The Monster of the Pond

The Monster of the Lake

I first heard about the Monster of the Lake when we first moved into the neighborhood. Everyone was talking about it. Even the adults. Especially the adults. The day I heard about it we were invited to the neighbor’s house for a dinner party. Well, really my parents were invited and they couldn’t agree if I was old enough to stay at home by myself yet. I secretly hoped they would decide I had to go or find a sitter somehow because I did NOT want to be in that house alone. The bonus room gave me the heebie-jeebies. The door to the attic was in there and the attic was big enough for a grown man to stand up all the way without hitting his head and wide enough for that same man to sleep long ways from one side to the other. I didn’t ACTUALLY think that a man was living there. But with a space so big where no one ever goes, well, you just never really know what is in there or not, right?

When my parents decided I would have to come to the adult dinner party I pretended to pout a little bit and protest I was old enough to stay home. The neighbors were literally less than fifty feet away. Why couldn’t I just stay home and watch TV? I said “watch TV” instead of “read a book” (which is what I would actually want to be doing, I was just a couple chapters short of finishing The Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, book five of seven but most people only know The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is actually my least favorite of the seven) because I knew my Mom, who thought I was grown up enough to stay at home, would not like the idea of me watching unsupervised TV for hours. And when Mom makes up her mind, that is that. Dad didn’t really stand a chance in their argument though he put up a good fight. I have a feeling he may have just been pretending too.

When the neighbors opened their front door I could see in their faces they were surprised and maybe a little disappointed that I had come along even though they said in conciliatory tones “No, no, it’s alright. Not a problem. Not a problem at all.” They smiled at me with those smiles adults use when they don’t want to tell the truth. “There is plenty here for a girl her age,” they said. I glanced over at the buffet table and doubted that statement. I doubly doubted that statement when I saw a second buffet table lined in liquor bottles and already opened bottles of wine. This was NOT a kids party. My parents looked around, down at me, and back at the hosts with an awkward apologetic smile. “We just don’t know any sitters yet, you know?” my Mom offered. Our neighbors, who were already nearly grandparent aged, and who didn’t have any children, or grandchildren, smiled thinly like they understood. But adults who don’t have kids, I have noticed, bless their hearts, never truly get it.

I try to make myself seen but not heard. Well, I try to make myself barely seen and not heard. I can tell my parents wish they could just be themselves and not my parents at this party. So, I try to make it easy for them by disappearing into the legs and arms of the other adults and pushing myself onto a trunk that had a blanket folded on top of it. From the corner and on top of the trunk my parents could see me, which I knew they liked, but I was also out of the way. As I scooted my derriere around on the blanket I felt something slide underneath me. I fished out an old National Geographic magazine and a newer Newsweek magazine. I decide National Geographic is far more interesting and has better pictures, so I open it up and pretend to read. Really, I am eavesdropping on the conversations near and far in the room.

A little ways away a blonde woman with multi-colored tinsel woven into her hair is laughing too loudly and saying “You don’t know about the monster!?” Her laugh is like a witch’s cackle and when she laughs she opens her mouth too big, showing the black spaces in her molars where she has had her cavities filled in. “Everyone knows about the monster. I don’t think there is anyone who lives on the lake who hasn’t seen it.” The man standing next to her grins with one side of his mouth and raises his eyebrows to his forehead signaling his disbelief. But he lets her continue.

“Yeah, Randy lost a tree to it at the edge of the lake. He says it looked like something gnawed through the tree but Jared says when he went over there with a chainsaw to cut it up that the base was splintered like something had rammed into it or knocked it over with a push.”

“It’s a good thing Randy only lost a tree to it and not one of his dogs or kids,” laughs the man with raised eyebrows.

The woman with tinsel in her hair frowns at him “That’s not funny, Jerry, next time someone might.”

“Well we should organize a search party for this monster of the lake and get it before it gets something more precious than a tree,” the man who is apparently named Jerry says laughing a bit.

“Funny you should mention that,” the woman continues, “we just organized a Neighborhood Watch and Catch committee. We plan on staking out the lake every night until we find it and trap it.”

“You aren’t going to kill it, are you!?” I practically screech.

All the adults in the vicinity turn to look at me, only just realizing I am there.

“Of course not, angel,” the woman smiles a kind of smile that tells me she is lying.

I frown and look out the window. There are ripples on the lake surface across the way that don’t look like they were caused by the wind.

