Nightmare Before Christmas Read Free

mistletoe. No luck. Then he tried a candy cane and a teddy bear. Still no luck. His eye fell on a group of bright Christmas ornaments: globes, angels, and a glittering star.
    "Hmmm" he murmured "It's worth a try." He crushed the star and poured the dust into a beaker. At first nothing happened. Then it began to glow and pulsate, filling the room with a beautiful soft green light. What was it? What did it mean? Jack didn't know.
    Not far away, someone else was watching that pulsing green light. As Jack stood in his tower room transfixed by its unearthly glow, Sally the Rag Doll saw it from the window, high up in her room, where the Evil Scientist had locked her.
    Sally wanted to escape the doctor more than ever. But for the first time in her lonely rag-doll life, she yearned to escape to someone. And that someone was Jack. Sally had fallen in love with him.
    She had decided to send him a gift--a special potion she had prepared for herself. She put the potion into a basket and lowered it out of her window on a rope. The ground was so far away! For an instant Sally lost her courage. But the thought of Jack brought it back to her. The basket landed on the ground, and Sally gathered up all her resolve. Then she jumped.
    The thud she made was soft enough that no one, least of all the Evil Scientist, heard it. So even though she had lost an arm and a leg in the fall, Sally didn't mind. She was clever. She had come prepared. She pulled out her trusty darning needle and proceeded to sew herself back together again. It didn't take long. Moments later she was standing at the foot of Jack's tower, fastening her basket to the rope and pulley that hung from Jack's window.
    When Sally's basket arrived, Jack was in the middle of yet another equation. This one read: Presents + Mistletoe + Snowballs = Christmas Fun. It looked as good as all the others. Why weren't any of them adding up right? Jack scratched his skull. It was aching.
    The basket at his window was a welcome interruption. So was Sally,. who stood, far below, beaming up at him. The sight cheered Jack immensely, though he couldn't say why. Then he noticed a bottle in the basket. He opened it. A tiny cloud drifted out of the bottle and took shape in the air above Jack's head. It became a ghostly butterfly, beautiful and haunting.
    How lovely! thought Jack. He leaned out the window to thank Sally, but she had disappeared.
    Though she was extremely clever and brave enough to jump fifty feet to the ground, Sally was also a little shy. The moment Jack had smiled down at her, she had been seized by a fit of shyness so overpowering that it had whisked her away from his tower like a turbocharged witch's broom. Now she sat at the town gates, wondering what the future held. Well, there was one way to find out.
    Sally picked a flower and began pulling off its petals one by one. "He loves me, he loves me not," she whispered. "He loves me. He--" Suddenly the flower in Sally's hand did something very strange. It began to twirl around, then changed into a miniature Christmas tree!
    Sally stared at it, not knowing what to think. Did this mean that Jack didn't love her? Or was it a bad omen about his plans for Christmas? She just didn't know. Suddenly the tiny tree burst into flames and disappeared, leaving Sally cold, confused, and completely in the dark.

C H A P T E R . S I X
    Sally wasn't the only one who was in the dark that night. Up in his tower, Jack was completely befuddled also. He'd done fifty-six more equations. He'd experimented with everything from toy trains to tinsel. He'd read Christmas stories and memorized Christmas carols. He'd been methodical. He'd been scientific. He'd been... unsuccessful. For in spite of all his calculations, Jack still hadn't been able to isolate the Christmas spirit. He felt as far from a solution now as when he'd started.
    He groaned, covering his eyes in despair.
    When he opened them, they fell on the beaker, glowing green, on his table. Its light was