by James Howe
“It’s nice you’re so worried about them, Chester, but—”
“It’s not them I’m worried about. It’s us. They’re taking us with them, Harold. Thanks to you and your little heart-to-heart with Mr. Monroe.”
“I couldn’t help it” I said. “I pictured us all around the campfire, toasting marshmallows, singing songs. ‘Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, someone’s in the kitchen, I know-oh-oh-oh. Someone’s in the kitchen with Di-nah—’”
“Listen, Harold,” Chester said, just as I was getting to the part about the banjo, “while someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, have you thought about who’s in the woods with us?”
“What do you mean?”
“The woods are full of spirits.”
“What woods?”
“Any woods. They’re dark places, Harold, harboring evil creatures who prey on the innocent.”
“Do the Boy Scouts know about this?” I asked. Chester ignored me and went on. “This time of year is the worst. The fifth of May is Saint George’s Day. When midnight tolls, the devil has sway.’”
“That’s pretty good,” I said. “I wrote a poem once.”
“I didn’t write that. I read it in a book.”
“Oh-oh.”
“I’m serious, Harold. This camping trip can only mean trouble.”
Just then, the screen door squeaked open, and Howie popped out. “Boy, this camping trip is going to be fun,” he said, running toward us. “You should see all the neat stuff they’re doing in there, Uncle Harold. First Pete was showing his father how to sharpen his knife, and now he’s teaching him first aid. It’s lucky Mr. Monroe is right-handed.”
“The first blood,” Chester muttered.
“What’d you say, Pop?”
“Chester didn’t say anything,” I said. “Who called?”
“What?”
“Who wanted you on the phone?”
“Oh, nobody important. Just one of those surveys. They wanted to know which dog food I like best.”
Chester’s eyes widened. “I worry about you sometimes,” he said to Howie, and he walked away. I knew what he meant. The Monroes don’t have a telephone at the cabin.
Howie went off to play, and I went around to the front of the house to find some sun. I settled in on the front porch, napping for the next hour or so. Chester’s worries were the furthest thing from my mind, and I probably wouldn’t have thought of them again at ail if it hadn’t been for the newspaper Mrs. Monroe brought back with her from the store. As she was opening the door to the cabin, the paper fell out of her bag and landed a few inches from my nose.
It wasn’t the headline that caught my eye. It was the date: May 4.
We would be in the woods at midnight. Midnight of Saint George’s Day.
[ TWO ]
Two Men and a Dawg
SOMEHOW, DESPITE Mr. Monroe’s bumbling and Chester’s mumbling, we managed to get on our way by about four o’clock that afternoon. I know the time because that’s when my stomach alarm goes off to remind me I have two hours until my next meal. In case I get distracted, a second alarm goes off around five so I can begin panicking. That day, however, I decided to start my panicking a little early. On a camping trip, I had no idea when I’d be fed. As it turned out I didn’t have to worry about it. But my panicking wasn’t in vain. It was good practice for everything that happened later.
I also needn’t have worried about ticks and mosquitoes. By the time we’d driven to the other side of the lake and were finally out in the woods, I’d been covered with so much spray that only bugs wearing gas masks could have gotten through. Howie, Chester, and I kept our distance from one another and the rest of the Monroes. It was hard to avoid the smell, though; in fact, I half expected the entire family to be picked up at any minute on charges of polluting the air.
“I don’t think anybody has ever been this way before,” Pete shouted out.
“A comforting thought,” I heard Chester mutter. I knew what Pete was saying wasn’t so, but I didn’t mention it then. I may not have done a lot of tracking in my life, but I knew enough to tell that someone had been this way before—and not so long before, either.
“Don’t worry, son,” Mr. Monroe shouted back.
“I’m not worried, Dad. I think it’s cool. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get lost and I can save us.”
“I have a compass,” Toby said.
“I have a compass and a map,” Pete said. “And if anybody chokes I can do the Heimlich maneuver.”
“I hope that isn’t a requirement for one of your badges,” Mr. Monroe said.
