Джеймс Хоу - Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow

As I sank into my Dusty Mauve Naugahyde Chair Ergonomically Sculpted with Lumbar Support Curvature—a bonus I’d received as part of a recent job promotion—I felt myself sink into a dusty melancholia as well. I picked up a copy of the latest self-help bestseller written by one of my authors, Dr. Bob’s Grab Yourself Some Happiness, Even If It Makes You Miserable, and flipped to a random page, hoping to find reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

Finding nothing on that page or any other to offer me answers (I began to wonder how the book had ever made it onto the bestseller lists, but felt it best not to pursue that line of thinking), I reached instead for the handle of the top right-hand drawer of my desk. I hesitated. What I kept in that drawer was there only “in case of emergency.”

Slowly I pulled the drawer open. I couldn’t find what I was looking for at first. I’d carefully hidden it from the eyes of my assistant, a former circus clown who liked to sneak into my office on weekends to reorganize my files and leave little balloon animals on my desk as a Monday morning surprise. But then my fingers touched it. I pulled the desired object out from under a legal pad and asked myself if I really wanted to do something so drastic. I had just come from the office holiday party, after all. I was full of eggnog and seven-layer cake. But the rich aroma of dark chocolate was too much to resist. I loosened my belt a notch and slid the bar from its wrapper, peeled back the foil, and was about to take my first bite when I was overcome by despondency.

To eat chocolate . . . alone . . . behind a closed door . . . had it come to this?

I let my gaze drift to the door, my mind a whirl-wind of chocolate and sheep and balloon animals, when suddenly I heard a familiar scratching. Could it be? Was it possible? After all these years and with no thought that he would write another book?

I bolted to the door, yanked it open, and beheld him: a sad-eyed, droopy-eared dog carrying a large, plain envelope in his mouth. I nearly wept for joy. Harold! Here to save me from eating chocolate alone! Here to present me his latest manuscript, and with it my opportunity to go out in glory! I could think of no way I would rather end my publishing career than editing one of Harold’s books.

I broke off a piece of chocolate, offered it to the canine author, and sat down to read the letter clipped to the top page of the manuscript.

My dear friend,

With the publication of my previous book, I had thought my writing career was at its end. But while a writer’s career may end, a writer’s life goes on. How does one close one’s mind to experiences that practically cry out to be recorded? And once recorded, how does one resist the temptation to share them with others?

Once again the events of my life were transformed from the mundane to the mysterious by strange circumstances—and even stranger strangers. I hastened to write them down, the result being the manuscript you now hold in your hands. I know that my books can only aspire to the bestseller status of Dr. Bob’s, but I hope that you will find my words worthy of publication nonetheless. They may be the last to find their way into print, for though I say I “hastened” to write them down, the pace of the writing itself was painfully slow. Arthritis has worked its way into these old paws of mine, and the words themselves don’t come as quickly as they once did.

Still, I felt compelled to tell this tale of writers and writing, of muses and the bemused, of crows and creativity. Oh, and did I mention terror? There is terror in this tale as well. It is, after all, about a bird named Edgar Allan Crow.

Yours sincerely,

Harold X.

I felt my pulse quicken as I reached for my trusty No. 2 pencil and turned to the first page of Harold’s book. Little did I know that his words would do far more than entertain me. For here, in these pages that you yourself, dear reader, are about to enter, I would find the answers I had been seeking.

Bunnicula

Meets

Edgar Allan Crow

ONE

The Letter

The trouble began with a letter that arrived at three o’clock on an early October afternoon. The hour was struck by the grandfather clock not far from where I lay dozing near the front door of the house. Howie began yipping his puppy head off at the unseen mailman on the other side of the door, and before I could think to move, a cascade of paper came showering down on me from the mail slot over my head. All in all, it was an ominous awakening.

“Howie,” I said, shaking off my drowsiness along with the envelopes and magazines, “that’s Joe. He’s not here to rob us; he’s here to deliver the mail. You know Joe. Why do you always bark at him?”

Howie looked appalled that I would ask such a question. “It’s my job,” he declared, “my duty as a canine. Gee, Uncle Harold.” (Howie calls me Uncle Harold even though we’re not related. I guess it’s because he looks up to me—and who can blame him for that?)

Chester jumped down from his favorite chair in the adjoining room and sauntered over. “And you call yourself a dog,” he snickered.

“I am a dog,” I replied defensively. “I just don’t care for the sound of barking. You know that, Chester.”

Chester didn’t respond. Distracted by something he’d spotted in the pile of scattered pieces of mail, he let out a loud gasp.

“What is it?” I asked, the hairs rising along the ridge of my back. If I hadn’t been half-asleep, I might have had the good sense to keep that particular question to myself, knowing as I do that Chester’s gasping is rarely cause for alarm. He is, after all, a cat, which means he tends toward the, shall we say, dramatic.

“Look for yourself!” he went on, jabbing a paw at the envelope lying closest to me. “It’s a crow!”

“Did you say ‘crow’?” Howie asked excitedly. He darted down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the pet door before you could call out, “Be back in time for dinner!”

Chester shook his head. “I fail to understand Howie’s obsession with chasing birds,” he said.

I sighed. “It must be part of his job.”

“Well,” said Chester, “one of these days his ‘job’ is going to get him into a heap of trouble. Crows are not to be messed with, my friend. They’re nefarious. Just look at that one.”

Yawning, I glanced at the crow on the envelope to see what all the fuss was about. What I saw was a crow. On an envelope. I didn’t think it looked particularly nefarious. Of course, I had no idea what “nefarious” meant. When I asked Chester for a definition, he started bathing his tail.

“Aha!” I said. “You’re stalling. You don’t know what ‘nefarious’ means either, Mr. Big Words Fancy Pants!”

Ordinarily, Chester would have been offended by being called Mr. Big Words Fancy Pants, but apparently he didn’t care to be offended. He also didn’t care to define “nefarious.”

“I’ll tell you this,” he went on, dropping his tail. I noticed there was a hair stuck to his tongue. “Crows are omens, Harold.”

I rolled my eyes. Chester sees omens everywhere. Just the other day, he thought he saw an omen in Mr. Monroe’s oatmeal. I pointed out that it was a raisin.

“Raisins can’t be omens?” he’d asked.

I would love to tell you that Chester is a deep thinker, but I don’t think “deep” is quite the right word. I, however, have been known to think deeply on occasion. And that is what I was doing now as I studied the image of the crow on the envelope. It looked familiar somehow.

Just then a key turned in the door. Having a pretty good idea of who would be coming in, I leaped to my feet to get out of the way fast. Pete, the older of the two boys with whom I reside, burst into the house, his flying backpack preceding him. The backpack landed with a thud and slid down the hall toward the kitchen, sending Chester scampering halfway up the stairs to the second floor.