by James Howe
Chester grimaced. “Why do I waste my . . . wait a minute, we’re wasting time right now! Follow me.”
Against my better judgment, I followed Chester out of the kitchen and down the hall to where we were within earshot of the conversation going on in the living room.
“And tomorrow we’re planning a lunch in your honor,” Mrs. Monroe was saying. “There will be a few guests. The principal. Pete’s English teacher, of course. The librarian.”
“Ms. Pickles,” Kyle put in. “That’s her name. She has to spend the first two weeks of school every year getting the new kids not to laugh when they say it. It’s pretty funny, though, right? I mean, not that it’s right to laugh at somebody’s name, but you kind of can’t help laughing when you say ‘pickles,’ especially when it’s a person’s name. Try it. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Anyway, she’s really nice. You’ll like her. Not that I know who you’ll like or anything, but . . . oh, and just wait until you see how many of your books are in the library. Hey, what are you going to talk about when you come to our school? Did you bring pictures of your wolves and bats and—”
Mrs. Monroe cleared her throat. “Thank you, Kyle. Now, let’s see, did I leave anyone out?”
“I’m not doing anything tomorrow,” Kyle said.
“Well, Kyle, would you like to join us?” Mrs. Monroe asked politely. “We’ll be eating at twelve thirty.”
“Wow, could I, Mrs. Monroe? That would be awesome. You don’t really drink blood, do you, Mr. Graves ... I mean, Mr. Tanner? Because I read somewhere that you do, and I gotta tell you, the sight of blood kind of grosses me out. Nothing personal.”
Mrs. Monroe laughed nervously. This was something else I’d never heard her do before. “I’m sure Mr. Tanner doesn’t drink blood, Kyle,” she said.
“Good,” said Kyle. “I mean, it’s a free country and all, but—”
“Oh, could Amber come, too?” Pete asked.
“Ooh, Amber, your girlfriend,” Toby said.
“She is not”
“She is so. Everybody says.”
“Boys! Mr. Tanner, I’m sorry, I can see this is getting to be too much. Kyle is welcome to join us, Pete, but no more guests, okay? Mr. Tanner, are you all right? You look a little ...”
“Tired,” the low voice rumbled. “May I ... lie down?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Monroe. “We’ll show you to your room. Dinner will be in an hour. And it will just be the family tonight, no guests. We’ll be having my husband’s vegetarian lasagna and salad with no dressing, just the way you asked.”
“But—” Tanner began.
“Oh, and Bunnicula is up in your room,” said Mr. Monroe.
“Just the way you asked,” Pete said.
“In my room? But won’t he be—”
Tanner’s words were cut off by the sound of wings flapping as Edgar suddenly flew from his shoulders and began circling the room.
“Edgar!” Tanner cried out. “Come back here!”
Edgar continued to fly about the room. His beak opened and closed, but no sound came out. His eerie silence was offset by the loud and somehow threatening caws of the crows outside.
“What on earth is going on?” Mr. Monroe asked.
“Hey, Dad,” said Pete, “this is like that movie, The Birds. Remember?”
“I saw that movie,” Kyle chimed in. “We’d better board up the windows before the crows get inside and peck out our eyes. Maybe we should wear goggles. Or helmets. Mr. Monroe, do you have any plywood?”
Strangely, Chester wasn’t paying any attention to the commotion. “Howie,” he said, “you’ve got to run up to the guest room and hide under the bed.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me. You’ve got to hide under the bed. You’re the only one who will fit.”
“You’ll fit, Pop.”
“Yes, but I’m needed at Command Central.”
“Ah,” said Howie. “In that case, okay.”
Chester often says things like “I’m needed at Command Central” to get Howie to do what he wants.
“We’ve got to spy on those two,” Chester went on. “We can’t let them out of our sight. I don’t know what they’re up to, but I’m going to find out. And you’re the one who’s going to do the finding out for me!”
“Awesome!” said Howie, as if Chester had just pinned a junior detective badge on him.
“Hurry, while everyone is distracted!”
