Monster Lake (8 page)

The boathouse was the place that held all
the answers.

But…

Wait a minute,
Terri thought, wondering.

Those words she’d seen on the computer
screen, those strange, complicated words. Plus there were the typed
words on the labels that had been taped to the weird glass bottles,
as well as more typed labels on the tanks. Terri had no idea what
the words meant, but maybe she could look them up, couldn’t
she?

I could look them up in
the dictionary!
she thought.

But there was one big problem with that:

She couldn’t remember the words!

She sat down at her desk, got a pad of paper
and a pencil out of the drawer. She tried to remember the words, or
even parts of the words. If she even remembered a part of one, she
could write it down quickly, and then maybe remember the rest of
it.

She stared down at the pad of paper,
reaching far back in her mind, trying to jog her memory.

Jeeze!
she thought in complete frustration.

She just…couldn’t…remember…the words!

Then she put the pencil down. Maybe she’d
remember the words later, if she didn’t try to think about them so
hard. Sometimes memories would just pop up when you least expected
them to. If you tried too hard to remember something, it wouldn’t
work. She’d had this problem a few times before, on school tests.
When she couldn’t remember an answer to a question, she’d sit back
for a moment, close her eyes, clear her mind, and then the answer
would come.

But when she did this now, she came up with
nothing! She’d been in such a hurry when she was in the boathouse,
she didn’t have time to really concentrate, and she hadn’t thought
to write anything down.

What am I going to
do?
she wondered.

It was so frustrating. And she couldn’t ask
Patricia because Patricia was in the hospital, and Terri had no
idea how long she’d have to be there. She didn’t even know what was
wrong with her!

And Patricia probably
wouldn’t remember the words either,
Terri
decided in still more frustration.
She
probably didn’t even see them. And she
couldn’t
have seen the words on the
labels because Patricia was never in the backroom. It was just
me.

How would she ever find the answers?

thunk-thunk-thunk!

Terri nearly jumped an inch off her bed,
startled. Someone was knocking on her bedroom door. Before she
could even get up, Uncle Chuck’s voice announced from the other
side of the door:

“
Terri, Patricia’s on the
phone.”

««—»»

Terri’s excitement raced
through her.
Patricia’s called!
It didn’t mean that Patricia was out of the
hospital but at least it meant that she was all right; otherwise,
she wouldn’t be able to call.

“
Keep it short, young
lady,” Uncle Chuck said when she came out of her bedroom. “Don’t
forget, you’re still being punished.”

“
Okay, Uncle Chuck,” Terri
peeped in reply. She raced to the kitchen, picked up the
phone.

“
Patricia! What happened? I
called earlier and your mother said you had to go to the hospital!
Are you all right?”

“
Yeah, I’m okay,” Patricia
answered over the line. “I got a big cut on my knee, and I had to
get stitches.”

“
Did it hurt?”

“
Well, not really. The
doctor sprayed this cold stuff on the cut and it made my skin numb,
so I didn’t feel anything. It hurt when I fell down,
though.”

“
What happened?” Terri
asked, relieved that her friend was okay.

Patricia’s voice lowered. “That’s what I
wanted to talk to you about. Remember this morning when I left your
house, and you were going to go back to the boathouse to get your
library card?”

“
Yeah,” Terri said. How
could she ever forget that! It was the whole reason she’d gotten
caught by Uncle Chuck.

“
Well,” Patricia went on,
“I was going home, like you said, and I was cutting across our
neighbor’s yard right by a bunch of trees and—”

“
What!” Terri
whined.

“
Something jumped out at me
from the trees. I fell down on the curb and cut my leg, and I was
bleeding pretty bad.”

“
But what was it?” Terri
couldn’t help but ask. “What jumped out at you?”

“
You’ll never believe
this,” Patricia said. “But it was a toad, bigger than any toad I’ve
ever seen in my life! And…it had
fangs!
”

Terri was astonished. “I
never told you, Patricia, but last night I woke up and looked out
my window and I saw the
same exact
thing!
I saw these giant toads hopping
around in the yard, and they had
fangs
! And then, after you left this
morning, I went back down to the boathouse, and I used my library
card to get into that other back room.”

“
Terri!”

“
And in the room were lots
of these glass tanks, and the tanks were full of toads with fangs!
And there were big salamanders too—”

“
With teeth?” Patricia
asked.

“
Yeah, they all had sharp
teeth, just like the salamander we saw on the dock this morning.
What did your parents say when you told them about it?”

Patricia paused on the line. “Well, I didn’t
tell them, I couldn’t. They’d never believe me. They’d think I was
making it up.”

Terri had no problem understanding this. “I
got out all my Golden Nature books today, and looked through them,
and I was right. There aren’t any toads or salamanders that have
teeth. None in the whole world.”

“
But there must be,”
Patricia continued. “We saw them, so we know they’re real. And I’ve
got to find some way to prove it to my parents.”

“
How?”

“
Well, I don’t really know.
But maybe we can think of something.”

Terri wasn’t sure if she thought this was a
good idea. “Patricia,” she said, “the only way to prove it would be
to go back to the boathouse and try to catch one of the toads or
salamanders.”

“
Okay. Why don’t we do
that?”

“
Because it’s dangerous!”
Terri exclaimed. “And, anyway, I can’t go there anymore because…I
got caught.”

“
Ter-
ri! Who caught you?”

“
My Uncle Chuck,” Terri
glumly reported. “When he got back from driving my mother to work,
he came down to the lake and caught me.”

“
Did you get grounded?”
Patricia asked.

“
I don’t know yet. I’ll
find out when my mother gets home from work, and I’m pretty sure
that’s what’s going to happen. But my Uncle Chuck made me stay in
my room all day.”

