Secrets So Sinister
By R.A. Jetter
“Yeah, how?” Dianna asked, watching the two boys stand chest to chest.
“OK Tommy, you come over to my house, stay over tomorrow night. We’ll get up early before the sun rises and watch… it’ll come out. I promise.”
“What about me?” Dianna asked.
“You can’t. We don’t want a ‘girl’ staying overnight,” Sammy said. “But you can come down to the lake with us on Saturday, meet us under the bridge right after lunch.”
“Yeah, that’s OK,” Tommy said. “Maybe we should have pictures. Can you shoot them with your new digital camera.”
“Yeeeaaahhh, then we can make scary postcards and send them to our friends. Show them what we found.”
“Cool,” Tommy said, “we can alter the size of the snake on your computer, make it look forty feet long.”
“Can you make some for me, too?” Dianna asked.
“An’, an’ we can stand over it like some of those old hunting photos in your Dad’s really old National Geo’s… the ones of all those guys posing with their foot on the head of the animal they shot in Africa.” Tommy added.
“Oh, way too cool. But first we have to get pictures of the snake.”
“OK. I’ll stay over tomorrow night, I’ll ask Mom,” Tommy said. “She’ll let me. I know.”
“Can you do pictures for me?” Dianna asked. Her attention turned to dried wildflowers lining the shore. Breaking the stems, she bundled several different kinds together.
“What are you going to do with those old dead weeds, Di?”
“They aren’t dead,” Dianna retorted. “Besides, Mom said if we put flowers in a glass of water they’ll start growing again. I’m going to take them home and grow them.”
“Yeah, sure. If that’s true, then I can grow those rabbit bones into a new rabbit, Sammy, gimme that skull.”
“No way,” Sammy yelled, turning and running through the brush, back toward the path. “I’m studying it with my microscope. You ain’t getting it.”
Tommy ran after him, yelling and laughing, both of them forgot about Dianna.
She clutched her flowers and ran after them. A broken branch tripped her mid stride. She fell face down into the brackish water. It covered her face, hair and yellow blouse. She sat up, screamed and started sobbing.
Tommy and Sammy stopped when they heard her scream; “The snake! It’s got her. It’s eating her.”
“Get a big stick to beat it. Hurry.” Sammy said, struggling to break a branch.
When they found her, Dianna was sitting, her legs crossed, pulling slimy moss from her hair and sobbing uncontrollably. Moss hung from her hair and covered her face and eyes. Both boys burst into laughter. “She’s the funniest looking ‘monster’ I’ve ever seen.” Her sobbing added to their hysterics.