Edward Lee - Monster Lake

But then Terri saw what he was doing.

He had a briefcase in his hand, like one of the briefcases she saw him and her mother bring home every day…

So that’s where he’s going, she noticed next.

Uncle Chuck was walking toward the path, then entering the path, then disappearing into it between the trees.

The path that led down to the lake, and to the boathouse.

And that gave Terri an idea…

««—»»

You’re in enough trouble as it is, Terri reminded herself. You must be crazy to take a chance like this.

But she couldn’t help it; this was an opportunity she wouldn’t have otherwise.

Still peering out her bedroom window, she waited a few minutes, to give Uncle Chuck plenty of time to get down to the lake.

Then she left her room.

She had to be quick. Getting caught out of her room would get her in more trouble than she could even think about.

But she had to call Patricia.

She moved quickly yet quietly, back into the kitchen, keeping an eye on the big glass pane of the back sliding door so she could see if Uncle Chuck was coming back up to the house.

No sign of him.

She snatched up the phone and dialed Patricia’s number as quickly as she could—

beep-beep-beep

It was busy.

She hung up and decided to wait a few minutes, keeping her eyes glued to the path entrance in the back yard. She had no idea how long he’d be down there. Sometimes he worked in the boathouse with her mother for hours on end, and sometimes he went down there by himself for hours too. But, then again—

Maybe he’s only going down there for a few minutes, Terri considered. To check some notes or something. Or…

Here was another thought.

Maybe he’s going to the boathouse to check up behind me, to see if I touched anything, or broke anything.

But if that were the case, then why would he be taking the briefcase with him? The fact that he was carrying the briefcase seemed like a pretty good sign that he’d be down there for a while, probably several hours, as usual.

Terri scratched her chin. Another thought occurred to her. Yes, Uncle Chuck definitely caught her in the boathouse, but only in the front room. She had gotten the door to the back room closed before he’d seen her. Which meant:

He doesn’t know that I was even in the back room, she guessed. So that means he doesn’t know that I saw those glass tanks with all the big toads and salamanders in them, or those bottles of gunk, or that trapdoor on the floor with the padlock on it.

And there was one more thing. Uncle Chuck had never asked her how she was able to get into the boathouse in the first place, had he? No, Terri was sure he hadn’t, and that seemed pretty absent-minded of him. Usually, adults always asked about every little detail.

These questions itched at her, along with many others. But her biggest question for the moment was this:

What’s Mom going to say when she finds out I was in the boathouse?

But Terri pushed these questions aside, at least for the time being. She would have to worry about them later. Right now, though, her goal was to call Patricia.

Terri glanced out at the path entrance again, and didn’t see any sign of Uncle Chuck. Then she picked up the phone and redialed Patricia’s number.

It’s ringing! Terri thought.

A woman answered, Patricia’s mother. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Terri said. “May I please speak to Patricia?”

But suddenly Patricia’s mother sounded very upset, like something awful had happened. “Patricia’s not here right now,” she said, her voice shaking. “She—oh, the poor thing!”

“What?” Terri asked. “What happened?”

“Patricia had to go to the hospital—”

««—»»

The hospital!

Terri couldn’t believe it; she felt crushed. Patricia was in the hospital! When Terri asked Patricia’s mother exactly what had happened, her mother said she wasn’t sure. “She got cut very badly,” Patricia’s mother had said over the phone, still very upset. “She has to get stitches.”

And that was all Patricia’s mother had said; she had to hang up quickly because she was expecting her husband to call from the hospital, and she didn’t want to tie up the phone line.

Terri went back to her room and sat glumly on the bed. With all the bad things that had happened lately—now this. Would it ever end? For the last year, it seemed, nothing good had happened. First, her parents’ divorce, her father moving away. Then the strange way her mother had been acting, and all the extra hours she had to work, and Uncle Chuck too. Then the big toad with teeth, and the salamander, the strange glass tanks she’d seen in the boathouse, and all the other weird things that had been going on. And now this—

Terri’s best friend had gotten hurt and was in the hospital to get stitches…

It’s not fair, Terri thought. Sometimes the world just isn’t fair at all…

She stayed in her room the rest of the day, as Uncle Chuck had ordered. All she could do was worry about Patricia. But she’d been right about Uncle Chuck. She sat looking out her bedroom window for the entire afternoon, keeping her gaze trained on the backyard. As expected, hours later, Uncle Chuck had trudged back up to the house, toting his briefcase. He’d spent most of the day working down at the boathouse.

And what bothered Terri most was that her mother and uncle must know about the giant, fanged toads and salamanders because they had so many of them in those glass tanks she’d discovered in that locked back room.

Terri strained her mind to think of a reason for this. The only thing she could guess was that her mother’s zoology laboratory must have discovered some new kind of toad and salamander that were unknown to the world until now, and that’s why they had so many of them in those glass tanks: to study them and do research on them. And some of the toads and salamanders must have gotten out of their tanks somehow and gotten into the lake.

That would explain the toads I saw in the back yard last night, Terri guessed. And the huge salamander Patricia and I saw on the pier this morning…

She only wished she could find out more, but how could she? Once her mother got home from work—and Uncle Chuck told her about how Terri had snuck into the boathouse—she’d probably be grounded. There’s no way I’ll be able to get into the boathouse again, she realized, and if there was one thing she knew, it was this:

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.