“Okay, Pop, I’m going. Gee, maybe I’ll overhear some writing tips. Would that be okay?”
“Fine, fine. Whatever. But don’t get so hung up on adjectives that you miss the important stuff.”
“What’s an adjective?” Howie asked.
“A describing word,” Chester explained. “Now get moving.”
Howie pondered this. “Oh, like in the sentence, ‘Howie is a funny, smart, and cute-as-a-button puppy,’ the words ‘funny’, ‘smart’, and ‘cute-as-a-button’ are adjectives?”
Chester rolled his eyes. “Something like that,” he said. “Now would you please—”
“I’ve never understood what’s so cute about buttons,” I interjected.
“Would you please get going?” Chester implored Howie as he glowered at me.
“I’m gone,” Howie said. And he scampered up the stairs and out of sight.
“Once again, Chester,” I said, “you are making a case out of nothing. Other than Miles Tanner being a little peculiar...”
“Not just him. What about the bird? What’s up with the silent treatment?”
“Maybe he has laryngitis,” I suggested, thinking how nice it would be if Chester had laryngitis on occasion.
“Maybe he does,” Chester replied. “And maybe when he gets his voice back, the first thing he will say is—”
“‘Nevermore.’ I know. But a bunch of maybes is all you’ve got, Chester. What evidence do you have that Tanner is up to anything?”
Chester began to bathe his tail.
“Aha!” I said. “You don’t have any evidence, do you?”
“May we help you get your bags from the car?” I heard Mr. Monroe ask as everyone entered the hallway where Chester and I were lurking about. Edgar had returned to his master’s shoulder, and the crows outside had quieted down.
“Thank you,” the author replied. “But leave the black bag with the silver clasp. I’ll . . . bring that one . . . in.”
“It’s okay, we can get everything, Mr. Tanner,” said Kyle. “I’m strong. I’ve been working out. Between Pete and me, we can—”
“NO!” Miles Tanner boomed. Immediately dropping his voice, he said, “I’m sorry, but... I’ll fetch ... the black bag ... myself.”
So shocked that he forgot to take his tail out of his mouth, Chester turned to me and asked, “Wath it evidenth you were after, Harold?”
Five
The Odd Guest
No one said another word as Mr. Monroe opened the door and led the way to the car. Mr. Tanner’s cape flapped noisily in the wind before us. I didn’t want to tell Chester, but I have to confess that in that moment I began to find something a little scary about this tall, stooped-shouldered figure with his dark eyes and pale skin. Based on his appearance alone, it was easy to think him guilty until proven innocent. Guilty of what seemed almost beside the point.
When we reached the car (a surprisingly modest, nondescript box on wheels parked haphazardly at the curb), Mr. Tanner immediately grabbed the black bag in the backseat and clutched it to him. Kyle, Pete, and Toby fought over the two suitcases in the trunk and somehow managed to get them out without destroying them.
Tanner’s attachment to his black bag was strange enough, but then something even stranger occurred. It was as we turned to go back inside that a single crow appeared over the roof of the house and came to rest on a tree branch above the living room window. It opened its beak and let out a cry that was at once plaintive and rallying. Edgar took off immediately, even as Tanner dropped the black bag and grabbe
d for him.
We all watched as Edgar flew up to land next to the bird on the branch. He appeared to bow before the other crow, and this gesture was repeated several times. Then the sky above the house grew dark with black wings as what looked like hundreds of crows flew up from behind the house and landed on the roof.
We stared for a moment in silence.
“I’ve never seen so many crows in one place,” said Mrs. Monroe at last.
“We have a flock that roosts in our backyard,” Mr. Monroe commented, “but this is twice that number at least.”
“It’s the same at... my place,’ said Mr. Tanner. “I don’t live very far . . . from here, you know. These crows ... I think they’ve . . . followed us here.”
“Is that possible?” Mr. Monroe asked. “Could they have flown all this way?”
No one had an answer for that. Except Chester, of course. He muttered under his breath, “Anything is possible when dark forces reign.”
