"CALVIN, IT'S TIME TO GET UP!"
Calvin was jolted out of sleep, startled by the shrill yell from his harpy of a mother. He gasped slightly before feeling exhaustion grab hold of him again and he slouched back into bed. He pulled the warm blankets over his body and hoped that a freak storm would sweep the city and cause school to be closed. Maybe even decimated.
But then he heard the drill sergeant footsteps coming up the stairs, and the door suddenly swung open, and his mother began to clap her hands in a very aggressive manner.
"Get up! Get up! Get up! You're going to be late! Let's move it! Hustle! Don't make me drag you out!"
Calvin glared at her and sluggishly climbed out of his warm bed and into the biting cold air of his bedroom.
"Good! Now get dressed! For Pete's sake, I shouldn't have to do this every morning!"
And she slammed the door shut behind her.
Calvin rolled his eyes. "I don't see anyone forcing you to do it," he muttered, climbing onto the bed and pulling open the top drawer.
He climbed inside and shut it around himself, and by the time he'd emerged from the bottom, full dressed, sans shoes, Hobbes was waking up.
Calvin glanced over at him. "I take it from the waking up in the bed instead the closet that you slept peacefully last night?" he asked, pulling his shoes on.
"Yep," Hobbes said with a yawn. "Nice and pleasant dreams for me. An entire field of cute little baby bunny rabbits to chase and terrorize."
Calvin was a little perturbed by the idyllic smile on his friend's face. "Okay… Glad to hear it."
Hobbes got out of bed and proceeded to do a series of stretches. "I'll be joining you for breakfast this morning," he said, lightly leaping down onto the floor.
"Okay. Come on. Let's go before Mom fixes me something sensible for breakfast."
They walked downstairs to the kitchen where they saw Calvin's parents milling around the kitchen. Mom was still making some breakfast while Dad was reading the newspaper.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," Dad said, taking a sip from his coffee.
"Mmm…," Calvin muttered, heading for the pantry. He pulled out the box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and a bowl from the sink and headed for the table, pouring it away.
Dad looked disdainfully at the sugar-incrusted toxic sludge his son called breakfast. "You know, Calvin, you really should have something more nutritionally wholesome for breakfast," he remarked with a pointed look.
Calvin raised an eyebrow. "How's the coffee, Dad?" he asked with an equally pointed look.
Dad blinked. "Uh…"
"Score one for the six-year-old," Mom muttered, fixing oatmeal at the counter.
Calvin smirked and went to grab the milk from the fridge.
Hobbes grabbed a piece of toast off of Dad's stack and munched on it, taking a quick swig of juice from the pitcher in the middle of the table, before taking the section of the newspaper that Calvin's dad always discarded: the funnies.
Calvin poured the milk into the cereal, and he was just putting the jug back in the fridge when the phone rang.
Mom looked up in surprise. "Who in their right mind would phone at this hour?" she wondered, heading for it.
"Hopefully the superintendent with news of a freak blizzard," Calvin said.
"Calvin, it's October, and there's no snow on the ground," Dad pointed out.
"Then maybe it's a very isolated freak blizzard – specifically occurring on school grounds."
Mom ignored them and answered the phone. "Hello…? Andy, why are you calling out house at this hour? Calvin is getting ready for school. He can't come to the phone right now."
Calvin and Hobbes looked up from the funnies in surprise.
Mom paused, listening to the boy on the other end. She sighed. "Okay, but make it quick."
Calvin held his hand out to take the phone. "Andy's calling?"
"He said it has to do with his hamster," Mom replied, passing it to him.
Calvin held the phone up to his ear. "Andy? What's wrong with Sherman?" he asked while Hobbes leaned over to listen.
"I'm not entirely sure," Andy replied, sounding concerned. "He's been listless and distracted all day. He won't admit it, but I don't think he slept well last night. I think he had a nightmare."
