Edward Lee - Monster Lake

At least that’s one good thing, Terri thought to herself. They don’t know I used my library card to get in, and they don’t know I saw the stuff in the backroom…

“But I’m really getting worried,” her uncle continued. “Things are really getting dangerous.”

“I know,” her mother agreed.

“I mean, can you imagine? If she went to the boathouse and actually got into the backroom, and saw the specimen tanks? She’d be terrified. Or, worse, if she got in there and found the key…” Uncle Chuck paused as if troubled. “And opened the trapdoor?”

“Don’t even say it!” her mother said in the most dreadful voice Terri had ever heard.

The kitchen conversation halted for a few moments, as though Terri’s mother and uncle were thinking about things. Then her mother said, “What did you do? When you caught her in the boathouse?”

“I sent her to her room,” Uncle Chuck said. “Didn’t really know what to do.”

“The poor thing. She must be so confused; I never have even a minute to spend with her since the project, and with her father being gone, that can only make it worse for her.”

Terri continued to listen eagerly at the crack in her opened bedroom door.

“But I’m really getting worried now,” her Uncle Chuck said next. “I mean, they’re getting bigger.”

“I know, bigger each day. And they’re coming up into the yard at night,” her mother said. “I saw them last night—they were all over the place.”

The toads, Terri realized. She must be talking about the toads… And the memory never left her mind.

The big, bumpy toads with teeth.

“What are we going to do?” Uncle Chuck said next, and he sounded desperate. He even sounded…scared.

“What are we going to do,” he continued, “if those things get into the house?”

««—»»

Just the way he’d said it—those things —made Terri shiver. It made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight.

What are we going to do if those things get into the house?

The words chilled her to the bone. But could that be possible? Could those horrible fanged toads and salamanders actually get into the house? At first, Terri didn’t think so. But then she thought back to some other things she’d heard her mother and Uncle Chuck say.

They’re getting bigger…

Meaning the toads and salamanders, Terri had already figured. But how could they get bigger? This question nagged at her, until she started putting things together. Maybe her mother and Uncle Chuck were working on some kind of experiment that made toads and salamanders bigger, and grow teeth. Maybe some kind of new vitamin they’d invented at her mother’s laboratory—

And something had gone wrong.

This seemed to Terri to be a strong possibility. An experiment, she wondered.

And they’d said something else, hadn’t they? Something that scared her even more.

Something about the trapdoor, she recalled. The trapdoor she’d seen this morning in the backroom of the boathouse.

With the big padlock on it.

Why was it locked? What was in it? Why would her mother and uncle be so concerned about Terri finding the key and opening the trapdoor up?

Questions, questions!

And Terri was still determined to find the answers, and she knew that some of the answers at least would come when she found a way to look up those words she’d found in Uncle Chuck’s black-leather briefcase.

“Terri?”

It was her uncle’s voice, on the other side of her bedroom door. “I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

“Okay,” Terri said.

Her door swooshed open, and there was Uncle Chuck standing there. He wasn’t tapping his foot, which was a good sign, and another good sign was that he hadn’t called her young lady.

“What is it, Uncle Chuck?” Terri asked.

“Well, I just wanted to say that you can come out of your room now; you’ve been punished enough.”

Great! She didn’t have to stay in her room anymore!

“But I just want you to know,” Uncle Chuck went on, “that the reason I punished you is because we love you very much and we care about you, and we don’t want you to do things that you shouldn’t. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Uncle Chuck,” Terri said. But she couldn’t resist asking the next question. She wanted to see what Uncle Chuck would say. “How come I shouldn’t go to the boathouse?” she asked him next.

“Well, honey, because, like I’ve said, the boathouse is dangerous. Those old boards on the pier could break, and you could fall in the water.”

Terri managed to keep her thoughts to herself. That wasn’t the real reason, and she knew it. But instead, she changed the subject. “Are we going to have dinner now?”

“Well, no, honey. Your mother and I are still working on something very important for your mother’s job, and we have to get to work right now, so we don’t have time to eat dinner. But I want you to fix yourself something in the microwave, okay?”

Terri nodded. “Can I go to Patricia’s?”

“Sure, but only after you’ve had something to eat,” her uncle said. “And make sure you’re home before dark.” Then he stepped back from the door. “And you can watch TV later too. I’ll see you later.”

“’Bye,” Terri said.

She waited a minute in her bedroom, then she went out into the hallway. Uncle Chuck had gone into his own bedroom and was coming out again right now.

With the briefcase.

Terri waited a few moments more. Then she quietly walked out to the kitchen and looked out the big sliding-glass door into the backyard.

There they go, she thought, looking on. Just like every night…

Through the glass door, she could see her mother and Uncle Chuck walking across the back yard, to the narrow gravel path that led to the boathouse.

««—»»

“Wow!” Terri said. “That’s a big bandage.”

Patricia, sitting in a chair, was holding her knee up, to show Terri the large white bandage on it.

“And it doesn’t hurt?” Terri asked.

“Naw,” Patricia said. “It just itches a little. I have to go back to the doctor’s in a week, so he can take the stitches out.”

Terri had quickly fixed herself a spaghetti TV dinner in the microwave, then she’d gone immediately to Patricia’s house. And why shouldn’t she? Her uncle had given her permission.

“So you didn’t get grounded?” Patricia asked.

“Nope. I lucked out. But—” Terri took out the piece of paper from her pocket. “Look what I brought.”

“What is it?” Patricia wanted to know.

Terri explained it all, about the words she’d seen in the boathouse, and how she’d been able to write them down after seeing them again on the notepad she’d found in her uncle’s briefcase.

“Terri!” Patricia exclaimed. “You really took a big chance! If your uncle had caught you in his bedroom right after catching you in the boathouse, you really would’ve been grounded!”

“I know,” Terri admitted. “But I had to find these words. I’m sure they’ll give us a lot of answers to all the weird things that have been going on lately. But the only dictionary I could find was one of those real skinny ones they gave us in first grade—you know, just when you’re learning to read.”

“Oh, yeah,” Patricia said.

“And it didn’t have any of these words in it. Do you have a dictionary, like a big one for adults?”

Patricia rubbed her chin. “Yeah, I think so. I think there’s one in the den. But we’ll have to ask my father’s permission first.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”