Afternoon light had overtaken the whole dining room, putting the fireplace to shame. Alice, the supersoldier frightened into a closet by a dashing squirrel several minutes prior, now opened the closet door with a monumental sigh of relief. The squirrel was long gone, taking with him the chance of an unwanted ticket to Wonderland. But he would be back.

Dracula and Adam yammered about rice, which is a delicious dinnertime accompaniment to yams. It is also fun to count. Drac’s arched back barely moved, and stayed well within Alice’s gun sight.

“The others—the fish, the cat, the squirrel—are all still in this bat building,” Alice gathered from a sniff. “Still much to do around here. But first, a stake.” For with a silver nail was this gun loaded.

The nail launched harpoony into Dracula’s back; so it appeared, but many strips of Adam’s papyrus interceded at master speed, and the stake was stalled by them as by a phone book. Adam did not seem to feel any pain. He and his strips did not appear weakened one bit, either, by the sun.

“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two,” whispered Adam, counting.

“Well well well,” said Alice, keeping her cool. “The silver bullets, then?”

And these she shot wildly about the room, toward chair backs, table legs, hanging paintings, and the bodies of her enemies...and none hit their targets. They were swallowed by the best of all Yellow Pages, which spread from Adam in likeness of the limbs of an octopus—the rays of the sun.

“Oh, bother,” she cursed. “If only I had giant shears.”

She paused dramatically for eight seconds.

“I’m sorry?” lilted her Brown House connection. “What was that? Were you talking to someone?”

Alice raised wrist to muzzle. “I said, IF ONLY SOMEONE WOULD FIND MY COORDINATES AND AIRDROP ME GIANT SHEARS.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Chop chop? Please, Helen, time is of the ess—”

“Submitting request for giant shears,” interrupted Helen, “and thank you for the magic word. The other magic word is ‘respect!’ Respect your coworkers!” Her metallic voice was buoyant, barely fazed by Alice’s rudosity.

Alice ignored her comments; she refused to admit defeat. “Make that silver shears. Timeframe?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Too long. Drop them in, but I’ll pick off the small fry first.”

Helen growled a “rrroger.” Again, she was not perturbed; she was merely a werewolf. Alice ripped a second bag of rice apart, then carefully sprinkled a trail of it toward, and then into, the fireplace. No trick on these simpletons was a bridge too far.

But Dracula had watched her, and he spat into the fire! “And you think that will work on us,” he sneered. “On Adam, who rules the sun, and on I, who have run across hot coals on many an island vacation.”

“Worth a shot,” Alice tossed back as she left.

“Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four,” whispered Adam, counting.

***

When telling visitors of his haunt, Dracula is fond of saying, “You may go anywhere you wish in this castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. My ways are strange ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.”

Trials, of course, had no thumbs. When confronting a door she could use the Thumb-Lumb-Tumb spell, but as she did not yet know Finger-Singer-Kinger, in practice this was useless. (To say nothing of her ignorance of Hand-Bland-Zand.) This problem became major when the squirrel slipped under a doorway. She halt-skidded before one door and rattled off the spell, but the lonely thumb only rolled from the brass.

Did the journey end here? She dared not burn down Dracula’s door.

Did the journey end here? …Ruminant thoughts were circling her mind, regrets, for she had plunged herself into great danger with creature-men whose weaknesses, in the end, were garlic and rice. Her aim was not pure malice and mischief, yet neither was she heroine. It was freedom she wanted! Freedom from a body that people burned; freedom from a journey that now seemed doomed to destruction.

However, if she made herself scarce while Robert toe-to-toe’d with Alice…wandered about for a while, waiting for the Geezer Squad to win or lose…then Bistritz might land, and she might then escape unscathed.

Or perhaps the squirrel would emerge again, show her to Wonderland, and there the rigmarole would end.

A stomp issued from close behind. A soggy stomp from a marine foot: that of Robert.

Trials kept her eyes on the thumb revolving gently on velvet rug.

