by Ned Rust
“Um, no,” said Patrick as a sheep came up and pressed the surprisingly hard top of its head against his leg. “So what’s the deal with all the farm animals?”
“Farm animals?”
“The sheep and cow and—” Patrick broke off, noticing a llama on the roof of the house next door.
“What do you mean what’s the deal with them? They control plant growth, and provide milk, wool, and fertilizer for the municipality.”
“What’s going on, Kempton?!” demanded a woman’s voice from behind Patrick. “With whom are you speaking?!”
“Mother! I found an Earthling! Didn’t you see my feed?!”
Patrick looked up as a blond woman, hands on her wide hips, came down the path from the house. She was wearing a neatly ironed flower-patterned dress and had on even more makeup than the boy. Her ears were similarly tiny and her eyes enormous—and they got even larger as she looked up from her own fancy smartphone, regarded Patrick, and began to scream.
CHAPTER 9
Sorry, Wrong House
Ichabod Coffin was not happy. Ultravivid dreams—including one in which some very strange people had moved next door and taken to throwing loud parties—had kept him tossing and turning all night long, causing his back to seize up and forcing him to seek relief in the massage chair down in the den.
He was still in the motorized chair—his reading glasses perched at the tip of his parrot-beak nose, his MacBook Pro centered in his flannel-robed lap—as the sun cleared the pine trees in the backyard and cast an annoying glare upon his newsfeed.
Watching people on Facebook had become one of his favorite pastimes of late. The idea of actively joining—commenting, sharing, telling people about his own life, etc.—seemed crazy to him, but he did occasionally feel pressure to be a part of the community and would sometimes press the Like button to show his approval of, or at least his amusement at, other people’s posts. He somehow was fascinated to see other people show off their kids, their puppies, their cats, their cars, their gardens, their meals, their deluded impressions of what was politically important … They were all so alarmingly stupid and spoiled—and this whole braggy social-media thing was to his mind another sign of civilization’s demise—but, at the same time, it was utterly riveting.
And he would have watched longer this particular morning despite the sun’s glare, but at 9:33 a.m. a flash of green issued from the hallway, together with an enormous, floor-shaking thud that caused dishes to chime and tinkle in the kitchen, and he broke off.
His mind flailed for explanations. It couldn’t be Consuela. His Ecuadoran live-in housekeeper had left last night to visit her daughter in North Carolina. Had an appliance or a lightbulb exploded? Maybe those new high-efficiency LED bulbs he’d installed weren’t stable? But an exploding bulb couldn’t possibly have made that much noise. And why would there have been green light? It had definitely been green.
He could call 911 but the police would take minutes to get here, and to talk right now might be to alert a home invader to his presence. He could run—flee through the front door in his bathrobe and bare feet—go to a neighbor’s house. But what if there was an innocent explanation?
Clearly he should first figure out what was going on, and then decide what to do about it.
It had to be a burglar. Ichabod’s great-grandfather had been a banking tycoon and, though no Coffin since had much grown the family fortune, the old man’s inheritance had been managed well, and the eight-bedroom, timber-framed house still reeked of wealth.
But if anybody thought it was going to be an easy job to rob the Coffin estate, the low-life scumbag had another think coming.
Despite Hedgerow Heights’ nearly nonexistent crime rate, Ichabod had installed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of silent alarms, motion detectors, panic buttons, and security cameras throughout the estate. And he’d taken other measures, too, including stockpiling self-defense items. In the coffee table right in front of him, for instance, was a Taser X3—the most advanced nonlethal self-defense item one could legally purchase over the Internet.
He pulled open the drawer and removed the black-and-yellow, pistol-like device. Holding the weapon out with both hands like a TV-show policeman, he crab-stepped his way out into the narrow hallway.
A faint but sickly sweet, smoky smell greeted his nose, and he could hear a low, regular rasping noise like somebody breathing, somebody with asthma. He quietly stalked to the end of the hallway and peered around the mahogany doorjamb. There on the floor next to the marble-topped counter, an animal was sprawled, apparently asleep, its furry gray-brown, puffy-tailed butt pointed right at him—there was a bear in his house!
