The car is an old beater that Lee inherited from his father. It rattles and shakes as he navigates the pitted back country roads. Kansas’s “Carry On Wayward Son” blasts from the radio. Classic rock. Another thing Lee inherited from his father. He wonders how he got to this banal place in his life.
The air is a strange, hazy yellow-green and thrums with a peculiar energy. The radio squawks with static then cuts out. Reception has always been terrible out here, Lee reflects. Like they are cut off from the world. Often they’d have no television or radio in the cottage, and Lee and his mother would have to endure another of his father’s stories. He loved telling stories.
There was one particular story that tormented Lee—The Grinning Woman. Lee’s father and mother were both in on it. As a child Lee suffered night terrors, waking in the night, moaning and screaming. Trembling. His parents would rush to his room and comfort him til he settled. This went on for weeks, night after night. One night, though, as his father held him, soothed him, patted his head, he whispered “Lee, go back to sleep now. Shush. Please. Go to sleep. If you don’t, the grinning woman will get you.” And he pointed to the corner of the room. In the darkness Lee thought he saw another even darker shape in the corner. It turned, as if awakened. Then a light snapped on under its chin, and a pale grinning face was revealed; a wide, feral toothy rictus that sent Lee whimpering under the covers. It was just his mother. It had to be.
And this went on: the night terrors; the grinning woman; Lee under the covers, petrified, hand over mouth so as not to draw attention from the dark shape looming in the corner, until the morning light breached his blankets and his eyelids and he dared a peek over the covers.
In the day, tired, timid, glancing at his stoic mother, he would ask who she was, the grinning woman? Where was she from?
“She’s everyone, Lee,” his father had said. “From everywhere. A thing that came from the oceans and lakes. Evolution’s progeny. A creature from the trees, stalking the countryside. A mimic.” And here he looked to Lee’s mother. “Something a lot like us. Maybe from another world that pierced the soft spots in our world. It’s anything and everything, Lee.” And Lee remembers his father tousling his hair. “That’s what stories are. Make-belief. They don’t hardly ever come true. They don’t come to life.”
It is near dinnertime when Lee arrives at the cottage, and his parents aren’t there but someone is.
“I’m Kate,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”
Of course, Lee thinks, yet another set-up from his parents who are still trying to marry him off. Still hopeful of grandkids.
And before Lee can ask Kate where his parents are, there they are, huffing through the door, dinner in hand.
“Oh,” his mother exclaims, bags dropping at her feet, no doubt surprised at Kate’s early arrival, “it’s—”
“—yes, Kate,” Lee says, vexed.
And Oh his father squeaks, breathless. “Kate, then. How utterly lovely. Let’s eat.”
Dinner is small talk between his parents and Kate—weather, sports, films, current world affairs—and passes pleasantly but without substance, Kate deflecting personal questions, and his parents peering at him, expectant, waiting for him to take the lead. But he is still too angry to address their complicity, so he says nothing.
Dinner done, dishes put away, the dark pushing at the windows and the wind prying at the door, his father summons him outside. By flashlight they pick their way down to the lake.
Late summer, chilly for the time of year, Lee and his father sitting in the midnight-dark by the lake sharing a six-pack of cheap, cold beer. His mother and Kate are in the cottage. “Too many bugs,” they’d said, sensibly, when Lee tried to get them to come along.
It is dark except for the ice-white stars that stud the black canvas of night sky, and the small fire that crackles and spits at their feet. And silent but for that snapping fire and the slow lap lap lap of waves like the beat of black wings.
“This place,” his father says, looking all around, “exists outside of everything. You can’t really find it unless you’re looking for it or know where it is. An oddity. The world is full of these thin places.”
Lee hands another beer to his father, says “Shouldn’t we talk about Kate. Address the elephant in the room.”
His father twists off the bottle-cap, takes a swig. “Yes. She seems lovely. But let me tell you a story first.”
Christ, Lee thinks. Him and his stories.
