The ranger squinted his eyes like What?! and then he recovered. “Okay, smart guy, what’s PSI stand for?”
Dill didn’t miss a beat. “You’ve got to be certified to know that. If you don’t know, then I’m not telling you, cuz then I’d have to kill you. Punk.”
“You little – ”
“We’ve only got ten dollars,” Peter interrupted as he held out the bills.
The college kid grabbed the money and handed them each a huge, black rubber donut. “Next!” he yelled.
“Why’d you do that?!” Dill whispered angrily to Peter. “I almost had him!”
Peter pointed at the side of the shed where a hand-painted sign listed prices. “The scuba equipment costs a hundred bucks.”
Dill began scooting his innertube down the gravel path, rolling it hand over hand. “I could have argued him down.”
“What about the life preservers?” Peter asked.
“Shhhh!” Dill pointed back to Peter’s mom, who was still wrapped up in talking to Eric the ranger. “If we don’t have to look like geeks, then let’s not look like geeks.”
“What if we fall out and drown?”
“Dude, it’s like two feet of water. You fall off, you’ll probably hit your butt.”
Peter looked back at the huge pile of life preservers. They looked cold, wet, and totally uninviting. He didn’t really want to wear one…
“Okay,” he said, and followed Dill.
“Hey!” College Ranger called out. “Hey, you two kids! You forgot your life preservers!”
“Peter!” Mom shouted. “Dill!”
“Peetah! Diii-uwl!” Beth screeched.
Dill stopped and hung his head in frustration. He turned back to look at Peter.
“Your family has a way of sucking the fun right out of everything, you know that?” he grumbled as he and Peter headed back to get their orange vests.
6
The first thing Peter noticed was the crystal clear water. Every little detail of the sandy river bottom and the reeds that grew on the banks was sharp as a photograph. The water was a little cold, but on a hot day like today it felt refreshing.
Peter and Dill sat in the center of their innertubes, which took a bit of effort because of their bulky orange vests, and pushed off from the bank into the middle of the stream. Immediately the current caught them and gently moved the tubes down the waterway.
“This is awesome,” Peter said. He flipped over on his belly so he could look straight down. There were all sorts of multicolored pebbles and green grasses underwater.
Dill reached into his plastic bag and pulled out a snorkeling mask. “Wait’ll you try this puppy.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“My sister Shayna’s closet. She went on a beach trip with a friend two summers ago.” Dill handed over the mask. “Try it out.”
Peter put the strap over his head and dipped the faceplate down into the water. It leaked some, and the mouthpiece for the breathing tube smelled like a musty garden hose, but he could see the river bottom even clearer. Dill was right, this was really cool.
Dill rummaged in his bag some more and brought out a deformed, rolled-up swim fin…but just one. First he took off his right tennis shoe and placed it in the grocery bag. Then he pried the fin this way and that, bent it into a semblance of normal, and put it on his bare foot.
“What happened to the other one?” Peter asked.
“My brother Woody lost it in the lake last year. I almost didn’t bring this one, but, you know, I figured one’s better than nothing, right?”
Judging from the way the fin curled around like a letter ‘C,’ Peter wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t say anything to Dill.
They floated lazily down the stream, trading the mask back and forth to gaze at the bottom of the riverbed. It wasn’t too long before Dill punched him in the arm.
“Ow!” Peter yelped. “What’d you do that for?”
“Otter, dude!” Dill pointed excitedly. “Otter!”
Sure enough, there it was: a sleek little brown head poking up out of the water. With a tiny splash, it flipped onto its back for a few seconds, flicked its tail, and then dove underwater. Peter put the snorkeling mask under the surface and watched it flit away into the bed of reeds on the riverbank.
“Hey, man, gimme the mask!” Dill shouted. “I wanna see!”
They drifted down the spring further, but didn’t spot another otter. There were butterflies, though, and dragonflies that buzzed through the air. Eventually the shouts of other kids got farther and farther away, and Dill and Peter were virtually alone on their stretch of the stream.
Peter relaxed and stared up at the clouds above. His butt was cold in the center of the innertube, but the rest of him was marshmellowy warm.
“Dill, I’ve been thinking,” Peter said.
“Uh-huh,” Dill mumbled through the mask’s breathing tube, his faceplate in the water.
“Why does all this weird stuff happen to us? First the dead hobos in the garden, then Mercy and Agnes – ”
Dill thrashed around in his innertube until he was looking at Peter. “I don’t want to talk about it!” he shouted through the breathing tube, although the mouthpiece messed with his lips and teeth, so it sounded more like a hollow I donh wanna tok abouddit!
“But don’t you ever wonder?”
Dill ripped out the breathing tube. “Dude, I have enough bad dreams as it is about you…”
Dill shuddered, then resumed talking.
“…kissing that chick, without you asking me stupid questions.”
“I only did it to bring her back to life,” Peter protested.
“Banh – unh – dunh!” Dill waved his arms around like I don’t wanna hear this. “I don’t care, I didn’t need to see that.”
“Dill, I saved her life!”
“Whatever! Next time, don’t do it in front of me!”