I was all set to say, “Chester, knock it off,” until I thought of Tanner’s cape flapping in the wind, the blackness of his eyes that seemed to go on forever, the unsettling rumble of his voice, and I kept silent.
When Tanner called out to Edgar this time, it was less a command than a plea. “Edgar, come back. Won’t you . . . please?”
Edgar bowed one last time to the other crow, then flew back to Tanner and nipped him lightly on the ear.
“Ah, my dear friend,” Tanner said with a deep sigh as he stroked Edgar’s feathers.
Returning to the house, Chester mumbled, “It’s all theater, Harold.”
“Beg pardon?”
“It’s all a big performance. Edgar and this Tanner or Graves or whoever he really is. They’re putting on a show to dazzle us so that we’ll be blind to their terrible deeds when they finally strike.”
“But what was Edgar doing up there with that other crow?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out. There’s no pulling the wool over this cat’s eyes. Oh, no, my friend. I am too smart for the likes of—ow!”
Chester had been so busy talking he hadn’t noticed the door swing shut in front of us.
“Is your nose okay?” I asked. “I guess we’ll have to go around and use the pet door.”
“By dose is fide,” he told me, which I took to mean he was all right.
After our guest had finished napping and Howie had confessed that he, too, had napped when he should have been spying from under the bed (I believe his exact words were, “Who knew the carpeting in the guest room was so comfy?”), the family gathered for dinner.
Miles, as he asked the Monroes to call him, got the conversational ball rolling by announcing in that rumbly, spooky voice of his that Edgar was still resting in his cage and that Bunnicula was “an interesting, if sleepy, specimen of a rabbit.”
Chester mouthed the word “specimen” at me from his place under the table. I wasn’t sure what his point was, but he explained it later when he presented the evidence he was accumulating in the case of The People (aka Chester) versus Miles Tanner (aka M. T. Graves, the Madman Who Could Turn Us into Mutants with the Aid of Waffle Irons). Lucky for me Chester didn’t get his paws on a computer, or we would have been swimming in spreadsheets.
“Ordinarily, I do not keep Edgar in a . . . cage,” Miles went on. “But I thought he might be more comfortable for now, since he is in a new and . . . unfamiliar . . . place. Might I set him . . . free . . . later?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Monroe.
“Is Bunnicula . . . allowed out of his . . . cage?” Miles asked then. I noticed Chester’s ears perk up. “I would love to . .. get to ... know him.”
“We don’t let him run loose,” Mrs. Monroe said, “but of course you may take him out of his cage.”
“Excellent,” said Miles. “I want to see those eyes that glow in the dark ... up close. How thoughtful of you to . . . put his cage ... in my room.”
Mr. and Mrs. Monroe exchanged a glance. I knew what they were thinking: Miles had asked to have Bunnicula’s cage kept in his room.
“Would you please pass the . . . salad dressing?” Miles asked then, and the Monroes exchanged another look.
How strange, I thought. Hadn’t Miles specifically requested salad without dressing?
After dinner, I overheard Mr. and Mrs. Monroe quietly discussing their odd guest in the kitchen, while Miles sat in the living room talking Flesh-Crawlers with Pete and Toby. Needless to say, Howie was in there too, hanging on each word and using everything in his power to keep from yipping.
When Chester and I sauntered in, Miles’s face contracted like a washcloth being wrung out. His hands tightened their grip on his knees. I began to think that Miles could give Chester a real run for his money in the “tightly wound” department. Toby and Pete didn’t seem to notice as they grilled him with their questions.
“Where do you get all the ideas for your books?” Toby was asking.
Miles darted a few looks our way, then said, “Life.”
“You mean all those things have happened to you?” Toby asked.
“In a. . . way,” said Miles.
Pete snorted. “No offense, Mr. Tanner, but most of the stuff you write about couldn’t happen to anybody. That’s why it’s called fantasy.”
Toby reached across Miles and jabbed his brother’s knee. “Says who?” he asked. “Mr. Tanner practices sorcery. Did you forget that? And what about his bats? What about your bats, Mr. Tanner? Are they vampire bats? And what’s it like living with wolves? You must really love animals, huh? I wish you could have brought all your pets with you. Hey, maybe we could visit you sometime!”
