by Edward Lee
“Use the library card,” Patricia suggested. “It worked before.”
Terri was thinking just that. But this lock looked different; it looked more sturdy. Again, she slipped her laminated library card into the door’s gap and went to work.
“How come it’s not opening?” Patricia asked impatiently after a minute.
“This lock is harder,” Terri replied in concentrated frustration. “But… I think the bolt is moving…”
“I’m going to look around outside,” Patricia said. “Call out to me when you get the door open.”
“Okay. But be careful.”
Terri continued to work on the lock as her friend left the boathouse to examine the deck and the pier. The bolt of the doorlock continued to move as Terri wedged the library card in further, but it was much more difficult than the outside door. Come on, come on, she thought. Open! Time was growing short, and if she wasn’t careful, she fully realized that she could ruin the card.
Come on, come on…
And just as the bolt was about to open—
“Terriiiiiiiiii!” Patricia screamed from outside.
—Terri flinched in startlement. The library card slipped out of the door.
And the bolt snapped back into place.
But Terri wasn’t worried about that. She ran out to the pier, her thoughts racing along with her heart:
What happened! Why is Patricia screaming?
««—»»
When Terri ran out to the pier, Patricia, shuddering with fear, ran right into her.
“What’s wrong?” Terri demanded.
Patricia looked frantic, her blond hair going every which way. “There’s some thing on the edge of the pier,” she wheezed, nearly out of breath. “It’s black and slimy, and it’s really huge! 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 a
nd 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.”
“I know, I will. I’ll call you later.”
Terri took a deep breath, then, and closed her eyes for a few moments. The image of the salamander, its fat, slimy body, and its needlelike teeth, still stuck in her mind. She’d never forget the way its jaw was snapping at them just before they ran away.
But I’ve got no choice, she told herself. I have to go back there, and I have to do it now.
And with that thought she opened her eyes again and turned. Then she began to jog back down the path.
Back—
A chill shot up her spine.
—back to the boathouse.
««—»»
Terri ran as fast as she could through the woods and down the winding path. Her sneakers scuffed the gravel; tiny tree branches reached out and threatened to brush her face. The path seemed strangely longer now, with more twists and turns. Just when she thought it would go on forever, she arrived at its end, spying the mirrorlike, silverish glare of sunlight off the lake.
The boathouse sat before her.
She stared at it, reluctant…
Afraid.
Hurry up! she screamed at herself then. You don’t have much time!
The wood planks creaked when she stepped onto the pier. She crept slowly along the walkway, keeping her eyes peeled for the hideous giant salamander. A salamander with teeth! she couldn’t help but keep reminding herself. But when she peeked around the corner of the boathouse, she saw that her earlier conclusions were quite right.
The salamander was gone.
It must’ve gone back into the water, she thought. And that was fine with her.
Quickly then, she trotted into the front room of the boathouse, to retrieve her library card. Her intentions were simple. Get the card, close the door behind her, and run back up to the house as fast as she could, before Uncle Chuck could wonder where she was, or worse, before he could come down here.
There it is!
She found the library card right where she knew it would be: on the floor in front of the door marked DO NOT ENTER. She picked it up, began to put it in the back pocket of her shorts. But—
Her curiosity seemed to wrestle with her, it seemed to tick in her head like a loud clock. She’d almost gotten the door open before, hadn’t she? I would have, she realized, if Patricia hadn’t screamed.
So…
She did what was probably the least sensible thing she could imagine. Instead of leaving, as she’d planned—
You really shouldn’t be doing this, Terri, she warned herself.
—she slipped the library card back out of her pocket. She couldn’t help it.
She simply had to know what was in that room!
Don’t mess around! she ordered herself. Sometimes Uncle Chuck stopped at the store after taking her mother to work; with any luck, he’d do the same thing today. Terri rushed to the DO NOT ENTER door, and slid the card back into the gap.
She worked quickly but carefully. Within moments she had the card wedged back between the bolt and the doorframe, and the bolt was moving again!
Come on! Open!
Then—
click!
She got it, and in good time! The door popped open…
Well, she thought. Here goes.
The room was very dark. Terri quickly felt along the wall next to the door, found the light switch, turned it on.
Then she stood and stared.
This room was nothing like the other room. There were no computers, no file cabinets. Along the front wall were big metal shelves, and each shelf contained rows of tall glass bottles which each seemed to be filled with some gross-looking yellow liquid. Gunky, she thought, making a face at a faint creeky smell. And then she noticed that a few of the bottles were full of green, not yellow, gunk. She had no idea what the stuff could be inside these bottles. Then she turned around—
The other three walls were lined with shelves too, but there weren’t any bottles on them. Instead, these shelves were filled with…
Fish tanks? she wondered.
