The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado

by John R. Erickson

Ooooo boy, we didn’t need to go very far down that road to find a couple of tombstones.

  How had I gotten myself into this mess? Oh yes, the storm. And the bacon, speaking of which . . . I still hadn’t been able to snag that bacon and the aroma of it was about to drive me . . .

  The Voice That Chills came again from the other room.

  “Loper, wake up.”

  “Uuuuuu.”

  “Loper, somebody is in this house.”

  “Uuuuuuu a;ckeit cl0e89dskcgh slckbnbedn—3um.”

  “Loper, wake up!”

  “Huh? What?”

  “I heard a sound in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll be derned.”

  “Would you like to go check it out?”

  “Nope.” Silence. “Ouch! Those are my ribs.”

  “Dear, please.”

  “Okay, okay. Okay.” The bed squeaked. Foot­steps on the floor. “Okay. Kitchen. All you people in the kitchen stand at attention. Here I come.”

  He was coming. That was pretty serious but not nearly as serious as if Sally May Herself had come. Somehow the thought of getting murdered by Loper didn’t terrify me as much.

  Still, we had to do something. I glanced at Alfred. He looked rather pale, seemed to me, and scared beyond recognition. The sound of bare feet moving across the floor filled the dreadful silence. They were coming our way.

  The feet, that is. Loper was coming our way too, walking on his . . . you get the idea.

  I was still watching Alfred, waiting for him to give us a sign. Son, do something. Don’t just stand there. Several lives are at stake here.

  The footsteps were coming closer and closer. My heart was pounding. The boy was frozen in his tracks. I was so scared that I could no longer smell that wonderful bacon draped over my snout. That’s pretty scared.

  Footsteps in the darkness.

  The rumble of thunder outside.

  Hearts racing and pounding.

  Then . . .

  Chapter Seven: Inside the Coverous Cavern

  At last he made his move, and not a second too late. Too soon, I guess it ought to be. He made his so-forth not a second too soon.

  He darted through the nearest doorway and into his bedroom, which lay just to the south of the kitchen. That was a piece of good luck for us, that his room was close by.

  Alfred didn’t say a word to me or Drover about following him, but then again, he didn’t need to say a word. I was ready to get out of there.

  On silent paws that made not a sound, I brushed past Drover and whispered, “You stole my bacon, you little creep.”

  We whisked ourselves through the door and into Alfred’s room. The boy oozed himself into his bed and, well, I guess he wanted us to crawl UNDER the bed, but in the excitement and confusion of the . . .

  We jumped into bed with him, is more or less what we did, and went slithering beneath the covers, straight to the bottom. See, I’m not fond of the underneath-side of beds. Too many spiders.

  And dust. Drover has allergies, don’t forget, and the last thing we needed was for him to go into a fit of sneezing.

  But back to the spider deal, I’m no chicken liver but I don’t get along with spiders. Don’t laugh. We have a variety of spiders in this country called the Brown Fiddlebow and they’re nothing to play around with.

  They bite, don’t you see, and they don’t rattle or hiss before they bite. Rattlesnakes are bad enough but at least they give you some warning. Those spiders merely bite, and I’ve heard stories about what happens.

  Your legs rot away. Your tail falls off. Your ears turn brown like autumn leaves and then they fall off too.

  You want to crawl under a bed with a nest of Brown Fiddlebow spiders? Neither did I, and if Little Alfred didn’t want two wet dogs under the covers with him, that was, as we say, too bad.

  And besides the spiders and so forth, I like soft beds.

  So there we were, under the covers and at the bottom of the bed, with Little Alfred’s feet sticking in our faces. It was then and there, in the silence and in the darkness, that I came to a terrible realization.

  “Drover,” I whispered, “I’ve lost my bacon.”

  “Oh darn.”

  “And if you find it before I do, I would appreciate it if you would turn it in to the proper authorities.”

  “You bet.”

