Mr.

And she had kept the secret for all these years.  She made it a point to visit every summer.  He had grown a lot since the first time she had met him.  He was as big a car now and lightning fast.  You couldn't swim away from him.  She thought about dolphins knifing through the water keeping up with the bow of a ship driving through the waves.  But Horace was no dolphin.  Even Mr. Cleary couldn't explain what he was.

"Maybe a mistake," the old man had said when she asked him about Horace, "Maybe one of God's mistakes.  Haven't seen or heard about anything like him anywhere else- 'cept maybe the Lock Ness.  I guess that's possible.  I don't think he's a monster, though.  They find all kinds of animals they thought were extinct or never even knew existed.  Some they can't even explain- I guess that's what he is."

A couple of years ago, a girl came up missing.  They found a shoe by water's edge but never anything else.  They dragged the lake, but didn't find a body.  Horace hid under Mr. Cleary's dock while they dragged it.  Sarah avoided the conversation with Mr. Cleary.

Then, earlier in the year, before the warm weather settled in , a couple had come up missing.  They found the car by the lake, the tent and fire.  Everything but the people.  Again, they dragged the lake but to now end.  Sarah knew it had to be Horace.  Maybe the fish and animals weren't enough to keep him fed now.  She had asked Mr. Cleary about that last summer.  She asked him what would happen if Horace couldn't find enough to eat.

"Well, I don't know.  I hate that little girl came up missing.  That wasn't right.  Horace knows it wasn't right.  He was just hungry.  I seen him get a deer- right down here one morning.  Big fella, eight points- drinking by the water and then, in a big rush, here comes Horace and drug the thing down under the water.  I got the antlers there in the living room." 

Sarah thought about that as she got to the ladder and pulled herself up out of the water.  She didn't know how much bigger Horace would get- or how old.  But he was getting too big for the little food in the lake to sustain him.  And he had a taste for mammals it seemed.  She smiled as she draped the towel around her.

Maybe when her parents left after the weekend, Tom would like to come for a swim in the lake.