“Who?” Jessie asked.
“Nicole, come on,” a woman’s voice said.
“I can’t tell you right now. I have to go. But I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Meet me at the beach tomorrow morning!” Nicole said in a low, rapid voice. Then she ran out the library door.
“So the monster is real,” said Violet. “Oh, no!”
“We’d better get to work doing research,” said Henry. “The more we know, the better.”
The Aldens searched for information in the lodge’s library for a long time. But the library was small, so they didn’t find very much.
“We should go,” said Benny the next morning when he had finished his big breakfast in the lodge dining room.
“Whoa. Where do you want to go in such a hurry?” asked Grandfather.
“To the beach,” said Benny.
Grandfather took a sip of coffee. “Don’t go in the water until I get there,” he said. “There’s no lifeguard.”
“Okay,” said Benny.
The Aldens put on their bathing suits, put on T-shirts and shorts, picked up their towels, and went down to the beach. At one end of the half-moon of shore was a small dock with four canoes pulled up onto the land next to it. At the other end Nicole sat waiting for them.
She jumped up when she saw them. “You’re here at last!” she cried dramatically.
“Have you seen Lucy?” asked Benny. He put his hand up to shade his eyes and peered out at the lake.
“No. But Carl Nielson has!” said Nicole.
“Carl Nielson? We met him yesterday,” said Henry. “He’s the one who told us about Lucy.”
Nicole’s face fell. “Really? So you know all about what happened,” she said.
“No,” Jessie said. “He just told us about Lucy. He wouldn’t tell us if he had seen her or not.”
“And then Nora told us there was no monster,” added Violet.
“Nora’s saying that because she’s afraid the monster will scare away the guests at Lucille Lodge,” said Nicole.
“Not many people are staying here,” observed Henry. “Maybe they are scared to come visit.”
“Maybe,” said Nicole. She shrugged. “I wish I could see the monster, like Carl did.”
“Where did he see it?” asked Henry.
“What did it look like?” asked Jessie at the same time.
“Did it chase him?” Benny chimed in.
“Over by the big rock across the lake. It had a small head and a long neck and a sort of hump on its back. He was in his boat fishing and it tried to turn him over.”
“How did he escape?” asked Violet, horrified.
“He threw Lucy all of his fish. While she was eating them, he rowed back to shore and jumped out of the boat. When he looked back, Lucy was gone,” Nicole told them.
“Maybe she wasn’t trying to turn him over,” said Benny. “Maybe she was just trying to play.”
“Well, I don’t want to ever play with a monster,” said Nicole. “But I’d like to see her!”
“Me too,” said Benny.
“I would, too,” said Jessie, and Henry nodded.
Violet said, “Maybe I wouldn’t.”
“But Violet, if we could see her, we could prove she exists,” Henry argued.
Violet didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lots of people have seen Nessie and Champ and that didn’t prove that they were real.”
“Nessie and Champ?” asked Nicole. She listened carefully as the Aldens explained what they had read.
“We thought we should do some research,” Jessie concluded.
“Research . . .” repeated Henry, looking thoughtful, “research.” Then he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! We have to have proof that the monster exists. Scientific proof.”
“But how do we do that?” asked Jessie.
“I’m not sure,” said Henry. “But maybe we could ask Dr. Lin.”
“Because she’s a scientist?” asked Benny.
“That’s right, Benny,” his brother answered.
Violet said, “But we don’t know Dr. Lin. What if she doesn’t want to help us?”
Nicole spoke up. “She’s not very friendly.”
“We won’t know until we try,” said Jessie. “Where is she staying, Nicole?”
“In Elk Cabin,” said Nicole. “She picked the last one at the very end.”
“Come on, then,” said Jessie. “Let’s go.”
Dr. Lin was just coming out of her cabin as the Aldens walked up the trail to her door. The Aldens remembered seeing her reading in the dining room.
“Hello,” called Henry.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She closed the door behind her. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts, heavy socks, heavy boots, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a cap. She had a pack on her back, and a camera and a pair of binoculars around her neck.
“We wanted to ask you a few questions,” Jessie said.
“About what?” Dr. Lin asked. “Who are you?”
“We’re the Aldens. We’re here for a visit. And this is Nicole —” Henry began to say, but Dr. Lin interrupted.
“Never mind. I know who Nicole is. And I don’t need to know who the rest of you are. I haven’t got time.” Dr. Lin pushed past them and started walking up the path away from her cabin.
“Wait,” said Benny. “It’s important. It’s about the monster.”
Dr. Lin stopped. Slowly she turned. “Did you say ‘monster’?”
“Yes. The one Carl Nielson says he saw,” Nicole said. “Do you know anything about it?”
“Why would I?” asked Dr. Lin, frowning. She started to turn away. “Besides, monsters don’t exist.”
Henry said quickly, “But if you wanted to prove that one did exist, how would you do it? Scientifically, I mean.”
That surprised Dr. Lin. “Oh,” she said. “Hmmm. Well, you’d need evidence. Scientific evidence. Castings of the tracks of the animal. A photograph. Tufts of fur. Or the animal itself.”
“Alive?” asked Benny doubtfully.
Dr. Lin shrugged. “If possible . . . but I can’t tell you how to catch a monster. I have serious field research to do.”
She turned again and walked quickly up the trail.
The Aldens and Nicole looked at one another. Nicole said, “I have my camera. But we have to find the monster to make a picture.”
“It might be easier to find Lucy’s tracks,” said Henry. “But what’s a casting?”
“We can go back to the library at the lodge,” suggested Jessie. “Maybe we can look it up there.”
“Here,” said Henry. “This book talks about how to make casts of animal tracks. You can use all kinds of materials — like wax. You melt it into the track and when it hardens, you have a cast of the animal’s footprint.”
Jessie read over Henry’s shoulder. “Listen to this! It says that you can tell all kinds of things from a footprint — like how tall the animal is and whether it walks on two legs or four.”
“We have lots of wax,” said Benny excitedly. “We have all those candles in our cabin.”
Violet nodded and took the book back to its place on the shelf.
Just then, they heard angry voices outside the half-open door of the library.
“I don’t care, Drew. That’s one of the best things about Lucille Lodge. It’s not some fancy tourist hotel. The people who come here really love the mountains. They don’t come to watch TV and order room service.”
“Nora, be reasonable. We need to attract more business. And the way to do that is to modernize. Tear down the cabins and build new ones that have running water and —”
“No. We have enough business. We have enough money to live on. What more do we want?” Nora asked.
Drew said, “You’re impossible.”
“If you want more money, I’m surprised you didn’t think we should sell it when we got that offer,” Nora asked.
“Maybe we should have,” Drew snapped. They heard heavy footsteps stomp away. Then they heard Nora sigh and walk slowly after her husband. |