by Frank Martin
“I actually need her help with something,” Sheriff Thompson explained. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two of questions down at the station.”
“Hold on a second,” Henry chimed in, stepping up to make his displeasure known. “The station? What happened to having an adult around?”
Sheriff Thompson kept his back straight and tall, doing his best not to appear accusatory. “We want you to come, too.”
Immediately put off by the idea, Henry sucked in air while clenching his teeth. “I don’t know if this is such a good—”
“It’s fine, Henry,” April interrupted as she finally made her way down the dock. “Honestly. I can handle myself.”
April reached the grass and Henry stepped towards her. The closing distance between them flicked a subtle tension in the air. Mark seemed oblivious to it, but April swallowed hard, which Sheriff Thompson only saw because he was looking for signs of her discontent. His partner must’ve sensed the girl was uncomfortable as well, for the deputy slowly drifted around the uncle to step in if things went sideways.
Henry looked distressed, too, fidgeting his hands like he was physically restraining himself from lashing out. “I know that. I’m just…”
His eyes shifted to the side, overly wary of the deputy moving behind him. “Wait. What are you doing?”
“She’s not doing anything,” Sheriff Thompson remarked, casually. “Just looking around.”
Henry wasn’t appeased and raised his voice as his eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. “You got cops sneaking up behind me, Sheriff?”
“Nobody’s sneaking anywhere,” Sheriff Thompson assured.
It was too late. Henry’s paranoia had taken over.
“Bullshit!” he screamed, with veins popping from his tense neck. “I see what’s going on here!”
Henry swiftly reached under his tie-dye shirt and pulled out a small pistol, his shaky hand pointing in the deputy’s face. A sudden rush of dread caused the cops and children to instinctually step back. Their eyes grew wide in fear as their legs locked into place.
“Whoa, Henry. Whoa,” Sheriff Thompson stammered as quickly as his voice would allow. “Take it easy, okay?”
“Don’t move!” Henry shouted, frantically waving the weapon back and forth between the two officers. “Neither of you move a damn muscle!”
The man had flown into such a frenzy he didn’t realize he was briefly aiming the handgun at his niece and nephew as he carelessly swung it around in a panic. Things had quickly gotten out of control, and Sheriff Thompson cursed himself for allowing this to happen. He should have never let Henry out of his sight. From the moment he said he wanted to go back inside the house the Sheriff should have dragged him outside and put him in cuffs right then and there. He didn’t, though. And now the crazed man was waving a gun around with two innocent children, his family, in the crosshairs.
“Uncle Henry, what are you doing?” Mark asked, his voice cracking from confused anxiety. “What the hell is going on?”
The boy’s trembling legs looked ready to step forward when April yelled to him. “Mark, just shut up and stay there.”
“Listen to your sister, Mark,” Sheriff Thompson concurred, holding his hands out to draw the gunman’s attention. “Look at me, Henry.”
He didn’t, though. Henry’s gaze continued to dance wildly, too afraid to lock onto a single target.
“Look at me,” the Sheriff repeated.
Henry finally listened and brought his other hand to the pistol as he pointed it firmly at Sheriff Thompson’s chest. The Sheriff had to fight the urge to flinch. This wasn’t new territory for him. He had stared down the barrel of a gun before. But from the deranged look in Henry’s eyes, a look that seemed equally terrified as it did angry, this was the first time the Sheriff thought the person behind it would actually pull the trigger.
“You need to breathe, okay?” Sheriff Thompson said, his voice low and soft. “Just relax, stay calm, and lower the gun.”
“You’ve come to arrest me, right?!” Henry shouted, pulling his arms back and shoving the gun forward as he spoke. “Think you can take me away?!
Sheriff Thompson shook his hands as well as his head. “We just came to talk to April. That’s all.”
