My daughter told me about this online forum, this place where all of the imagination-seekers go to find “content” or to read supposedly true horror stories written by others. And I’ll admit -I’m fascinated- some of the things I’ve seen here stimulate my own old curiosity even though it takes me awhile to scroll on this computer. My wife of fifty years, Jane -we’ll call her Jane, I suppose- tells me that I should open up and explore new things despite my advanced age, and I know she’s right, so I’m going to try. I’m going to try by telling you something I haven’t even told her, or anyone else. And perhaps one day -maybe on my deathbed- I’ll tell her this story, too, if it turns out I should be the one to go to the grave first.
I wrote this account long-hand back in 1999 and locked it in a drawer -and when I’m not in here I lock this study door. It may sound ridiculous and over-the-top obsessive, but I have a secure box where I lock up the key to the drawer itself. I suppose it’s to protect Jane’s own wandering curiosity from the horrors of what happened to me in 1951. I don’t want her to know about the little boy on the other side of the creek, or about the other thing I saw out there.
As for me, I grew up in a rural part of eastern Wake County, North Carolina, on the outskirts of Raleigh, and in 1951 I was fourteen years old. That puts my birth year at 1937 and makes me eighty-six today. During those years I was a socially awkward boy, and friends were hard to come by; I can thank my father for that handy trait manifestation in my childhood. I wouldn’t be acquainted with what would become my true friends until my family moved from that place to Winston Salem in 1955, far away from the Neuse River or any of its tributaries that flooded when Hurricane Hazel went through much of the state the fall before. In Winston Salem, I developed such a repressive persona that I cannot say truthfully that I ever thought about the mouth of that creek long enough for it to disrupt my sleep or daily interactions. But life kicks you in tender places when you’re least expecting it, and for me it’s the encroaching hell fog of that morning in early 1951. Every so often I think about that day and retreat from every good thing I have. I’ve lost a marriage over it -my first one, although the cause was broader- and things haven’t always been spotless in this one. I don’t give a damn if you’re eighty-six or twenty-six; You’re entitled to this life’s terrors and the terrors brought onto you by chance.
Before Winston Salem when my life truly began, my companions were the trees and the muddy waters of Crabtree Creek, the dust of a dry season and the bright blue skies of a summer day. We lived close to where Anderson Point Park is now, right off US-64 -which they were building back then, now that I think about it. It was a fifteen minute walk from my house to the mouth of that creek. When my father beat the hell out of me -as he often did over anything in his constant drunken stupor when I was younger- I’d often run to that place where the muddy waters feed into the ever muddier currents of the Neuse. I’d sit on the banks, wet or dry, and fume, often digging my fingers into the soil and contemplating how I’d get back at my goddamn-son-of-a-bitch of a father for whatever he did to me that day..
If I go on long enough, you may be hearing my entire background. Most of these stories on here are short and to the point, so I’ll try to do the same, if I can. I can’t type for that long anyway, the way the arthritis eats at my fingers these days.
Ironically, I couldn’t have started this on a more appropriate morning. The February snow falls just like it did that January in 1951 -a light snow, bordering on moderate intensity, with a great solemnity in tone. Except here, in this house with my wife happily still asleep, the gray body called death doesn’t blanket the air like it did that Sunday morning long ago. Its sickly aroma doesn’t hold me in such a clench, but I remember it well all the same..
I had just been awoken by my mother prodding my arm, telling me grandma finally went, and the doctor was on the way.
“Mom, are you okay?”
My voice was hoarse, and against the bright white light of the room my mother’s face was a running sheet of tears. She nodded, still touching my shoulder from over the blanket. “And..” she continued, face drawn closer to mine, whispers meant only for my ear. “Your father drank all night. Again.”
It was my turn to nod, and I sat up in bed. I took my mother’s arm, held it firm.
“I hate him.” It was pure venom, and it caught me off guard there in the tangle of my sheets, but I meant it. At least, right then.
My mother, all eyes, leaned in once more. Her perfume smelled of some blossoming flowers in a blossoming field, something I’d sell my ancient soul to never forget. I thought she was going to whisper more words into my ear, but she only kissed my forehead and drifted out of the room, leaving me in a state of sadness, anger, and general disruption. I threw the covers and sheets away and immediately began to dress into my winter attire. I had no interest in waiting for the doctor to come press his stethoscope against my grandma’s chest, or for the certain disappointment that was my father.
