Horror - Short
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs. No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.
All rights reserved. Creature from the Grey Lagoon Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026
CREATURE FROM THE GREY LAGOON
Cheryl latched onto him and sobbed into his shoulder, “Tell me you’re joking.”
The Jeep smelled like dried leather and pipe tobacco. Cameron Cole had inherited the ancient ride only a month earlier, two weeks after that, he finally convinced Cheryl Lam into the backseat.
In the moonshine coming through the windows, he watched Cheryl’s shoulders bounce, her head tilted forward. He had the radio on—all there was in Grandpa’s old Jeep—so as to not hear her crying.
“Sorry. I’ll see ya at school.” He’d parked but kept the engine running.
The yellowy overhead light glowed as Cheryl shuffled out the door. Cameron hadn’t even pulled into her driveway, perhaps worried Cheryl sent a text to her mother. Penny Lam was renowned for being cool, but also a hard ass whenever the situation deemed it necessary.
Instead of going inside, Cheryl sat in the garage with all the junk they’d collected as a three-member family and smoked cigarettes from her mother’s pack.
At least she was on the pill, so there’d be no trouble there. A couple girls at school had already gotten abortions and Cheryl heard the trickle down that the situation was about as unpleasant as it got. Some girls got the rep of easy, all of the girls who’d gotten abortions had that rep.
For some, Cheryl figured parents had nobody but themselves to blame when their kids went wild. Too many rules, like trying to squeeze a greasy balloon, some kids shoot out of grasp. Cheryl’s mother let her smoke and drink, as long as she was responsible and wasn’t caught drunk in public or too stoned for class. Penny was the reason Cheryl was on the pill too.
“Didn’t want me ending up like her,” Cheryl whispered to the dim garage, exhaling a gentle puff of smoke. “But I’d be totally honest about the father if I got knocked up, Mom.”
According to her mother, Larry Watson was a dead man and had passed when Penny was pregnant. When Cheryl had prodded about the death, her mother gave her plenty of answers, but they were vague with simple points mixed eerily with murder. Like getting killed at some beach was normal-everyday.
Plus, saying an estranged father is dead is about as single-mom-cliché as it gets.
Cheryl stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray and then dumped the butt into a steel coffee container with a plastic lid. Her mother had theories about cigarette stink that proved at least halfway true; it was the butts that kept odor lingering.
As she was about to go inside, Cheryl’s phone chirped. It was a message from her friend Leona: OMG!!! Cameron is dating that slut Tina Card??? WTF!!!
Tina Card: Mormon parents, survived a near miss resulting in an extremely lumpy and two-month overdue period, an easy girl if you believed the rumors.
Cheryl typed back: He wants to bang other people
Another message landed, but Cheryl pocketed the phone. She’d never been an addict like most of her friends and combing over her breakup was not a pleasant thought.
She opened the door to the house, quietly, and slipped off her flats. Her mother was in the living room with someone, or multiple people, or maybe just a podcast. It was after 11:00 PM, so nine-year-old Sara was in bed.
A long gasp carried out of the living room, through the kitchen, and to the laundry room where Cheryl stood. “Oh my god,” the owner of that gasp then said, drawing out the vowels.
Another voice spoke, “I know, right?”
Cheryl crept into the kitchen, thinking her mother needed to get some real friends, because Karen and Georgia and the cat named Elvis and some IT dude named Steven from the My Favorite Murder show were voices holding conversations that she’d never be a part of. Suddenly furious at her mother for being thirty-six and sitting in her living room alone on another Saturday night, Cheryl rounded a corner and stopped when she heard her mother crying.
“So it was this woman, left alive, six months pregnant, and surrounded by gore. Like her boyfriend and her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend, all dead, all ripped to pieces.”
The gasp came again. “Did they get him?”
Dramatic pause.
“No! Not a him. They had nothing, no blood, no hair, no saliva. In the letter, uh, Penny from Canada says the police tried to suggest it was her that did it, because who else could it be? But she says it was an animal. Like a creature though.”
“Fuck. Cops think a six-month pregnant woman was running around mutilating people?”
“I know, right.”
“Fuck that.”
Penny killed the feed to the iPad upon noticing that she had company. “You’re home.”
