The Legend of The Lake Shark

Diego asked himself if he should just resort to lighter fluid to start the bonfire, having already exhausted his fingers striking flint. He looked back to the procession of fellow 14-year-olds slowly filing into the amphitheater. He’d expected the demand for Nightmare Quest campfire stories to be closer to a dozen. Two times that had already shown up.

“Fuck it,” he said, whipping out the bottle of Ronsonol from his bag.

“Not such a Boy Scout after all, are you Diego?” The taunt came from Keisha, his best friend at camp. Sure, she poked fun at him relentlessly, but she took it right back as hard as she served it. The closest he ever found to a soulmate.

“You listen here, mouthy bitch. I didn’t see you helping me collect the wood.”

Diego held the yellow bottle at crotch level, first using it to simulate an erection before flicking the cap and urinating naphtha on his perfect teepee of firewood.

“I’ve just got so much wood y’all, I’m sorry,” he chuckled loudly to the growing crowd.

The setup of the rustic amphitheater at Camp Setauket was a unique remnant of its history as an Anabaptist retreat built by a sect that had long since gone extinct. The stone pews graduated up from what used to be a wooden altar. Behind it, a small fishing dock doubled as the front row for the sect’s particularly dramatic baptisms where the sadistic pastor liked to hold the parishioners underwater for two to three seconds after he sensed resistance—a morbid reminder that Christ had quite literally saved them

Behind Keisha, two sets of hands grabbed each of her shoulders.

“Boo!” Jessie and Monica screamed in unison.

“The fuck, you guys?” she scolded. Their attempt to frighten her had failed.

“I thought you came here to get scared,” Jessie said, casually brushing his bleached-out bangs away from his face only to have them flop back down into his eye.

“You can’t scare her,” Monica laughed. “She’s from Mott Haven. Or was it Yonkers? Tough as nails. Unless you’re eating her out, then she moans like a bitch.”

Keisha shot a wink at Monica. “I’m still embarrassed I ever let you anywhere near my clit.”

“Bitch, please,” Jessie chimed in. “We all know tonguing your wild-ass snatch is why Dana ran away last summer.”

“It’s not my fault if she couldn’t handle the intense power of this pussy.”

“You mean the intense aromas?”

Keisha’s voice dropped to her most masculine timbre. “Excuse me. Not only could you eat a three course meal off this vag, but until you have a box of your own, don’t joke about feminine odors. You’ll understand soon enough, tranny.”

“Miss Thing, that’s called transphobia and you should know better.”

“Don’t get into the gender debate with a stone butch, Jessie,” Keisha warned. “You will lose.”

Monica, feeling left out, butted in. “Can you two queens please stop fighting and remember you’re on the same goddamn team?”

“You’re right,” Keisha said. “We should be focusing our queer energy on roasting your straight ass.”

“No, what we should really be talking about is that hot goss on Kenny and Rita.”

“Can you believe it?” Jessie gasped. “Runaways two years in a row. Wild.”

“I mean, it was only a matter of time,” Monica said. “Remember that time in junior camp when we officiated their wedding? They’ve dated every summer since they were eight.”

“Are they even old enough to get a marriage license?” Jessie asked. “I mean, I assume that’s what they’re trying to do.”

“Fucking morons,” Keisha grumbled. “If they’re really trying to elope, they’re gonna have a rude awakening. They’re not even old enough to get jobs yet.”

“Are any of us?” Diego added before pivoting and running to the ampitheatre’s entrance to chastize some junior campers. “Nuh-uh, you guys. No campers under thirteen at Nightmare Quest!”

The younger of the two pushed out his chest. “We’re not scared.”

“Oh, I believe it, kid,” Diego shot back, “But this is some rite of passage shit. Seniors only.”

The older one’s eyes narrowed. “That’s some bullshit.”

“My sweet little junior campers. This is an exclusive event. I was once like you. Trust, you’ll probably be hosting this thing yourselves in two years.”

