The Thing At Black Hole Lake Read online

  Something moved to the right of the boat, distorting the moon’s reflection on the water. Milo swore he could hear the faint sound of laughter.

  “Who’s there?”

  The boat rocked as something brushed against it from underneath. Something big. Panicked, Milo started rowing with all his might. He was startlingly aware that his craft was now dipping perilously low under the weight of the growing puddle. He was sinking.

  Note to self. He panted, red-faced. Never go out in Sticky Pines alone. He was practically flying through the water now. Never go out in Sticky Pines at night. He gasped as something pulled at his oar. Never leave home in Sticky Pines, period!

  Forcefully, the paddle was yanked out of Milo’s hand. He yelped as it slid out of its socket and slipped under the water with a sad little PLOOP. He was now stranded. Then, just a metre away, he saw something emerge from the gloomy depths.

  The water rippled as something thin and dark rose above the surface. Milo’s chest tightened. Is that a snake? If it was, it was the biggest one he’d ever seen. He vaguely remembered something Lucy had said about an abyssal sea serpent in Black Hole Lake. Are ALL her nonsense beliefs actually real?

  With quavering hands, he held out his flashlight-phone like a protective talisman. Another serpent popped up to his left, followed by two more behind him, and one more at the front. Milo gulped. I’m surrounded.

  Another serpent slithered quickly up the side of the hull. Milo squealed, picked up one of his shoes and threw it at the snake with a THOCK. The slimy creature slurped back into the murky deep.

  Milo squinted at the water, where he could just make out a large shadowy form below the surface. Those aren’t serpents, he realised. They’re tentacles! He was floating directly above a giant squid-like creature, whose arms were encircling his boat like a hand about to snatch an apple from a tree.

  The puddle was halfway up Milo’s shins now, the boat barely staying afloat. He pulled the remaining oar out of its socket and wielded it as a weapon, jabbing at the closest tentacle. Lightning quick, it slithered up the paddle and slurped against Milo’s hand with an unsettling cold fishiness. Milo shrieked, lost his balance, and fell into the lake.

  The good news was that the water was not as cold as he’d expected. That’s where the good news ended. Milo coughed and sputtered, choking each time his head dipped below the surface. He’d received swimming lessons from an ex-Navy Seal, but right now he couldn’t even remember how to float. Keeping a tight hold on his phone, he shook off his heavy overcoat, which drifted downwards, its sleeves flailing like a drowning man.

  Something slimy caressed Milo’s bare foot. This is it, I’m a goner. And I’m going to die dressed as a politician. A wave of pitiful acceptance washed over him as he sank into the gloomy depths.

  Straining to hold his breath, Milo opened his eyes and held out his illuminated smartphone. If he was going to be eaten alive, he wanted to see what would be digesting him. The torchlight filtered through the murk, providing a hazy glimpse of an immense creature unlike anything Milo had ever seen. At its rear were eight tentacles, each as long as the rowboat. Its front half was that of a hideous, primordial fish with jagged teeth the size of bowling pins. What is that Thing?

  Above, Milo could hear the faint sound of a motor. Was someone else up there?

  The octopodal monster swam closer, watching Milo with plate-sized orange eyes, its pupils horizontal black slits.

  Nearly out of breath, Milo let out a bubbly scream.

  Lightning fast, the Thing splayed its arms out in every direction, like a dark star. Its skin changed colour, alternating black, ivory and purple splotches that swirled hypnotically.

  Mesmerised, Milo watched as the colour suddenly drained from the creature’s nose, down its torso and along its tentacles until its entire body was moon-white.

  What in the ever-loving…

  One by one, the Thing gathered its ivory tentacles at the top of its head and formed a two-pronged tree-like structure.

  Are those … antlers? Milo was reminded of the stag they’d hit with their car that morning. Did this Thing eat the deer?

  The motor above grew louder until it was almost deafening.

  Is it going to eat me? Regaining his terror-stricken senses, Milo inhaled a mouthful of water as he struggled to swim to the surface, which seemed an eternity away.

  Then he felt something soft and solid beneath his feet. Nudging him with its wide, flat nose, the Thing propelled him forcefully out into the night air with a SHPLOSHK!