No, not fish tanks, but terrariums: fish tanks with no water in them, and no fish. Instead each glass tank contained dirt and rocks and plants, with a small foil tray of water.
And they had animals in them too.
But not the kind of animals she would expect.
Toads, salamanders, newts—yes. But—
They were all huge—much bigger than normal.
And—
Terri gulped.
They all had teeth.
Just like the toad she thought she’d seen last night, and just like the three-foot-long salamander she and Patricia had seen only a few minutes ago.
Teeth.
Sharp, white, pointed teeth. Like a dog’s teeth, or a wolf’s.
It was so strange, and so scary…
This can’t possibly be, Terri thought, staring through the glass tanks.
Terri moved over to one particular tank, and looked intently in. There was a toad inside, sitting in the foil pan of water, but it was so big! It sat there in the tray of water, spread out and nearly the size of a kitten. Its gold-irised eyes were almost as large as the salamander’s, and a big white sac fluttered under its chin. But stranger still were the teeth. This toad’s teeth were so large that even with its mouth closed, the teeth stuck out past its lips like sharp, white fangs…
Taped to the front glass of the tank was a white sticker, which read in neatly typed letters:
COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED
…and then there was a date.
The date was yesterday.
Terri remembered the words on the computer in the other room, especially the word reagent. But she didn’t know what that meant, nor did she know what counter-reagent meant.
She turned away, and then noticed something else.
Right there, in the middle of the floor…
What is that? she wondered.
A square outline cut into the wood-plank floor.
A trapdoor, she realized.
Yes, that’s what it was: a trapdoor. She would love to know what was under it, but there was a big lock on it, and it wasn’t any kind of lock she’d ever be able to open with her library card. It was a large, heavy-duty padlock, the kind of lock you needed a key to open.
What is under there? she had no choice but to wonder.
But she was definitely determined to find out, and she wanted to find a lot of things out. How could her mother and Uncle Chuck explain this? Giant toads and salamanders, with teeth? Weird bottles of yucky-looking yellow gunk? Locked trapdoors on the floor?
What was going on here?
But she didn’t let her burning curiosity stall her any longer. She remembered the time…
She had to get out of here, and fast!
She quickly pulled the door closed, heard the bolt click shut. She turned, moved quickly toward the outer boathouse door, and—
Froze in her tracks.
A figure was standing in the doorway, its arms crossed, and its foot impatiently tapping the floor.
Uncle Chuck.
««—»»
Uncle Chuck didn’t say anything, not one word for th
e whole time they were walking back up the trail to the house. Terri felt an inch tall; if there was one thing she knew about grownups, it was this: you could always tell how mad they were by how silent they were. The less they said, the more mad they were.
And Uncle Chuck wasn’t saying anything.
Terri knew she was in big, big trouble now.
They went in the house through the back sliding door. Then Uncle Chuck slammed the door shut.
“Sit down, young lady,” he said in the coldest voice she’d ever heard.
Terri sat at the kitchen table, her hands in her lap.
“I thought we had an understanding, Terri,” Uncle Chuck said, still standing up with his arms crossed, still tapping his foot.
“I’m sorry,” was all Terri could think to say.
“You’re sorry?” he said in a sarcastic tone. “What good is being sorry going to do if you fall into the lake and drown?”
“I can swim,” Terri feebly answered. “I won the 7th Grade swim meet last year, remember? I got a First Place ribbon.”
“Don’t get smart, young lady—”
Oh, yes, Terri knew she was in big trouble, all right. Because that was one other thing she knew all too well about grownups. When they called you “young lady” instead of your name—that meant BIG trouble.
“—that’s beside the point, and you know it,” Uncle Chuck continued in his cold, cold voice. “I don’t care how well you can swim. I can’t believe you disobeyed us. That’s just not like you. Now—” Uncle Chuck’s foot kept tapping away on the floor—tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap—“I want to know how long you were down there.”
“Just a little while,” Terri said.
“Just a little while,” Uncle Chuck repeated.
tap-tap-tap, went his foot.
“And haven’t we told you many times to never go down to the lake unless you were with an adult? Haven’t we told you many times to never go into the boathouse? Hmmm?”
“Yes,” Terri peeped.
“Then, why, young lady? Why did you do it?”
