Blair’s Nightmare (2 page)

“Not that I care for myself,” Amanda said. “I'm not all that crazy about dogs. But I don't see why you little kids can't have one.”

Thanks a lot, Amanda, David thought. She knew how he felt about being classed with Janie and the twins as a little kid. The twins were barely six years old, and Janie was only eight. Thirteen was practically a whole different generation. But he'd learned from experience that having an argument with Amanda while she was supposed to be helping you clean up the kitchen was definitely what Dad called counterproductive. So he kept his mouth shut and only thought up a couple of very sarcastic remarks that he might have made if he'd been in the mood for an argument—or a crack over the head with a pancake turner, which was what he'd gotten the last time.

Fighting with Amanda under any circumstances had always been counterproductive, and lately it had become even more so. She'd always had the advantage of being a girl and therefore more or less unpunchable, even when she punched
first. But in the last few months she'd acquired another unfair advantage by suddenly going from about David's height to at least six inches taller.

In the end he was more angry at himself for not telling her off, than he was at Amanda. It wasn't that he was a coward; at least, he didn't think it was. It was just that when it came right down to it, he never seemed able to get in the right frame of mind for a fight. And not being able to get in a fighting frame of mind was a real handicap when you were thirteen years old and in the eighth grade at Wilson Junior High.

Not, of course, that it hadn't been a problem before. David had known he wasn't particularly fond of fighting since he was a little kid, but he hadn't worried all that much about it. But then, he'd come back to the Steven's Corners school system after being away in Italy on his dad's sabbatical, had gone into eighth grade—and had met the Garvey Gang.

It had started off on the very first day of school, and of course he'd handled it all wrong. If he'd just gotten up and taken a swing at Garvey on that first day at the bus stop when Garvey had tripped him—no matter what happened afterwards . . .

“Hey, what's the matter with you?” Amanda practically yelled in his ear. Apparently she'd been yakking away for several minutes before she noticed that David wasn't doing much
answering. She probably didn't even realize that her crack about little kids had bugged him. It figured.

“Nothing's the matter with me,” he said, “except for dishpan hands. Look at them. Next time I'm going to dry.”

Amanda was starting to argue, when all of a sudden she stopped and said, “Hey look. What's The Bleep doing?” Amanda thought it was funny to call Blair “The Bleep,” because he sometimes talked so quietly you couldn't hear anything at all, like a bleeped out comment on TV.

David finished rinsing the sink and turned around in time to see Blair coming out of the pantry. He wasn't tiptoeing or anything, but he'd somehow managed to walk right past them into the pantry and then come out again, before they'd even noticed. And now he was just walking along smiling to himself and holding four slices of bread in front of him, two in each hand. When Esther got caught snitching food she always started stuffing it in her mouth so as to get as much eaten as possible before you could take it away. And if it had been Janie, she'd have had it carefully hidden so the only thing that tipped you off was the hammy wide-eyed-innocent number she always did when she was up to no good. Nobody but Blair would walk along flatfooted, holding what he'd snitched right out in front of him. David grinned at Amanda, and she rolled her eyes and grinned back.

“Hey Blair,” David said. “What're you doing with all that bread?”

“Bread?” Blair looked carefully at the two slices in his right hand, then the ones in his left. Then he looked at David and Amanda and nodded with a serious kind of smile and said, “He's very big.”

“Who's big?” Amanda said. “What are you talking about? What's he talking about, David?”

“Blair,” David said. “What are you talking about?”

“That dog,” Blair said. “That big dog.”

“W
AS IT GONE,
B
LAIR?
D
ID
he come and eat it?”

“Yes, it's all gone.”

What Esther and Blair were saying filtered into and mixed with a conversation between Owl and Pussy Gato that David was in the midst of reading. He was sprawled out on the couch peacefully enjoying the Sunday funnies—
Gordo
was his favorite strip—when the twins came into the room whispering. Yelling, he probably could have ignored—you got used to yelling kids in the Stanley family—but something about whispering makes it hard not to listen. So he tuned in on the twins and gave up, for the time being, on Pussy Gato.