Henry’s nostrils flared into a sneer as the rage in his face overcame the fear. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to April. I get it. I’ve been down this road before and there’s no way I’m going back.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” the Sheriff pleaded. “These are your sister’s children and you’re scaring them.”
Henry scoffed at the thought. “Oh, don’t give me that. She doesn’t care about these kids. Not like I do.”
“Is that why you came into my room in the middle of the night?” April said, catching everyone by surprise. “Because you care about me?”
“I did it because I love you!” Henry exclaimed, shocked that he even had to say the words.
April’s body relaxed as she stood tall. Her knees no longer buckled and bent. Her back was straight and sturdy. The terror in her eyes had been replaced by conviction, and she stared Henry down with a piercing glare of judgment.
“No,” Henry said, almost ashamedly afraid of the girl’s righteous gaze. “Don’t look at me like that, April. Like I’m the villain of this story. Because I’m not. If you want to blame someone blame your parents.”
“They didn’t make you do what you did to me,” she stated, dryly.
“No. But they allowed it to happen when all they could’ve done was just hopped in the car and come to pick you up.”
April’s confidence wavered as she processed her uncle’s comment. “But…they’re in Europe.”
“They never went to Europe, April,” Henry said, his voice friendlier than Sheriff Thompson expected by the scowl on his face. “They never went anywhere. Your mom and dad have been home in the city this entire time and still left you here anyway.”
After the revelation, April’s mouth hung open, as if she wanted to speak but had no words to express the thoughts running through her head.
“They know exactly who I am and what I would’ve done,” Henry said, filling the silence with a restrained, measured tone. “They know all about my past and my need to feel loved. They just didn’t care. All so that they could get rid of you while saving a couple bucks. Cheaper than getting a babysitter, they said. Which was fine by me. Spending time with my dear sweet niece was all the payment I needed.”
Henry flashed a joyful, almost nostalgic smirk, and Sheriff Thompson’s open hands reflexively clenched into threatening fists.
“Get back!” Henry shouted, once again waving the gun between the two officers. “Back, I said, ba—!”
A loud, unexpected pop cut off his threats as the gun went off while he twisted back and forth. Sheriff Thompson froze in place, startled and shocked by the bang, until April unleashed an agonizing shriek of horror that boomed across the valley. She was staring at her brother, who had a small, dark circle in the center of his shirt. The crimson stain continued to expand as the boy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the grass.
CHAPTER TWENTYTWO
April’s tormented scream rang out like a shockwave across the water. It towered over the symphony of humming engines to catch the attention of everyone on the lake. But her shriek didn’t stop there. April’s voice pierced through the surface, diving down deep into the depths of the lake.
A rumbling soon followed. A subtle quiver in the water that quaked upwards from below. A hundred boaters above all looked around confused. The boat hulls all trembled beneath their feet, the vibrations growing until a sudden wave rocked them from side to side. The abrupt disturbance intensified until the water itself seemed to rise, pushing the boats aside like toys in a tub.
Boats in the center of the lake clung to the surface while being lifted straight up, climbing nearly ten, twenty feet in the air before toppling over. One after the other, boats all around the lake w
ere tossed aside by the large mass rising from underneath them.
Eventually, the mountain of water parted, revealing a gargantuan beast beneath it. The monster emerged as a hulking figure of grey, scaly flesh. Torrential waterfalls continued to flow down its body as it stood even taller, towering not just over the boats, the houses, the trees, but even the valley itself.
Sheriff Thompson stood in awe of the creature, his neck straining as he gawked up at it. Out of all the screams and chaos going on around the monster, its focus honed right down on top of Henry’s property, perhaps drawn in by April’s cry.
The creature appeared to be standing out of the water on six legs, although its front two resembled dangling tentacles rather than the thick, sturdy trunks of the other four. Protruding out from the rows of spikes on its ribs were two long, lanky arms with pincer-like talons on the end. They hung downward, barely caressing the water as an extra set of limbs.
