Blair’s Nightmare

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “He went out,” David said. “I think he—” He was about to say that Blair had probably gone up to bed, when he happened to look toward the hall and the words froze in his throat. Blair was standing in the door to the hall, and Nightmare was with him. Blair was smiling and holding onto Nightmare’s collar. On the dog’s huge bristly head—exactly level with Blair’s curly blond one—the floppy ears were tilted forward in their alert position. He looked tense and watchful and—even when you were used to him—incredibly enormous.

  David started shaking his head and making “go away” gestures, but he was too late. Molly, who was sitting on the floor leaning against Dad’s legs, saw what David was doing and leaned out around Dad’s chair. “Saints in heaven!” she said in a high, thin voice.

  Dad looked around and jumped to his feet. Then everybody was jumping up and running in all directions. David was trying to get in between Dad and Nightmare, Molly was trying to get to Blair, and most of the other kids were trying to stop her. David yelled, “Get him out of here, Blair,” and Dad yelled, “Blair, come here.” Everybody else seemed to be yelling something; and to make matters worse, Nightmare started to bark. The yelling and barking and pushing and pulling seemed to go on for a long time before it suddenly got quiet. It ended with David standing in front of Dad with his arms stretched out as if he were trying to block a pass, and Esther and Janie and Amanda all holding onto Molly. Blair and Nightmare were still standing in the doorway.

  The quiet lasted for several seconds, and then Dad said, “My God, Blair. What is that enormous creature?”

  “My dog,” Blair said. “This is my dog.”

  There was another long silence, and then Molly began to giggle. “It’s his dog. His dog, Jeff. Blair’s imaginary dog.”

  She laughed harder, and after a minute Dad began to laugh, too. They stopped laughing once and looked at each other and started all over again. When they finally stopped laughing, Dad looked at Blair and Nightmare and shook his head slowly, as if he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes. “Son,” he said, “is this the dog you’ve been talking about? The one that was lost last week?”

  “Yes,” Blair said. “We found him again. His name is Nightmare.”

  “I can well believe it,” Dad said. “Well, bring him on in and let’s get acquainted.”

  “Wait a minute,” David said. “Nightmare is nervous about men. You’d better let him get used to you a little first.”

  Dad looked at David sharply. “You knew about this?” he asked.

  David swallowed hard. But before he could think of a good way to start explaining, Molly interrupted. “Will he let me pat him, Blair?” Then she giggled again and said, “Will your imaginary dog let me pat him?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Blair said. He put his hands on each side of Nightmare’s face and pulled his head around and whispered in his ear. After a minute he smiled at Molly. “Okay,” he said. “It’s okay, now.”

  Molly went up to Nightmare then, moving slowly and talking in a soothing voice. As soon as he’d sniffed her hand, he began to wag his tail. It took a little more time with Dad. When he began to move forward, Nightmare growled softly; it was only after Dad squatted down and talked to him softly for several minutes that he stopped growling and let him get closer. Everyone stood around and watched and told Nightmare what a good dog he was, and at last he let Dad scratch behind his ears, while the little kids crowded around and patted him, too.

  When the introductions were finally over, Nightmare trotted over in front of the fireplace and flopped down on the rug. He put his chin on his front paws and rolled his eyes around, looking from one person to another. Then he sighed a tremendous sigh and thumped his tail twice on the floor. Everybody laughed.

  “Okay,” Dad said, when they’d stopped laughing, “now how about some explanations?” He was smiling, but his tone of voice made it obvious that he meant business.

  “I’ll explain,” Janie said. “I can explain everything.”

  “Fine,” Dad said, “but I think we’ll start with Blair. After all, he’s got some catching up to do. He’s been trying to tell us about this dog for a long time, and I haven’t been listening. Where did he come from, Blair?”

  Blair went over and sat down beside Nightmare on the rug. “He came from the hill,” he said, “at night. At night he came and sat in the garden, and I went down to see him. And I fed him, and then he went away. And then I told Janie and Esther, and they fed him, too. And then David and Amanda and Pete found out, and they helped, too. And—and—that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Dad said.

  “Dad,” Janie interrupted. “Do I get an extra week’s allowance, now? Because I didn’t really do what you told us not to. You said not to talk to Blair about imaginary dogs, and . . .”