He'd gotten up early that morning, not only to make Sunday last as long as possible, but also to have some time to
be by himself. With five kids in the family it wasn't easy to find time alone, and once in a while he felt the need for a little solitude. So that morning he'd dressed very quietly and then tiptoed downstairs, trying to keep the ancient floor boards from squeaking.

He liked the feeling of being alone in the old house, listening to the silence and imagining that it was full of the unheard voices of all the people who had ever lived there. At least he liked it in the soft new brilliance of early morning. He knew from past experience that all alone in the Westerly House in the dark of night could be almost too interesting. But in the kitchen, early in the morning, the new day was already in high gear. The sun spilled in across the old-fashioned sink and sent a pathway of gold dust over the round oak table. David fixed himself a bowl of cereal and went out on the back steps to eat.

He ate slowly and peacefully, staring off across the backyard, past the old oak tree with its tire swing to where the land sloped down to the creek, and hearing nothing but birds and an occasional gobble from the direction of King Tut's pen. And then, when he'd finished eating, he strolled down the driveway, thinking about how the warm sunshine mixing with the cool autumn tingle in the air was something like the way the sour of lemons and the sweetness of sugar mixed to make the good taste of lemonade. At the mailbox, he picked
up the Sunday paper and wandered back across the front yard, through the garden on the south side of the house with its gazebo and sundial, and back through the kitchen to the living room—where he'd been reading for quite a long time when Esther and Blair came in.

“Did you see him?” Esther whispered, and David moved the paper to one side and peeked around it. Esther was leaning toward Blair so that their heads were close together, Esther's sleek and brown and Blair's blond and curly. Esther's face was a pattern of circles—round cheeks, round eyes and mouth rounded into an “O” of excitement.

“No,” Blair said. “Not today. Last night I did.”

“See what?” David asked.

Esther looked around quickly, startled, but when she saw it was David she ran to him, pulling Blair after her.

“Blair's dog,” she said. “Blair's dog was there again last night, and this morning the food we gave him was all gone.”

“What food?” David asked.

“Oh, some bread,” Esther said, rolling her eyes at Blair, “and some other things.”

The morning before when David and Amanda had caught Blair coming out of the pantry, David had suggested that Blair put back all except one slice. “Why'd you let him keep that?” Amanda had asked. “Why can't an imaginary dog eat imaginary
bread? It'll just go to waste.” But apparently it hadn't exactly gone to waste. Something had eaten not only the slice of bread but “some other things” as well.

“Where was the food?” David asked Blair.

“In a pan,” Esther said, answering for her twin, as usual. “In an old pan on the bench by the swing tree.”

“And this morning it was gone?”

Blair nodded, and Esther said, “Yes. Yes, it was all gone this morning.”

“Hmmm,” David said. “Well, I guess a dog could have taken it, but there are other things around at night. Like raccoons and skunks and field mice.”

“No,” Esther said. “It was the dog. Because Blair saw him. He couldn't see where the food was from the window, but the dog came and sat by the sundial like he always does. And he said thank you. Blair said he said thank you.”

“Tesser,” David said, reprovingly. Since she'd started school Esther had decided she didn't like to be called Tesser anymore, but it was a hard habit to break. Particularly when she was acting especially childish. She'd always gone along with Blair's wild stories, and a lot of the time she really seemed to believe them, but it didn't seem possible that she really could believe this one. And besides, Dad said that they should stop encouraging Blair's fantasies now that he was six years old and in school
and everything. “Tesser, what are you talking about? Have you seen this dog of Blair's?”

“No.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “But Blair's told me all about him. And Blair says I could see him. Blair says he's the kind of dog that I could see, too.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, that's nice. Dogs you can see are definitely the best kind. Much better than invisible ones.”

“Blair doesn't see invisible things,” Esther said. “When something's invisible, nobody can see it, not even Blair. Blair just sees things that are different.”