  “Because if you don’t, if you steal another piece of my bacon, you little chiseler, your mother won’t recognize your face when I get finished with it.”

  “Yeah, good old Mom. I wish she was here.”

  “If she were here, Drover, it would be very crowded.”

  “Oh, she didn’t take up much space. They always said Mom was so thin, you couldn’t see her if she turned sideways.”

  “Hmmm. That’s very interesting.”

  “Yeah. And Uncle Spot always said she was too skinny to cast a shadow.”

  “I’ll swan.”

  “They said she had worms.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And she didn’t take the time to eat right.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Too busy raising pups.”

  “Drover, did you hear anything I said about the bacon?”

  “Oh yeah, she loved bacon. I’d almost forgotten how much she loved bacon.”

  “Drover, are you there?”

  “Good old Mom. I wonder what she’s doing today.”

  Sometimes . . . oh well. I had more serious matters to think about than Drover’s mother, the poor woman. Just imagine the sleepless nights she’d spent, wondering what could have produced her feather-brained son.

  Yes, I had very serious matters to think about, such as the footsteps that by this time had reached the kitchen. I lay perfectly still and listened.

  The light switch clicked on.

  “Hello?” said Loper. “Any ghosts around? Hon, nobody’s here. You must have heard the storm.”

  “Check Alfred and make sure he’s all right.”

  “Hon . . .”

  “Please.”

  “Okay. Okay, I’ll check Alfred. I don’t have anything better to do at this hour of the . . .” His voice trailed off into silence. Then, “Hon, did you spill some water on the kitchen floor?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “That’s funny, I just stepped in a puddle.”

  Upon hearing this, I turned to Drover. “Did you hear that?”

  “What was it? Gosh, I hope it’s not one of those monsters.”

  “It was Loper. He’s in the kitchen and he stepped in a puddle of water. And I think I know where it came from.”

  “Yeah, all this rain and stuff.”

  “Not rain and stuff, Drover. You.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then I heard him sniffle. “Well, I was scared. I heard Sally May’s voice and I thought she was going to come into the kitchen and find us and chase us with a butcher knife, and it scared me so bad . . .”

  “Okay, okay. I knew you’d do something, I just didn’t know what.”

  “Yeah, and I feel terrible about it.”

  “And don’t forget that you ate my bacon. Little Alfred brought that first piece just for ME and you stole it.”

  “Oh, the guilt’s just piling up! I’m not sure I can live with myself.”

  “Never mind, Drover. We’ll take this up at another time—if we should happen to survive the night, that is.”

  “Oh my leg!”

  “Shhhhh.”

  Where were we? Oh yes, Loper was in the kitchen and had just discovered the Mysterious Puddle—which wasn’t so mysterious to those of us who knew Drover. And now he, Loper, that is, was making his way into Alfred’s room.

  If he turned on the light, we were sunk. I mean, two dogs under the covers in a little boy’s bed mak
e humps, right? If he turned on the light, he would see the humps, jerk off the covers, and we would be exposed for all the world to see.

  The rest of what might follow was too scary to think about.

  We held our breath and waited. Would he turn on the light? No, he didn’t.

  Going strictly on the sounds picked up by my ears, here’s what I imagined that he did. He walked over to the bed and looked down. Alfred was asleep—or so it appeared. Loper straightened the covers and said, “Well, everybody’s in bed except me, and what am I doing walking around in the middle of the night?”

  He yawned and then . . . uh-oh. He sniffed the air. “Smells like goats in here. We may need to haul some sneakers to the dump.”

  He yawned again and went back to bed. Back in the bedroom, I heard him say, “Hon, I think you were dreamin’. Everything’s fine.”

  “Loper, I heard something, I know I did.”

  The bed squeaked. “Well, you can take the next patrol. I’ve got a date with a beautiful pillow. Night.”

