Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow

“It’s the same at... my place,’ said Mr. Tanner. “I don’t live very far . . . from here, you know. These crows ... I think they’ve . . . followed us here.”

“Is that possible?” Mr. Monroe asked. “Could they have flown all this way?”

No one had an answer for that. Except Chester, of course. He muttered under his breath, “Anything is possible when dark forces reign.”

I was all set to say, “Chester, knock it off,” until I thought of Tanner’s cape flapping in the wind, the blackness of his eyes that seemed to go on forever, the unsettling rumble of his voice, and I kept silent.

When Tanner called out to Edgar this time, it was less a command than a plea. “Edgar, come back. Won’t you . . . please?”

Edgar bowed one last time to the other crow, then flew back to Tanner and nipped him lightly on the ear.

“Ah, my dear friend,” Tanner said with a deep sigh as he stroked Edgar’s feathers.

Returning to the house, Chester mumbled, “It’s all theater, Harold.”

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s all a big performance. Edgar and this Tanner or Graves or whoever he really is. They’re putting on a show to dazzle us so that we’ll be blind to their terrible deeds when they finally strike.”

“But what was Edgar doing up there with that other crow?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out. There’s no pulling the wool over this cat’s eyes. Oh, no, my friend. I am too smart for the likes of—ow!”

Chester had been so busy talking he hadn’t noticed the door swing shut in front of us.

“Is your nose okay?” I asked. “I guess we’ll have to go around and use the pet door.”

“By dose is fide,” he told me, which I took to mean he was all right.

After our guest had finished napping and Howie had confessed that he, too, had napped when he should have been spying from under the bed (I believe his exact words were, “Who knew the carpeting in the guest room was so comfy?”), the family gathered for dinner.

Miles, as he asked the Monroes to call him, got the conversational ball rolling by announcing in that rumbly, spooky voice of his that Edgar was still resting in his cage and that Bunnicula was “an interesting, if sleepy, specimen of a rabbit.”

Chester mouthed the word “specimen” at me from his place under the table. I wasn’t sure what his point was, but he explained it later when he presented the evidence he was accumulating in the case of The People (aka Chester) versus Miles Tanner (aka M. T. Graves, the Madman Who Could Turn Us into Mutants with the Aid of Waffle Irons). Lucky for me Chester didn’t get his paws on a computer, or we would have been swimming in spreadsheets.

“Ordinarily, I do not keep Edgar in a . . . cage,” Miles went on. “But I thought he might be more comfortable for now, since he is in a new and . . . unfamiliar . . . place. Might I set him . . . free . . . later?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Monroe.

“Is Bunnicula . . . allowed out of his . . . cage?” Miles asked then. I noticed Chester’s ears perk up. “I would love to . .. get to ... know him.”

“We don’t let him run loose,” Mrs. Monroe said, “but of course you may take him out of his cage.”

“Excellent,” said Miles. “I want to see those eyes that glow in the dark ... up close. How thoughtful of you to . . . put his cage ... in my room.”

Mr. and Mrs. Monroe exchanged a glance. I knew what they were thinking: Miles had asked to have Bunnicula’s cage kept in his room.

“Would you please pass the . . . salad dressing?” Miles asked then, and the Monroes exchanged another look.

How strange, I thought. Hadn’t Miles specifically requested salad without dressing?

After dinner, I overheard Mr. and Mrs. Monroe quietly discussing their odd guest in the kitchen, while Miles sat in the living room talking Flesh-Crawlers with Pete and Toby. Needless to say, Howie was in there too, hanging on each word and using everything in his power to keep from yipping.

When Chester and I sauntered in, Miles’s face contracted like a washcloth being wrung out. His hands tightened their grip on his knees. I began to think that Miles could give Chester a real run for his money in the “tightly wound” department. Toby and Pete didn’t seem to notice as they grilled him with their questions.

“Where do you get all the ideas for your books?” Toby was asking.

Miles darted a few looks our way, then said, “Life.”

“You mean all those things have happened to you?” Toby asked.

“In a. . . way,” said Miles.

Pete snorted. “No offense, Mr. Tanner, but most of the stuff you write about couldn’t happen to anybody. That’s why it’s called fantasy.”

