Dunc's Halloween (5 page)

And he left the room before Dunc could tell him about his theory. About how Amos maybe hadn't gotten enough of a bite to make him a full werewolf. Maybe only a little bit of a bite only caused a little bit of a reaction.

Not a full werewolf.

Maybe, Dunc thought, watching Amos
trot out of the typing room and into the main part of the library, maybe just enough of a bite to make Amos into just exactly what he seemed to be.

A werepuppy.

.
7

As it happened, Amos didn't get to speak to Melissa. He came closer than usual, but he didn't break his previous record. The record was from the time she had thought Amos was his cousin, Lash Malesky, the world-class skateboarder. Melissa had actually spoken directly to him that time, but she didn't know it was Amos and so it didn't count.

This time it was very, very close.

Melissa was with a girl named Ehhrim, a black girl who had been born in Ethiopia and moved to the United States two years earlier. She was tall and fine boned and
looked like a model. She and Melissa were best friends, and they were in the library so Ehhrim could show Melissa a picture of an Ethiopian dress like the one her mother was making for her to wear to the costume party.

Amos worked out his plan as he left the typing room. He headed across the main lobby of the library to where Melissa and Ehhrim were looking at a computer screen to locate the book.

His plan was simple, and Amos felt it was bound to work.

He would walk right up, say hi, then flat-out ask Melissa what she was wearing, so he could tailor his own costume to fit. A clean, simple plan.

And later, when he and Dunc were talking about it and helping to clean up the library, even Dunc had to admit that it had started out all right. Or appeared to.

Amos walked across the lobby perfectly. Good form, a little bounce in his step, his ears perked up, and his nose twitching as he checked odors. He moved up in back of Melissa and Ehhrim, and opened his mouth
and said, “Hi, Melissa. What are you wear—”

He was going to say: What are you wearing to the costume party?

The problem was Harvey.

Two years before Amos and Dunc were born, somebody had dropped a kitten in a box in front of the library.

It had been so cute, the librarian had adopted it and named it Harvey, after a cousin of hers who had also been cute when he was young. Harvey the kitten had turned into Harvey the cat, then Harvey the old library cat. Newspapers had run stories on him, television had come to film him, and though he had about the same personality as a large fur-covered paperweight, everybody who came to the library loved him. They had taken up a collection to give Harvey his own little swinging pet door at the back of the library and a bed and special feeding and watering bowl so he would stop drinking out of the toilets.

Harvey had been out all day, and his odor that lingered in the library wasn't
fresh, and Amos had overlooked it in his excitement over speaking to Melissa.

But now Harvey was coming home. Just at the moment Amos was about to speak to Melissa, Harvey came through the pet door, lumbered into the lobby, trotted across the floor, and jumped up onto the main desk to get his daily petting from the librarian.

They were wrong, later, when they said Amos had gone insane. He wasn't insane as much as he was just very, very interested.

What he wound up saying to Melissa was: “Hi, Melissa, what are you wear—
cat
!”

And he was gone, growling and snarling.

During his many years of daily prowling, Harvey had learned how to survive. Without hesitation he leaped from the main desk to the top shelves in the fiction section. Amos went after him.

Shelves, books, and busts of Dickens, Twain, and Shakespeare went flying.

Harvey made one complete circuit of the library on the tops of the shelves, with Amos clawing along just four inches from his tail.

Then Harvey pulled a hard right
through the magazine rack, dipped beneath a potted plant, and made for his pet door in a straight line across the copier and an assistant librarian named Wilson who screamed, “Mad dog! Call the pound!” before going down in a welter of overdue notices.

Amos had been gaining slightly, and as with Iver, he would have had Harvey except for bad luck. He slipped a little, stepped on Wilson, and hit the pet door off balance. He didn't fit through it and jammed headfirst, and his teeth snapped shut just millimeters from Harvey's retreating rear end.

The library stood in stunned silence, looking as if an earthquake had hit. The whole thing hadn't taken five seconds, and the only sound now was Amos jerking and scrabbling to get his head out of the pet door.

“Who was that?” Ehhrim asked Melissa.

“I haven't the slightest,” Melissa answered, shaking her head. “Somebody with serious mental problems.”

“He spoke to you.”

“I can't help that,” Melissa said, peering
toward the back of the library, where Amos was struggling with the pet door. “It's sad, isn't it, that people like that are on the streets? They should be in, you know, homes or institutions or something.”

Dunc helped Amos pull his head out of the pet door so they could clean the library up. After jerking him out, Amos stood up and straightened his clothes. “I think that went well, don't you? I mean, up to a point.”

Dunc looked at the library, at Amos's clothes—which were torn and hanging in rags—and nodded. “Up to a point. Why don't we clean up now and go home?”

Amos nodded. “I'll wait for Melissa to call.…”

“Yes,” Dunc said, leading Amos to the fiction section to begin reshelving books. “That might be better.”

.
8

The moon showed a crack of silver blue through the east window of Amos's room.

In the time between the destruction of the library and the evening, Dunc had refined the plan.

“It has to be simple.”

“Right.” Amos nodded. “Like, let's not do it—how's that for simple?”