“I HAD to do it in front of you – she kidnapped you, remember?”
“Yeah, right. I think you enjoyed it.”
“I did not!” Peter yelled, genuinely shocked.
“Did too.”
“Did not!”
“Whatever. I don’t need to see that kind of thing, I gotta put up with it enough in movies as it is.”
Dill dunked his head back down under the water.
Peter noticed a sloping area of the bank that led up to picnic tables. “Hey Dill, is that where we’re supposed to get out?”
Dill suddenly screeched underwater.
“What?” Peter asked, terrified.
“Oddahs!” Dill said through the breathing tube.
“What?”
“Otters!” Dill said after plucking the tube from his mouth. He pointed downstream. “There’s two otters swimming around up there!”
“That’s cool, but shouldn’t we get out?”
Dill looked over at the bank. “Naaah, later. I wanna see the otters!”
“But that’s where we’re supposed to get out, right?”
“Yeah, but we can walk back, it’s not that far.” Dill saw that Peter was unconvinced. “Dude, the farthest it goes is down to the lake…come on, the truck’s not there, it probably just left and took everybody. It’ll be like twenty minutes before it comes to pick us back up.”
“Are you sure?” Peter asked hesitantly.
“Of course! Otters, man!”
Peter sighed. “All right. Fine.”
7
They continued drifting down the spring. Within minutes the otters surfaced and began swimming around each other in a hilarious game of tag. Dill lent Peter the mask, and he could see their tails flapping away, scooting them through the water as they twirled around each other.
Fifteen minutes later the otters finally disappeared, and the boys took a serious look at their surroundings. The trees overhead were so thick they blotted out the sky. The spring had become far more choked with reeds and bushes, and the once-dry banks now looked soggy. Frogs croaked everywhere around them, and insects
chirped from the trees.
“Oh man,” Peter groaned. “Dill, where are we?”
“Down near the lake. Why do you worry so much? You got the Dillster here, I know this place like the back of my head.”
“That’s ‘the back of your hand.’ You can’t see the back of your head.”
“I don’t care if I can’t see it, I know it anyhow.”
Dill used his hands and the blue flipper to guide himself over to the riverbank and run his innertube aground.
“Come on, let’s just get up on the bank and EWWWWW.”
He had tried to get off the innertube and walk up on the muddy shore, but immediately sunk up to his knees in mud.
Peter laughed. “Is the back of your head that gross, too?”
“Shut up.”
Dill pulled the gooey blue fin out of the mud with a SLUUUURRRRP. He tried to step up the bank, only to fall face down in the gunk.
“CRAP!”
Peter laughed so hard he almost fell out of his tube. “Are you okay?”
Dill pushed himself up. It looked like somebody had smeared chocolate pudding all over his face.
“This is messed up,” he muttered. Once back in the spring, Dill plopped under the surface and washed away the mud from his face and hands.
“This sucks,” he gasped when he came up for air.
“Here, I think it might be more solid over here.” Peter guided his tube to a different spot full of reeds and bushes. He was able to mat down the plants under his sneakers and keep himself from sinking into the mud as he pulled his tube ashore.
After switching out the swim fin for a tennis shoe, Dill followed suit. Soon they were both on relatively solid footing.
Peter looked around him. There were pools of water and mud everywhere, and only the barest hint of dry ground.
“Well, Mr. ‘I know this place like the back of my head,’ you wanna lead, or should I?”
“Oh, no, Mr. ‘I think I’m so much smarter than you but really I just got lucky,’ you go on.”
Dill invited Peter to take the lead with a sweep of his arm. So Peter led the way.
“Have you really been back this far?” he asked, taking special care to walk wherever plants and weeds were growing.
“Once. I went with my brothers…they, uh, they kind of left me out here. ”
Peter frowned back at Dill.
“That’s how I got so good!” Dill protested. “I had to find my way out!”
“Are there snakes back here?” Peter asked, a little worried.
“Oh yeah. You can see the snake holes.”
Peter looked where Dill was pointing. In some of the drier patches of earth, black holes about an inch or two across dotted the ground.
“Those could be gopher holes,” Peter said nervously.
“You think gophers live out here? Unh-unh.”
“Well…what kind of snakes are there?”
“All kinds – copperheads and water moccasins and rattlers and cobras – ”
“There are not cobras!”
“Yeah there are.”
“Nunh-unh, they’re only in, like, India.”
“Maybe some moved here. Or hitched a ride with a trucker.”
“Hitched a ride with a trucker?! Truckers can’t drive from India, it’s on the other side of the world!”
“Not it’s not, DUH. It’s a state, dummy. It’s near…Florida or something.”
“Not Indiana – India! Like by China and Russia, ten thousand miles away?!”
“Oh.” Dill sulked for a second, but then his face brightened. “Zoos have cobras. Maybe some escaped.”
“They can’t escape, they’re in glass cages.”
“Monkeys escape all the time.”
“That’s only in movies! And even if monkeys got out, they’re way smarter, so they probably figured out how to get out. Cobras can’t do that.”
