The Thing At Black Hole Lake Read online

  Now, after a couple days of careful tracking, Milo felt he had a handle on exactly where the Thing was hiding.

  Ducking under a broken sign that read “Restricted Area: Trespassers Will—”, Milo entered a sheltered clearing in a copse of leafless alders and indigo sticky pines. He set his pack behind a shoulder-high boulder covered in layers of graffiti, some of which was carved into the stone itself.

  On the far side of the clearing, ringed by a sprinkling of white-capped mushrooms, was a bubbling hot spring no wider than Milo’s waist. He’d be willing to bet his Burberry brogues that this was, in fact, the fabled “spring of life” mentioned in Sticky Secrets. At first glance it certainly didn’t seem “mystical” or “magical”, and its scalding waters smelled like boiled eggs. But, Milo reasoned, perhaps what made it “special” wasn’t what it did, but what it contained.

  He had realised the day before that this small stinky spring would make a perfect hiding place. Of course, the Thing was much too big to fit inside, but if it could shrink down from a giant lake monster to a deer that was a fraction of the size, perhaps it could shrink down even smaller. Small enough to fit inside that tiny little waterhole? Milo was determined to find out.

  “PHEW-EEEE-OOO!” Milo whistled to announce his presence. He didn’t want to scare it off this time.

  Unzipping his bag, he took out a paper parcel from Mandy’s Candies and tentatively approached the spring. He placed one end of a long rope of red liquorice into the bubbling water and laid the rest on the soil at its edge. Then he added a trail of gumdrops leading all the way up to the graffiti-covered boulder. “PHEW-EEEE-OOO.” Milo set his bag beside the rock and waited.

  There was nothing at first. Is it in there?

  “PHEW-EEEE-OOO,” he whistled again.

  The liquorice twitched. Milo perked up. All at once the red candy rope disappeared into the simmering spring. It’s working.

  Slowly, snakily, a thin black tendril emerged from the water and felt around in the dirt. Yikes! Milo ducked behind the boulder, his instincts urging him to run. That thing is like a slimy rat tail. Heart racing, he forced himself to look.

  The slithering appendage was exploring the sugary surface of the nearest gumdrop. Another tendril emerged from the spring and groped around, looking for more. As soon as it found the second gumdrop, more dark feelers emerged, resembling the spines of a sea urchin. With a series of SLURPs, the spines clumped together and coagulated to form three fat tentacles, like the ones that had harassed Milo’s sinking boat.

  Sweet Cerberus.

  Bit by bit, a quivering, bulbous, beach ball-sized blob that looked like it was made of inky jello squished up and out of the spring.

  Horrified, Milo darted back behind the boulder. Is that what the Thing looks like when it’s not pretending to be something else? It’s astonishingly gross. He could hear the creature squidging over pebbles and pine needles, inching ever closer to the boulder. Milo felt the sting of sweat on his brow. Did it know he was there?

  “PHBEEWWW-BEEEEEEE-BWOOOO,” came an unearthly trill, somehow originating from the blobby Thing.

  Milo felt a jolt of prideful recognition. That’s my whistle! Could it be that the creature was calling to him? He hesitated, not yet willing to emerge from his hiding spot.

  Tentatively, a black protrusion groped round the boulder and found Milo’s sleeve. Both he and the Thing flinched, then froze.

  Moments passed, Milo hardly daring to breathe. Eventually, the tentacle quietly slithered back to the other side of the boulder. There was a gurgling, sucking sound. Milo could feel all the air in the vicinity rush towards the Thing. What was happening? Digging his nails into his palms, Milo stuck his head round the stone and dared to look.

  The creature’s gelatinous dark body was growing, narrowing and twisting, like an enormous slab of black clay being moulded from within. Its colour began to pale, turning grey, then bone white. At last, the being congealed and settled into the form of a mighty stag as big as a horse. Colourless slime shimmered on its flanks.

  Milo covered his mouth to suppress a squeak.

  The horned deer stared down at him, its chestnut eyes mirroring Milo’s own apprehension.

  Milo reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a large swirly rainbow lollipop. He held it out timorously.

