Джеймс Хоу - Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow

“Chester,” I said as calmly as I could manage under the circumstances, “got a moment? I think we need to have a little chat.”

“We thtill don’t know what wath in the bag,” Chester replied.

I didn’t even have to turn to know that he was bathing his tail.

As for the bag, all was about to be revealed—if not understood.

“What in the world is going—” Mrs. Monroe started to say, when Edgar made what appeared to be a nosedive for Bunnicula. Toby yelped, turned away, and clutched the bunny to him, forcing Edgar to change direction and fly out the open door.

“Come back!” Miles cried as the crows outside cheered Edgar’s escape.

Kyle ran to the door and closed it. “Don’t anybody panic,” he said. “If we go into the basement, the birds can’t get us. Mr. Monroe, did you find any plywood yet for the windows? I’ll help you put it up. I know how to use a hammer. I’ve been using a hammer since I was five. Remember that time I had that swollen thumb? Well, I can use a hammer better than that now. Boy, this is exciting! It’s like being right inside one of your books, Mr. Tanner!”

Ms. Pickles said, “I should say it is! I’ve been talking to students for years about books coming to life in their minds. I had no idea they could come to life in their very own houses!”

Everyone began to laugh then—everyone but Miles Tanner, that is. He was staring in horror at what lay on the floor at his feet.

Pete was looking, too. “Are these yours, Mr. Tanner?” he asked.

Miles lifted his gaze to Pete’s eyes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a few seconds of shocked silence, he ran up the stairs, sending Chester and me into a tailspin as he whizzed past. The guest room door slammed shut with a resounding bang!

Chester and I made our way quickly down the stairs to see what all the fuss was about. Everyone was looking down at the mess on the floor now: the cheese and crackers, the cookies and trays . . . and the contents of the black bag. I could hardly believe what I saw.

The floor was covered with stuffed animals.

Pete was the first one to speak. “You guys,” he said to Kyle and Toby between clenched teeth, “if either of you tells anybody at school that M. T. Graves travels with a bag full of stuffed animals—”

“Why would we do that?” Kyle interrupted. “Hey, I used to have stuffed animals.”

“I still do,” Toby piped up.

“Okay, admittedly it’s a little weird for an old guy to have stuffed animals,” Kyle went on, “but what’s the big deal, right? To each his own, right? Besides, we have bigger worries right now. Those birds are sounding pretty mean. We’d better get some plywood and—”

Ms. Pickles laid her hand gently on Kyle’s shoulder. “I don’t think we need to be worried about the crows,” she told him.

“No?”

“No, but we may need to be worried about Mr. Tanner.”

“I agree,” said the man, who turned out to be Pete’s teacher. “I think he was embarrassed that we all saw this.”

The other woman knelt down and started putting the stuffed animals back in the black bag. “Peter,” she said, “I think you’re the one to talk to him.”

“Me?” Pete squeaked. “Why me?”

“You’re the contest winner,” the woman said. “You’re the reason Mr. Tanner is here.”

“And you’re the principal,” said Pete. “So I guess I’d better do what you say, huh, Ms. Kipper?”

Ms. Kipper smiled. “I’m off duty, Peter. I’m not telling you what to do, just what I think.”

Mrs. Monroe took the sleeping rabbit out of Toby’s arms and handed him to Pete. “Take Bunnicula up, knock on the door, and ask Mr. Tanner if you can put him back in his cage.”

“Where was he, anyway?” Pete asked.

“Sleeping under the porch,” said Toby.

I could hear Chester muttering something about having made “a teensy little glitch in the logic department” as Pete tucked Bunnicula in one arm, grabbed the bag of stuffed animals with his other hand, and started up the stairs.

He was about halfway up when Miles appeared at the top.

“Forgive me,” Miles said in his soft, gravelly voice. “It was ... rude of . . . me to run .. . away like that. Rude and .. . cowardly.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Tanner,” said Pete. “I was just coming up to—”

“No, I will come . . . down,” Miles said. “We will... talk.”

And so it was that we gathered in the living room to learn the truth about Edgar and Miles.

After settling himself into the corner of the sofa, Miles looked around the room and let out an enormous sigh. Just as he was about to speak, Ms. Pickles sat down next to him.

“It’s all right,” she told him in a reassuring voice. “You’re among friends.”

Chester perked up his ears at that. “Interesting,” he muttered to me. “Sounds like we’re about to hear a—”

“You may wonder why I asked to stay here with you,” Miles began. “Normally, I would stay in a . . . hotel. Well, there really is no ‘normally,’ since I never visit schools. I never go ... anywhere. But you would think I would want to stay in a hotel. You would think so, except that ... I wanted to meet your pets, you see, because ... I wanted . . . Bunnicula ...”

“Confession!” Chester hissed in my ear. “Here it comes! I was right, after all!”

Miles cleared his throat and glanced nervously about the room. “I was hoping, you see, that . . . Bunnicula . . . might. . . inspire me.”

Pete said, “But I thought Edgar was your . . . um, what’s that word again, Mr. Brooks?”

“Muse,” said the English teacher.

“Ah, my muse, yes,” Miles said. “He is that. My muse and my companion. My world, really.”

“But what about your other pets?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, what about the wolves and bats and alligators and—”

Miles held out his hands to stop Kyle from going on. “There are no other pets.”

The room fell silent. “The wolves, the bats, the castle on the mountaintop, the sorcery—all of them are as invented, as imaginary as M. T. Graves himself. All in the interest of making the author of the FleshCrawlers series creepy at best. . . and interesting at the very least.”

“But you said you got your ideas from your life,” Toby chimed in. “So your life must be pretty interesting, right?”

“I write scary books because I’m scared,” Miles admitted. “That’s how my ideas come from my life.”

“But you write the scariest books ever” Pete said. The color was rising in his cheeks. “I don’t understand. What could you be scared of?”

Miles turned to Ms. Pickles, who nodded and smiled at him in a “go ahead, you can do it” sort of way. I had the feeling these two may have talked more than we knew when Ms. Pickles had dropped off the pretzel crust Jell-O mold.

“I’m scared of . . . dogs, for one thing,” Miles began.

Howie gasped.

“And cats ...”

Chester purred.

“And people. I’m scared of going to the school tomorrow. I’m scared of . . . everything.”

“Are you scared of Bunnicula?” Pete asked. He was still cradling the sleeping rabbit in his arms.

Miles looked fondly at the bunny. “No, I’m not. I guess that’s because I never had a rabbit . . . bark at me.”

This made everybody laugh, even Miles himself. But then he grew serious again. “You see, I’ve always been so . .. scary looking, so ... ugly, even as a boy, that dogs barked at me, cats hissed at me, other children laughed at me. So I learned to keep to myself. A writer’s life was the perfect life for me. I could have my revenge on the animals that tormented me by transforming them into things even uglier and scarier than I ever was. And I could be alone.”