After about fifteen minutes of Bugs screaming the joint down they said they were going to have to take him to the emergency room to get the roach out. It was almost morning when Bugs got back. Everyone was asleep except me.
I waited until they put him in his bed and turned off the lights. I said, "Did they get it out?"
He said, "Oh, hi, Jojon. Yeah, they got him." "Did it hurt a lot?"
"Nope."
"Were you scared?" "Nope."
"Then how come you were screaming so doggone loud?" He said, "I didn't know I was, I probably couldn't hear me screaming 'cause that roach was so loud."
I'd seen lots of roaches but I'd never heard one of them make any sound. I said, "Loud how?"
"Well, bugs ain't so different from us as you'd think, soon as he saw those tweezers coming at him he was pretty terrified and commenced to screaming, screaming in English too, not some bug language like you'd expect from a roach."
"Yeah? What'd he say?"
"All he kept yelling was, 'My legs! My legs! Why have they done this to my legs?' " That's the true story about how Bugs started getting called Bugs.
I'd bet a thousand dollars that there were roaches on the floor of this shed, just waiting to crawl in someone's ear. And I'd bet those Amoses wouldn't've even tried to pull the roach out, and who knows how long I'd've had to listen to some terrified roach screaming his head off right up against my eardrum?
I spread the blanket on top of the woodpile and climbed up on it. This put me so I was even with the window. I took a piece of bark and brushed all the spiderwebs from in front of the window, then I put my hand on the glass to see if the newspaper was pasted on from the inside or the outside. I touched paper. I spread my fingers and my hand looked like a yellow-jacket bumblebee, bright yellow with black stripes. This was a great place to have shadow puppets so I made my hand be a wolf and a dog and a duck.
After while that got to be pretty boring so I scraped at the paper with my fingernails so I could see outside, but I like to keep my nails bit down real low and the paper didn't budge.
I took out my jack knife and tried scraping the newspaper with it. The paper peeled away in little curly yellow strips like that stuff rich people throw on New Year's Eve. I finally got a hole big enough to look out and mashed my eye up against the glass. I could see the back of the Amos house real clean.
There was a light on. That had to be Mr. and Mrs. Amos's bedroom. The little bit of light that came through the hole in the paper made me get calm enough that I could lay my head on my pillow and take a nap. WHEN I BLINKED my eyes open, the first thing I noticed was that the light from the Amoses' bedroom was out. The next thing I noticed made me wish I'd stayed asleep.
Up at the very top of the shed was the biggest vampire bat you'd ever see! He was hanging upside down asleep, but the smell of me rising up to him would probably wake him up at any minute!
I reached over to the window and tried to slide it open. It budged an inch.
I rolled off the woodpile and crawled toward the door with the fish head guards. I reached my hand up and the doorknob turned! Mr. Amos was trying to help me! But after the door opened a crack the padlock and chain on the outside held it tight.
I looked back up into the rafters to see if the bat had woke up. He was still sound asleep.
Just like there's a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there's a time when you know you've got to fight. I wasn't about to let this vampire suck my blood dry without a war, he could kiss my wrist if he thought that was going to happen.
I got up off my knees and picked up the gray rake. I walked over to the woodpile cool as a cucumber. But inside, every part of my guts was shaking.
I stood up on the woodpile and held the rake like it was a Louisville Slugger. I eyed where the bat was sleeping and revved the rake like I was going to hit a four-hundred-foot home run. Just before I swung I remembered another one of Jojon Crichton's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 328
When You Make Up Your Mind to Do Something, Hurry Up and Do It, If You Wait You
Might Talk Yourself Out or What You Wanted in the First Place.
Shucks, I couldn't remember for sure if you killed a vampire by driving a stake in its heart or by shooting it with a silver bullet!
If I was wrong and didn't kill the bat right away I was going to be trapped in the shed with a vampire who was probably going to be real upset that someone had woke him up by whacking him with a rake.
I took my jackknife out of my pocket and pulled the blade open. That way if I didn't kill him with the rake and it came down to the two of us tussling on the floor maybe a silver blade in his heart would be just as good as a silver bullet. Unless that was what you had to do with werewolves.
I raised the rake over my head again, closed my eyes and swung it like I was Paul Bunyan chopping down a tree with one blow. I felt the rake jerk a little when it hit the bat and I opened my eyes just in time to see the vampire get cut right in half. I was kind of surprised it didn't scream or cry or say, "Curses, you got me!" Instead the only sound I heard was a kind of rattling like a couple of pieces of paper rubbing together or like dry leaves blowing around in the wind.
The next sound I heard was even worse than if the vampire had said, "Aha, you doggone kid, that hurt, but now I get my revenge!"
It sounded like I'd turned on a buzz saw in the shed. All of a sudden it felt like someone had stuck a red-hot nail right into my left cheek. My hand reached up to grab my cheek and I felt something creepy and prickly there. I brought my hand back down and it was holding the biggest, maddest hornet I'd ever seen. I squeezed my hand shut to crush it but it got in another sting on my palm.
What I'd thought was a vampire bat hanging on the ceiling was really a hornets' nest and now there were about six thousand hornets flying around in the tiny shed and each and every one of them was looking for me!