Monster Lake (16 page)

They’re out there somewhere…

Terri unscrewed the top from the glass
bottle. She paused a moment, standing in the bright moonlight, the
nightsounds throbbing in her ears. And then—

She leaned over the pier rail and emptied
the bottle into the lake…

««—»»

A week later.

The bright morning sun beamed in through the
kitchen window. “And that night,” Terri’s mother was explaining,
“your Uncle Chuck and I accidentally got some of the reagent on our
hands, too, just like Patricia did when she broke the bottle.”

“
And that’s why we
mutated,” her uncle added. “Because the reagent goes through your
skin.”

“
But all summer long,”
Terri’s father got into the conversation now, “your Mom and Uncle
Chuck were trying to make a counter-reagent, to change me back to
normal. And they did it, only they changed themselves before they
could use it.”

“
And it’s a good thing you
figured it out, Terri,” her mother then added, “because if you
hadn’t, we’d all still be in the lake, and who knows how much we
would’ve changed by now.”

The thought sent a shiver up Terri’s back.
She’d only seen them mutated once, and once was enough. But none of
that mattered now anyway. All that mattered was that everything was
normal again.

When Terri had emptied the bottle of
counter-reagent over the pier, everything in the lake—her parents,
her uncle, and Patricia, as well as all the mutated toads and
salamanders—had absorbed it into their bodies through their skin,
and it had only taken a day or two to change them all back to
normal.

But there were still a few things she didn’t
understand, and that’s when her father explained it all.

“
Your Mom and Uncle Chuck,”
he said, “couldn’t tell you what really happened to me, because you
would’ve been too upset. So that’s why they made up the story about
us being divorced. But your mother and I were never
really
divorced, Terri.
We love each other just as much as we always have.”

“
And just as much as we’ve
always loved you,” her mother added, setting bacon and eggs out on
the table.

This much Terri had figured out. “But why?”
she asked. “I still don’t understand why you wanted to change the
toads and salamanders…into monsters.”

“
We never really wanted to
change them, honey,” her father said. “At the lab where I work, we
were trying to make a reagent that would give toads and salamanders
certain properties of other kinds of animals.”

“
Carnivores, you mean,”
Terri said.

“
Exactly. And that’s why
the toads and salamanders got larger and grew teeth.”

“
But I still don’t
understand
why,
”
Terri insisted.

“
Because amphibians—toads
and salamanders and frogs—never get the same kinds of diseases that
human beings and other mammals get, and my job at work was to find
out why. And that’s the reason I made the reagent, to give the
toads and salamanders certain properties of mammals. And from there
I would study them and see it they remained resistant to disease.
It’s called genetic research, honey. And with this kind of
research, we’ll be able to cure lots of diseases one day, and make
the world better for everyone.”

Now Terri understood. They weren’t making
monsters after all; they were just doing research and something
went wrong.

Terri sat back in her seat at the table,
where they were all together for the first time in months and
months. Her parents had never really been divorced, and her father
had his job back.

Her mother, her father, Uncle Chuck, and
Patricia were all changed back to normal now, and so were all the
animals in the lake.

Terri smiled.

Yes, everything was back to normal now, and
the best part of all was that her life had returned to normal
too.

Edward Lee has had more than 40 books
published in the horror and suspense field, including CITY
INFERNAL, THE GOLEM, and BLACK TRAIN. His movie, HEADER was
released on DVD by Synapse Films, in June, 2009. Recent releases
include the stories, “You Are My Everything” and “The
Cyesologniac,” the Lovecraftian novella “Trolley No. 1852,” and the
hardcore novel HAUNTER OF THE THRESHOLD. Currently, Lee is working
on HEADER 3.

Although primarily known for
his adult horror, this is Edward Lee’s first young reader novel. If
you enjoyed this book please check out his second young reader
novel,
Vampire Lodge,
available in eBook form from Little Devil
Books.

Lee lives Tampa, FL. Visit him online
at:

http://www.edwardleeonline.com