“There’s something down there!”
Toby’s cry fractured the stillness, carrying all the way to inside, where his mother was enjoying her morning coffee. Heart pounding, Sheila came running - across the terrace, through the pines, over the lawn, and onto the weather-beaten dock that protruded into Lake George, like a misshapen finger. Her son was 25 or 30 feet out, paddling his inner tube for shore as if his life depended on it.
“What? What is it?”
“There’s . . . something . . . down there]” There was terror in her son’s voice. Pure panic.
“Toby, what’s wrong? What is it?”
But he could not answer this time, not intelligibly. He was too panicked. Struggling too hard to get to safety. Screaming and gasping for air.
Now everyone was on the dock. Mrs. Rockwell, the well-to-do elderly woman who owned Haven Island and its only house, an enormous place that must have had 10 bedrooms. Her daughter-in-law, Anne Richards, Sheila’s ‘60s college roommate. Anne’s son, Jack, who was turning 12 in just two days. All of them were on the dock, blinking the August sun away and wondering what on earth could be making Toby ruin such a perfect summer morning.
“Is his tube leaking?”
“Maybe there’s a big fish.”
“Or a turtle.”
“Can he see without his glasses?”
“I’m going in!” Jack declared.
With a flawless running start, he dove off the end of the dock, disappearing into the lake with barely a ripple. He resurfaced alongside Toby, got an arm lock around his inner tube, shouted for the younger boy to hold on, and started swimming for the dock. In less than a minute, he had him in.
Toby pulled himself out of the water, looked once behind him - as if he thinks something’s following him, his mother thought - and dashed inside without saying a word.
“Sorry,” Sheila said, excusing herself.
She found Toby in his room. He was on his bed, struggling to hold back the tears.
“What was it?” his mother demanded. “Tell me, Toby.”
Now that her son was safe, her concern was shading to anger. How lucky they were that Anne had invited them to stay on Haven, she’d been reminding him all week. How well behaved he must be, she’d repeated the whole long drive from Providence. Now this. This embarrassing little scene, played out in full view of their hosts, who obviously didn’t know what to make of it.
“What was it?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
But he did know.
Even with his near-sightedness - bad enough to have kept him out of Little League before he got these glasses he so hated - it was clear what Toby had seen.
He’d seen the creature Mahican Indians called Chiganook.
An underwater creature, with bloated green body, scales, bear paws, and the pointed black head of a water snake. A head with a tongue big enough to wrap around a person several times, according to the library book about monsters Toby had read before leaving for Lake George. Twice the size of a grown man. Doomed to an eternity underwater, prowling the depths of the lake and waiting . . . waiting . . .
“Mom,” Toby said later, after lunch, when everyone else had taken the boat to the mainland to shop. “We should call the police.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“We’ve gotta get out of here.”
“It was just your imagination,” Sheila said.
“But I saw it.”
“You didn’t see anything,” Sheila said firmly. “And that’s the last I want to hear about it. Got it? The end.”
As of that morning, Toby refused to go back into the water. No amount of coaxing could convince him. He spent the afternoon on the terrace, reading a Hardy Boys book. After supper, he excused himself from the table and went to his room, leaving his mother to apologize to their hosts for his odd behavior (“He just doesn’t seem himself,” she said. “I bet it’s a touch of the flu”).
For three days, they’d been guests on Haven Island. Three days of swimming and fishing from the dock and barbecues and nighttime Parcheesi. Three days of fun - except for this morning, and Jack.
Jack, who, like everyone else, didn’t believe for a second there was anything down there.
Jack, who could now boast that he’d saved Toby’s life.
Jack, almost three years older than him.
Jack, always trying to be cool.
I hate him, Toby thought. Know-it-all.
The truth was, Jack was cool. He was bigger than Toby, stronger, and he didn’t wear glasses. He was the starting pitcher for his Little League team. He could swim in water over his head - without a tube or the stupid life preserver Toby’s mother always insisted on. Back home, Jack had a girlfriend - who was going to be a freshman in high school. He could smoke a cigarette, inhaling it without coughing. And he boasted of being able to drink two whole beers without getting drunk.
“Chicken,” Jack had whispered at one point.