“Yeah,” David said. “I know.” He knew what Esther was referring to anyway. For a long time Esther and Janie had had this idea about Blair being able to see and hear things that other people couldn't. And there had been times in the past when David, himself, hadn't been too sure it wasn't true. But it was the kind of idea that most people grew out of somewhere along the line. David had grown out of it. At least most of the time he was pretty sure he had.

Just about then there was a clatter on the stairs and Janie's voice yelling, “Twins! Twins! Where are you?” and a moment later she dashed into the room. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Why didn't you say so?”

“We were talking to David,” Esther said, and then she clamped her mouth shut in a way that said, “and not anybody else.”

Janie looked hard at Esther, and her big round blue eyes narrowed. She stared first at Blair and then at David. Then she squeezed in between the twins and put her arm across Esther's shoulders. She looked as if she'd just switched on to high beam, the way she always did when she was excited or curious. Dad always said that Janie had antennas for picking up other people's secrets, and right at the moment you could almost see them quivering on top of her head. “What are we talking about?” she said.

“My dog,” Blair said, just as Esther stuck her face in front of his and shushed at him. Blair stared at her in surprise.

“You said it was a secret,” she whispered at him. “You said you wouldn't tell anybody but me.”

Blair looked worried. “No,” he said. “You said I wouldn't. And you told David.”

Esther put her hands on her waist. “Well, telling David doesn't count,” she said, “because David already knew.”

All the time Blair and Esther were arguing, Janie was saying, “What dog? What dog? Who's got a dog? Where is it?” And finally she yelled, “Shut up, Tesser! Shut up!”

“Shut up, yourself,” Esther said. “It's Blair's dog, and it comes every night and sits out by the sundial. And it's very, very big.”

Janie looked at David. “Really?” she asked. “Is there really a dog?”

David shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “I haven't seen it. Maybe there's a dog, but I think it might be a dream.”

“No,” Blair said. “It's not a dream dog.”

“It's as tall as this,” Esther went on, holding up her hand about as high as the top of her head, “and it has long legs and its face is all whiskery and it has great big eyes and sometimes they're red.”

“Wowee,” Janie said. “If I dreamed a dog like that, it'd be a nightmare. I think it's a nightmare, Blair.”

Just about then Molly came in and said that breakfast was ready. So the dog conversation was over. After breakfast David got involved in working on the tree house Dad had helped him design for the little kids, and he forgot all about Blair's dream, or nightmare, until he was reminded that night, just as he was climbing into bed.

Blair was already asleep, and David was just getting propped up against the pillows for a little bedtime reading. He'd had to get up once because he'd forgotten to cover Rolor's cage, but now he was back in bed, and the only sound was an occasional cozy mumble from the crow as he settled himself for the night. David sighed comfortably and began to read just as the door opened and Esther and Janie came tiptoeing in.

“Hey,” David said, “what's going on? You guys are supposed to be asleep.”

“We came to see the dog,” Janie said. “Come on, Tesser.” They ran across the room, climbed up on the window seat and pressed their faces against the glass. When Janie cupped her hands around her eyes to shut out the light from the room, Esther did the same thing, and they went on kneeling there with their faces close together against the window and their bare feet and flowery pajama-bottoms sticking out over the edge of the window seat. David grinned. Several minutes passed in absolute silence. He sighed and went back to his book. Quite a long time later Janie said, “Do you see anything, Tesser?”

“I see the sundial,” Esther said. “That's where he sits. Right there by the sundial. But I don't think he's there now.”

And Janie said, “I don't think so either, but I'm not sure. I think we'd better get Blair.”

“Okay,” Esther said, “let's get him.” They got down and ran to Blair's bed.

“Good luck,” David said. He didn't bother to tell them not to wake Blair up because he was so sure they couldn't, but he hadn't counted on Janie's good ideas and Esther's stubbornness. They tried the usual things like shaking and tickling and bouncing, but when those didn't work, they tugged him to a sitting position, and then Esther propped him up while Janie pushed his eyelids open and made horrible faces at him. In a few minutes they had him sitting almost straight up on the window seat.