Calvin's spoon stopped just millimeters from his open mouth. "Nightmare…?" he asked, looking at an equally perplexed Hobbes.
"Yeah, he's so darn proud he won't admit it. He never likes to show weakness. He says nightmares a childish and infantile."
Hobbes glared. "Oh, just because I had one…," he grumbled.
"Andy, what can I do about it? I have to go to school in a few minutes. I still have to eat breakfast."
"I know. I was hoping you could send Hobbes over to help. I just need someone to assist over here. I'm worried he's so drowsy that he'll mix the wrong chemicals and he'll blow up the house."
"Yeah, I'll come over and help the little pest," Hobbes sighed tiredly. "Maybe I should bring Socrates over. His spastic behavior might be enough to make Sherman focus more on protecting his things."
"Might not be a bad idea," Andy agreed. "I'll see you later. Oh, one more thing, Calvin."
"What?" Calvin asked.
"Have you not fixed the MTM yet?"
"No, he's still broken. I need to find some way to recalibrate the temporal capacitor and rewire his molecular destabilizer."
"Oh… And that's why his phone's not working."
"No, no, no – that's a completely different problem altogether. Gotta go, Andy. See you later."
He passed the phone back to his mother, who looked very perplexed by the bizarre conversation she'd just witnessed.
Calvin began to gobble up his cereal, returning to looking at the funnies with Hobbes.
Dad cleared his throat. "Everything okay with Andy?" he asked at last.
"Hmmm? Oh, yeah, he's fine. Sherman had a nightmare."
Mom and Dad looked at each other.
"Sherman?" Mom asked.
"Andy's hamster. Hobbes is going to go over later and make sure he's okay."
Mom and Dad rolled their eyes. "Of course he is," Mom sighed.
Hobbes blinked as she turned away to continue with her breakfast. "She doesn't sound very confident in my ability to cross the street," he said, sounding insulted.
"Just go before eight o'clock," Calvin replied. "There's hardly any traffic until then."
To say that Socrates was amused by the situation would be putting it lightly. He was chortling away when Hobbes gave him a call after Calvin had gone to school. He met Hobbes halfway to Andy and Sherman's house, laughing like a cackling hyena.
"A hamster had a nightmare!" he laughed. "How rich! Can't wait to see him in his weakened state!"
"How come?" Hobbes asked as they crossed the street.
"Because it's just so funny! I mean, come on! Imagine a sleep-deprived hamster in a lab! I can't wait to see him!"
"That's probably the first time anyone's ever been genuinely thrilled to see that hamster in his entire tiny life," Hobbes smirked.
They approached the house and knocked at the door.
A few seconds later, Andy opened the door. He looked relieved to see them.
"Hey, sorry to have you guys come down here on such short notice," he began.
"Nonsense!" Socrates interrupted. "Always happy to see the little furball! Now, where is he?"
Andy glared. "I don't like that look in your eyes," he said.
Socrates blinked and looked at himself in a nearby mirror. "That's the same look I always have!"
"Exactly."
"So where is he, in your room?" Hobbes asked.
"Nope. He's down in his lab, toiling away."
"He's actually down there in his condition?"
"Yeah, in case you didn't know this about Shermie, he's a bit overconfident."
"No, really?" Socrates exclaimed in feigned shock.
Andy rolled his eyes. "Look, all I'm asking is for you guys to keep him alert for awhile. Just make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."
"Check," Hobbes said. "Don't worry. We'll make sure he doesn't blow us all to Kingdom Come."
"Thanks. I have to go to my lessons now with mom. I'll see you guys at lunch."
"We're going to be here that long?" Socrates whined.
Andy just nodded and headed for the kitchen.
"Come on, let's go play nursemaid," Hobbes sighed, heading for the secret hatch in the wall.
"But how do we get in?" Socrates asked. "Sherman's not gonna let us in."
"Calvin already thought of that. He gave me this."