“Hardy Boys, huh?” he said another time. “Drag. Mega-drag.”
“Four-eyes,” he taunted on his way in for his customary evening swim.
I hate him, Toby thought. I wish he was dead.
Late that night, alone in his bed, his finger at the ready on the flashlight he’d lifted from the cupboard, Toby heard it.
Chiganook.
Coming out of the lake, the way Mahicans believed it did once every year.
Stalking its next victim. Choosing the one it wants most.
At first, Toby tried not to believe. Those sounds that seemed so loud - heck, they could be waves lapping the shore. A midnight motorboat somewhere in the distance. Or the wind. But the wind doesn’t make a splashing sound. Waves don’t come ashore, don’t slosh across the terrace, don’t stop at the front door, trying to figure out how to open it.
Why didn’t they lock it? Toby thought, terrified.
There was silence, broken only by snoring from the other bedrooms.
The door creaked.
Not me, Toby pleaded. Please - not me. Take someone else. Take . . . him.
And then there were footsteps. Coming up, stair by stair by stair. Reaching the top. A passing smell like dead fish. Down the corridor that led to Jack’s room. Silence while it - whatever it was - sized him up. Then the footsteps again, retreating. Back down the stairs. Across the terrace. Splashing as it re-entered the water, its home.
The next morning, there they were: faint but unmistakable footprints.
“See?” he said to his mother before breakfast.
“What?”
“Those footprints.”
“So?”
“Chiganook.” He whispered the word, as if saying it too loudly would have terrible consequences.
“Toby, you’ve got to stop this creature business,” Sheila said sternly. “You’ve got to stop this game.”
“It’s not a game.” He pointed at the stairs. “See? That’s where it was.”
“Those are human feet,” Sheila said, not admitting to him that she could not, in fact, imagine which particular human’s - that they were much bigger than any foot she’d ever seen. And much rounder.
“Everyone’s in danger!” Toby shouted.
“The legend says that once a year it has to eat a person - I think it wants Jack]” As much as Toby hated him, he didn’t think Jack deserved to be eaten.
“Toby,” Sheila barked, “I want this to stop] And I want it to stop now] One more word and we’re going home. Got it?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now get your trunks. You’re going swimming.”
Reluctantly, Toby obliged.
He took his time putting on his trunks; then, when he could stall no more, he walked to the end of the dock, where his mother was slathering Coppertone over her body (damn if she was going to return to Providence without a tan). Toby sat, careful not to get a splinter from the old dock. He dipped one foot in the water and then pronounced, as calmly as he could: “It’s too cold.”
“Too cold?” his mother said. “It’s 78 degrees. There’s the thermometer, tied around that post. See for yourself. Seventy-eight degrees. That’s bath water, for heaven’s sake.”
“Well . . . I just don’t feel like it.”
“Come on, Toby. You’re going in. We’re going to end this . . . creature thing once and for all. Now put your life jacket on.”
“That’s not fair! Jack doesn’t have to wear one!”
“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m going to be right here, watching. You don’t need the preserver - this one time. But you have to use the tube. Now go.”
Toby could see that she meant business. Moving glacially, he took off his glasses and tucked them inside one of his sneakers. Once again, the world was a semi-blur. He climbed down the ladder until the water was knee-level.
“All the way, Toby.” It’s like falling off a horse, Sheila rationalized. You get right back up, or risk never getting up again at all.
“Do I have to?” he pleaded.
“Yes.”
Toby eased himself down another step, and another, until his foot contacted muck. He recoiled - the muck felt the way he imagined the creature’s belly would. But Mom was watching. Mom wasn’t going to back down on this one. He wrapped his arms around the inner tube and paddled away from the dock, not daring to look down.
And, in spite of himself, was almost enjoying the water again.
“See?” Sheila said triumphantly. “Nothing to it at all.”
Nothing at all, indeed. Toby still couldn’t bring himself to look down, into the weeds - its weeds, its home - but the water was warm, and the sun was out, and it was summer vacation, and for the morning, at least, Jack was away, shopping with his mother.
It grabbed his ankle.
Coiled its tongue around his leg and started dragging him down.
