“No, no!” Howie cried.
“Don’t stop,” said Dawg. “We’ve gotta know what happens next.”
“Well,” said Chester, relaxing his tail. “If you insist. Where was I?”
“France,” said Howie, stifling a chuckle. “The hutch back—”
“Never mind that,” said Chester. “After France, they crossed the English Channel and came at last to London, where they settled into Renfield Manor, their wearisome journey at its end.
“ ‘Sleep well, my children,’ Diabolicus said to Hans and Fritz that first night, as the boys settled into two large feather beds in a tower bedroom. Hans and Fritz were so overcome with exhaustion from their travels, they barely heard the door close as Diabolicus slipped out of the room. But the sound of a heavy bolt falling into place jolted them awake.
“ ‘We’re locked in,’ Fritz whispered in alarm. ‘I told you we shouldn’t have spoken so freely on our way here. He knows we plan to leave him, Hans.’
“ ‘How could he have heard?’ Hans said. ‘We talked of our plans only during the day when he was sleeping in that crazy box of his. Boy, what a nut case he is.’
“ ‘Yeah? What about Erda?’ said Fritz. ‘She’s as weird as he is. And those rabbits with their red eyes! Have you noticed their teeth, Hans? Have you seen how they’ve grown?’
“ ‘Don’t worry,’ Hans assured his brother. ‘We’ll be out of here tomorrow, mark my words. Tomorrow, we will be free.’ And soon the two boys fell asleep.
“They didn’t know that all this while Dr. Diabolicus had been listening outside their door. He didn’t move, even now as they began to snore. ‘Listen to them,’ he said to the housekeeper, as she approached on slippered feet, ‘the children of the night. What music they make. Ah, but Erda, they are deserting me. How can I let them go? They are my family, they are my own.’
“ ‘Give them eternal life,’ Erda suggested.
“ ‘Eternal life?’ said Diabolicus.
“ ‘You have given it to Bella and Boris. They will be with you always. Why not Hans and Fritz as well?’
“ ‘I don’t have the time,’ Diabolicus replied. ‘It will take months to duplicate the laboratory I had in Transylvania. By then, the boys will be gone. Or if I manage to keep them here, it will only be by force, and they will hate me for being their jailer. No, Erda, they must be free—free to live and die. Free to leave me, as one day so shall you.’ He turned with a heavy heart and went into the library, where he spent the night reading.
“Now it was his good fortune—and the ill fortune of Hans and Fritz—that one of the books he found on the dusty shelves that night was his cousin’s diary. As he turned its pages, Diabolicus made the amazing discovery that he was not alone, after all! There were others like him. He was one of a breed of creatures known as vampires. And vampires, he learned, had ways of creating others of their kind. ‘I don’t need a laboratory,’ Diabolicus said, laying the book on the table beside him. He licked his lips and ran his tongue over the two pointed teeth that hung like daggers inside his mouth. ‘Everything I need is right here. It has been here all the time!’ Slowly, he rose from his chair and climbed the staircase to the boys’ bedroom.”
There were sounds of twigs snapping and leaves crackling in the woods around me. I felt sure that Diabolicus was coming closer. Closer. I looked across at Howie and Dawg. Their eyes told me they felt as I did. Chester, seeing his effect on us, smiled contentedly.
“By morning,” he said, “the boys were his.”
“But how?” Howie asked. “What do you mean?”
“And what does this have to do with the rabbit?” said Dawg. “What’d ya say his name was? Binoculars?”
“Bunnicula,” Chester said. “Oh, I’m coming to that, don’t worry. Diabolicus had succeeded in turning Fritz and Hans, and then Erda too, into vampires like himself. He now had a wife, of sorts. And sons. And pets. His happiness, like his family, was complete.
“Fritz and Hans thought of Diabolicus and Erda as their father and mother. Their real parents were soon forgotten.
“Bella and Boris, being rabbits, increased their master’s happiness by adding to the family. For some reason, they had an unusually small litter—a litter, in fact, of one. Nobody knew what to call this new member of the family. Bella and Boris seemed almost embarrassed to have produced such a runty thing as their sole offspring. And Diabolicus wondered just what sort of race he had created if this was the best they could manage. He did not know that Bella and Boris had already bred others of their kind throughout Europe; nor, that no sooner had they added to their numbers, than those very numbers had been cut down.
“You see, when Fritz and Hans disappeared from Kasha-Varnishkes, it was believed that they had perished in the fire that had destroyed The House of Dr.E.A.D. But the boys’ parents would not give up hope that they had survived. ‘I will live to see my sons again,’ their mother had proclaimed. And so her husband, together with several other men from the village, set out on the trail of Diabolicus and the black carriage.
“They followed them across Hungary and Austria, through Switzerland and France, and wherever they encountered the race of rabbits Bella and Boris had left behind, they destroyed them. By the time the men arrived on England’s shores, there were no vampire rabbits left … none, that is, but Bella, Boris and the little one without a name.
“One night, shortly before dawn, Diabolicus was reading a bedtime story to Hans and Fritz. Hans held the tiny rabbit in his lap, stroking its head as he listened to his new father’s voice. Suddenly, they heard Erda’s footsteps racing madly up the stairs. ‘Hurry,’ she cried out breathlessly. ‘Hurry, master! They’re coming!’
“ ‘Get hold of yourself, woman,’ said Diabolicus. ‘Who’s coming?’
“ ‘The peasants from Kasha-Varnishkes. They’re carrying torches. They’re crying, “The monster must be destroyed!” Oh, master, we must leave at once.’
“With a sense of déjà vu, Diabolicus ran to get Bella and Boris, while hurrying the boys and Erda to the carriage behind the house. ‘Once it is daylight and we are asleep in our boxes of dirt,’ he said, ‘the horses will know where to carry us.’
“Their escape plan seemed perfect. But just as they were about to depart, Boris leaped from his master’s arms and scampered back to the house. Diabolicus ran after him.
“ ‘Where are you going, Papa?’ cried Fritz. ‘We can’t leave without you.’ ”
“Still a wimp,” Dawg commented.
“ ‘I shall return,’ Diabolicus called out. He chased Boris through an open door and was gone from sight.
“Now, whether Diabolicus ever reached Boris we will never know, for no sooner had he set foot in the house than it erupted in flames.
“The innkeeper from Kasha-Varnishkes wiped a tear from his eye, convinced that his sons were now lost to him forever. And, of course, they were … just not in the way he thought. Had he turned away from the blazing carnage, he would have seen a black carriage disappearing into the forest. Two boys, one clutching a tiny rabbit, were taking a last look at their home, their England. They were headed for a new life, a new land. They were headed for America.”
“America?” I said. “How’d they get to America?”
“Well, it just so happened,” said Chester, “that Diabolicus had prepared for an emergency such as this one. He had booked passage under an assumed name on the Q.E. II, thus enabling Erda, Fritz, and Hans to board the ship one November night and never look back.
“They settled in their new country, keeping to themselves, always apart from the others. They saved wisely, invested in the stock market, and, in time, their cash flow was sufficient to allow them to construct a duplicate of their original home, an American House of Dr.E.A.D. They lived a quiet life. And then one day their quiet life was destroyed.