Nighty-Nightmare

by James Howe

  “Well, now, Spud knows these parts like he knows his own name,” said Bud. “He can git you up Latawata Crick to Breakneck Falls afore dark. And by the time you get back, I’ll have this fire going good and strong.”

  I saw Mrs. Monroe exchange a worried look with her husband. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s getting late. Our boys should be in bed soon.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Toby whined. “We go to bed later than this at home.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “We have to toast marshmallows yet and sing some more songs.”

  “And tell scary stories,” said Toby. “We can’t go to bed until we tell scary stories.”

  “The boys are right,” Mr. Monroe said. “This is meant to be an adventure. And you don’t go to bed early on an adventure. Come on, Ann, let’s go.” He reached out his hand, which Mrs. Monroe reluctantly accepted. “What do you say, boys,” he said, turning to us, “how about a little exercise? Harold, with the way you’ve been eating lately, you could stand to lose a pound or two.”

  I tried to ignore Howie’s chuckling as I struggled to my feet. Dawg came over. “You’re going to like Breakneck Falls,” he informed us. “One hundred feet of falling water.”

  “For you droolers and spitters on our tour,” Chester said, “here’s one sight you won’t want to miss.”

  “I have the feeling yer friend is making wise at my expense,” Dawg said with a snarl. “If he is, he’d better watch out.”

  “Threats don’t frighten me,” said Chester.

  “Well,” Dawg said, as the light from Spud’s knife glanced off the fire in our direction, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  “Spud,” Bud shouted. “Spud, take these folks up to the falls. Spud. Spud, I’m talking to you.”

  As we set off, Chester turned to Howie and me and said, “How comforting to think that Spud knows these parts like he knows his own name.”

  NOW THE TRUTH of the matter is that had it not been for Mr. Monroe’s crack about my weight, I might never have taken that hike. Vanity, thy name is flab. I consoled myself that having worked off an astonishing number of calories, I would be entitled to an extra portion of s’mores on my return. But as I traveled the wet and buggy path up Latawata Creek, I began to worry. Not about s’mores, but about the night itself. I don’t know if it was Spud’s silence, which spread like contagion among the Monroes, or the unfamiliar sounds of the forest, but something was definitely beginning to spook me.

  By the time we’d reached Breakneck Falls, I was too unnerved by the creatures I’d begun to imagine lurking behind every tree along the way to care much about its beauty. My lack of enthusiasm disappointed Dawg, and I suspect I have no one to blame but myself for the trouble that ensued after I commented to that effect.

  “Ain’t that a sight?” said Dawg.

  “Wow,” Howie uttered breathlessly.

  “Not bad,” Chester remarked.

  “It reminds me,” I said, “of the time Pete left the water running in the upstairs tub.”

  “That all?” said Dawg. “Then I’ll show you something that will really impress you. Follow me.”

  He bounded off through the woods. Without thinking, Howie and I bounded off after him.

  “Come on, Pop!” Howie cried over his shoulder.

  I saw Chester looking back and forth between us and the Monroes.

  “Come back!” Mr. Monroe was calling.

  “Harold!” Mrs. Monroe shouted. “Howie come here!”

  Spud spoke then, for the first time. “Don’t worry about them,” he said. “Dawg knows his way around these woods like he knows his own name.”

  Spud might have said something else then or maybe it was the glint of his knife as he pulled it from his belt that did it, but the next thing I knew, Chester was behind us.

  When we caught up with Dawg at last, there was just enough daylight left to see that we were in a clearing of some sort, surrounded on all sides by tangled trees and vines.

  “Dawg,” I said, catching my breath.

  He regarded me with a vacant stare.

  “Dawg?”

  “Actually, Dawg is my nickname,” he said then. “My real name is Teufel. It’s German.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “I know,” Chester said, as the last remaining light fell away and there was no one left in the stillness of the place but the four of us and the shadows. “It means . . . ‘devil.’”