Now barely dripping with water, the monster finally lifted its head, revealing a deep red cross in the center of its face that hypnotized Sheriff Thompson with terror. Without even looking, the Sheriff could sense that he shared the same petrified expression with both Henry and the deputy.
Not April, though. She didn’t look up once as the colossal beast emerged from the lake behind her. The girl’s focus remained downward, staring in dismay at her brother lying dead at her feet. Mark’s face rested peacefully, his shirt now completely soaked with blood as a red pool began to ooze around the grass at his sides.
Either oblivious or uncaring, April had still failed to acknowledge the abhorrent beast looming over the top of her. She clenched her face, her eyes, cheeks, and mouth all scrunched together to keep from crying. After several quick sobs, a small trickle of tears seeped out from under her eyes.
April then abruptly sucked in a deep breath of air that drained her body of emotion. She appeared restrained and at ease as a wave of calm stillness washed over her face, filling it with a blank expression that continued to stare down at the corpse below.
“You…you…you killed him,” she stammered slowly, her demeanor lost between shock and disbelief.
Henry wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were aimed straight upwards at the beast leering overhead. “April, step away from the water.”
“Mark loved you, Henry,” she said as if she were thinking out loud, still trying to grapple with the painful reality that her brother was dead. “I hated you but he…he thought you were everything.”
Painful remorse slowly etched into Henry’s face, which still stared upwards in a horrified trance. “I’m sorry. I swear. I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
April’s gaze shot up from the ground, her eyes sharp and piercing. “You think that makes it better? That it somehow makes this okay?”
“I didn’t say that,” Henry prattled, his voice short and frantic. “I just—”
“You look at me when I’m talking to you!” April barked at him.
Henry’s line of sight dropped straight down to see the vengeful scowl on his niece’s face. His mouth hung open wide as he huffed and puffed, unable to bring a thought to words. The tense standoff hardened with every second, and Sheriff Thompson knew he had to do something to relieve the hostility.
“April,” he said, hard yet assuring. “I promise that your uncle will pay for what he did to you and your brother. But I need you to come to me right now.”
“Listen to him, April,” Henry pleaded, fearfully. “Please.”
While the men tried hard to keep their focus on April, they both continued to subtly glance upwards at the creature above her. The girl, on the other hand, never once wavered from glaring at her uncle.
“Why?” she asked him, viciously flinging the word like a dagger. “Give me one good reason why I should listen to a monster like you?”
Henry again opened his mouth to speak, but only a hushed whimper escaped his trembling lips.
“My brother and I never asked to come here,” April rued, scornfully. “We never asked to live in that stupid guesthouse all summer. We never asked for any of this!”
The monster’s enormous head inched closer with every sentence, leaning over more and more until the Sheriff could smell the bowels of the lake seeping off of it. The beast’s massive shadow eclipsed the morning sun, covering the lawn in darkness. Sheriff Thompson and his deputy both took a step back, but Henry stayed in place, his knees buckling so hard they nearly smacked together as they shook.
April ignored all that, though, focused solely on aiming every wrathful word in her uncle’s direction. “I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep every night if it weren’t for you. Mark would still be alive if it weren’t for you. And now you want me to just pretend this never happened? To ignore the fact that you just murdered my brother? To deny what you did...again!?”
In synch with April’s voice, the creature growled, splitting its forehead apart to reveal a crisscrossed set of jagged teeth.
“Nobody’s asking you to do any of that,” Sheriff Thompson implored with an outstretched hand. “All we want is for you to—”
“I don’t care what you want!” she snapped. “I don’t care what any of you want!”
The seam in the creature’s forehead detached even further to open its mouth up wide. The razor-sharp teeth spiraled into an endless tunnel, and a dripping glob of saliva oozed from between its fangs.
Realizing that drawing his gun was pointless, Sheriff Thompson, along with his deputy, watched the behemoth in horror, but Henry’s terror was on a whole other level. The creature’s glowing eye sharpened right on him, focused and attentive to nothing but his fear. Henry’s face went white, his ghastly eyes so wide they nearly popped from their sockets.