I laced my boots and zipped up my heavy winter coat, and at the door in a stink of booze and oozing sweat was my father. His eyes were gray, drooling, insignificant. His face was a dark mask, awfully daunting when I was a boy but now more frustrating as a teenager. I saw his fly was down; It made me furious.
“Where are you going?” he said, mumbling other incoherences. When my father was drunk, he’d grip his belt with his right hand, as if it were imminent that an ass-whooping was coming.
“Going to get some fresh air,” I said, approaching my old man at the door. For a fourteen year old, I was actually taller than him -I had my mother’s stature- and leaner. And this particular morning I was borderline rebellious, recently grief-stricken, and secretly vulnerable. There was a defining aura about that house. Maybe it was the torment of three months exiting those walls, seeping through the plaster into some finality beyond. I felt a real sense of fleetingness, a sense that I was a clock ticking down, that I was meant for a greater purpose than this goddamn-son-of-a-bitch blocking my reprieve of this house’s abrupt strangeness and discomfort.
“Your grandma is dead,” he said. “Stopped breathing. I heard..her go.”
Tears stung at the corners of my eyes, but I could see clearly. I lunged toward him, fists like metal balls.
“I swear you,” I said. He frowned, took a step back. I looked into his chest as I spoke. “You will be the next to fall into the grave, you fucking drunk.”
He shook his head and started to unloosen his belt, muttering. God, he stunk.
“Go ahead and hit me. Hit me.” I grabbed the greasy skeleton who was my father by the cuffs of his shirt and pushed him into the wall. His left elbow went through the plaster. As I went past -him sliding the rest of the way down the wall- he burped, fingers hooked like claws reaching for my leg.
“GET BACK. I’LL FUCKIN’ KILL YOU, BOY.”
I wanted to rear back and kick him in the face. I even stopped for a moment while he was down in the hallway and thought about just that as the man fumbled on the floor for his balance and sense. His belt was almost completely free of his waistline. I thought about wrenching it free and using it on him.
“Son.” My mother’s voice. And that rage -God help me- dissipated, dislodged like mucus from a diseased windpipe. That’s all it took when it was my mother, her soft but sharp tone. She had her arms out, beckoning me into her embrace in the living room.
I remember floating into her arms -not rushing, despite my father’s shouts from the hall, but falling into the heat of her flesh. It was warm in the living room. The chimney was on. And grandma was dead, I saw with just an initial glance. I buried my face into my mother’s neck, hugged her. I wouldn’t cry outright then, but I knew I would. Soon, when I was by myself.
Mother’s words in my ear:
“She went thirty minutes ago. Thank goodness.”
My father was still sitting on the floor in the hall, slurring his threats and making half-assed attempts at getting up. I knew he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
“I hate him,” I told her. “I didn’t even mean it, but I’m glad I hurt him. I’m glad.”
We released each other. I looked at grandma again and drew my eyes away. I didn’t like what I saw: her dead eyes were open. But her laborious breathing had stopped, and that was a good thing, recalling how painful it had sounded the night before.
My mother, aside from her apparent distress, was beautiful in grief. Wavy brown hair, brown eyes knowing me deep in my soul. In the cold morning, the light sang through the windows and lit up her tired smile. I hugged her again.
“Hey, you..you asshole loser,” my father called from behind me. “Hey, loser. Loser.”
She felt me start to pull in his direction and stopped me.
“You’re no loser. And right now, he’s no father. And it’s best if you go out for awhile.”
I stole another glance at grandma in the makeshift hospital bed, and was suddenly more guilty than I was angry or frustrated with my father.
“If you need me to stay-
“Doc will be here soon. And I’ve already cracked the window so her spirit may endure the white world outside.”
“The hard part is over,” I said, and smiled, reassuring myself of this. The last three months were terrible. They made my father’s drinking worse, and I became witness to some of the greatest vulnerabilities I had ever seen in my parents. I would eventually realize that this was something to appreciate, but right then I was awkward about it, as is any teenager in the face of mortality.
She touched my shoulder.
“Yes. Go on.”
“Fucking loser!”
She shooed me away, as she most likely saw my closeted pain. Mothers see everything, I’m sure of now.
The world was white, and my pain was a deep seated envelope around my heart. I think I began to cry before I even got past the car, and by the time I had reached the mailbox I had let the tears flow full on. If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know of the caliber these tears are; they are heavy-weight champions.
