Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow

Ms. Pickles laid her hand gently on Kyle’s shoulder. “I don’t think we need to be worried about the crows,” she told him.

“No?”

“No, but we may need to be worried about Mr. Tanner.”

“I agree,” said the man, who turned out to be Pete’s teacher. “I think he was embarrassed that we all saw this.”

The other woman knelt down and started putting the stuffed animals back in the black bag. “Peter,” she said, “I think you’re the one to talk to him.”

“Me?” Pete squeaked. “Why me?”

“You’re the contest winner,” the woman said. “You’re the reason Mr. Tanner is here.”

“And you’re the principal,” said Pete. “So I guess I’d better do what you say, huh, Ms. Kipper?”

Ms. Kipper smiled. “I’m off duty, Peter. I’m not telling you what to do, just what I think.”

Mrs. Monroe took the sleeping rabbit out of Toby’s arms and handed him to Pete. “Take Bunnicula up, knock on the door, and ask Mr. Tanner if you can put him back in his cage.”

“Where was he, anyway?” Pete asked.

“Sleeping under the porch,” said Toby.

I could hear Chester muttering something about having made “a teensy little glitch in the logic department” as Pete tucked Bunnicula in one arm, grabbed the bag of stuffed animals with his other hand, and started up the stairs.

He was about halfway up when Miles appeared at the top.

“Forgive me,” Miles said in his soft, gravelly voice. “It was ... rude of . . . me to run .. . away like that. Rude and .. . cowardly.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Tanner,” said Pete. “I was just coming up to—”

“No, I will come . . . down,” Miles said. “We will... talk.”

And so it was that we gathered in the living room to learn the truth about Edgar and Miles.

After settling himself into the corner of the sofa, Miles looked around the room and let out an enormous sigh. Just as he was about to speak, Ms. Pickles sat down next to him.

“It’s all right,” she told him in a reassuring voice. “You’re among friends.”

Chester perked up his ears at that. “Interesting,” he muttered to me. “Sounds like we’re about to hear a—”

“You may wonder why I asked to stay here with you,” Miles began. “Normally, I would stay in a . . . hotel. Well, there really is no ‘normally,’ since I never visit schools. I never go ... anywhere. But you would think I would want to stay in a hotel. You would think so, except that ... I wanted to meet your pets, you see, because ... I wanted . . . Bunnicula ...”

“Confession!” Chester hissed in my ear. “Here it comes! I was right, after all!”

Miles cleared his throat and glanced nervously about the room. “I was hoping, you see, that . . . Bunnicula . . . might. . . inspire me.”

Pete said, “But I thought Edgar was your . . . um, what’s that word again, Mr. Brooks?”

“Muse,” said the English teacher.

“Ah, my muse, yes,” Miles said. “He is that. My muse and my companion. My world, really.”

“But what about your other pets?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, what about the wolves and bats and alligators and—”

Miles held out his hands to stop Kyle from going on. “There are no other pets.”

The room fell silent. “The wolves, the bats, the castle on the mountaintop, the sorcery—all of them are as invented, as imaginary as M. T. Graves himself. All in the interest of making the author of the FleshCrawlers series creepy at best. . . and interesting at the very least.”

“But you said you got your ideas from your life,” Toby chimed in. “So your life must be pretty interesting, right?”

“I write scary books because I’m scared,” Miles admitted. “That’s how my ideas come from my life.”

“But you write the scariest books ever” Pete said. The color was rising in his cheeks. “I don’t understand. What could you be scared of?”

Miles turned to Ms. Pickles, who nodded and smiled at him in a “go ahead, you can do it” sort of way. I had the feeling these two may have talked more than we knew when Ms. Pickles had dropped off the pretzel crust Jell-O mold.

“I’m scared of . . . dogs, for one thing,” Miles began.

Howie gasped.

“And cats ...”

Chester purred.

“And people. I’m scared of going to the school tomorrow. I’m scared of . . . everything.”

“Are you scared of Bunnicula?” Pete asked. He was still cradling the sleeping rabbit in his arms.

Miles looked fondly at the bunny. “No, I’m not. I guess that’s because I never had a rabbit . . . bark at me.”

This made everybody laugh, even Miles himself. But then he grew serious again. “You see, I’ve always been so . .. scary looking, so ... ugly, even as a boy, that dogs barked at me, cats hissed at me, other children laughed at me. So I learned to keep to myself. A writer’s life was the perfect life for me. I could have my revenge on the animals that tormented me by transforming them into things even uglier and scarier than I ever was. And I could be alone.”

Ms. Pickles started to object, but Miles put his hand on her arm to stop her. I noticed that she let him keep it there.

“But then my books became popular and there were requests for me to speak and visit schools. I didn’t dare, even though at times I thought the loneliness would kill me. Then Edgar came into my life and . . . everything changed. I didn’t want to transform the animals in my stories anymore. I wanted to stop being afraid of animals in real life. I wanted to stop being afraid, period. I thought perhaps if I could get to know other animals . . . and replace Edgar with ... someone else ...”

“Why do you have to replace Edgar?” Pete asked.

“Marjorie ... er, Ms. Pickles . . . was right. He’s a wild animal. He doesn’t belong in a cage or even a house, which is only a bigger cage, after all.”

“But hasn’t Edgar always been with you? Wouldn’t he miss you if you set him free?”

“I believe he would miss me. I know I would miss him. But, no, he hasn’t always been with me. It was a stormy night almost two years ago, a very windy night, when I heard a thump at my front door. I opened it, and there on my doorstep lay a wounded baby crow. I couldn’t believe it. The image of a crow—Edgar Allan Crow—had been part of the FleshCrawlers series from the beginning, but there never was a real Edgar Allan Crow—until now. I nursed him back to health, and he stayed on with me. We became devoted friends. Edgar was, as you say, my muse. I stopped feeling lonely and I began to write with renewed vigor.

“But then one day a large murder of crows appeared in the yard, and I saw a yearning in Edgar I’d never seen before. He wanted to be with his own kind. I was afraid I would lose him—especially after the time he succeeded in escaping. I saw him fly to another crow and I understood that. . .”

“Aha!” said Chester. “The head crow! Now we’re going to get the confession!”

“Edgar had fallen in love.”

“Or not,” said Chester.

“He’s courting,” Ms. Pickles interjected. “That’s the bowing we’ve seen him to do with the female crow.”

Miles’s ashen face turned slightly pink. Was I imagining it, or was he blushing?

“Fearing that Edgar would leave me, I began to have trouble writing. I truly believed I couldn’t do it without Edgar. And my confidence wasn’t helped by the fact that since a certain boy wizard came along, my sales have plummeted like Niagara Falls. Hoping to improve sales and get me writing again, my publisher came up with the idea of this contest.

“When I read Pete’s letter, I thought I had my answer. I would stay in a house with dogs and cats to overcome my fear, and I would spend time with a most unusual rabbit in the hopes that he would inspire me. He has done that, and even more. In a very short time, I have grown quite fond of him. And so now I must ask something . . . difficult . . . for me ... to ask. . . .”

Just then, we were startled by a loud tapping on the window behind the sofa. There, peering in at us, was Edgar Allan Crow.

“Yes, yes,” Miles said, turning to look at him, “I was just getting to it.”

Edgar opened his mouth soundlessly, and Miles turned back. He looked around the room, finally bringing his eyes to rest on Pete and the black-and-white bundle in Pete’s arms.

“Peter,” said Miles, “I know this is a great deal to ask of you and your family. But may I... might I... have Bunnicula?”