Hello Neighbor: Waking Nightmare by Carly Anne West

Author:Carly Anne West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2018-06-14T17:00:00+00:00

These days, I spend most of my nights trying to fall asleep, and then regretting when I do.

This dream isn’t like the others. I can tell right away I’m inside, but not in a shopping cart or roller coaster car. This time, I’m on cold, hard cement.

“Hello?”

My voice should come back to me. Surrounded by all this cement, I expect an echo, but I’m greeted only by thick silence, like the air has swallowed my word in one gulp.

Then, all at once, a voice does waft past my ear: not my echo, but the familiar croaking voice of my long-dead grandmother.

“You stop that wandering, Boychik! Or one day, you won’t make it home!”

It’s the only thing I ever remember her saying. There were kind words and strong hugs I’m sure, but her warning is all that’s stayed with me. It didn’t work, though. My dreams make me wander; they always have.

Slowly, light creeps in, and I see I’m in the Golden Apple factory, its endless hallway of locked doors lined up on either side of me, bearing witness to Aaron’s and my petty crimes. I don’t have my lockpicks with me, though, so I pound on door after door down the endless corridor. No one answers.

Finally reaching the end of the hallway, I come to a door that’s different than the others. This one is wooden, with boards nailed across the front and a series of locks dangling from their hinges. I pull the boards away and pry off what remains of the hinged locks, then open the door to a set of steep stairs descending into an inky depth I can’t see the bottom of.

“Aaron!” I call, but barely a sound comes out. I try again. “Mya!” But my voice is lost to the same echoless abyss as before.

I know I shouldn’t go through the door, but my grandma was right; I wander where I’m not supposed to, and this time, I think where I’m not supposed to go is exactly where I’ll find the answers to where Aaron and Mya are.

Bracing myself against the cold cement walls, I grope for a railing that doesn’t exist and instead tap my toe in front of me to find each steep step that leads me farther into the bowels of what feels less like the Golden Apple factory and more like whatever lies behind the forbidden cellar door of the Petersons’ house.

The steps in my dream are getting steeper, and soon I can’t feel the next one with my toe. I hold my breath as I drop down with each descent, and the walls have gone from cool and dry to slick with some sort of dark grease.

Then, on the last step, the ground doesn’t meet me like it should. I try to pull myself back against the wall, but it’s too slick, and I fall with a stumble, skidding face-first to the damp, cold floor.

I’m surrounded in a darkness so thick, I can’t see my hand in front of me.

“Aaron?”

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