I made a left along a road whose name I cannot remember. There were four other houses lined up along the opposite side of the road, but today I imagine there are many more. In those days, trees littered the surrounding landscape at every corner, and in this winter wonderland it was absolutely breath-taking. I let the thick snow flakes catch on my tongue as I trudged through powdery fluff toward the woods. The tears had turned my cheeks numb, but that was okay. I wouldn’t be out here forever. I just wanted to see the river, follow the meandering creek to the mouth and stare at the water for awhile until my sobbing had stopped. And when the sobs had ceased their careless full-bodied reverberations, I’d wait until the underlying anger -like a toxic cloud- had fumigated from my skin. Only then would I return back to face my father and the consequences therein.
Out there, I realized the watershed moment in me and my father’s relationship on an epiphany. Somehow I knew he would never beat me again; maybe he’d try, and I would remind him. Or maybe it would kill me. That morning meant many things for me.
I was walking along the south face of the creek, beholden by grief, grabbing trees for balance in the thickening snow, when I saw something odd in the water heading downstream. There was a steeper embankment right there, and I was nearing where the creek met the Neuse, only fifty or so yards away. At first glance, it looked like a large fish lumbering along, and therefore kept my racing thoughts intact as I walked on. It struck me then how it neither had the quick motions of an aquatic creature nor the typical body shape, and I eyed it once more from the high bank. The creek was dirt brown, muddy, obscure, nearly stagnant where the water pooled around the banks before hurrying on. The object appeared to float atop the surface, bobbing up and down gently. I looked for a fin, because it was slow moving despite the current. I saw no fin, no protruding scales indicative of a fish, even a big one like a hulking catfish.
I kept moving along, hidden by the trees..when it hit me and I recognized the dark shape in the water as resembling the texture of wet clothing. I watched with intrigue the thing in the wide creek drift downstream.
With no warning, as I was reflecting about the way grandma’s eyes had looked glazed over and cloudy in her merciful death sleep, the lower half of a man’s leg reached out of the muddy water -making a right angle with the surface at the knee- and slowly went back down like a descending lever. The foot had been unearthly pale, a ghastly white in the brown wake. I recoiled in surprise, stopping near the edge of the snowy bank. What was a man doing swimming in the creek? He must have been freezing. Surely he must be insane.
The thing -the man- floated effortlessly without reason facedown in the water. I followed him along my side of the bank.
On the opposite bank at the corner where the creek intersected the river was a man and small child. The man was bundled up in gray attire, a blue scarf around his neck. He was crouched next to the boy, who I assumed was his son. The little boy was prodding the moving water with a flimsy stick, laughing as he made indentations in the snow drifting by. I do not know what the man was saying to the little boy, because I was not close enough to hear. In fact, I was barely paying attention to them at all. The strange creek man had sunk below the surface and had disappeared from sight.
And I didn’t like that void where the man in the water had just been. I didn’t like that one bit. I crouched in the comfort of the low-hanging branches and quietly approached the mouth of the river, not wanting the man nor the boy to hear or see me. This was very important to me at the time, that sneaking silence. I don’t know why. Surely it would have helped their fate, I suppose, for them to acknowledge my presence.
From my distance, I watched as the man ruffled the boy’s exposed sandy blond hair, smiling and pointing at the water instructively. Their joyful tones rang like a bell in the cold air amongst the swishing sway of the rapidly piling water. The man stood, letting go of his boy’s shoulders, and held a hand over his eyes to peer out over the water. The intensity of the weather had progressed; the snow fell thick, but I could still see them just as clearly as I did when I first saw them. I think something on the man’s face changed before he was taken, but I’m not completely sure about that observation. Something lunged out of the water with a great speed and grabbed the man in the time it took me to blink.
One second he was there, the next instant he was gone. And when I profess to you that something took the man, I mean exactly that, something with long white arms and a wholesome ambition. He could have simply been extinguished from the earth, zapped into invisibility by a cosmic entity of the greatest unknown. I had been crouching, but now I was huddled against one of the thickest trees I could find. Breathing was a hot turbulence in my chest. I felt giddy even, perplexed at what I did not understand about what had just transpired. And where the hell was the creek man?