  “Oh,” I said, “should we call you Teufel?” “No, no, Dawg’s jes fine. I wanted to clear up my real name, that’s all.”

  “Things are not what they seem,” Chester said to me. Then to Dawg, he said, “Well, as long as you’re clearing things up, where is . . . whatever it is you wanted us to see?”

  “Well, that’s hard to say,” Dawg said. “Wh-where are we?” Howie asked, starting to whimper.

  “Oh, now, that’s easy,” said Dawg. “We’re lost.”

  [ FOUR ]

  Nobody Here But Us Chickens

  “LOST ? ! !” CHESTER SHRIEKED.

  With that, Howie’s whimpering quickened by several rpm’s. I decided the last thing an impressionable young puppy needed at the moment was hysteria.

  “Chester,” I said, “calm down. Dawg knows these woods like he knows his own name. Right, Dawg? Dawg. Dawg, I’m talking to you” A whimper started to rise in my throat. “Well,” I said, swallowing it, “at least there’s a full moon, so it should be easy enough to find our way back to camp.”

  Just then, a cloud passed over the moon.

  “Aw, you guys are so lily-livered,” Dawg said. “You’d think these woods was full of ghosts er something.”

  “Er something,” said Chester.

  “May-maybe we should go back to camp,” Howie suggested.

  Dawg sidled up to Howie. “Whatsa matter?” he said. “You chicken?”

  “No, sir!” Howie said. “We’re not chicken, are we, Uncle Harold?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “It’s just—”

  “We’re not chicken, are we, Pop?” Howie asked Chester.

  “Buck-buck-buck-buck!” Chester cackled.

  This made Howie laugh. “That was pretty funny,” he said. “You’re a regular Hen-ny Young man, Pop.”

  Chester scowled.

  “Who’s Henny Youngman?” I asked.

  “An old-time comedian,” Chester said. “Howie’s been listening to Mr. Monroe’s nostalgia tapes again.”

  “Yep, that was pretty funny,” Howie went on. “Just watch out that your next joke doesn’t lay an egg, though.” He chortled merrily, having forgotten our predicament, it seemed.

  Dawg took advantage of the situation. “Come on, Howie,” he said, “what do you say? I’ll show you what I wanted to show you and get you back to camp before you know it.”

  “All right!” Howie shouted. “Let’s go!”

  “I thought we were lost,” Chester pointed out.

  “Well, we are,” Dawg replied. “So at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, as we started off.

  “Something else is beginning to make sense,” Chester whispered to me. We were trailing several yards behind Dawg and Howie.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Dawg wants us lost.”

  “Oh, come on, Chester,” I said. “Why would he want that?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s something fishy about this whole thing. I think he’s leading us somewhere, Harold. Leading us to our doom.”

  “Well, at least we’ve eaten,” I said, trying to humor Chester out of his gloomy thoughts.

  “Our last meal, perhaps,” Chester mumbled. And then he stopped dead in his tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I’ve figured it out,” he said. “The Monroes, they—”

  “What?” I said, beginning to feel alarmed. Chester has a way of doing that to me at times.

  “Don’t you see, Harold? He’s leadin
g us on a wild goose chase so that the Monroes will be alone with—”

  “Bud and Spud,” I said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “Harold, the Monroes are in danger.”

  “You could be right,” I said. “Bud suggested we take this hike. And Spud didn’t try to stop us when we took off after Dawg. But what can we do now? We don’t know our way back.”

  “We’ll have to look for an opportunity to break away from Dawg,” Chester said. “Then you and Howie can put your tracking skills to good use.”

  I looked ahead. Howie was racing to keep up with Dawg, laughing as he went.

  “I think Howie has made a friend,” I remarked to Chester.

  “A calculated move on Dawg’s part,” he said.

  “He’s won an ally. He knows we won’t leave Howie behind. And now we’ll have a hard time convincing Howie of Dawg’s ill intentions. Oh, Harold, I believe we underestimated the moronic mutt. He’s no dummy, after all.”

