A RED CANOE BOAT was docked on the shore, and Andy ran for it, even though his limbs were shaking. Often, he would stumble on the dirt, but he would quickly pick himself up for fear those evil flowers would find their way to him. He could still hear their moaning cries, each voice distinct from the other.

With his frail, bony, and shaky fingers, Andy fumbled around the rope's complicated knots and untied it from the post on the dock. The boy stepped carefully into the canoe and sat down. He lifted the oars and pushed against the dock to move the boat to the water. As he rowed farther and farther into the middle of the lake, Blooms Garden faded from sight as yellowing vines curtained the path towards the maze-like garden.

The leaves on the tall, green trees surrounding the lake blew gently in the wind, and the steady breeze managed to ease his frantic heart of the thumping pain.

Despite the aching of his tender muscles, Andy continued paddling the oars while his neck craned to the opposite shore, never letting his eyes leave his goal. The silver moonlight cast a spotlight on the shore as if encouraging Andy that a prize of guaranteed safety would be rewarded after this hardship.

But after that, what now? He wondered to himself, worrying too much about this journey's outcome. How would Andy find Elsie, Hex, and Chip? How could a powerless kid be able to continue on this journey? In all honesty, Andy only managed to stay alive because of Elsie. He was good at nothing but tinker, creating wild inventions that he could not even use in a situation like this, memorizing paragraphs from textbooks, and solving complex math problems. The monsters in this world wouldn't ask him first what America's capital was before eating him! Or what the square root of one hundred was.

Think, Andy. Think! he told himself. I thought you were smarter and better than most kids your age?

Andy continued rowing as the soft water danced him in smooth jazz of whistling night air. Even if his arms felt like snapping into two and his breath was now coming out as heavy puffs, the young boy was relentless as he kept going.

The lake was as silver as a diamond flame. No sound rang out from the shimmering emptiness of space around it. Unruffled by wind or rain, it was still and restful. The only sounds were the bumbling of bees and the heavy echo of a raven cawing.

Andy froze, his breath tied into a hitch. Raven? It brought a sense of dread just with the sound of that bird. He could still remember, as clear as a polished mirror, how those ominous birds attacked with their pincer-sharp claws and how they bore their bright red eyes hungrily at them.

He swiveled his head like a creaky, rusting robot. A single crow, much scarier and bigger with falling black feathers, was perched on a thick branch. Its wide beaks were parted open, and gooey and smelly saliva dripped from it.

A small whimper escaped from his chapped lips as he contemplated whether to row back or continue heading in his destined direction. The boy pinned the bird with his eyes. He imagined he had powers to make someone frozen on the spot just by looking at them.

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.