Monster Lake (14 page)

“
Oh, yeah,” Terri recalled.
“I called your house this morning and your Mom said you had the
flu. I guess you don’t want me to get too close. Shouldn’t you be
home in bed?”

“
It’s not the flu,”
Patricia said. “I snuck out of the house.”

“
Why?”

“
Never mind that. I have to
talk to you. It’s real important.”

“
Okay, but—” This was
aggravating. “At least step out of the shadows.”

“
No,” Patricia said. “Just
listen. My parents are looking for me, and I haven’t got much time.
I have to tell you what happened last night.”

Terri was instantly confused. “Last night?
You mean when I came over to use your dictionary?”

“
No, after that. It was
real late, like way past midnight.” The shadow paused. “I—I snuck
out of the house and I came down here.”

“
You came
here?
To the boathouse?
At
night?
”

“
Yeah. I brought my Dad’s
digital camera. I thought if I took some pictures of the toads and
salamanders, then I could prove to them that something’s really
messed up down here. But—but I never got the chance.”

“
Patricia!” Terri
exclaimed. “Are you crazy? You know how dangerous it is down here
at night!”

Patricia’s shadow nodded. “I did something
really bad. I used my library card, like you did, and got into the
boathouse.”

“
No!”

“
Yes,” Patricia countered.
“And I also got into the backroom where all those tanks and bottles
are. And then—” Patricia hesitated again. “I accidentally dropped
one of the bottles on the floor, and it broke, and all that gross
gunk spilled all over the place.”

Then it dawned on Terri. That’s what her
mother and Uncle Chuck were talking about just a moment ago.

“
And this stuff, this
reagent,” Patricia gloomily went on, “some of it dripped down
through that big trapdoor on the floor.”

“
There’s another tank under
there, isn’t there?” Terri asked, remembering what her uncle and
mother had just said. “Bigger than the ones on the
shelves?”

“
Yes,” Patricia said. “A
lot bigger. And that’s what I came to warn you about, what your
mother and uncle are really doing. They’re making monsters in
there, Terri. They’re turning toads and salamanders into
monsters.
”

I knew it,
Terri slowly thought to herself.

But then Patricia went on, “Because when
that stuff dripped down through the trapdoor, the thing underneath
the floor broke out.”

“
It broke out?”

“
That’s right, and then it
raced across the room and jumped in the water, and it’s still out
there, Terri. In the lake. Right now. And I saw it with my own
eyes.”

“
What was it?” Terri hotly
asked.

Patricia’s voice grew dark.
“It was a toad, Terri, but it was
huge.
It was at least seven-feet
tall.”

Terri gulped.

“
It wasn’t a toad anymore,
Terri,” Patricia said. “It was a
monster.
”

««—»»

The words chilled Terri to
the very core of her soul. Yes, she was right about what her mother
and uncle were doing, but only now did she know
how
right. They were using genetic
science to turn toads and salamanders into monsters. But not just
that—

Giant
monsters.

Patricia said that the toad
that broke out of the trapdoor was over
seven-feet-tall!

“
Patricia, we’ve got to
tell someone about this,” Terri suggested. “We should call the
police!”

“
They’d never believe us,”
Patricia answered. “What, two twelve-year-olds telling them there
are giant toad-monsters in the lake? They’d think we were
crazy.”

Yeah,
Terri thought.
But we’re
not
crazy! It’s all
true!

“
I’m going now,” Patricia
said.

“
Back home?”

“
No, I can never go home,
not like this.”

“
What do you mean?” Terri
asked.

“
Never mind. Just get out
of here.”

And then Patricia turned and ran away.

“
Patricia! No!” Terri
called out. “Come back!”

But Patricia kept on running up the path, so
Terri had no choice but to follow her. The path wound back up the
wooded hill, and soon Terri was gaining on her friend.

“
No! Stay away!” Patricia
was shrieking over her shoulder. “You can’t ever see me like
this!”

“
Like what?” Terri shouted
ahead of her, still running. “What do you
mean?
”

“
That reagent stuff! When
the bottle broke, I tried to clean it up with paper towels,
and…”

“
And
what!
” Terri yelled, huffing and
puffing up the hill.

She was closing in on Patricia fast, which
didn’t make much sense because they generally could run at the same
speed. But it was then that Terri noticed something strange about
the way Patricia was running.

She wasn’t really running
as much as she was, well, sort of…
hopping.

And then Patricia finally answered. “And
when I was cleaning it up, some of the stuff got on my hands! And
it changed me, Terri!”

Finally, Terri caught up. “Stop!” she
shouted. “You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong! How did it change
you?” And then Terri grabbed Patricia from behind and spun her
around—

—
and shrieked.

Patricia faced her now; she was no longer
hidden by shadows. And she was no longer Patricia any more either,
not really.

“
That stuff,” she said,
sobbing, “turned me into
this.
”

Patricia’s head had grown
to almost twice its normal size. Her skin was all spotted and brown
and covered by bumps, and her eyes…were
huge.
They were as big as baseballs,
only they were shiny-black, with bumpy, spotted eyelids.

Terri shuddered, staring.

Then Patricia opened her long, wide mouth,
showing teeth the size of nails…

Terri screamed one more time, high and hard
till her throat ached, and then she felt very dizzy, and then—

She fainted right there in the path.

««—»»

And Terri woke up…

The room was velvety-dark. Her eyes opened
very slowly, blinking. It took a few moments to realize where she
was:

In her bed.

