Bio:  Brad McNutt is a 48-year-old Respiratory Therapist. He has been married for 25 years and has 2 sons.

When Brad is not busy with work and family, he is painting, sketching, writing, or making movies on his computer.

He was brought up in the inner city of Milwaukee during the race riots. Since then, Florida, Washington state, and Idaho have been his homes. Now Brad lives in beautiful Fall Creek, Wisconsin.

 Travel is his number one lust.

Dark Lake 1910

by Brad McNutt

I never met my great-grandfather. Portraits of him revealed thick eyebrows with mysterious pupils shining from the darkness underneath. Three ugly scars at the corner of his mouth made half his face a perpetual frown. When his son, Taylor, died at ninety, I was informed I had inherited an artifact. That word recalled my great-granddad’s worldly adventures. I felt a childish excitement. Perhaps, it was something I could treasure or sell to obtain treasure.

The will’s directions led to the family’s ancient garage. In the dark rafters was a small but sturdy door. It had a hand bolt as thick as a rifle barrel. I retrieved a massive, wooden ladder and climbed up to the shadowy loft. The bolt pulled back with a noisy resistance. Inside the little door, I found a heavy crate with the stenciled words, “DARK LAKE EXPEDITION 1910, CONGO” on it. Archaic electrical wires along the ceiling joists sparked and broke off, as I wrestled the sarcophagus sized box down the ladder to the garage’s dirt floor. The thing was incredibly heavy. Inside it was another container, cold and coffin-like. The lid warmed as I pried out grim-looking rivets with a rusty crow bar and pulled it off.

A rush of fog escaped the box and blinded me. There was a violent and watery slosh. I swear something large moved inside the container. My face was struck savagely by a cold, damp thing. A loud roar paralyzed me to the floor where I laid. The slapping sound of wet feet on the dirt quickly diminished.

When I felt safe, I followed the direction those feet had gone. Behind the house, Carson’s Creek snaked between some tall grass. The grass had been violated recently and a circular ripple targeted something’s entry point into the murky water.
Just under the surface, was a large, nearly human figure. The color of its body had a sickening whiteness to it, like the underbelly of some cave fish. The flat eyes of the beast studied me, blinked, and in a flash of scales it was gone. I stood in confused disbelief as my face bled.

That was ten years ago. The local church stopped having baptisms in that creek after a few “morbid accidents” occurred. People don’t fish there anymore and the local kids leave the frogs alone.

I still carry three scars on the left side of my face. The same twisted, half frown that graced great-grandfather’s portraits shapes my mouth now. That was my only real inheritance as it turned out. Not exactly a treasure, is it?

I do, however, have a new interest these days. I hunt. I hunt day and night, in the tall grass along the dark waters of Carson Creek.

©Brad McNutt