Little preface, Im not good with english (even if its the only language i speak) so dont expect a lot from this. And as normal, names will be changed for anonymity’s sake.
About 4 years ago I was visiting my grandfather in South Carolina and we made a week of it. My bio-dad, real dad, mom, me, and my brother all decided to go to the beach on Wednesday. Looking back i wish we didn’t but hindsight and all that.
Noon We get to the beach and Papa John (gdad) remarks about there being way less people than normal but he pulls me and Scott (brother) to go fishing off the boardwalk. I see rather large waves and catch nothing but a strange feeling. Scott, ever the overachiever of a little brother winds up getting two baby sharks.
3 PM I finally convince the others to let me go into the water, mainly because im not catching anything but i really wanted to swim anyways. As i make my way back down the boardwalk, out of the corner of my eye i see a large… something dart through the water but by the time i turn to look its gone. I ask Scott and Papa John if they saw it but im looked at weirdly and asked what i saw. I shouldnt have asked. Papa John tells me a little story about when he was young and it went a little like this. “Better follow your gut boy cause maybe its the Water Beast. That ‘un took my friend un’er when I was ten.” That’s all I got from him though so I shrugged it off as an old man trying to keep me with him fishing. How dumb I was.
3:30 I’m happily swimming with Bill (bio-dad) and a rather large wave rolls over me, but it doesnt lift me like every other wave as i feel something sharp brush my leg laying it open like a well cooked steak. I get grabbed by Bill and pulled ashore and i swear to this day that as I was carried I saw a nearby tube float pop dragging the guy on it under. As we get to land luckily one of the few people here were a doc and i got fixed up without the need for stitches but I’m told I can’t go back in the water.
I pop open reddit as i lay beside Dad. I look up two or three nosleep posts in I feel a bone deep chill. I watch a large void-black shape circle around Bill a few times and I know whats about to happen. The shape lunges out of the water and for a split second all I see is blood, but than I see Bill laugh and plunge his head under, unkowingly damning the chick he’s flirting with. Just as Bill resurfaces the chick is dragged under and Papa John near rips his throat apart as he yells clear as the sun overhead “SHARK”. I heard him for the end of the boardwalk all the way to the beach.
I didn’t even know he could speak above a plesant speaking level so the gutteral fear in his voice throws me even deeper into the loop I was in from watching a woman go from smiling, to terrified, to just… gone. Next thing I know its pandemonium as people rush to shore as if death is on their heels, and it might as well have been, because in the rush to shore i see the wretched thing leap and this time i see it.
A black so deep its like its eating light instead of reflecting. Humanoid in all the wrong ways. Arms too long and thick. Hands thinner than bone and webbed. It was the only thing about this being that made sense, the webbing between the seven clawed fingers. The eyes were the only thing that wasn’t difficult to look at and they held a terrible level of evil intelligence. It grabbed one more person but I didnt even notice at the time as all I saw was a razor like glare directly pointed at me.
The news said shark attack. Few people knew different and I hate to say I am one of those people. I understand why he said shark and if I was in his place I think I would have done the same.
To this day I stay away from oceans of any kind. A year and a half later i was on a church trip to PCB Florida and i never went near the water out of terror of seeing it again.