she could get. And then Tesser had decided it was too cold and chickened out, too. So it was only Janie and Blair and David who went down and mixed up the kibble and leftovers and took them out to Nightmare in the garden.

  It was a nice clear night with an almost full moon, and when Nightmare finished eating, they all went out behind the garage and played tug-of-war with an old pair of Dad’s jeans. Nightmare loved to play tug-of-war. However, with only three people on the other side, it wasn’t really much of a contest. David took hold of one pants leg and Janie and Blair took hold of David, and then Nightmare took the other pants leg in his teeth and pulled them all over the backyard. When they were all worn out, he didn’t want to quit. Nightmare really liked winning.

  He was still feeling especially playful when they started into the house, and David had to tell him to be quiet and stop bouncing around. That is, David told Blair to tell him, since he minded Blair a lot better than anyone else. But halfway up the stairs, he started frisking again and bumped into David and made him stumble. It didn’t seem to David that they’d made very much noise at all, and he was just congratulating himself on a narrow escape when something else happened. They’d made it safely to their room and David was just closing the door when Rolor let out a horrified croak. David had forgotten to cover the crow’s cage, and Rolor had just set eyes on Nightmare for the first time.

  David made a dive for the cage cover. He just had time for one glimpse of Rolor’s bug eyes and bristling feathers before he blacked him out and shut him up. If it hadn’t been so dangerous, it would have been funny. If crows have nightmares, Rolor must have thought he was having one.

  While Blair climbed unconcernedly into bed and Nightmare stretched out beside him, David waited and listened and worried. It was almost beginning to seem as if they’d lucked out again, when it happened. David had locked the door and turned out the light and he was just crawling into bed when the doorknob rattled and Molly’s voice said, “Boys. What’s going on? Open the door.”

  David froze. “Blair,” he whispered. “Tell him it’s okay. Tell him that Molly is okay.” Sitting on the edge of the bed in the darkness, he listened to a rustling noise and Blair whispering. When he had waited as long as he dared, he got up and with his heart pounding like a jackhammer, he turned on the lights and turned the key in the lock. He tried to hold the door half open while he started explaining, but Molly pushed it back and came right in.

  “David?” she said. “What’s going on? I’ve been hearing the strangest noises.” And then before he could answer she said, “Where’s Blair?”

  David whirled around. Nightmare was gone and so was Blair. For a moment David’s mind felt disconnected, like a bicycle with a broken chain. The wheels were spinning but nothing was happening. “Blair?” a voice croaked, and for just a split second he didn’t realize it was his own. Then Blair came out of the closet.

  “Blair,” Molly said. “What were you doing in there? Why were you in the closet?”

  Blair’s eyes looked huge and round as marbles. “I was hiding,” he said.

  Molly had a strange expression on her face. She sighed deeply and said, “Oh dear.” Then she went to Blair and hugged him and led him back to his bed.

  David stole a glance at the closet. The door was slightly open but not enough to see much.

  “Look, sweetie,” Molly said as she tucked Blair in. “You mustn’t worry about those bad men. They probably aren’t around here at all anymore, or they’d have found them by now. If you and David really feel better with the door locked, it’s all right with me, but you shouldn’t sleep in the closet. Promise me you’ll stay in bed, now.”

  “Okay,” Blair said. “I promise.”

  Molly turned out the light when she went out. David lay still, except for shaking a little. He couldn’t believe that they’d made it—that Molly had come and gone without knowing what was in the closet. “Hey, Blair,” he whispered. “How’d you get him to stay in the closet like that?”

  “I left the door open,” Blair said. “He doesn’t like it when you close the door. And I told him to stay. He knows about stay.”

  A minute later Blair whispered again, and a huge shadowy form padded out of the closet and climbed up on his bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  EARLY IN THE MORNING, A day or two after the narrow escape with Molly, David woke up with Blair thumping him on the shoulder. Groaning, he rolled over and pushed Blair’s hand away. It felt early. Too early. He opened one eye and, just as he suspected, it was barely beginning to get light.

  “Knock it off, Blair. What’s the matter?”

  “He didn’t come. Nightmare didn’t come home last night,” Blair whispered.

&n
bsp; David sat up with a start. In the faint light of not quite dawn, Blair’s face looked puckered and pale, and there were reddish blotches around his eyes, which meant that he’d been crying.

