Monster Lake

Because she had the strongest suspicion that those other rooms had something to do with the strange way her mother had been acting over the past few months.

“It sure is pretty down here,” Patricia said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And look at all the flowers between the trees!”

There were indeed many forest flowers all around them, in a variety of tones and colors, plus lots of pretty green ferns and other plants.

“What kind of flowers are these?” Patricia inquired. “Do you know?”

“Not really. I don’t know that much about flowers.”

“Can I pick some of them and take them home?”

“Sure,” Terri said.

Patricia stepped off the path into the woods, scanning for the biggest and prettiest flowers. Then she spotted some bright orange ones, with bright-yellow centers, growing at the base of one of the big, thick-trunked oak trees. She reached toward the flowers to pick them, then flinched, then…

Shrieked at the top of her lungs.

“Patricia!” Terri exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

Patricia stumbled back out of the brush, and grabbed Terri in trembling fear.

“A snake!” she shouted. “There’s a huge snake right there next to the tree!”

««—»»

Terri’s heart swelled in her chest. A snake! She’d been wrong all along. She and Patricia clung to each other, their faces pale with fear.

“It’s right there!” Patricia wailed, pointing toward the brush at the base of the tree. “See it?”

Terri squinted, trying to focus her eyes. She was looking right at where Patricia was pointing. But—

I don’t see any snake, she thought.

“Where?” she asked. “Where’s the snake?”

“Right there!” Patricia insisted, still pointing. “Can’t you see it? That big, fat gray snake right there next to the orange flowers?”

Terri’s mouth hung open when she saw it. She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Patricia! That’s not a snake! That’s a dead tree branch!”

Patricia stared forward; she didn’t seem to believe it. “No, it’s not! It’s a snake, just like your Uncle Chuck said. It’s a snake, and it might bite us!”

Terri’s laughter continued. “Don’t be a moron, Patricia.” Then she stepped into the brush, reaching down.

“Don’t go in there!” Patricia screamed. “It’ll bite you for sure! It’s probably poisonous!”

Terri boldly picked up the scaly branch and held it up. “See?” she said. “Here’s your snake.” Nothing but an old, dead tree branch. She broke it over her knee and cast it back into the woods.

“Jeeze,” Patricia said, relieved now. “I guess I am a moron. I really thought it was a snake.”

“Well, sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you. You’ll think you’ll see something that’s not really there. It turns out to be something else.”

“I guess so. Like when I was little, sometimes I’d think my blouses hanging in my bedroom closet were really people standing there.”

“Yeah, like that.” But then Terri thought about it. Yes, sometimes the eyes did play tricks on you. Is that what happened last night? she questioned herself. She felt sure now that she hadn’t really seen the big toad with teeth. But what of her mother, walking up the trail from the boathouse at 4:30 in the morning?

Maybe I didn’t really see that, either, she considered. Maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.

She hoped so, at least.

“I feel like an idiot,” Patricia said. “I thought that stupid branch was a snake. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Terri promised as they continued down the path. “Everybody’s eyes play tricks on them sometimes. It’s happened to me too.”

“Really? When?”

Last night, Terri thought. But she didn’t want to tell Patricia what she thought she’d seen. Patricia would laugh her head off if Terri told her about the giant toad with teeth trying to eat the rabbit in the yard. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “But it happens to everybody once in a while. It’s no big deal.”

They continued on down the path, their sneakers crunching over the gravel. Little spots of sunlight, shining through the leaves on the trees, seemed to blink at them from above. Along the way they saw lots of birds and mushrooms and many more plants and colorful flowers. Butterflies fluttered around them in the shade, and moths and dragonflies.

And then—

A glare of sunlight shined in their eyes. The lake, Terri realized. Where the trees opened at the end of the path, they could see the water now, and the sun shining brightly on it like a huge mirror.

“Is that it?” Patricia asked excitedly.

“What?” Terri asked, but she already knew the answer to her friend’s question. The brown-shingled building at the very end of the path, propped up over the water on its own pier.

“Is that the boathouse?” Patricia said.

Suddenly, for some reason, a prickling chill ran up Terri’s spine…

“Yeah, that’s it,” she informed. “That’s the boathouse.”

««—»»

“Wow, this is neat!” Patricia exclaimed. They walked up onto the planked pier. If you looked down, you could see the water between the cracks in the planks. And a gentle lapping sound could be heard too: the water at the edge of the lake slapping against the pier posts.

Patricia walked out to the end of the pier, gazing out onto the lake. “This is beautiful. It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

“It’s not that big,” Terri said. She’d seen much bigger lakes. But it was still a good size.

“Is that your boat?” Patricia asked, pointing down.

“Yeah.” The small boat floated lightly, tied by a thick rope to one of the pier posts. “I’ve never even been out on it.”

“It’s even got a motor!” Patricia noticed. “Do you know how to work it?”

“All I know is you pull that cord there on top of the motor,” Terri said. “But there’re buttons you have to adjust too, and I don’t really know how to do it. There’s something on it called a throttle; you have to set it right first. But I don’t even think it works anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, my Dad told me.”

“Yeah,” Patricia scoffed. “And your Uncle Chuck told you there were snakes all over the place. And all we found were branches. Maybe your Dad told you the boat didn’t work because he didn’t want you to use it.”

Patricia, Terri knew, had a point. It just seemed to her that sometimes grownups said things on purpose that weren’t true, to discourage kids.

“I don’t know,” was all Terri said in response.

“Well, why don’t we try it?”

“What? Riding in the boat?” Terri questioned, astonished.

“Yeah, why not?”

“Because I already told you, my Uncle Chuck’ll be back in a half-hour. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’d get in if he caught us in the boat? I’d get grounded if he even knew we’d come down the path.”