I was very afraid. I feared for the little boy standing at the water’s edge, shaken and crying. He had dropped the stick and was soon taken to bawling, his face such a contortion of terror I could see it from my distance. I squeezed the bark of the tree -my sole protector- debating on yelling out and consoling the child, telling him I’d be right there. Right there. If he could just give me time to get to the other side..
I saw movement. I looked toward the river knowingly. The leg had returned, oriented above the surface and making small circles in the water. Its foot was a curl of white flesh the shade of snow.
The water was a rolling mass that flowed unhindered and unapologetic; no man could withstand its purpose. I realized this fact with a heightened sense of doom, that the water was, indeed, a north-to-south tide of relentlessness carrying unspeakable things, things no boy three years old or fourteen years old could comprehend. The creek man circling against the river current was no different; it was an existential reminder, something no man or boy was deserving to see. And I suddenly knew that the creek man was more than a mystery to be contemplated; it was a profoundly diabolical thing.
I began waving my hands at the boy, too unnerved to raise my voice, knowing in my heart that I shouldn’t even commit to a whisper. The little boy on the bank -now howling and unseeing me- had taken a few steps back, cuddled amongst the trees and brambles. I looked out at the water again, and I became still, so silent and stone-like as to become one with the dead landscape.
The thing had stopped circling in the middle of the river and was idling there, content. After a moment it began to shimmy to and fro, not bobbing necessarily, but moving side to side almost excitedly -yes, that’s the word I’ll use. Then, the leg-fin began to turn back to land.
I saw what was coming but I could only stare. My blood wanted to burst from my cheeks, explode from my chest as I despised the little boy’s lack of movement at the creek’s edge. He needed to move.
It stopped just short of the bank -what appeared to be pants on the lower half of the leg ripped and torn- the foot angled downward at the heel so that the paralyzingly white toes were reaching for the sky. The boy was sitting there cradling his tiny knees, sobbing, and the thing in the water crawled forward until a white, bulbous egg-shaped head ascended from the depths. The child’s reaction, I can imagine, was pure dread, for he recoiled in fright, fell onto his back, and was sliding away with his elbows in the grimy snow. The thing rose from the river with a human’s clumsiness and a human’s form, a figure dressed like a person but in complete tatters. Judging by what the boy saw written across its face, it was the embodiment of callous intent, and it stumbled in the knee deep waters before stepping up onto the bank.
The thing came forward and was over the boy in an instant. With its lanky, bony arms it grabbed the child and held him up to its face. The child squirmed and screamed, and my eyes bulged from red absorbed sockets. The creek man had gone motionless. According to the boy’s sweeping screams, the thing holding him up had an enthusiastic attention; it continued to hold the boy steady despite having its arms battered. I caught the side view of what happened next, but I’m going to be very careful in how I say it.
In a great yet meaningless effort, I watched as its jaw bones snapped, and its mouth fell. I did not see teeth, but there must have been something awfully sharp in that cavern of a mouth, because it bit the boy clean in half.
I think I stepped on a twig, but I don’t remember. I don’t think it would have mattered anyway. Such chaotic forces do have an otherworldly sense we humans do not. And although the creek man may have looked human -may have been human at some point- it was nature’s forbidden gate, a white paralysis of our greatest nightmares. In that event, I looked straight into the forbidden gate’s eyes.
The thing craned its head, somehow saw me through the trees, and threw the lower half of the boy into the river as if it were waste, a gory heap of clothes and viscera. It got back into the knee-deep water, the lower half of its face lolling, wet white skin dangling detached from muscle.
In all of these years of wondering, I seem to have some issue remembering what that thing truly said to me at the creek after devouring the little boy. When the monster screamed from its distance, I think this is what it said, standing there with its face sagging in the snow.
“MOMMIE SAYS IMMA SHARK!”
It dropped into a horrific crouch -like a huge, vicious crab- and dived into the water, sending ripples echoing along the surface. It dived deep, for I could not see any representation of that elongated shape or that egregious foot wisping the brown surface.
I ran hard, ran on lava breath in a body of boiling blood. Despite the hell that was surely waiting for me back at the house, I wanted to make it to dinner. I wanted that more than anything else. I would gladly take the belt, gladly take any reprimand from my father, sloppy or severe. I would gladly see grandma again, her dead eyes lazily oriented toward the ceiling of that living room, if it meant escaping the sure brutality that was coming after me there where the creek met the river. I remember thinking, It sure is a shark, and hauling my heavy weight through the woods ever-thickening with snow and cold.
