Free Monster Lake by Edward Lee Page B

getting
bigger.”
    “ I know, bigger each day.
And they’re coming up into the yard at night,” her mother said. “I
saw them last night—they were all over the place.”
    The toads, Terri realized. She must
be talking about the toads… And the memory
never left her mind.
    The big, bumpy toads with teeth.
    “ What are we going to do?”
Uncle Chuck said next, and he sounded desperate. He even
sounded…scared.
    “ What are we going to do,”
he continued, “if those things get into the house?”
     
    ««—»»
     
    Just the way he’d said
it—those things —made Terri shiver. It made the tiny hairs on the back of her
neck stand up straight.
    What are we going to do if
those things get
into the house?
    The words chilled her to the bone. But could
that be possible? Could those horrible fanged toads and salamanders
actually get into the house? At first, Terri didn’t think so. But
then she thought back to some other things she’d heard her mother
and Uncle Chuck say.
    They’re getting bigger…
    Meaning the toads and
salamanders, Terri had already figured. But how could they
get bigger? This
question nagged at her, until she started putting things together.
Maybe her mother and Uncle Chuck were working on some kind of
experiment that made toads and salamanders bigger, and grow teeth.
Maybe some kind of new vitamin they’d invented at her mother’s
laboratory—
    And something had gone wrong.
    This seemed to Terri to be
a strong possibility. An
experiment, she wondered.
    And they’d said something else, hadn’t they?
Something that scared her even more.
    Something about the
trapdoor, she recalled. The trapdoor she’d
seen this morning in the backroom of the boathouse.
    With the big padlock on it.
    Why was it locked? What was in it? Why would
her mother and uncle be so concerned about Terri finding the key
and opening the trapdoor up?
    Questions, questions!
    And Terri was still determined to find the
answers, and she knew that some of the answers at least would come
when she found a way to look up those words she’d found in Uncle
Chuck’s black-leather briefcase.
    “ Terri?”
    It was her uncle’s voice, on the other side
of her bedroom door. “I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”
    “ Okay,” Terri
said.
    Her door swooshed open, and
there was Uncle Chuck standing there. He wasn’t tapping his foot,
which was a good sign, and another good sign was that he hadn’t
called her young lady.
    “ What is it, Uncle Chuck?”
Terri asked.
    “ Well, I just wanted to say
that you can come out of your room now; you’ve been punished
enough.”
    Great! She didn’t have to stay in her room
anymore!
    “ But I just want you to
know,” Uncle Chuck went on, “that the reason I punished you is
because we love you very much and we care about you, and we don’t
want you to do things that you shouldn’t. Do you
understand?”
    “ Yes, Uncle Chuck,” Terri
said. But she couldn’t resist asking the next question. She wanted
to see what Uncle Chuck would say. “How come I shouldn’t go to the
boathouse?” she asked him next.
    “ Well, honey, because, like
I’ve said, the boathouse is dangerous. Those old boards on the pier
could break, and you could fall in the water.”
    Terri managed to keep her thoughts to
herself. That wasn’t the real reason, and she knew it. But instead,
she changed the subject. “Are we going to have dinner now?”
    “ Well, no, honey. Your
mother and I are still working on something very important for your
mother’s job, and we have to get to work right now, so we don’t
have time to eat dinner. But I want you to fix yourself something
in the microwave, okay?”
    Terri nodded. “Can I go to Patricia’s?”
    “ Sure, but only after
you’ve had something to eat,” her uncle said. “And make sure you’re
home before dark.” Then he stepped back from the door. “And you can
watch TV later too. I’ll see you later.”
    “’ Bye,” Terri
said.
    She waited a