“You ever notice, son, how when we come up here that everything starts looking . . . off?”
“Off?”
His father scrunches up his face, all serious, sharp shadows in the firelight. “Yeah, like the trees are gnarled, and twisted unnaturally. The strange squirrel-like rodents. Even the fish in the lake here,” and he gestures toward the water with his beer bottle, “are strange. Big eyes. Bulbous and bug-like. Lots more teeth.” He gulped down the dregs of his beer, dropped the bottle. Looked up. “Even the light is different. In daytime it’s got that greenish tinge. At night, well, just look. Have you ever seen a dark so dark? And those stars. Shining with some weird intelligence. Don’t you think?”
Lee shrugs. His father is having him on or the beers are already getting to him. “Hadn’t really noticed, to tell the truth.”
“About that story,” his father says. “For this one you just need to know that this place where we are is different.”
Lee waited. Even as a small child, his father was always making up stories. They’d come to the cottage, tromp through the woods on a grand quest like noble knights; sit on the deck under the canopy of night and visit strange worlds; row their boat on the lake as pirates plundering and looting distant shores. His father liked a tall tale.
A half-moon, like a lidded eye winking, hangs in the night sky. Across the lake a loon calls. There’s a small plink from the water and a rustling from the woods. The night creatures stirring.
“Up a ways,” his father says, vaguely gesturing across the lake, “where the waters meet and go out to the vast sea, there’s a large bay and a harbour. It’s still there. It used to be a fishing town. A busy port, in fact.”
Lee opens another beer, drains half in one easy pull.
“This was a long time ago,” his father continues. “My father told me this story. And his father told him. And one day you can tell it to your son. Or daughter.” He smiles, glances at Lee. “When you and Kate decide the time is right, of course. If nothing else, it whiles away a nice summer evening.”
The fire spits sparks and smoke. Lee peers at his father’s face, orange and ghoulish in the firelight. When you and Kate decide the time is right. The unmitigated gall. Lee had only just met her and hadn’t said two words to her. His father was yanking his chain.
His father coughs, waves smoke and ash from his face. “Story goes that one summer day a vicious squall swept over the bay and the town. The harbour master and even the townsfolk could see a ship out in the bay. One they didn’t recognize, and one they weren’t expecting. But there’d been rumours of this ship and its mysterious cargo. It wasn’t a whaling vessel, as such. It purported to deal in more exotic fare.”
His father exhales sharply. “You have to remember; it was a time of tall tales. The taverns overflowed with beer and gossip. Rumour had it that this black vessel carried creatures the likes of which man had never seen, from the farthest corners of the earth, to be turned into food or pets, or put into zoos and aquariums. Strange and abnormal things from deep down in the ocean. Giant sea snakes with no eyes, just a mouthful of teeth.” His father stops, gnashes his teeth together. Grins. “Lots of sharp teeth. Things that should have stayed down there deep in the dark. All thrashing about in their watery holds.
“It’s told that many of the ship’s crew took ill and started to die. Scurvy laid waste to the men. It was common practice those days to dump the corpses overboard. But the Captain of this vessel fed the bodies to those things in his hold. They acquired a taste for human flesh.”
Lee shivers, glances up at the baleful stars. Pale light arcs across the sky, a comet or shooting star. The wind briefly gusts like a breath held too long, and the trees sway and smash into each other. Pine prickles his nostrils. Lee turns toward the woods, but all is dark. And in that darkness Lee thinks he sees an even darker wedge of night detach from the trees and amble toward the cottage. But that can’t be right. No, that can’t be right.
“Ah, but the storm,” his father continues. “Torrents of wind and rain slammed the ship. The squall was so intense that the ship bobbed like a cork; then mighty waves crested and dashed the ship against some rocks. Wood and bodies splintered and flew. Some survived; mostly the creatures in the hold. Some swam back out to the sea, to the deep. Others . . . well, others apparently took a liking to the freshwater lakes, and headed inland. Far inland.”
