by James Howe
Pete chuckled. “What sort of things?” he asked.
“About what goes on here.”
Slowly, Pete moved toward the girl. She didn’t move. When he was just inches away from her, he said, “How lovely your neck is.”
Well, I was surprised at that one, I can tell you.
As far as I knew, Pete didn’t like girls. He’d certainly never noticed their necks before. Or said mushy things like that.
“So white,” he went on, “so pure, so . . .”
He didn’t finish. Instead, much to my amazement, he lunged for her neck and appeared to be biting it. Chester, Howie and I gasped. The girl fell to the ground. And Pete, wiping his mouth with his arm, laughed like a maniac.
“I can’t believe it,” Chester muttered. “It’s happened. It’s really happened.”
“What’s happened, Pop?”
“Yeah, what?” I asked. “Pete finally likes girls?”
“No, you dimwit. He . . . shh . . . listen!”
Toby came around from back of the house.
“Did you take care of the others?” Pete asked him.
“Yes, Master, just as you told me to.”
Just then, another kid came running up the street and into the yard. He too was wearing a black cape.
“Come on, let’s go,” he called out. “It’s time. The others are waiting.”
Pete and Toby jumped up and down, laughing. “It’s our time at last,” Toby cried out gleefully. “Time for the vampires!”
“On to Castle Bunnicula!” Peter shouted, and they all broke out in demonic giggles.
“We’ve got to stop them!” Chester said, his voice shaking with excitement. “It’s happened, don’t you see? Bunnicula and his zombie vegetables have finally gotten to real human beings. I’m not surprised that it’s our own Toby and Pete who are the ringleaders. I always knew they were too susceptible. All that television had to take its toll one day. And now . . . and now . . . oh, I can’t believe it. Vampires! Come on, you two, we’ve got to get there and warn the others.”
“Get where?” I asked.
“Where they’ve rounded everybody up.” “Gee,” I said, “remember that crowd of people we saw earlier? Do you suppose—”
“Of course!” Chester replied, cutting me off. “They’ve got them all in their power. Hurry, it’s up to us to save what’s left of Centerville.”
Once again that day, I found myself racing down the street. I must admit that this time I was really worried. A drastic change had come over Toby and Pete. Were they gone forever? I thought, as I hurried behind Chester. No more chocolate snacks at twilight, no more games of catch in the backyard, no more tummy rubs?
“Hey, Harold! Chester! Come here, Howie!” I looked back and saw Toby calling us. “Come on, you guys! Where’re you going?”
I hesitated for a moment. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe if I went to them, they’d be just ol’ Toby and ol’ Pete and everything would be the same.
I whimpered, longing for things to go back to the way they were.
“Don’t turn back, Harold,” Chester cried out.
“That’s just what they want you to do. Don’t be a fool! Keep moving! They’ll turn you into a vampire . . . or a werewolf . . . or . . .”
“Ahh-oooooooooo!” Howie yowled, throwing back his head.
Chester shuddered. “Of course, in some cases, we may already be too late,” he said.
“Sorry, Pop,” Howie called out. “I just had to get that off my chest.”
Everything became a blur as we ran faster and faster. Where we were headed I didn’t know. But what we were running from was clear.
“Hey, you guys, come here!” Toby called.
“Here, Harold! Here, Chester! Here, Howie!” Pete chimed in.
Chester is right, I thought. Bunnicula really is a vampire. He really does have minion onions. And now he’s got Toby and Pete, too. Who knows who else in our humble little town has fallen into his clutches? We may be too late to save them all, but we’ll save whomever we can, however we can.
Watch out, Centerville, here we come!
Curse if the Vampires
ON AND ON WE RAN, racing breathlessly past the post office, the Acme Supermarket, the Starlight Lounge and Bowlarama. In the distance, I made out a throng of people moving toward an iron gate that stood ready to swallow them up into the yard of a long brick building.
Castle Bunnicula! I thought, though I must say that even then the building didn’t look too much like a castle anything.
