Dunc's Halloween

by Gary Paulsen

  “WILL YOU COME ON!” Amos screamed from the door. “You’re driving me nuts with this.”

  Dunc jumped and followed Amos out the door.

  Outside, it was a spectacular fall day. The sun was bright and the air was crisp. All the elms and oaks were changing colors, and in the afternoon sun the street looked bathed in color.

  “I feel good about tonight,” Amos said. Dunc was walking down the sidewalk, but Amos trotted out ahead, then went around Dunc and got in front of him, trotting backward so he could talk.

  “So do I,” Dunc said. “I think we have a real good chance to catch the werewolf.”

  “Not that.” Amos shook his head. “I mean I feel good about the costume party and Melissa and all. If I close my eyes, I can see how it will go—you know, the way you do? Where you see it all the way it’s supposed to happen? I’ll come in and Melissa will be there, maybe bobbing for apples. I’ll lower my head underwater, and we’ll see each other through the floating apples, and she’ll know—”

  He stopped talking suddenly, stopped dead in front of Dunc so abruptly that Dunc ran into him.

  “Amos—”

  “Cat.” Amos raised his head, turned it, his nostrils quivering. “I smell a cat. Close, too. And on the ground. Smells like a big tom.”

  “Amos?” Dunc looked at him. “Are you all right?”

  Amos ignored him. “Close … very close …”

  Mrs. Shandorf lived in the house four doors down from Amos’s place. She was a nice older woman, widowed, and she spent a lot of her time trying to make an old alley cat she’d adopted weigh more than a car. She named the cat Iver and fed it constantly, and it had grown and grown until it weighed close to forty pounds. Scarred and mangy from a million alley-cat fights, Iver spent most of his time hiding in the Shandorf rose bushes waiting for unsuspecting cats or small dogs to come by. Iver would jump them with glee, trying his best to pound them into mush.

  “It’s Iver,” Amos said. “See him, hiding under the rose bush there? He thinks we can’t see him. Man, a chance to get Iver …”

  “Amos—”

  But Amos was gone. In a sudden lope he made for the hedge where Iver was hiding, growling low in his throat.

  Iver spent half a second wondering just exactly why a boy he’d seen every day of his life walking past the yard had suddenly turned into a raving maniac and was coming at him like a Doberman.

  It very nearly cost him.

  With bared teeth and the growl changing to a snarl, Amos came within an inch of catching him.

  At the last possible second Iver made up his mind and exploded out of the rose bush, back down the narrow slot between Mrs. Shandorf’s house and the next one.

  The sudden maneuver threw Amos half a step off, but he countered by throwing his weight sideways and made the turn, following Iver down between the buildings.

  He was gaining.

  “Amos?” Dunc was still standing on the sidewalk, his hand half raised, speaking to the empty spot where Amos had been just a second before. “Are you all right?”

  Amos was already beyond earshot.

  Iver heard the pounding feet in back of him, heard them gaining, and he added a few miles an hour to his stride. The space between the buildings was long, and at the end there was a small, low shed that held gardening tools.

  Iver put everything into his legs and made one huge leap to clear the building.

  But he was fat, very fat, and his weight held him down. He made the slanted metal roof, but he failed to clear it and slid for a moment trying to get purchase.

  Amos was on him. He took a bite at the big cat’s rump. Iver broke free and over the roof and was gone.

  Amos looked at the building, ran back and forth whining for a moment, then trotted back out to where Dunc still stood, his hand raised, staring at Amos.

  Amos spat cat hair out. “I almost had him. I mean, it was that close. Next time he’s mine.”

  “Amos …”

  Amos looked at Dunc. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a cat before?”

  Dunc nodded. “Well, yes. But I’ve never seen you chase and bite at one.”

  Amos spat the last of the cat hair out. “It’s all a matter of attitude.”

  “Attitude?”