“Did you feed them your bullshit monster story?” Even as Cheryl said it, she no longer knew it to be bullshit. The tears and the emotion on her mother’s face were real.
This stiffened the woman. “What? No and it’s not bullshit. If I was going to make up that your father died, why wouldn’t I make up that Sara’s father was dead too?”
“Because I know Ronny. You dated him for like a year and he works at No Frills.”
Penny stuck out her tongue.
Cheryl threw her hands in the air and stormed down the dark hall to her bedroom, her mother’s words trailing her, “I didn’t make it up, but I don’t talk about it ‘cause nobody believes the tru—” Cheryl slammed the door on her mother’s fast chatter, cutting it short.
—
Night gave rise to the sudden realization that perhaps her mother was not lying. Also, the nearly constant text messages and Facebook and Twitter DMs had her seeking shelter under the veil of other topics once morning came.
“Where are you going?” Penny asked.
Cheryl, a teenager and fully versed in lying, said, without pause, “Out to hang with Lisa, until work.”
“Not Cameron?” Penny lengthened the name in a tease.
“He dumped me.”
Before Penny could respond, Cheryl was out the door and in her mother’s Ford Fiesta. Penny hardly used the car anymore—only for groceries or immediate errands, late night runs to Timmy’s. Cheryl used it every day she had work, and in the summer, that was most days. She hadn’t lied about going to work, she did start a shift at 5:00 PM. She worked the snack booth at the mini-putt, been working summers there since she was fourteen, but this would be her final season, so she figured, seeing as she’d have to get a better job after high school. Adults didn’t work at the mini-putt.
The lie she’d told her mother was what she’d planned to do before work. Lisa was not in the cards. In fact, Lisa was out of town for three more weeks, working as a camp counsellor.
Cheryl parked her mother’s car behind the library.
—
“Those big books. You pick the year and then figure it out.”
Cheryl frowned at the middle-aged woman looking eager to be elsewhere. “Don’t you have them in PDFs or something?”
“Been a request for volunteers for six years to help with that. Turns out people dislike the tedium of scanning old newspapers. I’ve managed to scan three years over about twenty months, but those were from nineteen-oh-two to oh-five, so the papers were much smaller. If you’d like to scan them then search through the PDFs, I’ll set you up at a machine.”
“Wait. What?”
“Not interested? Paint me surprised. Please put the books back in proper order once you’re finished.” The librarian started away from the wall of shelves featuring huge scrapbooks.
Cheryl pulled the first book labelled 2001 from the shelf. She’d tried Google, but found a million Kubrick pages dedicated to a Space Odyssey and nothing on a murder near or in Espanola.
—
Home from work, Cheryl was irritated and sweaty. The library gave her nothing, a big waste of a morning. She spent her entire shift in a grump trying to figure out why there was no official news report in the local rag on her father’s death. She needed a report, needed something to keep her mind off Cameron. At home, her mother told her to heat up some personal pizzas from the freezer because that’s what she and Sara ate, but all that was left were deluxe with mushrooms. No thanks.
She made microwave Orville and ate it in her room. It was after 10:00 PM and her phone was alive with messages and pokes. She read them all, but responded to only a few, then scrolled Facebook for only as long as it took to stumble onto a pic of Cameron sucking Tina Card’s stupid face.
She felt like crying and rolled into her down bedding. Just before she fell asleep, an epiphany hit and she rose. She signed up for a week-long free trial of The Toronto Sun—her mother’s credit card information popped up via Google on every device in the home. The Toronto Sun was a sensationalist paper, drawing light on any lurid—the inside back page featured a Sunshine girl in a bikini—or terrifying incidents happening in the province.
After sixteen minutes of scanning headlines and clicking next, she landed on a myth that had become much more. The story was harsh on her mother, suggesting that she knew beyond what she told the paper and that if the police knew something, it was the reporter’s obligation to share it.
“Yeah, right,” Cheryl said as she read, sucking salt and butter from un-popped kernels left behind from her supper.
The reporter essentially knew nothing aside from the bare facts: three were dead, one had survived, and where the crimes took place; and what some of the local First Nations myths described as the Ugly One, given the survivor’s account. That bit felt like filler to go around police tape pictures at a beach that could’ve been any beach.
