It Came From Beneath the Bed!

by James Howe

  Howie said, “We’re doomed.”

  Delilah said, “Being doomed makes me hungry.”

  “We can’t think of our stomachs at a time like this,” said Howie. “We’ve got to save the world.”

  “Okay,” said Delilah. “But then can we get something to eat?”

  “Okay,” said Howie.

  He raised himself on his hind paws and peered at the sleeping boy. Inching his finely shaped head forward, he opened his professionally trained jaws, ready to secure the test tube in their grasp. Soon the world would be safe from harm and he and Delilah could go downstairs and get something to eat.

  Then . . . disaster struck!!!!

  HOWIE’S WRITING JOURNAL

  cliff-hanger are awesome!!!!

  Uncle Harold asked, “What’s the disaster?”

  I said “you’ll have to read the next chapter to find out!”

  He said, “well, let me read it.”

  I said, “I have to write it first.”

  Writing is awesome!!!!!

  CHAPTER 5:

  “DISASTER!”

  Pete suddenly swung his arm in the air.

  Startled, Howie thought, He must be dreaming about baseball again.

  The test tube flew out of Pete’s hand and landed in the space between the bed and the wall.

  “You’ll never get it now,” Delilah fretted.

  “I’ve got to go in and give it a try,” the square-shouldered, iron-jawed, wirehaired dachshund said, dropping down to all fours and looking Delilah in the eyes.

  “Oh, but you mustn’t, you mustn’t, I beg you,” Delilah whimpered, tossing her curly blonde ears from side to side. “I know this mission is important, I know the fate of the whole world is at stake, but why do you have to be the one to go in? Why now . . . now, when we’ve only just met? We have our whole future ahead of us, our whole past behind us, our whole present, um, with us. Please, Howie, think of the children.”

  “Children?” Howie asked. “What children?”

  “Our children,” Delilah cried. “The children we’ll one day have if only you don’t go.”

  “I’m just a puppy,” said Howie. “I’m too young to think about having children. Besides, there’s a job to be done and I’ve got to do it!”

  “Then let me go with you,” Delilah insisted.

  “No,” the heroic and protective Howie replied. “You stay here, where it’s safe and doesn’t smell.”

  Delilah stifled a sob as the valiant Howie crawled under the bed. The foul aroma of aging socks hit his nostrils like a finely tuned concert piano.

  It was dark under there, so dark it hurt, and smelly, not just from the socks but from sneakers that should have been retired a year ago and moldering food and mildewed comic books and . . .

  That’s when he saw it—the stain of purple creeping down the wall! The stopper had come out of the test tube! All the liquid had run out! Whatever that formula was, it was no longer safely contained. It was out in the world now, where Pete alone knew what harm it might cause. But Pete wasn’t even aware that the spill had taken place. He was snoring loudly, muttering in his sleep about strikes and foul balls.

  Wearily, Howie crept out from under the bed.

  Delilah was there with a picnic basket and an American flag. “I waited for you, Johnny,” she told him.

  “My name is Howie,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, but you’re safe at home now,” she said. “The dust bunnies didn’t get you, that’s all that matters.”

  Howie told her about the formula dripping down the wall.

  “Is that bad?” she asked.

  “It’s not good,” Howie told her.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? But—”

  “Nothing,” Howie said in the firm yet affectionate tone she had come to see as manly yet sensitive.

  There was nothing left they could do. Nothing anybody could do.

  Nothing.

  Except pray.

  HOWIE’S WRITING JOURNAL

  Writing stinks!!!!!!!

  It gets you in trouble!

  I let Delilah read what I wrote and now she’s not speaking to me!

  She said I’m making her sound stupid and that her character is an insult to females everywhere and what is that business with the picnic basket and American flag, anyway?

  I tried to explain. I said, “in a story like this, the man is always the hero and the woman gets to admire him.”

  I think that’s when she stopped speaking to me.

