The boy stopped struggling and rolled over onto his back. Peter pulled away some vines from the kid’s head until he saw two eyes, a nose, the entire face. The mud parted, and the boy’s mouth trembled.
“It got Rory,” the kid sobbed, and burst into tears.
9
They took the kid down to the springs to wash up. At first he was terrified, but Peter and Dill found him an extremely shallow section to bathe in.
“It can’t get you here,” Peter explained. “It’s not deep enough.”
“It’s not just in the water,” the kid moaned, and wiped his nose. “It’s everywhere.”
As the kid finally started to clean himself, Peter and Dill walked off to the side and talked under their breath.
“Do you know who he is?” Peter asked.
“Greg Withersomething. He’s a grade ahead of us. So’s that Rory kid he mentioned.”
“Greg?” Peter said to the kid, who flinched like someone had fired a gun. “Whoa, it’s cool, it’s cool. We just wanted to know if that was your name.”
Greg nodded slowly and turned back to the water.
“What do you think happened to him?” Peter whispered.
“I dunno. Nothin’ good.”
They watched as the mud gradually dissolved from Greg’s body, leaving behind a chubby kid in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. The shirt had been pink at some point, but now was stained a slick, wet brown. His hair seemed to be black, but Greg refused to stick his head underwater, so it remained a goopy mud color, too.
“Let’s get you away from the water,” Peter said once it was clear that Greg was finished. They led him up on dry land where they’d stashed the innertubes and sat him down on a rotting log. Greg refused to look at Dill or Peter. Instead, he spent every second checking his surroundings like a terrified mouse in a nature documentary.
“So…” Peter began. “What, uh…”
“What happened, dude?” Dill demanded.
Peter kicked Dill. Dill went “OwwwWWW,” but settled down when Greg finally spoke.
“I’m hungry,” he whimpered.
Peter looked at Dill. “You got anything in that grocery bag with your mask?”
“Dude, it was supposed to be a snack for us.”
“I think Greg needs it more.”
Dill grumbled and pulled two foil-wrapped granola bars out of the plastic bag. Greg hungrily unwrapped them and stuffed them in his mouth.
“Greg, can you tell us what happened?”
Greg started scanning the woods again. “It got Rory.”
“What got Rory?”
“The monster,” Greg half-whispered, half-sobbed.
Dill’s eyes almost bugged out of his head.
“A monster?” Peter prodded.
“Did it look like a burned-up hobo?” Dill asked nervously.
“Dill,” Peter warned.
“Or a girl with fangs?”
“DILL!”
Greg shook his head ‘no’ and continued to dart his eyes all around.
“Was it an alligator?” Peter asked.
“They don’t have alligators here,” Dill informed him. “That’s in Florida.”
“Maybe they do.”
“Well maybe they have cobras, too.”
Peter rolled his eyes and turned back to Greg. “Was it an alligator?”
“Not unless an alligator learned to walk,” Greg said. He started to rock back and forth, back and forth.
“Uh…alligators can walk on land, Greg,” Peter pointed out.
“Not on two legs, they can’t…and they’re not ten feet tall, uh-uh, not an alligator, not an alligator…” Greg chanted over and over. “Not an alligator, not an alligator…”
“Well, what was it then?”
“Not an alligator, not an alligator, not an alligator…”
“Where did it happen?”
“At the dock,” Greg moaned.
“The monster walked up on the dock?”
Greg shook his head ‘no’ repeatedly. He looked like he was going to cry again.
“Where, then?”
“In the water…it jumped out of the water, pulled him in, and swam away with him…took him down in the water…swam away, swam away…”
Chills ran up and down Peter’s neck. “Uh…then what happened?”
“I waited and waited, cuz I had to jump the hole…I didn’t want to…but then it came back. I saw it and I jumped across the hole and ran up on the land and I thought I was safe –but I wasn’t, it came up after me, it walked up and ran after me, I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t safe anywhere, not anywhere!” Greg wailed, and collapsed into a shivering mess on the ground.
“What do we do?” Dill whispered.
“I don’t know…you think there’s really a monster in the lake?”
“I seen some things in the last month that were a lot weirder than that.”
Peter raised his eyebrows in a You’ve got a point kind of way. “We should get him back to the truck.”
“What if Rory’s still out there?” Dill asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What if whatever it is that’s out there didn’t get him the way Greg said?”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Dude, he’s a couple fries short of a happy meal. If he told me the sky was blue, I’d probably double-check.” Dill looked off into the distance. “I think we should go take a look and make sure Rory doesn’t need help.”
“You just want to see a monster.”
Dill smiled the tiniest bit. “Don’t you?”
“What if it runs after us?”
Dill pointed at Greg shuddering on the ground. “Dude…if he outran it, I think you and I can.”
“Hm.” Peter turned back to Greg. “Greg, are you sure Rory’s not…out there anymore?”
“I told you it got him.”
“Well, what if Rory got away? Shouldn’t we go check?”
“No,” Greg moaned. “No, no, noooo…”
“Why not?”
“It’ll get us…it’ll get us, it’ll get us, it’ll get us!” Greg repeated, his voice getting higher and more frantic every time.