As we drew closer to the milling crowd, Chester cried out, “Mindless zombies! Hypnotized, lost, hopeless. We’ll save them, Harold! We’re almost there, I can feel it!”
I glanced back to see that Toby and Pete and their gang of fiendish hoodlums were still on our tails. Faster, faster I went, dodging honking cars and wobbly bicycles, whose riders called out words of encouragement and support like, “Hey, you stupid dog, watch where you’re going!”
Howie’s little legs scampered by as he shouted, “Aren’t we having fun, Uncle Harold? This is better than eating shoes!”
Chester ran through the crowd and the iron gate. “This way!” he called back to us. “Follow me!”
Howie and I bounded through the gate to find ourselves in the midst of a swarm of people milling about, shouting, laughing, carrying on. What a festive air, I thought, for people doomed to a fate worse than death. I thought no further then as I spotted Chester at the far end of the crowd. He was jumping onto a large platform on which stood a youngster who didn’t seem to notice his arrival. Instead, the kid waved his hands in the air and called out above the heads of the crowd, “Here we are! We’re all ready!”
I glanced behind me and saw that he was shouting to Toby and Pete, who were leading the pack fast catching up with us.
“Hurry!” Chester called to us. “Faster! Faster!”
Through the crowd we raced madly, bumping into legs everywhere we went.
“Watch it!” someone cried.
“Who let those animals in here?” shouted another.
“Oops!!”
“Stop them! Catch them!”
“Mad dogs!”
I looked up to see people lunging toward me. A look of fierce determination glinted in several pairs of eyes. Possessed, I thought; out to get us to join their vampire ranks. I jerked out of the
way of their advances, shepherding Howie safely through.
A fat man in a bright yellow shirt suddenly blocked our way.
“Here, doggie. Come on, little pup,” he said menacingly.
“Be careful!” Chester warned. “Don’t look him in the eye or it’s all over!”
I darted through the man’s legs. He fell forward, narrowly missing squashing Howie, who fortunately moved to the side just in time. I crashed into a little kid, transplanting the ice cream cone he was eating from his fist to his forehead.
“Mommy!” he screeched.
I jumped up onto the platform, knocking over the kid who’d been calling to Toby and Pete.
“What the—” he cried out in surprise as he picked himself up.
“Uncle Harold! Uncle Harold!” Howie called. I dashed back to the platform’s edge to pick Howie up with my teeth.
“Now what?” I asked Chester, dropping Howie on the platform next to me.
Chester looked around him. “This must be their headquarters,” he confided quietly. Then, taking a big breath, he screamed, “Destroy! Demolish! Charge!”
I barked loudly as I dashed about, tumbling into chairs and tables, scattering a scatter rug, unearthing a plant, sending a cup and saucer flying. Howie tugged at the pants leg of the kid still standing on the platform.
“Cut it out!” the kid yelled, trying to shake Howie off. “What’s with you, anyway?”
Chester jumped from one overturned object to another, emitting unearthly yowls as he went.
In short, we made quite a scene.
And it wasn’t over yet. Just as I thought we’d done
about as much damage as we could do, I heard a loud, creaking sound.
“Watch out!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“It’s falling! Move out of the way!”
The kid jerked his pants leg out of Howie’s mouth, and scrambled out of the way and over the edge of the platform.
“Move, Harold!” I heard Toby cry. “It’s going to fall right on your—”
It was then that I glanced up and saw what looked like a wall falling right in my direction. Down it came . . . right toward me. I had enough time to notice a portrait hanging on the wall. And then, with a CRASH, the portrait was hanging on me!
Pretty flimsy construction, I thought, as I surveyed the scene and saw that the “wall” was nothing more than cloth stretched over some pieces of wood. No wonder it hadn’t hurt when it had smashed over my head.
I didn’t have time to observe much else as I heard Chester yelling, “Look, over there, it’s Mrs. Monroe. She’s holding a giant white carrot! Undoubtedly the leader of the vampire vegetables. I’ve got to destroy it!”