  And what does she have against the American flag?! She said it didn’t make sense and I said it didn’t have to, because I have a literary license!!!! She snatched the doggie treat I was eating right out of my mouth and said I woudn’t have room for it because I was TOO FULL OF MYSELF!!!!

  Maybe that was when she stopped speaking to me.

  Is it my fault that Delilah doesn’t understand the way stories work?

  I thought she’d at least like what I wrote about her eyelashes.

  CHAPTER 6:

  “THE TERRIBLE THING UNDER THE BED!”

  The next morning, Howie found a note from Delilah under the mat outside the front door of the Monroes’ house.

  “I have fallen in love with someone else,” it read. “I cannot see you anymore. Please do not come sniffing around my yard. Good luck with saving the world.”

  A tear fell from Howie’s manly yet sensitive cheek.

  Just then, he heard a cry far greater than the one his heart was silently screaming inside his chest. He ran up the stairs to Pete’s bedroom.

  “No, no, no!” Pete was crying.

  “What is it?” Mr. Monroe, Pete’s father, called in alarm as he rushed into the room, almost stepping on the adorable yet low-lying dachshund puppy. “Are you okay, Pete?”

  “Uh, er, uh, yeah, I’m okay,” said Pete. “I just uh, er, uh, lost my science homework.”

  Pete’s father shook his head. “Why don’t you look under your bed?” he asked. “That’s where everything else ends up.”

  “Ha, ha,” Pete laughed. “Okay, Dad.”

  As soon as Mr. Monroe left the room, Pete scrambled under the bed. The clever and quick-thinking Howie hid himself behind the bunched-up sleeping bag that was still next to Pete’s bed from the time his friend Kyle had stayed over two weeks ago.

  “Whew,” he heard Pete say. “No harm done. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to duplicate that formula.”

  Downhearted, Pete came out from under the bed and pulled on a pair of socks he’d found. They didn’t match, except in odor.

  Howie scampered out of the room before Pete could notice he was there.

  Later that day, when there was no one in the house but Howie (except Bunnicula, who was sleeping), it happened.

  A strange noise was coming from upstairs. I’d better go investigate, Howie thought.

  Cautiously, the nervous but ever brave dachshund went up the stairs. With each step he took, the sound grew louder.

  It’s coming from Pete’s room, he thought.

  GA-RUNCH, CRRRUNNCHH, GA-RUM-RUM, GA-RUNCH!!!!

  What was it?

  The curious and daring Howie had to know.

  The door creaked as he opened it.

  The floor squeaked as he put one paw in front of another.

  “Is someone there?” Howie asked. Even though he was trembling inside, his voice was as solid as a finely tuned concert piano.

  “GA-RUNCH!” came the answer.

  Howie’s heart started racing. He dared not move. He waited. He waited some more. He dozed off. He woke with a start.

  That’s when he heard the voice.

  “Mo-o-o-re,” it growled.

  “M-M-More?” Howie asked.

  “MORE!” it repeated.

  The voice was coming from under the bed!

  Howie moved at a snail’s pace toward Pete’s bed. He peered under it. Something was breathing, raspy and raw.


  “Mo-o-o-re!” said the gravelly voice.

  Howie thought his imagination was playing tricks on him. He wished there were someone else there to hear what he was hearing. He felt a lump in his throat as he thought of Delilah. He remembered her standing there with her picnic basket and little flag, calling him Johnny. He remembered her curly blonde ears and high-speed eyelashes.

  Oh, Delilah, he thought.

  But then he thought no more, for that was when he noticed the eyes staring out at him from under the bed.

  The eyes were getting larger! Whoever they belonged to was coming toward him!

  The formula! Howie thought.

  He ran as fast as he could.

  CHAPTER 7:

  “THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!”

  Howie bolted down the stairs. Whoever—or whatever—it was, was still coming after him! He could hear the thump, thump, thump of footsteps—or whatever they were—moving along the hallway over his head.

  “Be brave, be brave,” Howie told himself.

  Suddenly, the footsteps—or whatever they were—stopped.

  Howie looked up. There was nothing there.

