Face in Murky Waters

Several decades ago, a group of scientists experimented with the effects of gene manipulation.  They employed four transients to take part in their experiments.  Soon after, the city was plagued by several unsolved disappearances.

It seems that the poor subjects had begun to search out 'alternative' nourishment.

When a fisherman and his daughter came across one of the subjects making a meal of a horse, they ran for their lives.  The subject would have caught them, were it not for the truck that ran the subject over.  Before their very eyes, the subject deteriorated, and soon was reduced to a greenish pile of ashes.

Weeks later, another subject was caught attempting to attack a local librarian as she was locking the library for the night.  Her screams alerted several men in a bar, which immediately went after the shadowy figure.  They chased the subject as far as the dock, where it jumped into the dark waters, and disappeared from sight.

In the distance, they noticed two more shadowy figures drop down into the waters.

Reports of more violent attacks came more frequently.  The locals began patrolling the areas at night, and groups of armed men would go out in search of the 'fish men', as they were called.  People that had escaped the fish men's clutches had described the croaking, and clicking, and the swampy smell that protruded from the slimy creatures.

When the scientists were found deceased, and their laboratory destroyed, the locals decided that it was time to put an end to the slimy fish men.

They took weapons, and went out in search of them.  Soon after, some of the men found the fish men scrounging around in the local woods.  The locals confronted the slimy fish men, who began fighting back.   As the fight continued, the noise alerted more of the locals.  As they arrived, they found the men sprawled on the ground, and the three fish men gone.

Some of the men that went in search at the dock, saw the fish men jump into the water.  Startled, one of them went back to alert the others.  When all of the locals arrived at the dock, they poured oil into the water, and set it ablaze.

The locals remained long after the fires went out, and into the early morning.

Since that night, the slimy fish men were never seen again.  Most of the locals believed that they had been destroyed trying to escape the flames, and others believed that they perished under the waters by all of the objects and dynamite that had been thrown in.

Years later, the fish men had been mostly forgotten, until the day when a tourist diver came across a greenish, and slime-covered figure lurking in a nearby bay.

Needless to say, nobody believed his story.