Hobbes held up a common water pistol (a.k.a.: the Transmogrifier Gun) and aimed it at the wall. He transformed a section of the wallpaper into a big red button. He pressed it, and the secret door slid open, revealing the lab within.
Socrates grinned. "You've gotta let me use that sometime!"
"No way," Hobbes replied.
"Aw, come on, Hobbo! Don't you trust me?"
"Socrates, we've known each other for years – of course not!"
And with that, Hobbes descended into the lab, with an insulted Socrates trailing after him.
When they got there, they were rather surprised to find Sherman sitting on the table, wearing a disheveled tiny lab coat and a pair of goggles gone eschew on his face. His lab reports were scattered haphazardly across the wooden table and his handwriting was barely intelligible.
"Looks like a party at Prince's house got out of hand," Socrates muttered.
"Sherman, are you okay?" Hobbes asked.
Sherman jerked into alertness, taking a defensive stance before realizing who had asked the question. This placed a look of the utmost disdain upon his features. "How the heck did you two get in here?" he demanded.
"You left a key under the mat," Hobbes lied.
Sherman blinked, not realizing. "Oh…"
Hobbes and Socrates glanced at each other, realizing that lack of sleep had put the usually genius hamster off his game.
"Andy called and asked us to help you out around here since you're feeling a bit drowsy," Hobbes continued.
Sherman managed a sleepy glare. "I don't need any help! I'm not tired! Just a slight headache, that's all! A headache that got worse the minute you walked through the door!"
Socrates arched his brow. "Well, you'll see. We'll be the most helpful headache you ever had!"
"Psh… Yeah, right. Look, just stay out of the way and bask in my genius, alright? I've got stuff to do that I can do perfectly well on my own, thank you very much."
And he turned dramatically towards a beaker full of fizzing blue liquid.
Hobbes and Socrates watched him stumble in that direction.
"You know," Hobbes whispered, "he's probably so tired his defenses are totally down."
"So?"
"So…" Hobbes licked his lips for emphasis.
Socrates stared at him. "Oh, you're sick!" he hissed, absolutely appalled.
"Just a thought…"
Sherman didn't hear them. He was too busy trying to carry the large beaker over towards an empty measuring glass. He stumbled slightly and the liquid sloshed around, and a little of it spilled on the table. The small droplet sizzled loudly as it ate through the wood, creating a perfect hole straight through to the bottom.
Hobbes and Socrates stared nervously.
"You know, I think I see where Andy was concerned," Hobbes said at last.
"Yeah, one minute it's acid on a wooden surface, and the next it's nitroglycerin on oily rags and typing paper," Socrates agreed.
They moved cautiously towards the table and carefully moved the measuring glass closer to Sherman, who, not noticing them, proceeded to pour the blue acid into the measuring glass.
But he didn't stop pouring.
Hobbes snuck a glance at the papers on the desk and saw a strange coded series of letters and numbers on them that matched the label on the beaker, and he saw the phrase "3 L" on the side. He looked at the amount that was currently going into the glass and saw that it was getting a little too high. In fact, it was already at "12 L".
"Er, Sherman, it looks like you're putting in too much," he pointed out.
"Shut up, I'm not tired," Sherman grumbled, but he stopped pouring nevertheless.
He set the beaker down and staggered off towards another beaker at the other end of the table.
Hobbes surreptitiously began pouring the blue acid back into the beaker, constantly checking to make sure there were only 3 Liters in it. He looked at the little lines and numbers on the side of the glass carefully.
"Does that look like 3 liters to you?" he asked.
Socrates shrugged as he looked at the little white line. "Pretty close," he said at last.
"I just don't want the world to suddenly blow up because we don't use the metric system."
Then they heard the oh-so-wonderful sound of glass breaking.
They looked over in alarm and saw that Sherman had knocked over an empty beaker, as he was moving around with a full one.
"Get a broom. I'll handle this," Hobbes sighed.
Socrates nodded and went to the supply cupboard.