Dunc shook his head. “Here I am, trying to make you famous—”

“You're trying to make me a lamb chop, that's what you're trying to do.”

“Come on, you know I wouldn't do anything that would really hurt you.”

Amos just ignored that one. It was too ridiculous to even notice. They were sitting on Amos's bed getting ready to get ready to go to the costume party.

Dunc continued. “We skip trick or treats—”

“
Skip
trick or treats? After I worked on that schedule for weeks? We can make our candy ration for a year if we work it right.”

“Think now,” Dunc said, holding up his hand. “The neighborhood will be crawling with little kids, and we're going to try trap a werewolf. Or at least somebody who thinks he's a werewolf. It will be too confusing, too dangerous. We have to wait, hold back until after the costume party, then set our trap. If we're out there rumbling around before we're ready to trap him, he might get suspicious and we'll lose our chance.”

As always, Dunc talked Amos into it. What was worse, at least to Amos, Dunc also talked him into going to the costume party dressed in his lamb suit. Now he was dragging him out of the house, and they were on their way to the gymnasium.

“Oh, man,” Amos said, trotting along
next to Dunc. “This is really bad. I look like I've been hit by a car—like a roadkill somebody scraped up.”

“No, you don't. It's cute, really. Melissa will love it. Besides, there wouldn't have been time to change after the party.”

They were walking along the sidewalk heading for the costume party. Dunc was dressed as a shepherd, to go with Amos's lamb costume.

Amos stopped dead. “Dunc, you're always telling me to stop and think. All right, now you do it. Think what you're actually doing here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're walking along the street with somebody dressed in a lamb suit, talking about trying to catch a werewolf in a volleyball net.”

Dunc looked at Amos. “So?”

“Well, doesn't that sound a little strange to you?”

Dunc thought a moment, then scratched his head. “No—not if we catch him. It will be a first. And besides, I'm prepared.” He dug into his pocket and held up something
shining silver in the streetlight. “I have the butter knife.”

“Oh.” Amos nodded. “Oh, good. I feel much better now. I was really worried, but now it's all right.…” He trailed off as they approached the gym.

There were monsters and princesses and vampires and pirates and rock stars streaming in from all directions. Amos moved off to the side in the dark place next to the entrance to the gym. “Let's hold back. I want to see if I can recognize Melissa.”

Dunc stood next to him. “We don't know what her costume is.”

As Dunc studied each person going in the door, his attention was diverted from Amos. Which was just as well.

Back in the shadows, some very strange things were happening to Amos.

The moon had come up over the gym, and as they had walked to the door, Amos had come into the silver-blue light.

The changes came slowly at first, almost not there at all.

He crouched a little. Then a little more. And then his ears and nose grew a little.
Then a little more. And hair grew on his hands and neck and face. Then a little more. And all of this happened and kept happening until it wasn't Amos standing in the dark next to Dunc. It wasn't really
not
Amos, but it wasn't really
him
, either.

The crouch continued until it was just more comfortable for Amos to be down on all fours, while his growing nose made it easier for him to growl and pant than to talk. It all seemed so natural, and it happened one-thing-to-another until Amos wasn't much like Amos any longer. He looked less and less like Amos and more and more like a kind of rangy cross between a coyote and a dog pound stray.

Except, of course, that he was wearing a T-shirt, a pair of Fruit of the Loom shorts, a moldy lamb costume, and a pair of tennis shoes.

Dunc turned. “Amos?”

But Amos was gone. He had dropped back into the darkness, flipped his feet to get the tennis shoes off his paws, and set off at a lope, the lamb costume trailing along behind.

Dunc looked to his right. Amos moved around to his left, zigzagged through some people in costumes, and whipped into the gym.

Dunc didn't see him. “Amos? Come on now. This is no time for kidding around.”

Dunc heard a sudden commotion inside the gym, yelling and noise, and he turned to the door.

“Somebody catch him!” an adult voice roared. It was one of the teachers who were chaperoning the party. “They aren't supposed to be in here!”

Dunc moved inside the gym. At first he couldn't see anything through the people milling around.

Then he caught a glimpse of a furry animal zipping through legs and outstretched arms.

Somebody's dog had gotten into the gym, he thought. But something in him knew what it really was even then.

“It's a dog!” someone yelled. “Wearing a costume—a dog. Catch it, catch it!”

That was when Dunc got a clear view
and saw that the “dog” was wearing a tattered lamb suit.

Dunc moved closer, fighting his way through the crowd.

“It's all right, don't worry—I've got him.”

The voice was very familiar. Dunc worked his way to where everybody was standing around in a circle and saw Melissa kneeling on the ground.

She was holding the dog, looking up at the rest of them. “He's very friendly.”

“Amos?” Dunc said.

Amos wagged his tail at Dunc, panted a bit, and leaned in to let Melissa hug him.

“Oh, man,” Dunc said. “We've got to get you out of here.”

Amos raised his lips, showed a good set of yellow-white fangs to Dunc, and growled, pushing harder against Melissa.

“Is this your dog?” Melissa asked.

“Well, sort of—yes.”