The younger one flipped off the full congregation with both hands and turned back around. “Ghost stories are for faggots anyway!”

Jessie clutched the pearls around his neck and feigned his most dramatic gasp. “So rude.”

Diego was happy that mostly girls had shown up, as it would give him a chance to show off. His story, he hoped, might even make one lucky lady vulnerable enough to seek his services as a cuddle buddy. A pipe dream for sure, but one he was happy to act like a cocky reckless teenager for a shot at.

“Ladies!” Diego announced. “Ladies and some gentlemen! And Keisha.”

Keisha smirked, already having thought of a comeback, “More of a man than you’ll ever be, more woman than you could handle.”

“Yes, fellow campers. You can thank Keisha for tonight, as having me organize this was her idea—another idea she had was not to help or even contribute a story.”

Keisha had one for that too: “Whatever tired urban legend Diego comes up with will pale in comparison to the horrors I saw growing up. My story is my story.”

“Keisha, your mother sent you to Catholic school and camp every summer to keep you from joining a gang. I’m sure the nuns were a real terror.”

Diego observed the audience. Three times more girls than boys—even after Jessie and Keisha canceled each other out. If he didn’t get laid tonight, he thought, he would probably never get laid in his entire life. Rather than keep up the riffing, which he was certain was charming, he returned course to the practiced introduction.

“Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, sorry for getting off track there. Welcome to the Camp Setauket’s traditional senior rite of passage. This year, Keisha and I have dubbed our team Nightmare Quest because we want to scare you. We want to give you nightmares. We’re not gonna be like those other teams relying on the same old tired campfire tales. That’s why there’s only one rule to Nightmare Quest: original stories only. We encourage each of you to dig deep into your respective psyches and find the core of what truly terrifies you. Would anybody like to volunteer to go first?”

The first hand to shoot up was Keisha’s. “Well if you didn’t think I had a story to tell, let me set the record straight.”

Keisha proceeded to recount her most traumatic childhood memory. A precocious and curious child, Keisha was prone to exploration. After her mother had gone to bed one night, the girl defied the maternal order to only leave their unit in an emergency and went looking for hiding places in her building. The laundry room seemed ideal, given that the machines had been broken for two months, a constant point of her mother’s frustrations.

Keisha had barely managed to fit herself into one of the low dryers when she heard someone coming. Heeding her mother’s warning, and wanting to test the effectiveness of her hiding place, she managed to pull the door shut mostly behind her and crouched towards the back of the machine, where she disappeared into the shadows.

The sound she heard turned out to be a man she recognized from the building and a woman she did not, both in their early twenties. The woman, she would later find out, had offered the man a ride home from a church pot luck, but when she tried to drop him off, he pulled a knife on her and led her to the building’s laundry room, which he assumed to be empty given the late hour and disrepair of the machines.

From her hiding place, Keisha watched for almost two hours as the man brutally raped his victim. From the little she’d seen on TV and in movies, her 8-year-old mind had always assumed rape to be a much quicker process. Instead, she watched the man routinely compensate for his fleeting erections by forcing the woman into degrading acts like licking his feet and at one point, demanding she eat his feces.

Eventually, with a well-timed kick between her rapist’s legs, the despondent woman was able to make an escape. Rather than chase after her, the man remained crying there on the floor until the police showed up a half hour later. With little forensic investigation of the scene necessary, and a mentally-disturbed perp with a rap sheet a mile long, the cops cleared out quickly and Keisha was finally able to make her own escape. She made it back to her bed as dawn began to break, her mother remaining oblivious to her fateful reconnaissance mission.

After learning of the previous night’s events, still unaware that her daughter had witnessed the whole affair, Keisha’s mother resolved to move the two of them up to Yonkers where it would be safer.

“Excellent work, teammate,” Diego commended, starting the applause. “I must admit, that was truly disturbing and fucked up on every level. I don’t know if I can compete.”

Keisha brushed off the praise with her usual cool confidence and started traveling back to her seat. “Why try?”