Personally, I took Pete’s remark as a hopeful one. You have to eat before you can choke, after all.
Howie, meanwhile, didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. He was sniffing the air happily, ignoring the stench of insect repellent for the more delicious and inviting aromas in the air. “Smell those pine trees!” he cried. “Smell those wild flowers! Smell that smoke!”
Smoke?
Suddenly, Mrs. Monroe, who with Toby was in the lead, stopped in her tracks and pointed. “Look,” she called back to her husband.
Pete and Mr. Monroe ran to catch up with the others. The three of us were quick to follow.
“Someone’s camping over there by the lake,” Mrs. Monroe said. “They already have a fire going.
I think we should head in that direction.”
“Oh, Mom,” Pete said, “we don’t want to make camp near somebody else. The whole idea of this is to go it alone.”
“No, the whole idea is to get through the night. So far, no one,” and she glanced at her husband’s bandaged hand, “has demonstrated a reassuring flair for survival.”
“We have Pete’s books,” Mr. Monroe said tentatively.
“Better than that,” said their oldest son. “You have Pete.”
“You haven’t earned that merit badge yet,” said Mrs. Monroe. “Look, I don’t want to argue about this. If no one else were around, I’d say let’s just pitch our tent wherever we end up. But the point is, there is someone else around, and I’ll bet they know a lot more about camping than we do.”
Pete and Toby looked to their father.
“Your mother is right,” he said. “It can’t hurt to have somebody nearby.”
“It can if that somebody is a homicidal maniac,” Chester whispered to me.
“Sshh,” I said, not wanting Howie to overhear.
Howie, however, had already run on ahead of us, sniffing at the ground as he went. When we caught up with him he asked, “Is this how you track, Uncle Harold? Am I doing it right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Just put your nose to the ground and follow it.”
“Makes scents to me,” he said with a chuckle. “Get it, Uncle Harold? Get it, Pop? It makes scents to me.”
I chuckled back. Chester just rolled his eyes and commented, “Let’s hope you’ll still be laughing at midnight, Harold.”
Behind us, the Monroes were singing as they walked. It was a silly song about a bunny rabbit, one I hadn’t heard in a long time, and it got me thinking about Pete and Toby when they were little. But then, as I listened to the words, I started thinking about someone else.
“It’s too bad,” I remarked to Chester, “that Bunnicula couldn’t have come camping with us. He always gets left out of these adventures we have.”
“Yeah,” Howie said. “Just because he’s a rabbit, I don’t see why he has to stay home in his cage all the time.”
“Rabbits don’t understand camping trips,” Chester said. “If Bunnicula were here, he’d go brainlessly hopping this way and that, and the next thing you know, he’d be lost.”
“That would be terrible,” Howie said sadly.
“Darn right it would,” said Chester. “Can you just imagine him lost in the woods? I can see the headlines now—‘Evergreen Forest Turns White!’”
“Here we go again,” I said.
“Besides, a vampire rabbit,” Chester went on, “is
the last thing we need with us on Saint George’s Day.”
“Saint George’s Day?” Howie asked. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly.
“Stop protecting the kid,” Chester said. And then, before I could say another word, he told Howie all about the evil spirits and the woods and midnight.
Howie’s eyes grew larger and larger and larger. “I want to go home,” he whimpered when Chester was through.
“Howie,” I said, “Chester is telling stories out of books. Nothing like that is going to happen here. There’s no evil in these woods. There is nothing to be scared of.”
“Oh, really?” said Chester, coming to a sudden halt.
Straight ahead of us, not ten feet away, were two men and a dog. One man was frying some fish over an open fire. I couldn’t see his face, but his hands made me think of spiders. The hairs rose a little along the back of my neck. They rose even higher when I glanced at the other man sitting on a rock nearby. His head was the shape of a potato, all lumpy and swollen. His right eye twitched. And in his hands he held a large knife. He wasn’t doing anything with it, just holding it. From time to time, he’d turn it over, and then he’d spit on the ground.