  Shuddering and coughing, Milo clung to the prow of his half-submerged boat, the buzz of the motor echoing around him. He searched desperately for the mysterious creature, but saw no sign of it.

  A bright headlight shone in his eyes.

  “Milo!” yelled his stepmother.

  Silver-blonde ponytail flying, Kaitlyn sped her jet ski over to the sputtering boy. She slid to a stop, reached down and, with Pilates-honed strength, lifted her soggy stepson on to the back of the vehicle.

  “What were you thinking?” she demanded. “Going out on the lake at night, all alone.” She was wearing a sparkly pink wetsuit. “Your father is going to FLIP HIS LID.” She smoothed Milo’s hair with her manicured hand. “When he called me, saying he’d lost your signal over the water…” She exhaled, hand on her chest.

  My signal? So he really was tracking me… “I was j-just trying to get h-home,” Milo stammered through chattering teeth.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m all right.” I think. “Did you s-see anything weird out here?”

  “Weird? No.” She squeezed the water out her hair. “Not until I found you here, flopping around like a dying seal. Why?”

  “I—” Milo stopped. Should he tell her? How would he even begin? “Nothing. Forget it.” Deep in thought, he wrapped his arms round her waist. “Let’s go home.”

  Kaitlyn sped the jet ski towards the shore, leaving the ill-fated rowboat to sink into the depths, joining whatever else lurked below.

  Turtle Boy

  “Are you done yet?” Willow whined. “I’m booooored.” She lay upside down in her chair, her pigtails dangling on the threadbare blue carpet.

  Lucy thumbed through a thick tome entitled, Signs, Designs and Crooked Lines: An Illustrated Guide to Symbology. Haphazard piles of books on linguistics and ancient mythology adorned the desk around her.

  “Go read a picture book or something,” said Lucy.

  “I’ve read them allllllll.”

  They were waiting in the school library for their mother to finish grading so she could drive them home. For Lucy it was an opportunity to investigate.

  Her battered notebook lay on the table before her, open to a page covered in drawings of the mysterious hieroglyphs she’d seen on the stone steps beneath the Nu Co. factory. One looked like a leaf with an arrow through it. One was a series of triangles with dots around them. Another resembled a lollipop.

  According to Mr Fisher’s scientists, the glyphs meant: “Beware the Pretenders”. Lucy knew exactly who the “Pretenders” were: the Strickses, Mandy Millepoids and the rest of Fisher’s victims, because they were only pretending to be human.

  But who’d made these glyphs? What language was it? Did the warning mean the Pretenders were dangerous? The origin of the symbols was one small mystery amongst many, but since nobody would talk to her, it was the only trail Lucy could follow for now.

  Willow slid to the floor and pulled a musty hardback book off the nearest shelf.

  “Ah, you found one of the old school yearbooks,” said Ms Keisha. The young tattooed librarian pushed past Lucy and Willow with a cartful of books. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  Lucy narrowed her eyes at the cheery woman. Could she be one of Them? She imagined Ms Keisha’s tattoos squiggling around, her skin jellifying as she gooped into a bat or something and flew out the window.

  Willow wiped the dust off the title: SPEAMS Dreams. “I wonder if Dad’s in here.” She opened the c
rumbling cover.

  “If you find him, let me know immediately,” said Lucy. “I’ll bet his hair was INSANE.”

  Willow laughed so hard she snorted.

  “Girls,” said Ms Keisha, “this is a library, you need to keep it down.” She tapped a poster on the wall from the 1900s featuring a cartoon kangaroo saying, “SSSHHH!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lucy saluted. She skimmed through her notebook to a page where she’d scribbled some of the questions and riddles rattling around in her brain: “Is it the trees?” “Does the sap make the Strickses turn into owls?” and “Note to self: eat a bunch of tree sap.” The last sentence was crossed out, a vomit-faced emoji drawn underneath with the words “unsuccessful attempt” scrawled next to it.

  “Oooh, look what I found,” Willow whispered. She slammed the book on the desk and flopped it open. The pages were yellowed and worn, with drawings of big-eyed animals doodled in the margins.

