Monster Lake

and with teeth the size of kitchen knives! And when she thought about it just then, she began to shiver again. But then she calmed herself, and thought: Don’t be a baby, Terri. Toads never get that big!

Uncle Chuck was right: everybody had bad dreams sometimes, and dreams could never hurt you because they weren’t real. They were just thoughts and fears inside your head, and they always went away. Dreams were nothing to worry about.

But then, she knew, there were some other things she had to worry about. Like the way Mom and Uncle Chuck looked at each other when I told them I dreamed about a huge toad with teeth. Plus, the strange words and the boathouse and the glass tanks, the locked trapdoor, and the weird bottles full of that creepy, ugly-looking gunk.

But she tried not to think about any of that now. She got up her courage, turned off her light, and then lay back in bed to go to sleep.

But…she couldn’t…

Nightsounds flowed in through her open window, a great, loud throbbing sound from all the crickets and peepers and tree frogs that lived in the woods behind the house. The moonlight flowed in too, and cast a large square of eerie faint-white light on the floor. Terri irritably tossed and turned in the covers. The more she tried to go back to sleep, the more awake she felt.

Minutes ticked by but they seemed like hours. Eventually, though, Terri began to nod off and slowly drift back to sleep, until—

Ka-CRACK!

She jerked up in bed. What was that! she wondered in brand-new fear. She’d heard a loud cracking sound coming from the open window. She wanted to get up and look out the window, but something kept her from doing so, and she knew what it was: fear. She didn’t dare look out the window because if she did she was afraid she’d see all those big, toothed toads in the yard like she had the other night. But there was one thing she was certain of: the loud cracking sound she’d heard had come from deep in the woods behind the house…

From the lake, she realized with a chill.

And one other thing she noticed. The room was completely silent now. The steady, throbbing nightsounds had stopped the instant she’d heard the cracking, almost as if all those crickets and peepers had gotten scared from the noise and fell silent.

And then—

Ka-CRACK! she heard again. And:

SPLASH!

Something had fallen into the lake, something, she knew, that was very, very big…

Don’t be stupid, Terri, she kept telling herself. It was nothing to be afraid of. It was probably just a tree branch breaking off and falling in the water.

Yeah, she thought sleepily, her eyes growing heavy. Just a tree branch…falling…in the water…

And a moment later, Terri fell fast asleep.

And because she was asleep now, she never heard the next sound that sailed out of the woods:

A scream…

««—»»

An hour earlier, Terri wasn’t the only one who was having trouble falling asleep. Patricia, too, lay wide awake in her bed, tossing and turning. So many things were on her mind right now, things that bothered her, things that just weren’t right.

The big toad that had jumped out at her this morning, causing her to fall and cut her knee. And that big slimy-black salamander she and Terri had seen on the boathouse pier.

With fangs, she remembered. The toad and the salamander both had fangs…

Patricia wanted to tell her parents but she knew she couldn’t. Her parents would never believe her; they’d think she was making it all up. And Patricia knew there was only one way to prove to her parents that it was true…

I’ll have to go back to the boathouse, she thought. I’ll have to catch one of the toads or salamanders and show it to them. Then they’ll have to believe me.

And she knew she’d have to go alone; Terri would never go back to the boathouse herself—she could get into too much trouble. I’ll have to go by myself, Patricia realized. I’ll have to go alone…

It was a crazy idea, she knew, and a scary one, but she knew that if she was careful, she could do it.

But then she thought about that big black salamander again and remembered how big it was—over three-feet long!—and that toad that had jumped out at her—it was pretty big too, now that she thought about it. Trying to catch something that big would be hard or maybe even impossible. The things would try to bite her if she got too close or tried to pick one up, and, besides, what could she use to catch one with? A bucket? A big plastic garbage bag? she wondered. But, no, she couldn’t see any way to do that without the risk of getting bitten, and she sure didn’t want to get bitten by one of those ugly things!

But—

Wait a minute! she thought next. There was a way she could show her parents without actually catching one, wasn’t there? Downstairs in one of the cabinets in the den, her father had a digital camera, and it had a built in flash so it would work in the dark.

I could take some pictures of the toads and salamanders! she realized. And then show them to my parents. Then they’d have to believe me!

What a great idea!

Patricia, excited now, got out of bed and quickly put on her shorts, T-shirt and sandals. Then she sneaked downstairs. All the lights were out, and she knew her parents had gone to bed hours ago. She tiptoed through the hall to the den, careful not to make any noise, and after only a minute or two, she found her father’s digital camera in one of the cabinets. There it is! she thought.

Then she grabbed the camera and snuck out of the house.

««—»»

It didn’t take her long to get to the woods behind Terri’s house; she’d jogged the whole way. And even though it was the middle of the night, she didn’t have any problem seeing. The moon was full and very bright and it lit up Terri’s backyard quite well. Even when Patricia entered the narrow path between the trees, she could see just fine; the moonlight reached down through the high branches and illuminated the walkway.

Her footsteps crunched over the gravel. The path wound down through the woods until it ended at the boathouse and the creaky-planked pier. Patricia stood still a moment, at the front of the dock, and glanced out. The lake looked perfectly black, with squiggles of white moonlight floating on the surface. Tiny green-glowing dots, thousands of them, blinked on and off in between the trees and over the lake—lightning bugs. And just the sound of the lake itself seemed so intense, the shrill, pulsating chorus of crickets. For a moment there, standing on the wooden dock, Patricia felt as though she were the only person in the world.

The windows of the boathouse were dark.

She felt creepy looking at it, for the boathouse reminded her of all the things that had been happening lately—bizarre things, scary things, things that couldn’t be explained. But that was the reason she’d come down here, wasn’t it? To take some pictures that would prove what was going on.

So I better get on with it, she told herself. The sooner I get some pictures, the sooner I’ll be out of this creepy place and back home where it’s safe.

She looked out over the pier’s rail, to examine the lake shore, and sure enough, she saw lots of toads and