Andy thinks he's lost forever when his aunt's chimney transports him and his dog, Chip, into the magical world of Emerraine. To get home, he must save the Hearthstone Village with Elsie, a young witch, and her Familiar against a dark plot that has b...
Then suddenly, he stopped and peered out to the lake. "Who's there?" he asked as he heard deep evil laughter that sent ripples across the waters. "You were probably imagining it, Andy." He laughed at himself but was silenced by another rumbling laughter, now sending much bigger waves that rocked Andy's canoe boat.
The laughter was heard again, but this time, it was louder. Something was coming towards him. Andy gasped. Further out in the lake was a swirl of dark blue water! It almost looked like a whirlpool, and it was heading where he was.
"Oh, no! What was that thing?" Andy gripped the paddles and doubled the speed of his rowing. It was coming closer, faster. And in the middle of the whirlpool, something big and bulbous was emerging. When it was entirely out of the water, Andy froze at the horrendous sight in front of him.
A morbidly obese octopod, about fifteen feet tall, hovered over the churning whirlpool. It had a deep purple skin mainly covered with moss, and from the waist were twelve tentacles dotted by suckers that were oozing with pus. Its irregularly shaped bulbous head carried eight obsidian black eyes and a pincer mouth.
The monster snapped his jaw as his tentacles wriggled violently, and the whirlpool swirled in overdrive. Before Andy could prepare himself, one of the tentacles rose in the sky and knocked Andy's canoe boat in one vertical whiplash, sending the boy flying and reducing the boat into nothing but small chopped pieces of wood.
He crashed into the water in a heavy splash. Andy flailed his limbs in desperation to reach the surface. As his head broke out of the surface, he sputtered some water and desperately gasped for air. He wiped his eyes free of water, but to his horror, directly in front of him was a shadowy figure of the giant monster octopus. Andy had never seen as scary as him. Heck, he had never watched ghost and monster films because he never once believed in things created only by human imaginations.
Andy screamed, and turning, he tried to swim away, but the monster wrapped its slippery tentacles around his tiny frame. Up close, the monster's foul smell made Andy gag, and his eyes tear up. He struggled to release himself, but he was running out of air. The octopus brought him closer and closer to its mouth. The monster's pincer mouth snapped at him. Now that he was up close to the monster's face, inside its mouth was a clump of worm-like tendrils.
Andy punched and kicked his arms, but his attacks only bounced off the jelly-like substance of the octopus' body. He screamed for help and called the names of everyone he knew, but he had lost all hope when he was just mere inches away from his death. He would be gone too soon, and his parents wouldn't know. Had Elsie thought of him as a hero who would save Hearthstone Village? He couldn't even save himself!
The edges of his vision started to blacken. Everything around him sounded muffled to his ears. Maybe it was a near-death hallucination, but Andy thought he heard a heavy pounding of paws on the ground. It reminded him of when the wolves attacked them in the cave.
Then, before he completely lost all consciousness, a flash of shadow filled his line of vision. Moments later, his body was falling fast, and the cold water enveloped him once more. Andy flapped his arms and kicked his legs to reach the water's surface, coughing.
The boy lost his eyeglasses, and he couldn't rely on his blurred vision to believe what he was seeing right now. The monster octopus let out an ear-piercing shriek while all of his twelve tentacles flail wildly in the air. One of those tentacles was cut in half, and black blood gushed from the big wound.
Beside the monster was another massive figure in the shape of a dog, furry and mottled gray. It had one of its ears missing. The missing part of the octopus' decapitated limb was clamped in its mouth.
The newcomer spits out the wriggling tentacle. Its hackles rose, and its muzzle curled back to expose pearl-white fangs. Ears shoved forward, and tail held high, the creature pounced on the monster once more. The octopus' shriek turned a notch higher, and all twelve tentacles whipped violently to take a hit on its attacker, but it was so fast it couldn't land a blow on its body. Andy remained watching as he pulled himself up on a plank of wood drifting nearby.
Then, out of nowhere, a piping howl—long and mournful—joined the pain-filled cries of the octopus. The octopus twitched as if something was attacking him from the inside, and one by one, his eyes exploded like a bursting light bulb.
The monster stumbled backward. All tentacles covered his face as if to protect it. The octopus slowly descended to the depths through the whirlpool before vanishing. In less than five minutes, the lake was back to its peaceful state, and the figure of the large dog swam towards him.
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