  “Are you sure?” David asked. “Maybe he came and we just didn’t wake up.”

  Blair shook his head. “No,” he said in a quavery voice. “He didn’t come.”

  “Well, look,” David said. “Maybe he just wasn’t hungry. We’ve been feeding him a lot lately. He’ll probably be here tonight, just like always. Now go back to bed, and don’t worry.”

  Blair did as he was told. At least he went back to bed and worried quietly. But now David was wide awake and worrying, too. He was afraid it was his fault. He hadn’t set his alarm the night before, depending on Blair’s interior one to let him know when Nightmare had arrived. Maybe this time it hadn’t worked. Maybe Nightmare had arrived, and waited, and gone away hungry. He was still worrying when Janie came in, asking why she hadn’t been awakened to help feed Nightmare. By breakfast time everybody—that is, all the kids—knew, and when the meal was half over Molly asked if anything was wrong. “You’re all so quiet,” she said. They all said everything was fine, but Molly didn’t look convinced.

  It was a long day at school. David had a hard time keeping his mind on his schoolwork. At lunchtime he was coming out of the cafeteria when he saw Pete and his friend Jerry Wilcox heading towards the gym. Without stopping to think about it, he hurried after them.

  “Garvey,” he said, when he caught up. “Could I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure,” Pete said.

  David moved off the path, and Pete followed—and Jerry, his eyes bugging with curiosity, came sidling after them. “Disappear, Wilcox,” Pete said, and Wilcox disappeared. David told Pete about Nightmare not showing up.

  Pete nodded, scratching his head. “How’s The Bleep taking it?” he asked. Pete had been picking up Amanda’s nicknames for everybody.

  “Not too good,” David said. “You know, crying and stuff.”

  Pete frowned. Pete’s normal expressions were: 1. his famous dangerous grin, and 2. a real “nobody home” type blank stare. The frown was an interesting change. “Hey,” he said, shaking his head. “Look. You tell The Bleep he’s probably just kinda sick and sleeping it off somewheres. Dogs do that a lot. They get a belly ache or something like that, and they go eat some grass; then they go find themself some place to hole up until they’re feeling better, and they come back, good as new. Tell The Bleep if he’s not back by Saturday we’ll all go looking for him. I can come over Saturday and help.”

  “You mean go up in the hills?” David asked.

  “Yeah,” Pete said uncertainly, but then he grinned. “Well, if we all went together it ought to be safe enough. I mean, six to two are pretty good odds. You all going to be home Saturday?”

  “I think so.”

  “Amanda too?”

  “Far as I know.”

  Pete nodded. “You tell The Bleep I’ll be over. Okay?”

  “Sure,” David said.

  David headed across the lawn to the art building, feeling a little better. It had been kind of a relief to talk to someone about it. It wasn’t until quite a while afterwards that it suddenly occurred to him that he’d actually gone up to Pete Garvey on the school grounds and started a conversation. It was something he would never have dreamed of doing—not even before the gruesome morning when Mrs. Baldwin had jeopardized his entire future by making him class monitor. It was really a strange thing for him to have done, and if he hadn’t been so busy worrying about Nightmare, he might have given it a lot more thought.

  He slept poorly that night, and so did Blair. Several times, finding himself awake, he turned on the light and found that Blair was awake, too—sitting up in bed or just lying there with his eyes wide open. And once he was crouched on the windowsill, staring out into the night. When it began to get light, Blair started to cry. “Let’s go look for him, David,” he kept saying. “He needs us.”

  “We can’t,” David told him. “We have to go to school. And besides, Dad wouldn’t let us go out in the hills. You know what he said about not going out there until they catch those guys. We can’t do it, Blair. We’ll just have to wait for Nightmare to come back. You know what Pete said. He’ll come back when he’s feeling better.” He’d told Blair what Pete had said about dogs holing up when they got sick, but he hadn’t mentioned the possibility of a Saturday search party because he was sure Dad wouldn’t let them go. “He’ll come back. I’m sure he will. Just remember what Pete said. About how dogs get sick sometimes and doctor themselves by eating grass and resting for a while. That’s probably what it is. Nightmare will come back. Just wait and see.” David tried to sound confident, but he wasn’t really. And Blair knew it.

