by B. A. Frade
I blinked. “The Scaremaster changed the words. Why—”
“There’s more,” Jenna interrupted.
You were distracted. I took advantage. And lucky you, so did my special friend. Ready or not… here it comes!
“Here what comes?” Josh asked fearfully.
Sploosh-blorp.
A strange noise caught my ear. I tilted my head. “Did you guys hear that?”
Liv, Jenna, and Josh all listened. Jenna shook her head. “I don’t hear—”
Sploosh-blorp.
Liv sat up straighter. “Wait, I heard it that time. I think it came from the lake.”
Sploosh-blorp.
“Something is splashing in the water,” I said, recalling how the rocks I’d launched earlier that day had sounded.
Sploosh-blorp.
“Probably just a frog or a turtle,” Jenna said. “What else could it be?” She sounded as if she hoped rather than believed she was right.
I wanted to agree with her. I mean, I really, really wanted to. But I had a feeling—not a good feeling—that she was wrong. Frogs, turtles, rocks—their splooshes and blorps would come at random intervals. The sounds we were hearing now were steady and deliberate, slow and methodical. Like something was repeatedly hitting the water.
Sploosh-blorp.
Something… big.
Sploosh-blorp.
“Ra-owf!”
This time, the sound was followed by a sharp bark.
“Hang on.” I straightened. “Where’s Snort?”
We all looked around the campfire and then at one another. Snort was nowhere in sight.
More barks rang out, louder this time and more urgent. They were coming from the direction of the lake.
“That’s her! She could be in trouble! Come on!” Heart thudding, I snatched the flashlight from Josh, scrambled to my feet, and charged into the night.
“Aidan, wait for us!” Liv cried.
I ignored her. Waiting for them would just slow me down. Snort needed me now.
The slumbering beast sleeps no more. Amid mist and muck, it slogs toward shore.
The lines slid into my brain. I pushed them away, but they came back like the worst kind of musical earworm. Sleeps no more. Slogs toward shore.
Snort was on the shore.
I picked up the pace. Shapes loomed around me in the dark. I jumped over a half-rotted tree trunk lying on the ground. Dodged around a thicket of sharp-thorned brambles. Ran through wildflowers whose petals had closed up tight as if to hide from the gloomy night. Finally, I came to the narrow footpath that led to the lake.
I could hear Liv, Josh, and Jenna hurrying to catch up to me and cursing as they ran into the obstacles I’d avoided. But I didn’t slow down until, midway down the path, a thick mist crept around me. Then I screeched to a stop.
The others caught up to me then.
“Where is she? Do you see her?” Liv asked, panting hard.
“I can’t see anything,” I replied, panning the flashlight around. Rather than shedding light, the beam seemed to fade into the fog, as if being absorbed. “The fog is too thick.”
“It’s like looking through pea soup,” Josh murmured. “Only not as green.”
I hushed him. “Shhh! Listen!”
Sploosh-blorp. Sploosh-blorp.
The noises were closer now. Snort’s barks turned to low, threatening growls.
Without waiting to see if the others would follow, I blundered on through the mist in the direction the growls had come from. The flashlight was all but useless in helping me see, and I knew I’d gone off the path when tall weeds lashed at my legs. I veered back to where I thought the path should be. A stick stabbed the sole of my bare foot. Pain shot up my leg. I ignored it and half limped, half ran toward the growls. When the tall grass thinned and gave way to sandier soil, I knew I’d found the path again.
Yes! I thought. Then—“Ow!” I stumbled over something and fell. The flashlight flew out of my grasp and spun through the air, the beam slashing crazy lines through the mist. I heard a splash, and the light vanished, plunging me into darkness. “Oh, shoot.”
“Aidan? You okay?” Jenna called from somewhere in the fog behind me.
“Yeah. I just, um, dropped the flashlight. Hang on.”
Kneeling on the sandy ground, I walked my fingers forward, trying to get my bearings. I realized I was a lot closer to the shoreline than I thought when my fingers touched water almost immediately. My heart skipped a beat. If I hadn’t tripped, I would have run straight into the lake.
