“You’re saying a monkey could kick a cobra’s butt?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know — ”
“Nuh–unh, it CAN’T,” Dill interrupted. “Wanna know why, Mr. ‘I know where all the stupid countries are’?”
“Why.”
“Cuz a snake ain’t got no butt to kick. Ooooh! FACE!”
Dill put his hand in his own face and danced around like he’d just made a game–winning touchdown.
Unfortunately, he stepped in more goo.
“Crap,” he muttered.
Peter was about to say, ‘That’ll teach you,’ but he stopped as he realized something: the marsh had gone silent. All those little croaking frogs were quiet now. Even the insects had stopped making noises.
“Hey Dill…”
“Ughhh, what?” Dill said as he tried to scrape the gunk off his ankles.
“You hear how quiet it is?”
“So?” Dill asked, still occupied with the muck on his feet.
“There were frogs and insects before, and now there’s nothing. It’s too quiet.”
Dill looked up with a frown. “Dude, cut that out, you’re gonna jinx us. That’s what they say in the movies all the time, right before — ”
Dill’s eyes suddenly bugged out, and he dropped to his knees in the mud.
“What — ?”
“Get down!” Dill hissed. “Get down NOW!”
Peter at first thought it was a fake–out, but the fear in Dill’s face convinced him otherwise. He ducked down. “What is it?”
“I saw something…”
8
Peter raised his head above the ferns and moss–covered logs. Only gnarled swamp trees, bushes, and pools of muddy water lay ahead.
“Where?”
“Behind those plants.” Dill pointed to a thicket of marsh vines about thirty feet away. The greenery was so dense that Peter couldn’t see through it, not even a patch of light.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it big?”
“Pretty big.”
“What’d it look like?”
“I dunno. Kinda brown.”
“Do you think it’s a bear?”
Dill considered for a few seconds. “If it was, it was a real little one.”
“Maybe a wild pig?”
Dill looked at Peter. “They got wild pigs in here?”
“Yeah, warthogs. I mean, I don’t know if they’re in this marsh, but — ”
“There it is — look, the bushes moved!”
Sure enough, the bushes trembled the slightest bit.
“What should we do?” Dill asked.
“Why don’t we just leave? We gotta get back and go tubing again.”
“What if we ignore it and it comes and hunts us down?”
“If it’s something that would hunt us down, I really don’t think you wanna go poking around in that bush after it.”
Dill looked around and grabbed a short, heavy tree limb. “Okay, I’ll just toss this in there.”
“No, let’s just — ”
Before Peter could finish the sentence, Dill stood up and lobbed the stick right into the middle of the thicket. The stick was heavy enough that it sunk immediately into the leaves and disappeared.
Peter was about to cuss Dill out when the scream cut him off.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
It was high–pitched and horrible, like an animal in agony. And it was coming right out of the bushes.
Peter’s blood froze in every vein in his body. Dill collapsed to the ground and grabbed Peter’s arm as though they were on a rollercoaster ride.
The scream stopped.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Dill blubbered softly.
“Do you still think that was a good idea?” Peter fumed.
“What’re we gonna do what’re we gonna do what’re we gonna do,” Dill whined.
Peter was at a loss. Whatever was in that bush, Peter definitely didn’t want to turn his back on it. But he sure as heck wasn’t going to go find out what it was, either.
Then he heard another noise, much softer. It sounded like crying. Like a little homesick kid in bed at camp who doesn’t want the other kids to know.
“Hey,” Peter said loudly.
Dill whacked Peter on the arm. “What are you doing?!”
Peter ignored him. “Hey, you in the bush — can you hear me? Is somebody out there?”
The crying stopped, and everything was quiet again. Dill hung onto Peter’s arm.
“Can you make a noise if you hear me? Or come out?”
There was a shuffling deep within the vines. Dill’s grip hardened like steel around Peter’s elbow. Still, nothing emerged from the thicket.
Peter looked down and saw another stick on the ground. It was slightly smaller than the one Dill had thrown, but still plenty big. As he bent to pick it up, Peter debated for a second. Was this a good idea?
Better than leaving that ‘thing’ in there and waiting for it to come get us.
Peter swung his arm and let go. The stick twirled through the air and slammed down into the vines.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” came the scream again.
But this time, something charged out of the bush.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Peter and Dill wailed as the thing rushed towards them.
It was wider than Peter, though not quite as tall. Mostly slick and brown, it was tangled in green vines ripped from the thicket. It had two arms that flailed wildly, and two hind legs pumping back and forth under its stout, stubby body. Even in his terror, Peter realized something looked awfully familiar about the creature.
Wait a minute…
The thing got within five feet of Peter, then veered to the right and ran screaming through the forest. That is, until it tripped over a log and went down SPLAT in a puddle of mud.
Peter ran over.
“What are you doing!” Dill howled. “Let it go, let it go!”
The thing was struggling to right itself.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Peter said soothingly.
“No it’s not!” Dill yelled and flapped his arms. “It’s not okay! Get away, get away from it!”
“Shut up, Dill — it’s a kid!”
Dill stopped moving. “A kid?!”
It was definitely a kid. Covered head to toe in a thick cocoon of slime, with vines draped all over his body, but definitely a kid. Under the mud, Peter could make out shorts, a shirt with a collar, and a goopy scruff of hair.
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 gonn
a 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.
Peter And The Vampires (Volume One) Page 29