Horror logo

Maintenance Request

A Horror Story on Foggy Waters

By Tyler C ClarkPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
Like
Maintenance Request
Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash

Harold gripped the steering wheel of the small deck boat with white knuckles. He flinched as icy specks of lake water misted his round glasses. Being on open water reminded him of almost drowning as a child, and the lake still terrified him.

He wished he could get this maintenance request at the lake house done as fast as humanly possible. But even as the thought crossed his mind, the motor of his boat coughed and sputtered out to his immediate horror. He was only halfway across the lake.

“Come on,” Harold groaned. Turning the key in the ignition only produced tired, dead complaints from the old beast.

“Damn it!” he shouted. He couldn’t believe this was happening—on his birthday no less! He grumbled, shifted his tool bag out of his way, and fetched an oar to start rowing to the island. After only a few strokes, something jolted the oar in his grip so violently that his fingers stung from the impact. He instinctively retracted the oar from the water, knowing that if he lost his oar he’d be stranded.

Harold’s jaw dropped as he lifted the dripping oar from the water. A crescent chunk of the oar was missing, seemingly ripped away by something with many teeth.

“What the hell?”

He centered himself in his small boat—hands, arms, and legs as far from the water as possible—and watched the surface of the water for telltale ripples or shadows of life beneath the water’s surface, clutching his broken oar to his chest as if it were a rope and he was hanging from a precipice.

He held perfectly still. His eyes fished for signs of life around him. He couldn’t be sure how long he sat there in paralyzed silence, vigilantly scanning the water. The swaying of the boat eased until there was only the slightest bobbing motion to the vessel. All he could hear was his own breath, and the gentle lapping of water against the sides of his boat. It was the late afternoon, and drifts of fog wafted from the far bank to drift across the lake’s surface like a ghost.

He swallowed hard and wiped his brow, assessing the resources in the boat. “First aid, life-jacket, flare gun, tool bag—my tool bag!” he whispered. “That's a sterndrive engine. Shouldn’t be too hard to fix.”

But the compartment to access the engine was right next to the water, that murky green depth of suffocating nothingness. He still couldn’t bring his legs to move.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered. His chest felt tight and painful. A numbness creeped into the tips of his fingers. His breathing came in shallow gasps.

It was in this very lake that he almost drowned many years ago. He was seven years old. An older kid in his swim class had held Harold’s head under the water as a joke. Harold had panicked, inhaling a mouthful of water. His lungs had burned. The water stifled his shouts. He grasped and clawed at the larger kid, unable to find enough purchase on his body to free himself. He blacked out. The next thing he remembered was coughing and puking on the dock after they’d revived him. He hadn’t been breathing for nearly five minutes.

“No!” Harold shouted at the memory, at himself, at the panic attack that was now overtaking him.

“No!” he shouted again. He tore his hat from his head and threw it with all his might. He seized his tool bag, crouched beside the deck boat’s outboard engine, and opened it’s compartment.

“Fix this thing while there’s still daylight,” he mumbled, getting to work. “Maintenance request be damned, I am not staying out here all night.”

About a half-hour later, he believed he’d fixed the outboard engine. He shifted back to the driver’s seat to turn the key in the ignition. As he was thus turned away from the rear of the ship, he heard a splash and a strange noise behind him. He spun to see a child-sized figure with short, webbed fingers, fish eyes, and fins on either side of its broad, green face reach its little arms over the edge of his boat to swipe tools from his tool bag.

“HEY!” Harold shouted, staying as far back from the creature as he could.

The creature grinned at him with an open maw filled with rows of teeth, tilted its head back and laughed! The small fish creature laughed!

“GET AWAY!” Harold screamed.

It pulled Harold’s tool bag from the boat and overturned it in the water, emptying it’s contents into the lake, laughing its chittering laugh all the while.

Harold pulled a flare gun from the compartment to his side, took aim, and fired it at the creature. The flare seared bright orange in Harold’s vision. The creature’s laughter was replaced with a short cry of pain, then it vanished beneath the water.

Harold spun in his seat, turned the key in the ignition with a pleading prayer, and let out a cry of relief as the engine turned over. He sped the boat back to shore the way he’d come.

When he reached the dock, Harold sprung from the boat and collapsed to the solid ground in a heap, crying with relief to be on solid ground again. He took a moment to pull the glasses from his face and rub the tears and lake spray from his scruffy cheeks. He focused on slowing his breathing, banishing his recurring memories of drowning in the lake and the monster he'd just witnessed. The sun was now dying behind the wooded hills. The shadows around him deepened by the minute.

As he leaned back on his haunches, he saw two blurry figures approaching him from the end of the dock. Their basic shapes in his myopic vision resembled that of a tall woman with a child in tow. He rubbed the lenses dry on his shirt and replaced them on his nose.

“Hello!” he shouted hoarsely. “I need he—”

The lanky figure approaching him was no woman, but a fish creature just like the one he’d seen before. The smaller of the two made a pitiful sound like a complaint to the other, pointing to Harold with one webbed finger. The taller creature’s mouth opened wide in an outraged screech revealing rows of thin teeth while the smaller one cowered behind it, sneering at him wickedly.

Harold’s screams peeled over the water as curtains of dark fog closed over the lake.

monster
Like

About the Creator

Tyler C Clark

I'm a poet who discovered a love for fiction. This seems like a good place to stretch my legs.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.