Bunnicula Strikes Again! (4 page)

“So he can what?” Howie asked.

I looked at him blankly. “I don't know,” I said, “but there's one way to find out.”

As stealthily as we could, we made our way across the yard, through the pet door and into the kitchen, where we were stopped in our tracks by the strangest sound emanating from the living room.

Slurp, slurp, slurp.

Was it Bunnicula, sucking the juice out of vegetables? It couldn't be—he was never awake during daylight hours. Suddenly, the terrible truth hit me—it was Chester! Chester had become a vampire! He was sucking the lifeblood out of Bunnicula! That's why he said there was nothing to worry about anymore. That's why Bunnicula had become so listless! It was all too beastly to believe, too awful to face, yet I knew I must face it, must fling open the door that separated us, and put an end to Chester's hideous deeds!

“Be brave,” I told young Howie, without explaining why he would need to be. How could I tell
him what lay on the other side of that door, what violation of all that was good and decent accounted for those seemingly innocent slurping sounds?

“Now!” I said, and with Howie at my side, I butted the door open, charged into the living room, and cried out in wild desperation, “The game is up, Chester! I know you're a vampire! Let the bunny go!”

“H
AVE
you completely lost your mind?” Chester asked.

Had I not worked myself up into such a state, I might have asked him the same thing. There he was inside Bunnicula's cage, all hunched up next to the sleeping rabbit, the hair and whiskers around his lips slick and matted with . . .

Carrot juice?

“Fine, so you're not a vampire,” I said, trying to sound calm despite my heart's pounding reminder that I was anything but. “You
are
drinking Bunnicula's carrot juice, though, are you not?”

“Past tense, Harold. I just finished.”

“Gee, Pop,” said Howie, “there must be some way to let the Monroes know you like carrot juice, too. You don't have to drink Bunnicula's.”

“I don't like carrot juice, Howie,” Chester said, gingerly stepping over the inert bunny and out of the cage. Carefully locking the door behind him, he jumped down and joined us. “I do not drink it for pleasure. I drink it because I must.”

“Is that why you eat string?” I asked.

“I ate string once in my life, Harold. Leave it to you to remember.”

“How could I forget? There you were with this little piece of string dangling from your lips and Mr. Monroe went to pull it out and he kept pulling and pulling, and the next thing you know he was clear across the other side of the room holding one end of a twenty-foot piece of string with your mouth still holding the other end. You looked like a tape dispenser.”

Howie cracked up. Chester did not.

“But that's beside the point,” I said. “The point is, why are you doing this?”

Chester sighed heavily. “Harold,” he said, “you have a touching belief in the goodness of all creatures great and small. But how many times do I have
to tell you? Bunnicula is not like other rabbits. He is evil.”

“Now, Chester,” I said.

“Tut, Harold, don't interrupt. You asked me for the truth, and now you will hear the truth.”

Howie lowered his rear end to the floor, an indication that he was settling in for a good story. I wondered if he understood the distinction between fiction and reality. Then again, I suspected that for Chester there was no distinction at all.

“It began about a month ago,” Chester said. “It was a Saturday. I remember it particularly because Mr. and Mrs. Monroe had received phone calls that morning from both their mothers that they would be coming to visit on Mother's Day. And although Mother's Day was still two weeks away, the family spent the rest of the day in a frenzy of cleaning and fixing up and telling us we were underfoot and—”

“Piling things in the car and taking things out. Yes, I remember,” I said.

“And we ended up getting kicked out of the house,” Howie put in, “and they forgot about us and it started to rain and—”

“Yes, it was a memorable day,” said Chester. “Well,
Bunnicula slept through the day, of course, as he always does, but in the middle of the following night I was awakened by a clicking sound in the kitchen, followed by a light appearing under the door.”

“Refrigerator,” I surmised.

“Precisely. I might have made nothing of it had I not happened to glance in the direction of Bunnicula's cage and seen that it was empty. Well, what was I to think, Harold? He was at it again! He was in there, I had no doubt of it, attacking artichokes, sucking squash, biting broccoli, sinking his fangs into fennel—”

“Stop!” Howie cried. “It's too horrible!”

Chester pressed on relentlessly. “I tried to catch him in the act, but, oh, he's a tricky devil, that one, and he outmaneuvered me. By the time I entered the kitchen, he was gone. He had left his victims behind, though, carelessly scattered about the floor like so much litter on a public beach.”

“Uncle Harold,” Howie said, “when you write a book about this, will you find a way to remind your readers that they should never litter?”

“I definitely will,” I promised. “Now go on, Chester.”

“What was I to do? Should I leave those poor victimized victuals on the floor for the Monroes to discover in the morning? Remembering how dense they had been the first time this happened and, seeing no reason to think they'd grown any additional brain cells since then, I decided on a different course of action. I buried the pallid produce under some other garbage in the pail and made a vow to myself once and for all to take matters into my own hands.”