The Sheriff noted how difficult it was to even watch a man so engulfed by fear, but April appeared to revel in it, smiling as a thin stream of piss trickled out from within her uncle’s shorts.
“This is about what I want,” she said through her smirk. “And I want you to pay.”
The creature snarled, showering Henry with mucus before recoiling its neck into a strike position.
“No,” Henry babbled, dropping the gun and backing away from the looming monstrosity. “Wait. No!”
Henry turned to run, his legs kicking so hard he stumbled to the ground. Pushing off the grass, he scrambled back to his feet but was unable to take another step. The monster whipped its tentacle straight down, snatching Henry by the ankle before he could gain traction. The beast then yanked the tentacle towards the sky, tossing Henry through the air. He unleashed a terrified scream that echoed as he arced, tumbling head over heels before landing straight into the pit of the creature’s mouth.
Sheriff Thompson watched the whole scene unfold in awe, appalled and spellbound at the same time. He continued staring at the creature as it chewed. Muffled crunches and squishes bellowed out from deep within the fiend’s throat, and the Sheriff couldn’t look away until April’s voice snatched him from his trance.
“You scared, Sheriff?” she asked, plainly
He swallowed deeply while trying to inject some sign of life into his dumbfounded expression. “I’m terrified.”
April tilted her head to the side, confused and somewhat hurt by his honest reply. “Why? You didn’t hurt me. You tried to protect me. Just like I tried to protect Mark.”
Her sober gaze fell to the ground, where she once again locked onto her brother’s lifeless body. “That’s what a family is supposed to do for each other, right? Protect one another from harm? But I failed. Henry failed. And my parents…”
April’s mournful expression morphed a vengeful sneer as she looked up, beaming at the Sheriff in front of her. “They never even tried.”
Filled with rage, the girl’s eyes sent a chill down Sheriff Thompson’s spine. He didn’t know where this monster came from, but April’s command over it, combined with the trauma of her brother’s death, had her drunk with power. The Sheriff had to tread carefully or risk winding up as another snack.
“April, I’m sure that’s not true,” he reasoned. “Your parents probably did everything they—”
“You heard him,” she interrupted. “They’re here. In New York. They never even left the city!”
The monster grumbled, causing Sheriff Thompson to flinch and allowing April to continue her rant. “All my life they’ve treated my brother and I like a burden. Like garbage. Like raising us was some kind of punishment.”
She turned around slowly to face the creature for the first time since it rose from the lake. “But now we’re the ones who punish. Don’t we, boy?”
The beast bobbed his head, which Sheriff Thompson amazingly considered a nod. The creature understood her. It heard and absorbed not just April’s emotions but every word she’d been saying. Without her even giving an order, the monster knew exactly what she wanted and turned its massive body to face the far side of the lake.
The giant took a step forward, sloshing the water in its path. Then it took another, and another, swinging its tentacles side to side and turning the entire lake into a massive wave pool. Boats and tiny specks of swimmers rode the torrential currents like a hurricane before slamming into the shore. The creature never noticed the insignificant obstacles in its path and continued lumbering forward, clawing its way up the valley and over the horizon, where it disappeared from Sheriff Thompson’s sight.
CHAPTER TWENTYTHREE
After the creature disappeared from view, it took a second for Sheriff Thompson to shake away his stupor. A scrambled mess of emotions ran through his head so fast that it was impossible to lock onto a clear thought. He came to this house looking for answers and now he was so overwhelmed with questions that they were making him dizzy.
“We have to follow that thing,” he declared when his mind finally cleared.
The Sheriff opened his shoulder to start back towards the pathway and called for April to join him. “You’re coming with me.”
She turned around but kept her eyes low, staring at Mark’s corpse. “I’m not leaving my brother.”