Lee laughs, and his father only smiles. They finish their beers in silence under the black and starry sky and pull the last two icy bottles from the cooler.
A sudden splash startles them both.
“And some clearly didn’t stay in the deep,” his father says. “Some evolved. Grew appendages, like roots, crawled from the lakes and hid among the shadows and tall trees. Kept evolving, probably. They could be walking among us. This is a thin place, remember.”
“It’s getting late,” Lee says. “We should get back, check in with mom and Kate.”
“I’m sure they are getting to know each other,” Lee’s father says.
“Surely they already do?” Lee says.
“Hmmm, yes, probably. First, let me tell you another story.” He holds up his bottle. “Just while we finish the last beers.”
Another call rings out, more like an anguished cry.
“Chrissakes, dad—”
“A quick one. I promise. And a true one.”
Lee looks back to the cottage. The porch light spills a sickly cone of yellow onto the deck boards, briefly flickers. The only other light is the blue-white static of the television in the living room broadcasting dead air. Lee can just barely make out a shape at the window, vaguely humanoid and unmoving. He has the sense that it is watching. And waiting. And smiling. No, not smiling. Grinning. But that can’t be. No, that can’t be. His mother playing at that goddamn game again.
“So, these thin places,” his father says, “these liminal voids, they allow things—creatures, beings—passage to our world from their world. I’ve been reading up on it. Most of the evidence is anecdotal, but . . .
. . . well, you know me. I like a good story. All those ones I told you over the years. But they’re just made up. Not real. Stories don’t come to life. That’s what I thought.”
Lee kicks at the dirt, impatient.
“We came up early,” his father says. “Last night. Didn’t want to deal with the Saturday traffic. I came down here alone, had a few beers, just like we’re doing. No fire. Just me and the dark. To listen to this quiet blue world. Bliss. To see the moonlight glint on the lake. Your mother was already in bed. The air felt charged somehow. Maybe a storm was coming. I’m looking at the glassy water, probably half dreaming, when I see . . . something just rise up from the water and wade to the shore. I blink, rub my eyes. But it’s still there. So I grab the flashlight and head to the water’s edge. I’m about twenty-feet away, and I call out ‘Hey! Hey, are you okay?’ My light catches its face, and I see it’s a woman, a sort-of woman—its features are a bit too angular—wet and pale as a grub. Naked. And she is smiling. Or sneering, rather, in a menacing way. Then it, she, whatever, turns and darts back into the water.”
“Well,” Lee says, “you do like your beer.”
“It wasn’t that,” his father says. “See, last year around this time the same thing happened. I was on the porch that time, watching the moths flit and dance when—how can I put this?—above me the sky opened like an eye and something dropped into the woods. Flashlight in hand I waded into the trees. I found a pathway and I could barely discern a shape moving along the path, coming toward me. ‘Hello’ I called, and it stopped. I fixed the flashlight on the path. And it was a woman. A normal woman. Dressed casual. Pants. A top. Long hair. Pale face. A normal woman. Except . . . except for that long shit-eating smirk creasing her face. That time, I ran. Back to the cottage, where I sat on the couch in the dark, heart thumping, listening, waiting.”
Lee chuckles, but it isn’t a happy sound. “Woman don’t just fall from the night sky.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t mention it because, well, I’m not certain even I believed what I saw. Now, though, after last night . . . ”
Lee sighs. “How do I know this is not just another of your stories?”
Lee’s father shrugs. “I guess you don’t.”
“Come on,” Lee says. “I’ve had more than enough. Let’s put out this fire and go back up. Mom and Kate have probably packed it in.”
“About Kate,” Lee’s father says, “you didn’t bring her up here, did you?”
“What? Of course not,” Lee says. “I thought—”
They both turn back to the cottage. The porch light has been extinguished, but the dead-static glow illumines the front window and the shape that still watches them. Then there is a small flash of light and even from the water’s edge they can see that face and that mad, mad grin.
Originally published in Nightmare Abbey, Issue 10, March 2026.
