Edith was fully alert now. All her drowsiness had disappeared as soon as she heard that strange sound from the ceiling. She leaped down from the windowsill.
Cree-eeeak!
“There it is again!” she whispered. “What could it be?!”
Stick Cat had no idea. He had never heard such a strange sound before—and certainly never twice in a row. And definitely never from the ceiling.
Cree-eeeak!
Three times in a row.
“It’s the ceiling!” exclaimed Edith. “It’s going to collapse! There must be an elephant up there or something.”
She took a few quiet steps to follow the sound. It was definitely moving—whatever it was.
“Don’t get under it, Edith!” Stick Cat yelled. He dove toward the couch and crouched behind it. He peeked around its edge. “Come back here with me!”
Edith continued to walk along with the sound. It was as if something was pushing through something else. There was a swishing sound now too—like a dragging sound.
“How do you think it got up there?” asked Edith.
“How do I think what got up there?”
“The elephant, of course!”
Cree-ee—eeak!
“Edith, an elephant is not in the ceiling.”
“How do you know? It could be an elephant. You just won’t admit that I’m right—that I figured it out first. That’s what I think.”
Stick Cat couldn’t believe they were even having this discussion. He asked incredulously, “How could an elephant get in the ceiling?”
“That’s what I just asked,” Edith said. “That’s what I want to know too.”
Stick Cat could not be certain, but the ceiling seemed to bulge a bit with the sound—as if something heavy was slowly moving across the room right above them. It was an almost impossible thing to detect.
Precisely when Stick Cat wondered if he could indeed see a slight bulge moving across the ceiling, something happened.
And then something else happened.
Cra-aaa-ack!
A single piece of white plaster—about the size of a quarter—fell to the floor. And a thin crack shot out from that spot and ran in a jagged line across the ceiling.
“Edith!” Stick Cat screamed. “Get over here! Please! NOW!”
Edith stood directly under that bulgy spot—and didn’t move an inch. Her chin was pointed up, her head twitched in tiny degrees as she followed that crack—and listened to that sound.
“It will be neat to see an elephant!” Edith said. “Imagine, just imagine, an elephant right here in our very own building.”
“It’s not an elephant!” Stick Cat repeated in a whisper-yell.
Edith didn’t hear him—or, at least, wasn’t paying particular attention to him anyway.
“You’d think we would have heard it stomping around,” Edith continued. “I mean, elephants weigh at least eighty or ninety pounds. They’re huge! And they blow those trunks like trumpets. You’d think we would have heard that once or twice.”
“It’s not an elephant,” Stick Cat said again. He watched the crack move farther along the ceiling. It was almost to the wall now—almost to the big vent that blew cool air in the summer. Stick Cat stared at the large rectangular grate covering the vent. He tilted his head a bit to the side. It looked like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
Edith chatted away.
“No matter,” she said, as much to herself as to anybody else. “We’re going to see that elephant in no time.”
“The vent,” Stick Cat whispered. “Whatever it is will come out of the vent.”
He bounded out from behind the couch, grasped Edith’s front left paw, and began to pull her back to the couch.
“What the—?” Edith said, and resisted his efforts.
“Come on!”
“Why?”
“Something is going to come out of the vent in a few seconds!”
“I know that, silly,” Edith said. “It’s an elephant. I don’t know how it’s going to fit through that vent though.”
Stick Cat continued to pull.
Edith continued to resist.
“If it’s an elephant,” Stick Cat said. It sounded like he was negotiating now in an attempt to change Edith’s mind—and stop her from resisting. “Then I promise we’ll come out to see it. We’ll introduce ourselves. Become friends. Fix it a snack. Whatever.”
“‘Fix it a snack?’”
“Sure. If it’s hungry,” Stick Cat said, and yanked at Edith some more. He couldn’t believe they were even talking about this. Something was crawling through the air-conditioning pipes toward the vent. It was not normal. Something extremely strange—probably even dangerous, Stick Cat thought—was happening. And here he was talking with Edith about fixing a snack for an elephant.
“I’m not sharing any of my food with an elephant,” Edith huffed. “Forget it. I’m willing to be friends and all, but let’s try to stay serious here.”
Stick Cat had successfully pulled her back to the couch, at least. He took a little comfort in that. He thought they would be safer there. They peeked out from the back corner of the couch.
“Let’s watch,” Stick Cat whispered.
“How do you address an elephant?” Edith wondered out loud. “Is it like, ‘Hey, Mr. Elephant’? Or is it more formal like, ‘Good afternoon, Sir Elephant’? Or is it more like, ‘Elephant. Dude. ’Sup?’”
“We’re about to find out,” Stick Cat said.
The air-conditioning vent shook. It rattled. Paint chips fell down from its edges onto the living-room carpet. Then the vent cover itself separated from the wall and dropped to the living-room carpet with a dull THUD!
Stick Cat and Edith stood perfectly still.
A long, thick, gray object fell out of the vent opening.
“Told you!” Edith exclaimed. “It’s an elephant’s trunk!”