Cheryl matched the description to Google Maps and found the general location of what the reporter called the grey lagoon by the southeast coast of Madcat Lake in Algoma County. It wasn’t marked and from the aerial view showed only trees, a gravel road, and a water blob. Luckily, since the reporter had little else to run with, he’d given vivid instructions on how to get to the crime scene from the highway.
—
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Cheryl stopped at the door. She had a bag filled for the beach, still halfway pretending to herself that she was about to check out a small body of water for no reason beyond fresh air.
“What?”
“You have to watch your sister today. You know that.”
Cheryl moaned, recalling. No argument, besides Sara could sit through a car ride. Company might be nice, keep her mind occupied.
“You girls have fun today,” Penny said, unlit cigarette dangling between her lips as she stepped through the door.
Cheryl looked at her sister. Sara had brown lips from the Reese Puffs cereal, smacking wet, exaggerated, animalistic chews.
“We’re going swimming today. Finish your breakfast.”
Sara grinned, mushy clumps in her teeth. “Can we go to the island?”
“No, we’re going someplace we’ve never been.” Cheryl corrected herself in her head, Where you’ve never been. I was there once, in a womb.
—
The Fiesta was great on gas, so they didn’t bother filling up before leaving town. Cheryl took the 810 northbound—a cracked and chipping two-lane stretch of highway that seemed wholly unused. Sara controlled the music with Cheryl’s cellphone via auxiliary jack while Cheryl eyed the clock, comparing it to the odometer and the report’s stated kilometer count until the turn off.
“Why we going here?” Sara asked, big sunglasses on her face giving her the bug-eyed look.
The here in question was a skinny, dusty, gravel road, and if the highway leading up was underused, this was a ghost route. Cheryl slowed to twenty-five and drove for six minutes until the first sign popped into view, promising the right track. It said Dow Lake and pointed to the right. Another sign followed and pointed to the left: Madawanson Lake.
“When do we get there? We should’a just went to the island.”
“It’s barely an island.” Cheryl had little oomph in her words—Manitoulin Island seemed out in the middle of Lake Huron when approaching from the south, but only a wide, shallow river separated it from the mainland to the north. “Almost there.”
“Almost where?”
A hand-painted sign for Madcat Lake stood on the side of the road, directing the car straight, avoiding the veering road, and into the forest on a one-lane trail. If the Fiesta had been a foot wider, branches would’ve struck the windows and front bumper.
“You sure we should drive here?” Sara looked worried, her tone sounded downright scared.
“Shh.”
Four minutes after starting down the trail, the trees peeled back and a scummy bog revealed itself. Another sign declared it to be Madcat Lake.
“Eww.” The fear gone from Sara.
The path continued around the edge of the lake and the final sign made itself visible by cutting off the route. An arrow pointed right and a word promised, simply, Lagoon.
—
On lunchbreak, Penny opened the browser on her phone and checked her bank statement. Financially, all was kosher, but a strange fee and then refund appeared on her credit card. She sent a text to Cheryl, asking what it was for, as it was almost certainly the girl’s doing.
—
“Cool,” Sara said, extending the O—coooool.
The lagoon had grey sandy beaches and pale green water. It had taken them two hours to get there, a full hour longer than she assumed, but they’d arrived, finally. Cheryl rolled six more feet until the car sat beneath the shade of the treeline. She opened the door, smiled, inhaled deeply, and then frowned.
Behind her, aside from the beep warning of an open car door, she heard a hissing. Not snake-like, no, much more irritating than reptilian. “You bastard,” Cheryl said and then turned to Sara. “They teach you how to change a flat in the fourth grade these days?”
“A what?”
“Never mind.” Cheryl could’ve watched a tutorial on YouTube surely, but the chances of any kind of data service were about nil way out there. She didn’t even check. Instead, she climbed back into the car and dug in the glovebox for the owner’s manual. Sure enough, it was all there.
But that was later. They’d just gotten here and had to check it out.
Cheryl shuddered matching the police tape pics with the world before her, this was where her father died and where she and her mother nearly died. It was beautiful.
The sun banked off the water in a way that coated the world in a sheen of comfort. The ozone scent of the small lake carried into their noses and out their mouths. Sara tossed her sunglasses in the car and then followed her sister, began stripping—her bathing suit beneath her clothing.
