Edward Lee: Monster Lake

There it is!

She found the library card right where she knew it would be: on the floor in front of the door marked DO NOT ENTER. She picked it up, began to put it in the back pocket of her shorts. But—

Her curiosity seemed to wrestle with her, it seemed to tick in her head like a loud clock. She’d almost gotten the door open before, hadn’t she? I would have, she realized, if Patricia hadn’t screamed.

So…

She did what was probably the least sensible thing she could imagine. Instead of leaving, as she’d planned—

You really shouldn’t be doing this, Terri, she warned herself.

—she slipped the library card back out of her pocket. She couldn’t help it.

She simply had to know what was in that room!

Don’t mess around! she ordered herself. Sometimes Uncle Chuck stopped at the store after taking her mother to work; with any luck, he’d do the same thing today. Terri rushed to the DO NOT ENTER door, and slid the card back into the gap.

She worked quickly but carefully. Within moments she had the card wedged back between the bolt and the doorframe, and the bolt was moving again!

Come on! Open!

Then—

click!

She got it, and in good time! The door popped open…

Well, she thought. Here goes.

The room was very dark. Terri quickly felt along the wall next to the door, found the light switch, turned it on.

Then she stood and stared.

This room was nothing like the other room. There were no computers, no file cabinets. Along the front wall were big metal shelves, and each shelf contained rows of tall glass bottles which each seemed to be filled with some gross-looking yellow liquid. Gunky, she thought, making a face at a faint creeky smell. And then she noticed that a few of the bottles were full of green, not yellow, gunk. She had no idea what the stuff could be inside these bottles. Then she turned around—

The other three walls were lined with shelves too, but there weren’t any bottles on them. Instead, these shelves were filled with…

Fish tanks? she wondered.

No, not fish tanks, but terrariums: fish tanks with no water in them, and no fish. Instead each glass tank contained dirt and rocks and plants, with a small foil tray of water.

And they had animals in them too.

But not the kind of animals she would expect.

Toads, salamanders, newts—yes. But—

They were all huge—much bigger than normal.

And—

Terri gulped.

They all had teeth.

Just like the toad she thought she’d seen last night, and just like the three-foot-long salamander she and Patricia had seen only a few minutes ago.

Teeth.

Sharp, white, pointed teeth. Like a dog’s teeth, or a wolf’s.

It was so strange, and so scary…

This can’t possibly be, Terri thought, staring through the glass tanks.

Terri moved over to one particular tank, and looked intently in. There was a toad inside, sitting in the foil pan of water, but it was so big! It sat there in the tray of water, spread out and nearly the size of a kitten. Its gold-irised eyes were almost as large as the salamander’s, and a big white sac fluttered under its chin. But stranger still were the teeth. This toad’s teeth were so large that even with its mouth closed, the teeth stuck out past its lips like sharp, white fangs…

Taped to the front glass of the tank was a white sticker, which read in neatly typed letters:

COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED

…and then there was a date.

The date was yesterday.

Terri remembered the words on the computer in the other room, especially the word reagent. But she didn’t know what that meant, nor did she know what counter-reagent meant.

She turned away, and then noticed something else.

Right there, in the middle of the floor…

What is that? she wondered.

A square outline cut into the wood-plank floor.

A trapdoor, she realized.

Yes, that’s what it was: a trapdoor. She would love to know what was under it, but there was a big lock on it, and it wasn’t any kind of lock she’d ever be able to open with her library card. It was a large, heavy-duty padlock, the kind of lock you needed a key to open.

What is under there? she had no choice but to wonder.

But she was definitely determined to find out, and she wanted to find a lot of things out. How could her mother and Uncle Chuck explain this? Giant toads and salamanders, with teeth? Weird bottles of yucky-looking yellow gunk? Locked trapdoors on the floor?

What was going on here?

But she didn’t let her burning curiosity stall her any longer. She remembered the time…

She had to get out of here, and fast!

She quickly pulled the door closed, heard the bolt click shut. She turned, moved quickly toward the outer boathouse door, and—

Froze in her tracks.

A figure was standing in the doorway, its arms crossed, and its foot impatiently tapping the floor.

Uncle Chuck.

««—»»

Uncle Chuck didn’t say anything, not one word for the whole time they were walking back up the trail to the house. Terri felt an inch tall; if there was one thing she knew about grownups, it was this: you could always tell how mad they were by how silent they were. The less they said, the more mad they were.

And Uncle Chuck wasn’t saying anything.

Terri knew she was in big, big trouble now.

They went in the house through the back sliding door. Then Uncle Chuck slammed the door shut.

“Sit down, young lady,” he said in the coldest voice she’d ever heard.

Terri sat at the kitchen table, her hands in her lap.

“I thought we had an understanding, Terri,” Uncle Chuck said, still standing up with his arms crossed, still tapping his foot.

“I’m sorry,” was all Terri could think to say.

“You’re sorry? ” he said in a sarcastic tone. “What good is being sorry going to do if you fall into the lake and drown?”

“I can swim,” Terri feebly answered. “I won the 7th Grade swim meet last year, remember? I got a First Place ribbon.”

“Don’t get smart, young lady—”

Oh, yes, Terri knew she was in big trouble, all right. Because that was one other thing she knew all too well about grownups. When they called you “young lady” instead of your name—that meant BIG trouble.

“—that’s beside the point, and you know it,” Uncle Chuck continued in his cold, cold voice. “I don’t care how well you can swim. I can’t believe you disobeyed us. That’s just not like you. Now—” Uncle Chuck’s foot kept tapping away on the floor— tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap —“I want to know how long you were down there.”

“Just a little while,” Terri said.

“Just a little while,” Uncle Chuck repeated.

tap-tap-tap, went his foot.

“And haven’t we told you many times to never go down to the lake unless you were with an adult? Haven’t we told you many times to never go into the boathouse? Hmmm?”

“Yes,” Terri peeped.

“Then, why, young lady? Why did you do it?”

Terri couldn’t look up at her Uncle Chuck. “I…,” she began, but then she paused. What could she say? It occurred to her that she could lie to Uncle Chuck, she could maybe make up a story, she could say that she heard someone down there or something like that, and that she found the boathouse door already open. Maybe he would think there were burglars or something. But Terri didn’t like to lie, she knew it was something only crummy people did, and she also knew that when you lied, eventually the lie would catch up with you, and then you’d be in even more trouble.