Monster Lake

I think it’s some kind of giant lizard!”

“Yeah, right, Patricia, just like you thought that old branch was a poisonous snake.”

“I’m serious, Terri!” Patricia insisted. “Go and look! It’s right around the corner!”

Terri skeptically did so, rounding the corner of the boathouse. But the instant she turned, she came to a dead stop.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Patricia was at least partly right. At the very end of the wooden pier-walk sat a shiny, coal black thing with four pudgy feet and a long tail. But it wasn’t a lizard—

“It’s a salamander,” she said distractedly. “I can tell by the yellow dots on its back.”

“It looks like a lizard to me,” Patricia remarked, clinging to Terri’s shoulders, still obviously afraid.

“Lizards are reptiles,” Terri informed her friend. “They can’t go in the water. But salamanders are amphibians.”

“Amphibians?”

“It’s a kind of animal that can live on land or in the water. Like toads and frogs. And that thing has definitely been in the water. You can tell. See how wet its skin is?”

“Well, yeah,” Patricia agreed.

“Besides, I know it’s a salamander because I’ve seen them before, and I’ve read about them in my Golden Nature books.” But this was where Terri’s knowledge of wildlife ended. “There’s only one problem,” she said, now even a little scared herself.

“What’s that?”

“Salamanders never get to be more than eight or ten inches long.” And after she said that, all she could do was stare at the puffy, wet, black thing on the pier.

“Eight to ten inches long?” Patricia questioned, staring in disbelief. “But that thing is—”

“I know,” Terri said, her own eyes wide in what she was seeing.

Because this salamander was no eight or ten inches.

It easily over three feet long.

««—»»

“Don’t go near it!” Patricia warned.

“I’m not,” Terri assured her. “I just want a closer look.” She still couldn’t believe it. She knew for a fact that salamanders didn’t get this big; she’d seen lots of salamanders in the yard, and they all had the same shiny black color with the bright yellow spots on their backs.

But I’ve never seen one this big, she reminded herself. Nothing even close to this…

The giant salamander lay there lazily. Terri could see its cheeks puffing in and out as it breathed, and its two big eyes on top of its head looked like giant black marbles that never blinked. Its tail alone must’ve been over a foot long itself.

I can’t believe this, Terri thought.

“Terri,” Patricia continued to nervously warn. “You better not get too close. That thing could bite you.”

“No, it can’t,” Terri responded, and leaned over to take another step. “Salamanders don’t have teeth.”

But then her own thoughts stalled right after she’d said that, and she couldn’t help but remember last night. Just when she’d finally convinced herself that what she’d seen was really just a dream—now, again, she wasn’t so sure. Toads don’t have teeth either, she reminded herself. But that toad I saw last night definitely had teeth…

And, then, when Terri took one more step toward the giant salamander—

The salamander lurched forward, its big lazy head raised, and it opened its thin-lipped mouth and hissed at her.

Terri’s heart thudded in her chest, and she jumped back.

Then she and Patricia screamed at the same time, because the salamander’s mouth stretched open wider, and Terri could easily see that it too had teeth.

Two rows of gleaming, white teeth that looked sharp as sewing needles.

Then the creature hissed again, and began to move toward Terri and Patricia, its jaw nearly snapping like a mad dog’s.

««—»»

“Run!” Terri yelled.

And they ran, all right, as fast as they’d ever run before in their lives, down the wooden pier-walk and back up the gravel path through the woods. The last thing they’d seen as they’d sprinted away in their sneakers was the salamander crawling after them on its fat feet, its tooth-filled mouth snapping open and shut as though it meant to bite them.

When Terri and Patricia got halfway back up the trail, they stopped to catch their breath. The uphill run left them winded and sweating, and they were still scared.

“It’s impossible,” Terri whispered. “I can’t believe what we just saw. A salamander with teeth.”

“Well you better believe it,” Patricia said, huffing and puffing. “And don’t try to tell me it was our eyes playing tricks on us. That was real.”

Terri nodded. This was definitely different from last night. Last night, she’d been sleeping restlessly, and she’d been groggy, and she supposed it was possible that her eyes had been playing tricks on her. But today? Just now? Terri knew this wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t be.

Something’s really wrong around here, she thought.

But what could she do?

If she told her mother and Uncle Chuck about the giant salamander, she’d get in lots of trouble for disobeying them. All kinds of trouble.

And then another thought rang in her mind like an alarm.

“Oh, no!” she fretted.

“What?” Patricia asked.

“How much time has gone by since Uncle Chuck took my mother to work?”

Patricia looked at her wristwatch. “About twenty-five minutes,” she said.

Terri’s thoughts exploded in her mind like a string of firecrackers.

Twenty-five minutes!

Patricia grabbed Terri’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

Terri gulped in dread. She looked over at Patricia and said, “I forgot to close the boathouse door. And I left my library card inside.”

“Terri!” Patricia exclaimed. “And your uncle’s going to be home any minute!”

“Yeah, and he’ll probably go straight to the boathouse to work, like he does almost every day.”

Terri had to think fast, and she knew she had to move fast too. “You go home right now,” she instructed Patricia. “If you’re at the house and I’m not with you, Uncle Chuck will know we’ve been up to something. Sneak around the side of the yard and go back to your house. I’ll call you later.”

Patricia looked confused. “But, Terri…what are you going to do?”

“I have to run back down to the boathouse, get my library card, and close the door.”

“Are you crazy!” Patricia nearly shrieked. “You can’t go back down there. That— that thing’s down there, that salamander or whatever it is. It’ll bite you for sure!”

“I’ll just have to be careful,” Terri concluded. “It probably went back into the water by now because most amphibians have to keep their skin wet, and, besides, salamanders are real slow.”

Patricia looked terrified at the idea of Terri going down to the boathouse by herself. “You better be careful, Terri, and I mean real careful.”