Lunchtime came at about eleven-thirty in Andy's house, so he was excused from his lessons for an hour to go see how things were going down in the lab. He walked through the open doorway. This was a bad sign in and of itself. Sherman never left the door open except to air out the place when he mixed particularly noxious gasses together.
He wandered into the room down the spiral staircase and looked around anxiously. The place was like a disaster room. Papers were strewn all over the place. Broken glass littered the floor. Strange bubbling liquids lay in puddles. Some books were scattered around.
Socrates was frantically trying to sweep up some more of the broken glass with a broom and dust pan while using one of his hind legs to keep Sherman from going off the edge of the table.
Hobbes was going through the pages of various technical and chemical formulae, making sure that Sherman didn't accidentally misread anything or blow anything up.
Andy stepped gingerly over a fallen hat stand. "Well, it's definitely better than I thought it would be," he admitted.
Socrates looked up at the voice. He glared as he tipped the contents of the dustpan into a trashcan. "Thanks for this, Andy. I needed something to keep me busy all morning."
Hobbes frantically took a bottle of noxious-looking green stuff from Sherman and handed him one full of nice-looking yellow stuff instead. "There we go. Sodium cathorolite – not Cesium Mixy Lodium," he said, hoping he was pronouncing those chemicals correctly.
Sherman didn't really acknowledge the tiger as he poured the stuff into the measuring glass.
"What's that green stuff do anyway?" Socrates asked.
"I think releases a toxic gas," Hobbes said, skimming through the nearest encyclopedia. "You know – the one that makes you sound like a chipmunk before you croak?"
"I thought that was Helium?" Andy said.
"Distant cousin, I'm guessing. I've learned more about chemistry than I ever cared to know today."
"How's Shermie been doing?"
"Take a look around," Socrates grumbled. "He's more out of it than the gardener at Tommy Chong's house."
Andy leaned close to look at his hamster friend. "Shermie, why won't you just talk about it? For crying out loud, look at what you're doing to your lab! You just need to talk about it!"
Sherman stopped what he was doing – and just in time, because he'd been about to break out the nitroglycerin. He stared off into space for a few seconds, contemplating and weighing his options.
Andy waited patiently while Hobbes gently took the small bottle out of the hamster's grasp and put it away.
"Phantom tiger…," he said quietly.
Hobbes' eyes widened. "No…," he whispered disbelievingly.
"Phantom tiger?" Andy repeated.
Socrates looked up from mopping. "What phantom tiger?" he asked.
"That's what I dreamed about," Sherman elaborated. "I was in the woods, and it was foggy, and I was being chased by an evil phantom tiger."
Hobbes stared. "With glowing red eyes?" he asked.
Sherman nodded.
"How did you know that?" Andy asked.
"Because I had that dream the night before," Hobbes said. "And Calvin had it the night before that."
Socrates looked impressed. "Wow, Calvin is subletting his nightmares? In this economy, that's a pretty good idea…"
Andy ignored him. "You really had the same nightmare?" he asked skeptically.
"Yeah… It was so bad, I came here yesterday for advice on how to deal with it," Hobbes admitted. "That reminds me: did you ever get around to researching the woods like you said you would?"
"You mean the woods behind your house?" Andy asked.
"Yeah, that's where the dream takes place. Sherman, did you?"
Sherman rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, I got some done between projects. I don't think I got much about history – just some basic stuff. The papers are on the end table."
Hobbes and Andy dug around on the table that was cluttered with several papers.
"I hope they haven't disintegrated yet," Socrates muttered, resuming mopping.
But Hobbes found the papers. He skimmed through them. His face looked grim. "Hmmm… Nothing much. Just basic atmospheric details… Topography… Wildlife… Nothing out of the ordinary."
Sherman shifted and tried to get comfortable where he was sitting. "Maybe I'll head out there later and do some actual hands-on stuff…," he mumbled, slowly drifting off.
"Yeah, maybe that'll work. We can do that tomorrow when you're feeling more rested," Andy said.