  And then . . . there it was!

  It stood at the top of the stairs, raised on its hind legs, larger than Howie remembered it. Much, much larger.

  PUDGYKINS!!!!

  “Mo-o-o-re!” Pudgykins growled. “More food now!!”

  As the overgrown koala started making its way awkwardly down the stairs, Howie glanced at the clock by the front door. It was too soon for any of the Monroes to come home. Bunnicula was asleep in the living room, and Harold and Chester were out somewhere. It was going to be up to him—Howie, the brave and courageous yet recently dumped and therefore heartbroken dachshund puppy—to save the day.

  How much of a threat could a stuffed animal be? Howie asked himself.

  Pudgykins stopped on the second step from the bottom, reached down, and picked up a sweatshirt lying there. It was Pete’s and it still smelled like yesterday’s soccer practice.

  “Yum!” Pudgykins said as he stuffed the sweatshirt into his mouth.

  Howie felt his knees buckle as he watched Pudgykins shred the sweatshirt with his sharklike teeth. In ten seconds the sweatshirt was nothing but a memory.

  “Mo-o-o-re!” Pudgykins growled at Howie.

  And then, before Howie’s astonished eyes, Pudgykins began to swell. He grew taller and rounder and bigger. He was as big as Mr. Monroe now.

  How long before he was as big as a house?

  CHAPTER 8:

  “IT ESCAPES!”

  Howie did not wait to find out.

  Being the heroic type he was, he would have waited, but after Pudgykins looked at him, licked his lips, and asked, “Got milk?” Howie thought it would be a good idea to find the nearest exit.

  Once outside, he tried to think calmly. How to stop an overstuffed koala bear from achieving world domination? It was just the kind of question Chester would have loved. But where was Chester?

  Suddenly, a new thought came into Howie’s brain: Bunnicula!

  The poor bunny was inside the house with Pudgykins! He, Howie the dauntless dachshund, would have to go back in and save him!!!!

  He wished Delilah could be there to see him, then shook the thought out of his head.

  Howie dashed back through the pet door, ready to do whatever it took to rescue the innocent bunny!

  But Bunnicula was sound asleep in his cage, unharmed.

  Whew, thought Howie, Pudgykins hasn’t found him yet.

  Then there was a loud CRASH!!!!!!

  Oh, no! thought Howie. Pudgykins has escaped!!!!!!

  Terrified screams confirmed Howie’s hunch.

  Passing the front closet on his way out, Howie noticed that all the Monroes’ winter boots were missing.

  Pudgykins has been here! Howie deduced smartly.

  Out in the street, Howie was met with a sight too bewildering, too staggering, too weird for the human—or canine—mind to grasp. There, standing at the center of Maple and Elm, was a twenty-foot-tall koala bear picking up garbage pails and downing their contents as if they were nothing more than cans of soda.

  “Food!” Pudgykins said between burps. “More!”

  With every swallow, he grew another foot. High. Not at the end of his leg.

  Howie’s sharp and unusually large brain began to work overtime.

  What could he do to save the world from Pete’s terrible science experiment? He was only one small dachshund in a world gone mad, one tiny voice in a sea of voices, one pebble in a field of boulders, one itsy-bitsy minnow in a school of sharks, one

  HOWIE’S WRITING JOURNAL

  Uncle Harold was just reading over my shoulder and said I’m getting a little carried away. He also wants to know why he and Pop aren’t in the story. I told him I thought my readers wouldn’t be too interested in such old characters.

  Now he’s not speaking to me, either.

  A writer’s life is a lonely life.

  What could he do to save the world from Pete’s terrible science experiment? He was only one small dachshund in a world gone mad. He might need to call in the army, the marines, the Humane Society. But how could he? His paws were too big to push the buttons on the phone!

  Just then, the answer came to him, rounding the corner.

  Pete! And who should Pete be walking with but Amber Faye Gorbish, Pete’s classmate and—more important to the story—Delilah’s owner.