“Aren’t you going in?”
It was too cold for Cheryl and she wasn’t in the mood to get over the initial shock that comes with pond swimming in mid-June. “No, but you go ahead. I want to look around a bit, stretch my legs.”
“You can stretch your legs in the water.”
“I said no.”
“Fine!” Sara stormed to the beach, leaving her shirt, pants, and sandals in the windblown and mossy grass.
Cheryl watched her go and then followed her half the way to the water. She slipped off her shoes and began walking in the strange sand. More like dust than sand, it clung to her skin in a powder rather than in granules.
The newspaper painted the un-photographed parts of the scene in a way that Cheryl could see superimposed on the world around her. Gruesome, but fake. She added a bloody Cameron dead on the beach. That helped some, but nothing struck her like she’d hoped. There was no real revelation beyond the thought that she believed her mother fully.
A first.
While envisioning a faceless corpse half-submerged by the shore, Cheryl closed her eyes. The attempt at a greater grasp lasted two heartbeats before Sara’s voice cut her reverie to pieces.
“What? What?” Cheryl bolted.
“Look’it.” Sara was out of the water with her arms hugging over her chest. Her eyes pinned on a floating moose carcass, or what was left of it—a sum that amounted to an eyeless, tongueless head and fore-hips with legs that stopped at the knees.
“Ugh. Gross.” Cheryl suddenly realized this trip was a pain in the ass mistake and she still needed to figure out how to change the damned tire. “Come on, help me change this wheel.” She slipped her feet back into her shoes.
“What did that to it?” Sara picked up her stuff as they walked, slid her feet into the sandals.
Cheryl didn’t want to think about the dead moose nor what might kill it and maim it in such a way. “Forget it.”
The leather-bound owner’s manual was on the driver’s seat, flipped open to the page describing how to change a tire. The instructions seemed simple and obvious, but nothing like that was ever easy as it seemed.
The doughnut tire came out of the trunk after flipping the carpeted floor up and out of the way. It was much heavier than expected. The jack was out next and Sara demanded she be the one to turn the crank, which worked for the best because the jack had to meet up with the designated landing pad on the underside of the frame. Once the weight of the car came into account, Sara gave up trying to turn the crank.
The flat rubber still touching the ground, though barely—just as the manual specified—Cheryl put the tire wrench on the first nut. She grunted and jerked and thought of Cameron using her for sex and nearly came apart at the seams to get the first squeak of movement.
“Holy shit,” she said, winded.
“Want me to try?”
Normally, Cheryl would’ve told the girl to give her space or, if in a bad mood, to screw off, but she was tired and there were three more nuts after the first, and the new tire had to go on and all the nuts re-tightened after that. A breather was a fine idea.
“Sure, spin that one the rest of the way.”
Sara did and tried the next nut, but quickly gave up.
Sweat matted Cheryl’s bangs to her forehead by the time the fourth nut creaked loose. She flopped back and Sara jumped in for action, sensing that this situation was not going to have a quick solution.
“How long you think it’s gonna take to put on the new one?” Sara spun the nut with her bare fingers.
“Not as long, I think.” Cheryl leaned her palms flat behind her and gazed the scene for a millionth time. The notion of importance came on her in fleeting waves. This was where her father died. This was just some remote place with weird sand. This was where her father died. This was where she got her first flat tire. On and on.
Sara grabbed onto the wheel, but it remained in place, though no longer tight to the car.
“Just a second, needs to get higher.” Cheryl leaned in and cranked.
The wheel fell into Sara’s lap.
“Think you can lift that into the trunk?”
Sara nodded and flipped the tire close to the trunk and began the effort, but gave up. Cheryl’s filthy hands had the spare lifted. Her arms shook as she held it up, trying to match up the lugs to the holes.
“Is that a dog?” Sara asked, returning to Cheryl’s side.
“What?”
“It’s ugly.”
Cheryl rested the wheel over the hub, though out of place and looked to where Sara looked. The distance seemed safe—its rear legs dipped in the lagoon. And it certainly was something, and about the size of a dog, a pit bull, maybe bigger. Closer and closer, it moved slowly, and oh yes, it was bigger than a pit bull, more like a Rottweiler.
