by James Howe
The front door opened and Mrs. Monroe and Toby entered. Toby was carrying something in his arms. Even from the top of the stairs I could see what—or should I say who— it was. There, blissfully asleep, was Bunnicula.
“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.”
Ms. Pickles started to object, but Miles put his hand on her arm to stop her. I noticed that she let him keep it there.
“But then my books became popular and there were requests for me to speak and visit schools. I didn’t dare, even though at times I thought the loneliness would kill me. Then Edgar came into my life and . . . everything changed. I didn’t want to transform the animals in my stories anymore. I wanted to stop being afraid of animals in real life. I wanted to stop being afraid, period. I thought perhaps if I could get to know other animals . . . and replace Edgar with ... someone else ...”
“Why do you have to replace Edgar?” Pete asked.
“Marjorie ... er, Ms. Pickles . . . was right. He’s a wild animal. He doesn’t belong in a cage or even a house, which is only a bigger cage, after all.”
“But hasn’t Edgar always been with you? Wouldn’t he miss you if you set him free?”
“I believe he would miss me. I know I would miss him. But, no, he hasn’t always been with me. It was a stormy night almost two years ago, a very windy night, when I heard a thump at my front door. I opened it, and there on my doorstep lay a wounded baby crow. I couldn’t believe it. The image of a crow—Edgar Allan Crow—had been part of the FleshCrawlers series from the beginning, but there never was a real Edgar Allan Crow—until now. I nursed him back to health, and he stayed on with me. We became devoted friends. Edgar was, as you say, my muse. I stopped feeling lonely and I began to write with renewed vigor.
“But then one day a large murder of crows appeared in the yard, and I saw a yearning in Edgar I’d never seen before. He wanted to be with his own kind. I was afraid I would lose him—especially after the time he succeeded in escaping. I saw him fly to another crow and I understood that. . .”
“Aha!” said Chester. “The head crow! Now we’re going to get the confession!”
“Edgar had fallen in love.”
“Or not,” said Chester.
“He’s courting,” Ms. Pickles interjected. “That’s the bowing we’ve seen him to do with the female crow.”
Miles’s ashen face turned slightly pink. Was I imagining it, or was he blushing?
“Fearing that Edgar would leave me, I began to have trouble writing. I truly believed I couldn’t do it without Edgar. And my confidence wasn’t helped by the fact that since a certain boy wizard came along, my sales have plummeted like Niagara Falls. Hoping to improve sales and get me writing again, my publisher came up with the idea of this contest.
“When I read Pete’s letter, I thought I had my answer. I would stay in a house with dogs and cats to overcome my fear, and I would spend time with a most unusual rabbit in the hopes that he would inspire me. He has done that, and even more. In a very short time, I have grown quite fond of him. And so now I must ask something . . . difficult . . . for me ... to ask. . . .”
Just then, we were startled by a loud tapping on the window behind the sofa. There, peering in at us, was Edgar Allan Crow.
“Yes, yes,” Miles said, turning to look at him, “I was just getting to it.”
Edgar opened his mouth soundlessly, and Miles turned back. He looked around the room, finally bringing his eyes to rest on Pete and the black-and-white bundle in Pete’s arms.
“Peter,” said Miles, “I know this is a great deal to ask of you and your family. But may I... might I... have Bunnicula?”
TEN
Farewell
I could hardly believe my ears! Miles Tanner was asking to take Bunnicula away with him—forever! He wanted our bunny to be his new muse and companion. I turned to Chester, who sat dumbfounded, his tongue half out of his mouth, his eyes as glazed as an Easter ham. The whole room had come to a standstill, all except for Howie, who began bouncing around on his back legs and yipping his head off.
“Take me! Take me!” he yipped. “I’m a better muse than Bunnicula! I’m cuter than Bunnicula! I stay awake more than Bunnicula! Sort of. Take me!”
Miles shrank bank into the sofa cushions as Mr. Monroe got Howie to stop his noise.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Monroe said to Miles.
“No, it’s not Howie’s fault. I guess I still have some work to do on that,” Miles said. “My therapist—Dr. Verrückt Katz—said I should start with stuffed animals and work my way up to the real things.”
“You know Howie isn’t barking at you because he thinks you’re ugly or scary,” said Mrs. Monroe. “He’s excited. I think he likes you.”
“And you’re not ugly or scary at all,” said Marjorie. “On the contrary. As for stuffed animals . . .” She opened her purse and took out a tiny stuffed lion. “I call him C. L.,” she said. “It stands for ‘Cowardly Lion.’ I take him with me everywhere, for courage.”
“Wait right here!” Pete shouted. He stood up and thrust Bunnicula into Miles’s arms before racing up the stairs and back down again in a flash. He held a stuffed koala bear.
