The Creature From Elkhorn Slough

Moss Landing is a queer little town, a relic of the past that has long since sold its soul to tourism. Whatever grandeur it might've once held has been abandoned, 'rustic' having been the aesthetic for the last forty years on account of it selling souvenirs better. On its best days it is a snapshot in time, and on its worst days not even that. A handful of streets, a harbor, a string of weathered storefronts that mostly sell clamshells and postcards speak of a place that has given up and chosen to die slowly... ...but ask any of the two-hundred or so unfortunates who live in this quaint little town and they'll sing a different tune. Moss Landing never so much 'gave up' as it was 'driven away'. There's something different here, something older and evil. Anyone who has ever walked the boardwalk at low tide knows exactly the feeling. It's as if the town had been built around something that was never meant to be seen.

Elkhorn Slough, a festering, briny wound that bisects the town from the westbound Monterey Bay and the larger Pacific, has always been the subject of much superstition. The slough itself is a slow-rolling geography of in-betweens: brackish water that fails to commit to sea or river and, for this flippancy, thrives. This sloshy soup and its surrounding habitats teem with life, hosting all manner of fish, seals, eels, rays, and even the occasional shark. Yet this host of creatures is rarely seen, for the slough is thick and murky, too dark to see the bottom and too strangely, deathly still in even high tide. It shines in the sun like black glass, and fishermen swear there's something unrighteous lurking in its depths.

Listen closely to the drunken old sailors that frequent the bars here and they'll gab with softened tongue about things that have aged them before their time. Many think it came from the powerplant, a dilapidated building that stands right by the slough, now oft mistaken for a lighthouse by account of its two large smokestacks. It's been retired now, of course, but the the sailors of more gusto and less sanity might recount the smell of chemicals and pollution that came from it back in its heyday - and the strange barrels they supposedly dumped into the slough.

That is to say, rumors aside, no one was surprised when it was announced that the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute was staging its grand opening right by the coastline, the most publicity a quiet town had otherwise seen in years. The swathes of nameless suited men pouring in and out of it all day and all night are pointedly ignored by the townsmen, as if they have always been there. And every so often when MBARI proclaims to have discovered a new kind of mold people offer polite congratulations and then quickly look the other way, as if they do not have their own suspicions on what is really being researched.

Put in other words, Moss Landing is the kind of place that when a pet goes missing, the search to find it doesn't go on for very long. The locals here don't exactly say 'monster', but they sure as hell have learned to expect the unexpected. And that's exactly the reason Amber wants to spend fall here. She can hardly, after all, call herself a cryptid hunter if she doesn't actually hunt any cryptids!

The plan was simple. Step one was wait for fall break so college classes let up. Check. Step two was rent a big old van - a roadtrippin' van. That's a check too. Step three was bribe a friend to come with her with promises of a fun beach holiday. (A good cryptid hunter always needs back up!) Check-a-rooney George Clooney. Step four is actually drive all the way out to Moss Landing, CA. Check... in progress. There's the exit off Highway 1 now.

"Hey! Peepers peeled, dumb-dumb!" Amber snaps teasingly, taking one hand off the wheel and shaking the lump sitting shotgun as she eases into the down ramp. "We're almost in Moss Landing, and I want YOU to be awake with me for first impressions! I'll probably have some incredibly inspiring or insightful commentary that you don't wanna miss! Plus, you gotta help me look for our hotel. I hope it's 'rustic'!"

Actually she hopes it's spooky, but rustic sounds nicer.

Elkhorn Slough is silent in the twilight, the usual chatter and chirping of wildlife stunted by an instinctual fear of things unseen. Even the moon, full and bright, a skybound sentinel of the heavens, wobbles warily across the water's surface, a single white bead humbled by its own inadequacy against miles of inky brine. A soundless ripple spreads across the black sheet, an afterimage of motion further below. There is something in the water tonight, something that any sane god would see barred from his reality.

With chilling and predatory silence the water breaks, a stripe of white moonlight contrasting the edge of something long, sharp, and serrated. Then rises another, another, another... From the depths below they rise, bearing the silhouette of a conifer tree but all the unnaturalness of a butcher's shears. It is only when they curl grotesquely around a beam of the wharf's edge that it becomes apparent that they are attached to fingers. They are claws: long, hooked, and eager to carve flesh from bone.

Oh. Em. Gee. I literally cannot even with these things. Like, have you seen my flaky cuticles? Ew! I’m giving major 'dollar store Edward Scissorhands' vibes. '#dying' for a mani-pedi rn.

The fingers tighten, flesh ripples with strength, and the thing begins to pull. Arms of a sickly shade of dark blue emerge next, arms smooth and slimy with an eel-like sheen, but blotchy as if covered in patches of old healed scabs.

My skin is like, sooooo dry right now. Like, ummm, hello??? Can somebody spare a girl some exfoliant or something? This salt water is totally murdering my pores!

The thing, as it rises from the muck, might be mistaken by a less watchful observer for a large piece of seaborne refuse if not for its eyes. Indeed the beast appears a matted mass of sea trash and kelp, smelling strongly of salt with the faintest and sickening undertones of rotting flesh beneath it. Only its eyes, bulbous, elongated things of an unnatural yellow color, distinguish it as something that is alive - that and the heavy, gurgling breathing that emanates from its twisted frame.

Spend a little time at the bottom of the slough and what does it get me? Overgrown. I need a trim, and I needed it yesterday! Actually make that a full body wax! It's one thing for hair to have volume, but this is lowkey disgusting. Does this seaweed make me look fat?

Schlorp... scrape... thunk! Schlorp... scrape... thunk! The creature begins to move. Its shoulders roll forward in a horrible hunch, seaweed parting like curtains to let the ends of its long black claws drag against the boardwalk as it shambles forth. It is behemothian in size, yet so poor in posture that seven feet become five, every wet lurch forward echoed by the popping of bones.

Girlfriend, I did NOT just wake up from my two-decade-long power nap sore! OMG, I am WAY too young to feel this old! Better add 'masseuse' to list, but, like, honestly...? I wouldn't wanna touch me right now without a hazmat suit.

Among the dark, quiet, thrice-boarded houses the monster walks, a primal, stalking, violence in its lopsided stride. Only a single jewel of light draws its ire, an arrogant foray into after-hours that promises unwitting damnation for whatever doomed souls might still reside inside. The sign out front reads 'Beauty Parlor'. The thing approaches the door.

"MMMUuuURRRAAaaAAaaa!!!" the monster bellows, dragging a long, jagged claw down the glass with a horrible screech. "Mmrruakeover fruu un peeze..."

Ugh, is that ME? I sound like a busted garbage disposal! And is that MY breath I'm smelling??? This is soooo embarrassing! I am literally going to DIE! Please be open, please be open, please be open! I'm a customer! That means I'm like, always right or something!

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