It’s time for the next installment of our Tales from Macabre Manor retrospective. We’re going to be talking about the second book in the series, The Nightmare Man. In this novel, M.P. Hanover had his hero Milton Mallory tackle a spectre plaguing the people of Pine Valley. It takes place about a year after The Flowers of Pine Valley, which reflects the time between the publication of the two novels.

The Nightmare Man starts with Milton noticing his friend Lyla White always seems tired at school. He asks her about it, and she says she’s not sleeping well. Throughout the week, more and more people he encounters have bags under their eyes and seem to be completely sapped of energy. Everyone’s response is similar to Lyla’s.

When Friday comes, Lyla’s not in school. Their teacher asks him to bring her homework to her since she lives in the last house on the street that ends at the gates to Mallory Manor. When he arrives, her parents are in a similar state as the other exhausted townsfolk. They tell him that Lyla missed school because she burned her hand really badly while boiling water on the kettle.

Milton is sent through to Lyla’s room to give her the homework from their teacher. He asks her what happened, and she says that while she was boiling the water, she nodded off and began to fall. That jolted her awake, and when she instinctively reached out to steady herself, her hand pressed against the side of the kettle. The metal was hot enough to cause third-degree burns all across her palm.

Seeing how her lack of sleep was becoming dangerous, Milton presses her for more information about why she’s not sleeping. Lyla finally admits that for the past week, she’s been visited by the Nightmare Man. Milton doesn’t know what she’s talking about and asks who the Nightmare Man is, but Lyla’s parents suddenly interrupt them and tell Milton he needs to go.

Once he gets home, Milton retrieves his copy of Pine Valley Fables to see if there’s anything about the Nightmare Man. Sure enough, he finds a story called “The Nightmare Man Cometh.” It explains that shortly after Pine Valley was founded, a stranger arrived seeking shelter. He claims something is after him, and begs them to hide him away. The townsfolk were suspicious of him and his intentions, so they refused to let him stay in Pine Valley. They chased him off and told him never to return.

Two weeks later, the stranger’s body was found by a pair of fur trappers about three miles outside of town. They couldn’t find any marks on his body that might indicate how he died. When they searched his person, the only item he had on him was a small ivory token with an open eye carved on one side and a closed eye on the other. The fur trappers buried the stranger where they found him and brought the ivory token back to Pine Valley.

The townsfolk soon began reporting having nightmares about being chased through the forest by a shadowy beast. No matter how fast they ran, they couldn’t escape. They eventually reached a cave and raced inside, hoping to hide from their pursuer. Although the beast did not follow them into the cave, their ordeal wasn’t over yet. They ventured deeper underground until they came upon a chamber lit by a glowing white orb. At the center of the chamber was a plain wooden coffin.

They felt compelled to open the coffin, and when they did, they discovered the body of the stranger. His eyes suddenly opened and he climbed out of the coffin. He grabbed their hand, causing them to feel a searing pain, as if being burned. This was when they would wake up. Most of the townsfolk were simply left feeling tired and lethargic. However, one person awakened to find their hand bubbling with blisters in the shape of an open eye.

Within a week, the person with the eye marking on their hand died mysteriously. Just like with the stranger, there was no apparent cause of death. The following week, the townsfolk had the same nightmare again. Another person was left with the eye burned into their palm, and they suffered the same fate as the last. This went on for another two weeks before the townsfolk forced the fur trappers to take them to the stranger’s grave.

When they dug up the disturbed earth, they discovered that the body of the stranger was gone. The townsfolk lived in fear of the dream’s return, but as the weeks became months and the months became years, the dream of the Nightmare Man never returned. It was soon relegated to the annals of myth and legend.

At school the following Monday, Milton approached Lyla as soon as she arrived. He asked her to see her hand, and when she showed it to him, she had the same blister marks shaped like an eye that was described in his book. She finally confesses that she had the same dream that Milton read about, and that she didn’t burn her hand on the kettle. The last time she woke up from the dream, the eye marking had appeared.

Milton manages to confirm that many of the other townsfolk suffering from sleep depravation have also had the dream, but only Lyla received the blistered eye. He fears that his friend is marked for death, and became desperate to find a way to save her. Not knowing what else to do, he ventures into Brokenwood Forest during the next full moon and returns to the glade with the meadow of black-stem orchids.

The Dancing Wraith appears to him again, and he asks her about the Nightmare Man. She knows he is from the forest like her, but she has no idea who he is or how to save Lyla. Milton wonders why he has been spared from having the same nightmare, and the Dancing Wraith speculates that breaking the curse on his family offered him some manner of protection.

He asks if there’s any way to let him have the dream. The Dancing Wraith plucks an orchid from the meadow and crushes it in her hand. She gives Milton the petals and tells him to use them to brew a tea. Once he drinks the tea, it will induce the dream. However, she warns him that any protection he had against the Nightmare Man will be gone. He thanks her for her help and returns home to brew the tea.

Within minutes of drinking the tea, Milton falls asleep and begins to have the dream. When the Nightmare Man grabs his hand and burns his palm, he squeezes his hand shut. Even though the pain increased tenfold, he refuses to open it. The Nightmare Man points at the coffin, and Milton climbs inside. He finds himself falling through a lightless void as a heartbeat echoes around him. The sound gets louder and louder until reaching a deafening crescendo. Finally, Milton wakes up.

When he looks down at his hand, he sees that his palm is covered in blisters. Instead of an open eye, his blisters are in the shape of a closed eye. The following day at school, Lyla is in much better spirits. She shows Milton that her hand is completely healed. Over the next few weeks, the people of Pine Valley return to their usual selves, no longer plagued by the dream of the Nightmare Man. The blisters on Milton’s hand heals, but he is left with a scar of the closed eye.

In an interview published by the Carson Hills Journal, Hanover revealed that he was inspired to write The Nightmare Man by a recurring dream that had plagued him for years. He refused to describe it, claiming to never remember the details. He only remembered the feeling of deep dread it left when he woke up. He told the interviewer that unlike his young hero, he hadn’t found a way to make the dream stop. The novel’s happier ending was Hanover essentially rewriting reality to be more to his liking.

While The Nightmare Man didn’t sell as well as The Flowers of Pine Valley, it was still successful enough for Hanover to continue the series. The second installment of the series was notable for the introduction of Lyla White, who would go on to become a much more important character later in the series. When Hanover was asked if she was based on a real person in the same way the members of the Mallory family were based on the Rook family, he only said that she was the ghost of a girl he once knew long ago.

-William Cooper & Elizabeth Barton, Human Interest, Emerson Valley Gazette