  Silence. The sounds of Loper’s snoring reached my ears, and at last I dared to breathe. Alfred’s toe gouged me in the ribs and the next thing I knew, he was under the covers with us.

  “Hi, doggies. We sure fooled my dad, didn’t we? He thought I was asweep, and he didn’t even know y’all dogs were here.”

  Right. We lucked out, but there was no sense in pushing our luck. It was time for us to go back outside.

  “We’re in a cave, aren’t we? You want to pway Expwore the Cave? Don’t ya think that would be fun?”

  Uh . . . no, we really needed to be going, but thanks anyway.

  “It’s still waining outside, and thundoo and wightning too, and I’m gwad we’re all together in my bed. I was scared, but I’m not scared anymore. I’ve got my doggies wiff me.”

  Yes, that was touching, a boy and his dogs, but the other side of that particular coin was “a boy’s MOTHER and his dogs,” and that one gave me the creeps. We could fool Loper, but Sally May was another story.

  She couldn’t be fooled. She had eyes in the back of her head, ears that heard everything, a nose that could find a sugar ant in a ten-section pasture.

  And worst of all, she was always suspicious. I mean, every time she came around me, she seemed to read my innermost thoughts, some of which . . . many of which . . . okay, most of which aroused her disapproval.

  And if it was okay with everyone, I was ready to take my chances with the storm outside, now that we were fairly sure that it was just a storm and not an invasion of . . . I had never totally bought into that business of the Little Green Monsters anyway.

  “So you weckon I ought to wet you back outside?”

  Uh-huh. Yes. That was the best idea, in and out with no major bloodshed.

  The boy heaved a sigh. “Well, all wight. Come on and we’ll sneak y’all back outside.”

  Whew!

  All three of us crawled out of the coverous cav­ern. Once outside the sheets, I turned to Drover and was about to tell him to hurry up when I heard . . .

  Smack, smack, gulp.

  I froze and sniffed the air. All at once I caught the smell of . . .

  Chapter Eight: A Mysterious Phone Call

  I sniffed the air again, just to be sure.

  “Drover, all at once I smell bacon.”

  “Yeah, me too. I wonder what it could be.”

  “I think it could be bacon, Drover, because bacon smells exactly like bacon.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Funny how that happens.”

  “You won’t think it’s so funny if I find out that you ate my property. Did you just eat some bacon?”

  “Well, let’s see here. Yes, I did but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t yours. It was just lying around under the covers. I don’t think it belonged to anybody. It was lost.”

  I felt my temper rising. “It was lost? What kind of clam-brained answer is that? You knew exactly whose bacon that was and you ate it anyway.”

  “Well, I thought . . .”

  “You’ll pay for this, Drover. If we ever get out of this house alive, you will pay a terrible price for your greed and gluttony and stealing from your very best friend in the whole world. How can you stand yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I smell pretty bad when I’m wet.”

  “That smell comes from your rotten sense of morals, Drover. Who would steal two slices of bacon from his best friend?”

  “Well, let’s see. Pete would.”

  “Yes, of course, but he’s a cat. Is that your standard of behavior? Do you want to be a cat when you grow up?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you just might, pal. Were you aware that researchers have found a direct link between bacon and cats?”

  “No, I missed that.”

  “They’ve found—and this is a laboratory test, Drover, solid scientific evidence—they’ve found that dogs who eat two or more slices of bacon often turn into cats.”

  “Oh my gosh!”

  “And the group with the highest risk included dogs with sawed-off stub tails.”

  “Oh my gosh!”

  “Yes. You’re sorry now, aren’t you? Huh? You may have just thrown your whole life away, Drover, and for what?”

  “I don’t want be a cat. I don’t even like cats. I’d hate myself if I turned into a cat.”

  “Well, that may be your punishment, son. I’m sorry.”

  “You couldn’t help it.”

  “Thanks. Let’s get out of here.”