“Maybe we should,” Cheryl began to say, drinking in the ugly, bird-like cone over its snout, the severe toothy under-bite, talon-ed feet, and rough leathery body. It had hair in sporadic patches like a chemotherapy patient. It began growling and then leapt into a run, “get in the car!”
Cheryl yanked open the back door and the front door of the driver’s side. The girls both jumped in and slammed the doors. The car rocked on the jack. Cheryl had a vision of the car falling and leaving them stranded out there. Amazingly, equilibrium teetered and tottered, but remained where it should.
A breath escaped Cheryl’s mouth in a whistle.
“What is that?” Sara whispered.
Cheryl looked out the window to the thing leaning against the door on its hind legs to see in through the glass. Slobber ran from its parted jaws. Its eyes glowed iridescent grey. A foot long pink tongue flicked out and splashed around its face. It then fell back to its fours and began walking around in the blown grass.
“What is it?” Sara’s whisper was louder.
“I don’t know, but it’s going away. Once it’s gone, you stay in the car and I’ll get the wheel on and we’ll leave, okay?”
Sara didn’t answer, but also did not attempt to open her door.
The creature was already at the beach and by the time Cheryl stood by the tire, it had gone into the lagoon, disappearing beneath the inviting green surf.
Cheryl crouched and eyed the lugs to the holes. Her arms had rested and the chore proved easier than what her earlier attempts suggested. She glanced over her shoulder and saw waves on the water, gentle ones, a breeze maybe. She faced the task. This was going to happen and then they’d go, they’d tell someone about the animal and how crazy it was and they’d be home with an interesting story in pocket.
The steel on steel rolled into place, the sound like a shopping cart with a stuck castor. The first nut was in Cheryl’s hand when Sara shouted, “It’s coming back!”
Cheryl looked over her shoulder again and saw the wet beast rushing towards her, a lake water mist reaching from its back, creating a rainbow effect on the air above it, as if it carried its own atmosphere. Those ripples hadn’t been wind, this thing was smart and hunting her.
The tired, dirty, and overwrought girl scrambled to the front of the car. Her feet swished and tore the flimsy grass blades. She flung the door wide, hopped in, and slammed it shut. The Fiesta rocked on the jack with a ree-ree, but kept hold. If Cheryl could get the damned wheel on, they could leave, but it the car fell onto the jack, pinching it or burying it beneath the frame, they were done.
The creature stopped abruptly no more than ten feet from the car. It’s strange and beautifully horrible eyes regarded them. It almost seemed to smile at them, as if knowing their minds. Then, the girls watched as it turned and trotted back to the lake like it didn’t have a thought to spare them.
Cheryl waited until her heart calmed and then waited some more, her grip tight on the handle. She opened the door.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to get the wheel on or we’ll never get out of here.”
“Call someone, make them kill it. Tell them to come get us.” Sara sounded especially childish, much younger than her nine years.
Cheryl pulled the door closed again, spying the lake, thinking for a moment she saw two bumps rise above the surface like gator eyes. There was no doubt about waves, but maybe those were from before. From her purse, she retrieved her phone. No bars, but the emergency service was available.
She hadn’t thought of that, didn’t know it was a thing. She dialed 911 as she scanned the growing shadows about the lagoon’s shore.
—
“Okay, okay.” Cheryl took a breath and turned in the driver’s seat to look at Sara. “The lady can’t hear me. I have to try for better service.”
Sara nodded slowly, her mouth open, eyes full of alarm. “But then come right back.”
“For sure.” Cheryl narrowed her gaze onto the lagoon as she pushed open the door. Nothing. Not even wind ripples. She stepped a foot out and then rose to standing. The grass was above her ankles, but strangely, there were no visible insects. “Can you hear me?”
Crackle, “…try…ter…,” crackle, “…may…lit…,” crackle.
Cheryl took five long strides before she had the chance to think it through. Behind her, the car dinged the warning of an open door and she ached to be back there, away from the whole damned mess. “I’m at the lagoon by Madcat Lake. One hour north of Espan—”
“Cheryl!”
