by James Howe
A clock tower chimed eight times.
“It’s closin’ time at the Big Belly Deli!” Felony shrieked. “We’re gonna be late!”
“Aw, can’t I just say hello to Cute Whiskers?” Miss Demeanor whined.
“Pastrami and lox on an onion roll!” was Felony’s reply.
Miss Demeanor jumped down from the windowsill. “Gotta run,” she said. “Say hi to Cute Whiskers for me, will ya, Harold?”
“Thank . . .” I said to the two cats as they streaked off into the night, “.. . you.”
“Harold, Harold? Is that you?” Chester called out. “What’s going on out there?”
With the help of a garbage pail, I leaped up onto the windowsill, then lifted Howie up by the nape of his neck. The two of us dropped down into the dimly lit back room of the veterinarian’s office. I felt like a hero in a war movie.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw Chester staring down at us from a nearby cage.
“Chester!” I cried. “How are you feeling?” “Greenbriar gave me some kind of medicine that made me sleep most of the day. Right now, my mouth feels like somebody lined it with mouse fur, but other than that I’m feeling a lot better. You’ve got to get me out of here, Harold!”
It suddenly occurred to me how quiet the place was.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“I’m the only one here.”
“But where’s Bunnicula?” Howie inquired.
“He’s gone.”
Howie began to whimper. “Gone? To the big carrot patch in the sky? The bunny beyond? The hareafter? The hoppy hunting ground? The—”
“He escaped!” Chester exploded.
“Oh,” said Howie.
“That’s why you’ve got to get me out of here! I’ve got to stop him before it’s too late.”
“Was this his cage?” Howie asked. He was looking in at a ground-level cage next to him.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Chester. “Why do you ask?”
“Look, Uncle Harold,” said Howie. “Look at the newspaper lining the bottom.”
I looked. It was Saturday’s paper. There was a big ad in the middle of the page:
CENTERVILLE CINEMA—THE LAST PICTURE SHOW!
SEE THE MOVIE THAT OPENED THIS LANDMARK THEATER IN 1931!
DRACULA, STARRING BELA LUGOSI
TRANSYLVANIA COMES TO CENTERVILLE!
BE THERE .. . IF YOU DARE!!
If Bunnicula hadn’t thought before of looking for his mother at the movie theater, there was no question in my mind now that that is where he had gone. I knew what I had to do.
And I knew what I couldn’t do.
“Come on, Harold, get me out of here. It can’t be that hard to unlock this cage. I’ll talk you through it.”
I looked up at my friend, my best friend, my oldest friend in the world, and I said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Chester.”
“Oh, now, Harold,” Chester said, “of course you can. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve called you a dunce or a simpleton—”
“Or a dolt,” I said.
“Or a dolt,” Chester went on, “but I know you’re not really that dumb. I’m sure you can figure out how to open the door and get me out of here.”
“It’s not that I can’t do it, Chester,” I said. “It’s that I won’t do it.”
I looked away, but I could hear in the silence that Chester understood what I was saying.
“I thought you were my friend,” he said at last.
My heart lay heavy in my chest. “I am your friend, but I’m Bunnicula’s friend, too, and I can’t let you hurt him. I’ve stood by you in all your crazy at-tempts to do him in in the past, but I. . . Well, I just can’t do it anymore, Chester. I’m sorry.”
Chester’s voice was like a shard of ice that cut through me. “Sorry?” he said. “That’s what you have to say after all the years we’ve been friends? Sorry? Well, here’s what I’m sorry about, Harold. I’m sorry that I can’t be your friend anymore.”
I looked up. “Chester,” I said.
But he turned his back on me and said nothing. Nothing, that is, but one word, which he spat out at me as Howie and I made our way back out through the open window.
“Traitor,” he said.