The dog, also potatolike, sat by his feet. He didn’t look as if he had the energy to spit. A long ribbon of drool hung from his lower lip, as much a part of him as the scar that ran across his jowl.
When the Monroes arrived right after us, the man by the fire looked up.
“Well, howdy,” he said. “You folks out camping?”
“We . . . we thought we’d camp over there,” Mrs. Monroe said, pointing to a sandy patch near the water’s edge. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Heck, no. We never do get to see people in these parts. I’m Bud. And that there is Spud.”
Spud, I thought. How fitting.
The Monroes introduced themselves and us. Spud looked everybody over, turned the knife in his hands, and spat on the ground.
“Nice-looking animals you got there,” Bud said, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans. “Yes’m. Nice looking. Now, you take Dawg, he’s seen better days. He cain’t help it, he’s been kicked around by life, and sometimes he jes gets downright mean and orn’ry. But he’s a good dawg, Dawg is.”
“That’s your dog’s name?” said Mr. Monroe. “Dog?”
“Dawg,” said Bud.
He flipped the fish in the frying pan. Spud spat. Dawg dragged himself to his feet and, drool and all, headed in our direction.
“He looks a little like Max,” I commented, trying to cheer myself by bringing to mind a friendly bulldog of our acquaintance.
“Yeah, the way a rattler looks like a garter snake. Happy Saint George’s Day,” Chester said, and the hairs continued to rise all the way down my back.
“What kind of mutt do you call yourself?” Dawg growled as he came closer. His teeth were stained and pitted like old linoleum.
“Nonviolent,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t catch the tremor in my voice.
He snorted, sending a waft of rancid breath my way, and started to circle me, sniffing. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s this humiliating sniffing routine that passes for a handshake in the dog world. I would have suggested that he “give me five,” but I was a little too nervous. Besides, I didn’t have the feeling Dawg was the kind of old dog who was keen to learn new tricks. In fact, I didn’t have the feeling Dawg was too keen at all.
“Watch this,” he said, when he’d tired of sniffing. He sauntered over to the campfire, stopping only when he was so close that his mangy fur took on a red glow. I exchanged puzzled glances with Chester and Howie, wondering what it was we were supposed to be watching.
The Monroes, meanwhile, had moved down the slope to their campsite. Bud, who had gone back to his fish, ignored Dawg, while Spud just stared off into space, slowly turning his knife in his hands. After a moment, Dawg barked. The two men looked up and Bud started to shout, “Lookee, Spud. Hot dawg! Hot dawg!” His wild laughter made him sound like a demented goose. From the way Dawg and Spud curled their lips, I gathered that this was meant to be a big joke. Suddenly, I had the feeling I knew how prehistoric cavemen might have entertained themselves. I decided maybe television wasn’t such a bad invention after all.
“Gee, Uncle Harold,” Howie said, “What do you think?”
“I think Chester’s right,” I replied. “The woods are full of spirits tonight.”
“Evil spirits?”
“Stupid spirits,” I said.
Chester mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the can opener in the distance. Dinner was about to be served, and I wasn’t going to miss it.
AFTER I’D EATEN, while Toby and Pete and Mr. Monroe renewed their attempts at keeping the family’s improvised tent upright, I joined Howie and Chester for a stroll along the lake’s edge.
“This isn’t so bad, is it, Chester?” I said. “It’s a beautiful night. The moon will be out soon.”
“It’s a full moon tonight,” Chester commented.
“I’m full, too,” said Howie.
“Listen to the water lapping the shore,” I suggested.
“Watch where you step,” Chester countered. “You never know what’s been washed up.”
“The trouble with you, Chester, is that you’ve lost your capacity to enjoy the simple things in life.”
“That isn’t true,” Chester replied. “I enjoy you.”
“Thank you.” I sighed deeply. “The world is full of wonder,” I said. I often get philosophical after meals. “Behold its majesty. Marvel at its creatures great and small.”
“Not to mention weird,” said Chester. He nodded toward a figure sitting on its haunches several yards ahead of us. I could tell from the potatolike silhouette that it was Dawg.
