Monster Lake (15 page)

In fact, it was so tall that it had to duck
its giant head just to stand upright in the foyer.

Terri’s heart skipped in her chest. Her eyes
widened, and fear like electricity suddenly ran through her
body.

It’s the monster,
she realized, unable to move.
It’s the giant seven-foot toad that Patricia saw break out of
the trapdoor in the boathouse…

And the giant figure opened its mouth,
revealing shiny white teeth even bigger than Uncle Chuck’s or
Patricia’s.

Teeth that were twice as big…

“
Terri, honey,” the figure
croaked. “Help me…”

And then Terri almost fainted again, when
she recognized the voice.

No, she was right. It wasn’t Patricia or her
mother’s voice.

Oh, no—

It was…her
father’s
voice.

««—»»

Terri’s breath seemed to leave her; she
couldn’t say a word. Instead, all she could do was stare back at
the giant toad-creature that she knew now was her father.

“
Oh, Terri,” the thing
croaked. “Things just went so wrong.”

“
Did—did Mom or Uncle Chuck
do this to you?” Terri asked in shivery words.

“
No, no, it was me. I
accidentally spilled some of the reagent on myself several months
ago. Your mother and uncle had to keep me in the big tank under the
trapdoor, while they tried to make a counter-reagent to change me
back. So far they haven’t been able to, and now they’ll
never
be able to because
they’ve changed too, just like I changed…”

Terri stared some more, shivered some more.
It was a thing, a monster, but still, she realized…

It’s my father—

“
But—but, Dad,” she asked.
“What can I do? There must be something I can do to help
you.”

Her father shook his large toad-like head.
“Nothing,” he said in that same low, croaky voice. “There’s
nothing. But you have to promise me something, honey. You have to
promise me that you’ll leave. There’s money in your mother’s
desk—take it and get a bus and go to your grandfather’s house as
soon as you can. Get as far away from here as you possibly
can…”

Terri, as shaken as she was, didn’t
understand. “But why, Dad? Tell me why!”

“
Because,” her father
croaked and paused. “Because we might change more. The reagent—we
have no idea how much it will change us. You have to leave while
you still can because we might change completely, and…”

“
And
what?
” Terri asked.

“
We might try to…hurt
you.”

Terri couldn’t believe this, but—

“
We wouldn’t want to,
honey,” her father croaked on, “but soon the reagent could take
over our minds, and we wouldn’t know what we were doing. So you
have to protect yourself. You have to get away from here. So
promise me. Promise me you’ll leave as fast as you can.”

Tears flowed from Terri’s eyes. She didn’t
know what to say.

“
I have to go,” her father
said next. “I have to get back to the lake, in the water, or else
I’ll die. Promise me!”

“
I can’t!” Terri
shrieked.

But then her father was stepping forward. He
moved past her, toward the kitchen, and as he did so, he very
gently pushed her aside.

“
I love you, honey,” he
said, and then ran awkwardly away toward the kitchen.

“
Dad!” Terri screamed.
“Don’t go! I’ll call the hospital! Maybe doctors could help! I can
call the lab where you used to work—”

But Terri didn’t hear a word from him after
that. He’d slipped out the back sliding door, across the back yard,
and was moving toward the path which would take him to the
lake.

««—»»

Teary-eyed, Terri watched out the kitchen
window as the thing that was her father disappeared down the
path.

I can’t!
she told herself.
I can’t
do it! I can’t leave them!

No, there was no way she could go away, not
after knowing all that had happened. But she couldn’t think
straight; millions of questions filled her mind. Like: What about
the divorce? If her father and mother had gotten divorced, why was
he still here?

And another question, even more
important:

What should I do?

She stood a moment more at the kitchen
window, let her heart slow down. She had to sort her thoughts out
and decide what she was going to do.

And then it dawned on her:

No, I can’t leave. I have to go down to the
lake. There must be something I can do…

She had no idea what that
might be, but she knew she
had
to do something—

But—
Oh, no,
she thought.

When she looked more closely out the window,
she realized that getting down to the lake might not be so easy.
Because the back yard was full of large mutated toads, as big as
footballs now, and they were all hopping around with their mouths
open, showing long white sharp teeth.

How could Terri get down the path to the
boathouse without getting bitten?

Carnivores,
she thought, remembering the word. The reagent had
changed all the toads and salamanders to carnivores, and carnivores
ate meat…

Meat,
she thought.

She rushed to the refrigerator, swung it
open. There, sitting on the top shelf was a large package of ground
hamburger meat. She plucked it up, her heart racing again, and tore
the package open as she ran out the sliding door into the back
yard.

As expected, the giant toads began to move
toward her, but as she jogged across the back yard, she threw a
small clump of the ground hamburger whenever she saw one
approaching. And—

It’s working!
she thought. The ground meat was the perfect bait
to keep them away. The toads went for the meat instead of her! And
this allowed Terri to safely get to the path behind the house,
without getting bitten.

The high, bright moon lit her way. She
scurried down the path. Gravel crunched under her feet; branches
swiped at her face like feisty hands, but she ran on, as fast as
she could. The nightsounds throbbed in her ears, louder and louder
the closer she got to the lake. Her sneakers skidded to a halt on
the dock. An explosion of butterflies seemed to swell in her
stomach when she looked over the pier rail; along the lake’s narrow
shore, dozens more toads and salamanders hopped about or were
slithering out of the dark water, all huge and showing their fangs.
But they were far enough away that they didn’t present any danger
to Terri. To her left sat the boathouse. The lights were on and the
door was open.

