Beast of the lake (standard:horror, 1947 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Sep 01 2009	Views/Reads: 3227/2039	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Can he summon the beast to grant him immortality? and would it be better not to believe in such myths?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


He opened the door and reached inside and took out a supermarket carrier
bag, wrapping its consignment almost airtight. Locking the car, he was 
soon back on the lake, rowing towards the centre. The other two boats 
had gone from his sight. There was silence, a light mist surrounding 
him as though watching out of curiosity. He stopped rowing, and the 
boat simply drifted slightly. There was no wind. The sky was white, and 
the surface of the lake rippled slightly, caused by the slight rocking 
of the boat as Kenneth stood up near the front, the adrenaline surging 
through him. He looked around him as though somebody might hear him, 
and began to recite the prayer over the lake. 

After three minutes, it came to an end: “....endowed with grace, majesty
and faith. Your ever graceful, eternal disciple, sacrificial mortal 
animal, and devoted believer”. He held out his left arm over the water, 
and from his trouser pocket took out a pen-knife. Without hesitation, 
he sliced into his palm, and blood immediately streamed into the water, 
the sound of splashing the only sound. A bolt of pain shot through him, 
and he winced, almost falling over. He did not mean to cut so deep. He 
knelt over the front, breathing heavily for a few seconds and putting 
his hand beneath the water. Reaching into his jacket pocket he pulled 
out a small plastic money-bag. It was full of jewellery. “I offer you 
my gift,” he said, and tipped them into the water. They all sank into 
the murky depths. He reached back, and picked up the carrier bag. It 
was slightly heavy, and with his other hand aching, he pulled it from 
the water and took out the human brain, then threw the bag back into 
the boat. He held it out with his injured hand which still dripped 
blood. “A guilty mind”, he said, holding it forth as an offering, then 
dropping it into the water, where that too, vanished into the depths. 

In one of his classes, there was a six-year old boy who always talked.
What his young mind could fathom and comprehend, he vocalised, so 
anything that happened in his family, he spoke of to anybody who would 
listen. ‘My mum does this, my mum does that'. ‘My Dad's drives a taxi. 
My dad makes loads of money...'. Kenneth hardly ever listened to little 
James, knowing that what he said was of no significance. It was simply 
a child with a loud mouth, talking about nothing and everything, until 
Kenneth remembered that James had periodically mentioned his brother. 
‘.....my brother's in jail. My brother beat someone up. My brother 
stabbed someone...”. Kenneth had taken the boy to one side, and asked 
him about his brother, and James told him everything he could. 
Seventeen years old, out of prison, and living at home with his 
parents. “What does he do?,” Where does he go?” were questions Kenneth 
asked, along with others, to try and fathom how he could get the youth 
alone. He looked through the class files to find the address, and then 
began to follow James's brother as he left a friend's. He watched him 
take a shortcut through a park, took a sledgehammer to the back of his 
head, and dragged him into a copse, where he took out his guilty mind. 

Kenneth spread his arms and stared across the lake. He then noticed that
the boat was slowly starting to sink. The surface of the water grew 
closer, and more fear shot through him as it spilled over the edge, and 
rapidly filled the vessel, where Kenneth also sank, as though his feet 
were attached to the wood. His fear became even more intense as the 
cold water came to his chest, then to his shoulders. He took in a deep 
breath and two seconds later his hair went beneath the surface. The 
boat drifted silently towards to the bottom of the lake. As Kenneth 
watched the daylight above recede, he realised he didn't need air, and 
after the around three minutes, when the boat stopped, and the daylight 
vanished, the craft disintegrated, its particles vanishing into the 
blackness. 

Kenneth stood at the bottom of the lake, surrounded by silence and
gloom. He realised that down here there must be the portal, and that he 
had to go to and welcome the beast into the new world. His fear still 
surged through him, and he managed to take three steps, the ground like 
walking through a muddy riverside in autumn, when his jaw began to open 
far wider than normal, and pain shot through him as the skin tore, and 
his hair was dragged down his back. His bones began to snap, his 
innards forcefully moving and altering shapes. His forehead cracked and 
expanded, as a new eye formed, then another, then another. New sharp 
shark-like teeth began to emerge in the cavity that had become his 
mouth, and from his chest began to emerge long tendrils, or arms, each 
with eight talons. Twelve of them tore slowly from his torso, his legs 
fusing together, then into his midriff, his bones rearranging and 
expanding. Sixteen tennis ball sized eyes circled its expanding head, 
and hundreds of teeth circled its gaping maw, with a tongue that had 
become curled, like that of an iguana, and transparent. Its arms were 
also circled around it like an octopus, the large hands on the end of 
each giving it poise and balance. When it had stopped, and the pain had 
gone, it was the size of an expensive house. Kenneth's memories filled 
its mind, also of what it was, and also its name: ‘Orami' entered its 
psyche. 

What Kenneth could not have known, was that the story of the beast
beneath lake Brenig had been passed down through the ages, altering as 
it did so, so that it was twisted unintentionally by the author of the 
children's book. They wrote of the truth surrounding the fables, but 
got them in a disorganised order so as not to reflect their reality. 
Kenneth, nor the author did not know that performing the rituals 
written, and believing wholeheartedly in its truth, he was to become 
the beast of the lake, and as it walked slowly in the depths, in the 
darkness, another realisation came in Orami's mind. It was immortal. 


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