Howie panted enthusiastically to show his support of that idea.
“Oh, well, I don’t know about . . . that.” Miles squirmed uncomfortably as he looked over at Chester and me.
“Do you think they . . . need to go out?” he asked, indicating with a nod of his head that Howie, Chester, and I were the “they” to whom he was referring.
Pete shrugged. “They use the pet door when they go out. Why? Do you want to take them for a walk?”
Toby chimed in, “Cool idea. Let’s go for a walk, Mr. Tanner. Maybe Edgar could go with us.”
“No!” Miles said emphatically. “We don’t need to go for a walk. I just. . . perhaps I should go upstairs to let Edgar out of his cage. If he’s in it too long, it becomes a . . . prison ... to him.”
I was struck anew by the way Miles spoke. It wasn’t just that his voice was low and rumbly. It was that he spoke slowly and haltingly, as though every word were an effort. And no matter what he was talking about, he sounded sad. It came to me later that the word I was looking for, the word that fit Miles Tanner perfectly, was “melancholy.”
“Can we go with you?” Toby asked. “To let Edgar out of his cage, I mean? Bunnicula should be up by now. He wakes up when it gets dark.”
“So he is a . . . creature of the . . . night,” said Miles.
“I guess,” Toby said.
“You can see how his eyes glow in the dark,” said Pete. “It’s way cool.”
“Yes,” said Miles, raising his hands slowly upward and rubbing them together. “Yes, that would . . . interest me. Very . . . much.”
As the threesome made its way up the stairs, Chester turned to me with one eyebrow arched. I knew that meant he was about to speak at some length. I looked for the nearest exit, but he got started before I could escape.
“I have it all figured out” he began.
“Does that mean we have the rest of the night off?” I asked.
“Hardly. We must be ever vigilant, Harold, you know that. This is a man who used the word ‘specimen’ to describe Bunnicula. Unusual word, don’t you think? Unless you’re a scientist—a mad scientist, perhaps—who sees a living being not as a living being but as fodder for some gene-altering experiment!”
“I heard Mrs. Monroe say she had to get her jeans altered because she was getting fodder,” said Howie.
“Okay, not really,” Howie said. “But that was a good one, right? Am I right?”
Chester replied, “Howie, if you call the radio station and you’re the one hundredth caller, they’ll give you a one-way paid vacation to the Bahamas.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
Howie left the room.
“That was cruel,” I said.
“Think of it as pest control. Now, where was I? Ah, yes: Tanner’s interest in Bunnicula. Do you notice that he practically recoils at the sight of the rest of us? That’s because he’s afraid we’ll get in his way. It’s Bunnicula he’s after, Harold, there’s no doubt of it. And did you notice how Edgar and Tanner were all lovey-dovey after Edgar flew up to the top of that tree branch and met with the head crow?”
“The head what?”
“The head crow. You saw how Edgar went up there and was bowing all over the place. Edgar and Miles are in cahoots with some kind of crow crime family.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That makes a whole lot of sense.”
“The evidence speaks for itself. Tanner is full of lies, and the two of them are full of charades. And Edgar has to be out of his cage so that he can fly out and consult with the head crow. I rest my case.”
Oh, if only Chester did rest his case. If only he would ever rest his case.
“I don’t know,” I said, “you may have a case . . . or half a case .. . about Miles, but Edgar seems like a regular crow to me.”
“So-called ‘regular crows’ are anything but regular, Harold. They are very clever and resourceful creatures. They know how to fashion tools to get to their food, they play games of their own invention, and they’re excellent mimics. Other than their unfortunate taste for roadkill, there’s a lot to admire in them. However, as much as one might be tempted to respect their intelligence, one must remember that above all else, crows are crafty.”
Chester’s research was finally beginning to interest me. “Crafty?” I asked. “Do you think Edgar might be able to knit me some socks for the winter?”
Chester stared blankly at me.
“My feet get cold,” I explained. “They didn’t used to, but as I get older, I find—”