When Howie and I emerged into the outside world, the air felt different. Where it had been warm and springlike before, now all I felt was a chill. All I wanted was for everything to be the way it once had been. And all I knew was that it never would be. I had lost my best friend. How I ached to go home and curl up in a dark corner where I could sleep for days. But I couldn’t go home. I had to find Bunnicula. How was he to know that the newspaper in his cage was from two days earlier? There would be no movie shown tonight, just an empty, dangerous theater perilously close to being destroyed.
As we set off to find Bunnicula, Chester’s final word repeated itself over and over in my mind.
Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
[ NINE ]
The Last Showdown
BY the time Howie and I reached the movie theater, the night sky was not only chilly but dark. I could make out several large trucks parked out front, one of which held a tall crane with an ominous steel ball hanging from the end of it, and everywhere there were police barricades and banners bearing the words DEMOLITION SITE, DO NOT CROSS. All I could think was that somewhere inside that darkened, haunted-looking theater was a weak and sickly bunny searching for his mother. Was she even in there? Or was Bunnicula pursuing a memory, a wish, a phantom?
“Are w-we g-g-going in there?” Howie stammered next to me. “It looks scary, Uncle Harold. Like Night of the Living Gargoyles.”
“Excuse me?”
“Number eighteen. There’s this boy, see . . .”
“Howie,” I said, “we have to get Bunnicula out of there before the building is torn down tomorrow.”
“What about his mother?”
“Yes, well, we’ll get her out, too, of course.” I didn’t tell Howie that I had serious doubts Bunnicula’s mother was in there.
I also had serious doubts we would be in there anytime soon. This was a challenge that would have stumped Felony and Miss Demeanor. It was too dark to find a way in—and even if we did get past all the barricades and doors locked with chains, it would probably be pitch-black. Besides, I told myself, if we looked for Bunnicula now, the Monroes would miss us. No, it would be better to return first thing in the morning, when there was light.
Howie didn’t give me an argument. He was as glad as I was to be out of there. And the Monroes were glad to see us when we returned.
Howie, being young and without worries, slept soundly that night. I did not. When I wasn’t worrying about whether we’d be able to rescue Bunnicula before the wrecking crew did its work, I was thinking about what had happened between Chester and me. I kept thinking how only days before I had been so happy that things were normal around our house and how quickly everything had changed. Not everything, perhaps, but the friendship that mattered most to me in the world had been destroyed. And by my own doing. Had I been right to do it? I couldn’t let Chester harm Bunnicula. I had to draw the line somewhere. So why was it that every time I licked my lips that night I tasted salt?
Just before dawn I fell asleep, only to be awakened a short time later by Toby’s cry of “Do I have to go?”
“No,” I heard Mrs. Monroe say, “you don’t have to go. You can go over to Jared’s house if you want.”
“You’re such a wuss,” Pete said to his brother. “Don’t you want to see it get knocked down? It’s going to be so cool!”
“If you’re going to cheer,” Mrs. Monroe said then, “maybe you should go to Kyle’s house, Pete. Our committee is going to register one final protest. No, it won’t stop the wrecking ball at this point, but it’s important for us to be there as a voice, as a conscience, Pete. The movie house is the most beautiful and architecturally interesting building in Centerville. It should be preserved, not torn down. We live in a t
hrowaway society. Someone has to be there to say, ‘This is wrong.’ Do you understand?”
“Can I have chocolate milk for breakfast?” Pete asked.
Mrs. Monroe sighed. “It’s ‘may I,’ and yes, you may,” she said.
“I want to be a conscience,” Toby piped up. “Like you and Dad. I’ll go.”
Conscience. There was something about that word—and then my fuzzy, half-awake brain remembered.
“Howie!” I cried.
Howie jumped up from where he was sleeping and bumped his head on the underside of the coffee table.
“Ouch! What?” he asked.
I answered with one word: “Bunnicula!”
We were out of the house in ten minutes flat. Okay, we might have been faster if we hadn’t stopped off in the kitchen to have breakfast first. But we needed our strength. Besides, we didn’t want to make the Monroes suspicious.
