Lloyd Dobson, my middle school bully, was the first one to see it. Had the circumstances been different, I doubt anyone would’ve believed what happened, though it was undeniable we encountered something on that trip. He and his buddy, Ray Mathers put me through hell for years; me and the only friends I had, along with anyone else who was unfortunate enough to have been born smaller and weaker than them.
I didn’t even see Lloyd until it was all over; the events that still weigh heavily on my subconscious. I barely registered the condition he was in at the time, given the fact that I was out of it myself. After I heard the whole story, though, I never would’ve wished that on anyone, even if they had made life hard for me for years.
It was mid-March of 2014, with only a few months of 8th grade left, when we took that field trip. It was a fairly small school I attended back then, with even the full graduating classes consisting of maybe 30-40 students in all. The high school was in another complex, but it shared the grounds with the junior high and kindergarten, which was one of the reasons I could never escape my bullies.
I remember begging my parents to send me to a different school, but that would’ve required moving to a different town altogether; something they couldn’t afford to do on a whim. I was well aware of that, even when I would spend hours crying after getting off the bus, but I still hoped things could’ve been different.
I never held it against my folks, mind you; they did everything in their power. They both kicked up a fuss at the school, threatened lawsuits, and the like if Principal Marx didn’t address the problem, but that only made things worse. Yeah, they calmed down for a few weeks after Marx read them the riot act, but after a while, they got back to it, far more relentless than ever.
I pretended things had gotten better to my parents, playing off the cuts and bruises as playground accidents and the like, but I knew they knew things weren’t great. Dad had dealt with bullies when he was a kid, so he likely had a good idea of what was going on, but I convinced them not to pay another visit to the school. I dreaded to think how bad it would’ve gotten if they had called in reinforcements and all.
Jace Banks and Bella Sweetin were the only friends I had through kindergarten and middle school, so we sat together on the bus as we headed out to Lake Sakakawea. It was only a 30-minute trip to get there from our small North Dakota town middle school, but that was more than enough time for Lloyd and Ray to give us a quick preview of the fun they had in store for us.
While I had been out to the lake before, given that there wasn’t much of anything else of interest nearby, even familiar places were so much more exciting when they were taking the place of some hours spent at school. Of course, it would surely have been more fun without the company of the biggest asshats in our class, but that didn’t take away from my excitement.
Most of the other kids were cutting up or gazing out the windows at the beautiful scenery, but while we attempted to keep to ourselves, the constant barrage of spit wads and smack talk kept us from being able to relax and enjoy the ride. Gabriel Baker, our homeroom teacher who sat at the front of the bus, tried his best to turn a blind eye to the loud teens at his rear, but he would make regular empty threats in a meager attempt to calm things down.
He was always a pushover, Mr. Baker, so everyone knew he wasn’t about to have the driver “turn this damn bus around,” regardless of the visible vein throbbing above his temple. If I couldn’t take him seriously, I knew Mathers and Dobson wouldn’t either.
We still laughed and joked about all of the things that made us ‘freaks’ in the eyes of our peers, regardless of the endless mockery. Even if the trip felt a good deal longer than the 30 minutes or so that had gone by, we were pulling up to the parking area off to the side of the lake before we knew it.
I felt my face burn when Ray pushed Bella down the steps as she walked off the bus, but Jace caught her before her face planted into the gravel. Fortunately, Baker actually paid attention to what happened, looking as flushed as I felt at the time. He warned the chuckling duo of douchebags that he would be keeping an eye on them, and even though they laughed the whole thing off, they surprisingly kept their distance from us after that.
Sure, we could see them staring at us, talking shit from a distance over the next hour or so, but I wasn’t about to allow them to stop me from having a good time. For a school field trip, it was actually quite relaxed. We didn’t have any sort of itinerary or anything, no obligations, or chosen path to follow. We weren’t even required to stay in a huddle, so everyone scattered to their normal groups, taking in the beautiful scenery.
It wasn’t until a couple of hours had passed, as Baker was asking around about Ray and Lloyd’s whereabouts, that I even noticed they had disappeared.
“They probably just snuck off to smoke,” Bella said, rolling her eyes.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll find ‘em drowned, or something,” Jace said, giving us a laugh.
Normally, I wasn’t one to wish anything bad on anyone, even those I don’t care for, but I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if either of those two pricks had washed up dead on the riverbank. In the end, I think that may have been a better outcome than what happened. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but even Lloyd Dobson didn’t deserve that.