  Lucy examined the date in the corner. “1925? I’m pretty sure Dad’s not that old.”

  “Not Dad. Look.” Willow flipped to a page with several black-and-white student portraits.

  The people in the photos were all around Lucy’s age, but their overly styled hair, formal clothing and steely expressions made them seem much older. Willow tapped a picture of a girl with chin-length pin-curled hair.

  Lucy read the name under the picture and her eyes widened. Esther Stricks. “The Other Mrs Stricks?” She checked the date again. “It can’t be. If she was twelve in 1925, that would make her, like, over a hundred years old.” Although she can turn into a bird, so what else might be true about her?

  Willow’s lip curled in ambivalence. “I can never tell how old adults are.”

  Lucy thumbed through more student portraits and spotted another familiar name. “Alastair Chelon. Okay, I know he’s not a hundred. He works with Dad, and they’re basically the same age.” She examined the skinny ten-year-old boy wearing a suit. Is it really him? Can he turn into a bird, too?

  “Maybe it’s his great-grandpa?” Willow suggested.

  “That’s a possibility,” said Lucy. She crossed out the word “werewolves?” in her notebook and added “vampires?” under the word “ALIENS??”

  She perused the rest of the portraits but didn’t spot any other names she recognised. Near the back of the book, she came across group photos for various school clubs and activities.

  Esther Stricks was pictured at the centre of the girls’ basketball team, a head taller than everyone else. Lucy smirked at their attire, which looked like sailors’ uniforms with pouffy skirts gathered in the middle to create makeshift shorts. How can you dribble a ball in something like that?

  Next, she found a photograph of the “Arts and Crafts Society”, in which little Alastair Chelon stood proudly next to his painting of a tortoise. That’s not bad, actually, for a ten-year-old. She squinted at the picture, then gasped. The tortoise’s intricately designed shell was covered in symbols like those she had seen under the Nu Co. factory.

  He’s definitely one of them. “I’m on to you, turtle boy.”

  “What?” said Willow, perusing a yearbook from 1963.

  “I didn’t say anything.” Lucy shook herself from her reverie. “You’re hearing things again.”

  “Nice try, gaslighter.” Willow stuck out her tongue.

  Lucy raised her hand so high she was straining.

  Ms Keisha looked up from the cartful of books she was shelving. “Yes, Lucy?”

  “Can I please check out this book?” She held it up.

  The librarian shook her head. “Those yearbooks are too old and fragile. They’re for reference only.”

  “But this is an emergency,” Lucy insisted.

  Ms Keisha put her hand on her hip. “No, Lucita.”

  Pickled beets, this woman will not be moved.

  Just then, Miranda Sladan strode into the library, a canvas satchel overstuffed with papers slung round her shoulder. “All right, girlington bears, are you ready to go home?”

  “Finally.” Willow gathered her things.

  Yeeps. “Just a minute,” said Lucy. What am I gonna do?

  “Got your grading done early today, Miranda?” said Ms Keisha.

  Miranda patted her satchel and strolled over to the librarian’s book cart. “Yes, hallelujah! I sense a big bar of dark chocolate in my near future. Sy and I are hoping to have a date night this evening, too, if Nu Co. doesn’t have him working late again.”

  While they talked, Lucy bit her lip and prepared to do something positively sacrilegious. It’s all in service of the Truth, she repeated to herself. As quietly as she could, she tore the turtle page out of the yearbook. Grimacing, she folded it up and slipped it into her pocket. She shut the yearbook, creating a small cloud of dust. “Okay,” she croaked, “I’m ready.”

  “Great,” said Miranda. She said goodbye to Ms Keisha and led Willow out the door.

  I’ve got what I need, thought Lucy. Alastair Chelon can fill in the rest. She was formulating a plan to confront the suspected Pretender, but to pull it off she was going to need something harder to obtain than authentic alien autopsy results: her parents’ permission.

  Woo Woo

  What was that Thing? Milo had been ceaselessly replaying the events of Halloween in his head. Was it some kind of mutant octopus? Was I hallucinating? He thought of all the ways his assumptions had repeatedly been proven wrong since he’d arrived in Sticky Pines. Is there really an honest-to-goodness monster in Black Hole Lake?

