THE MONSTER BELOW

The lake wasn’t low. It wasn’t shrinking. It was gone.

Joe and I stood on the high bank that morning, staring at a place that had always been blue and alive. Now it was a cracked, muddy wasteland. The sun hit the dried lakebed and made the ground look bruised. Sick. Wrong.

A cold line slid down my spine.

Joe didn’t speak. His jaw tightened, like he was trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece.

I was ten. I didn’t solve puzzles. I just felt things. And what I felt was fear.

But Joe insisted there had to be water somewhere—hidden pockets the lake hadn’t surrendered. So, we pushed through the brush, branches whipping our arms, mud sucking at our shoes. Every step felt like trespassing into a place the world didn’t want us to find.

Then we saw it.

A pond—big, oval, stubbornly alive. Real water. I almost smiled.

Until I saw what lay on the bank.

At first glance, it looked like an alligator. A massive head, long jaws, teeth like carved bone. But the body—what was left of it—was fish. A fish bigger than anything I’d ever imagined. Split open. Gutted. Dead.

I froze.

Joe tried to act brave, but I saw the way he swallowed. The way he didn’t step closer.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s dead. Let’s swim.”

Swim? Near that? What if another one was still in the water?

But Joe was older, and I didn’t want him thinking I was scared. So, I followed him down the slope into the warm, murky pond. The water felt thick. Heavy. Like it didn’t want us there.

Joe started counting for tag. “Ten… nine… eight…”

I slipped under.

The world below was brown and blurry. I couldn’t see more than a few feet. I held my breath, waiting for Joe to finish counting.

Then the water moved.

Not a ripple. Not a wave. A shift—slow, massive, deliberate.

A shadow slid beneath me. Longer than me. Wider than me. Moving with the calm confidence of something ancient, something that had ruled this shrinking world long before boys ever came to play.

I felt it pass under my legs. Felt the cold trail it left behind.

My heart stopped.

I shot upward, breaking the surface with a gasp that ripped out of my chest. I scrambled toward the bank—slipping, clawing, desperate.

Was it going after Joe?

Behind me, Joe yelled, confused. “Ross? Where’d you go?”

I couldn’t speak until I reached the mud. When I finally did, my voice shook.

“Joe, get out… It’s down there. The big one. Like the dead one. It’s alive. It’s under the water.”

Joe tried to laugh, but it wasn’t real. He didn’t go back in either.

We left fast. I walked ahead, still trembling, and Joe hurried to keep up.

That night, we told Dad everything—the dried lake, the carcass, the monster that moved beneath me.

Dad listened quietly, the way he always did. Then he explained: the creature was an alligator gar. Ancient. Misunderstood. A gentle giant unless threatened. But huge—maybe two hundred pounds. And starving now that the lake was dying.

The Rio Grande was too low for the pumps to pull water. The lake was collapsing. Everything in it was trapped. Even the irrigation canals Dad cleared were drying.

I felt something strange then—pride. Dad hadn’t finished high school, but he understood the world in ways that made me feel safe. He said he’d gather his co‑workers on Saturday to catch and kill the gar so it wouldn’t suffer a slow death.

I believed him.

But I never forgot that moment in the pond—the silent glide of something ancient beneath me, brushing the edge of my childhood with its shadow.

And I never forgot how close I came to the monster below.