I stood up and backed away, arms out. The darkness pressed in around me. My elbow hit something squishy.
“Oof! Watch it, Aidan!”
The squishy thing was Liv. She must have found her way down the path too.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
Suddenly, a bright white rectangle of light flicked on above us.
“I love technology.”
Jenna loomed out of the fog, illuminated by the flashlight feature on her phone. She walked toward Liv and me, her arm held high, with Josh right behind her. The phone light was just strong enough to penetrate the creeping mist. I spotted Snort standing by the water’s edge farther down the shoreline. To my great relief, she looked unharmed.
“Snort!” I jogged toward her.
She swung her head toward me. Jenna’s phone light hit her eyes, turning the warm brown pools to glinting disks of eerie silver-green. The fog swirled around her feet.
“Whatcha doing there, girl?” I asked, moving closer.
She turned away from me and started barking her head off at the lake. I strained my eyes to see what was making her so crazy, but I couldn’t detect anything unusual. And yet, she must have seen or heard something she didn’t trust out there, because when I drew alongside her, she sideswiped me at the knees, shoving me backward as if to prevent me from taking another step.
“Geez, Snort, why are you…”
My voice trailed off. The full moon had just come up over the tree line. Its thin, silvery light shone down on us. At the same time, the mist shifted, parting to reveal more of the lake’s surface. Something in the water moved.
Sploosh-blorp.
Something… big.
Sploosh-blorp.
And it was coming our way.
Chapter Twelve
“Aidan?”
I jumped. Once again, Liv had come up behind me so quietly I hadn’t heard her approach, making me determined to fit her with a bell at some point. Her voice sounded tight and higher-pitched than usual. I swallowed hard to moisten my suddenly dry throat. “Yeah?”
She clutched my arm and stared openmouthed out at the water. “What’s that?”
Deep down, I’d hoped I’d been hallucinating what I’d seen out there. But from the look on her face, I knew I hadn’t.
“Remember earlier,” I whispered, “how the lake was between that old rowboat and us?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not between us anymore.”
“No. No, it is not.”
The swamped rowboat we’d seen that afternoon was drifting toward the shore. Except drifting wasn’t the right word. Though still mostly submerged, it was cutting through the black, weedy water as if pulled by a line.
“Aidan?” Liv quavered. “Tell me there was a big pile of sticks and mud in the boat before.”
“There was a big pile of sticks and mud in the boat before.”
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I swallowed again. “But I’m seeing a mound like that now.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
We stared in silence as the boat knifed toward us. In the dim moonlight, I saw the enormous humped mass of mud was riddled with pits and gouges, the holes slick with murky water. A large rounded knob protruded from the front of the pile, right where a head would be.
Get a grip, Aidan. Piles of mud don’t have heads.
The rowboat drew closer still until, a few yards from shore, it slowed and
then stopped completely. It sat there with its lumpy cargo of filth, unmoving, its bow pointed at us.
A memory of an encounter at an aquarium sparked in my mind. I’d been standing in front of the thick glass wall of a saltwater tank, peering in at a shark. The shark had been swimming lazy laps. Then, suddenly, it stopped and faced me. It floated there, holding me rooted to the spot with the gaze from its dead-looking, dull black eyes. Its mouth and gills slowly gaped and closed as it sucked in water. I knew without a shred of doubt that it was studying me. It didn’t matter that there was no way it could get to me. I was petrified.
That same terror washed over me now. “Liv,” I croaked. “Let’s get—”
Sploosh-blorp.
The mound in the boat moved. Liv gasped. “Did you see that?” she hissed.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. An arm—or a thick, heavy-looking roll of wet, packed mud shaped something like an arm—had reached out from the mound. A wide, web-fingered hand plunged into the lake (sploosh-blorp) and dragged slowly through the water. The wallowing boat surged forward. The arm, now dripping with slimy muck and stringy swamp plants, settled back in the boat.