“We’ll be there to protect you, Greg. I promise.”
Greg shook his head ‘no.’
Dill bent over so he was face-to-face with Greg. “Dude, Pete and I are going back to look for Rory. Now, you can come with us if you want, but if you don’t, you can stay here and fight it by yourself when it comes back,” Dill said in his spookiest voice.
Greg’s face contorted in horror.
“…or you can come with us, and we’ll kick its butt if it tries to mess with you,” Dill added cheerfully. “So what’s it gonna be?”
10
Greg shuffled along, whining and sniffling. Peter and Dill followed close behind, wheeling their innertubes hand over hand along the marshy ground.
“Nice,” Peter said sarcastically.
“Thanks.”
“No, I meant that was crappy,” Peter whispered. “He’s scared out of his wits, and you’re frightening him even more?”
“You obviously don’t have older brothers.”
“You know I don’t.”
“Yeah, cuz if you did, you’d know that’s how you get anybody to do anything.”
“That’s not cool.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
Peter grunted. “Yeah.”
“And if we find Rory, I’d say it all turned out okay.”
“Mm.”
Halfway there, they reached two bicycles chained to a tree. Peter inspected the lock.
“Hey, Greg, is this yours?”
Greg started to whimper. “It’s Rory’s chain, it’s Rory’s chain.”
“It’s okay, man, it’s okay,” Peter said soothingly. “Let’s just keep walking.”
“Guess he didn’t know the combination,” Dill said.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a sweet bike. I wonder if I could – ”
>
Peter grabbed Dill by the neck and forced him to keep walking. “Would you come on?”
The farther they marched down the path and the closer they got to the lake, the more agitated Greg became. By the time the water was in view, he was talking to himself in a tiny, desperate voice.
The water was beautiful, a sparkling sheet of sunlight. The dock was a dark shadow on its surface – or, at least, what was left of the dock. A long rectangular patch still remained untouched out in the water, and on the shore, the beginning of the walkway was still attached to the ground. But everything in between was really messed up. Part of it was submerged at an angle. Snapped planks were sticking up everywhere like something had tried to smash it apart.
Dill whistled. “Well, something happened out here.”
They were still a good thirty feet from the dock when Greg started pacing back and forth. He wouldn’t take his eyes off the water, and he kept babbling to himself in high-pitched baby talk that neither Peter nor Dill could understand.
“I don’t think he’s going any farther,” Peter whispered.
“Okay, okay…hey, Greg!”
Greg screeched and jumped a foot in the air.
“Whoa, Nelly, chill out,” Dill said, putting out his arms. “You’re gonna stay up here with Peter, and I’m gonna go check out the dock, okay?”
“You’re what?” Peter asked in shock.
“I’m gonna go check it out.” Dill put his innertube on the ground and stacked Peter’s on top. Together they looked like a pile of two huge, black doughnuts.
“It’s all busted up and dangerous. Plus there’s not even anything to see,” Peter said. “We should go back.”
“Come on, we came all this way, and we’re not even gonna look?!”
Peter huffed. “Dill…”
“Just stay with him,” Dill commanded as he trotted down the slope towards the lake.
“This is a really bad idea!” Peter yelled after him.
Dill stopped about five feet from the dock and stared at the ground. For a second, Peter thought that Dill might have actually listened to him and come to his senses.
“Hey Pete, come down here for a second.”
Peter glanced at Greg, who was watching him with panicked eyes.
“Just for a second, Greg, okay? Just stay here, I’ll be right back.”
Greg started gnawing on the collar of his shirt. Peter mouthed okayyyyy to himself and walked down the bank.
11
Dill was standing on a muddy patch of shore, where an inch-deep impression was still visible in the sand and muck. It was three feet long and shaped like Dill’s blue swim fin, just much, much bigger.
There was only one. The bank above was too dry to make an impression, and any track behind it had been erased by the lake water.
Peter felt the back of his neck prickling with fear.
“That’s not an alligator track,” Dill said.
“How do you know? Have you seen an alligator track before?” Peter argued in an attempt to keep himself calm.
“Well…no…but give me a break, does it look like an alligator track?”
Peter had to admit that it didn’t. “What do you think it is?”
“Looks like freakin’ Big Bird’s foot.”
“Or your scuba fin.”
“Yeah, I was thinking that, too.” Dill scrunched up his nose. “You think Rory and Greg are putting us on?”
Peter hadn’t considered that possibility. He glanced back up at Greg, who had taken refuge behind the pile of innertubes, and any lingering hope he had disappeared.
“No…I don’t know any kid who’s that good at acting crazy.”
“Huh.” Dill turned around and headed for the dock.
“What are you doing?!”
“Goin’ for a peek.”
“You’re crazy! Have you even looked at the dock?”
“Quit being a little girl, dude.”
“Quit being stupid!”
“Whatever.”
Dill walked out on the weathered boards.
Up by the innertubes, Greg let out a mournful whine. Peter searched the water in a panic – then realized it was probably Dill venturing out onto the dock that was putting Greg in an uproar.