  “Yeah. I mean Iver, you know—what a snot. Every day I walk by, and he sits there like he owns the world, just sits there with that superior attitude like he’s better than dogs. He thinks I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I do know what he’s thinking, and I think it stinks, what he’s thinking. I think his thinking attitude needs changing. So I went for him.”

  “So you went for him.…”

  “Almost had him, too. Man, I’d like nothing better than to put him up a tree and keep him there for an hour or two while he adjusts his attitude. Well, maybe next time. Come on—don’t you want to get to the library?”

  He trotted off down the street, moving easily on the outsides of his feet, his shoulders rolling freely. Dunc started after him.

  They’d gone almost a block before Dunc realized he had to run nearly wide open just to keep up with Amos.

  “Hey, hold up.”

  Amos turned, his tongue hanging out a bit, panting easily while he ran. “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t keep up.”

  “But we’re just trotting.”

  “You are. I’m running flat out, and you’re just pooping along. I don’t understand it. And why are you panting?”

  Amos shrugged. “I don’t know. I felt a bit warm and thought it might cool me off.”

  “Amos, aren’t you acting a bit strange?”

  Amos stopped and scratched himself in back of the ear. “I don’t think so. Wait—look! It’s a UPS truck. Oh, man, I can’t stand those things—”

  He turned away from Dunc and shot out into the street, tearing after the UPS truck.

  Dunc stopped and stood watching him run after the back tire on the truck.

  “Amos?”

  .6

  They stopped only briefly at Melissa’s house. Amos didn’t even look in the window. He took one whiff of the front sidewalk and shook his head.

  “She’s not here. Been gone a little over an hour, maybe an hour and four minutes. Let’s go.” He moved off down the street, trotting.

  Dunc trailed along, shaking his head. None of it made sense.

  Amos had chased the UPS truck for a full two blocks while Dunc stared after him. And Amos had almost caught it, showing what he would have called classic form, both legs pumping, a bit of spit flying, lips bared, and throat in a low growl. When he was close to the tire, the truck had taken a sudden left and Amos had missed, swung around to the right, and trotted back to Dunc as though everything were normal.

  “Did you see that? I just missed him. It must be my day for just missing—first Iver, and now the UPS truck.”

  Dunc had stopped him. “Amos, is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything. You’re chasing cats and UPS trucks and sleeping on little rugs in your hallway.”

  But Amos had wheeled away and set off at an easy trot headed for Melissa’s, and Dunc had to run to catch up.

  But it still bothered him.

  Now, heading for the library after they’d found that Melissa wasn’t home, Dunc tried to puzzle it out again.

  “It’s all very mysterious,” he mumbled aloud.

  Amos was well ahead, half a block at least, and he turned and came back at a fast lope, his tongue hanging out in a soft pant.

  “What’s mysterious?”

  “You heard me say that?”

  “Sure. You practically yelled it.”

  But I didn’t, Dunc thought. I whispered it, and he was half a block away. “Everything about this Halloween is weird. We see that monster last night, and now you’re acting so strange.”

  “I’m not acting strange.”

  “You are. You’re acting just like a—well, a dog.”
>
  “You’re nuts.” They were near the park across from the library, and Amos took off at a run through a flock of pigeons in front of the statue of a Civil War hero named Thromborton who had done something terribly important that nobody could remember. The pigeons flew up in a scattering cloud, and Amos circled back to Dunc.

  “Don’t you love that—the way they fly up and head off in all directions? I just love that. It’s almost as good as cats and UPS trucks.”

  Dunc shook his head and seemed about to say something, but they were at the library steps and they went inside before he could talk.

  Dunc loved the library. It was an old building, with high old-fashioned ceilings and tall wooden shelves. He sometimes liked to go and just stand back there in the books and feel them in his mind.

  Amos thought he was nuts. Or he always had before.

  This time he stopped just inside the door.

  “The smells.”

  “What?” Dunc stopped next to him.

  “Old smells. Smell them? Old wood and leather, old smells of oil, rich smells—makes me think of old nice things. I never knew how neat the library was—I never really smelled it before. Oh, wait—something else. There are two people in here who really need a shower.”