“Look, at, me.”

She turned, her body and face betraying nothing; no mood, no sympathy. Unlike her mouth, those saucer eyes told no tales.

“Enemy, come, you, do, nothing. Putting, squirrel, chase, before, allies. We, not, friends. But, we, people.” He crossed his arms. “Right?”

Trials appeared to give his words some thought. “I don’t have to stay any longer to know I teamed up with the losers.”

“That, not, have, to, happen! Help, us!”

She looked away, her tail waving like a wisp of smoke. She looked back up at Robert. Then she said, in a voice as small and unassuming as any meow, “Okay.”

“No, good,” grumbled Robert. “Have, to, mean, it. Have, to, care.”

“I said ‘okay,’ fish-head! What am I, chopped litter?” Trials came forward a step. “That’s the thing: I don’t really care anymore! I don’t have a reason to care! I like the moon, I like pretty lights! I’m just a wisecracking cat who’s lived for hundreds of years!”

Robert jabbed his own chest. “I, fish, lived, forever! I, care! It, hard! That, life!”

Trials chuckled. “Oh, that’s rich!”

Then he went and did it—threw his arms out like pincers, snaring Trials! As she struggled, twisted and yowled, Robert hissed, “Maybe, lock, you, up, keep, you, safe. That, what, you, want?”

The one thought on Robert’s mind was triumph, ideological as well as physical; the one on Trials’, a line that Alice had said. “Fire for fish” …her chance at escape.

“F-F-F-Fire Pyre Multiplier!” she shouted, and a merciless fireball consumed Robert’s head! Oh, no! Oh, Trials! Oh, what a ghastly development! And then she, the freed cat, she—Trials, don’t run down the hall! Not while Robert is collapsing in his own sea of fire!

In Robert’s scrunching, he rolled himself up in a carpet, creating a tube or taco of terror that I pray Trials could not ignore! “My gills!” he was wailing! “My…gills…!”

The cat turned back.

“Water Daughter Otter!” she cast, dousing Robert’s gills and rest of body with a soothing splash. Though the ravaging heat was off, he yet panted in agony.

He turned to her and managed words of reconciliation: “Meow…meow.”

Trials had not left fight-or-flight mode; her every breath could be seen coursing through her body. She approached slowly. “Did you just…thank me in catspeak?”

“Meow,” Robert agreed weakly. “Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow,” he added, which translated roughly to, “I forgive you, as I hope you will forgive me. There have been misdeeds on both sides.”

“Hey, that’s water and fire under the bridge. How did you ever learn to speak cat?”

“Meow, meow,” he exposited, which meant, “I have had many years to devote to language in my eternal fishman life. Such a language is very useful, and much easier to speak when I’m this injured.”

“I guess you’re not as stupid as you look,” accepted the cat with real respect. “Hold on. Heal Wheel Congeal!” And from friendship’s ashes a miracle bloomed: the restoration of Robert’s gills (and rest of body) to the fullest vitality they had ever known! All his scars disappeared… even the old burns from the 1950s. The scars from precisely one thousand and fifty years ago, from the time he first met mankind, were finally a thing of the past. He filled his lungs and grew strong, stronger, strongest...ejected himself from the rolly carpet and stood proud on his feet.

He screamed rapturously, “I feel like a brand new tuna!”

“You can talk without sounding like a winded caveman?”

Joyous, Robert whisked Trials into his arms and spun down the hallway!

“I haven’t felt this good in a thousand years or more! Every day my old gills ached so much from old injuries that I could barely breathe! Why, it’s as if I had a large spiked ball up my nostril and just now got it removed! You darned cat, you’ve made me such a happy man—I haven’t been this glad since before the Ice Age!”

“Woah woah woah, settle down, oldster! Where we goin’?”

He stopped in a hallway that looked just like the one previous. With one exception: all carpets, as far to either side as the eye could see, were in place. No burnt-up roll-ups here.

