Monster Lake (6 page)

Terri gulped in dread. She looked over at
Patricia and said, “I forgot to close the boathouse door. And I
left my library card inside.”

“
Ter
ri!” Patricia exclaimed. “And your uncle’s going to be home
any minute!”

“
Yeah, and he’ll probably
go straight to the boathouse to work, like he does almost every
day.”

Terri had to think fast, and she knew she
had to move fast too. “You go home right now,” she instructed
Patricia. “If you’re at the house and I’m not with you, Uncle Chuck
will know we’ve been up to something. Sneak around the side of the
yard and go back to your house. I’ll call you later.”

Patricia looked confused. “But, Terri…what
are you going to do?”

“
I have to run back down to
the boathouse, get my library card, and close the door.”

“
Are you
crazy!
” Patricia nearly
shrieked. “You can’t go back down there. That—that
thing’s
down there, that
salamander or whatever it is. It’ll bite you for sure!”

“
I’ll just have to be
careful,” Terri concluded. “It probably went back into the water by
now because most amphibians have to keep their skin wet, and,
besides, salamanders are real slow.”

Patricia looked terrified
at the idea of Terri going down to the boathouse by herself. “You
better be careful, Terri, and I mean
real
careful.”

“
I know, I will. I’ll call
you later.”

Terri took a deep breath, then, and closed
her eyes for a few moments. The image of the salamander, its fat,
slimy body, and its needlelike teeth, still stuck in her mind.
She’d never forget the way its jaw was snapping at them just before
they ran away.

But I’ve got no
choice,
she told herself.
I
have
to go back there, and I have to do it
now.

And with that thought she opened her eyes
again and turned. Then she began to jog back down the path.

Back—

A chill shot up her spine.

—
back to the
boathouse.

««—»»

Terri ran as fast as she could through the
woods and down the winding path. Her sneakers scuffed the gravel;
tiny tree branches reached out and threatened to brush her face.
The path seemed strangely longer now, with more twists and turns.
Just when she thought it would go on forever, she arrived at its
end, spying the mirrorlike, silverish glare of sunlight off the
lake.

The boathouse sat before her.

She stared at it, reluctant…

Afraid.

Hurry up!
she screamed at herself then.
You don’t have much time!

The wood planks creaked
when she stepped onto the pier. She crept slowly along the walkway,
keeping her eyes peeled for the hideous giant salamander.
A salamander with teeth!
she couldn’t help but keep reminding herself. But when she
peeked around the corner of the boathouse, she saw that her earlier
conclusions were quite right.

The salamander was gone.

It must’ve gone back into
the water,
she thought. And that was fine
with her.

Quickly then, she trotted into the front
room of the boathouse, to retrieve her library card. Her intentions
were simple. Get the card, close the door behind her, and run back
up to the house as fast as she could, before Uncle Chuck could
wonder where she was, or worse, before he could come down here.

There it is!

She found the library card right where she
knew it would be: on the floor in front of the door marked DO NOT
ENTER. She picked it up, began to put it in the back pocket of her
shorts. But—

Her curiosity seemed to
wrestle with her, it seemed to tick in her head like a loud clock.
She’d almost gotten the door open before, hadn’t she?
I would have,
she
realized,
if Patricia hadn’t
screamed.

So…

She did what was probably the least sensible
thing she could imagine. Instead of leaving, as she’d planned—

You really shouldn’t be
doing this, Terri,
she warned
herself.

—
she slipped the library
card back out of her pocket. She couldn’t help it.

She simply
had
to know what was in
that room!

Don’t mess around!
she ordered herself. Sometimes Uncle Chuck stopped
at the store after taking her mother to work; with any luck, he’d
do the same thing today. Terri rushed to the DO NOT ENTER door, and
slid the card back into the gap.

She worked quickly but carefully. Within
moments she had the card wedged back between the bolt and the
doorframe, and the bolt was moving again!

Come on! Open!

Then—

click!

She got it, and in good time! The door
popped open…

Well,
she thought.
Here goes.

The room was very dark. Terri quickly felt
along the wall next to the door, found the light switch, turned it
on.

Then she stood and stared.

This room was nothing like
the other room. There were no computers, no file cabinets. Along
the front wall were big metal shelves, and each shelf contained
rows of tall glass bottles which each seemed to be filled with some
gross-looking yellow liquid.
Gunky,
she thought, making a face at a faint creeky
smell. And then she noticed that a few of the bottles were full of
green, not yellow, gunk. She had no idea what the stuff could be
inside these bottles. Then she turned around—

The other three walls were lined with
shelves too, but there weren’t any bottles on them. Instead, these
shelves were filled with…

Fish tanks?
she wondered.

No, not fish tanks, but terrariums: fish
tanks with no water in them, and no fish. Instead each glass tank
contained dirt and rocks and plants, with a small foil tray of
water.

And they had animals in them too.

But not the kind of animals she would
expect.

Toads, salamanders, newts—yes. But—

They were all huge—much bigger than
normal.

And—

Terri gulped.

They all had teeth.

Just like the toad she thought she’d seen
last night, and just like the three-foot-long salamander she and
Patricia had seen only a few minutes ago.

Teeth.

Sharp, white,
pointed
teeth.
Like a dog’s teeth, or a wolf’s.

It was so strange, and so scary…

This can’t possibly
be,
Terri thought, staring through the
glass tanks.