Liv and I recoiled in horror.
“‘The slumbering beast sleeps no more,’” I whispered.
Liv turned to me with wide eyes. “‘Amid mist and muck,’” she finished, “‘it slogs toward shore.’”
As the words were leaving her mouth, something growled, grabbed her from behind, and gave a violent yank. She shrieked. “Aidan!” Her fingers dug into my arm with a viselike grip.
“Ow! Ow! Let go! It’s okay! It’s just Snort!” I cried. Our retriever had seized Liv’s shirt in her teeth. “She’s trying to get us away from here!”
“Then let’s help her and go!” She pulled herself free, and we turned and fled.
We aimed for the rectangle of light shining from Jenna’s phone, yelling, “We’re out of here! Come on!” to our friends as we charged past them. I’m guessing we looked pretty panicked because they didn’t ask questions. They just crashed through the weeds at our heels.
We were halfway down the path when the moon disappeared behind a cloud. At that same instant, Jenna’s phone light winked out. The darkness closed in around us. We screeched to a halt.
“Seriously, Jenna?” Josh cried. “Turn it back on!”
“I can’t,” she replied frantically. “The battery’s dead!”
Just then, I spotted the glow from our campfire. “This way!”
Maybe I should have led everyone to our house instead. If Jenna’s phone had still been working, that’s probably what I would have done. But at that moment, heading to the light of the fire seemed a whole lot safer—not to mention closer—than plunging into the dark woods that stood between us and our back door.
Besides, I told myself as I guided the others through the pitch black, the Scaremaster wrote that the beast would slog toward shore. There wasn’t anything about it coming on shore.
We reached the campsite in record time and flopped, panting, around the fire pit. Snort bounded up, snuffled each of us in turn, then sat at my feet, looking extremely alert.
“What… the heck… is going on?” Josh asked between gulps of breath.
I fed more logs to the flames—nothing like an enormous bonfire to push back the dark, not to mention things that lurk in the dark—while Liv told them what we’d seen. She ended by reciting the lines of rhyme.
“You think that mound of sticks and stuff in the boat was this slumbering beast and that it’s slogging toward shore, or whatever?” Josh looked at his sister for reassurance. “That’s impossible, right? It’s just a story in a book!”
Jenna pushed her hair back from her face. I noticed her hands were shaking and her eyes, always large and luminous, were enormous. “I—I don’t know,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Remember what it said after the rhyme?”
“‘Ready or not… here it comes,’” Liv recited.
We all turned to look at the book. It lay within easy reach on the ground where Jenna had dropped it. After a long moment, I bent to pick it up.
“Are you sure you should touch that?” Jenna asked.
I hesitated but then grabbed the volume. “It’s our only source of information about that thing,” I said. “Maybe the Scaremaster added clues or something that could help us. Can’t hurt to check, right?”
Silly me.
The Scaremaster had added more lines. I blanched when I saw what they said.
“Let me guess,” Liv said. “It hurt to check.”
“Yeah.” I glanced around at the others. “Should I read it?” They nodded solemnly. I drew in a deep calming breath that did nothing to slow my racing heart.
Shrouded in darkness, drawn to fire, It drags its feet through the muddy mire. It trails the stink of swamp and rot. Its ragged breath comes thick and hot. It lives for terror, longs for fear. And now, dear children, it’s coming here.
“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” Josh interrupted. “Seriously, I’m good. Let’s just go home and pretend this never happened.”
“I’m with Josh,” Jenna put in. “If this beast thing is really out there, then I vote we head home. Now.”
“I third that,” Liv said.
They all turned to look at me. I hesitated, remembering the lines about needing to finish the story or it wouldn’t end. But one glance at their expressions made my decision easy. I closed the book and nodded. “Yeah. I’m in. Let’s pack up and get the heck out of here.”
Chapter Thirteen
We crawled into the tent to gather our belongings. I sneaked a glance at their faces. They all looked scared.
