Nighty-Nightmare (11 page)

“Why aren't you going crazy like everybody else?” I demanded. “What's your secret?”

His smile grew more knowing. “Books,” he said, with a nod to the one in front of him, “are not only windows to the world, dear Harold, they are pathways to inner peace.”

I shook my head. “I've tried books,” I said. “Fifteen minutes and all I ended up with was cardboard breath.”

“Try reading them instead of chewing them,” Chester advised.

“Oh.” This hadn't occurred to me.

Chester is a big reader. The problem is that his reading often gets us into trouble—especially considering the
kinds
of books he likes to read.

“So what are you reading about now?” I asked. “The supernatural?”

“The paranormal,” he said.

“Well, that's a relief. Pair of normal what?”

“No, Harold, not a ‘pair of normal,' the
paranormal.
How shall I explain this? The paranormal are experiences that are . . . beyond explanation. Like Bunnicula, for example.”

Chester believes our little bunny is a vampire.

“Or Howie.”

“Howie?”

“I'm still convinced he's part werewolf. That's no ordinary howl on that dog.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Or,” Chester went on, if I may use the expression with regard to a cat, doggedly, “haven't you ever felt that something was about to happen, you just knew it in your bones, and then, bam! it happened?”

A chill ran down my spine. “Chester!” I cried. “I had a paranormal experience just the other night.”

Chester's eyes lit up. “Really? Tell me about it, Harold.”

“Well, it was after dinner and I was lying over there by the sofa, where Howie's sleeping now and . . . I was yawning and I felt my eyes growing heavy ...”

“Yes? Go on.”

“And I had this overpowering feeling that I was about to . . .”

“What, Harold? Oh, this is really exciting. Go ahead.”

“That I was about to fell asleep. And I did.”

Chester looked at me for a long time without speaking. “And do you have the feeling that you're about to experience pain?” he asked at last.

“You mean right now? Well, no.”

The book fell off the chair. It landed on my paw.

“Ow!” I cried.

“Never discount the paranormal,” were Chester's parting words, and he jumped down and headed toward the kitchen in search of a midnight snack.

I wanted to whimper but no one was around or awake enough to hear. This made me ask myself the question, If a tree falls on a dog in the forest, does the dog make a sound? I was eager to share this provocative conversation starter with Chester when my gaze fell on the open pages at my feet. I began to read.

Harriet M. of Niskayuna, New York, reports the fascinating case of the
phantom telephone conversation.
“1 had been talking with my sister
Shirley for seventeen minutes late one afternoon before I noticed that the phone plug was disconnected,” she writes. “The next day I told Shirley what had happened and when. Stunned, she informed me that she had had oral surgery just two hours prior to the phantom conversation and her mouth was wired shut. She would have been incapable of speaking to me even if the phone
had
been hooked up!”

Incredibly, Harriet herself suffered such extreme tooth pain the following day that she too was forced to undergo emergency oral surgery. While under the effects of anesthesia, she recalled her sister's words during their nonexistent (??) conversation: “That new dentist is so cute. Yd do anything to see him, wouldn't you?”

“Amazing stuff, isn't it?”

I looked up at the sound of Chester's voice as he emerged from the kitchen, licking milk from his lips. Now I understood how he'd remained so calm all this time. His brain had turned into a two-week-old banana days ago.

*   *   *

THE rain stopped at exactly three o'clock in the morning. I remember the time because I was awakened just before the clock in the hall chimed the hour. It was not the rain that woke me, however, nor the ticking of the clock. It was a voice.

“Harold,” it whispered in my ear, “something terrible is going to happen.”

Go away, I thought. But the voice persisted.

“Harold,” it intoned. “Wake up.”

I knew that voice. Who else would wake me in the middle of the night just to tell me something terrible was going to happen?

“What do you want, Chester?” I mumbled without opening my eyes.

“I've seen an omen.” He was louder now that he knew he'd succeeded in awakening me. “Don't you want to see it?”

“That's okay,” I said, yawning. “I'll wait for it to come out on video.”

“Very funny. Come on, Harold, it's not every day you get to see an omen.”

I was going to point out that it was night, not day, but I knew that the difference would be irrelevant to Chester.

Howie was awake now too. He raced over to join us. “I want to see an omen, Pop,” he said to Chester. Howie, for unknown reasons, calls Chester “Pop”. “What's an omen?”

“A sign that something terrible is going to happen,” Chester replied.

Howie shook his head. “I've seen signs like that,” he muttered, “
NO DOGS ALLOWED
. Don't you hate that one? And, oh, here's one that really means something terrible is going to happen:
DON'T WALK
, when the hydrant is on the other side of the street.”

Chester pretended to ignore Howie. “Come on, you two,” he said. Apparently, he was unimpressed by the fact that I had both my front paws over my face and was loudly snoring.

“Stop faking, Harold,” he said, tapping my eyelids. “Open up. Let's go.”

Much against my will, I followed Chester
and the relentlessly energetic Howie into the front hall. It was then that the clock struck three and the rain suddenly stopped.

“Look!” Chester commanded. “There, by the front door.”

I looked, but I didn't see anything I'd call an omen. I told Chester so.

“Look again,” was his response.

And then I saw it.

There, next to the umbrella stand, was Chester's cat carrier. It was open.

“What's that doing there?” I asked.

“And what does it mean?” said Howie.

I felt myself begin to quiver. “It resembles an open mouth,” I sniveled. “It means . . . it means . . . we're all going to have oral surgery! Well, I'm not going! I don't care how cute the dentist is.”

“Harold!” Chester snapped. “Nobody's having oral surgery.”

“Oh. Well, that's a relief.”

“But it does mean we're going somewhere and I don't think we're going to like it.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“ ‘We would have heard about it if it was anything good. You know what the Monroes are like. They tell us everything. But no one has said a word, so it must be a place too . . .
horrible
. . . to talk about.”

There was a scuffling sound in the living room. We turned. Bunnicula was hopping about nervously in his cage. His eyes glistened in the dark.

I ran to him. “Don't worry, little furry friend,” I said. “Nothing terrible is going to happen.”

“Mark my words,” Chester said, “we are doomed.”

MARK DAVIS

James Howe says:

“Back in the Olden Days, before there were such things as cable television or DVDs, I loved staying up late at night to watch old horror movies on TV. My favorites were the ones about hollow-eyed vampires and torch-bearing peasants, or those with mad scientists whose accents fell somewhere between Upper Mongolia and the Bronx.
Nighty-Nightmare
came out of the affection I still feel for those movies and the laughs—along with the chills—they gave me. Chester's story of how Bunnicula traveled from Transylvania to America is a spoof of just about every old horror movie I ever saw!”

James Howe is the author of more than seventy books for young readers, including the popular and award-winning series about Bunnicula and his friends. Among his other books are the Pinky and Rex series,
The Misfits, Totally Joe
, and the Sebastian Barth mysteries. James did not enjoy camping when he was a boy, but he did always wish he had a pet skunk. He still does wish this at times, but for the most part he's happy with the dog and two cats who share his home in New York State.