  When Molly called them to come to breakfast, David took Blair into the bathroom and washed his face and told him he had to stop crying, and he did. But when they went downstairs his face was still pale and there were bright pink blotches around his eyes. David was afraid Molly would notice, and she did.

  Molly was the only one in the kitchen when David and Blair came in; and as soon as she saw Blair, she took him by the shoulders and stared at his face. “Blair,” she said, “what’s the matter?” Blair shook his head and went on shaking it. Finally she picked him up and sat him on the sinkboard and took his face between her hands. “Tell me, sweetie,” she said, and Blair burst out sobbing and said, “My dog. My dog is gone.”

  “Oh Blair,” Molly said. “Oh honey.” And she picked him up off the sinkboard and carried him out of the room. The scrambled eggs were about to burn, so David went over and turned off the fire and scraped them out into a bowl. He felt strangely numb, or at least not any more worried than he had been before. He didn’t think it mattered too much what Blair told Molly. She’d just suppose it was all his imagination; and besides, Nightmare was gone anyway. Dad couldn’t very well send a missing dog to the pound.

  When Molly and Blair came back, everyone was in the kitchen. Nobody said anything. It was another strange meal with lots of staring and not much conversation. David finished as quickly as he could and went upstairs to get his books. He was still in his room a few minutes later when Blair came in.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for?” David asked.

  “For talking about Nightmare. To Molly. I forgot. I’m sorry, David.”

  “Look, Blair. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. She probably didn’t believe you anyway. That Nightmare is a real dog, I mean.”

  Blair nodded. “She didn’t,” he said. “But she got mad. It made her very mad.”

  “Mad? At you?”

  “Nooo,” Blair said thoughtfully. “Not mad at me. But she’s very mad at somebody.”

  “Ye gods!” David said. Then he looked at his watch and said it again. “Ye gods. I’m going to miss the bus.”

  He grabbed his books and ran. He was just turning the corner at the foot of the stairs when he heard voices coming from the direction of the living room.

  He didn’t hear much—there wasn’t time to—but it was enough to give him a pretty good idea of what was going on and what the conversation was all about. If you could call it a conversation. Argument would be more like it—or quarrel—or even fight. At least that’s what he would have called it, if it had been Janie and Esther yelling at each other like that—instead of Dad and Molly.

  Amanda was already at the bus stop. She looked at David and looked away, and then looked back again.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  David shrugged, staring at the ground.

  “Tell me.”

  He shook his head.

  “You want to get slugged?”

  David looked up, quickly. “What for?” he said.

  “For not telling me.”

  They stared at each other. Why not, he thought. Let her worry, too. “They’re fighting again,” he said. “Dad and Molly.”

  “Figh
ting?”

  He nodded.

  “What did they say?”

  “Well, first—” he began, but just then the bus pulled to a stop. Amanda made him get on first, and when he started to sit down, she shoved him on down the aisle and kept shoving him until they got to the back of the bus. She let him sit down then and sat beside him.

  “Go on,” she said.

  David looked up the aisle to where Amanda’s friend Tammy and two or three other people had turned around and were staring back at them.

  “Okay, Rabbit Ears,” Amanda said. “This is a private argument, so butt out.”

  Tammy tossed her head and turned around, and after a second the rest of them did too.

  “Go on,” Amanda said again.

  “Well, Molly was kind of yelling and crying at the same time. She said something like, ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing to him, Jeff. You and that Bowen woman. Making him kill his dreams. Trying to force him into some stupid pattern.’ And Dad said something like, ‘Calm down, Molly. I haven’t forced him.’ And she said, ‘Yes, you have. You told him to get rid of his dreams, and he’s done it and it’s breaking his heart.’ And Dad said, ‘Oh Molly, stop being so dramatic.’ And then she called him a computer-brained academic, and he called her a Celtic Niobe or something like that, and then I left.”

  “So?” Amanda said.

  “So?” David stared at her, but then he got the picture. She just didn’t care. In fact she’d probably be delighted if Dad and Molly decided to get a divorce. It was probably what she’d been hoping for all along. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, I guess you’ll be glad when they get a divorce.”

  “What?” She stared at him, and then after a moment she began to grin. “Divorce? Mom and Jeff? They’re crazy about each other. What makes you think they’re going to get a divorce?”

  “Well, they’ve been fighting a lot lately.”

  “Fighting? You call that fighting? If you think that’s fighting you should have seen her with my dad. That was fighting.”