I have been telling folks about that damned monster since this neighborhood was first built. But no one wanted to hear me out. Not until Randy lost his tree that is. I have been here from the start, you see. I have had time to see all the natural and unnatural goings on. The lake is unnatural, that is, it is man-made. I watched them dig it out and line it with rip-raff. I watched as the creeks fed into it and the water rose little by little. It took a couple years to fill it up. It would have took less time if the damned thing hadn’t broke in the hurricane that one year. But we had the damn reinforced and we haven’t had that problem again in twenty years. We also got a better pond management company to watch when the damn needs to be lifted and lowered, to monitor the fish population, to test the water, and more. So, when I told them I wanted them to catch a nuisance on the lake, at first they agreed. I was encouraged, and impressed, with their fast action. It took all of forty-eight hours for traps to appear along the lake edge. They never asked what exactly they were meant to be trapping but the cages were large enough for a fox. I had seen foxes in the neighborhood before too. I wasn’t happy about them either, but it was the monster we needed to get rid of. The foxes, at least, are natural. The monster ain’t. It is as unnatural as they come. It has water buffalo horns and a pig snout that it lifts just above the water and you can see its alligator eyes with their double eyelids blink in the dark because it is nocturnal. And before you go asking, no, I haven’t managed to get a picture of it, even though I have invested in night vision goggles and night photography lenses for my camera. I have laid in camo in different corners of the lake and stood to my knees in ice cold water trying to capture it on camera. But it is too wiley, you see. It knows what I am doing. It knows once there is evidence opinion will turn. And it could have continued to slip under the radar if it just hadn’t pushed over Randy’s tree. Randy really liked that tree.

Yeah, I guess you could say I took a liking to that tree. I planted it when we first moved in, oh, almost fifteen years ago. The lake had just finished being dug out and the water was rising. My wife, she has this thing for weeping willow trees. She says they are “just the most romantic thing.” So, I planted three of them for her along the water’s edge. They grew quickly and were soon towering as tall as the house. She was pleased. And I was pleased that she was pleased. I never paid much mind to Ms. Darlene’s talk of some Monster of the Lake. I had never so much as seen a bubble that couldn’t be accounted for. Anyway, what kind of monster would be in a man-made lake less than a couple decades old. Don’t those things hang out in ancient places and deep lochs like in Scotland? This here ain’t no Scotland. Just Eastern North Carolina. The monsters, according to Native American legends, are out west on Brown Mountain. In places like that the monsters may not be actual monsters but the lights that flicker up and down the mountain, they aren’t lit by men. Who or what lights them? Well, I don’t reckon I know. A man out in Shelby swears he saw a Sasquatch with red hair that curled at the ends. He also seemed a little drunk for his television interview, so I’m guessing that the Sasquatch was his own wife, who stood in the background with a frown and a whole bunch of red, curly hair. Now, I am not saying there ain’t monsters and ghosts and the unexplained out there. I am just saying it is rarer than people think and that it ain’t happening here. But sometimes it is easier to just go along with Ms. Darlene rather than listen to her go on and on.

I didn’t much believe the whole Monster of the Lake thing. The same as I don’t believe there is a man, or even a ghost for that matter, living in our attic. But just like the attic gives me the heebie-jeebies, the idea that there was something out on that lake terrified me. But I wasn’t going to take it lying down. Like Ms. Darlene, I had every intention of finding that monster, and preferably before she did, because I was going to make it see reason and go on somewhere else. And if I couldn’t make it see reason, I would have to catch it and take it somewhere else. Monster or no monster I couldn’t let Ms. Darlene kill it. And so, my monster hunting career began. I started by walking along the lake’s edge over and over, getting to know the place, memorizing where each large rock was placed, how different branches bowed out low over the water, the sounds and the movements above and below the surface. I learned to tell the difference between a catfish bubble and a carp bubble. I learned to tell the difference between a turtle V in the water and a duck V in the water. I peered under every dock and took stock of what was there. Curiously, I noted that under our dock there was a large collection of mussel shells. On more than one night I snuck out of the house to do my patrol in the dark, just in case anything was different. All I found were some bats sleeping under the eaves of our roof and a pair of eyes staring at me from the thickets next to the lake. But those eyes didn’t belong to a monster. From my daytime patrols I knew that deer frequently slept in that exact area from the way the brush was tamped down and padded after being laid on over and over again. I was beginning to doubt more and more this monster.

I was a part of the team that dug that lake. There ain’t no monsters there. I dug that lake, I introduced all the fish species, and I have taken my boat out twice a week to monitor environmental conditions. Man-made lakes require upkeep and vigilance to keep them healthy. My work is grounded in science and I can’t support the idea of the existence of some monster. If there were anything unaccounted for in that lake, I would know. I would know because the number of fish would be altered. I would know because the behavior of the birds would be altered. I would know because the chemical composition of the water would be altered. I would know because no one knows that lake better than I do. I would know because no one else seems the slightest bit interested in following the scientific method. But that Ms. Darlene is persistent. And loud. She is a very loud woman.

