The Ghosts of Rabbits Past. John R. Erickson
Yawn all you want. Fall into your yawns, I don’t care, just don’t make any noise.”
I rumbled over to my gunny sack, fluffed it up, and collapsed. Exhaustion leaped upon me like a lurking tiger. I was drifting off when I heard an odd sound. It was Drover, yawning. “Boy, that was a good one. I love to yawn. I’d rather yawn than chew a bone. There’s another good one!”
I sat up and melted him with a glare. “Drover, if you continue making noise, we will have to impose a ban on yawning. Is that what you want?”
That got his attention. “Gosh, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t yawn.”
“I’m sure it would become a personal crisis, so yawn quietly. And don’t mutter about how much you love to yawn.”
“Okay, sorry. I’ll try.”
“Good night.”
At last he shut his beak and I began drifting out on the snorking honk of barbecued snicklefritz fiddle blossoms and spiral tomatoes…I must have dozed off, but not for long. All at once, another horrible scream penetrated the perpitude of my turpentine.
I shot straight up and staggered to my feet. “Drover, did you hear something?”
“Affirmative.”
“A scream?”
His eyes were wide with fear. “Yeah, and it wasn’t me.”
“Then who could it…” And then we heard it again: an unearthly scream that made my hair stand on end. It wasn’t Drover’s yawning, and it wasn’t the cat. “Good grief, what is that?”
Drover moved his lips but couldn’t utter a sound, until at last he gasped, “I think it’s the Hoodian Voles!”
Those words sent a scorching jolt of electricity down my spine. “Hoodian Voles! Do we have those things on this ranch?”
“Yeah, I saw five of ‘em, right over there. They’re everywhere!”
“You saw five Hoodian Voles?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Good grief. What are they? Give me a description. Facts, we need facts and details.”
His teeth were clacking together. “They looked just like twenty-five monsters, only ten times worse.”
A wave of fear washed over me. “Okay, let’s settle down. We’ve got to be professional about this.”
“Yeah, let’s head for the bunkers.”
“I agree. To the bunkers!”
And so it began. We had ourselves an invasion of…whatever Drover had said, some kind of creatures, and you’re probably worried sick. You should be. This had turned into a very dangerous night on our ranch.
Chapter Two: Something Big and Hairy
The first reports were sketchy, but we had reason to think that a force of Hoodian Voles had overrun ranch headquarters and captured the barn and chicken house. I had never gone up against a Hoodian Vole, but our intelligence units had warned us that they were more dangerous than skeletons, ghosts, or monsters.
We responded in a professional manner and dived into our bunkers, the heavily fortified areas beneath our gunny sack beds. Once there, we closed the hatches and waited for something to happen. In the deadly silence, we heard a burst of high-pitched screeching and cackling.
Pretty scary, huh? You bet. Hey, I’m no chicken liver and over the course of my career, I’d heard some creepy sounds, but this! It was goose-bump creepy. For several moments, we listened as the sounds changed from hideous cackles into howls.
Drover was the first to speak. “You know what? That sounds like coyotes.”
“Don’t be absurd. Coyotes never come up this close to the house. And besides, your report stated that you saw twenty-five…whatever you called them.”
“Hoodian Voles?”
“Exactly. Follow the trail of logic. If you witnessed an invasion of Hoodian Voles, that’s what we’re hearing.”
“Yeah, but sometimes my eyes play tricks.”
I glared at him in the darkness of the bunker. Actually, it was so dark in there, I couldn’t see him, but I glared anyway. “Drover, is it possible that you turned in a garbled report?”
“I’d hate to put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“Well, it was dark…and I was scared and half-asleep…and I thought I saw something, but maybe there weren’t twenty-five of them.”
“All right, maybe you miscounted. How many did you see?”
“Maybe five or three or only one. Or maybe I didn’t see anything.”
I was stunned. “Drover, the first thing we need to clear up is…what exactly is a Hoodian Vole?”
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head.”
“It just popped…DID YOU SEE ANYTHING OR NOT?”
I heard him sniffling in the darkness. “No.”
“Then why did you…I can’t believe this!”
“I wanted to do something important. I thought you’d be proud of me.”
“Proud! Do you realize the full impact of your bungling?”
“Yeah, I’m a failure.”
“No, it’s worse than that. You’ve made the entire Security Division look like…I don’t know what. An outside observer would probably think this ranch is being run by monkeys.”
“I’m sorry. I want to go home!”
“You are home.”
“Then I want to go homer!”
“Stop blubbering. Once you’ve spilled the milk, it’s too late to feed the horses.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m babbling, you’re babbling, the Security Division is in shambles…” I had to give myself a minute to absorb all of this. “All right, Drover, listen carefully. We must form a plan and stick with it. Number one, no more behaving like monkeys.”
“I wish I had a banana.”
“What?”
“I said, I’ll try.”
“Good. Number two, we will leave the bunkers. Number three, once we’re outside, I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’ll do something. Are you ready?”
“I guess.”
“All right, stand by to put our plan into action. On my mark, we will leave the bunkers. Three, two, one, exit bunkers!”
We climbed out of the bunkers and found ourselves…well, in our office under the gas tanks. I lifted Earatory Scanners and did a sweep for sounds. I heard two crickets and an owl, but nothing that suggested skeletons, coyotes, or those other things. Hooligan Moles.
“Drover, the radar is clear, not a sound out there. Is it possible…do you suppose we dreamed all of this?”
“I sure thought I heard something scary.”
“Right, and you thought you saw twenty-five Hooligan Moles, then admitted that you saw nothing.