Terri moved over to one
particular tank, and looked intently in. There was a toad inside,
sitting in the foil pan of water, but it was
so big!
It sat there in the tray of
water, spread out and nearly the size of a kitten. Its gold-irised
eyes were almost as large as the salamander’s, and a big white sac
fluttered under its chin. But stranger still were the teeth. This
toad’s teeth were so large that even with its mouth closed, the
teeth stuck out past its lips like sharp, white fangs…

Taped to the front glass of the tank was a
white sticker, which read in neatly typed letters:

COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED

…
and then there was a
date.

The date was yesterday.

Terri remembered the words
on the computer in the other room, especially the word
reagent.
But she didn’t
know what that meant, nor did she know what
counter-reagent
meant.

She turned away, and then noticed something
else.

Right there, in the middle of the floor…

What is that?
she wondered.

A square outline cut into the wood-plank
floor.

A trapdoor,
she realized.

Yes, that’s what it was: a trapdoor. She
would love to know what was under it, but there was a big lock on
it, and it wasn’t any kind of lock she’d ever be able to open with
her library card. It was a large, heavy-duty padlock, the kind of
lock you needed a key to open.

What is
under
there?
she had no choice but to wonder.

But she was definitely determined to find
out, and she wanted to find a lot of things out. How could her
mother and Uncle Chuck explain this? Giant toads and salamanders,
with teeth? Weird bottles of yucky-looking yellow gunk? Locked
trapdoors on the floor?

What was going on here?

But she didn’t let her burning curiosity
stall her any longer. She remembered the time…

She had to get out of here, and fast!

She quickly pulled the door closed, heard
the bolt click shut. She turned, moved quickly toward the outer
boathouse door, and—

Froze in her tracks.

A figure was standing in the doorway, its
arms crossed, and its foot impatiently tapping the floor.

Uncle Chuck.

««—»»

Uncle Chuck didn’t say
anything, not
one word
for the whole time they were walking back up the trail to the
house. Terri felt an inch tall; if there was one thing she knew
about grownups, it was this: you could always tell how mad they
were by how silent they were. The less they said, the more mad they
were.

And Uncle Chuck wasn’t
saying
anything.

Terri knew she was in big, big trouble
now.

They went in the house through the back
sliding door. Then Uncle Chuck slammed the door shut.

“
Sit down, young lady,” he
said in the coldest voice she’d ever heard.

Terri sat at the kitchen table, her hands in
her lap.

“
I thought we had an
understanding, Terri,” Uncle Chuck said, still standing up with his
arms crossed, still tapping his foot.

“
I’m sorry,” was all Terri
could think to say.

“
You’re
sorry?
” he said in a sarcastic tone.
“What good is being sorry going to do if you fall into the lake and
drown?”

“
I can swim,” Terri feebly
answered. “I won the 7th Grade swim meet last year, remember? I got
a First Place ribbon.”

“
Don’t get smart, young
lady—”

Oh, yes, Terri knew she was in big trouble,
all right. Because that was one other thing she knew all too well
about grownups. When they called you “young lady” instead of your
name—that meant BIG trouble.

“—
that’s beside the point,
and you know it,” Uncle Chuck continued in his cold, cold voice. “I
don’t care how well you can swim. I can’t believe you disobeyed us.
That’s just not like you. Now—” Uncle Chuck’s foot kept tapping
away on the floor—
tap-tap-tap,
tap-tap-tap
—“I want to know how long you
were down there.”

“
Just a little while,”
Terri said.

“
Just a little while,”
Uncle Chuck repeated.

tap-tap-tap,
went his foot.

“
And haven’t we told you
many times to
never
go down to the lake unless you were with an adult? Haven’t we
told you many times to
never
go into the boathouse? Hmmm?”

“
Yes,” Terri
peeped.

“
Then, why, young lady? Why
did you do it?”

Terri couldn’t look up at her Uncle Chuck.
“I…,” she began, but then she paused. What could she say? It
occurred to her that she could lie to Uncle Chuck, she could maybe
make up a story, she could say that she heard someone down there or
something like that, and that she found the boathouse door already
open. Maybe he would think there were burglars or something. But
Terri didn’t like to lie, she knew it was something only crummy
people did, and she also knew that when you lied, eventually the
lie would catch up with you, and then you’d be in even more
trouble.

So instead, she did what she felt was the
right thing.

She told the truth.

“
I was curious,” she told
Uncle Chuck. “You and Mom spend so much time down there, I was
curious. And—”

Again, she hesitated. If she told him about
the toad she’d seen last night, or the giant salamander, he might
not believe her. He’d think she was telling lies, and that would
just get her in more trouble than she was already in.

“
I was just curious,” she
repeated.

Uncle Chuck looked down at her. His face
looked made of stone, and his foot never stopped—

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap

“
I have a mind to call your
mother at work right now and tell her what you’ve done, and the
only reason I won’t is because it would upset her,” he said. “She’s
very busy at work, and she works very, very hard, and since your
father left, she has to work even harder to pay the bills and to
keep food in the refrigerator and a roof over your head. It’s not
easy for her, you know, and you just make it that much harder for
her when you do things like this. That’s pretty selfish of you,
isn’t it? That’s pretty darn inconsiderate of you.”

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap

“
And,” he continued, “do
you have any idea how disappointed she’d be?”