  Dawg turned back. “You guys coming or are you going to flap yer yaps all night?” he yelled. The moonlight made the ribbon of drool hanging from his lower lip glisten. It reminded me of Spud’s knife shining in the light of the Monroes’ campfire.

  But then I noticed once again the vacant look in his eyes.

  “I don’t know, Chester,” I said. “It’s difficult to imagine Dawg as being capable of what you’re suggesting.”

  When we were still lost three hours later, it had gotten easier.

  [ FIVE ]

  Nighty-Nightmare

  MY LEGS ACHED from walking. I’d never realized just how big the woods were on this side of Boggy Lake. Was Dawg trying to wear us down, so that when we finally stopped to sleep, there would be no fear of our waking until it was all over? I tried not to think such thoughts but couldn’t help myself. With each step we took, with each utterance Chester made about the spirit of evil being let loose at midnight, with each reflection of the moon I caught in Dawg’s eyes, I wondered . . . and I wondered . . . and I wondered.

  “What do you suppose is happening to the Monroes?” I asked at one point. Chester just shook his head darkly, and I didn’t ask again.

  After a time, he began telling stories of Saint George’s Day, not to frighten us, he assured me under his breath, but to check out Dawg’s reactions. There were none that were noticeable. Howie, seeing the lack of response in Dawg, reacted not out of fear but delight.

  “Tell us more,” he’d say after Chester had finished each tale of twilight terror.

  And so Chester would regale us with another.

  And another.

  Until: “It is near,” he said. And he fell silent. I believe he was referring to the midnight hour. But Dawg interpreted his remark differently.

  “Yep,” Dawg said. “We’re going in the right direction this time. I can feel it. Pretty soon, we’ll be there.”

  “I can’t wait,” Howie squealed enthusiastically, as if we’d been walking for three minutes rather than three hours.

  Dawg sniffed at the ground. “If we just follow the bed of this stream,” he said, “we’ll be there right quick.”

  We walked now on muddy ground, our paws sticking with each step. Covered with cockleburs and mud, I was beyond the point of caring, wanting only to stop and rest, stop and sleep for the night. . . even if it meant the worst. I was beginning to nod off, when I heard Howie’s excited voice cry out, “Look! Look, there in the mud!”

  Chester, Dawg, and I rushed to Howie’s side. There were fresh footprints.

  “The prints of darkness,” Howie said ominously.

  “They were made by people,” Dawg said. “I wonder if that means... yep, I’ll bet it does. We’re almost there, just like I told ya. Come on, follow me!”

  Once again, he bounded off. Howie, who was as endlessly full of energy as a rechargable battery, was quick to follow. Chester and I lagged behind.

  By the time we caught up with them, they had found what Dawg had been looking for all this time. Through an opening in the trees, we made out a large house standing in an open field. Its spires were silhouetted against a purple sky; its windows were dark but for one, which quivered with a yellow light. It seemed like something from another time and place.

  When he saw it, Chester gasped.

  “I’ll bet you never thought you’d see that in the middle of the woods,” Dawg said. “Ain’t it a sight?”

  “It looks like a castle,” said Howie.

  “Or a cathedral,” I said.

  We turned to Chester for his response, but there was none—none other than the look of sheer horror on his face, that is.

  “Come on,” Dawg said, “let’s go closer.”

  “No!” Chester cried.

  “Aw, come on,” said Dawg, “don’t start that chicken stuff again.”

  “It . . . it isn’t that,” Chester stuttered. He looked up at the sky. It had grown cloudier, but the light of the moon was still strong and full of power. “I’m tired, that’s all. I think maybe we should go back to camp. Do you know the way, Dawg?”

  Dawg frowned. “Well, shore, but don’t you wanta see the house? We’ve come all this way.” He turned to Howie and yawned in spite of himself. “You wanta see it, don’t you, Howie?”

