Always October (30 page)

“I suppose that makes me a mistake too, someone who just shouldn't exist.”

He winced again. “You're good at this,” he said softly. Then, even more softly, “How is your father?”

“How would I know?” I asked bitterly.

He blinked, looking puzzled.

“Dad has been gone for almost two years. He went on a caving expedition and never came back.”

My grandfather's shoulders slumped. “I'm sorry, Jacob. I did not know that. I had received word from the Poets that you were here and heading for the library. The message didn't come with a lot of details.” He stepped toward me. As he did, a motion from the enormous book he had been gazing at when we entered caught my eye. I blinked in surprise. A quill pen, not held by any hand—or at least, I thought, remembering Invisible Ed, not by any
visible
hand—raced across the page. Suddenly the pen lifted into the air. Without anyone seeming to touch it, the page turned.

“What's going on there?” asked Lily, pointing at the book.

My grandfather smiled, and I could tell he welcomed the diversion. “
That
is the current volume of
The Book of All Nightmares
. It's a complete record of human nightmares. That's what the Library of Nightmares is, you see—the place where nightmares are recorded.”

“Very interesting,” I said sharply. “I wish we had time to read it. But we need to get Little Dumpling back to Humana before the Unravelers can use him to start their work!”

He started to say something, then paused, gazing at the baby. “May I hold him?” he asked, extending his arms. When I hesitated, he said, “This will likely be the last time I see him.”

I sighed and passed him the baby. Little Dumpling gurgled and patted his cheek.

“Remember me, do you?” asked our shared grandfather.

Against my will, I felt my heart soften just a bit.

“I understand your urgency, Jacob,” said my grandfather, not looking up. “The thing is, we don't keep a door to the other world open at all times. We're preparing a portal now. It should be ready in a few hours. In the meantime, why don't I give you a bit of a tour? Then you can rest. Come on—you should take a look at the book.”

We stepped closer, drawn by the magic happening right before our eyes. The pages flipped rapidly as nightmare after nightmare was written down by the speeding pen.

“Can't see!” complained Toozle.

“Neither can I,” said Luna.

I scooped up the cat, and Lily lifted Toozle. As we watched, the moving pen finished the last page of the book. The book snapped shut and floated to a shelf.

Instantly, another appeared to take its place.

My grandfather gestured toward the shelves. “These volumes hold every nightmare dreamed since Always October came into existence.” He handed LD back to me, then crossed to the shelves and took down a thick volume. “The library is an ever-expanding record of humankind's greatest fears and terrors.”

He placed the book on a wooden table and opened it.

I stared at the writing, puzzled. Here and there would be a paragraph describing some horrible vision, but most of what spilled across the page was a jumble of letters and numbers that made no sense at all.

“What does it mean?” asked Lily. “It's like the book is in code.”

My grandfather nodded. “In a way, it is. Many nightmares are very common—you dream you're being chased yet can't move, or that you've gone to class without your clothes on, or that someone you love is in terrible danger. If every one of those dreams was written out in full, it would be more than the library could handle. So those are noted with symbols. Each set of shelves holds a separate book with a key to all symbols. What's really exciting is when we get a
new
theme, and a dream is written out in detail. That's fairly rare these days. Heck, humans have had so much time to dream up terrors, you'd think there wouldn't be any new ones left. But when it comes to fear, the human mind is astonishingly creative.”

“What are the new dreams about?” I asked.

My grandfather shrugged. “Mostly they come from changes in the world. Many people fear change, so every time a new invention becomes widespread, we get flooded with dreams about the technology running amok. Same with new weapons, of course, or new ways being discussed for how the world might end. I've noticed that television news shows are particularly good at generating nightmares.”

“Really?” asked Lily.

My grandfather nodded. “Every time a network comes up with some new scare campaign, we get hundreds of thousands of nightmares about it. Here, let's take a stroll back through the shelves.”

Following him, we found that the library seemed endless … certainly bigger than I would have thought could be held within the walls of Cliff House. I began to wonder if it stretched into some sort of magical space. Given where we were, that seemed perfectly likely.

At a certain point the records shifted from books to scrolls.

“We also have a large collection of clay tablets,” said my grandfather. “But those are kept—”

He was interrupted by a knocking. I couldn't figure out where it came from until I spotted a small, square door, no more than six inches on a side, in the wall to our right. My grandfather walked over and pulled it open. An arm thrust out. The hand at the end, gloved in white, held a piece of paper. My grandfather accepted it and the hand withdrew, pulling the door shut behind it.

“What was
that
?” asked Lily.

“In-house delivery system.” He unfolded the paper, then smiled. “Ah! The portal will be ready in less than two hours.” He turned toward the front of the library. “We should give you a chance to rest before you go. I'll have Igor show you to your rooms.”

Sure enough, Igor—or, more accurately, Affenheimer Sesselbach—was waiting for us near the pedestal that held the current
Book of All Nightmares
. He was carrying a seven-branched candelabra.

