Nat swallowed hard and reached a shaky hand out toward the cover. Before he could touch it, the book sprang open again, almost knocking him over. The pages riffled and fanned themselves fussily, opening at last to a picture of a boy and a large white wolf, which looked uncannily like himself and Woody. To Nat’s delight, the picture began to move and the sketch turned into a living but tiny version of boy and Wolven. Nat breathed in the sea air and the salty, eggy smell of the seaweed as he pushed his face closer to the page. He heard himself laugh as his tiny self and Woody ran down to the shoreline. It looked as though it was a late summer’s evening. Nat watched in delight as the pair played in the surf.

Abruptly, the scene changed to a leafy, wooded glade. His delight turned to dismay as dark clouds rolled inland toward the woods, where the boy and Wolven were now enjoying a walk. Then Nat spotted a third figure, in the corner of the page. It appeared to be watching them.

Nat strained to see the tall, thin figure more clearly, and then wished he hadn’t. The watcher turned away from the pair in the woods and looked straight at Nat. Terrified, Nat tried to look away from the burning orange eyes. “No,” he whispered, but he couldn’t break his gaze.

The figure grew larger on the page, as if a camera were zooming in on it. Nat felt himself being drawn closer in. The man grinned at Nat, showing enormous teeth; the smell of its breath made him gag. Nat saw now that it wasn’t a man at all. It was some kind of werewolf. The same horrible, mottled, gray-skinned thing he had seen in his nightmares: Lucas Scale! Never mind being politically correct; the thing grinning at him from the page was a crazed werewolf. He tried to tear his terrified gaze away from the loathsome mottled wolf thing. It raised a misshapen paw in a kind of mocking salute. Nat couldn’t help himself. He screamed.

A large white furry object hurtled out of nowhere and knocked him away from the evil book. As Nat fell onto the stone floor, he saw that Woody had grasped the book in his jaws. He let it drop to the floor and began pummeling it with his paws, gripping random pages with his teeth and shredding them to a pulp. Pages flew everywhere, swooping around the room like white birds. When Nightmares: A Compendium had been mashed beyond recognition and the pages lay strewn around as though they were dead at last, Woody threw himself on Nat, chuffing and yipping, trying to console him.

“OK, OK!” Nat laughed shakily. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had cyclehatrick help.”

Woody wagged his tail and pulled at Nat’s jeans with his teeth.

“Absolutely,” agreed Nat. “Let’s get out of here!”