“So?” Louise pressed on relentlessly. “What do you have to say for yourself, Monsieur Fancy-Pants?”
“I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, that’s what I have to say,” Max responded. “You’re making a little hello into—”
“A little hello?!?” Louise shot back. “This kind of little hello, as you call it, I will make into a big au revoir—that’s what I will do with this little hello.”
“Louise,” a soft breathy voice interjected. I strained my head to see where it was coming from. The speaker was in a bungalow off to my right, but I couldn’t see inside.
“Oh no!” Louise exploded. “This is too—oh, what is that word!? Oh yes—much. Now she wants to speak!”
“Now, Louise,” Max said, his anger building, “she has just as much right to speak as you do.”
“Yes, yes, defend her, why don’t you?”
“Louise, I don’t need defendin’,” said the feathery voice. I noticed the speaker had a slight Southern accent. “I’ve done nothin’ wrong.”
“Max is mine! Do you hear me, Scarlett?” Louise fairly ranted across the empty space.
“Georgette,” the voice responded gently.
“What?” Louise shrieked.
“My name is Georgette,” Georgette repeated.
“Scarlett, Georgette—it’s all the same to me. You may want him, but he’s mine, do you hear? Mine!”
“Louise!” Max bellowed in a full, rich voice. “Enough! I’ve had enough of your wild accusations! Now, let it be!”
There was the sound of a crash, and Louise vanished to the back of her bungalow. Max looked sullenly out into the distance.
“Oh dear,” Chester said drily next door, “I do believe Louise has thrown her din-din dish against the wall.” And then he let out a screech.
“What is it, Chester?” I cried. “What’s wrong?”
“Something—something—landed on my door. I don’t know … what … what …”
“You’ve got to help me!” a new voice hissed eerily. There was the sound of wire rattling. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Chester, is that you?” I whispered. “Is this some kind of joke?” Suddenly, a head appeared upside-down over the edge of my bungalow. I jumped and hit my own head on the ceiling. That must have jarred my visitor, for he flopped to the ground before my door.
“You’re new here, aren’t you, buster?” he snarled.
“Uh, yes, yes, I am,” I replied, trying to size up the vision before me. He was a cat, that much was clear, but a cat unlike any I’d ever seen. He looked like a walking, talking, patchwork quilt.
He glanced furtively over his shoulder before he spoke again, and then it was in a low, intense whisper. “Tuesday,” he uttered. “Over the wall. Don’t tell the others. Just you and me.”
“Just you and me,” I repeated. I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about.
“Sshh,” he said quickly, “not so loud. We’ll get out of here, pal, don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’m not,” I answered. “At least, I think I’m not.”
“Okay, just keep cool.” Again, he looked around him. “Watch out!” he snapped all at once. “It’s them!” And he was gone.
I cast my eyes in the direction he’d just been looking and saw Harrison and Jill coming with our dinners.
“Oh no,” Jill was saying, “will you look at that? Lyle’s gotten out again. He’s a regular terror. Come on, Lyle, let’s go now. Come on, be a nice kitty.”
Lyle swept by my bungalow, flattening himself against it as if trying to escape a searchlight. I could see he was the very same cat who had just been talking with me. Harrison swooped down on him suddenly and had him back in his bungalow a few seconds later. I heard Lyle muttering under his breath all the way.
“You know,” Jill said to Harrison as he returned to passing out our dinners, “we’re going to have to do something about that cat. He gets out of his cage all the—”
“Bungalow,” Harrison mumbled irritably.
“Right,” she said, “I stand corrected. Oh, by the way, I found Chester’s file. It was under your stack of comic books.”
“Oh?” Harrison looked up from Max’s bungalow, a puzzled look on his face. “I wonder how it got there.”
“That’s what I wondered,” Jill said. “Why do you read those things anyway?”
“Comic books?” Harrison shrugged. “It’s something to do,” he said simply.
Jill stopped where she was and regarded Harrison. Shaking her head, she said. “What are you going to do, Harrison? Read comic books all your life? Don’t you want to be something?”
“You mean, go to college like you?” he asked. “No thanks. I don’t have the time. I want to retire at twenty-one. All I have to do first is make a million bucks.”
“Oh, is that all?” Jill replied. “And how will you do that, if I may ask?”
“That is what I haven’t figured out yet. But don’t worry. I will. I’m thinking all the time.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Jill said. “I’ll just bet you are.”
“Oh, I am.” There was a growl of thunder. “We’d better hurry,” Harrison said. “It may start raining.”
Quickly, they finished dishing out our food and started toward the door. Jill turned back. “Okay, everyone,” she called out, “enjoy your dinners! I’ll check in on you later.”
I stared down at the fare that had been set before me and wondered what Chester had been so worried about. After all, any place that would put a sprig of parsley on top of a bowl of dog food couldn’t be all bad. Mold and rainwater, indeed! I dug in.
IT WAS much later that night when we first heard it. Jill had already checked in on us as promised, and now the sounds of snoring and deep breathing convinced me that most of the guests at Chateau Bow-Wow were already fast asleep.
I was thinking what a strange bunch they were: Max, Louise, Georgette, Lyle—Dr. Greenbriar and Harrison and Jill. Who would I meet tomorrow? I wondered. I was just about to ask Chester what he thought, when—
“Aaah-oooooooooooooo!”
I sat bolt upright, a violent chill racing down my spine.
“Chester!” I cried. “Did you hear—”
“Aaah-oooooooooooooo!” it went again.
It was a howl, of that I was sure. But a howl so terrible, it was unlike the howl of any dog I’d ever heard. Apparently, Chester felt the same way.
“Werewolves!” I heard him utter from his bungalow next door.
“Oh come on, Chester,” I said, “you’re letting your imagination run wild.”
“Werewolves!” he exclaimed again, as the howls reverberated through the night air, alternating with the thunder, which was growing in loudness and intensity.
“Beware!” Chester hissed at me. “Beware!”
“Aaaaah-oooooooooooooooooooo!” went the cry in the night.
There was a sudden silence. Exhausted, but unable to sleep, we sat, side by side, staring into the blackness before us. I held my breath in anticipation of the next sound I would hear. As it turned out, it was Chester.
“Chateau Bow-Wow, my foot,” he uttered in a deep, throaty voice. “Welcome to Howliday Inn.”
Chapter 3 - An Uneasy Calm
I AWAKENED to the sound of rain pelting the roof above me. As my eyes began to focus, I found myself staring at the words, “A Bow-Wow Breakfast.” After a moment of confusion, I realized I was reading the side of my new food dish. What I saw when I raised my head a little was not what I personally would have described as a bow-wow anything. My dish was heaped with some sort of grayish gruel that was rivaled in dreariness only by the day outside. Perhaps Chester had been right, after all.
“Chester,” I called out over the patter of the falling rain. “Chester, are you there?”