I watched as he raced through the crowd and leaped into the air just feet away from where Mrs. Monroe was standing. He smashed into the carrot she was holding in her hands. He must have jumped with a lot of force because the carrot seemed to disintegrate before my eyes. It splattered into the air, all over the ground and over Chester, who at the moment was sliding off the plate the stunned Mrs. Monroe still held in her hands.
Just then, Howie tugged at my hair. “Uncle Harold!” he said with great alarm in his voice.
“Yes? Ouch!”
“They’re drowning Mr. Monroe! Look! He must have resisted, and now they’re drowning him!”
I looked past the crowd, past Mrs. Monroe and Chester, and saw that, sure enough, Mr. Monroe was in the process of being drowned. There he sat, on a little seat above a pool of water when suddenly . . . the seat gave way and . . . splash! . . . down he went!
“I’ll save you!” I barked. I dashed off the platform and through the crowd and without thinking of what I was doing (heroic type that I am) jumped into the pool of water. Boy, was it cold!
Even my teeth were shivering as I grabbed Mr. Monroe by his shirt collar and pulled him to the side. For some reason, he was laughing. Hysterical, I thought, the poor man’s gone over the edge. But, no, he seemed to be laughing at me.
“It’s all right, Harold,” I heard him say, “no one is trying to hurt me. It’s a game, just a game.”
Huh? Now I was really confused. What was going on here anyway?
I looked up to see other people laughing as well. Were they laughing at me? Mrs. Monroe came through the crowd as Mr. Monroe and I departed the pool. Someone handed Mr. Monroe a towel. I shook the water off as best I could, to the squeals of surprise of several bystanders. Mrs. Monroe didn’t appear to be as amused as the other people.
“What in the world’s come over them?” she asked.
Toby and Pete pushed their way through. Toby was carrying a bedraggled-looking Howie under his arm. Chester was suspended by the scruff of his neck from the hand of the irate Pete.
“They’ve ruined everything!” Pete cried.
Ruined? I thought. We saved the day!
Didn’t we?
“Yeah, Mom,” Toby whined. “Look what they did to our play!”
Play?
I turned my head and saw for the first time the sign hanging atop the platform.
“Curse of the Vampires!” it read. “A Play by Toby and Peter Monroe. 1:00 Today!”
I turned and glared at Chester. As best he could in his awkward position, he shrugged.
“Yeah,” Pete went on, “I think they’ve gone crazy or something. We were up at Kyle’s house, practicing our parts, when all of a sudden, the three of them jumped out from behind this bush and took off down the street.”
“We called to them and everything, but they wouldn’t come.”
“We chased after them, but the closer we got, the faster they went.”
“Until they got to school here, and ... well, you see what they did. They knocked over the set and the walls and ... “
School?
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Monroe said, knocking water out of his ear, “we’ll get the stage set up again in no time, and the play will go on as scheduled.”
Mrs. Monroe turned to a woman standing next to her and said apologetically, “I’m sorry about your carrot cake. I’m sure it would have won first prize in the bake-off. It was so clever of you to bake it in the shape of a carrot and put that scrumptuous-looking cream-cheese frosting on it. I don’t know what got into Chester.”
“I don’t know what got into Chester, Mom,” said Pete, “but he sure got into that carrot cake.” A chuckle ran through the crowd.
“And Harold’s acting weird, too,” Toby said.
“Well,” said Mr. Monroe, “I can guess what happened with our friend Harold. He must’ve thought I was drowning and tried to save me. You can’t expect a dog to understand things like a Dunk-the-Teacher booth at a school carnival.”
Dunk-the-Teacher booth? Carnival? I thought. What’s a carnival? I looked around me at the brightly colored streamers that festooned the school playground, the booths, the balloons, the clown who was at that moment walking by. So this is where everybody was headed! Zombies, indeed.
“I’d say you have four unusual pets,” said a man in the crowd, tapping Mrs. Monroe on the shoulder. Mrs. Monroe just shook her head and sighed.
“Yes,” someone else said, “maybe you should have entered them all in the pet contest.”