Diego chuckled. “Funny you should ask. My story required a lot of research actually, and in my process, I learned some disturbing things about this very campground.

“The story begins in 1872, when Pastor Jebediah Berger founded these grounds we now call Camp Setauket. I know you’ve all heard about Pastor Berger’s infamous baptism rituals at this very dock behind where I stand. What you might not have known was that he was even crazier than we’ve been told.

“Pastor Berger was an avid fisherman, and one time out in coastal waters, the good pastor made what was perhaps his proudest catch: a bull shark. Rather than simply re-release the shark, Jeb decided to bring the shark back to the lake to keep as a pet.

“You see, he figured having a shark in the water during the baptisms would convince his congregants even more of the divine salvation of Jesus. Even more than trying to drown them. Some say he even believed the shark would be incapable of attacking those who had truly been saved.

“The congregation, already fully aware of the pastor’s eccentric ways, dismissed the arrival of the shark, certain it would die in the lake’s fresh, shallow waters. Little did they know—in fact, little did any of you know—that bull sharks are the largest breed of shark that can survive in fresh water.”

“Bullshit,” Jessie moaned with an eye roll.

“It’s true. Look it up. They’ve got these special organs that regulate the salt in their bodies. These things swim up rivers into lakes all the time. It’s real. Look it up.

“But back to the story. What do you think happened to Pastor Jebediah’s little cult? One by one, they began to disappear. The lake only had so many fishes for the shark to gobble up before it needed to quench its hunger with more nutritious options.

“The number of congregants began to dwindle, and within a year, was down to half what it had been. Most of the believers convinced themselves that the missing had simply lost their faith and ran away, just like Pastor Berger said they had. But some got suspicious. Some believed the preacher’s love for his pet shark was great enough that he started sending his most loyal parishioners on late night ‘faith test’ swims in the lake. He timed them perfectly to the shark’s appetites to ensure it wouldn’t attack during the scheduled baptisms. Most of the congregation just thought it had died. Instead it was growing larger and hungrier.

“Oh, but that’s not all. The initial shark he caught wasn’t the last to be seen in Lake Siwanoy. That very first shark--let’s call her ‘Bertha’--she was pregnant. She ate three of her young, but five survived past her own demise, continuing to reproduce through incest for generations.

“Now, as lake sharks, without the abundant food options of the ocean, the offspring were never able to reach full size on their diet of birds and turtles. Ten years ago, though, after a few generations of evolving to the lake, the last female shark to have been born birthed a single male, who remains the only surviving shark in the lake to this day--let’s call him ‘Jaws.’ Without the competition of any brothers or sisters to share his food with, Jaws began to grow—larger and faster than any of his ancestors.

“The lake sharks hadn’t feasted on human flesh for almost a hundred years, but the biological imperative passed to Jaws from Bertha’s maneating genes kicked into high gear when he finally reached full size last year, when he finally claimed his first human victim.”

Diego didn’t need to say the victim’s name for the campers to know who he was talking about. A fellow camper who had a notorious reputation for self-harm among her myriad mental maladies, had gone missing from the campground a year prior. Initially assumed to be a runaway, she was never found.

After a pause for dramatic effect, he said her name anyway: “Dana Perry.”

Diego could practically see the hairs standing up on the backs of the prettiest girls’ necks. They’d bought into his fabrication more than anticipated.

“I ain’t scared of Jaws though,” Diego laughed, ripping off his t-shirt.

Keisha perked up. “Diego, what are you doing?”

Diego unbuckled his belt. “I’m gonna show that stupid lake shark who’s boss.”

Down to his underwear, Diego made a run for the fishing dock behind him.

“Diego, don’t!” Monica screamed, surprised at how effective her friend’s story had been at giving her the chills.

The cocky senior camper didn’t heed her advice, diving headfirst into the lake from the deepest part of the dock. After he resurfaced, he shot a fountain from his mouth. “Water’s fine!” he cackled.

