Blair’s Nightmare Read Online Free

they had him sitting almost straight up on the window seat.
    â€œLook, Blair,” they said. “Is he there? Is the dog there yet?”
    Blair swayed toward the window until his head was resting against the glass and stayed there—until Janie whacked him on top of the head. Then he jumped and said, “No. He’s not there yet. Not yet.” And then he curled up in a ball and went to sleep on the window seat.
    David went back to reading, and after a while Esther and Janie gave up and started back to bed—leaving Blair where he was.
    â€œHey,” David said. “You come right back here and put Blair back to bed.”
    Janie stopped in the doorway. She looked at Blair all curled up on the window seat and gave David one of her super-sweet smiles. “You’re a lot stronger than we are,” she said. “You could carry him.”
    â€œHuh-uh,” David said. “You got him out—you can put him right back where you got him. I’m reading.”
    It was only fair, but afterwards David wished he’d just given up and done it himself. It took Janie and Esther so long to wake Blair up enough to walk him across the room that when it was finally over it was too late to do much reading. He’d only managed to read a few paragraphs, but with a seven thirty bus to catch the next morning, he knew he’d better stop.
    It was a lot later when he woke up suddenly and sat upin bed. He’d been dreaming but he couldn’t remember what, except that he’d been running, trying to get away from something, and all of a sudden a dog was running beside him. The dog looked up at him and barked, and suddenly David was awake and sitting up, and feeling that something wasn’t right. Across the room, Blair’s bed was dissolved in darkness but somehow, even before his groping fingers found the lamp switch, he knew that Blair wasn’t there. He wasn’t in his bed, or standing by the window, or anywhere else in the room.
    David went first to the window, and just as he reached it, before his eyes had finished adjusting to the change in light, he thought he saw something in the yard below. It looked like a beam of light, and it seemed to come from a spot near the gate that led from the garden into the backyard. But then it was gone, and in the dark window David could see only the reflection of the room behind him. Running to his lamp, he switched it off and hurried back to the window.
    Gradually, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he began to recognize the dimly seen shapes in the garden below. The moon wasn’t very full, but there was enough light to see the white gazebo quite clearly. Next to it the gray stone of the sundial’s pedestal was barely visible, and just beyond that the big pine tree near the gate threw its long dark shadow across the lawn. But surely he’d be able to see a big dog, evenif it were in the shadow. He’d have been able to see it, that is, if it had been there. But, of course, it wasn’t. No dog, and no six-year-old kid in blue pajamas, either. But Blair had to be somewhere, and somebody had to find out where. As Molly said, sleepwalkers sometimes fell down stairs, or out of windows.
    About one minute later when David was on his way downstairs, he met Blair coming up. He was wearing slippers and carrying David’s flashlight, and if he was sleepwalking, he must have been dreaming that he was wide awake. Before, when he’d found Blair sleepwalking, David had been careful not to speak to him, but this time he decided to take the chance.
    â€œBlair?” he said.
    â€œHi, David,” Blair said.
    David took the flashlight out of Blair’s hand and shone it on his face. Blair blinked and smiled. When you shine a flashlight right on someone’s face, it makes most people look weird and evil, but not Blair. On Blair it just turned his hair into a curly halo and made his Christmas-card-angel face look even