Robert set Trials down with a sigh, but he was smiling. “Sorry, Trials. Got worked up and carried away, didn’t I?”

“Me too, apparently,” she snarked, but without malice and with very little mischief. “I have an idea, though. Can you speak bat?”

“Sure. Eek, eek eek! Eek?” he replied, which meant something like, “Hello! Nice weather?”

Bistritz responded far faster than anticipated. Straightaway his vocal cords produced a slight rumble that resounded through the entire back-bound castle. His words reached everyone within! “Eek eek eek! Yeek! Eek eek eek eek, eek eek eek eek eek!” said he. In other words, “No, it’s too sunny! Yecch! But I’m so happy to chat with my friend Robert!”

“Sakes alive! He can hear that!” Robert coughed and began anew. He said “eek eek, eek eek eek,” that is, “Bistritz, we’re in trouble! Can you turn back into the darkness?”

“Eek eek eek, eek, eek eek eek eek! Eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek!” boomed the reply: “Sorry, Rob, I can’t move my wings! You’ll have to get my steering wheel back in order to drive me outta this gross sunlight!”

Robert translated for Trials: “He says he can’t budge unless we return to the bridge and unseal the wheel.”

“Well, if we go past the dining room again, that dog’ll know exactly where we are with that nose of hers!”

“Um, Trials,” Robert said with a throat-clearing cough, “that’s the idea. We can’t run away, remember?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m talkin’ stealthy hijinx, Bob.”

“Oho! Outsmarting her?” Robert quirked a scaly eyebrow.

Trials quirked the ridge of her skull where an eyebrow would be for humans. “Now you’re speakin’ my language…the other one!”

Shortly Robert revealed that they were not quite lost; he had toured Castle Dracula more than a few times. If memory served, he would, at the very least, spare them a visit to the dungeons infested with what Dracula referred to as “children of the night” (meaning not bats but wolves, counterintuitively). If that news were not inspiring enough, the fresh oxygen, which rushed into his body and brain with such vigor now, rarefied him, enkeenened his senses. This danger was nothing.

As they went, Robert even began to puff bubbles from his pipe. Observing the follower cat, he mused silently, “It appears as if this time I am the scientist and she is the Amazonian fishoid…”

He threw open a door. It creaked ajar, and inside was a yellowed, dingy dustbin of a hospital room, with flickering fluorescents and old equipment dropped among shattered glass.

Far away, in a chamber very distant, Dracula’s skin prickled. “Oh,” he said to no one, “I feel as if my old sick bay for taking care of sick guests has been opened. It really has been a long time since I cleaned that up. It must look like a horror movie in there.”

“One-hundred eight, one-hundred nine,” Adam counted.

The flightive fish and cat threw open another door. It creaked ajar, and inside was a musty garage with various dark stains spattered ‘cross the floor, chains rattling from the ceiling, and tall steel shelves housing rusty power tools and cutters.

“Oh, I feel as if my old auto garage has been opened,” said Dracula. “It really has been a long time since I used those power tools or even owned a functional automobile. It must look like a horror movie in there.”

“Three-hundred, three-hundred one,” Adam counted.

The weapon-like tools were all rusty and bacteria-laden, so once again Robert and Trials threw open a door. It creaked ajar, and inside was a spooky old graveyard on a grassy knoll littered with gravestones and old skeleton bones. There may also have been a ghost inside.

“Oh, I feel as if my spare room for spare coffins and dirt has been opened,” said Dracula. “I should definitely go about retrieving those old toy skeleton decorations. Halloween is approaching, after all. They would make this castle look more like a horror movie for certain.”

“Eleven, twelve,” Adam counted. “Wait, what is a movie?”

Finally Robert and Trials found a massive closet, which looked not only useful, but also not blatantly horrifying. Close to infinity outfits hung on twin forever-rows extending into nether, but the old shoeboxes, hatboxes, and opened Christmas presents under the clothes racks gave that touch of home. “Just the room I was hoping for. Come in!” hollered Robert.