  “Amos, we have to talk. Come on.”

  Dunc led him back into a room where there were typewriters on tables. With the computers up front, nobody ever used the typewriters anymore, so the room was almost always empty, as it was now.

  “Somebody was here less than half an hour ago,” Amos said. “Chewing bubble gum. You know, the fruity kind. It was a girl. And she had just about chewed the gum completely—maybe ten more bites, and the sweetness would all be gone.”

  Dunc sat Amos in a chair by a typewriter. “All right—what’s different with you?”

  Amos shook his head. “Like I said—nothing. I’m fine.”

  Dunc nodded. “Maybe, but you’re totally different. And we have to find out why. Let’s go back over the last twenty-four hours.”

  Amos shrugged. “We’ve been together all the time. Yesterday we flummoxed around the mall a little. Then it got dark, and we tried our test run for trick or treat. Then we got jumped by the monster and you deserted me when I got stuck in the hedge, and he bit me in the butt and—”

  Dunc stopped him. “Wait. Right there. What was that?”

  “You deserted me in the hedge.”

  “No, after that. Something about the monster.”

  “I got stuck in the hedge, and he bit me in the butt.”

  “The monster bit you?”

  Amos shook his head. “It wasn’t much of a bite. He nailed me just as I was getting through and made a tiny scratch in my rear end. It didn’t even show this morning when I looked in the mirror, so it couldn’t have been much.”

  Dunc frowned. “Think, now. Did it break the skin?”

  Amos shook his head. “I don’t think so. It ripped my pants a little, but there wasn’t any blood or anything. What’s the big deal?”

  “Wait here.” Dunc went to a back shelf in the nonfiction section and came back with a book. “I couldn’t take it out so it’s still here.” He riffled through the pages. “Here it is: ‘It was widely thought that if one was bitten by a werewolf, the disease would be passed with the bite to the person bitten.’ ”

  Amos looked at Dunc. “So what are you telling me—that I’m a werewolf?”

  Dunc shook his head. “I don’t really believe in all this—not exactly. But if the monster thought he was a werewolf and you subconsciously believed that he thought he was a werewolf, you might think the bite would work enough for it to affect you.”

  But Amos wasn’t listening. He perked up his ears and turned to the front of the library. “She’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “Melissa. She just walked in.”

  Dunc looked at the door to the typing room. It was closed. There was no way Amos could see out into the library. “How can you tell?”

  “I smelled her.” Amos stood. “She had oatmeal with cinnamon for breakfast, and she brushed with that new toothpaste with the red stripes. I smelled it before at her house. Are we done talking? I want to ask her about the costume party tonight.”

  And he left the room before Dunc could tell him about his theory. About how Amos maybe hadn’t gotten enough of a bite to make him a full werewolf. Maybe only a little bit of a bite only caused a little bit of a reaction.

  Not a full werewolf.

  Maybe, Dunc thought, watching Amos trot out of the typing room and into the main part of the library, maybe just enough of a bite to make Amos into just exactly what he seemed to be.

  A werepuppy.

  .7

  As it happened, Amos didn’t get to speak to Melissa. He came closer than usual, but he didn’t break his previous record. The record was from the time she had thought Amos was his cousin, Lash Malesky, the world-class skateboarder. Melissa had actually spoken directly to him that time, but she didn’t know it was Amos and so it didn’t count.

  This time it was very, very close.

  Melissa was with a girl named Ehhrim, a black girl who had been born in Ethiopia and moved to the United States two years earlier. She was tall and fine boned and looked like a model. She and Melissa were best friends, and they were in the library so Ehhrim could show Melissa a picture of an Ethiopian dress like the one her mother was making for her to wear to the costume party.

  Amos worked out his plan as he left the typing room. He headed across the main lobby of the library to where Melissa and Ehhrim were looking at a computer screen to locate the book.