Cheryl spun at the scream of her sister and saw that to the left, behind the end of the car, the creature had slunk around and was taking steps like a lion stalking its prey. She ran, her legs stretching and pounding at maximum effort before she jumped inside the Fiesta, slamming her ass on the steering wheel.
Safety was a mirage. On her heels snorting and panting. It was hideous and right there. She yanked the door closed when the creature’s open jaws came into view and the steel door banked off its skull, sending it downwards, out of site. The car rocked, somehow still standing on three wheels and a flimsy crank jack.
Cheryl was panting.
Sara was crying. “Are they coming?”
Cheryl looked out at the phone in the mossy grass, wondering the same thing, wondering how readily an emergency service gets dispatched if they have to go by a caller’s GPS. Was her GPS even engaged?
“I told them where…we’re safe in here. It’s going to be okay.”
“I want Mom.”
Cheryl said nothing. It was her mother’s fault they were in this mess at all.
They sat and watched the grass and the lagoon and the creature through the window as it wobbled back into view and then out. It appeared almost stunned.
Or it wanted to appear stunned.
Cheryl shook her head as the creature ceased its motion and looked across the short distance with knowing eye contact. “It’s just an ugly dog,” she whispered, but was it?
The creature moved along, edging closer to the lagoon. Cheryl imagined it being right there again and smacking the door off its head so hard that it died with a single crunch of the skull.
—
The sun was on its quick descent when Penny stepped into a surprisingly dim and quiet home. She’d sent three text messages after the first and sat at the dining table with a Salisbury steak Hungry Man dinner, wondering.
The wonder was strong enough that Penny took her supper into Cheryl’s bedroom and onto her computer. With an ear on anything happening elsewhere in the home and a hand steadily shoveling mushy food into her mouth, a mother invaded her daughter’s internet privacy.
—
“Do you have any candy?” Sara asked.
Afternoon had become evening so quickly.
“Check my purse.”
The creature left their sight what seemed like hours ago and Cheryl thought maybe it had had enough when she conked it with the door. Was probably just some genetic mutation, not even a dog, an oversized raccoon with a serious case of ugly. Then again, maybe it was only a dog. Maybe its mother got into some kind of atomic waste. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
“Maybe I should try doing the wheel again.”
Sara acted as if not hearing. “You have four of those stupid mini-golf mints.” She lifted her hand to show Cheryl her work logo on the white wrappers. They gave them out with meals, trying to class up the experience. “You want any?”
“You eat them. I’m going to get those things on the wheel and then drive us out of here.”
Again, as if not hearing a word, Sara spoke. “How come the police aren’t here yet?”
No answer to that one, Cheryl took a deep breath and pushed open the door far enough that she could slink out. The air had come to wear a chill, still warm, but cool was surely on its way. Ten feet at max, Cheryl eyed the phone and decided to ignore it, for now. She hurried to the wheel and picked a nut from the ground. Grass clung to her fingers as a sweat poured immediately.
Sara began whining and crying. Didn’t scream. Still, Cheryl looked around. Left. Right. Back. She saw only the picturesque lagoon until she saw more. There it was, slinking like a hunter coming from a reedy spot of the beach. Cheryl broke for the car as the creature broke as well. Too fast, so fast it almost seemed as if it had been playing before, and Cheryl had to jump over it as the creature slammed its head into the driver’s door, knocking the car from the jack. The crack and dent of the collision were dull. The fall was incredible, crunching, and sounded expensive, deadly. Sara’s whine grew louder, more childish.
Cheryl circled the snub nose of the car and made for the passenger’s side front door. The warning dinged and the light came on, illuminating their fear for a half-second before dimming to match the atmosphere.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s oka—” Cheryl reached for her sister, speaking until being cut off by the fantastic scrabble of talons on steel and then talons against the glass. The creature was on the hood. The black finish had great scores of grey streaks where the creature cut into the paint. Cheryl screamed. Sara went blank-faced as shock seized invisible hands around her throat.
The creature began stabbing its snout into the windshield as it shuffled for balance on the little car. The glass cracked and a spider web danced the entire surface.
“No. No.” Cheryl reached for her sister, pulling her forward. That horrible thing was going to get inside the car. If it got inside, there was no tomorrow. Cheryl knew that, knew it at her core.