But the creature appeared to be asleep. He immediately thought to retrieve one of the six cans of bear spray he’d ordered after the Peekskill sighting a few months back. One was stashed by the seldom-used front door. But he probably shouldn’t be setting off bear spray inside a house and anyhow it wasn’t a very large bear—probably just a cub, not much bigger than a large dog—and certainly a good deal smaller than a full-grown criminal.
He considered the weapon in his hand, leveled his arm, and placed the red laser-sight dot right in the middle of the animal’s fluffy rump. There was a terrific pop! and a series of clicks, and the next thing he knew the animal was flopping on the floor, its claws clacking noisily on the polished hardwood.
It was a disturbing sight, not that he spent much time watching. He dropped the still-discharging weapon and ran—or at least tottered—back down the hall as fast as his knob-kneed old legs would take him.
He didn’t get very far. As he crossed the dining room he was nearly dropped to his knees by a terrifying pain in his chest. He gasped and placed his right hand on his left breast. An image of a trout flopping in the bottom of a rowboat came to him and he did his best not to panic. He needed to stay calm. He needed to think rationally. He needed to slow his pulse and be clearheaded. And especially he needed to avoid having a heart attack while there was a bear in his kitchen.
Putting his free hand on the back of the nearest chair, he dropped his head and concentrated on his breathing. Just breathing, like he did for his weekly calisthenics: In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out.
The tingling in his arms, and the ringing in his ears, began to fade. He raised his head and listened. No sounds were coming from the kitchen. Maybe he’d killed the animal or—better yet—maybe it had fled back outside the way it had come in? Had it entered through an open window? Had Consuela left the back door unlatched?
“A bear,” he whispered to himself. “A bear in my kitchen!”
And a strangely colored one at that. It had to have been a black—there were no grizzlies east of the Rockies, thank God. But this one had been grayish brown in color. Perhaps sometimes black bears weren’t entirely dark, or maybe their young sometimes were lighter colored.
But it had definitely been a bear. Its legs had been thicker than a dog’s, and most dogs didn’t have puffy tails. But … did bears have puffy tails?
He drew a deep breath, held it, let it out, and tried letting go of the chair.
He was fine. He could walk. He—
“What kind of greeting was that for a world-weary traveler?!”
The servant’s door was being held wide by a relatively short furry animal standing on its hind legs.
As Ichabod Coffin’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head, the creature craned its antlered head over its shoulder.
“Gah!” it exclaimed as it yanked one of the electrodes from its rump. “These things have barbs on them!”
“O-oh-a-o-eh!” replied Ichabod, collapsing back against the dining table, his heart once again flip-flopping in his chest, his lungs aching for breath, and his mind—as he lost consciousness—busy trying to decide if the police sirens he was hearing were real, or figments of his imagination.
CHAPTER 10
Second Thoughts
“Mother!” yelled the big-eyed boy named Kempton. “Cut it out. I
t’s okay. This is a good thing! It’s an Earthling!”
Kempton’s mother kept right on screaming. Patrick wondered if, beyond the obviously large eyes, she might have outsized lungs, too.
A big-eyed businessman rushed out of the house, button-down shirt untucked, a white streak of cream cheese or something on his rouged cheek, and a torn edamame pod in his hand.
“Darling, darling!” he yelled as he stumbled down the path, startling the animals into the neighbor’s yard. “What’s the matter!?”
A dark-haired girl about Patrick’s age trailed after the man. She had the same big eyes and was dressed all in black except for some silver rings on her fingers and an Egyptian ankh pendant hanging from her neck. Of everyone there, she had on the least makeup.
Kempton’s mother buried her head in her husband’s chest and began to sob.
“Is it Kempton? What’s he done?!” blurted the man. He gave his wife a one-armed embrace and squinted down the path.
“Kempton Chappaqua Puber! Come here right now and apologize to your mother!”
“But, Father—didn’t you see my vid-feed?—it’s an Earthling!”