Chester jumped down from Pete’s arms and ran over to me. “That reminds me,” he said, “we’ve got to find Bunnicula before he—”
Howie cut him off with a sharp yip. “Look,” he cried, squirming out of Toby’s armhold and jumping to the ground. “Over there on that table!“
We looked up and saw a cage made to look like a castle. “Castle Bunnicula” read a sign atop it. On the front was a big blue ribbon that proclaimed “First Prize—Most Unusual Pet in Centerville.” And inside was none other than our long-lost furry friend ... Bunnicula!
We scurried over to the rabbit’s cage and peered in. He was sleeping soundly ... the sleep, as they say, of the innocent.
“So that’s where he’s been,” Howie whispered.
I glared at Chester. “Somebody goofed,” I said. “If you don’t deserve that prize, nobody does.”
Chester yawned. Then he smiled weakly at Howie and me. “Well, boys,” he said, “it’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”
I was about to place my paws around his neck when Mrs. Monroe came up behind us.
“Phew, do you fellas smell!” she said. “Where have you been?”
It’s a long story, I thought.
She called across the school playground to Mr. Monroe, who was on the platform helping some other people put the stage set back together.
“Robert!” she said, “I’m going to take these guys home and give them a quick bath. They smell as if they’ve been to the town dump. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Hurry, Mom,” Toby shouted. “I don’t want you to miss the play.”
We walked single-file behind Mrs. Monroe, our heads hanging, our tails drooping, all the way home.
“Well, Chester,” I mumbled, “now that we’ve made total fools of ourselves, what do you have to say?”
“A slight misinterpretation of the facts,” he replied. “Everyone’s entitled to one slight misinterpretation of the facts in the course of a lifetime.”
Suddenly, Howie said, “Psst, Uncle Harold, don’t look now, but you’re being watched.”
I looked up and saw a large white cat hanging over the front porch railing of his home, his beady eyes following my every step. He hissed. I gulped.
“Remember me?” he said as I passed.
“Uh ... well ... uh ... “
“Don’t worry, buster,” he went on, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You will remember me. On
e of these days, I’ll give you something to remember me by.”
I gulped again, wondering what it would be like never to leave home again.
“Don’t worry, Uncle Harold,” Howie said, apparently overhearing my throat muscles contract, “Snowball may or may not be serious in threatening you. After all, he could be just kitten.”
I resisted the temptation to bounce Howie the rest of the way home.
“Ha ha ha,” Howie chortled. “Get it, Uncle Harold? Just kitten! That’s a cat joke. Wait’ll I tell Pop. I’ll knock him dead.”
Or vice versa, I thought.
I sighed as I mulled over the possibilities fate held in store for me: captive forever in a house with wise-cracking Howie and adventure-loving Chester, with squabbling Toby and Pete and a television set that’s possessed, or free in the world where Snowball was waiting to rearrange my body hair. How complicated life had become for a dog who wanted only the simple pleasures: peace and quiet and the occasional cream-filled chocolate cupcake.
I appreciated anew the old expression: it’s a dog’s life!
Home Is Where the Heart Is
THAT EVENING, bathed, fed and refreshed, I felt life returning to a semblance of normalcy. I was curled up on the rug contentedly chewing a recent copy of Architectural Digest, while nearby Howie and Chester were trying to help Toby and Pete solve a Rubik’s Cube. Howie’s idea of helping was to grab it with his teeth and race to the other side of the room before the boys could get it away from him. Time after time they succeeded in retrieving it, however, until he finally tired of the game and began playing tug-of-war with Mr. Monroe’s slipper. Unfortunately, Mr. Monroe’s foot was still in residence in his slipper, so that didn’t last long either. Bunnicula sat in his cage, staring out at the rest of us and twitching his nose, which I guess is a rabbit’s way of having fun. Or at least passing the time. His First Prize ribbon adorned his regular cage; Castle Bunnicula, I gathered, having been relegated to the garage or one of the boy’s bedrooms.
The Architectural Digest clamped in my jaws lost its interest when Mrs. Monroe appeared suddenly at the kitchen door carrying a plate of fudge. I ran to her side and begged shamelessly.