I looked back once, but I knew what I would see. I would see the creek-man-thing and its cavern of a mouth in a heated pursuit of my flesh. When I saw that white face, just as the boy had seen, I would trip and fall over, witness the beady eyes of the unknown. Then -slowly- I would be eaten alive from the bottom up, and-
I saw nothing. The only noises were the sounds of millions of flakes hitting the earth, the water beyond, and me. Somehow, in all of this beauty, it was a dream. I was running from myself. I was running from the archetypical monster of all bad dreams. But I had no armor on; I didn’t even have a weapon, a sword. And I knew, just like grandma was gone, that the creek man was real and in this world. He was an animal -archaic in form and menace- but real nonetheless. I sprinted on, past the woods, past the creek, and then quicker still along the shoulder of the road. I didn’t stop. I ran past my home, past the intersection, and ran some more. It was only after I could hardly breathe did I drop to my knees in the snow and weep, pulse deep and throbbing in my limbs. At first, I didn’t know where I was, but then I saw the sign of the gas station in the distance and realized I was a mile from home.
For the second time, I looked back. Nothing. I was faster than the monster, faster than its hunger, but home was back there. I was cold. It would be warm in that house, and maybe a hot breakfast would come after the doctor had left and grandma’s body was removed. Maybe my father would be snoring the day away. I remembered the little boy, him being devoured, and I knew it would be some time before any food would suit me.
Warmth had risen in my throat, and spit filled my mouth. I turned and vomited by the road. When I had caught my breath, I walked on to the gas station.
-
That’s really it. Although, I should say, not really a satisfying ending, right? I didn’t battle the creature by the mouth of that creek or save anyone. In my heart, though I know any attempt to get the boy’s attention wouldn’t have worked anyway, I feel as if there was something I could have done. That’s human thinking, flawed thinking, the type of thinking us old folks certainly could do without. Our hearts aren’t meant for the fever of such wrongs, because that fever is like an acid eating, eating away. Our beating hearts can only take so much decay.
My fingers are getting tired, so it won’t be much longer. I promise. I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say -imagine that?, an old-timer like me wrapping up his thoughts?
The highway was built. The houses went up. And, suddenly, there was a strip-mall not half a mile from where I grew up. The gas station where I got shelter that day was knocked down and replaced with a store they call Sheetz. Whatever that means. Goddamn stupid name, if you ask me.
We went to Winston Salem after the big hurricane damaged our house in 1954, and after living alongside my father there for an additional two years, I moved out and went to college. After college I got a job working nine-to-five at a pharmaceutical company. I married my supervisor, and that turned out to be a mistake. I made up for it, though, and came across Jane in a newspaper ad -just kidding. Really though, she did work for the newspaper, writing columns and stories of mundane life in mundane political spheres.
Suffice to say, I have found a reasonable amount of peace in the years since. I found an ordinary purpose and an extraordinary companion, and I found a bass boat -bought it used from a close friend when I was in my thirties. As much as my first wife bugged me over what she called these “pointless leisure outings”, I never told her what I was really doing with the boat. Neither did I with Jane later on. I never told them about the 12-gauge shotgun I brought with me on these “trips”, either. I mean, by God, what could I say? Going to find and shoot a river monster I first encountered in my youth?
To that, I say, good luck.
Sitting here, writing this, it plays out like a movie. I see myself as a young man getting up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, pouring black coffee into a thermos, attaching the boat trailer, then setting out for that day’s business. I’d take fishing poles, even buy live bait. After awhile I began cutting my palm and letting the blood run into the water as the engine idled. I often wondered how many fishermen went missing out there on the Neuse, just casting out and listening to old rock music only to catch something white, bloated, and with a cavern for a mouth.
In my sixties, I started leaving the boat behind and scouting the banks of that river on foot. I’ve walked along many creeks, streams, and wetlands, pistol on hand. I’ve gone out in rain or shine. I never expected to find that thing again, but I tried. God, I tried. I’ve tried for decades, and now I can only do so much as I get older in this house. But by opening up -as Jane pleaded I do- I decided I could actually do something. With the advent of technology, I can make others beware. And I think I’ve done just that. I can’t go out to the Neuse River anymore, not even to observe and protect those who get a little too close to the water.
I can mean something right here. I can be a look-out from behind the screen, and as brittle as these old bones are that is good enough for me.