By giant toads with fangs…
But Terri knew this was only her imagination, so she forced herself to go on and continue down the path. Eventually, a great glare of sunlight shimmered across her eyes—the lake.
Terri stopped at the front of the pier. The door to the boathouse was closed, but one of the side windows stood open, and she could hear voices.
Her mother, and Uncle Chuck—
“This is terrible, Chuck,” her mother was saying with anxiety in her voice. “How could this have happened?”
“I don’t know,” Terri’s uncle replied. “Somehow the bottle must’ve fallen off the shelf, and when it broke, the reagent seeped into the tank beneath the trapdoor.”
What? Terri thought. At first she didn’t understand. She’d seen the tanks on the shelves of the backroom. And she remembered the trapdoor on the floor, with the padlock on it. But—
Wait a minute, she thought then. That’s what he means. There must be another tank, under the floor, and they keep it locked shut with the trapdoor.
And this possibility scared her even more. Because she knew that the trapdoor was big…
So the tank under the trapdoor must be big too, she concluded. Real big.
Big enough to hold a really big toad or salamander…
But the rest she didn’t understand. What were they talking about?
What? One of the bottles of reagent broke?
Terri’s heart was fluttering. More and more it seemed she was right. But there was only one way to find out for sure.
I’m going in there right now, she determined herself. And I’m going to ask them…
But just as she was about to step forward and approach the boathouse door, she heard—
“Pssssssssst!”
Terri spun around. But she didn’t see anything except the trees. And what was that sound? It sounded like someone whispering.
Then she heard it again:
“Pssssssst! Over here!”
And that’s when Terri noticed the figure standing in the shadows, looking at her.
««—»»
The dark figure waved at her. “Psssssssst! Terri! Over here! It’s me, Patricia!”
Patricia? Terri thought. What would she be doing down here? And why was she standing in the shadows?
Terri walked quickly up the path, to see her friend, but then Patricia held her hand up. “Stop! Don’t come any closer!”
“Oh, yeah,” Terri recalled. “I called your house this morning and your Mom said you had the flu. I guess you don’t want me to get too close. Shouldn’t you be home in bed?”
“It’s not the flu,” Patricia said. “I snuck out of the house.”
“Why?”
“Never mind that. I have to talk to you. It’s real important.”
“Okay, but—” This was aggravating. “At least step out of the shadows.”
“No,” Patricia said. “Just listen. My parents are looking for me, and I haven’t got much time. I have to tell you what happened last night.”
Terri was instantly confused. “Last night? You mean when I came over to use your dictionary?”
“No, after that. It was real late, like way past midnight.” The shadow paused. “I—I snuck out of the house and I came down here.”
“You came here? To the boathouse? At night?”
“Yeah. I brought my Dad’s digital camera. I thought if I took some pictures of the toads and salamanders, then I could prove to them that something’s really messed up down here. But—but I never got the chance.”
“Patricia!” Terri exclaimed. “Are you crazy? You know how dangerous it is down here at night!”
Patricia’s shadow nodded. “I did something really bad. I used my library card, like you did, and got into the boathouse.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Patricia countered. “And I also got into the backroom where all those tanks and bottles are. And then—” Patricia hesitated again. “I accidentally dropped one of the bottles on the floor, and it broke, and all that gross gunk spilled all over the place.”
Then it dawned on Terri. That’s what her mother and Uncle Chuck were talking about just a moment ago.
“And this stuff, this reagent,” Patricia gloomily went on, “some of it dripped down through that big trapdoor on the floor.”
“There’s another tank under there, isn’t there?” Terri asked, remembering what her uncle and mother had just said. “Bigger than the ones on the shelves?”
“Yes,” Patricia said. “A lot bigger. And that’s what I came to warn you about, what your mother and uncle are really doing. They’re making monsters in there, Terri. They’re turning toads and salamanders into monsters.”
I knew it, Terri slowly thought to herself.
But then Patricia went on, “Because when that stuff dripped down through the trapdoor, the thing underneath the floor broke out.”
“It broke out?”
“That’s right, and then it raced across the room and jumped in the water, and it’s still out there, Terri. In the lake. Right now. And I saw it with my own eyes.”
“What was it?” Terri hotly asked.
Patricia’s voice grew dark. “It was a toad, Terri, but it was huge. It was at least seven-feet tall.”
Terri gulped.
“It wasn’t a toad anymore, Terri,” Patricia said. “It was a monster.”
««—»»
The words chilled Terri to the very core of her soul. Yes, she was right about what her mother and uncle were doing, but only now did she know how right. They were using genetic science to turn toads and salamanders into monsters. But not just that—
Giant monsters.
Patricia said that the toad that broke out of the trapdoor was over seven-feet-tall!
“Patricia, we’ve got to tell someone about this,” Terri suggested. “We should call the police!”
“They’d never believe us,” Patricia answered. “What, two twelve-year-olds telling them there are giant toad-monsters in the lake? They’d think we were crazy.”
Yeah, Terri thought. But we’re not crazy! It’s all true!
“I’m going now,” Patricia said.
“Back home?”
“No, I can never go home, not like this.”
“What do you mean?” Terri asked.
“Never mind. Just get out of here.”
And then Patricia turned and ran away.
“Patricia! No!” Terri called out. “Come back!”
But Patricia kept on running up the path, so Terri had no choice but to follow her. The path wound back up the wooded hill, and soon Terri was gaining on her friend.
“No! Stay away!” Patricia was shrieking over her shoulder. “You can’t ever see me like this!”
“Like what?” Terri shouted ahead of her, still running. “What do you mean?”
“That reagent stuff! When the bottle broke, I tried to clean it up with paper towels, and…”
“And what!” Terri yelled, huffing and puffing up the hill.
She was closing in on Patricia fast, which didn’t make much sense because they generally could run at the same speed. But it was then that Terri noticed something strange about the way Patricia was running.
She wasn’t really running as much as she was, well, sort of…hopping.