Summer, 1975

It was 1975 when we all realised that perhaps, our summers from now on were going to be different. It was a crazy time and blazing heat meant that everyone had left for beaches and other bodies of water. I was pathetically afraid of water and so, my parents allowed me to stay at home. I was fifteen that summer and my brother was sixteen. He had decided that he would spend the spring before earning some cash after school so that he could go to the lake with his friends, having enough money to buy some equipment such as a little boat and some fishing equipment.

It was the first Saturday of the summer when he phoned me from a café to tell me they had got themselves stuck in traffic and so, waited and drank some coffee for a while. It was only a half hour to the lake but with the traffic, that turned into two hours. By the time they got to the lake, it was already half way through the day but they still decided to make the most of it. My brother said over the phone that he and his friends were going to stay there past nightfall in order to get the best look at the lake in the moonlight. There was strength in numbers, all of the boys had been through some sort of army-style training and so I don't think my parents minded that much that he'd be home later than usual. He had, for the most of it, earned this trip out.

The rest of what I'm about to tell you is stuff my brother told me to record as he spoke to me over the phone. I'm sorry if it sounds muffled but I don't have any state-of-the-art equipment. It's literally just a toy my parents bought for my friends and I to record little songs on. But my brother definitely didn't want anyone putting words into his mouth.

***

I'm going to try and be as quick as I possibly can Marie so please, listen to me here. Things didn't really go the way we had planned them and the boys are all gone. Five of us set off this morning and I swear to God, Marie I am the only one left. Let me tell you how it happened. When I called this morning it wasn't just about the traffic it was also about the heat. The car had heated up so much that even though I was sitting in the back where the most air conditioning was, it was still way too hot. We pulled over for a few cokes - the guy behind the counter didn't want to serve coffee since it was so warm outside.

When we took off again we reached the lake at about midday, maybe a little later I can't remember. But we had agreed to stick around until nightfall to see the moon on the lake and well, you know all of this but things changed pretty quickly.

Once evening hit, we had cooked sausages on the makeshift fire we put on and ate them. To be honest, that wasn't too bad. The horrid parts came after that, once nightfall began to hit. We spent the evening trying to tell ghost stories like we did as kids around the campfire, but everyone just kept laughing and so that didn't work. But as we were telling these ghost stories, one of our group - Jasper - went to take a dip into the water to see the temperature. He said it was weird that though the air was hot, the water was cold.

That was weird. But it wasn't as weird as what would happen next.

Jasper said he was going to swim in it to cool down and everyone just shrugged and let him go. Bennie didn't think that was a bad idea and said he would go too after finishing eating. But half an hour later, Jasper still hadn't come back to get Bennie even though he said he would. Bennie walked out to the lake and said he saw no sign of Jasper anywhere. We all went out on to the lake after him and staring over the water, nobody would have even known Jasper had been there.

Bennie wondered whether Jasper had drowned and being that he was the best swimmer out of all of us, we didn't think so but Bennie looked anyway. Ten minutes later, he came back and said he couldn't find Jasper anywhere. The lake was quite big so I don't think he swam the whole thing but he probably swam enough to know that there was something really wrong. After Bennie returned, we heard a loud splash from the other side of the lake and there was Jasper.

Jasper got out of the lake all the way on the other side and began waving frantically to us. We couldn't really make out what he was saying and so told him shout louder. He was telling us to run away. Then, almost instantly, some creature wrapped itself around Jasper's body and pulled him back into the water - devouring him whole. We all turned to Bennie to ask him whether he had really looked and Bennie confirmed he hadn't seen anything.

I shivered even though it was hot.

Something had just eaten Jasper. Something like a large sea creature with a big, black and gaping mouth. Bennie said that nobody should go back in the water and Neil suggested we leave but George just called him a coward and kicked him in the leg. Everyone was on one side or the other - something was out there alright and some of us wanted to leave right away, others thought it wrong to abandon Jasper.

We set up camp and everyone became hungry very quickly afterwards because of all the heat and panic. Neil and Bennie volunteered to look for food in the nearby trees whilst I would stay and keep watch just in case Jasper wasn't eaten (I mean, I was still shivering so I was pretty much given a task that didn't require me to do anything). George was given the job of setting up tents just in case it started to rain. I'm pretty glad we brought these things with us now.

An hour in and Neil and Bennie returned with nothing. They asked why the tents weren't set up yet and I told them they'd told George to do it so he was, as George always was, goofing off. But George was nowhere to be found. His shoes were found at the edge of the lake, upside down as if he had been dragged by something. Dragged down.

I asked if we could go home now, it wasn't safe out here but now Bennie was in charge, nobody was going anywhere until we found our friends. It wouldn't take long for us to split up into a mini-search party and for Neil to go missing when we met up again at the other side of the river. This time I was pleading with Bennie and he agreed that it was way too dangerous to stick around a moment longer.

I turned towards the car and out came a long, spidery and wet arm from the water. We both began to run but Bennie was still to close to the water and, well, I saw the creature then with my own eyes and up close. It was a giant monster of the sea with many eyes and many claw-like legs. It grabbed him and started pulling him into the lake. I didn't want to look back for long so I kept running and running. I could hear Bennie's dying screams and gargles as he tried to fight his way out. But, the very last scream I heard from Bennie is when I was already starting the car to leave. I made it halfway down the road before it ran out of gas - then I sprinted on foot.

I am calling you now because I need you of everyone to understand what I saw. Don't let them put words into my mouth. I'm going to buy a camera from a shop and go back to the lake to try and photograph it so nobody calls me a liar. I haven't been one of God's best men, Marie and I probably shouldn't have bailed on my friends, but please don't let them tell lies about me.

***

It's as though he knew he wouldn't come back either. I received a camera in the post some days later, so he must have made it somewhere. Whether the monster took him or whether grief had its way with him, I'll never know. But what I do know is that there's a monster in the lake just outside of town. If you get a little close in the depths of the night, you can hear it get hungry.