After another forty-five minutes passed by with no trace of the two bigger kids, Baker looked like he was getting pretty concerned. Regardless of whether or not the school, and the world, for that matter, would be a better place without them, they were under his watch. There’s no denying he’d be in a shit ton of trouble if he lost any of the teens who were in his care, even those who were likely to grow up to be the next Gacy or Dahmer.
Our teacher gathered up the rest of us and made us stay together while he took a head count, to make sure Dobson and Mathers were the only two unaccounted for. Once he was satisfied, he and Umber, the bus driver, headed out to search for the missing asshats.
“Those two always gotta be the center of attention,” Jace said, shaking his head with his eyes rolling.
“Hopefully,” I said, almost under my breath, “they found a hill to tumble down and broke every damn bone in their bodies.”
“Damn, dude,” Bella said with a chuckle, “little harsh, huh?”
“Wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit,” I said bluntly.
Sure, I felt a little embarrassed when Bella called me out, especially since she only laughed when Jace made the crack about them drowning, but those two could go to hell, for all I cared. They had gone to great lengths to make life miserable for any of the weaker kids, ever since kindergarten.
Even if their home life was a trainwreck, inspiring them to lash out in any way they could, wasn’t my problem. All I knew was that I hated them with the passion of a thousand suns. That was until the screaming began.
I couldn’t tell if it was Ray or Lloyd who made that horrified shriek; it may have been Baker of Umber, for all I could tell from the sound of it. Whoever it was, it silenced every one of us who remained huddled in the group, awaiting our teacher’s return.
“OH GOD!” a voice howled from a distance, “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, HELP ME!”
There was murmuring through the group, accompanied by wide eyes and shocked expressions. While nobody exactly jumped at the opportunity to assist whoever was yelling out, I can’t deny that my curiosity was practically bubbling over.
When I ran for the treeline, intent on seeking out the source of the terrified wailing, I can’t honestly say where my mind was at the time. For some reason, I didn’t even factor in that the assholes could be playing some sort of prank, just to make me look stupid in front of everyone. I think my curiosity overruled my common sense at the time; my instincts took the wheel, not allowing me to give it a second thought.
I heard my friends call out to me as I sprinted between the trees, but I was so focused on that haunting sound, I paid little attention to them. Even after the screams softened to more of a constant moaning, I could tell it wasn’t far ahead. As I drew closer to another parting in the trees; one that looked as though it led to another section of the lake we came to visit, I allowed the throbbing in my side to slow my approach.
“What the hell, man!?” Jace said as he and Bella came up behind me.
“You nuts?” Bella asked, panting for breath, “you don’t run towards shit like this, dingus!”
“But what if they’re hurt?” I said, choosing not to reveal the other side of my reasoning for running this way.
“Then, we call someone: 911, or some shit. We don’t go lookin’ for trouble, Billy,” Jace said, slugging me on the shoulder.
With that whimpering just ahead; maybe twenty or thirty feet off, if I had to guess, I just looked in the direction I was heading, then back at my friend’s. They both looked lost for words, glancing at one another, seemingly having some sort of silent debate, before Bella gave a shuddering sigh.
“Okay,” she said, “but if you get me killed, I’m kicking your ass!”
Leading the way, I pushed through the brush between the trees, stepping out to the riverbank. Baker, it seems, was the one providing the ambient moaning, as he writhed on the gravelly ground, holding his hands over his eyes.
He didn’t look hurt; not that I could tell anyway, but there was definitely something wrong with him. I crouched down beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder, which he instantly jerked himself away from, scraping his legs against the ground to push his body from me. With another attempted touch of my hand, he began to scream again, folding himself into the fetal position with his back to me.
“Mr. Baker. It’s me, Billy Johnson, your student. What’s…”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” he yelled, again scraping his body across the ground; flopping around like a fish out of water.
“What the actual…” Jace said before his words trailed off.
When I turned to see him staring at the water, steadily inching towards it, I couldn’t tell what had inspired his eyes to grow so large and his jaw to fall limp.
“It’s coming back!” Baker said, his screams replaced by mad laughter, “you’ll see…”
“What…”
I turned to look at the man who had finally raised himself, almost stunned as his hands slipped from his face.
“Then you won’t…”
I felt my jaw unhinge when I saw the blank and lifeless, milky-white eyes of my homeroom teacher, staring into oblivion. The skin around his eyelids was torn and split from where it looked as though his fingernails had dug into the flesh, but there was nothing behind his empty gaze.