“
Bummer,” Patricia
said.

“
Yeah, I know.”

“
But what are we going to
do?” Patricia logically asked next. “There are a lot of weird
things going on, you have to admit. And—jeeze—you said you saw more
toads and salamanders with teeth in the backroom of the boathouse.
That can only mean one thing.”

“
What?” Terri
asked.

“
Your mother and your Uncle
Chuck—they’re the ones who are behind it.”

««—»»

Terri knew exactly what
Patricia meant; she’d already thought of that herself. All those
toads and salamanders in the glass tanks proved that her mother and
Uncle Chuck must know what was going on. And Terri had to admit
something else: whatever
was
going on, it was definitely weird…

Terri wanted to talk more, but just then
Uncle Chuck stepped into the kitchen and sternly said, “You’ve
talked long enough, young lady. It’s time for you to hang up and go
back to your room.”

Terri explained to Patricia that she had to
go, and then she hung up the phone. Her eyes averted to the floor,
she walked back to her bedroom.

“
And make sure you stay
there, young lady,” Uncle Chuck called behind her. “I’m going to
pick your mother up from work now, and you better not even
think
about coming out of
your room. Do you hear me?”

“
Yes,” Terri peeped. She
shuffled back to her bedroom, closed the door. A few minutes later,
she heard the car door thunk closed from outside, the engine
started, then the car pulled out of the driveway and drove off down
the road.

Instantly, Terri felt
frustrated and bored.
At least Patricia’s
all right,
she thought. But—

There was just too much to think about, and
worry about.

And be
scared
about…

She had to find the
answers, and she knew the answers had to be in the backroom of the
boathouse.
I could go again now,
she realized. Uncle Chuck was gone, picking her
mother up. But with her luck he’d come right back just to see if
she was still in her room.
I can’t risk
it,
Terri wisely decided. She could get
into too much trouble. The only other thing she could do, she knew,
was look up some of those complicated words she’d seen on the
computer screen, the tanks, and the bottle labels, but—as hard as
she tried—she still couldn’t remember any of them. So she was still
faced with the problem of getting to the backroom of the boathouse,
so she could look at the words again, write them down, and then
look them up in the dictionary. That was the only way.

Or…

Was it?

There was still one other thing she could
try, wasn’t there?

Something that hadn’t occurred to her.

Yes!
she thought.

Maybe the boathouse wasn’t
the
only
place
where she could read those words again.

Uncle Chuck, she knew, had been working down
there all afternoon. And when he’d come back up to the house, what
had he been carrying with him?

The briefcase!
Terri realized.

Maybe those words were in the briefcase
too.

And—

There’s only one way to
find out,
she told herself.

Right now, Uncle Chuck wasn’t in the house;
he was picking Terri’s mother up at work.

She could sneak out of her room right now,
couldn’t she?

And look in the briefcase herself…

««—»»

One thing in Terri’s favor was this: if
Uncle Chuck came back home unexpectedly, she’d be able to hear the
car pull into the driveway. So she’d have time to get back into her
room before he came in. But she knew she couldn’t fool around, she
had to be quick about it, and of course, the first thing she had to
do was find the briefcase. She brought a Bic pen and a piece of
notebook paper with her, stuck them in the pocket of her shorts.
Then, very quietly, she opened her door and left her bedroom.

The house seemed very quiet
right now, maybe because she was doing something she knew she
wasn’t supposed to be doing. As always, the floor of the foyer
went
creeeeak!
when she stepped on it, and that reminded her of how Patricia
had scared her this morning, by hiding in the coat closet. Terri
could only guess that the wooden tiles of the foyer had gotten old,
and that’s why they creaked whenever someone stepped on
them.

The hall to the kitchen was
dark. She tiptoed quickly across the carpet and slipped into the
kitchen. She wished she’d thought of this before; she could’ve been
looking for the briefcase earlier, while she was on the phone with
Patricia.
Darn! Why didn’t I think of
that?
she scolded herself. She pranced
around the kitchen, looking everywhere, but—

Uncle Chuck’s briefcase wasn’t anywhere to
be seen.

Where is it!

Terri looked all over the
place: the kitchen table, the big veneered walnut cabinet her
mother kept her bills in, the closet, even the regular cabinets.
She couldn’t find the briefcase
anywhere!

It must not be
here,
she finally realized. And that could
only mean:

It must be somewhere else, like maybe in the
dining room, or—

Terri’s thoughts stopped short.

Maybe it’s in his bedroom…

She searched the dining room from top to
bottom. The briefcase wasn’t there.

Now this really
was
risky. Going into
Uncle Chuck’s bedroom without his permission. But Terri had no
choice; she needed to look in that briefcase, and this was the only
way. She walked quickly back down the carpeted hallway, put her
hand on the knob to Uncle Chuck’s bedroom.

She paused, took a deep breath—

Here goes nothing,
she thought.

—
and entered the
room.

Uncle Chuck’s bedroom was neat as a pin. The
bed was made, the fern-green drapes were tied open, showing the
sunny front yard. All of Chuck’s clothes hung neatly in the closet,
like in the men’s section of a department store. But Terri’s eyes
glanced about the room in total dread—

Where’s the briefcase!

She didn’t see it anywhere!
Where else could it be? It wasn’t on the floor anywhere; it wasn’t
in the closet. If she didn’t find it this minute, she knew she’d
have to give up because Uncle Chuck would be back soon, with her
mother.
That’s all I need,
Terri thought.
First I
get caught in the boathouse, and now I’m about to get caught in
Uncle Chuck’s bedroom!