By the time we got to the theater, a crowd was already beginning to gather. There were even a couple of reporters and TV cameras. And there, standing near the trucks, were several burly men glancing at their watches.
“They’re going to start tearing the building down soon,” I said to Howie. “I hope we didn’t wait too long!”
Making sure we weren’t being watched, we sneaked down the alley next to the theater until we came to a door marked STAGE ENTRANCE. Luckily, it was open, probably to allow the workers to make their final preparations.
“Okay, Howie, this is it,” I said. “We’ve got to move fast. Are you nervous?”
“Wh-h-h-h-ho, m-m-m-m-me?” Howie replied. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, his breath was coming in quick, short pants. “N-n-n-no, I’m n-n-not n-n-n-n-n-nervous!”
I decided this was no time for a debate. “Good,” I said, “then let’s go.”
The theater was dark and cool inside. Enough light leaked through from cracks and windows here and there to help us see where we were going, but we still managed to bump into things with every fifth or sixth step. Every time we did, Howie would yip excitedly.
“Ssh!” I admonished him. “We don’t want to scare Bunnicula.”
And then softly, softly I called out his name: “Bun-nic-ula! Bun-nic-ula!”
“Bunnicula!” Howie echoed. “It’s us, Howie and Harold.”
The farther we crept into the abandoned theater, the creepier the shadows became, the eerier the silence. At one point, I thought I heard something moving. I stopped and listened and realized that all I’d been hearing was the pounding of my own heart.
We were in the middle of a very large and very empty room. Having never been in a movie theater before, I couldn’t make much sense of it. Then I remembered Mr. Monroe saying that all the seats were being taken out before the demolition began. Apparently, this was the room where people came to watch the movies. There at one end was a big white wall. And there at the other end was a wall with two doors in it. Very high in the center of that wall was a small square opening neatly framing the silhouette of a figure—a figure with two tall ears.
“Bunnicula,” I said in a hushed voice.
Howie heard me and looked up, too.
“But, Uncle Harold,” he said, “How can Bunnicula be awake? It’s daytime.”
“There’s no sunlight in here,” I pointed out. “Bunnicula must think it’s still night. Now come on—we don’t have a moment to lose.”
As we made our way cautiously out of the large, empty room, through one of the doors, and up a set of stairs that would take us—I hoped—to the small square opening in the wall that held our friend Bunnicula, I heard the same clock I’d heard the night before. Only now, it chimed nine times.
Nine o’clock. Why, I asked myself, did that seem significant?
And then I remembered. The demolition was scheduled to begin at nine o’clock this Tuesday morning.
I picked up the pace, and Howie scampered after me. At the top of the stairs, we came to a half-open door. Behind it was a small room—and there on the wall to our left was the opening we’d seen from below. In the shadowy light, I could make out a pair of eyes glistening. Red eyes. Frightened eyes.
“Bunnicula!” I cried. I was all set to leap up and grab him by the neck when another set of eyes stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Uncle Harold!” Howie called out in alarm. He too had seen them. I could hear him panting rapidly behind me.
“Is it B-Bunnicula’s m-mother?” he sputtered. Was it? I asked myself. Or was it someone else? Something else? Had Howie’s FleshCrawler books gotten to me? Was I imagining some sort of creature who lived in the movie theater, some beast who was about to leap out from the shadows and attack?
There was no time to waste. Either the beast would get us or the wrecking ball would.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”
“Oh, I think you know who I am,” a familiar voice said. “And I know you know what I want.”
“Chester!” I cried. “But how—”
“How did I get here?” Chester said, stepping out into a pale pool of light. His eyes looked unnatural, possessed. “Oh, it was easy enough, thanks to last night’s handiwork of a couple of criminal kitties. When Greenbriar opened my cage this morning, I made a dash for it before he spotted the open window. I got here moments before you did, Harold. Oh, and by the way, whatever you had planned, forget it. Bunnicula is mine!”
“But what are you going to do?”
