Growing up on a lake might sound amazing to most people. Looking back on it, some 40 years ago now, I suppose it lent a certain excitement that other kids didn’t have. To us it was normal. The backyard sloped down gently toward the water and ended abruptly with a foot or two drop to the water, only a handful of inches deep here at the edge of the shore. We had a pier that jutted out into the lake about fifty feet. My brother and I used to go out there and cast our fishing rods hoping to catch anything and everything. We were fascinated by the water. We used to make up stories about what things might be living in the unknown depths and what bait we needed to catch them with.

Our parents were always a bit nervous about having the lake basically at our doorstep. Every year you’d hear about someone somewhere on the lake having an accident and drowning. On a good year it might not happen at all, but on a bad year it could be as high as half a dozen. Lakes are dangerous creatures themselves regardless of what might live in them.

Then came the summer of 1979, a summer that I won’t soon forget. My brother had just turned 18, fresh out of high school, and I was just shy of 16. It was mid-July and it had been a bad summer. Two teenagers from out of town had drowned in June and and four more over the 4th of July weekend in a terrible boating accident. The lake had an almost malicious feel to it. Standing out on the pier you could almost feel it calling to you.

Jump in.

Dive down.

These intrusive thoughts seemed to almost be planted in your head. I would often sit on the edge of the pier and stair down into the murky depths of the lake. Of course, right under the pier could only be twenty feet deep at max but you could only see a couple of feet before the silt in the water obscured everything. I’d sit there listening to the water call to me, staring into its soul. Sometimes I thought I’d see a glimmer of something swimming by. I always just assumed it was fish or a turtle, the lake is full of them.

One night we had stayed up late fishing from the pier. We didn’t catch very much, nothing seemed to be biting that day. We didn’t think much of it and chalked it up to the oppressive heat of the summer. We packed up our tackle boxes and fishing rods and trekked the 50 yards back up to the house. We put our gear away in the garage on the side of the house, my brother went inside and I stepped back out into the yard to make sure we had gotten everything. As I looked around I noticed a shape down on the pier. It was difficult to make out and I could only really see it as it blocked the reflection of the moon and stars in the gentle ripples of the lake.

I called out, thinking someone had snuck out on to our pier. The shape perked up at the sound of my voice and seemed to turn to look at me. I could just make out a torso before it turned away and dove into the water with hardly a sound. My brother came running out of the house behind me asking what was wrong. I told him what I saw down by the water. He laughed at me and said I had a strong imagination then turned to go back inside. I told him I was going to go down there and check it out, which he snorted at and said not to take too long. Mom and dad want us to come inside.

I grabbed a flashlight and turned back towards the water and walked the path down to the pier. The only sound i hear is the gentle slapping of the minuscule ripples in the water against the posts supporting the pier. As I stepped onto the wood I realized I was holding my breath. I could feel the tension in my body as I walked out to where I saw the creature. I looked down and the boards under where it was sitting were wet. I didn’t imagine it. It was real, I thought to myself. I took another step to peer over the edge into the water. I might as well have been staring to the mouth of a pitch black cave. It was at that point I remembered I had brought the flashlight. I fumbled it out of my pocket and pointed it down at the water then clicked it on.

What I saw staring back at me I will never forget. It scared me so badly I dropped the flashlight which fell and hit the wood planks making a thunderous racquet. That scared me nearly as much and I bolted back to the house.

The creature I saw in the depths staring back at me couldn’t have been more than a couple feet under the surface. The lower half of its body was too low in the water to make out behind the murkiness. But the upper half looked an awful lot like a drowned corpse. It’s skin appeared slightly iridescent and it’s face vaguely resembled that of a fish. But the most frightening thing was just how human it seemed.

The ruckus of the flashlight must have startled it too, as I was turning to run I caught a brief glimpse of it turning in the water and I heard the sound of disturbing the surface of the water behind me as I dashed back to the house.

Nobody believed me when I told them what I saw. They believed it was just the imagination of a kid wanting attention. But I know what I saw. Something lived in that lake back then, probably more than one. I have no reason not to believe that something still does.