  The deer sniffed the treat, then skipped excitedly, sending Milo’s pulse skyrocketing. Tentatively, the deer bent down to take the candy, but it changed its mind and sashayed backwards.

  “It’s okay,” Milo assured it. “I won’t bite.” He was far from certain that the Thing could offer the same guarantee.

  Using all the willpower he could muster, Milo sidestepped towards the enormous creature, the candy extended as far as he could reach. “PHEW-EEEE-OOO,” he whistled.

  Still apprehensive, the deer nipped the head of the lollipop from Milo’s hand, crunching its prize as it retreated to the other side of the clearing.

  “I’m Milo.” Milo pointed to himself. “Is that where you live?” He pointed to the spring.

  The creature cocked its head, as if trying to understand the words. Can it? It swallowed the last of the lollipop, then snorted and skipped like a playful puppy.

  Milo laughed for what felt like the first time in ages. “You want more, do you?” He took out another lollipop from his pocket and the deer danced in a circle, its formidable antlers whizzing perilously within range of Milo’s face.

  “Gah!” Milo stumbled back.

  Worried the Thing might accidentally trample him, he tossed the lollipop in the air. The Thing reared up and caught the candy in its massive jaws, its front hooves flailing. Landing with a THUD, it looked down to find Milo cowering at the base of the boulder, his arms shielding his head.

  From between his elbows Milo watched as the deer finished its sugary treat. And then something changed.

  Milo rubbed his eyes, thinking his vision had gone blurry, but there was nothing wrong with his sight. Each hair on the creature’s body was vibrating as its form shimmered into translucence. Beads of slimy sweat coursed down its neck and legs as the stag, antlers and all, decreased in size until it was about as tall as Lucy’s wolfhound, Errol. When it finished, solidifying once again, it snorted as if to say, “Is this better?”

  Dumbfounded, Milo scrambled to his feet. “Thank you. This is a much more manageable size.”

  Seeming quite proud of itself, the dog-sized deer pranced around, kicking its knees up like a show pony.

  Milo laughed. “I think you deserve some more candy, you silly Thingus.” Grinning, he disappeared behind the boulder and rummaged through his pack, picking through colourful stretches of taffy, candy buttons, and peppermint patties the size of hockey pucks. When he re-emerged, he stopped in his tracks. “What the—” The peppermint patty he was carrying dropped to the dirt with a THOD.

  The creature had mutated again. Well, not the entire creature. Its body was still a graceful, if comically proportioned, white stag. Its head, however…

  “How in the world?” Milo found himself looking into a pair of familiar blue eyes.

  The Thing’s head, while still crowned by a gorgeous spread of antlers, had shrunk and rounded to form a human face, the proportion and colouring of which resembled a somewhat pinched sculpture of Milo himself.

  “Holy—” Milo began.

  “Holy mother of fewmet flinging frogspit!” interrupted a new voice.

  Milo whipped round to find none other than Lucy Sladan gawping at the scene, her mouth open so wide he could see her tonsils.

  Remedial Rendezvous

  Lucy pushed through the pine branches she’d been crouching behind, heedless of the fact that her parka was covered with black streaks of sticky sap. Her blood bubbled with a confluence of competing emotions.

  “I’ve spent my entire life trying to discover unknown cryptozoological species, and you manage to stumble upon one in a couple of WEEKS?!” The last word came out as a shriek.

  The human-fa
ced stag reared back on its hind legs.

  “Whoa, Thingus.” Milo held up his hands to calm the bizarre being. “What are you doing here?” he demanded of Lucy.

  “I was gonna ask you the same question.” Lucy goggled at the incredible creature. “But now I understand perfectly.”

  It had taken several hours of intense ingenuity for Lucy to get to the Siren’s Lair. She’d spent all morning straddling a cardboard platform tied to two freshly inflated inner tubes, using a tree branch as an oar. Her jeans were wet to the knee. Her teeth chattered in the Autumn wind and strands of sweaty hair clung to her forehead. But none of that mattered right now. What did matter was the magnificent creature before her, which was the most hideously beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  “How could you not tell me about this?”

  “Can you keep your voice down?” Milo fumed.