Dill jumped the three foot gap of pulverized planks and landed on the end of the walkway, the rectangular part out in the water. He looked all around him, hands on hips, inspecting the lake.
“I don’t see nothin’,” he yelled.
“Get back here, then!” Peter hollered.
Dill waved him off, and instead fished out his snorkel mask from the plastic grocery bag he’d carried with him.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Peter bellowed.
Dill put the mask on his face, kneeled down on the dock, and stuck his head underwater.
Peter grabbed his hair and pulled at it anxiously. Stupid Dill – this was just like him. Taking Peter out into the garden the night he moved in, climbing out on the tree that hung over the ocean cliff…as long as Dill thought there wasn’t any real danger, he’d do just about anything. And then, once he saw exactly what he’d gotten himself into, he’d wet his pants and want to crawl under his bed.
Greg’s whine turned into a squeal.
Dill raised his head up out of the water. “It’s pretty clear down here, but I don’t see nothin’.”
“Then come back in!”
Behind Peter, the squeal rose in pitch. It was really getting annoying.
He turned back towards the innertubes. “Hey, Greg, you’re safe, man – cut it out, alright?”
That’s when the squeal became a scream. Greg pointed out at the water.
Peter whipped around and saw –
Nothing. Just the sun shimmering on the lake…
Wait.
There.
It was easy to miss…a ‘V’ in the water, small but getting bigger. And faster.
And headed right for the end of the dock.
Where Dill had his head in the water again.
12
“DILL!” Peter screamed. “DILL!”
The ‘V’ was even closer to the dock. Twenty feet away now.
“DILLLLLLL!” Peter screamed as he ran for the water’s edge.
There was no way he could make it in time.
Peter was unsure if Dill heard the screaming, or if he saw the thing in the water first. Whatever the reason, Dill pulled his head up out of the lake and scooted back on the gray boards of the dock.
Either way, he escaped by the skin of his teeth.
The surface of the lake exploded, and a monstrous head burst out of the water and clamped its mouth on the wood planks where Dill had been just seconds before.
Greg was right: it wasn’t an alligator. It looked more like a giant salamander, gray and mottled brown, with slimy skin and a head six feet across. Two large, red eyes, big as softballs and smooth as glass, bulged out from the side of its head. Eyelids flicked down over the eyeballs, covering them in gray before snapping back up.
The mouth, while huge, had no teeth. It was like a trout Peter had caught once on a camping trip, with a bony ridge where its gums should be. Not that the lack of teeth made it any less terrifying. The head was as big as a small car, and big enough to swallow Dill whole.
Which Dill seemed to realize pretty quickly. In less than a second, he was on his feet and racing towards the hole in the dock.
Behind him, the monster slid back into the lake. Its huge tail whipped the water into a froth.
“DILL, RUN!” Peter screamed.
Dill launched himself into the air and over the jagged hole in the boards. But as he landed, the dock tilted under his feet. He started to slide sideways toward the water.
The ‘V’ shape circled around the end of the dock and headed for the middle section. Peter’s heart leapt into his throat.
Dill regained his footing and bolted forward, legs pumping triple-time. He was almost to the shore when the dock rose up in the air.
&nb
sp; The monster was ramming it from underneath.
It looked like a whale bursting up out of the ocean. The monster’s entire upper body cleared the surface of the lake with the dock draped over its head. Peter could see muscular arms folded at its sides. They looked like a frog’s legs, complete with webbed fingers – but some prehistoric, nightmare frog, not the little things hopping in the marsh. Those rippling arms were longer than Peter’s whole body.
The creature must have lifted the dock four feet out of the water. A shockwave rippled the boards like a kid snapping a jump rope. Planks splintered like twigs.
That wave of motion caught up with Dill and launched him like a catapult. His legs and arms waved comically as though he were swimming midair, and then he thudded onto the grassy bank.
“DILL!” Peter yelled, but relief flooded his body. Dill was off the dock, out of the water. Safe.
And then Greg’s voice echoed inside his head:
I thought I was safe –but I wasn’t, it walked up and ran after me, I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t safe anywhere, not anywhere
“DILL, RUN!” Peter screamed. “IT CAN COME UP ON LAND!”
As he shouted, it was like his words made the thought come true.
The monster threw the dock off with a toss of its head and lurched clumsily out of the lake. Its belly was speckled and pale. Its legs were shaped like its arms, but bigger and more muscular. The tail came last, weaving and splashing through the water.
The thing was huge, like a dinosaur. Maybe not as tall as a T-Rex – its head was only ten feet off the ground, and it stretched twenty feet from snout to tail. But that didn’t matter. The last T-Rex Peter had seen was in a museum, and that was just bones.
This thing was alive, and it was coming after his best friend.
“DIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL!” Peter screamed again.
Dill was already running up the bank, but in a different direction from Peter, as though to lead it away. Behind the glass of his faceplate, his eyes were as big as his mask.
The monster reached the shore and immediately picked up speed. The muddy lake bottom must have made it harder to walk; once it hit solid ground, it moved faster. Peter noticed its feet were like those of a huge frog – webbing between the toes and triangular in shape, just like the footprint in the mud.
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS) Page 30