I was the detective assigned on the most recent disappearance. Two nights before, the tailor of the town, Fraser Duncan was gone without a trace. His neighbor explained to me that he grew up with an extreme attachment to the lake and claimed that our attempts to close off the lake hadn’t stopped him. But now, he was the third to have disappeared around the area. We weren’t sure if the disappearances and the strange horse were all tied together, though many townsfolk were convinced.

I spotted a camera resting on a rock accompanied by a torn piece of cloth wrapped around the sharp edge of this rock. The camera’s batteries were almost dead but I was given enough time to look through the pictures. They were all photos of the lake and the wildlife around it. But the last one specifically interested me. I was so intrigued, I took the camera back to the station with me and printed it.

It appeared to be a dark, blurry picture of a horse. A draft horse, possibly a clydesdale. The mane was long and soaked like the leaves of a weeping willow and its eyes were glowing white. Once this picture was found in the newspapers, the whole town all thought different things. The older folks were stuck on the belief that a rancher’s horse had run away. A majority of the younger adults believed it to be fake altogether. Almost every teenager questioned believed it was a kelpie–an evil horse creature found in bodies of water.

I questioned many of the horse-owners in town. None of them were missing any horses. I later found myself standing on the cliff that looked down at the lake. In the distance, I watched the very horse from the picture emerging from the water, and I examined its behavior. It didn’t take long for this equestrian creature to take notice of me. . . .