“I’ll make you wish you were an Earthling if you don’t get here in two quints!”
Kempton’s mother was blubbering words including sick, inconsiderate, imp, horrid, ungrateful, and apologize at her husband.
“Wait right here,” said Kempton.
“I wouldn’t know where else to go,” said Patrick softly, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
Kempton stomped away toward his parents.
The dark-haired girl regarded Patrick from the flagstone walkway. “So, how’s your day going?” she asked.
“Um. Okay,” said Patrick, a little flustered. She was quite pretty and he found himself dropping his eyes to the ground, whereupon he noticed her shoes were like gloves—the fronts were indented around her individual toes. He looked up the path and now noticed the same was true of the father’s, the mother’s, and the boy’s, too.
“Just kind of found yourself on our lawn?” she asked.
“Um, yeah,” said Patrick.
She nodded as if this were what she had been expecting him to say. “What’s your shirt all about?” she asked.
“Umm,” said Patrick. He was wearing Neil’s They Might Be Giants shirt with the giant squid on it—a hand-me-down. He’d slept in it last night because his pajama drawer had been empty. “Umm, they’re called They Might Be Giants—they’re sort of a rock band,” he said.
“Rock band? What’s that?”
“Umm,” said Patrick again, wondering if she was making fun of him. “You know, they play music.”
“Cool,” she said. “I like the lettering.”
Patrick looked down at the shirt again.
“Hey, Earthling!” yelled the boy from up the walkway.
“I’ll handle this, Kempton!” said the boy’s father, turning and beckoning Patrick with his soybean-holding hand. “Come here, son, I want a word with you.”
“I’m Oma, by the way, Oma Puber.”
“I’m Patrick,” he replied, fascinated as a gust of wind set her crow-black hair whipping about her shoulders, “Patrick Griffin.”
She offered him a Mona-Lisa smile as he turned and headed up the path.
“What on the Minder’s green Ith—” said the father as his eyes settled on Patrick’s face, and ears.
Patrick stopped at hand-shaking distance and tried to smile.
“Father, there’s tofu whip on your cheek,” said Kempton.
The big-eyed man handed his bean pod to his wife and absently wiped at his cheek.
“Allow me, son,” he said, reaching out and gently grabbing both of Patrick’s ears.
“They’re real,” he gasped.
Patrick shrugged.
“See?” said Kempton, offering his father what looked to be a bottle of hand sanitizer. “I told you so.”
The woman tentatively stopped crying. “Really?”
After wiping his hands, the man waved at a security camera atop a polished aluminum street pole and stumbled back up the path toward the house. “Wait here, everybody. I must have left my binky in the kitchen.”
CHAPTER 11
Service Outage
Grunting and gasping like he was getting into a way-too-hot bath, Ichabod Coffin rolled onto his back and immediately wished he hadn’t—the back of his head felt like he’d been smacked with a board, and his wrists ached, too. Perhaps he’d tried to stop himself from falling? Perhaps he’d tried to fend off—
The creature with the antlers!
He felt up and down his body and, failing to find any torn fabric or gaping wounds, raised his hands to his face. There didn’t seem to be any blood—clearly he hadn’t been mauled.
Had he had a stroke or a heart attack? If so, he felt pretty okay. Well, okay other than for questioning his own sanity. Had the creature—whatever it was—actually spoken to him? Had he hallucinated?
He rolled over and sat up. At which point he noticed a water glass and a small card on the floor next to him. He picked up the latter and squinted at the large, handwritten block letters.
FORGIVENESS IS THE CALLING CARD OF THE BRAVE. –BCP §307¶404
He flipped the card over and—with some difficulty—read,
JOHN ANDERSON PERTOLOPE, ESQ.
a.k.a. Mr. BunBun
Trans-World Consultant and Fomenter
He clucked his tongue in anger. What was going on here? Some sort of prank? It made him furious to consider this, but at the same time, it was some reassurance: clearly he hadn’t lost his mind. Obviously it couldn’t have been a talking bear or a giant antlered rabbit, or really, an animal of any sort. It had been somebody—a person, a criminal—in costume. It made perfect sense. Criminals, of course, often wear disguises.