  The dog-sized, child-faced deer shifted its weight uneasily from one hoof to the other.

  Milo retrieved a chocolate disc from the ground then gently approached the creature. “It’s a peppermint patty,” he said. “Go on, eat it. It’s good.”

  Keeping its eyes on Lucy, the being plucked the candy from Milo’s hand with its human teeth. It dropped the treat on the ground a yard away and munched on it like it was a patch of grass. When it finished, the Thing waggled its antlers happily, its cherubic cheeks covered in chocolate.

  “This is so cool!” Lucy chirped. She made a beeline towards the strange being. The creature jumped in alarm and darted behind Milo.

  “What are you doing, crazy?” Milo hissed at Lucy. “I’ve spent over a week gaining this Thing’s trust. You’re either going to scare it away or it’ll rip your face off. You don’t know what it’s capable of.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy could barely rein in her exuberance. “It looks harmless.”

  “Harmless?” scoffed Milo. “It’s a deer with a human face!”

  “I know! Isn’t it great?”

  Milo glared at her, arms crossed.

  “Okay. I’ll be careful.” She rolled her eyes.

  With her hand outstretched, Lucy approached the Thing slowly, as she would a stray dog. The being gingerly sniffed her fingers and didn’t retreat. With a pointed look at Milo, Lucy gently patted the creature’s shoulder. She could feel a soft purr deep within its throat. Scratching up its neck, she felt under its chin. The skin on its face was as soft as a baby’s. “This is incredible,” she marvelled.

  “Will you please go home?” Milo sulked. “This is my cryptozoological creature, not yours.”

  Lucy laughed. “Fat chance, fancy-pants.”

  “How did you find me, anyway?”

  “I saw your big red kayak.”

  Milo slumped. “It was that easy?”

  “I thought you were sneaking out here to feed a den of stranded bear cubs or something, but this…” Lucy laughed as the strange being nosed Milo’s pockets with its freaky face. “What is this magnificent weirdo? It looks like some kind of Egyptian god. Maybe it’s a sphinx…”

  “A sphinx has a human head,” said Milo, “but with the body of a lion, not a deer.”

  Lucy looked at him sideways. “How do you know that?”

  “You’re not the only one well versed in mythical creatures.” Milo smugly lifted his chin.

  “Is that so, Smarty McFly?” Lucy retrieved her notebook from her pocket and prepared to take notes. “So what is it, then?”

  “I have no idea,” Milo admitted. “As far as I can tell, he’s unlike any known cryptozoological specimen.”

  “He? How do you know the creature’s a boy?”

  “Well, he’s got antlers, doesn’t he?”

  “Fair enough.”

  The child-faced deer nibbled at Milo’s pocket and nudged his shoulder with an antler.

  “Ow.” Milo held up his hand. “Stop that.”

  The creature stomped his hoof, as if asking Milo where the candy was and why wasn’t he giving him more candy right now.

  “You need to be patient, Thingus,” said Milo, hands on his hips.

  Huffily, the creature trotted over to the hot spring, shot an annoyed pout over his shoulder, then shuddered and jellified into a blob of black goo, draining his mass into the bubbling waters in a matter of seconds.

  Lucy dropped her notebook. “He’s a shapeshifter!” she squealed. “Just like the others! This is— Wait,” she said. “You discovered a member of an entirely new species and you named him ‘Thingus’?”

  “It was the only name I could— Others?” Milo’s mode switched from annoyance to intense interest. “What do you mean, others?”

  Oh snap. Lucy couldn’t reveal what she knew about the Pretenders without putting them in danger, but she wanted to share the Truth so badly it hurt. Was she going to have to lie to Milo yet again? “I mean,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “like those people who turned into Bigwoofs.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking!” Milo exclaimed, his cheeks rosy in the chill air. “But Thingus is different. His transformations aren’t happening to him. He decides how to change, and when. It’s totally incredible, isn’t it?”

  “Totally.” Lucy picked her notebook up out of the mud, thoughts colliding in her brain a mile a minute. Thingus is a Pretender. He has to be!

  She listened keenly as Milo described in detail how Thingus had morphed from a giant tentacled lake monster into a white stag, and the disgusting amount of slime his transformation entailed.

