What Happens at the Lake

By Victoria Shanks

I was but a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old, the summer I worked grounds crew at Camp Sand Lake.

Sand was a given, being smack in the Mojave Desert, and it would’ve been omitted altogether in an alternate universe where “Camp Lake” made good branding. The eponymous lake, however, was a mystery. How deep was it? What fed it? Why did growls drift from the basin on still nights?

By July I’d convinced myself the growls were my imagination. Better to focus on useful things, like not exploding the cardboard compactor.

Until the morning my grounds foreman caught me mid-clomp through the machine shop to the daily briefing.

“Samantha,” he said, “new job assignment.”

I turned, swallowing a most people call me Sam. “Yessir?”

“Assistant Pest Control Technician.”

I didn’t know we had a pest control technician—let alone an assistant—and based on his losing battle with a smile, he read that on my face. “You’ll be helping Mateo.”

Mateo Espinoza. A rangy hatchet-faced, amber-eyed twentysomething who looked thirtysomething. Hair like baling wire on a mission. Aside from being the coolest person at Sand Lake, nobody seemed to know what he did for a job.

It took some doing, but I scraped my jaw off the floor. “Neat.”

“Yep,” came Mateo’s voice behind me. “Sam, right?”

I stammered an affirmative, sandwiching myself in the bed of his ancient pickup between the cab and a mountain of ant killer pellet sacks.

“So.” He raised his voice as the truck squeaked into gear. “You afraid of blood?”

Apparently, pest control entailed more than bugs. “I hunt with my dad.”

In the 5 a.m. gloom I barely made out his approving nod.

We turned onto a road leading to the nether regions of Sand Lake. Not another peep from my new boss, so I made myself comfortable among the ant killer sacks.

I’d just read the “Environmental Hazard: this product is highly toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates” part of the nearest label when the pickup lurched to a halt.

Mesquite billowed like smoke around us, if smoke bristled with thorns and wanted to kill you. A cabin squatted among the brush, siding flaking off and windows boarded.

The front door, though, looked new. As did its four deadbolts.

Mateo jumped out and got to work on the locks. I kept a safe distance. Serial killer shacks were above my pay grade.

To his credit, Mateo didn’t breathe a word about me entering the Little Shack of Horrors. Just tromped in, emerged with a garbage bag in each hand, and dropped them in the sand outside the door. “Load ‘em up.”

Heavier than they looked; whatever was inside poked out the plastic in bizarre ways. On my last trip I could take the curiosity no longer. I clambered into the truck along with my haul and untied the nearest bag’s drawstrings.

Fur?

“There’s something you should…” Mateo rounded the side of the truck just in time to see me fish out a dead jackrabbit. “… know.”

I let it flop back in with its compatriots and wiped my hand on my jeans. “You don’t say, bud.”

Whether or not he knew what “bud” translated to in Southern-ese, it gave him pause.

He sighed, lifting his baseball cap to run a hand through his hair. “First you gotta swear—”

“That’s against the Ten Commandments,” said my mouth before my brain could intervene.

“Look.” He gave a tired smile. “What happens at the lake, stays at the lake.”

I folded my arms. “What happens at the lake?”

“Pest problem.” He cleared his throat. “Hard to explain.”

“Then show me.” What kind of pest required a jackrabbit buffet?

A death-quiet ride later, we parked by the lakeshore. Sunrise stained the water scarlet.

Mateo grabbed the first two bags of jackrabbit. With a backward glance at me, he loped to the water’s edge and… chucked one in?

The water rippled closed around the bag. A bubble broke the surface, then another. Then the center of the lake lurched upward into a writhing tentacle of… water.

Oh.

He threw the other bag. The tentacle split into a hand huge as the truck, snatching the bag midair and dragging it into the depths.

That… would definitely be a problem.

“Got to feed it so it doesn’t eat campers.” Mateo jogged back and gathered up three rabbit bags at once. “Hard to catch enough by myself. That’s where you come in.”

I nodded, staring numbly at the drifting-ever-closer hand.

“I like rabbits, don’t get me wrong.” He sent his final offering into the deep. “But I like campers more.”

The hand still waited.

“So, if it doesn’t get enough food—” I began.

The hand loomed skyward and slammed down on Mateo. He thrashed inside the watery fist before it retreated under the surface with a splash.

Taking him with it.

Holy cow.

What do I—

The ant killer label flashed before my eyes. Extremely hazardous to aquatic invertebrates.

Do man-eating lakes count?

I slung an ant killer sack over my shoulder and sprinted to the water. Heart pounded—if this doesn’t work—

Ripping the sack open, I dumped the entire thing in.

The whole lake recoiled, and a roar split the air. Bubbles boiled the surface. Gotta run—feet felt like concrete—

The watery fist shot out of the waves and crashed onto the shore, dissolving to reveal a gasping Mateo.

My now-Jell-O knees gave out and I sank onto the sand beside him. “Holy cow!”

“You nearly—” He hacked up a mouthful of water. “Nearly got promoted, kid.”

My gaze never left the lake, smooth as a mirror once more. “Does the health code inspector… uh… have a problem with this?”

“As long as it tests negative for cyanobacteria, he doesn’t care.” Mateo managed a shaky pair of finger-guns. “Like I said. What happens at the lake…”

I couldn’t help but grin. “… stays at the lake.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Victoria Shanks is the oldest of five siblings raised on creek mud, the Bible, and Bigfoot stories. Now she writes quirky fantasy and science fiction about faith and family, both found and blood; stories to remind her readers that they are never alone. You can find Victoria deep in bluegrass country, consuming too much caffeine while muttering to her black cat, Fish.

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