  He locked his silver bicycle to a lamp post across the street from The Woo Woo Store on the corner of Main Street and Ravenstone Way. It was the local “metaphysical” shop, specialising in incense, crystals and other nonsensical gewgaws. But, according to its out-of-date website, the shop also carried books on “supernatural phenomena” and, in particular, “local myths and legends”.

  The door chimes tinkled as Milo entered the store, the scent of sage overwhelming his senses.

  “Welcome,” said a serene female voice.

  Milo stepped round a rotating display of dreamcatchers and spotted a rosy-cheeked woman with curly unnaturally red hair. She was threading a beaded necklace behind a glass counter filled with fairy figurines. Her blue-velvet dress wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Renaissance.

  Milo smirked at the crystal ball by the cash register. His late mother had had a deep appreciation for mystics, auras and the like, much to his father’s chagrin. Milo wasn’t really one to be taken in by any of this stuff. Still, he remembered that his mother had found it comforting when she was sick.

  “Hi, I’m loo—” Milo tripped over a heavy gnome statue.

  “Are you here for a tarot or astrological reading?” asked the woman.

  More like astro-illogical. “Uh, no, I was looking for something specific.”

  She smiled coyly, taking in Milo’s khaki trousers and tucked-in sweater. “In the market for a love potion, perhaps?”

  His cheeks reddened. “I’m looking for a book, actually. On legends from the Big Crater Valley.”

  She raised a hand to her temple, her bracelets tinkling, as if she were divining his thoughts from the ether. “I know just what you need.”

  Because I just told you?

  The woman sashayed out from behind the counter and led him to a haphazardly organised bookshelf at the back of the shop. Running her ring-adorned fingers over the spines, she pulled out a well-read volume and handed it to Milo.

  “Sticky Secrets by P. J. Barry,” he read. “Is there anything about monsters in here?”

  “Monsters?” she said, alarmed.

  “My, uh, friend thinks she saw something weird in Black Hole Lake.” Milo rolled his eyes to show that he, of course, would never consider such nonsense.

  “I see.” Lips pursed, the woman located a book titled North American Cryptozoology.

  Lucy’s obsession. Great. Milo deflated.

  He followed her to the cash register and paid for the two bo
oks, which she put into a paper bag adorned with stars.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a reading?” She gestured to a sign on the wall behind her: “Marietta Corbin, Fortune Teller. $10 for 10 minutes. CASH ONLY”. “You look like you could use some insight.”

  “Oh, no,” he laughed. “I mean, no offence, but none of this stuff is real, is it?”

  “Everything is real,” Ms Corbin replied, “though perhaps not in the way you think it is.” She leaned in. “You know,” she pressed, “some people do it just for fun.”

  Fun? Milo couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any. He glanced around. Nobody else was in the shop. “Yeah, okay,” he acquiesced. “Why not?”

  He followed her to a table covered in a black-lace cloth. Ms Corbin handed him a deck of cards, the backs of which featured strange glyphs made of shapes, swirls and dots.

  “What do these symbols mean?” Milo asked while she shuffled.

  “I made all these cards myself,” Ms Corbin replied. “The symbols are just a Sticky Pines thing.” She took the deck and dealt three cards face up on the table. “Intriguing,” she mused.

  The first card showed a picture of two rabbits standing on either side of a river. The second was a half-shaded moon with a smiling face. The third depicted a pyramid being demolished by a bolt of lightning, golden bricks tumbling down its sides.

  Milo balked.

  “That’s not a bad card necessarily,” Ms Corbin assured him.

  Not necessarily?

  She studied the spread, her fingers hovering over the images. Finally, she spoke. “You will soon learn that nothing is what it seems. Relationships, old and new, will be tested. What once was hidden will be revealed.” She gripped Milo’s hand. “You are in for a big shift in perspective, young man. Your world will be forever altered. Some degree of destruction is necessary.” Her gaze intensified. “You must learn who to trust. Your choices will determine who you are to become. Change is coming, whether you’re ready or not.” Then she released him.

  Milo picked up the pyramid card and examined it, horrified. I thought this was supposed to be fun?