“This is Pudgykins,” he told Miles. “I’ve had him since I was real little. Now I keep him under the bed in case ... well, in case I need him, I guess.” He shot a look at Kyle and Toby that said, If you ever tell anybody about this, you are dead meat!
Miles smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for being so kind. I know I’m asking too much of you. I had never intended on asking it. I just wanted to be around Bunnicula, to see if he inspired me. And I was inspired! I began writing a new book last night—even if I did end up turning the rabbit character into a bat. But I got frightened and thought I couldn’t do it without Edgar. And then I realized that Edgar had something else in mind entirely.”
“Edgar?” said Mr. Monroe.
“Yes. You see, I couldn’t understand how it happened that Bunnicula was placed in my room, and why you put a salad next to my bed. And then I discovered an e-mail addressed to you that I had never written. It had to have been written by someone else, and there was only one other ‘someone else’ that could have done it.”
“Edgar,” Mr. Monroe repeated.
Miles nodded. “Edgar is mute. He has never spoken, never uttered a sound. I suspect it’s because of his injury when he was young. But being a crow, and therefore a remarkably clever and adaptive creature, he taught himself how to write by watching me. It was he who wrote that e-mail to you, to ensure that I would spend a good deal of time with Bunnicula and get to see him in action. He wanted Bunnicula to be his replacement. You see, Edgar could have left me long ago, but he doesn’t want me to be alone. He is the most considerate of birds, the gentlest of souls.”
“Ah!” I said, turning to Chester. “So that’s what ‘nefarious’ means!”
“This is no time for jokes,” Chester snarled. “We’re about to lose Bunnicula, can’t you see? If they let Tanner take him away from us ...”
Were my eyes deceiving me? Was that a tear rolling down Chester’s nose?
“Yes,” Pete said. “You can have him.”
The rest of the Monroe family started to object, but they stopped when they saw the look of hope on Miles’s face.
“Really?” he asked.
Chester began to sniffle next to me.
And then I thought I heard Howie barking. I cringed at the sound. But when I saw everyone in the room staring at me, I realized it wasn’t Howie who was barking. It was me. Me, who hates the sound of it. I was barking and Chester was sniffling and the humans didn’t seem to have a clue what to do about any of it.
Were we really going to have to say farewell to our bunny?
“You know, Miles,” Ms. Pickles said then, patting him on the arm, “there may be other ways to solve this. I don’t think the Monroes really want to part with their dear pet. And I don’t think you’d really want to have them do so.”
“I have a rabbit for you, Mr. Tanner!” shouted Kyle. “See, one time Pete and I did this hare-raising project for Scouts. That probably sounded like a joke, but I didn’t mean it that way. I mean we bred rabbits. And Bunnicula was the dad,
and I have his son, see—Sonnicula! And the other day my mom said she was afraid she was developing an allergy to him and maybe we should find him a new home. And so what if he goes to live with you?”
Miles looked down at the sleeping rabbit in his arms. “It wouldn’t be Bunnicula,” he said.
“No,” said Kyle.
“But it would be fine.”
Everyone cheered. And Chester began to purr.
The next day, after Miles returned from visiting Pete’s school, we all went out into the backyard to say farewell to Edgar. Ms. Pickles was there and so was Kyle. And so was Sonnicula, although—since it was still daylight outside—he was sound asleep on Miles’s bed up in the guest room. Miles took to Sonnicula right away, although he said—and who would argue—that no one could ever really replace Edgar.
Now we watched Edgar’s flock flapping its wings in anticipation of leaving. Suddenly one of the birds flew down and landed on Miles’s shoulder. He nipped him on the ear, and Miles stroked his feathers.
“You’ve been a good friend,” Miles said. “Thank you for everything. I will never forget you. Never.”
Edgar flew off to join the one who was waiting for him. And then he flew back one last time, grabbing Ms. Pickles’s scarf in his beak and drawing her toward Miles. He hopped onto Miles’s shoulder and tugged at his ear until Miles was forced to move toward Ms. Pickles. Once their arms were touching, he flew down to grab the cuff of Miles’s shirt, pulling it up until Miles’s hand was in Ms. Pickles’s.
Miles turned red and smiled at Ms. Pickles.
“Clever bird,” he said.
Miles and Ms. Pickles lifted their eyes skyward as Edgar flew off, and the birds rustled and flapped and began to grow smaller in the distance.
“Goodbye, Edgar!” Miles called. There was a catch in his voice as he cried out, “Will you forget me?”
The crows spread out across the sky and went into a formation, and the formation was a word, and the word was:
A Letter Within a Letter Within a Final Word from the Editor