  Little Alfred was already down on the floor and creeping toward the kitchen. I smothered my anger and outrage, hopped off the bed, and followed him through the gloomy darkness.

  We sneaked our way through the bedroom and into the kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen, Little Alfred stopped, placed a finger over his lips, and said, “Shhh.”

  I don’t know why he felt the need to tell us to shush. We were operating in Stealthy Crouch Mode and couldn’t have moved any silenter if we’d been flies wearing . . . something. Ballet slippers, I suppose.

  But he stopped in the middle of the kitchen—Alfred did—and gave us the shush signal, and then we began the last leg of our dangerous journey to the back door.

  We had gone no more than two or three steps when, suddenly and all of a sudden, the creepy dark silence of the night was ripped and torn by the loud ring of a bell.

  Holy smokes, we must have tripped a fire alarm . . . burglar alarm . . . air raid siren . . . what­ever . . . something that made a terrible loud ringing sound. And fellers, you talk about having the liver scared right out of you! That did it.

  All at once, we had chaos amongst the yearlings, so to speak. I mean, it was totally dark in there except for the eerie flashes of lightning coming through the windows, and children and dogs were running in all directions.

  In the space of ten seconds, I ran into Drover three times. I don’t know where he was going. He didn’t know where he was going. Running in circles, I suppose.

  Then Little Alfred stampeded right over the top of me, stepped on my tail in two places, and went streaking back to his bed.

  The Thing, the awful Ringing Thing, rang a second time, sending another jolt of electrical fear down my spine and out to the end of my tail. I had lost all sense of direction. I banged my nose into the kitchen cabinets, slipped and slided on the limoleun floor, and continued to stumble over Drover.

  It was then that I began to piece together the pieces of the puzzle. The ringing we had heard, the awful piercing ring that had thrown us into such a panic turned out to be . . .

  Hmmm, the telephone, it seemed.

  The phone was ringing, don’t you see, and that would have been no big deal except for one small detail. Sally May jumped out of bed and came pounding through the house in our direction.

  Why
? Because the telephone happened to be mounted on the kitchen wall, the east wall to be exact, and since that’s where the telephone was ringing . . . you get the point.

  Here she came. BAM, BAM, BAM. Those were her footsteps on the floor. As far as I knew, Sally May had a fairly dainty set of hooves, but they sure didn’t sound dainty at that hour of the night, when she was chasing the telephone.

  Shook the whole house, is what she did, and you can imagine the effect this had on me and Drover . . . mostly Drover. It threw us . . . him . . . into a new and higher dimension of terror.

  I mean, from the moment we had set foot in this house, the thing we had feared most was a face-to-face meeting with Sally May.

  And now SHE WAS COMING OUR WAY, sounding like thirteen Frankincense Monsters or a herd of charging elephants, and there we were in the middle of her kitchen, running around in circles and banging into things and wondering what form of execution she would choose for us.

  Hanging?

  Firing squad?

  Flogging to death with a broom?

  Strangulation?

  Perhaps you’re wondering why we didn’t do the obvious and simple thing, follow Alfred into his room and seek shelter in his closet or beneath his bed.

  It wasn’t fear of spiders, I can tell you that. The thought of standing before Sally May’s frigid glare caused my fear of spiders to melt away like . . . something.

  Butter on a piece of corn. A snowflake on a brand­ing iron.

  Give me ten thousand crawling spiders and I’ll shake all eight hands of all ten thousand if it will spare me the fate of being caught in the house by Sally May.

  Trouble was, we couldn’t find our way to Alfred’s room. I mean, it was very dark in there, and after a guy runs in circles for a while, he loses all sense of direction.

  And she was almost there and we were almost dead meat, but at the last possible second, I squirted myself beneath the kitchen table and poured my­self into a ball in the corner, as far away from her as I could get.

  Which wasn’t nearly far enough but the best I could do.

  Drover followed.

  There, we ceased all breathing and waited to see what would happen. Here’s what happened.