  Slime is basically Pretender juice! “He had tentacles, you say?” Lucy jotted down a few key words: “Sharkosquidosaurus!?” “Stag”, “Doggydeerboy”. “Has Thingus ever turned into a human?” she asked.

  “Not unless you count the strange face he had today.”

  Lucy chewed the inside of her cheeks, thinking. “Can you get him to come back out of the spring?”

  “I can try.”

  Milo retrieved a bag of peanut brittle, tossed a few pieces into the burbling water and whistled. A moment later, a slimy tentacle emerged.

  Lucy watched, hypnotised, as the slippery creature flubbered out of the spring. She felt a breeze as the gooey Thing doubled, then tripled in size, sucking in air as he grew. The formless being lengthened, its saggy middle rising and dividing to form a torso with four spindly legs. A protrusion at the top of his body stretched out and upwards into a mammalian neck and head, from which two bony antlers emerged. The shiny black creature turned matte and white fur flashed across the now solid surface of its skin. Once again, the Thing had adopted the form of a small stag, without the human features.

  “Holy crudberries,” Lucy murmured.

  Milo fed the Thing another piece of peanut brittle.

  “Please tell me you have video footage of this,” said Lucy.

  “No way,” said Milo. “I’m all out of cameras, and my phone’s not secure. I don’t want my dad to know about Thingus yet. He’s not ready.”

  “You’re hiding this discovery from your dad?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Milo muttered.

  “Wow,” said Lucy, impressed. She sketched a likeness of Milo’s description of the lake monster. “Is this what the tentacles looked like, or should they be ‘snakier’?” She held up her notebook to show Milo the drawing. For the first time Lucy noticed the graffiti-covered boulder behind him. No. Flippin. Way. “It’s the symbols!”

  Running over to the massive rock, she looked past the spray-painted names and profanities and focused on the markings carved into the stone itself. She ran her fingers across time-worn rows of engraved shapes, dots, lines and squiggles. How long have these been here? Decades? Centuries?

  Milo peered over her shoulder as Thingus danced in circles, begging for more candy.

  “Just a minute, Thingus,” said Milo. “What is it?” he asked Lucy.

  She showed him the glyphs in Willow’s notebook. “I’ve seen symbols like these before, under the Nu Co. factory.”

  “Under?” Milo ra
n his fingers along the boulder’s engraved surface. “What language is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, “but I’m pretty sure I know someone who does.”

  “Who?”

  Thingus snorted to get their attention to no avail.

  Lucy squinched her face. “You’re not gonna like it.” A gust of cold air sent a shiver down her spine.

  Milo’s eyes narrowed with understanding. “You mean my father, don’t you?”

  “Well, I— Sufferin’ slugspit!” Lucy pointed behind Milo.

  “What?” He spun round.

  The stag had mutated again. His body now glittered with silver opalescence. A flowing mane, every colour of the rainbow, ran along his head and neck. Instead of antlers, there was a single horn on his forehead that glowed with soft white light.

  Lucy looked down at the cover of Willow’s notebook, which featured a metallic illustration of a unicorn. “It’s just like the picture.” She gazed, awestruck, at Thingus. “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”

  The unicorn reared up proudly on its hind legs, its prismatic mane fluttering in the wind. Lucy took care to stay out of range of its silver hooves.

  “PHBEEWWW-BEEEEEEE-BWOOOO!”

  “Did he just purse his horsey lips and whistle?” asked Lucy, agog.

  “I think he wants more candy,” Milo gulped. He ran behind the boulder and returned with a giant wheel of black liquorice. He tossed it high and the unicorn caught it in mid-air.

  Thingus took one bite, then emitted a high-pitched multi-tonal scream. The kids covered their ears and huddled together as the creature collapsed in on itself, morphing into a writhing knot of angry tentacles. Reaching for the hot spring, the Thing squelched his wormy mass into the steaming hole until all that was left was a trail of transparent sluggish slime and a tooth-marked wheel of uneaten candy.

  Lucy uncovered her ears, staring incredulously at a wide-eyed, unblinking Milo. “Dude.” She shook her head. “Nobody likes black liquorice.”