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take for Dawg to go to sleep.
    Looking in his direction, I saw his eyes shining in the dark. It seemed the moon was forever reflected in them. He blinked when he saw me looking at him. I swallowed hard.
    â€œHaving trouble sleeping?” I asked.
    â€œI always do,” he said. “This ol’ body of mine’sgot so many breaks and bruises in it that something’s always aching. Don’t worry about me, I’ll just rest while you all sleep. I don’t mind.”
    â€œGreat,” Chester muttered. Then to Dawg, he said, “Would anything help you sleep?”
    Dawg thought for a moment. “A doggie-bone softened in warm milk,” he said at last. I was ready to forgive him anything when he said it, but then it occurred to me that even Al Capone, the most notorious gangster of them all, probably liked his milk and cookies now and again.
    â€œWell, we’re a little short on milk,” Chester said. “How about a lullaby? Harold, sing him the song about Dinah in the kitchen. Soft and low, Harold. Soft and low.”
    I was about to open my mouth in song, when the words froze in my throat. There was someone out there. I heard the crackling of branches, voices whispering in the dark. “Chester, did you hear?” I hissed.
    â€œOf course,” Chester said. “The evil spirits are waking to the devil’s alarm. Midnight is upon us.
    The sooner we
get
this clown to sleep, the better. Sing, Harold.”
    I opened my mouth again, but was stopped this time by Dawg. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “what would help me to sleep better than a song is a story.”
    â€œYeah,” Howie said, “that’s what we need. A story. Just think, if we were back at the campfire with the Monroes, we’d be telling ghost stories. Tell us a ghost story, Pop.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” Chester said. The leaves about us stirred in the wind. A branch snapped somewhere off to my left.
    â€œA scary story,” Dawg said. “Yer good at that, Chester. If you want me to go to sleep, you’d better tell me a scary story.” His words sounded like a threat, like he knew that we knew. If you
want
me to go to sleep, he’d said.
    I looked to Chester, whose eyes were focused on the house in the distance. The quivering yellow light faded and went out. The house was dark and still. “All right,” Chester said, “I’ll tell you astory. A story of Saint George’s Day. A true story. One that started in Transylvania and ended right here.”
    â€œHere?” I said, feeling my hair begin to rise. Boy, my hair was really getting a work out tonight.
    â€œIt is the history of a vampire rabbit named Bunnicula,” Chester went on. “The little-known but true story of a race of creatures who brought terror wherever they roamed and passed on to each generation the secrets of their evil ways.”
    â€œI get it,” said Howie. “This is the story of a hare with dark roots.”

[ SIX ]

Once Upon a Time in Transylvania
    C HESTER TOOK A MOMENT to bathe his tail. Howie, Dawg, and I settled down on our bed of pine needles and leaves and waited. The air that ruffled our hairs and rustled the trees above us was changing, perhaps in anticipation as well, though anticipation of what, I couldn’t say. When Chester was ready to begin, he assumed the classic cat position—head high, spine erect, front legs as straight and formal as marble columns—and wrapped his freshly laundered tail around himself, leaving only the tip in motion. For a time, it flickedthe ground. Then slowly it quieted. And the story began.

    â€œOnce upon a time in Transylvania,” Chester said, “high in the Carpathian Mountains in a little town called Kasha-Varnishkes, there lived twin brothers, whose names were Hans and Fritz. The simple sons of simple innkeepers, their lives were—”
    â€œSimple?” I