“Show our guests to their rooms, please,” said my grandfather.

“Of course, master,” he replied. Turning to us, he added, “Follow me.”

“I have more questions,” I said urgently.

My grandfather looked sad. “Questions I would probably rather not answer, Jacob.” He sighed. “I think I was a pretty good writer, grandson. Unfortunately, I was fairly lousy at being human. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have much to do to prepare for your departure.”

With that, he turned and walked away. I wanted to follow, to insist on more answers, but Igor put a restraining hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “He came here to try to help Teelamun with Mazrak,” he said. “Not that it did any good. But he's never stopped feeling guilty about leaving his human family.”

He turned away from the thought almost as soon as he had uttered it, and said, “Walk this way!”

He was smiling, and this time I realized he knew the line was a joke. One leg dragging behind him, the light from the candles flickering around us, the hunchback led us up a high, curving stairway. At the top was a hallway much like the one in my house except far, far longer. Like the hall at home, it was lined with pictures, though these made even the freakiest of my ancestors look like beauty-pageant winners.

About a third of the way down the hall Igor stopped between two doors, each made of dark wood and carved with screaming faces. Opening the door on the right, he said, “This is for the young lady.” Then he opened the door on the left. “And this is for the young master.”

Lily stepped into her room. Luna trotted along behind her, tail waving in the air.

I turned to enter my room and realized Toozle was not with me. A moment later he came running down the hall, gasping, “Sorry, sorry! Was looking at picture. Didn't follow fast enough.”

“Come on in,” I said. “You can rest in here with me.”

“Feel free to sleep,” said Igor. “We will wake you when the portal is ready.” He paused, then added, “I know what you have done so far, Jacob. You have been very brave, and it is an honor to meet you. Even so, I will feel better once we have returned you and the baby to Humana. Until that moment I live in terror of what the Unravelers might do. Sleep well.”

“Thank you,” I said, though I thought sleep was extremely unlikely after what he had just said. It turned out I was wrong, since the moment I saw the bed, my body informed me in no uncertain terms how tired I really was.

The bed looked the way you would expect a bed in this place to look: enormous, with a tall post at each corner and curtains hanging from a frame that connected the four posts at the top.

LD was snoozing on my shoulder. I placed him gently on the bed, then crawled up beside him.

Toozle stood on the floor looking up at me. To my left was a good four feet of empty space. “You can climb up too,” I said.

Toozle grinned and scrambled onto the bed, which was higher than he was tall. He flopped onto his back, folded his hands across his chest, and in less than a minute was snoring softly. LD snuggled against me, warm and sweet the way only a baby, even a monster baby, can be. He was clutching his green rattle.

Exhaustion claimed me, and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Though I had plenty of material for nightmares after all we had been through, if there was anything in my brain to be recorded in the Big Book, I was unaware of it.

I'm not sure what woke me—a slight sound, perhaps, or maybe simply the loss of warmth. Whatever it was, I stirred to find that I didn't need a nightmare while I was asleep, since I had opened my eyes to the worst nightmare of all.

Little Dumpling was gone.

W
hen Luna and I entered the room we had been offered and I saw the big bed waiting for us, I found myself longing to rest. Unfortunately I couldn't … not with what I had on my mind. Though things had been moving so fast that I had not had a chance to talk to Jacob about my grandfather, I had come to a decision: I could not go back to Humana without Gramps.

What was there for me if I did go back? Jake, of course, but that was about it. I wouldn't be allowed to live on my own, so I would be sent to a foster home. Might be good, might not. Probably wouldn't be anywhere near Jake. But that wasn't even the main thing.

The main thing was that I had to stay and try to find Grampa.

I knew Jake would be upset when I told him. I also figured he would understand, given everything that had gone on with his own family … though what it meant that he had just found his own grandfather was more than I could think about right then.

The bed was so high off the floor, I was barely able to climb onto it. It was worth the effort, though, because it was wonderfully soft and warm. Luna jumped up next to me and curled up at my side, purring.

“Luna,” I said softly, stroking her fur.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for getting me out of the forest.”

“You're welcome.”

I waited a minute or two, then brought up the next thing on my mind. “I think I'm going to stay here,” I whispered.

“I expected as much.”

“You don't think it's crazy?”

“You love your grandfather, don't you?”

“Of course!”

“Then it doesn't make any difference if it's crazy or not, does it?”

Something about the cat's approval was deeply soothing. Feeling solid in my decision, an unexpected sense of peace came over me, and I drifted off to sleep.

I was having a wonderful dream, sort of an
un
-nightmare, when a pounding on the door brought me bolt upright. I scrambled off the bed and threw open the door. Jake stood there, eyes wild, fingers making a blur against his thumbs. “They've got the baby!” he cried.

My stomach clenched. “Who has the baby? What happened?”

“I don't know, I don't know! I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Little Dumpling was gone! So was Toozle!”