  “He’s stalling,” Chester whispered to me. “We’ve got to get back to camp. We don’t have much time till midnight. And the last thing we want to do is go near that house. Anywhere but that house.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What are you talking about?” But Chester couldn’t answer, because Dawg and Howie were looking to us for a decision.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m beat,” Chester said. “What do you say we try to get some rest? Then we can go see the house, and then go back to camp.”

  Dawg yawned again. “Well, okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind setting down these weary bones for a spell. It looks like there’s some shelter over there under those leaves. Is this all right with you, little fella?”

  Howie stretched his mouth wide, trying to make his yawn as big as Dawg’s, I think. “Sure,” he said.

  As we settled in, I tried not to be hurt by the fact that Howie cuddled up to Dawg’s side instead of mine. Chester didn’t allow me any time for hurt feelings, however. “As soon as Dawg is asleep,” he whispered, “we grab Howie and run.

  “Nighty-night,” he said to Dawg and Howie, who were curled up several feet away from us.

  “Nighty-night,” Howie said.

  Dawg grumbled something I couldn’t make out. It might have been “nighty-night,” but garbled in some unidentifiable, macho way.

  Well, I thought, as I looked up through the leaves at the broken pattern of stars and clouds above me, here I am: middle-aged and having an adventure. It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when Mr. Monroe had suggested an overnight camping trip, but I was sleeping under the stars and there was no denying that an adventure was what I was having. I wondered about Mr. Monroe then. What kind of adventure was he having? I shuddered as I thought about it and wondered how long it would take for Dawg to go to sleep.

  Looking in his direction, I saw his eyes shining in the dark. It seemed the moon was forever reflected in them. He blinked when he saw me looking at him. I swallowed hard.

  “Having trouble sleeping?” I asked.

  “I always do,” he said. “This ol’ body of mine’s got so many breaks and bruises in it that something’s always aching. Don’t worry about me, I’ll just rest while you all sleep. I don’t mind.”

  “Great,” Chester muttered. Then to Dawg, he said, “Would anything help you sleep?”

  Dawg thought for a moment. “A doggie-bone softened in warm milk,” he said at last. I was ready to forgive him anything when he said it, but then it occurred to me that even Al Capone, the most notorious gangster of them all, probably liked his milk and cookies now and again.

  “Well, we’re a little short on milk,” Chester said. “How about a lullaby? Harold, sing him the song about Dinah in the kitchen
. Soft and low, Harold. Soft and low.”

  I was about to open my mouth in song, when the words froze in my throat. There was someone out there. I heard the crackling of branches, voices whispering in the dark. “Chester, did you hear?” I hissed.

  “Of course,” Chester said. “The evil spirits are waking to the devil’s alarm. Midnight is upon us.

  The sooner we get this clown to sleep, the better. Sing, Harold.”

  I opened my mouth again, but was stopped this time by Dawg. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “what would help me to sleep better than a song is a story.”

  “Yeah,” Howie said, “that’s what we need. A story. Just think, if we were back at the campfire with the Monroes, we’d be telling ghost stories. Tell us a ghost story, Pop.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Chester said. The leaves about us stirred in the wind. A branch snapped somewhere off to my left.

  “A scary story,” Dawg said. “Yer good at that, Chester. If you want me to go to sleep, you’d better tell me a scary story.” His words sounded like a threat, like he knew that we knew. If you want me to go to sleep, he’d said.

  I looked to Chester, whose eyes were focused on the house in the distance. The quivering yellow light faded and went out. The house was dark and still. “All right,” Chester said, “I’ll tell you a story. A story of Saint George’s Day. A true story. One that started in Transylvania and ended right here.”

  “Here?” I said, feeling my hair begin to rise. Boy, my hair was really getting a work out tonight.

  “It is the history of a vampire rabbit named Bunnicula,” Chester went on. “The little-known but true story of a race of creatures who brought terror wherever they roamed and passed on to each generation the secrets of their evil ways.”

  “I get it,” said Howie. “This is the story of a hare with dark roots.”