The boney, hook-pointed snout broke through, a shower of sparkly pebbles landed on Cheryl’s shoulder as she reefed on her sister, pulling her forward. Almost miming the motion, the creature yanked back its head and the safety glass shattered fully, sending the creature rolling in reverse, off the hood.
“Wake up!”
Cheryl slapped Sara. It did no good. She reached past and yanked on the plastic handle of the back seat, sending it forward, against Sara’s limp form.
“Dammit, get in there!”
The creature’s talons scratched at the plastic of the bumper and grill as it righted itself in the grass. Grace was not in its skillset. Cheryl chanced a look over her shoulder, made eye contact again with the hideous form, and rammed her sister’s body over the back seat.
The creature made a horrid, almost bird-like cry before it launched onto the hood. It thumped a bent steel bark and then popped back into shape almost immediately. Cheryl jumped over the seat and walloped heavily onto her sister. Sara’s breath left her chest in a whoop, but the girl was too out of it to react beyond that. Cheryl saw a shadow playing on the ceiling of the car a half-second before yanking on the back of the seat to seal them away inside the trunk. It clicked and the creature climbed after them.
It was out there, pawing at the material, making heavy breathing sounds. The seat worked, at least for now, and a barrier of synthetic cotton, foam padding, and steel springs separated girls from creature. Cheryl heard her heartbeat loud in her ears, but also heard sniffing. She felt around the cramped trunk for hope, as fleeting as that was.
—
At nine minutes past six in the morning, Penny rode in Ronny Johnson’s Dodge Caravan, trailing behind two OPP Taurus cruisers. The trees bashed at the cop cars and played even worse hell on the sides of Ronny’s minivan as they chased the clues Penny put together during her sleepless night.
Internet browsing history and a call to the Espanola OPP detachment linked bits of information and four cops showed up at her door. She dialed Ronny and got his ass out of bed in time to caboose the parade to the likely location of the missing girls.
Penny had no doubt the thing that had killed her boyfriend and friends was out there.
Suddenly, the opening in the forest hit them and they rolled to the lagoon. The cops obviously didn’t know about the place, but had followed the signs hastily and without hesitation. The Fiesta came into view, scratched, dented, windshield shattered, and sitting on only three wheels.
Penny’s heartbeat was in her throat as she envisioned the girls torn to shreds, a sequel to her past, an update for the younger generation of lore seeker.
Ronny pulled the shifter of his Caravan to park and Penny bolted out. The police had hands on hips, ready to draw, but saw nothing.
“Sara! Cheryl!”
All listened, silent and unmoving.
“Sara! Cheryl!” Tears bubbled on Penny’s words.
Again, silence.
“Sara! Cheryl!”
This time, a thumping.
Cheryl ran for the car. She pawed at the trunk, gone stupid with panic. “Open! Open! Open!”
One of the cops reached around the ignition and felt for the keys. She withdrew them and hit the trunk button on the fob. The lid swung open.
Wide-eyed and grinning maniacally, looking like an asylum resident, Cheryl swung her arms around her unconscious sister’s form. “I tricked it! It was sniffin’, but couldn’t smell us anymore. I tricked it!”
The trunk reeked of alcohol—windshield washer fluid.
Penny grabbed onto Sara and lifted her free. Cheryl bounced up then and fell to the ground. “Mommy?” Sara whispered into Penny’s ear.
“I tricked it!” Cheryl began to laugh as she rolled in the grass behind the trunk.
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The Toronto Sun – June 23, 2018
Daughters of the only survivor of the Madcat Lake massacre during the summer of 2000 claim a creature harassed and destroyed their mother’s 2015 Ford Fiesta sedan. They’d gone out to see the place, according to Cheryl Lam, 18, resident of Espanola. Recently Pam Lam, 36, had her side of a mysterious and difficult to believe story featured on the Hometown Murders segment of the comedic true crime podcast, My Favorite Murder, and ignited intrigue in her daughter.
“I would’ve never emailed the show if I thought Cheryl would find out. It’s just such a crazy thing and I thought, I don’t know, maybe more people would’ve had something like that happen to them and maybe share it,” Penny Lam said.
Police searching the vicinity around Madcat Lake found no clues as to the whereabouts of the creature described as dog-like with a boney snout and talon-ed feet…
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