He was looking out at the horizon, waiting for sunset, perhaps, or dreaming of sunsets past. When we approached, he shared his thoughts with us. “You could spit till you’re dry,” he said, “and never make a lake.”
Chester hissed, a cat’s way of booing.
“You come here often?” I asked Dawg, hoping to compensate for Chester’s lack of good manners.
“Cheez,” Chester said under his breath, “why don’t you ask him his sign?”
“Not so often,” said Dawg, apparently oblivious to Chester’s rude remark. “Bud and Spud, they . . . they don’t get out much.”
“Well,” Chester said, loudly enough for Dawg to hear this time, “it was certainly nice of the warden to let them out for Saint George’s Day.”
There was a glimmer in Dawg’s eyes. Of a pretty low wattage, mind you, but a glimmer nonetheless. “Saint George’s Day,” he said. “Funny you should mention that.”
“Funny?” said Chester. “What strikes you as funny?”
“Just before we came here, Bud said something about it being a special day soon. He said . . . he said”
The glimmer faded, and I wondered how long we’d have to wait for the bulb to be changed. “‘He said?’” I prompted hopefully.
“He said,” Dawg went on, “that this was the night to find it.”
“Find it?” Howie squealed. He was beginning to shiver a little, as the wind coming off the lake turned colder. I felt a chill go through me, too. “Find what?”
“I don’t know,” said Dawg. “He didn’t say. But I do know one thing. Bud’ll find it, and Spud’ll know what to do with it.”
A sudden whiz and thunk grabbed our attention. In the distance, Spud walked to a tree and pulled his knife from where it had lodged.
“Oh, yeah,” Dawg said. “Spud’ll know what to do, all right.”
[ THREE ]
Things Are Not What They Seem
“‘SOMEONE’S in the kitchen with Di-nah, strummin’ on the old banjo. And singin’, fee-fie, fiddly-eye-oh. Fee-fie, fiddly-eye-oh-oh-oh-oh. . .’”
Hearing the Monroes’ voices raised in song, seeing the warm glow on their faces, watching them
sharpen their sticks in preparation for marshmallow treats, I was content. It had been only ten minutes since Dawg had made his ominous remark at the water’s edge, ten minutes since I’d felt the cold wind run through me, but all that might as well have happened in another lifetime. For now there was nothing more on my mind than peace on earth, good will to men, and the unopened bag of marshmallows lying at Toby’s side.
“Listen to the happy campers,” Chester said of the Monroes. I glanced over my shoulder to where he lay stretched out on a log, the firelight dancing in his eyes. “How innocent they are in their merrymaking. While out there somewhere in the shadows of the night—”
“It isn’t dark yet,” I observed.
“In the woods it is always dark,” he said. “In the forest of the soul it is always night.”
“Chester,” I said, “have you been reading Stephen King again?”
“Howdy, folks.”
I was spared a book report by the arrival of Bud, Spud, and the inevitable Dawg.
“Well, hello, Bud,” Mr. Monroe said. “We were just about to toast some marshmallows. Would you and your brother care to join us?”
Bud smiled awkwardly, as if he’d long been out of practice. “Why, sure, that’d be right nice. That fire isn’t going to last long, though. Who made that thang?”
Pete cried, “I did!”
“Well, I don’t know who taught ya about fires, young fella, but that one’s got about as much life in it as a toad what’s jes shook hands with a steamroller.”
“I’m a Boy Scout of America,” Pete said proudly. “I learned how to make a fire from the Fieldbook.”
“Page one seventeen,” Toby said, coming to his brother’s defense.
“You cain’t build a fire from a book,” Bud scoffed. “I’ll get that thang goin’ again in no time. Say, I tell you what. It isn’t going to get dark for another twenty minutes or so. Why don’t you-all go for a walk along the crick? There’s a purty falls up there. You folks know this part of the lake?”
“We’ve never been here before. We have a cabin cross t’other side,” said Mr. Monroe, looking as surprised as the rest of us at what had come out of his mouth. I wondered if it was just a matter of time before we were all saying “thang” and “howdy.”