Few people went far out in the lake without a boat. The water had an ink quality to it, the kind that makes your skin crawl just thinking about what could be down there. Of course your brain helpfully points out that it's rural England and the chances of anything bigger than your average four foot cod are slim to none.
Still, deeper down in your thoughts lurks the little phrase "but what if" which is a curse of a phrase if ever there was one. It's the kind of phrase that slithers about your thoughts and makes you wonder just how bad things can really be, if you weren't so naive as to believe they could be anything but the worst to begin with.
This little phrase now asks you "but what if there are bigger things down there and what if they can see you standing by the shore?" to which you could easily laugh off as fish don't care about people, only food. They're just simple little beasties leading simple little lives. But what if they can see you and what if they're follow you whenever you walk your dog by the water? Would you necessarily be able to see them under the murky surface and would you really care if some daft little stickleback was tailing you?
These thoughts cling to the corners of your mind,as intrusive little things often do, keeping you wary of seemingly innocent objects, people and places like the clown statue at the end of the pier or your grandmother's false teeth. The same thoughts that have kept people from swimming in the lake for as long as anybody cared to remember.
When the corpse of something prehistoric washed up on the shoreline, stomach full of human remains, everyone's worst fears were confirmed. All those suicides from the tall bridge miles upstream and their bodies all ended up in the belly of something that looked like an octopus, a bag of needles and a box of glass eyes all had a baby that grew to almost 10 metres long.
So many of the bodies looked fresh, barely digested to the point where they cold be mistaken for merely sleeping, yet there was no obvious sign of death on the creature. The lake was closed to the public for a few days after that while the authorities did their thing of wandering up and down the shore, debating this and that until they declared that the lake was safe again.
The growing missing persons list contests that but that's another story altogether.
Still, deeper down in your thoughts lurks the little phrase "but what if" which is a curse of a phrase if ever there was one. It's the kind of phrase that slithers about your thoughts and makes you wonder just how bad things can really be, if you weren't so naive as to believe they could be anything but the worst to begin with.
This little phrase now asks you "but what if there are bigger things down there and what if they can see you standing by the shore?" to which you could easily laugh off as fish don't care about people, only food. They're just simple little beasties leading simple little lives. But what if they can see you and what if they're follow you whenever you walk your dog by the water? Would you necessarily be able to see them under the murky surface and would you really care if some daft little stickleback was tailing you?
These thoughts cling to the corners of your mind,as intrusive little things often do, keeping you wary of seemingly innocent objects, people and places like the clown statue at the end of the pier or your grandmother's false teeth. The same thoughts that have kept people from swimming in the lake for as long as anybody cared to remember.
When the corpse of something prehistoric washed up on the shoreline, stomach full of human remains, everyone's worst fears were confirmed. All those suicides from the tall bridge miles upstream and their bodies all ended up in the belly of something that looked like an octopus, a bag of needles and a box of glass eyes all had a baby that grew to almost 10 metres long.
So many of the bodies looked fresh, barely digested to the point where they cold be mistaken for merely sleeping, yet there was no obvious sign of death on the creature. The lake was closed to the public for a few days after that while the authorities did their thing of wandering up and down the shore, debating this and that until they declared that the lake was safe again.
The growing missing persons list contests that but that's another story altogether.
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