Keisha hung her head in disapproval, knowing that Diego’s overconfident finale had broken the haunting spell of his story and put the campers back at ease. Their team, she thought, might have actually won otherwise.

Diego kicked around for another minute or so, really milking the attention, until he felt something under the water.

His tone shifted abruptly from arrogance to abject fear. “Wait! What was that?”

“Nice try, asshole,” Keisha said, shaking her head.

“No, really,” Diego insisted, swimming back towards the dock. “I felt something.”

“He’s just trying to scare us again,” Monica whined, still ashamed that the story had actually frightened her.

“No, really, there’s something trying to grab me!”

With that, Diego sank beneath the surface. Keisha knew he wasn’t that good of an actor and paced quickly toward the dock. Her friend only resurfaced one more time to let out a scream before he disappeared into the black waters of the lake.

“Diego!”

Only Diego’s closest friends knew something had gone wrong. Even Monica went back to being terrified. The other campers, still convinced this was part of the story, waited for the big jump-scare ending that never came.

Epilogue

Sheriff James Ford gazed out at the hypnotic bubbles surfacing from the copper water before him. He hoped the divers below wouldn’t find more than the four bodies they already had.

Detective Amber Hall didn’t mean to scare the aging lawman, but her soft steps behind him had evaded his understandably distracted attention. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Hall held out the coffee she’d brought for her boss, but he held his hand out in refusal. “I’ve been here all night. I’ve had more than enough.”

“Sir, I’m still confused. If this was a drowning, why did it just change to a homicide investigation?”

“We’re going to have to ask the divers. One of the victims has been down there since last year.”

“Wait, what?” Hall knew that a drowned body would eventually fill with gasses and resurface in less than a week.

“Freaky, right?”

Hall ignored her superior’s morbid attempt at levity. “And the kids said it was a shark attack?”

“Yep.”

“In a lake?”

The sheriff lowered his aviators to the bridge of his nose. “They were very adamant about bull sharks being able to survive in fresh water.”

“Is that true?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“And they said they saw a shark?”

“Nobody claimed to see the shark, per se, but all the witnesses to the drowning seemed to be in agreement it was a shark attack.”

“In this lake?”

“Right? I mean, c’mon. This one’s a head scratcher.”

In the water, the bubbles increased in size until the pair could see one of the divers beginning to surface. Still without a body.

The sheriff didn’t hesitate. “So what’d you find, Joe?”

The forensic diver Joe, who’d had to wait for the underwater visibility brought by daybreak, removed the respirator from his mouth and lifted his mask so his response wouldn’t sound so nasal.

“Sheriff, I think we’re gonna need some bolt cutters.”

Hall tilted her head in confusion and mumbled under her breath. “Bolt cutters. For the shark.”

“What for, Joe?” the sheriff asked.

“The victims’ ankles are shackled to concrete bricks on the lake floor. Rudy and I tried to move them closer to the shore, but the bricks are staked down. They’re too heavy anyway. If we cut the chains, they should just float to the surface.”

The sheriff looked over to Hall. “That’s your call, detective.”

“Fuck, I don’t think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“The victims are shackled, Sheriff. We’ve got a serial killer on our hands. I’ve gotta call in the Feds to set up the investigation.”

“Ah, shit! How do you even kill someone underwater like that?”

Hall turned back to the diver. “How tall are those stakes, Joe?”

“About six feet.”

“Makes sense,” she said, to the Sheriff’s befuddlement.

“Care to fill me in?”

Hall pointed down at the water. “If the killer already had the bricks propped up on the stakes, he wouldn’t have to do much to trap his victims. As long as he could get the shackle around an ankle, any movement from the victim would knock the brick off the stake and bring them sinking to the bottom.”

“But how does he shackle them without being seen?”

Hall looked back to the water again. Rudy, the other diver, was starting to surface.

“Sheriff, sometimes the answer is quite literally staring you in the face.”

© 2021 by Robert de la Teja