And when her eyes adjusted
to the room’s murky darkness, she looked up and saw a figure
standing beside her. At first, Terri thought of Patricia, the way
she’d been deliberately standing in the shadows down by the lake,
and then the rest of the memory jolted her like a bolt of
lightning.
Patricia said she got some of
that reagent gunk on her hands,
Terri
slowly but surely remembered.
And it
changed her…

It changed her into something that was
part-human, part-toad…

But this figure standing before her now
couldn’t possibly be Patricia. The figure was much taller, and
then, when the figure spoke, Terri knew at once that it was Uncle
Chuck.

“
Are you all right, Terri?”
her uncle asked.

“
Yeah,” she said. “I think
so. I guess I—”

“
You fainted, honey. We
heard you scream, so we ran up the trail and found you lying there.
Then we brought you back up to the house, to your room. You’ve been
sleeping for hours.”

Beside her, on the nightstand, her clock was
ticking. But she couldn’t see the dial. “What time is it, Uncle
Chuck?” she asked groggily, and then rubbed her eyes.

“
It’s almost
midnight.”

Midnight!
Terri thought.
I’ve been
sleeping that long?

And then Uncle Chuck asked, “What happened,
honey?”

It was then that Terri came fully awake, and
she remembered everything. All kinds of different feelings in her
heart seemed to crash together, and she leaned up in bed and
shouted, “What happened? You know what happened, Uncle Chuck! I
found out everything, everything that you and Mom have been doing
down at the boathouse!”

Uncle Chuck’s shadow stepped back. A long
pause hung in the air, and then, in a lower voice, he asked, “What
do you mean?”

But Terri spat right back, “You’re using
genetics! Mr. Seymour at the library told me all about it! And
Patricia and I have seen them!”

“
Them?” Uncle Chuck
asked.

“
The toads and salamanders
that you and Mom used that reagent stuff on. It makes them bigger!
It makes them grow teeth! And I also know that you’ve made a
giant
toad that you’ve
been keeping under that trapdoor in the boathouse! And last night,
it broke out. You’re using special chemicals to change the genes of
toads and salamanders—you’re
mutating
them!—and turning these poor
animals into monsters!”

Uncle Chuck took another step back in the
darkness. “You’ve got it all wrong, honey—well, part of it. It’s
true, we did create a special reagent, but not to make
monsters.”

“
I don’t believe you!”
Terri shouted back at him. “I just told you, I’ve
seen
them!”

“
You’ve got it all wrong,”
Uncle Chuck repeated.

But then Terri reached up and turned on the
lamp on her nightstand—

She screamed as loud as she had when she’d
seen Patricia.

Uncle Chuck’s head had turned huge, and his
eyes were as big and black as Patricia’s had been when Terri saw
her on the path. Tan and brown bumps covered his skin—

And when he opened his long, wide mouth to
speak, Terri could see the jagged teeth.

“
Several weeks ago, we
accidentally spilled some of the reagent into the lake,” Uncle
Chuck said. “And all the animals there, mostly toads and
salamanders…changed. But it was an accident, Terri! We didn’t do it
on purpose! I promise you that! It was an
accident!
”

But by now, Terri couldn’t believe it.
They’d been hiding things for all this time. Lying. Covering
up.

“
And the same thing
happened to you that happened to Patricia!” Terri yelled, knowing
she was right. “Look at what’s happened to you! You’re changing
too!”

Uncle Chuck, now standing in the bright
lamplight, turned and looked at his reflection in Terri’s mirror
hanging on the closet. His giant toad eyes widened, and then he
screamed himself, and ran out of the room.

Terri jumped out of bed and followed him
through the house, but Uncle Chuck dashed out the open sliding
glass door, ran across the back yard, and disappeared into the
opening of the trail.

Going back to the
boathouse,
Terri wisely concluded.
And my mother’s probably down there right now,
too—making more monsters out of the innocent animals in the lake.
And she’s probably changed—mutated—just like Uncle Chuck and
Patricia.

She decided not to follow
him. Why do that? She was on her own now, and she knew it. The only
thing she could think to do was call the police and tell them
everything.
They’ll have to believe
me,
she thought.
When they see what Mom and Uncle Chuck have been doing down
there, and when they see what they’ve changed into, they’ll have no
choice but to believe me!

She went to the kitchen phone, picked it up,
was about to dial 911, which her father had taught her to do if
there was ever an emergency when she needed the police or an
ambulance. But just before she could dial, she heard:

creak

Terri stood still as a
statue. She
knew
that sound…

It was the sound the wood floor made when
someone had stepped into the foyer.

Someone’s there,
she realized.
Someone’s
in the foyer right now, and it can’t be Uncle Chuck, because I just
saw him run down the path back to the boathouse.

It had to be Patricia or
Terri’s mother. There was no one else it
could
be.

Terri boldly walked toward the darkened
hall, toward the foyer. “Patricia?” she called out. “Is that
you?”

But there was no answer.

“
Mom?” she called out. “I
know what happened, so you can come out.”

Again—no answer.

Terri walked the rest of the way down the
hall. Then she turned and faced the foyer.

It came as no surprise. A tall figure stood
there in the darkness, perfectly still.

“
Mom?” Terri asked again.
“Patricia? I know it’s one of you. So come out and we can call the
police and they’ll take care of things.”

But the figure didn’t answer her—at least
not yet. It stood there looking at her from the other side of the
foyer.

“
Come out of there!” Terri
exclaimed. “You’re scaring me!”

And then the figure moved a little, taking
half a step forward, and it was then that Terri noticed how tall it
was—much taller than Patricia or her mother—