  His plan was simple, and Amos felt it was bound to work.

  He would walk right up, say hi, then flat-out ask Melissa what she was wearing, so he could tailor his own costume to fit. A clean, simple plan.

  And later, when he and Dunc were talking about it and helping to clean up the library, even Dunc had to admit that it had started out all right. Or appeared to.

  Amos walked across the lobby perfectly. Good form, a little bounce in his step, his ears perked up, and his nose twitching as he checked odors. He moved up in back of Melissa and Ehhrim, and opened his mouth and said, “Hi, Melissa. What are you wear—”

  He was going to say: What are you wearing to the costume party?

  The problem was Harvey.

  Two years before Amos and Dunc were born, somebody had dropped a kitten in a box in front of the library.

  It had been so cute, the librarian had adopted it and named it Harvey, after a cousin of hers who had also been cute when he was young. Harvey the kitten had turned into Harvey the cat, then Harvey the old library cat. Newspapers had run stories on him, television had come to film him, and though he had about the same personality as a large fur-covered paperweight, everybody who came to the library loved him. They had taken up a collection to give Harvey his own little swinging pet door at the back of the library and a bed and special feeding and watering bowl so he would stop drinking out of the toilets.

  Harvey had been out all day, and his odor that lingered in the library wasn’t fresh, and Amos had overlooked it in his excitement over speaking to Melissa.

  But now Harvey was coming home. Just at the moment Amos was about to speak to Melissa, Harvey came through the pet door, lumbered into the lobby, trotted across the floor, and jumped up onto the main desk to get his daily petting from the librarian.

  They were wrong, later, when they said Amos had gone insane. He wasn’t insane as much as he was just very, very interested.

  What he wound up saying to Melissa was: “Hi, Melissa, what are you wear—cat!”

  And he was gone, growling and snarling.

  During his many years of daily prowling, Harvey had learned how to survive. Without hesitation he leaped from the main desk to the top shelves in the fiction section. Amos went after him.

  Shelves, books, and busts of Dickens, Twain, and Shakespeare went flying.

  Harvey made one complete circui
t of the library on the tops of the shelves, with Amos clawing along just four inches from his tail.

  Then Harvey pulled a hard right through the magazine rack, dipped beneath a potted plant, and made for his pet door in a straight line across the copier and an assistant librarian named Wilson who screamed, “Mad dog! Call the pound!” before going down in a welter of overdue notices.

  Amos had been gaining slightly, and as with Iver, he would have had Harvey except for bad luck. He slipped a little, stepped on Wilson, and hit the pet door off balance. He didn’t fit through it and jammed headfirst, and his teeth snapped shut just millimeters from Harvey’s retreating rear end.

  The library stood in stunned silence, looking as if an earthquake had hit. The whole thing hadn’t taken five seconds, and the only sound now was Amos jerking and scrabbling to get his head out of the pet door.

  “Who was that?” Ehhrim asked Melissa.

  “I haven’t the slightest,” Melissa answered, shaking her head. “Somebody with serious mental problems.”

  “He spoke to you.”

  “I can’t help that,” Melissa said, peering toward the back of the library, where Amos was struggling with the pet door. “It’s sad, isn’t it, that people like that are on the streets? They should be in, you know, homes or institutions or something.”

  Dunc helped Amos pull his head out of the pet door so they could clean the library up. After jerking him out, Amos stood up and straightened his clothes. “I think that went well, don’t you? I mean, up to a point.”

  Dunc looked at the library, at Amos’s clothes—which were torn and hanging in rags—and nodded. “Up to a point. Why don’t we clean up now and go home?”

  Amos nodded. “I’ll wait for Melissa to call.…”

  “Yes,” Dunc said, leading Amos to the fiction section to begin reshelving books. “That might be better.”

  .8

  The moon showed a crack of silver blue through the east window of Amos’s room.

  In the time between the destruction of the library and the evening, Dunc had refined the plan.

  “It has to be simple.”