They’re in there,
she thought with a shiver.
Dad, Mom, Uncle Chuck, but they’re all different now.
They’re…changed…

But then:

“
Terri! Terri!”

She’d been wrong. The voice didn’t come from
the boathouse; it came from the lake. Terri glanced nervously over
the rail and squinted out.

And the butterflies in her stomach
doubled.

There, in the center of the lake, she could
see them: Her father, her mother, her Uncle Chuck, and even
Patricia. She could only see their heads above the water, but she
knew it was them. Their giant, shiny-black eyes looked sadly back
at her, and when they spoke, Terri could tell that the mutation—the
change—had gotten worse. Their voices were more croaky, barely
human at all now…

“
Terri!” her mother
croaked.

“
The boathouse!” her uncle
croaked.

“
What?” Terri shouted back.
She didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“
You might be able to help
us,” her father croaked out.

“
How?” Terri pleaded, her
hands gripping the pier rail till her knuckles turned white. “Tell
me how!”

But the mutation was changing him so fast
that his words were deteriorating even as he spoke. She couldn’t
understand him!

“
Siiiiiiiiixbeeeeee,” came
her mother’s croaking voice in a long, low groan.

What?
she wondered. What did that mean? But when she called out
again, their heads had lowered into the water so that only their
big black eyes showed—like toads—and they were swimming
away.

By now, Terri felt dizzy from so much
confusion. She wanted to just sit down and cry. They had said there
was something she could do to help them but they’d never been able
to say what it was!

I’ll have to figure it out
myself,
she realized.

And there was only one place to do that. The
boathouse.

She quickly turned away from the moonlit
lake, rushed into the boathouse, and all at once her heart felt
like it was going to explode.

Lying right in the middle of the boathouse
floor was a slimy black salamander, its jaws stretched wide open,
its long fangs showing.

It was as big as an alligator…

««—»»

And when the salamander began to slither
toward her, Terri shrieked at the top of her lungs. It was the
biggest salamander she’d seen so far, and it had the biggest teeth.
Terri knew she could run away, but then what would she do?

I know,
she thought.

She didn’t have much of the ground beef
left, but maybe it would be enough. She broke off little pieces of
the meat and made a trail leading from the front room of the
boathouse to the edge of the pier. She waited, staring wide-eyed.
It had worked before but this salamander was so big, maybe it
wouldn’t be interested in such small pieces of meat.

It probably wants bigger
meat,
Terri fretted.
Like me!

But eventually the giant salamander began to
move, slithering up to each piece of ground meat, eating it, and
then moving on to the next piece, until it was out of the boathouse
and nearing the edge of the pier.

Now!
Terri thought.

Just as the salamander was about to eat the
last clump of hamburger, Terri grabbed a broom, and—

SPLASH!

—
pushed the salamander over
the edge into the water.

She dropped the broom, ran
back into the boathouse, her feet thudding against the wood-plank
floor.
Now what do I do?
she asked herself. If there was something in here
that could help her parents, her uncle, and Patricia, where would
it be?

The backroom,
she realized at once.

The door was open. The instant she went in,
she could see the broken trapdoor and the stains on the floor from
where the bottle of reagent had broken. But now she felt lost. How
could she figure out what to do to help?

And what was that her mother had said?

Siiiixbeee,
she remembered.
Or
something like that.

But what
was
that? What did
it
mean?

The rest of the backroom was just how she
remembered it. One wall full of glass bottles, the other three
walls full of glass tanks containing toads and salamanders. She
scanned her eyes across the rows of tanks, and then—

Wait a minute,
she thought.

Something was different, wasn’t it? Yes…

She walked up to the first tank she’d looked
at the other morning. She easily remembered then that the toad
inside had been changed; it was abnormally large, and had sharp,
white fangs. But now…

Terri peered in through the glass,
astonished.

It’s…normal now,
she saw.

Yes, the toad inside was normal size, and it
didn’t have teeth any more, and when Terri looked around some more,
she noticed that lots of the toads and salamanders that had been
large and fanged just two days ago had all turned back to normal
size.

She stood there excitedly, thinking. She
thought back to what Mr. Seymour had said, about reagents and
counter-reagents.

A counter-reagent was like an antidote. It
was something that reversed the changes made by a reagent. Which
meant…

Mom and Uncle
Chuck,
she realized.
They must have been able to make a counter-reagent that
works, but they got changed themselves before they could use
it…

Then she looked at the tanks again, the ones
with the normal-sized toads and salamanders. White labels, which
she remembered from the other morning, were stuck to the top of
each tank, and they all said the same thing:

COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED: 6b.

Siiiixbeee!
Terri thought. The word her mother had
said.

6b was the name of the counter-reagent that
worked!

She rushed to the other wall with all the
metal shelves of bottles. Each bottle, too, had a label but they
all said different things. 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, and on and
on.

Terri’s fingers traced along the rows of
bottles until—

Here it is!

6b,
read the label on one of the bottles.

Terri stood on her tiptoes, took the bottle
down off the shelf. Then she went out onto the pier.

Her eyes scanned all around the moonlit
lake, but she didn’t see any evidence of her parents, her uncle, or
Patricia. But there was one thing she knew: