Skinny-Dipping at Monster Lake

by Bill Wallace

  It all made sense now. People were always talking about seeing the monster’s eyes, but no one ever saw the monster. The first time I saw them—that night with Zane at our first fishing trip—the eyes were yellow or orange. The night I was alone they were white-hot.

  Headlights.

  Headlights were white. Except when the battery was low. (I remember when Mom left the lights on one night. When I got up to go to school the next day, they were yellow and kind of sickly looking.) The eyes were headlights.

  A work shed that wasn’t a work shed. There were no tools, just batteries and cables to keep them charged. The submarine, as well as the lights, probably worked off batteries.

  The night I sneaked out of the house, the eyes came toward me as I stood on the bank. Shaking and scared, I knew that any moment the monster was going to slosh out of the water and come after me. Only it didn’t. In water that should have been two to three feet deep, it simply vanished.

  The tunnel.

  Then Mrs. Baum screamed at me and almost made me pee my pants.

  It had to be her!

  “KENT!”

  I jumped when Ted roared my name.

  Blinking a few times, I looked around. Except for Dad and Greg, who were busy putting the splint on Pete’s broken arm, the whole group stood staring at me with open mouths.

  Ted waved a hand in front of my face. “You okay, Kent? You were spaced out or something, there for a while. What happened? It was like you just went off and left us—you know, like Jordan does. What . . .”

  Ted flinched. He clamped his lips closed, suddenly realizing Mr. Parks was standing right beside him. Looking up with a sheepish smile, he gave a little shrug.

  “Sorry, Mr. Parks. No offense.”

  Mr. Parks smiled down at him. “None taken. I know how Jordan is.”

  They turned back to me.

  “What were you talking about, Kent?” Ted finished what he was trying to say.

  While I explained the whole thing to them, Dad climbed down the ladder to use the EMS radio in the truck and call for another ambulance.

  I was just finishing up when he came out of the trench. “It’ll be about thirty minutes!” he called to Pete and Greg. “They’re on another call.”

  “We don’t have thirty minutes!”

  It was Jordan’s voice, but he wasn’t standing with the rest of us. Even when he was with us, most times he wasn’t really with us. Guess that’s why no one noticed he was missing. When he called, we all turned toward the voice.

  Water dripped from his bathing suit. Shoulders sagging, he still carried the two big wrenches in his hands as he sloshed toward us from the lake.

  “What do you mean, ‘we don’t have thirty minutes’?” Dad called.

  “When the top of the tree rolled, everyone came running up here to see what happened. I went out and told the guy”—he lifted a wrench—“to try and move the sub.”

  “And?” Dad urged.

  “And the tapping was so light I could barely hear it. You know, really weak. All I got back was three letters. N. O. A.”

  Everyone stood there. Puzzled. Staring at Jordan.

  Suddenly there was a little yelp when Pete struggled to get to his feet. Greg tried to make him sit back on the ground, but Pete shoved him aside with his good arm.

  “Kid’s right,” he said. “N. O. A. No a. No air. That’s what she was trying to say, only she’s too weak to finish it. We don’t have time to wait on the other unit. We’ve got to do something—now!”

  23

  One handed, Pete managed to fight Greg and Dad off. He kept telling them that his arm wasn’t hurting and that he wasn’t going into shock. They finally listened, and we all followed Pete and Jordan down to the water.

  That didn’t help Mrs. Baum much, because all we did once we got there was stand and stare.

  “We could use one of the pickups,” Mr. Bently suggested finally. “Take the cable off the EMS thing. Attach it to a pickup and—”

  “No way,” Greg said, shaking his head. “That’s a two-ton truck with mud-grip tires. It could barely move the tree limb. Pickups don’t have enough weight, and the tires don’t have enough traction. All the thing would do is sit and spin.”

  “How about if we all got hold of the cable and pulled?” Mr. Hamilton said. “Counting the boys, there’s sixteen of us here. That might give us enough weight to haul the thing up.”

  This time Dad shook his head.

  “No way to get a grip on that quarter-inch steel cable.” He sighed. “Besides, I don’t think sixteen of us could move it.”

  “You’ve got a scuba tank with air,” Mr. Shift said. “Now that the tree’s off it, maybe you could open the hatch and—”

  Pete cut him off. “That’s always a last resort. Way the water rushes in, most times you can’t get air to them fast enough. Even a young person—healthy and strong—has a sixty percent chance of drowning. Chances of reviving them with CPR—especially someone as old as Mrs. Baum—well, her chances would be almost zero.”

  Again we fell to silence and stood to stare out at the lake. Time was running out—and quick. We had to do something . . . but there was nothing we could do except wait for the other EMS truck. That would be at least another twenty-five minutes. There was just nothing . . .

  “Horses!”

  The way I blurted out the word startled everyone. Even me. We all jumped.

  “We could use the horses,” I repeated. “We’ve got a bunch of rope lying around in the garage. Their hooves can get traction, even in the mud—you know, where a truck tire can’t. They’re strong, too. Plenty strong enough.”

  “I . . . I don’t . . . know,” Dad hesitated. “We’ve got a bunch of rope up there, but it might not be enough.”

  “There’s rope in Mrs. Baum’s hay barn, up behind the house,” Mr. Aikman said. “Ted and I cleaned the barn out for her last spring. Some of it’s kind of old, but . . .”

  “We’ve got three lariats in Jordan’s horse barn,” Mr. Parks spoke up.

  “The steel guard around the propeller looked strong enough,” Pete said. “We could tie on to that. Should work.” When no one said anything or did anything, Pete waved his good arm at us. “Well, quit standing around talking. Move!”

  Dad nodded. “Boys! Get your horses. Make sure the saddles are cinched up tight. Greg—come with me to carry the rope from my garage. Rowdy, you go to the hay barn.” He looked around for Jordan’s dad. Mr. Parks didn’t wait for instructions. Already past the light generator, all we could see of him were his white boxers, bobbing in the moonlight.

  Even with nothing on but our bathing trunks, and running around in the dark, it still took us only five to ten minutes to get the horses saddled and ride them back to the base of the big cottonwood. Dad and Greg were the last to come back. That’s because the pile of ropes each of them carried was so big they had trouble lugging it around.

  The fire department used lots of rope. Each year they bought new, and the firefighters could purchase the used ropes from the city. Guess Dad had been collecting it for quite a while. “Rope is like duct tape,” he’d say, when Mom complained about the collection in the barn. “Never can have too much.”

  Dad went to get his scuba gear on while the men began straightening the ropes. We helped them by unrolling the different lengths and checking for knots. If the ropes were too short to reach, Mr. Aikman or Greg tied two together. Once that was done, they inspected them again, threw out the ropes that seemed old or weak, and replaced them with better ones.

  When all was said and done, we had eight strands of rope—each about thirty to forty feet long—stretched out in eight lines. The lines gathered near the base of the tree and spread out like a fan, going up the hill.

  Leading our horses, we joined the men near the fallen tree. That’s when I noticed Pete struggling with one arm to get his tank on. Dad stopped him. “You’re not going down.”

  Pete kind of crinkled his nose. “Why not? Take you forev
er to tie those ropes on. Least I can do is hold the light for you.”

  “You’ve got a broken arm.”

  “It’s in a plastic blow-up splint. Water’s not gonna bother it.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not diving alone. That’s the first thing they ever taught us—you never dive alone.”

  “It’s not that deep,” Dad argued. “There are no currents. Now that the tree’s out of the way, there are no obstructions or anything to get caught on. It’s a safe dive. Easy.”

  One of Pete’s eyebrows arched so high, it almost disappeared into his hairline. “And just how do you plan to tie ropes and hold an underwater light?”

  “Well, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “Can’t be done, Simon. You’ve got to have help down there.”

  “How about Greg?” one of the men suggested.

  Greg kind of ducked his head.

  Dad smiled. “I was with that man about three years ago. Saw him run into a blazing house to find a kid. Bravest man I ever met. But when it comes to water . . .” Dad’s voice trailed off and he shook his head.

  Mr. Shift puffed his chest out and stepped forward. “I did an underwater dive last year when we took our vacation in Tahiti. Maybe I could . . .”

  “Pool dive?” Dad asked.

  Mr. Shift frowned. “Well, we spent most of the time in the resort swimming pool. But then we went out in the ocean and swam down to look at the coral formations and the fish.”

  Dad sighed and shook his head. “It’s a brave offer, Dennis, but I need to concentrate on what I’m doing. Not worry about a beginning diver.”

  Suddenly Dad’s head gave a little jerk. Then . . .

  He looked straight at me. “Kent. Looks like it’s just you and me, son. Let’s go!”

  24

  I guess I should have been scared. After all, I’d never been on a night dive in my life.

  I guess I should have been nervous. Sure, I’d gone to the classes with Dad. But those were just training—this was real!

  For some reason I didn’t feel scared or nervous, either one. I just handed Duke’s reins to Mr. Aikman and marched down to help Pete take some of the lead out of his weight belt.

  Maybe it was the way Dad’s shoulders went back and the way that big smile lit up his face when he said: “It’s just you and me, son.”

  I don’t know what it was, but I wasn’t the least bit worried. Well . . . I guess I was . . . but not about myself. The only thing that worried me was Mrs. Baum. Jordan said she didn’t answer the last time he signaled her. If we didn’t hurry . . .

  Greg and Dad lifted the tank so I could put my arms through the harness. Pete tried to tighten the straps on his fins so they wouldn’t fall off my feet. But with just one hand he didn’t have much luck. Once my tank was on and all snugged down, Dad and Greg adjusted them.

  Side by side, we strolled into the lake, stopped about waist deep, and put on our fins.

  “Better move the horses uphill,” Dad called. “We start pulling these ropes, the sound of them rattling and sliding through the grass might spook them. Wait until Kent and I have our ends tied before you wrap your ends around the saddle horns.”

  The fathers walked over to get on the horses, but Mr. Aikman stopped them.

  “The boys know their mounts better than you do,” he said. “Besides that, they’re better riders. We’ll handle the horses. You guys take care of the ropes for us.”

  Each of the men found a rope. They’d feed the line out so we wouldn’t have so much weight to drag in the water. Then, once the ropes were tied on, they’d take the other end to their sons.

  “Ready!” Dad called.

  Greg trotted out and handed him the ends of the four ropes on the left. Pete gave me the four on the right.

  “We’ll swim out before we start down,” he told me. “I’ll tie. You hold the light for me. When I’m ready for the other four ropes, I’ll wave.”

  I nodded.

  Dad looked at Greg. “Once we get our ends tied on, we’ll swim aside and let you start the boys. Be sure everyone is out from between these ropes. Rowdy!” he yelled up the hill. “Don’t let the horses get the ropes tangled around their legs. If they get to pulling too hard and rear up, they could fall over backward and the boys—”

  “Simon,” Mr. Aikman called back. “The boys and I know what we’re doing. You take care of your end. We’ll do our job up here.”

  Dad nodded, then he smiled over at me.

  “Keep the light on where I’m tying. When we’re done, we’ll come up. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s get ’er done.”

  We slipped our masks on, cleared the regulators, and—a light in one hand and four ropes in the other—we swam for the submarine.

  The water was cloudy, but with the powerful lights I could still see the bottom. As we moved farther from shore, deeper, the muddy bottom disappeared into nothingness. I stayed with Dad, though, and never gave it a thought. One handful of rope and the other holding the light made swimming a little tricky, at first. But after a few feet I got the hang of guiding with my fins and my body.

  What I noticed the most was the quiet.

  Above—even when Dad was giving instructions and everyone was quiet—it wasn’t really quiet. There was the constant hum of the light generator. There were the sounds of horses stomping their hooves and snorting. Men moving about. Crickets chirping. The breeze rustling the leaves.

  Here—except for my own breathing—there was silence. Nothing but a peaceful stillness.

  Then . . .

  I saw it.

  About ten feet below us and a little to the left, a dark form began to take shape through the murky water. Round and tapered, like the body of a big fish—an enormous shark—it lay motionless on the bottom. I knew what it was, but seeing it for the first time gave me an eerie feeling. Lifeless and still, I could almost picture a sudden movement. A quick flip of a fin or tail that would bring it to life. Send it knifing through the water and . . .

  Suddenly I realized I was holding my breath. I forced myself to concentrate. Breathe slow and steady.

  Dad swam to the propeller on the back of the sub. The prop was quite a bit bigger than those I’d seen on an outboard motor. The guard around it was probably three to four feet around and attached to the back of the sub with four steel rods. Tucking three of the ropes under his arm, and dropping his light, Dad tied the fourth to the propeller guard. Once done, he pulled on it, then yanked a couple of times to make sure the knot was secure.

  Careful to keep it from glaring in his eyes, I held my light on where he worked. Dad finished all four of his ropes, then he waved for me to bring mine. When all eight ropes were tied, he picked up his light from the bottom and swam around to the front of the submarine. I wanted to follow him. I wanted to inspect the thing, see what it looked like, how it was made.

  That could wait.

  Dad pointed his light at the front of the sub for a moment or two, then pointed up. I met him on the surface.

  “It’s Mrs. Baum, all right,” he told me, once he had the hose out of his mouth. “She’s unconscious, but still responsive.”

  I pulled my hose out. “What’s that mean, Dad?”

  He smiled. “Her eyes are closed, but when the light hit her, she flinched. It means she’s still alive, but we need to hurry.

  “Rowdy?”

  “Ready, Simon!”

  “You’ll have to pull toward the fence and the light generator. If you go the other way, we’ll get tangled in the tree again.”

  “Will do,” Mr. Aikman called back. “Want us to start?”

  “Just a second.” Dad turned to me. “I’ll go down where I can see the ropes. You stay here and watch. If anything starts to come loose, I’ll hit you with my light. You yell at them to stop, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rowdy!” he shouted. “Count to ten, then start pulling. If Kent yells—stop.”

  “Got
ya, Simon.”

  Floating on the surface like a jellyfish, I kept my light on Dad. I could barely see him when he stopped. I knew he was aiming his light on the ropes at the back of the sub, only the water was so cloudy I couldn’t see that far. Every muscle tight and tense, I watched. Waited.

  Then . . . ever so slowly at first . . . Dad’s light started to move.

  I followed from above as we headed in.

  I stayed even with him. In a little while I could see him clearly in my light. A few more feet and the outline—the shape of the sub—began to appear. It was still ominous and eerie-looking. Then I could see the propeller guard and the ropes. Finally I saw the muddy bottom as the sub slid closer and closer to the shore.

  Before I knew it, Dad was on the surface with me. We swam along, watching the ropes. Every now and then Dad would raise his head to see if the hatch was above the surface.

  When the wheel and the very top of the hatch port were a good two inches above the waterline, Dad ripped off his mask.

  “That’s good, boys. Hold it!”

  Wriggling his shoulders, he got out of his tank and handed it to me. My fins brushed the bottom, but it wasn’t quite shallow enough to stand up. Holding his tank, I treaded water and watched as he climbed on top of the thing and started turning the wheel.

  It moved a lot easier than I expected. Then he gave it a hard spin and lifted.

  “Emma? Emma Baum? Can you hear me? Emma?”

  He stood up on the back of the sub and reached out toward me. “Tank. Quick.”

  I handed it to him. He yanked the hose and regulator off, twisted the valve all the way open. Then, holding the tank in front of him, he kind of dived at the hatch. The only thing left were his legs.

  Suddenly Greg was there with us.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Flooding the compartment with air. All the oxygen’s used up. Got to get fresh air in there so—”

  Dad yelled something. Hanging upside down in the opening, we couldn’t understand him.

  “What?” Greg called.

  “The other tank!”

  Greg helped me out of my tank. Like Dad had done, he yanked the hose from the regulator and climbed up on the sub. Before he handed it down alongside where Dad was hanging, he opened the valve. I could hear the air spewing out.