Chester bounded up to the opening in the wall with a single leap. Bunnicula barely budged. I could tell the poor thing was terrified.
“What am I going to do? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Chester said.
But that was all he had time to say, for suddenly there was a thunderous roar, and before we knew what was happening, the wall to our right exploded.
“Run!” I heard Chester cry.
I looked up at the opening in the wall and to my horror watched as Chester and Bunnicula, locked in a deadly embrace, tumbled from the precipice. The scene from the story Toby had read to me flooded my mind, its words, its images exploding within me even as the room seemed to be exploding around me. I thought of Chester, my dear friend, who had so recently called me traitor, and the words of the story came back to me: “It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.”
Before the terrible wrecking ball could strike again, I ordered Howie to run for his life. I ran, too. And I didn’t look back.
[ TEN ]
One of the family
“HAROLD! “Toby cried out.
“Howie!” Frantically, I raced toward my young master even as I searched the onrushing crowd for signs of Chester and Bunnicula, hoping against hope that they had miraculously escaped and were somehow already out there in front of the theater. But as Toby threw his arms around me, I knew that the only ones to have escaped were Howie and me.
“Are you okay, boy?” Toby asked. “What are you doing here?”
Mrs. Monroe had picked Howie up and was trying to comfort him, but Howie was squirming to be free.
“We’ve got to go back, Uncle Harold!” he yipped. “We’ve got to rescue Pop and Bunnicula!”
Mrs. Monroe seemed to understand. Perhaps people were more intelligent than Chester and I had been willing to give them credit for.
“Stop the demolition!” she cried out. “There may be other animals inside!”
“Stop the demolition!” someone echoed.
The trucks and the noise came to a sudden halt.
Breaking free of Toby’s embrace, I charged down the alleyway to the back of the theater. Howie, who must have leaped from Mrs. Monroe’s arms at the same time, was fast on my heels. Barking for everything we were worth, we led an impromptu rescue team, complete with flashlights and TV news cameras, into the partially decimated movie house.
“Be careful!” someone warned.
“Just follow the dogs,” another voice called out. “They seem to know what they’re doing.”
A fine
thing, I thought. Does that mean most of the time we don’t seem to know what we’re doing? I didn’t dwell on the thought, however. I had more important matters to attend to. Matters of life and death.
There must have been a second blow of the wrecking ball as Howie and I had been fleeing the building, because the wall that had held the small square hole where we’d first spotted Bunnicula and from which he and Chester had tumbled was gone. In its place was a large pile of rubble.
I stared at the pile with a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Chester!” I woofed.
At first there was no response. But then I heard it. The same sort of pitiful mew I’d heard coming from the closet only—was it possible?—the day before. This time it was not a sickly mew, but a frightened one.
“There!” I heard Mr. Monroe call out. “Let me have that flashlight!”
A beam of light bounced off the walls and floor and fallen pieces of plaster and concrete and wood, and then suddenly it caught something. Something alive! It was Chester, wide-eyed and panting!
Howie and I bounded across the room. “Chester!” I cried. “You’re all right!”
He didn’t respond, but just kept staring at all of us. “What about. .. What about Bunnicula?” Howie asked.
Chester did the strangest thing then. He howled. Or so it seemed. He lifted his head high and let out the most piercing cry. Was he hurt?
“Chester, it’s all right, boy!” Mr. Monroe said, brushing against me as he extended a hand to Chester. “Come here, boy,” snapping his fingers. “Come on, it’s all right, Chester. Everything will be fine.”
But Chester didn’t go to Mr. Monroe. On the contrary, the closer Mr. Monroe got, the more Chester hissed and spat.
“Maybe he’s been injured,” another man said. “He might be in shock,” said Mrs. Monroe. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”
I felt Toby’s hand stroke my head. “Is he going to be all right?” he asked his parents. “Is Chester going to be all right?”
A big man who looked like he might have been a member of the wrecking crew worked his way through the small crowd that had followed us inside. “I’ll take care of this,” he said brusquely.