“What is that?” Jace asked from somewhere outside my erratic thoughts.
When I looked up to see him and Bella both, gazing almost entranced at the water, I turned to see what had their undivided attention. When my eyes met the almost hypnotic, vibrant red that shimmered beneath the afternoon sun, I was barely aware of getting back to my feet, to join my friends as they paced toward the rapids.
“NO!” a voice called out, almost pulling my transfixed glare from the eerie, yet beautiful sight.
As something began to rise from beneath the rippling surface of the lake; something I still steadily approached, I felt my body colliding with the ground once more, with the wind knocked out of me. Whether my legs had somehow given out at the sight of whatever was freeing itself from the water, or that something else left me splayed out on the gravel, coughing and wheezing, I didn’t know at the time. Either way, once my eyes were distracted from the mesmerizing sight, I felt my senses begin to return.
“Don’t look at it!” a familiar voice said, pushing me back on my ass before I could pick myself back up.
“What the fuck, dude!?” Bella barked, having joined me on the ground at some point.
A thick and muscled arm wrapped around me, while another shielded my friend from whatever was happening. When I heard a howling sound of madness, emitting from the mouth of the friend who did not share my company on the ground, I fought against the one who held me in place, desperate to reach Jace.
“Oh God…oh Jesus…” my friend whimpered before another shrill squeal echoed from his mouth.
“Let…me…go,” I begged, battling harder against my subduer with every word.
“You can’t!” he said, “you can’t look at it!”
“But, Jace…”
“He’s already gone. Too late for him now…it’ll be over in a moment, just…”
“NO!” I screamed, launching my knee into the gut of whoever held me on the ground.
As a horrendous roaring sound joined the horrified wails of my friend, I felt my legs betray me as I attempted to lift myself back up. When I noticed it was Ray Mathers who still tried to pull me back down to where he crouched, holding a writhing Bella in place, I grew certain this was some bizarre stunt or prank, designed to make us feel like idiots when the curtain was pulled back.
With that, I was more determined than ever to reach Jace, worried he was caught in the middle of some cruel joke performed by the other half of our duet of tormentors.
“What the hell are you guys playing at now?” I asked, finally breaking free of his grasp, “this shit ain’t funny, you…”
I didn’t know where the attack came from, but whatever caught me across the jaw left my head loopy and my eyes crossed for a time. When I spun in place, wrestling to remain on feet that felt disconnected from my body, I could barely believe what my faltering vision revealed. My mind was dazed from the hit, my thoughts were all over the place, but even through my blurred and unfocused sight at the time, I couldn’t even hope to rationalize the thing that stood waist-deep in the water.
Jace had dropped to the ground, still screaming and writhing in place, just as we had found Mr. Baker, but the creature just gazed back at us, barely moving. Maybe it was just my reeling and jarred consciousness that inspired some bizarre hallucination, but my shell-shocked brain could barely wrap around the sight of this thing.
It stood the height of a tall person, lean, yet muscled, its every inch layered with brownish-red hair. The face was long and gaunt, with longer hair hanging like a beard on its chin and from the top of its head, with a single, glowing, orange eye, dead in the center of its forehead. A long horn protruded from directly above it, like an extended brow, twisting and coiled like a static serpent.
Were it not for the impending dizziness, brought on by whatever left my jaw swelling, I can only imagine what effect the sight of this thing could have had on me. Likely, I would be in a similar state as my teacher and friend, who still contorted their bodies against the gravel, moaning in shared anguish.
Just as I began to feel the loopiness completely numb the senses it had muted, I saw the creature turn away from me, lowering back into the water. The last thing I saw before everything went black, was the sight of the jagged, saw-like spine that pushed through the back of the monster. It was like a grotesque fin that carved through the water like a hot knife through butter, as it drifted away.
When my eyes reopened, or I should say, when they were forced back open by the paramedic shining the light on them, it took me a moment to relocate my bearings. From what I could tell, I had been moved away from the water, though I could still hear it rushing from somewhere in the background.
“Can you tell me your name?” the medic asked, turning his light off while I blinked my eyes.
“Billy…Billy Johnson…what..?”
“Do you know where you are, how you got here?”
“It’s…we’re on a field trip…who?”
“This one’s lucid,” he called to someone else before a stocky, balding police officer came strolling up beside him.
