Water Monsters
There’s a monster living in their uncle’s lake. He’s told them about it: the watery footprints he finds across his back porch, the mysterious missing vegetables from his garden, the sound he hears sometimes at night, the sound of something hollow and aching. It’s not a very big lake, so not a very big monster, but still, they are impressed. Their mom doesn’t believe that there’s a monster, but their uncle has seen it, or at least a portion of it. He’d caught a glimpse of its oily shadow one night as it ran across his lawn. It had been a summer night, and he had been sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette (this part was a secret from their mom) when he had heard rustling in the garden. He had tiptoed over, breath held, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the thing he shared his property with, but it had been too quick. He saw it dart towards the lake and he had run after it, but by the time he got there all he saw was the trail of bubbles across the surface that it had left as it sank.
They can’t get the monster out of their head. That afternoon, their uncle had taken them out to the garden and shown them some broken stalks of green beans, carrot tops that had been plucked clean off, along with half the carrot. “This is how I know he’s been here,” he told them, nodding towards the lake at the back of his yard. “He has an affinity for tomatoes, you know,” he had continued, showing them giant tomatoes split clean down the middle, juices and seeds spilled across the dirt below. Since they are there for another night, they want to see the monster for themselves. They want to know if it has webbed feet or sharp claws, a hooked beak or a giant mouth full of teeth. They want to catch it in their uncle’s garden, face buried in one of those tomato bushes, seeds dripping down its cheeks.
They are only allowed to leave their bedroom if they need to use the restroom or need a drink of water, and even the daytime they are only allowed to go into the backyard with an adult at their side, but neither of them can sleep. Their toes and legs and arms feel itchy and restless, every sound the house makes amplified: the ticking clock, their uncle’s snoring from down the hall, their limbs rustling around underneath the covers in an attempt to get comfortable. “If not tonight, then when?” the older one whispers. “I swear I heard something outside before we came up to bed. It had to be him.”
And then: “Come on.”
They both whip off the covers and slide down from either side of the bed, their bare feet almost silent as they pad across the wood floor. The younger one crawls out into the hallway first, his head and chest low to the ground in case either their mom or uncle are awake. It’s so dark that he can barely make out the outlines of the bedroom doors, so he whispers to his brother that all is clear. They make their way to the stairs, both careful to avoid the middle parts of each step where the wood sags and sighs beneath every footstep. Downstairs, the moonlight floods in through the windows and they move quickly. They try the backdoor, but it’s locked. The younger one whispers that their uncle keeps his keys on the hook in the kitchen. It’s too high for either of them to reach, so they start pulling one of the kitchen chairs towards the wall when it makes such a shrieking noise that they both jump and hold their breath, listening for any noises from upstairs that would mean one of the grown-ups had heard it and woke up. When no one comes, the two of them decide to make a pile of couch cushions for the older one to climb on and grab the key.
They unlock the back door (their mom taught the older one how to do this, “Just in case,” she had said). The air outside is much colder than they thought it would be, their pajamas much thinner than the jeans and long-sleeved shirts they had worn earlier. The grass is cool and slick underneath their feet. In the garden, they check for any newly trampled leaves or marshy wet footprints. They listen for the rustling of a water monster who comes out of his home to eat dinner. When they find nothing, the younger one motions towards the lake with a nod of his head, both afraid to even whisper and alert the thing to their presence.
In the moonlight, the grass around the lake moves like a sea of snakes, and the lake spreads out before them like a dark and giant mirror. It smells like mud and decaying leaves and something else dark and murky that makes them thing the monster is nearby. They roll up their pant legs and walk closer, mud squishing between their toes until they are standing at the very edge of the water. With a shrug, the older one steps in far enough for the tops of his feet to be covered, and the younger one follows right behind. The two of them stand there, water licking at the bottoms of their ankles, scanning the surface for any sign of bubbles or ripples, waiting to see the glint of a moonbeam off a smooth and silvery back, waiting to see a dark shadow just below the surface moving towards them. They stand there until their toes go numb, believing that if they’re just still enough, the monster will show himself.
