Monster Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

she shouted.
“There’s a huge snake right there next to the tree!”
     
    ««—»»
     
    Terri’s heart swelled in
her chest. A snake! She’d been wrong all along. She and Patricia clung to each
other, their faces pale with fear.
    “ It’s right there!”
Patricia wailed, pointing toward the brush at the base of the tree.
“See it?”
    Terri squinted, trying to focus her eyes.
She was looking right at where Patricia was pointing. But—
    I don’t see any
snake, she thought.
    “ Where?” she asked.
“Where’s the snake?”
    “ Right there! ” Patricia insisted, still
pointing. “Can’t you see it? That big, fat gray snake right there
next to the orange flowers?”
    Terri’s mouth hung open when she saw it. She
rolled her eyes and laughed. “Patricia! That’s not a snake! That’s
a dead tree branch!”
    Patricia stared forward; she didn’t seem to
believe it. “No, it’s not! It’s a snake, just like your Uncle Chuck
said. It’s a snake, and it might bite us!”
    Terri’s laughter continued. “Don’t be a
moron, Patricia.” Then she stepped into the brush, reaching
down.
    “ Don’t go in there!”
Patricia screamed. “It’ll bite you for sure! It’s probably
poisonous!”
    Terri boldly picked up the scaly branch and
held it up. “See?” she said. “Here’s your snake.” Nothing but an
old, dead tree branch. She broke it over her knee and cast it back
into the woods.
    “ Jeeze,” Patricia said,
relieved now. “I guess I am a moron. I really thought it was a
snake.”
    “ Well, sometimes your eyes
can play tricks on you. You’ll think you’ll see something that’s
not really there. It turns out to be something else.”
    “ I guess so. Like when I
was little, sometimes I’d think my blouses hanging in my bedroom
closet were really people standing there.”
    “ Yeah, like that.” But then
Terri thought about it. Yes, sometimes the eyes did play tricks on
you. Is that what happened last
night? she questioned herself. She felt
sure now that she hadn’t really seen the big toad with teeth. But
what of her mother, walking up the trail from the boathouse at 4:30
in the morning?
    Maybe I didn’t really see
that, either, she considered. Maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on
me.
    She hoped so, at least.
    “ I feel like an idiot,”
Patricia said. “I thought that stupid branch was a snake. Don’t
tell anyone, okay?”
    “ I won’t tell anyone,”
Terri promised as they continued down the path. “Everybody’s eyes
play tricks on them sometimes. It’s happened to me too.”
    “ Really? When?”
    Last night, Terri thought. But she didn’t want to tell
Patricia what she thought she’d seen. Patricia would laugh her head
off if Terri told her about the giant toad with teeth trying to eat
the rabbit in the yard. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “But it
happens to everybody once in a while. It’s no big deal.”
    They continued on down the path, their
sneakers crunching over the gravel. Little spots of sunlight,
shining through the leaves on the trees, seemed to blink at them
from above. Along the way they saw lots of birds and mushrooms and
many more plants and colorful flowers. Butterflies fluttered around
them in the shade, and moths and dragonflies.
    And then—
    A glare of sunlight shined
in their eyes. The lake, Terri realized. Where the trees opened at the end
of the path, they could see the water now, and the sun shining
brightly on it like a huge mirror.
    “ Is that it?” Patricia
asked excitedly.
    “ What?” Terri asked, but
she already knew the answer to her friend’s question. The
brown-shingled building at the very end of the path, propped up
over the water on its own pier.
    “ Is that the boathouse?”
Patricia said.
    Suddenly, for some reason, a prickling chill
ran up Terri’s spine…
    “ Yeah, that’s it,” she
informed. “That’s the boathouse.”
     
    ««—»»
     
    “Wow, this is neat!” Patricia exclaimed.
They walked up onto the