Toby screamed. He could feel the slimy roughness of its scales. He could see its snake face, its giant snake eyes, looking at him, laughing at him, preparing to have him. His other ankle was ensnared. Down. Down, beneath the surface, toward the weeds, the water in his mouth, in his eyes, only a matter of time before it entered his lungs -
And then it let him go.
Just like that. He bobbed back up. His mother was in the water, swimming for him. She hadn’t seen anything except her son in distress.
And when she finally had him out of the water, and his crying had finally subsided, she vowed: Never again without a life jacket. Never.
This time, she punished Toby for talking about the creature (“Chin-whatever-it’s-called”). Lectured him about honesty, about little boys who cry wolf, and sent him to his room.
It was not a sentence that displeased him.
During the day, his room was safe.
From Chiganook, that is.
But not from Jack, who when he returned from shopping poked his head in and said: “Monster get you again? Chick-en!”
Toby said nothing.
Jack went on, squawking like a chicken.
Toby felt tears coming.
“Mega-chicken!”
Toby couldn’t help it. He cried.
It was a family tradition, Mrs. Rockwell reminded everyone after supper. On their 12th birthday, Rockwells since before the turn of the century had made their momentous first solo swim to Partridge Isle, a quarter-mile away.
Jack had already been making the swim regularly since three summers before - when he was Toby’s age, he pointed out - but tradition was tradition, his grandmother said, and that was that. He would swim. Since thunder squalls were forecast for tomorrow, the big day, Mrs. Rockwell saw no good reason why the landmark couldn’t be passed tonight.
AND SO, on the eve of his 12th birthday, as the sun was still high over the horizon, a smiling Jack strode to the water.
“Cheers!” said his grandmother, sipping champagne. “Happy birthday!”
“Ready?” said his mother. She was in the boat, ready to follow him and bring him back when he’d reached Partridge, which was uninhabited except for birds.
Sheila had dragged Toby out of his room and onto the dock with her. He did not want to watch . . . hated the idea . . . but he had no choice. In a whisper, when they were alone after supper, his mother had told him it was come or be spanked. It had been years since she’d made such a threat (which she had no intention of fulfilling), but it had also been years since she’d been so frustrated with her son, normally so well behaved. She couldn’t threaten to keep him out of the water, or to cut short their vacation - Toby would welcome those punishments. Besides, she wanted to stay at least until the weekend, when her husband would join them for the Rockwells’ annual croquet tournament, said to be the biggest party of the year on Lake George.
“Ready!” Jack announced.
Don’t! Toby thought but didn’t say.
“Set!” said Jack’s mother.
“Go!” said Mrs. Rockwell, hoisting the champagne bottle over her head.
Jack’s strokes were strong, sure, and in no time he was halfway to Partridge Isle.
“Such a marvelous swimmer!” cried his grandmother.
“Excellent,” said Sheila. Beside her, Toby cast his glance at his feet. He was ashamed.
“I suppose I should head over to fetch him now,” said Anne, starting the Evinrude. “Not that he couldn’t swim back by himself,” she added, with no small measure of maternal pride.
The motor masked Jack’s first scream.
From the dock, it was impossible to determine why he went under the first time. Probably he’s just being playful, his mother thought. He does so love to swim underwater.
By the second time, a crisis was apparent.
“My God, he’s drowning!” shrieked Mrs. Rockwell, dropping her champagne. He was thrashing wildly, churning up the water like the victim of a shark attack. His mother raced toward him in the boat. As the motor’s noise receded on the shore, Toby could hear Jack’s cry:
“There’s something . . . down. . . there!”
It was only seconds before Anne reached the spot where he’d gone under for the last time.
Already, the ripples were subsiding.
His body - at least, the bits and pieces that the dental charts indicated were Jack’s body - wasn’t found until two days later, when two locals came across it while fishing one of Partridge’s secluded lagoons. Jack was belly up, bloated, gray, weighing less than a quarter of what he should have weighed, according to the medical examiner’s scales.
They were quite the characters, these two locals, fond of whiskey and a good story, and not the least averse to pulling a leg every now and then. And so naturally no one believed them when they told what else they’d seen, staring up at them from the weedy bottom of the lagoon: some kind of creature, green, with scales and the black head of a snake, seemingly smiling.