My mother and I were staying at a resort among a strip of businesses and restaurants in a wooded area alongside a freshwater river. The scenery was beautiful and almost had a Japanese feel, with elaborately designed buildings connected by covered walkways, several with patio areas facing the river. Stone staircases led down the slope to walkways that paralleled the river and a shallow beach area where children swam in the clear water.
I wondered along the pathways and eventually decided to go for a swim, but there were dozens of people in the shallow area, so I swam out into deeper water away from the others. As soon as I did, however, I got the feeling that I wasn’t alone and thought to myself “This is how people wind up getting attacked by sharks.” A bit spooked, I quickly made my way to the side of the river, climbed up to the walkway and clambered up the stairs leading back to the strip. I didn’t look back to the river until I was safely under one of the covered walkways (as if something from the river could follow me out of the water) and when I did, I could faintly make out something swimming towards the area that I had just left. Looking closer, I spotted a dark gray fin protruding from the water.
I ran down the walkway towards a patio overlooking the beach, screaming “Shark in the water! Shark! Sharrrk!” At first, people looked at me like I was crazy, then a few on the beach saw the finned shadow in the water coming towards them and panic broke loose. Everyone started grabbing children and running for the buildings (they seemed to think that they had to get as far away from the water as possible). In the chaos, no one noticed that another fin had emerged right behind the first; I froze as I realized that the second fin was too closely following the first for it to be a second creature. In my horror, I watched as the shadow neared the beach and began to rise from the water, standing on hind legs! The beast appeared to be lizard-like, with webbing between its arms and legs, towering over the beach at what had to be nearly ten feet in stature.
Everyone else was in such a panic that they were no longer looking towards the water, too busy scampering about, evacuating the area. What they didn’t see were several other shadows nearing the beach, each bearing a different ghastly shape and joining the tall lizard-type creature in rising from the water and slowly moving towards land. Some of the beings were skeletal and coated in a clear slimy substance, others were scaly with claws like lizards or birds, and a couple even appeared to have bat-like wings.
I eventually broke from my trance and realized that I had to find my mother in all the madness. I turned, surprised to find that she was actually just a short distance behind me on the patio, and had apparently been recording the chaos on her camera phone. She seemed amused and almost bedazzled with the creatures. As I walked toward her, she smiled and pointed the phone toward me for a moment, and then motioned for me to follow her. We hastily made our way back to the resort and crammed onto an elevator with numerous others. I turned to her and said “No one is going to believe us!” She simply said “Check your phone.” Patting my pockets, I couldn’t find my phone, so she handed me hers, which was playing a video of the creatures arising from the water. She smiled, proud that she was able to capture proof of the encounter, then said “Oh, there’s your phone” and pointed to the floor in front of me. I picked up my phone and opened it to find two video messages from her. Opening the most recent message, I gasped as the video played of me walking towards her on the patio, with one of the creatures lurking up right behind me!