“Paws,” Howie said.

“Why?” asked Chester. “Do you need to go get a drink of water?”

“Take matters into your own paws. You don't have hands.”

Chester pulled his lips back into a strained smile. “Has anyone ever told you you're a bright little whippersnapper?” he asked.

“Gee, no,” Howie said, beaming.

“Well, there's a reason for that,” Chester said, and then he went on. “Every night for the next two weeks it was the same thing. Out of his cage, into the kitchen, drain the veggies, and back before dawn. But I detected a puzzling difference from times past when Bunnicula had sucked the juice out
of vegetables. This time he didn't always finish the job. It must be, I thought, that he isn't all that hungry. After all, he was still drinking the juice the Monroes gave him every day. What then was his motive? It almost appeared that he was playing a game, that attacking vegetables was a form of sport for him. I thought about it, and it occurred to me that Bunnicula was unusually frisky and playful at that time.”

Although I wondered why neither Howie nor I had come upon any evidence of these nighttime escapades, I knew the last part of what Chester had said was true. I remembered how on several occasions when Toby and Pete had taken Bunnicula out of his cage, he'd frolicked about with enormous energy and had appeared especially contented when he'd cuddled into the crook of Toby's neck. As best one can judge the emotional state of a rabbit, I would have said he was the happiest I'd ever known him.

“But he's not like that anymore,” I pointed out. “When did it change? And why?”

“This is where the story becomes truly curious,” Chester replied. “A couple of weeks ago, I was all
set to prevent his midnight runs on the refrigerator when—”

Howie interrupted. “How were you going to do that, Pop?”

“Garlic,” Chester said matter-of-factly. “It immobilizes vampires and, as Harold can tell you, it's worked on Bunnicula in the past. In any event, I never got to use it because all of a sudden he stopped.”

“No more sinking his fangs into fennel?” Howie asked.

“No more attacking artichokes,” said Chester.

“So why didn't you just leave him alone?” I inquired.

“At first, I thought I might. Then it occurred to me that he was probably well aware of my watching him. What if he was trying to lull me into a false sense of security? Perhaps he had something really
big
planned. Ha! I thought. I'll show him a thing or two! And with that, I began sneaking into his cage every day and drinking that disgusting potion the Monroes concoct for him. And as you can see, he's gotten weaker and weaker.”

And you, Chester, I thought, have gotten weirder and weirder.

“Do you intend to continue to deprive him of his food until he starves?” I asked.

Chester just gazed at me slyly.

“Let me just repeat: The matter is now under control,” he said.

So at the very least Chester planned to keep Bunnicula at bay by weakening him. Yet I couldn't help thinking that there was another reason Bunnicula had stopped his attacks, a reason beyond lack of food, that he had suddenly become less frisky, a reason that had nothing to do with Chester. However, my dog's brain, which is to a cat's brain what a corridor is to a labyrinth, could not begin to sort it all out. No, it would take Chester to do that—and although the conclusion he would draw would be based more on a hunch than hard, cold fact, it would prove to be correct. Just as the consequences would prove to be nearly catastrophic.

I
DID
not sleep well that night. Toby tossed and turned, and I, tethered to the end of his bed by inertia, allowed myself to be rolled this way and that until shortly before dawn when he sat up and whispered in the dark, “Harold, are you awake?” Not waiting for an answer, he climbed out from under his covers and wrapped himself around me in a full body hug.

“I had bad dreams, boy,” he said in a hushed tone. “Did I tell you what movie we saw last night when we went to the last show at the theater?
Dracula.
Not the new one we saw the time we found Bunnicula, but the old one with Bela Lugosi. It wasn't even in color and the special effects were totally lame. I didn't think it was scary at all when I was watching it, but, boy,
Harold, it sure was scary in my dreams.”

I looked him in the eye and panted to let him know I understood.

“Aw, you understand, don't you, boy?” he said. Works every time.

“I'll tell you one thing, Harold,” he said, yawning. “You'd better stay out of Mom and Dad's way today. They're pretty bummed out about this theater thing, losing the battle and all. You know what's going to happen on Tuesday? Boom! They're coming in with a wrecking ball and down it goes!”

He yawned again. “Well, I'm going to try to get some more sleep. What are you going to do?”

He ruffled the hair on the top of my head, then crawled back under the covers, and before I'd had time to find out if his question was multiple choice or essay, he was sound asleep.

Looking out the window, I could see that the sky was beginning to grow light. Bunnicula, whose sleeping and waking hours were at odds with everyone else's in the house, would be going to sleep soon for the day, and that meant it was time for his old buddy Harold to sing him a lullaby.