I could see more paramedics working on the others, but Lloyd and Umber looked as catatonic as Jace and Baker. At the time, I could only speculate as to what had happened to them, as I had only been present for my friend losing his shit, but it would all be revealed soon enough.
Though I was still somewhat out of it, I answered the officers’ questions to the best of my ability. Recounting the events that still felt vague and scattered at best, was no easy task, but the more we spoke, the more my senses returned.
I would have to recall this tale to others over the hours and days that followed, along with Bella and Ray, but it would be some time before we were informed about the fate of our teacher and friends.
According to Ray, he and his friend had been walking the riverbank, having snuck away from the rest of the class a while back. When Lloyd began to act strangely, stopping in place to gaze at the water with his body trembling, Ray turned to see him transfixed by the reddening water.
He got in front of his friend, shaking him violently in an effort to break his unwavering focus, but when he heard the roaring sound from behind him, he turned, allowing only his periphery to see the creature emerging from the lake.
When Lloyd shrieked at the sight of this thing, Ray whipped his attention back to the one before him, refusing to permit his eyes to meet what he feared to be creeping up on him from behind. As his friend fell to the ground, Umber broke through the treeline, his legs immediately paralyzed by the sight of the monster, as his screams joined Lloyd’s.
At that, Ray ran for it, wasting no time in attempting to preserve his life, regardless of the state his friend was in at the time. I could tell he was ashamed of his actions, while he recounted them, but I couldn’t blame him; there was nothing he could’ve done, after all.
He hid in the bushes, between the trees, trembling from head to toe, terrified that the creature would seek him out. Having no idea how long he stayed there, nestled away in the brush, he couldn’t tell how much time had passed when he heard Baker howling from somewhere to his left.
It wasn’t until he watched my friends and me approaching from a distance that he finally convinced himself to take action. By the time he arrived at the scene, Jace was already mesmerized by the sight of the thing rising from the lake, so he tackled Bella and me; the only two he thought he could save. When I broke free of his grip, the only thing he could think to do was clock me as hard as he could.
“Better bruised than whatever happened to Lloyd,” he said, wearing an apologetic expression.
Even with everything he and Lloyd had put me through over the years, I couldn’t hold it against him. Had he not left my head spinning, I would surely have ended up in the same condition as the others.
Gabriel Baker, a husband, and father to three children died on the way to the hospital. Lloyd Dobson and Jace Banks both lasted a day or two before they too lost the fight. Benjamin Umber, a widower and father to a twenty-year-old son, remains in a mental facility to this day.
All four of those who clearly saw the creature were blinded by the time the ambulance arrived, but autopsies showed no reason for that or the apparent heart attacks that put a premature end to their lives. Umber will likely live out his days in that facility; days that are numbered from what I’ve heard. His health has been deteriorating for some time now. Rumor has it the doctors feel his journey is coming to an end soon.
Why he lasted so much longer than the others, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he was further back from the lake when he saw it. Supposedly, he had left his glasses on the bus, and his vision wasn’t the best before he lost his sight completely. Whatever the case, it seems that the creature got the better of him in the end. If nothing else, maybe in death, he’ll finally be freed from his torment.
It wasn’t long after I returned to my home that I finally got my wish: we moved away from that town to somewhere with no rivers or lakes for miles. Even now, I try to avoid coming close to anything like that. Hell, I break out in a cold sweat if I see a damn swimming pool, let alone anything not crafted by human hands. Last I heard, Ray is of the same mindset as I; that it’s in our best interest to remain on dry land.
Bella and I drifted apart after that day, as she blamed me for what happened to Jace. In all honesty, I carry the burden of his death to this day. It was my damned curiosity that put us in the crosshairs of that thing.
Surprisingly, I grew closer to my former bully after the events that left us haunted and broken. We have our trauma and guilt in common, as well as the frequent nightmares that revisit that ill-fated field trip and those we lost that day.
I live in fear that, someday, the image of that monster my subconscious still holds will be enough to end my life, as it did my friends on that field trip, what feels like a lifetime ago. While I have no way of understanding why it chose to only reveal itself from a distance, rather than breaking free of the water to finish us off in a more physical manner, I would be a fool to believe I can understand the motivations of such a creature.
Just be careful when you visit the lakes and rivers of the world. If you see a shimmering red illuminating from beneath the rippling water, don’t stick around to see what happens next. If you do, it may just be the last thing you ever see, before the lights go out completely.