Monster Lake

“An office? Why?”

Terri shrugged as they sat down at the kitchen table to eat their TV dinners. “I told you, he and my Mom are zoologists, and I guess they wanted their office to be close to the lake so they could study the animals there.”

“Like the frogs and toads and things?”

“Yeah.”

“And the snakes!”

Terri paused. “Well, I don’t think there really are any snakes in the lake.”

“But your Uncle Chuck said there were.”

“Yeah, but he may have been making that up so you and I wouldn’t be tempted to go down there by ourselves. I mean, I’ve never seen any snakes around here… Anyway, that’s why my Mom and Uncle Chuck were going out back. They do their work in the boathouse.”

Patricia turned her fork idly in her cheese enchiladas. “But isn’t that—you know—kind of weird?”

“What?”

“Turning a boathouse into an office?”

Terri thought about that. Sure, her mother was a zoologist—just like her father had been—and the boathouse was close to the lake. But the work she brought home every night came from the laboratory she worked at just outside of town. What could it have to do with the lake?

Yeah, she finally had to admit to herself. I guess it is kind of weird. And that thought only reminded her more of how weird her mother had been acting over the past few months, and Uncle Chuck too.

“And another thing,” Patricia went on. “Did you see the weird way your mother and your Uncle Chuck looked at each other whenever you mentioned the lake?”

Terri had noticed that too, and she couldn’t deny it. “You’re right,” she agreed. “It was almost like they were…hiding something from us.”

“That’s right,” Patricia agreed. “And it must have something to do with the lake or the boathouse.”

Terri couldn’t imagine what it could be. What could they possibly want to hide? she wondered.

Then Patricia asked, “Have you ever been in the boathouse?”

“Yeah, a few times, back when my father lived here.”

“What was it like?”

“Well, like I told you, my father turned it into an office, or I should say he turned the front room into an office.”

“You mean there are other rooms?”

“A few,” Terri recalled.

“What was in them?”

Terri hesitated. “I don’t really know,” she confessed. “Mom and Dad told me to never go into any of the other rooms.”

Patricia held her hands out. “See, there’s another weird thing. Whatever it is they’re hiding, it must be in those other rooms.”

Terri hadn’t considered that. But she had to admit: Patricia was right. There did seem to be an awful lot of weird things going on lately.

Patricia leaned over the kitchen table, lowered her voice. “Don’t you want to know what it is? What they’re hiding?”

“Well, yes,” Terri agreed.

“Well, then…”

“Well, then what?” But this was a phony question on Terri’s part, because she already had a pretty good idea what Patricia was going to suggest.

“Why don’t we sneak down there?” Patricia said.

“We can’t!” Terri exclaimed. “We’re not allowed. If I took you down there without my Mom’s permission, I’d get into all kinds of trouble!”

Patricia grinned like a cunning cat. “They’ll never know,” she said. “We’ll go in the morning, when your Uncle Chuck is taking your Mom to work.”

Terri thought about it.

We really shouldn’t, she thought.

But—

“Okay,” she said. “That’s just what we’ll do.”

««—»»

The best thing about summer vacation was that she could stay up a little later and watch TV. Terri preferred the Disney Channel and the National Geographic shows about nature and wildlife and animals in other countries, and, of course, The Simpsons. But tonight, she found it hard to pay attention to her favorite shows. Her mind felt like it was somewhere else, and she thought she knew why…

Patricia had been right. Terri’s mother and Uncle Chuck were acting weird. Those strange, foreboding glances they’d exchanged, Uncle Chuck’s lie about snakes, and then the entire business with the boathouse. Terri supposed she’d known something was wrong all along, but she’d never wanted to admit it to herself. It was hard enough that her father and mother were divorced, and that she hadn’t seen her father for so long—plus her fear that she’d never see him again. Sometimes, when things were too hard to cope with, people would overlook the obvious. There were a lot of strange things going on recently; Terri was surprised that it took her this long to realize it.

“Terri?” Uncle Chuck stuck his head in the rec room, where Terri lay on the floor before the TV. He was still wearing the same clothes he wore when he’d brought Terri’s mother home from work, and he gripped one of the big black briefcases.

“Bedtime,” he said.

Generally, Terri would’ve complained a little, but tonight she was unusually tired. She straggled up to her feet, and then noticed with some surprise that it was past eleven o’clock.

“Has Mom already gone to bed?” she inquired.

“Not yet,” Uncle Chuck answered. He looked tired too, droopy. “She’s still working in her office.”

Her office, Terri thought to herself. You mean the boathouse…

And whenever she thought of the boathouse, she remembered the rooms in it that her mother and father had forbidden her to ever enter.

“But she’ll be up soon,” Uncle Chuck continued. “Sweet dreams.”

“Goodnight,” Terri said.

Uncle Chuck, still toting his briefcase, disappeared down the hall. Terri retreated to her own room, and put on her favorite soft-pink nightgown. Then she climbed into bed, lay back in the pillows, and—

—listened.

She almost always kept her bedroom window open during the summer; summer nights in Devonsville were breezy and cool, unlike the summer days. It was nice to listen to the crickets peep at night, a steady, gentle throbbing sound that always lulled her to sleep. But tonight she felt fidgety and restless. And the nightsounds coming in through the window sounded…different.

But how so?

They sounded louder and faster. They sounded, somehow…

Menacing.

But why should she think that?

They’re just crickets and little tree frogs, she realized.

She was being silly, she knew.

Her hand reached up then, paused, and turned off the light.

Darkness jumped into the room, and the nightsounds seemed to grow even louder and more etchy. She’d