I guess you could say my dad is obsessed with fishing. He has more fishing rods than I have socks. He has a tackle box the size of a suitcase. He even has a subscription to a magazine called International Fisherman. Seriously. Who reads that?
So when we moved into a new house right on the edge of Blackwater Lake, it was like a dream come true for him. For me, it was more like a nightmare. The lake wasn’t the nice, clear, fun kind of lake. It was the murky, muddy, “there’s-probably-a-car-at-the-bottom” kind of lake. The water was so dark it looked like ink.
The first night in the new house, it happened.
Around midnight, a sound drifted in through my open window. It was a scream. A high-pitched, piercing scream, like someone was in serious trouble.
I leaped out of bed and ran into the hallway. Dad was already there, peering out the window.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered, my heart thumping.
He nodded slowly. “Probably just a fox,” he said, but he didn’t sound very convinced. “They can make some weird noises.”
But the next night, it happened again. Same time. Same horrible, human-sounding scream. It echoed across the dark water and made the hairs on my arms stand up.
This went on for a week. Every night, the scream from the lake. I started stuffing pillows over my head to block it out.
Then, on Saturday, Dad came back from the lake with the biggest, dopiest grin I’d ever seen. He was soaking wet and covered in mud.
“You are not going to believe what I caught, Danny!” he yelled, practically vibrating with excitement. “It’s a monster! A legend!”
He led me and Mom out to the garage. In the center of the floor was a huge, inflatable swimming pool he’d filled with water. And inside it, something was moving.
It was an eel.
But this wasn’t just any eel. It was gigantic. As long as a bicycle and as thick as my leg. Its skin was a slick, oily black, and its eyes were like two tiny, polished beads of jet. It floated there, its mouth slightly open, showing off rows of tiny, needle-sharp teeth. It was the ugliest, creepiest thing I had ever seen.
“I’m calling it ‘The Beast of Blackwater’!” Dad announced proudly. “I’m going to get a proper aquarium for it tomorrow. We’re going to be famous!”
Mom did not look happy. “Frank, you cannot keep that… that thing in our garage.”
But Dad was already on the phone, ordering the biggest fish tank money could buy.
That night, the screaming didn’t come from the lake. It came from the garage. It was louder now, more desperate. I lay in bed, trembling, knowing that slimy, black monster was just downstairs.
The next few weeks were weird. The eel—which Dad now just called ‘Beasty’—seemed to get bigger. Dad fed it buckets of fish, but it never seemed to eat them. The fish would just disappear. And Dad… Dad was acting strange. He was always tired. He had dark circles under his eyes. He spent hours in the garage, just staring at the eel through the thick glass of its new tank.
Then, my pet hamster, Captain Kirk, vanished from his cage.
“I’m telling you, that eel did something!” I told my parents.
“Danny, don’t be ridiculous,” Dad said, his voice sharp. “An eel can’t get out of a locked tank and steal a hamster. You probably just forgot to close the cage properly.”
But I knew. I knew it had something to do with Beasty. I would go into the garage and the eel would just be floating there, its beady black eyes following my every move. It felt… intelligent. And hungry.
The screaming got worse. It started to sound less like a random person and more like it was calling a name. Heeeelp meeee. It was horrifying.
One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. The scream from the garage was so loud, so full of pain, it felt like the whole house was vibrating with it. I had to see what was going on.
I crept down the stairs and tiptoed to the door that led to the garage. A dim, blue light was glowing from under it. I turned the knob. It was unlocked.
I pushed the door open a crack and peered inside.
The blue light from the aquarium cast eerie shadows across the concrete floor. My dad was standing in front of the tank, his back to me. The eel was thrashing wildly in the water, its long, black body slamming against the glass. The high-pitched screaming filled the air, so loud it hurt my ears.
“Dad?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “What’s happening?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He was just standing there, motionless, like a statue.
“Dad!” I said, a little louder.
Slowly, my dad turned around.
His face was ghostly pale, his skin tight across his cheekbones. His eyes were wide and hollow, like two empty holes. His mouth was hanging open in a perfect ‘O’.
But he wasn’t the one screaming.
As he turned, the eel in the tank suddenly went still. It floated in the center of the tank, its beady eyes locked on me. Its mouth, its horrible mouth full of needle-like teeth, stretched open. Impossibly wide.
And the scream, the horrible, piercing scream, poured out of it.
I stumbled back, my mind unable to process what I was seeing. The eel… the eel was screaming.
My dad took a slow, shuffling step toward me. He looked exhausted. Drained. He raised a shaky hand and pointed a finger at his own throat.
“It’s hungry again, Danny,” he rasped. His voice was a dry, scratchy whisper, like dead leaves skittering across pavement. It was barely a voice at all. “It’s so hungry.”
“What… what are you talking about?” I stammered. “What does it eat?”
Dad’s empty eyes looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something in them. Fear. Utter, absolute fear.
“It doesn’t eat the fish,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “It eats the sound. It eats the scream.”
He shuffled over to a small refrigerator we kept in the corner for drinks. He opened it. It wasn’t filled with soda. It was filled with old photo albums. My baby pictures. Family vacations. Christmas parties.
He pulled one out and let it fall open on the floor. It was a picture of my aunt Carol, laughing at a family barbecue.
“She was the first scream,” Dad whispered, his voice breaking. “After I caught it. I didn’t know. I just… thought of her. And the next night, the scream from the lake… it sounded just like her. Then she stopped calling. Her voice was just… gone.”
My blood turned to ice.
“Captain Kirk was the second scream,” he continued, his voice getting softer, weaker. “Just a little one. A squeak. But it was enough for a few days.”
He pointed at his own throat again. The skin was pale and scarred, like it had been stretched.
“I was the third,” he rasped. “I tried to fight it. But it was so hungry. It drained me, Danny. It took my voice. I can’t scream anymore. I can’t even shout. It took it all.”
He looked at me, his hollow eyes pleading. “The screaming you hear every night? That’s just the echo. The last little bit of the meal, fading away. When the screaming stops completely… it gets hungry again.”
The eel in the tank let out another piercing shriek. It was the sound of pure terror. And it was starting to fade.
“It’s almost finished,” Dad whispered, a single tear tracing a path down his pale cheek. “It needs a new voice. A new scream. Or it will take yours next.”
He reached behind the aquarium and pulled out a long, green fishing net. He held it out to me. His hand was trembling.
“It’s your turn, Danny,” he rasped, his voice barely audible now. “It’s your turn to feed it.”
He pointed with the net, not at me, but through the garage window, toward the house next door. The house where the Henderson family lived. The house where their daughter, Ashley, was probably sleeping soundly in her bed.
“Find a new scream,” my dad whispered, his eyes closing as the last echo of the old one finally died away, leaving the garage in a cold, hungry silence. “Please.”