I was scared too. But more than that, I felt responsible. After all, this whole campout had been my idea. Plus, I was the one who found the book, which, I couldn’t help thinking, I wouldn’t have found if I hadn’t accepted the bucket from the weird woman in Meyer’s. I’d led them back to the campsite instead of right home. The way I saw it, everything was my fault. So logically, I had to be the one to find a solution.
At the last second, I shoved Tales from the Scaremaster into my backpack. Why? Finish it, or it will never end. Running for home seemed like the right thing to do, but I had a feeling it wasn’t the end. If I was right, we were better off with the Scaremaster on hand to warn us about what was ahead than being on our own in the dark.
As I zipped up my backpack, I suddenly noticed that everything had gone still, just as it had earlier that day. A chill ran down my spine. “Guys—”
Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK.
A strange noise floated up to us from the direction of the narrow lake path. Josh’s head whipped around. “What was that?”
“Footsteps,” Liv replied in a low voice. She caught my eye. “Wet, muddy footsteps. Remember, Aidan?”
I recognized the sound now too. This past spring during school vacation, we’d had a solid week of heavy downpours. While Liv and I went stir-crazy inside the house, outside, our yard turned into a thick soup of mud mixed with dead leaves, pinecones, acorns, and sticks. By Friday, we were desperate for some outdoor time. So we suited up in slickers and rain boots and braved the elements. The minute we stepped off the front stoop, though, we sank up to our ankles in mud. When we pulled our feet free, there was this cool sucking sound: thhhh-UCK.
I thought it was cool back then, anyway. Now… not so much.
Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK.
“It’s coming this way,” Josh quavered.
At that moment, I realized why the footsteps were coming this way.
I dashed out of the tent.
“Aidan! Stop!”
Liv raced out in time to see me upend the bucket of water onto the fire.
“What did you do that for?” Liv coughed as a choking mixture of steam and smoke billowed around us.
“‘Drawn to fire,’ remember?” I replied, wiping my watering eyes. “No fire, nothing to be drawn to.”
We dove back into the tent.
&n
bsp; “Pretty smart, Aidan,” Jenna whispered.
Snort gave a low whine and started dancing on her front paws with agitation.
“Yeah,” Josh hissed, “except it didn’t work!”
He was right.
Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK. Thhhh-UCK.
The sucking sound penetrated the gloom. I’d only seen part of the thing in the rowboat, so I had no clue how big it really was. But whatever was coming was large and heavy enough to make the ground shudder.
“That’s it,” Josh said. “I’m out of here.”
He unzipped the tent’s back door and bolted into the night.
“Josh!”
With a strangled cry, Jenna took off after her brother, with Liv and Snort following right after. I was a few seconds behind because I had to tug on my good sneakers. I grabbed the second flashlight too and darted into the dark.
And immediately stopped short because I realized I had no clue where the others were. Not staying with them was my first mistake. Turning around was my second.
I’d thought Josh’s zombie getup was horrifying. But hulking on the far side of the fire pit was a monster of truly epic hideousness. A colossus of muck and mud, its form was vaguely humanoid, but that’s where any resemblance to a human ended. Its body was slick with a sludge of decaying leaves. Gray-white fungus studded its legs. Its arms were shot through with thorny brambles. Ropy vines of poison ivy twisted around its lumpy torso. It oozed a thick mucus of slime and smelled like rotten vegetables long forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. The whole mass crawled with a writhing skin of worms, centipedes, spiders, and other things I chose not to identify.
Then there was its face. Its mouth was a yawning gash. As I watched, the beast snapped one of our marshmallow roasting sticks in half and shoved it into that maw. “Mwooooaah. Mluck-mluck-mluck.” As it chewed, stringy, sticky threads stretched and relaxed like vertical spider webbing across the gap.
It snuffled and wheezed through nostrils encrusted with dried slime. Drops of muck dribbled from its tiny green-brown eyes. And lodged in its head was a rock—a smooth gray chunk of grade-A feldspar with a starburst of mica right in the center.