  “I get your point,” Dad said. “Okay, Janie. Not guilty on that particular charge. But how about what I said about no more pets. I’m afraid you’ve all been more than a little guilty on that particular ruling. You all agreed—no more pets, and then you all apparently entered into a conspiracy to adopt a dog and keep it a secret from Molly and me.”

  It suddenly got very quiet. With a sinking sensation David remembered his own predictions about what Dad would say and do if he found out about Nightmare. What was Blair thinking of, to drag Nightmare right into the house in front of everybody? And just when things were going so well, too, with Nightmare learning to stay in the tool shed and his foot beginning to heal up. And now Dad was going to start with all the logical and reasonable reasons why Nightmare wouldn’t be able to stay. Wait till I get him alone, David thought. Just wait till I get Blair alone.

  It was Amanda who broke the silence first. “Okay. We are guilty, I guess. All of us. But before you and Mom start handing out judgments, I think you ought to hear the whole story. Like for instance, how Nightmare was with David and Blair when they bumped into those guys in the woods—and what might have happened to them if he hadn’t been, and how . . .”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Dad said. “David? What’s this about—the prisoners?”

  “Well,” David said. “I guess it would be better if we started at the beginning.”

  So they did. First David told how it had all started with Blair going out alone to feed and play with Nightmare at night—when everyone thought he was just walking in his sleep. And then how Esther and Janie got in on the act, and the stormy night when he and Amanda and Pete discovered what was going on. Molly was amazed when he told about Nightmare hiding in the closet with Blair the night she came to the room. “I can’t believe it,” she kept saying. “That monster was really right there in the closet that night. I can’t believe it.”

  When he started on what they’d found out about Nightmare’s history, Janie interrupted and said that since she’d found out about it, she ought to be the one that got to tell it. So she did, in great detail, and when she got to the part about Sam Plenty and how he’d tried to make a killer out of Nightmare and then took him out in the woods and shot him, Molly said, “How terrible! What a dreadful man. The poor dog.” When she said “poor dog,” Nightmare did his mournful eyebrows number and wagged his tail, and she got up and went over to him and petted him and called Dad over to feel the scar that ran across the side of his head.

  David took over again then and told about the capture of the criminals. He tried not to leave anything out, and when he did, one of the other kids would remind him. The whole thing took a long time. He was only about halfway through when Esther said she was hungry, and everybody took time out to go into the kitchen and get cookies and milk. Nightmare went along too, and the little kids gave him bites of cookie and showed Dad and Molly how carefully he took food from your fingers, without biting off your whole hand, like he could have done easily if he’d wanted to.

  David really began to hope when he saw Dad sneaking Nightmare a bite of his cookie on the way back into the living room. He wasn’t sure, though, not even when Dad sent Janie to his study f
or his first aid kit and changed the bandage on Nightmare’s foot himself.

  When he’d finally finished, and all Dad and Molly’s questions had been answered, it suddenly got very quiet. Everyone was looking at Dad. Dad was looking at Molly. “Molly,” he said, “most of the burden would be on you.”

  Molly was smiling. “How could an imaginary dog be a burden?”

  Dad grinned. “But a pet is time consuming—even the best behaved . . .”

  Molly got up off the floor and sat in Dad’s lap. “Jeff,” she said, “checking to see that all the doors are locked after you’ve all gone off to school is time consuming. Worrying about funny noises when I’m here alone is time consuming. Nightmare’s going to save me a lot of time.”

  “Right,” Dad said, and everybody cheered. Nightmare’s head came up off his paws, and he wagged his tail.

  “Just a minute, now,” Dad said. “We will have to check with the authorities. There may be problems.”

  “Daddy,” Esther whimpered.

  “But, I imagine we can solve them,” Dad said.

  David was sure that they could.

  Chapter Twenty

  DAVID COULDN’T GET TO SLEEP. Across the room Blair was curled up in one corner of his bed, and Nightmare was stretched out across most of the rest of it. David turned and flopped and unwound himself from the covers—and then wound himself up again. Finally he got up and, taking a blanket with him, he went to sit on the window seat. Wrapping himself in the blanket, he stared down into the silent moon-shadowed garden.

  He didn’t know why he couldn’t sleep. Normally when he had insomnia, it was because he was worried about something, and tonight he wasn’t. For the first time in quite a while there was nothing concerning Nightmare to worry him, but that wasn’t all. A bunch of other stuff that used to keep him awake nights had suddenly disappeared, or turned into something a lot different.