Toby reached across Miles and jabbed his brother’s knee. “Says who?” he asked. “Mr. Tanner practices sorcery. Did you forget that? And what about his bats? What about your bats, Mr. Tanner? Are they vampire bats? And what’s it like living with wolves? You must really love animals, huh? I wish you could have brought all your pets with you. Hey, maybe we could visit you sometime!”

Howie panted enthusiastically to show his support of that idea.

“Oh, well, I don’t know about . . . that.” Miles squirmed uncomfortably as he looked over at Chester and me.

“Do you think they . . . need to go out?” he asked, indicating with a nod of his head that Howie, Chester, and I were the “they” to whom he was referring.

Pete shrugged. “They use the pet door when they go out. Why? Do you want to take them for a walk?”

Toby chimed in, “Cool idea. Let’s go for a walk, Mr. Tanner. Maybe Edgar could go with us.”

“No!” Miles said emphatically. “We don’t need to go for a walk. I just. . . perhaps I should go upstairs to let Edgar out of his cage. If he’s in it too long, it becomes a . . . prison ... to him.”

I was struck anew by the way Miles spoke. It wasn’t just that his voice was low and rumbly. It was that he spoke slowly and haltingly, as though every word were an effort. And no matter what he was talking about, he sounded sad. It came to me later that the word I was looking for, the word that fit Miles Tanner perfectly, was “melancholy.”

“Can we go with you?” Toby asked. “To let Edgar out of his cage, I mean? Bunnicula should be up by now. He wakes up when it gets dark.”

“So he is a . . . creature of the . . . night,” said Miles.

“I guess,” Toby said.

“You can see how his eyes glow in the dark,” said Pete. “It’s way cool.”

“Yes,” said Miles, raising his hands slowly upward and rubbing them together. “Yes, that would . . . interest me. Very . . . much.”

As the threesome made its way up the stairs, Chester turned to me with one eyebrow arched. I knew that meant he was about to speak at some length. I looked for the nearest exit, but he got started before I could escape.

“I have it all figured out” he began.

“Does that mean we have the rest of the night off?” I asked.

“Hardly. We must be ever vigilant, Harold, you know that. This is a man who used the word ‘specimen’ to describe Bunnicula. Unusual word, don’t you think? Unless you’re a scientist—a mad scientist, perhaps—who sees a living being not as a living being but as fodder for some gene-altering experiment!”

“I heard Mrs. Monroe say she had to get her jeans altered because she was getting fodder,” said Howie.

Chester glared at Howie.

“Okay, not really,” Howie said. “But that was a good one, right? Am I right?”

Chester replied, “Howie, if you call the radio station and you’re the one hundredth caller, they’ll give you a one-way paid vacation to the Bahamas.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

Howie left the room.

“That was cruel,” I said.

“Think of it as pest control. Now, where was I? Ah, yes: Tanner’s interest in Bunnicula. Do you notice that he practically recoils at the sight of the rest of us? That’s because he’s afraid we’ll get in his way. It’s Bunnicula he’s after, Harold, there’s no doubt of it. And did you notice how Edgar and Tanner were all lovey-dovey after Edgar flew up to the top of that tree branch and met with the head crow?”

“The head what?”

“The head crow. You saw how Edgar went up there and was bowing all over the place. Edgar and Miles are in cahoots with some kind of crow crime family.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That makes a whole lot of sense.”

“The evidence speaks for itself. Tanner is full of lies, and the two of them are full of charades. And Edgar has to be out of his cage so that he can fly out and consult with the head crow. I rest my case.”

Oh, if only Chester did rest his case. If only he would ever rest his case.

“I don’t know,” I said, “you may have a case . . . or half a case .. . about Miles, but Edgar seems like a regular crow to me.”

“So-called ‘regular crows’ are anything but regular, Harold. They are very clever and resourceful creatures. They know how to fashion tools to get to their food, they play games of their own invention, and they’re excellent mimics. Other than their unfortunate taste for roadkill, there’s a lot to admire in them. However, as much as one might be tempted to respect their intelligence, one must remember that above all else, crows are crafty.”

Chester’s research was finally beginning to interest me. “Crafty?” I asked. “Do you think Edgar might be able to knit me some socks for the winter?”