One day during my patrols I found a set of curious tracks. There were paws with narrow toes, one paw print was a little bigger than the other and had five toes and the slightly smaller one had four toes. They all faced forwards. And in between the paws was a line as if something had been dragged there. A tail? A body? A kill? I tried to follow the tracks but there were too many leaves along the lake edge. I tramped along in the mud a while longer and began to run through all the possibilities. From my observations on the lake, and from asking the pond manager who had a degree in forestry and wildlife, I ruled out racoons. Their pawprints always had five fingers and were wider and deeper than these prints were. I also ruled out opossums because their paw prints look strangely like a human’s. It was most definitely not a squirrel, I knew their tiny, narrow prints anywhere. And, obviously, it wasn’t a bird. I didn’t waste my time even running through those possibilities.

I began to sink deeper and deeper into the mud and ooze. The sun was starting to go down and cast a pinkish-purple color to the air. I knew it was time to head home. I sighed deeply. Maybe Ms.Darlene had made the whole thing up. Adults do that sometimes. Sometimes it is because they like to lie. Sometimes they just like to tell a story. Sometimes they have told a lie so often it is just like a story. Sometimes they don’t even know what they are talking about. I suppose that is why it is so frustrating to be accused of lying by adults. They do it too. And worse. Their lies were going to get a poor monster or an innocent animal captured and killed. Over what? A tree? I felt hot tears on my cheeks. And then, as I tried to wipe the water from my eyes, I saw it. There was a V pattern on the lake surface that didn’t belong to a turtle, a fish, a duck, or anything else. I wiped my eyes again and tried to blink out the tears. By the time my eyes were water free and focused on the spot where I had seen the V in the lake, it was already dissipating, like it had never been there to begin with. But there was no sign of any monster, no horns, no pig snout, no alligator eyes, no nothing. And then, I looked again. A little further out on the lake, rounding the peninsula, that same V in the water, heading towards a dock. Our dock. My dock. I had to get home.

I yanked my feet out of the mud with all my strength, but it was slow going as I tried to make my way back to dry ground. My foot slipped out from one of my galoshes I pulled so hard. I looked back at it, standing on one foot like the herons on the lake do sometimes, and decided it was worth the sacrifice. This might be my only chance. I fell face first at the line where mud becomes land because I yanked myself so hard from the muck. I tasted a little blood in my mouth. And I felt it dribble down my chin. But I kept going. I began to run, only I was missing a shoe, so my run was lopsided and my left side dropped down lower than my right side, pulling me off balance. And the mud on my remaining shoe was heavy and made me swing my leg like I had a skipper attached to it. But still I kept going. Some of the neighbors looked at me in disgust, others in amusement, as I made my way past them on the sidewalk. I didn’t much care what they thought of the mud covered, blood splattered, lopsided girl, running awkwardly in the twilight. The only thing that mattered was getting home.

As I pushed open the gate to our backyard, I heard a familiar cackle of a too-loud laugh. Ms. Darlene had beat me to it. I started to fume and I felt the tears in my eyes again.

“You leave it alone!” I yelled as loudly as I could, but it came out choked and guttural.

Ms. Darlene and my parents turned to look at me.

“Leave what alone, sweet pea?” my Dad asked innocently.

“The monster-leave it alone!” I yelled more confidently this time.

“Monster, what monster?” my Mom said

Then, I looked at the scene in front of me. The adults were in nice work-clothes and had wine glasses in their hands. They had no idea the monster was under the dock. I froze.

“Nothing. Nevermind.” I said quickly, but I saw how Ms. Darlene raised her eyebrows. She knew. She knew I knew.

I dodged around them and jumped down into the water.

“Good gracious, child, what are you doing! You’ll freeze to death!” my Mom called behind me. But I could tell from her tone it was all for show and she wasn’t actually all that concerned.

I trudged over to the dock and bent over at the waist. I was finally going to see the monster! It was getting dark, so I let my eyes adjust and held my breath. And it suddenly occurred to me that this monster might attack me. Briefly, I had second thoughts. But I was committed now. I trained my eyes into the dark, looking for a sign of movement, a paw, the glow of a nocturnal eye. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was nothing but the same pile of mussel shells as always.

From above me I heard Ms. Darlene laughing, “Did you find the monster, dear?”