  That was it, really, he decided. A lot of things suddenly looked different. It seemed as if people just naturally got locked into seeing their problems in a certain way, until after a while they forgot that there was any other way to look at them. When actually, they might not seem like problems at all if they were looked at from a slightly different angle.

  Like, Dad and Molly for instance, and their quarrel over whether Blair ought to have an imaginary dog. If they hadn’t been looking at their quarrel so hard, they’d have probably had time to ask Blair a few more questions and find out what was really worrying him.

  And Dad and Molly weren’t the only ones. There were several things that David was suddenly seeing from another perspective. Like how Amanda really felt about him—and how Jeff and Molly really felt about each other—and most surprising, perhaps, the whole Pete thing. How Pete felt about David—and how David felt about Pete. He’d been so sure for all those weeks that Pete was only interested in punching him out. He’d been so sure that Pete was nothing but a stupid bully. Pete was certainly a bully at times, and he might not be the brightest guy in the world about some things. But it was Pete who’d told him something very important about himself—and about courage. And now, because of Pete, he was pretty sure he was finished with one particular hang-up—because, as Pete said, there were lots of different ways of having guts, and some of them weren’t as important as others.

  David was still staring out the window and thinking when he heard Blair say “Hi.” He turned around in time to see Blair climbing over Nightmare. Nightmare looked up and wagged his tail and went back to sleep, and Blair crawled up on the window seat beside David. David put one end of his blanket around him, and they both sat there for a while looking out at the darkness. David was trying to think of a way to explain what he’d been thinking about to Blair.

  “It’s getting locked into seeing something in a certain way,” he told Blair, “until you can’t see any other possibilities. It’s a matter of point of view. Do you know what I mean?”

  Blair stared at him. “Nooo,” he said.

  “Well, like—like I was so sure that Dad would make us get rid of Nightmare if he found out. You know, he doesn’t change his mind very often, and I was sure he’d never change it about a dog.” He laughed, and Blair laughed too. “I was really P.O.ed at you for bringing him in the house tonight. At first, I mean. I was sure you’d really blown it for poor old Nightmare.”

  “Are you P.O.ed at me now?” Blair asked.

  “No. Of course not. Everything turned out great. But it might not have, you know. I mean, deciding to bring Nightmare in like that, without telling anybody what you were going to do. You were really taking a big chance.”

  Blair didn’t say anything. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but suddenly David was sure he was smiling.

  “Blair! You didn’t know, did you? Did you know how things were going to turn out?”

  Blair shook his head. “No,” he said. “But Harriette did.”

  David sighed. “Blair. There’s no such person as . . .” But then he stopped. Having a friend like Harriette, like a lot of other things, was probably all a matter of point of view.

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder is the author of The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm—all Newbery Honor Books. Her most recent books include The Treasures of Weatherby, The Bronze Pen, William S. and the Great Escape, and William’s Midsummer Dreams. She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit her online at zksnyder.com.

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  Also by

  ZILPHA KEATLEY SNYDER

  And Condors Danced

  Black and Blue Magic

  The Bronze Pen

  Cat Running

  The Changeling

  The Egypt Game

  The Famous Stanley

  Kidnapping Case

  Fool’s Gold

  The Ghosts of Rathburn Park

  Gib and the Gray Ghost

  Gib Rides Home

  The Gypsy Game

  The Headless Cupid

  Janie’s Private Eyes

  Libby on Wednesday

  The Magic Nation Thing

  The Runaways

  Season of Ponies

  Song of the Gargoyle

  Spyhole Secrets

  Squeak Saves the Day

  The Treasures of Weatherby

  The Trespassers

  The Truth About Stone Hollow

  The Unseen

  The Velvet Room

  William S. and the Great Escape

  William’s Midsummer Dreams

  The Witches of Worm

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1984 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2014 by David Frankland

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  The text for this book is set in Electra LT.

  This Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition September 2014

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Snyder, Zilpha Keatley.

  Blair’s nightmare / Zilpha Keatley Snyder. — 1st ed.

  p. cm

  Summary: The Stanley kids and their stepsister try to keep secret a dog that Blair finds, keep David out of the clutches of the school bully, and find out if some escaped convicts really are nearby. Sequel to “The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case.”

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0320-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0321-4 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0322-1 (eBook)

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Stepchildren—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S68522 Bn 1984

  [Fic]—dc23 83015677