“Cute Whiskers?” I heard Chester repeat from inside. “Is it … is that …?”
“One, two, three!” Felony commanded. The two cats arched their backs against the half-open window and forced it all the way up. We were home-free.
“It is I! It is me! It is we! It is us!” cried Miss Demeanor in a bravado display of grammatical insecurity.
I too became insecure at that moment, worrying that the two cats would jump inside and free Chester before I could stop them. I was saved by a remarkable stroke of luck.
A clock tower chimed eight times.
“It’s closin’ time at the Big Belly Deli!” Felony shrieked. “We’re gonna be late!”
“Aw, can’t I just say hello to Cute Whiskers?” Miss Demeanor whined.
“Pastrami and lox on an onion roll!” was Felony’s reply.
Miss Demeanor jumped down from the windowsill. “Gotta run,” she said. “Say hi to Cute Whiskers for me, will ya, Harold?”
“Thank …” I said to the two cats as they streaked off into the night, “… you.”
“Harold, Harold? Is that you?” Chester called out. “What’s going on out there?”
With the help of a garbage pail, I leaped up onto the windowsill, then lifted Howie up by the nape of his neck. The two of us dropped down into the dimly lit back room of the veterinarian’s office. I felt like a hero in a war movie.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw Chester staring down at us from a nearby cage.
“Chester!” I cried. “How are you feeling?”
“Greenbriar gave me some kind of medicine that made me sleep most of the day. Right now, my mouth feels like somebody lined it with mouse fur, but other than that I’m feeling a lot better. You’ve got to get me out of here, Harold!”
It suddenly occurred to me how quiet the place was.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“I’m the only one here.”
“But where’s Bunnicula?” Howie inquired.
“He’s gone.”
Howie began to whimper. “Gone? To the big carrot patch in the sky? The bunny beyond? The hareafter? The hoppy hunting ground? The—”
“He escaped!” Chester exploded.
“Oh,” said Howie.
“That’s why you’ve got to get me out of here! I’ve got to stop him before it’s too late.”
“Was this his cage?” Howie asked. He was looking in at a ground-level cage next to him.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Chester. “Why do you ask?”
“Look, Uncle Harold,” said Howie. “Look at the newspaper lining the bottom.”
I looked. It was Saturday’s paper. There was a big ad in the middle of the page:
centerville cinema—the last picture show!
see the movie that opened
this landmark theater in 1931!
dracula, starring bela lugosi
transylvania comes to centerville!
be there … if you dare!!
If Bunnicula hadn’t thought before of looking for his mother at the movie theater, there was no question in my mind now that that is where he had gone. I knew what I had to do.
And I knew what I couldn’t do.
“Come on, Harold, get me out of here. It can’t be that hard to unlock this cage. I’ll talk you through it.”
I looked up at my friend, my best friend, my oldest friend in the world, and I said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Chester.”
“Oh, now, Harold,” Chester said, “of course you can. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve called you a dunce or a simpleton—”
“Or a dolt,” I said.
“Or a dolt,” Chester went on, “but I know you’re not really that dumb. I’m sure you can figure out how to open the door and get me out of here.”
“It’s not that I can’t do it, Chester,” I said. “It’s that I won’t do it.”
I looked away, but I could hear in the silence that Chester understood what I was saying.
“I thought you were my friend,” he said at last.
My heart lay heavy in my chest. “I am your friend, but I’m Bunnicula’s friend, too, and I can’t let you hurt him. I’ve stood by you in all your crazy attempts to do him in in the past, but I … Well, I just can’t do it anymore, Chester. I’m sorry.”
Chester’s voice was like a shard of ice that cut through me. “Sorry?” he said. “That’s what you have to say after all the years we’ve been friends? Sorry? Well, here’s what I’m sorry about, Harold. I’m sorry that I can’t be your friend anymore.”
I looked up. “Chester,” I said.
But he turned his back on me and said nothing. Nothing, that is, but one word, which he spat out at me as Howie and I made our way back out through the open window.
“Traitor,” he said.
When Howie and I emerged into the outside world, the air felt different. Where it had been warm and springlike before, now all I felt was a chill. All I wanted was for everything to be the way it once had been. And all I knew was that it never would be. I had lost my best friend. How I ached to go home and curl up in a dark corner where I could sleep for days. But I couldn’t go home. I had to find Bunnicula. How was he to know that the newspaper in his cage was from two days earlier? There would be no movie shown tonight, just an empty, dangerous theater perilously close to being destroyed.
As we set off to find Bunnicula, Chester’s final word repeated itself over and over in my mind.
Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
Chapter 9
The Last Showdown
BY the time Howie and I reached the movie theater, the night sky was not only chilly but dark. I could make out several large trucks parked out front, one of which held a tall crane with an ominous steel ball hanging from the end of it, and everywhere there were police barricades and banners bearing the words demolition site, do not cross. All I could think was that somewhere inside that darkened, haunted-looking theater was a weak and sickly bunny searching for his mother. Was she even in there? Or was Bunnicula pursuing a memory, a wish, a phantom?
“Are w-we g-g-going in there?” Howie stammered next to me. “It looks scary, Uncle Harold. Like Night of the Living Gargoyles.”
“Excuse me?”
“Number eighteen. There’s this boy, see …”
“Howie,” I said, “we have to get Bunnicula out of there before the building is torn down tomorrow.”
“What about his mother?”
“Yes, well, we’ll get her out, too, of course.” I didn’t tell Howie that I had serious doubts Bunnicula’s mother was in there.
I also had serious doubts we would be in there anytime soon. This was a challenge that would have stumped Felony and Miss Demeanor. It was too dark to find a way in—and even if we did get past all the barricades and doors locked with chains, it would probably be pitch-black. Besides, I told myself, if we looked for Bunnicula now, the Monroes would miss us. No, it would be better to return first thing in the morning, when there was light.
Howie didn’t give me an argument. He was as glad as I was to be out of there. And the Monroes were glad to see us when we returned.
Howie, being young and without worries, slept soundly that night. I did not. When I wasn’t worrying about whether we’d be able to rescue Bunnicula before the wrecking crew did its work, I was thinking about what had happened between Chester and me. I kept thinking how only days before I had been so happy that things were normal around our house and how quickly everything had changed. Not everything, perhaps, but the friendship that mattered most to me in the world had been destroyed. And by my own doing. Had I been right to do it? I couldn’t let Chester harm Bunnicula. I had to draw the line somewhere. So why was it that every time I licked my lips that night I tasted salt?
Just before dawn I fell asleep, only to be awakened a short time later by Toby’s cry of “Do I have to go?”