Gentle snores were all that he heard in response.
Everyone sighed with relief.
"Okay, let's get him upstairs to bed," Andy said, heading towards the dozing hamster to pick him up.
But then Sherman was suddenly wide-awake and screaming frantically. He was so terrified that he levitated two feet in the air, and when he landed, he ran and hid under some papers.
Everyone stared at him in surprise.
"Did you see the eyes?" Hobbes asked.
Sherman nodded timidly.
"Yeah, those keep turning up too… It's strange."
Later that afternoon, once he was home from school, Calvin headed over to the house to see what was going on. He just barged right in without knocking and looked around. He saw the lab door still open and walked inside.
He looked down and saw Hobbes, Socrates and Andy were finishing cleaning up the mess from earlier. The place was covered in full trash bags.
"I take it all is well?" he asked ironically.
"It was really bad an hour ago," Hobbes replied. "He was so drowsy he mixed up a can of instant oxygen with liquid nitrogen."
"Yeah, those stains probably aren't going to come out," Socrates tutted, mopping up another section of the floor.
"Sorry I missed it," Calvin said, coming down to join them. "Where is he now?"
"Well, after a lot of persuasion, we finally managed to get him to go to bed," Andy said. "Whether or not he actually sleeps is a different matter."
"Was it the same nightmare we had?" Calvin asked Hobbes.
"Yep. Phantom tiger and everything."
Calvin scratched his chin. "I really need to get MTM up and running again. He'd know what's going on. He somehow always does."
"Of course he usually doesn't tell us until after the fact that he knew."
"I'd be interested in knowing how your nightmare has been brain-hopping to other peoples' minds," Andy said. "I mean, whoever heard of a recurring nightmare happening to multiple people at different times?"
Socrates shrugged. "You know how things are at Halloween for us. That guy who got shot in my mansion still stops by from time to time. I've gotten used to him. Sometimes he just wanders around and waits for his energy to run out. He only really gets annoying when I'm trying to watch TV and keeps changing to the Hallmark Channel. So annoying, I tell you."
Andy blinked. "A dead mobster who enjoys made-for-TV movies about relationships. I never would've guessed."
"I wonder how Sherman's sleeping now…," Calvin wondered.
"Hopefully peacefully. I'm not doing this everyday," Hobbes grumbled, sweeping up some more broken glass.
He was in the woods. It was foggy. Mists were swirling around him and creating all sorts of strange shapes. The moonlight did little to make him feel more at ease.
He felt his hair stand on end as he heard a rustling in the bushes. He turned to look. At first, he couldn't see anything.
But the bushes started shaking madly. Leaves flew off their branches from the force.
He began to back away nervously. What could possibly be making that much racket?
And then a large pair of paws pushed the branches aside, and a large feline head poked its way through.
Those glowing red eyes glared at him, piercing all the way into his soul.
He realized he was going to have to try running away. This creature was moving towards him with more than hunger in its eyes. There was a definite rage brimming in them.
Summoning all his strength, he turned and ran from the tiger, hoping he had the power to make it all the way to safety, wherever that may be.
But he could hear the tiger chasing him.
And then he couldn't hear it anymore, but he could sense it.
He stopped and listened…
And listened…
And then he felt hot steam on the back of his neck.
He warily turned around and found himself staring right into those piercing red eyes. The tiger bared its fangs, which gleamed in the moonlight. It opened its mouth and prepared to devour him alive.
Andy sat up, gasping and looking around frantically. He saw the four walls of his room surrounding him, and he saw the familiar posters and bookshelves lining them. He saw his blue bed sheets and his quilt. He looked around and saw all his personal belongings.
He looked over at the hamster cage on the table, its curtain drawn around it for Sherman's privacy, and he could hear the gentle breathing coming from inside it, signifying that his hamster was sleeping soundly.
Andy looked at his digital clock. It was five minutes after midnight.
October 28th – three days until Halloween.