He replaced the card and looked at the water glass. He was quite thirsty but it obviously had been put there by whoever had left the card and he shouldn’t disturb the crime scene. The police could dust it for fibers and fingerprints.
He stood and, steadying himself on a chair, reached for his iPhone. It was clearly time to call 911.
But the smartphone wasn’t in the pocket of his robe where it should have been. He let loose a torrent of very bad words as he bent and looked under the dining room table, where it wasn’t, either. The hooligan had clearly taken it.
Running his hand along the wall for support, he headed back to the den and saw, with some measure of relief, his Macbook Pro still on the coffee table. What was missing, however, was the house’s cordless phone.
He considered why a burglar would steal a thirty-dollar phone when a three-thousand-dollar lamp and a two-thousand-dollar computer were right there in plain sight. Probably they had taken it precisely to prevent his calling 911.
He shuffled to the kitchen where he found the parquet floor under a half inch of water. Letting loose another torrent of bad words, he kicked off his slippers and splashed to the overflowing sink to shut off the tap. The drowned carcasses of his iPhone and apparently every other phone in the house were at the bottom of the stainless steel basin. Another business card was propped on the windowsill behind the faucet. The message written upon it read,
BINKIES ARE FOR BABIES –BCP §1401¶17
“What on Earth is that supposed to mean?!” he wondered aloud.
The bird clock on the wall said it was almost nine forty-five a.m. He’d assumed it was later. The person had taken the time to write two notes, pour a glass of water, collect and drown all the phones in the house. That alone could have taken twenty minutes, and if he’d only been passed out for ten or fifteen …
Perhaps the malefactor was right now upstairs cracking Mother’s jewelry safe, or down in the basement searching for the false panel behind which the Eau Clair silverware was hidden?!
The Taser clearly hadn’t worked that well.
“The bear spray!” he said aloud. Wasn’t it guaranteed to be powerful enough to stop a seven-
hundred-pound bear!? The closest can was stashed in the broom closet by the back door. He quickly sploshed across the kitchen and removed it from the top shelf, breaking off the safety tab and giving enough of a read to the directions to realize they were a silly restatement of common sense (“Use only in case of impending attack,” “Hold can perpendicular to the ground,” “Do not use indoors,” “Do not spray upwind,” etc.). Then he noticed movement through the back door’s four-paned window. The costumed burglar was out in his backyard demolishing the bird feeders!
“You good-for-nothing vandal!” the old man screamed as he burst out the back door and stumbled down the brick path. “Look what you’ve done! Are you eating my birdseed?!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, is it yours?” replied Mr. BunBun, slowly swallowing a last mouthful of seeds as he sized up the angry man. “I assumed since it was out here and otherwise the birds would eat it all up—”
Two things dawned on Mr. Coffin. The first was that animal costumes had come a long way in the dozen years since he’d last opened the door for a trick-or-treater (the mask was so lifelike—the shiny black eyes, the intricately molded teeth, the glistening mouth and snout, the multi-textured fur…), and, second, that no sober burglar would be out in the yard ransacking somebody’s birdfeeders.
“Are you a druggie?!”
“Druggie?” asked Mr. BunBun. “I’m not familiar with that word.”
“You’re a disgusting, filthy drug addict, aren’t you?! That’s why you were asleep on the floor of my kitchen, that’s why you’re out here in an animal suit eating birdseed! You’re higher than a kite!”
“Kite? What? I—”
“You picked the wrong house to mess with, you reprobate!”
“Reprobate? Mess with? Sorry? I’m afraid I don’t have the foggiest notion—you seem to be angry—perhaps we should back up and—” BunBun broke off, bemused suddenly. He’d been worried the object the old man was holding was another weapon like the one with which he’d first electrocuted him. But now he’d had a better look at it. “Is that can you’re holding labeled ‘bear spray’? Do you think I’m a bear?”
