Blair’s Nightmare Read Online Free Page A

more so. “Hi,” he said again in the eager, breathless way he always talked when he was excited. David sighed. He knew what the answer was going to be before he asked the question.

Chapter Three
    I T TOOK D AVID QUITE A while to get back to sleep. A long time after Blair’s breathing had shifted to a deep steady rhythm and he’d started making occasional little murmuring noises, David lay stiffly on his back trying to keep his mind a blank. A blank mind, he knew from experience, was the best kind at that hour of the night. In the evening when he’d just gone to bed, he never tried to keep his mind from freewheeling. At that time of night he could dream up whatever he wanted to and make it all turn out great, like a video game that he was so good at he could win every time. But late at night, when he’d been asleep and then awake again, it all got out of control. As if the joystick was disconnected and all the bombs were hitting you dead center and the blue meanies were gobbling up yourPac-Man. And Pete Garvey was punching you out in front of the whole school, and Blair’s dog was real and dangerous, or even some kind of a werewolf.
    That night most of the gruesome scenes that kept appearing in front of his closed eyelids had to do with what Blair had told him. When David met him coming back up the stairs, Blair had been very excited. Excited and wide awake. David would almost swear to that. As a matter of fact, David couldn’t remember ever having heard Blair talk so much and so fast, and it didn’t seem likely a person could talk better asleep than awake. One of the first things Blair said was that the dog had licked him on the cheek.
    â€œHe licked me right here,” he’d told David, pointing to his cheek. “And he let me pat him.” Blair’s teeth were chattering and his hands were cold as ice. “I p-p-p-patted him,” he said. “He never let me pat him before.”
    David got him into bed and tucked him in, but he kept popping back up again. His cheeks were so red they looked painted, and his eyes glittered with excitement. He told David all about the dog—how it was taller than his head and how its fur was long and gray, and how big and white its teeth were when it smiled at him.
    â€œSmiled at you?” David asked.
    â€œLike this.” Blair lifted his lip in what looked like anexaggerated smile—or what, on another kind of face, might have been a growl. David felt a shiver run up the back of his neck like a cold finger.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “But don’t go out there at night anymore. Okay?”
    â€œBut that’s when he’s there,” Blair said. “He’s not there when it’s daytime.”
    â€œI don’t care,” David said. “You shouldn’t ever go outside at night, all alone like that.”
    â€œI wasn’t alone,” Blair said. “That dog was there.”
    The conversation started going in circles after that and then Blair went to sleep—and David lay awake trying, without much success, to keep his mind a blank. The problem was that at that time of night he found himself taking seriously a lot of ideas that he would probably have laughed at in the daylight. Ideas like ghost dogs, or werewolves. There wasn’t any such thing, of course, but if there were, a kid like Blair might see them when other people couldn’t. A kid who just possibly saw and talked to a ghost named Harriette, who was a real person who once lived in the Westerly House and who some people thought still lived there, even though she was dead. And a kid who seemed able to talk to all sorts of animals, like crows and turkeys—not to mention wild cats that nobody else could get close to.
    Those were the kinds of ideas that kept pushing into David’s mind, sometimes in words and sometimes in vivid pictures that turned the inside of his eyelids into wide-screen horror movies. Pictures of