Chester stared blankly at me.

“My feet get cold,” I explained. “They didn’t used to, but as I get older, I find—”

“Harold! ‘Crafty’ as in ‘sly,’ not ‘crafty’ as in ‘pinecone bird feeders’!”

“Ah,” I said, although I didn’t see what pinecone bird feeders had to do with anything. And I still needed socks.

“Besides, Harold, you’re forgetting that there is something that makes Edgar anything but a regular crow.”

I thought about it. “He doesn’t like corn?” I ventured.

“He never makes a sound,” said Chester. “Unless of course that too is all an act. There’s so much for us to find out. It’s a good thing Howie is going to spend the night under the bed. And this time he had better stay awake!”

“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked. “What if we wake up in the morning and he’s been transformed into a steel-plated gummy bear?”

“I can assure you, Harold, that we do not have to worry about Howie. It’s Bunnicula they’re interested in. It’s Bunnicula they’re after.”

Just then, Howie came racing into the room. “Guess what!” he exclaimed. “I was the ninety-ninth caller! I didn’t win the trip to the Bahamas, but I did win a nice set of Samsonite luggage! I’m going to share it with you, Pop. Do you want the carry-on tote or the garment bag?”

Chester was spared being drawn into Howie’s Wonderful World of the Imagination by a very real knock on the door. Mr. Monroe appeared from the kitchen to answer it.

“Good evening,” said a woman’s voice.

“Ms. Pickles,” said Mr. Monroe. “What a nice surprise.”

“I hope you don’t mind my stopping by like this,” the school librarian said.

“Not at all” Mr. Monroe said. “Please come in.”

“Well, only for a moment” said the tall, frizzy-haired woman in a long, chocolate brown cape who entered. She was holding a covered dish in both hands. “I didn’t have room in my refrigerator,” she explained, holding the dish out to Mr. Monroe. “It’s a pretzel crust Jell-O mold . . . for lunch tomorrow. The recipe called for strawberries, but I used pineapple chunks instead. It’s so hard to find good strawberries this time of year, and besides .. .”

“Besides, I adore pineapple chunks,” came a rumbly voice from the top of the stairs.

The librarian nearly dropped her mold when she looked up and beheld the author of the Flesh-Crawlers series gazing down at her. Edgar was perched on his shoulder, and Pete and Toby stood on either side of him.

“Mr. Graves, I presume,” she said.

“It’s Tanner, actually. And you must be .. .”

“Ms. Pickles!” Pete cried. “Remember, we were telling you about her?” He poked Miles in the leg, presumably to remind him not to giggle at Ms. Pickles’s name.

“You were talking about me?” The librarian’s cheeks flushed. “I am honored. And please call me Marjorie.” She extended her arm as if to shake his hand.

“The honor is mine, and you must call me Miles,” said Miles as he descended the stairs. Edgar flew down ahead of him and alighted on Ms. Pickles’s extended arm.

“Oh!” she said. “How lovely. Is this ... ?”

“Edgar Allan Crow,” Miles Tanner said, as he approached and took Ms. Pickles’s hand in his own. “We were just upstairs saying hello to Pete’s unusual pet, Bunnicula.”

“I would say this is a house full of unusual pets,” said Ms. Pickles. “A fact that delights me, lover of animals that I am. Though it does make me sad to see a wild bird in captivity. Oh, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“It would be impossible for you to offend anyone,” Miles said. I noticed he was speaking without hesitation and that he didn’t sound as melancholy. I wondered if the change was due to his adoration of pineapples.

As if reading my mind, he said, “I not only adore pineapples, I’m wild for pretzel crusts. How did you know?”

“Your website,” Ms. Pickles confessed.

“How remarkable that you found a truth among so many lies,” Miles said mysteriously.

Edgar fluttered his wings, startling the librarian into a fit of nervous laughter and erasing Miles’s curious comment from everyone’s mind.

Everyone’s mind but Chester’s, that is. It was he who proposed that Miles and Edgar existed in a tangle of mysteries, where lies and truths made up a web of deception in which to catch the innocent and unwary.

I would have accused him of overreacting, were it not for a cry in the night—and the disappearance of not one unusual pet. . . but two.