“You’re saying a monkey could kick a cobra’s butt?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know – ”
“Nuh-unh, it CAN’T,” Dill interrupted. “Wanna know why, Mr. ‘I know where all the stupid countries are’?”
“Why.”
“Cuz a snake ain’t got no butt to kick. Ooooh! FACE!”
Dill put his hand in his own face and danced around like he’d just made a game-winning touchdown.
Unfortunately, he stepped in more goo.
“Crap,” he muttered.
Peter was about to say, ‘That’ll teach you,’ but he stopped as he realized something: the marsh had gone silent. All those little croaking frogs were quiet now. Even the insects had stopped making noises.
“Hey Dill…”
“Ughhh, what?” Dill said as he tried to scrape the gunk off his ankles.
“You hear how quiet it is?”
“So?” Dill asked, still occupied with the muck on his feet.
“There were frogs and insects before, and now there’s nothing. It’s too quiet.”
Dill looked up with a frown. “Dude, cut that out, you’re gonna jinx us. That’s what they say in the movies all the time, right before – ”
Dill’s eyes suddenly bugged out, and he dropped to his knees in the mud.
“What – ?”
“Get down!” Dill hissed. “Get down NOW!”
Peter at first thought it was a fake-out, but the fear in Dill’s face convinced him otherwise. He ducked down. “What is it?”
“I saw something…”
8
Peter raised his head above the ferns and moss-covered logs. Only gnarled swamp trees, bushes, and pools of muddy water lay ahead.
“Where?”
“Behind those plants.” Dill pointed to a thicket of marsh vines about thirty feet away. The greenery was so dense that Peter couldn’t see through it, not even a patch of light.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it big?”
“Pretty big.”
“What’d it look like?”
“I dunno. Kinda brown.”
“Do you think it’s a bear?”
Dill considered for a few seconds. “If it was, it was a real little one.”
“Maybe a wild pig?”
Dill looked at Peter. “They got wild pigs in here?”
“Yeah, warthogs. I mean, I don’t know if they’re in this marsh, but – ”
“There it is – look, the bushes moved!”
Sure enough, the bushes trembled the slightest bit.
“What should we do?” Dill asked.
“Why don’t we just leave? We gotta get back and go tubing again.”
“What if we ignore it and it comes and hunts us down?”
“If it’s something that would hunt us down, I really don’t think you wanna go poking around in that bush after it.”
Dill looked around and grabbed a short, heavy tree limb. “Okay, I’ll just toss this in there.”
“No, let’s just – ”
Before Peter could finish the sentence, Dill stood up and lobbed the stick right into the middle of the thicket. The stick was heavy enough that it sunk immediately into the leaves and disappeared.
Peter was about to cuss Dill out when the scream cut him off.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
It was high-pitched and horrible, like an animal in agony. And it was coming right out of the bushes.
Peter’s blood froze in every vein in his body. Dill collapsed to the ground and grabbed Peter’s arm as though they were on a rollercoaster ride.
The scream stopped.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Dill blubbered softly.
“Do you still think that was a good idea?” Peter fumed.
“What’re we gonna do what’re we gonna do what’re we gonna do,” Dill whined.
Peter was at a loss. Whatever was in that bush, Peter definitely didn’t want to turn his back on it. But he sure as heck wasn’t going to go find out what it was, either.
“Hey,” Peter said loudly.
Dill whacked Peter on the arm. “What are you doing?!”
Peter ignored him. “Hey, you in the bush – can you hear me? Is somebody out there?”
The crying stopped, and everything was quiet again. Dill hung onto Peter’s arm.
“Can you make a noise if you hear me? Or come out?”
There was a shuffling deep within the vines. Dill’s grip hardened like steel around Peter’s elbow. Still, nothing emerged from the thicket.
Peter looked down and saw another stick on the ground. It was slightly smaller than the one Dill had thrown, but still plenty big. As he bent to pick it up, Peter debated for a second. Was this a good idea?
Better than leaving that ‘thing’ in there and waiting for it to come get us.
Peter swung his arm and let go. The stick twirled through the air and slammed down into the vines.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” came the scream again.
But this time, something charged out of the bush.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Peter and Dill wailed as the thing rushed towards them.
It was wider than Peter, though not quite as tall. Mostly slick and brown, it was tangled in green vines ripped from the thicket. It had two arms that flailed wildly, and two hind legs pumping back and forth under its stout, stubby body. Even in his terror, Peter realized something looked awfully familiar about the creature.
Wait a minute…
The thing got within five feet of Peter, then veered to the right and ran screaming through the forest. That is, until it tripped over a log and went down SPLAT in a puddle of mud.
Peter ran over.
“What are you doing!” Dill howled. “Let it go, let it go!”
The thing was struggling to right itself.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Peter said soothingly.
“No it’s not!” Dill yelled and flapped his arms. “It’s not okay! Get away, get away from it!”
“Shut up, Dill – it’s a kid!”
Dill stopped moving. “A kid?!”
It was definitely a kid. Covered head to toe in a thick cocoon of slime, with vines draped all over his body, but definitely a kid. Under the mud, Peter could make out shorts, a shirt with a collar, and a goopy scruff of hair.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 29