  Just the thought of Delilah made Howie’s heart sink, but he refused to give in to sentiment. This was no time for romantic notions! This was a time for action!

  Howie went bounding up to Pete, who said, “What’s up, pup?”

  “Woof!” Howie replied as he turned his handsome face with its chiseled profile up toward the towering koala bear, whom he would have thought was hard to miss.

  “Pudgykins!” Pete cried. “How did you—”

  And then an evil smile spread slowly across his face like an accident working its way across a carpet.

  “The potion,” Pete muttered. “It must have spilled onto Pudgykins. That means it works! It works, it works!”

  “What potion? What are you talking about?” Amber Faye asked. “Pete, don’t you see that there’s a giant teddy bear blocking our way? What are you going to do about it?”

  “No sweat!” Pete said. “Pudgykins is my bear. He’ll do what I tell him.”

  “Cool,” Amber Faye said, glancing at her watch. “But can he do it soon? Because if I am, like, one minute late for my piano lesson, my teacher will be, like, furious.”

  Amber Faye tossed her curly blonde hair the way Delilah had once tossed her curly blonde ears. Like owner, like puppy, Howie thought.

  “PUDGYKINS!” Pete called out.

  The giant koala bear, who was now taller than most of the trees, dropped the garbage pail it was holding and looked down at Pete. “Food!” it said.

  “No, Pudgy, I’m not food. I’m your master. It’s Pete, don’t you remember?”

  “Pete,” Pudgykins repeated dully. He sounded one kibble short of a full meal. Like owner, like teddy bear, Howie thought.

  By this time, quite a crowd had gathered. Even the police had showed up. Some of them were talking through megaphones, saying things like, “We’ve got you surrounded! Don’t try any sudden moves! How’s the weather up there?”

  There were a lot of kids in the crowd, Toby Monroe among them, and pets, too. Howie spotted Harold and Chester and ran over to them.

  “What’s going on?” Harold asked the young but well-informed dachshund puppy.

  Howie told them.

  “I will save the day!” was Chester’s response.

  “Pete,” Pudgykins kept saying. “Pete, Pete . . .”

  Suddenly, a terrible smell overcame the crowd.

  “P. U., what’s that?” Howie heard someone say. He turned his head. To his surprise, the terrible smell was Delilah!

  “Delilah!” he gasped. “Where have
you been?”

  Delilah’s eyes were bleary. Her fur was matted. She had the lid of a pizza box stuck to her hind right paw. “I’ve been out at the town dump!” she snapped at Howie. “What’s it to ya? I was drownin’ my sorrows in trash.”

  “Sorrows?” Howie asked hopefully. Was Delilah’s heart as broken as his own?

  But before she could answer, Delilah was whisked out of sight!

  Pudgykins had grabbed Delilah and was now holding her in his outstretched paw. His eyes gleamed as he looked at her and licked his chops. “Food!” he growled. “Yum.”

  HOWIE’S WRITING JOURNAL

  I wonder what’s going to happen next. Howie has to save Delilah, but how? then again, since delilah still isn’t speaking to me, maybe I should just let Pudgykins . . .

  Nah, that wouldn’t be nice.

  At least Uncle Harold is speaking to me again. He said was just being too sensitive before. Besides, he wanted to read the rest of what I’d written. I let him. He said it was good, but that just because a simile works once doesn’t mean you should use it again and again. I think he means the concert piano.

  He also said I’m still overdoing the adjectives describing one of the characters.

  I wish I knew what he was talking about.

  Well, it’s time to finish the story. In most stories like this, the monster has to be killed off. I like Pudgykins too much to kill him off. Besides, I am a gentle peace-loving creature and I do not want my story to be violent. How am I going to end this without blowing Pudgykins up?

  Maybe the formula could wear off and he could grow small again.

  Or maybe he could grow so big that he floats off into space and becomes another planet. Planet Pudgykins.

  Maybe not.

  I guess I’ll just have to write it to find out what happens.

  CHAPTER 9:

  “HOWIE TO THE RESCUE!”