THE FROG-MAN OF TROUT LAKE

By Mia

This is the story of the mysterious frog-man of Trout Lake. One day, a girl called Maralyn was walking her dog, Snowy, on the gravel pathway alongside Trout Lake. She was on her lunch break from work, and she still had her name tag on. Suddenly, Snowy started barking madly and bolted, snapping the leash out of Maralyn’s hands. She rushed to grab him, but he got away and ran into the weeds. A couple of seconds later, he stepped back out, covered in mud, water and blood. Snowy had several puncture wounds on his legs, and was limping from the profuse injuries he was suffering. Maralyn noticed that his dog tag was missing. But that wasn’t even her biggest concern.

Maralyn took the rest of the day off. She took Snowy to the vet, who put bandages on his wounds. Then they went home. Maralyn bundled her dog up, placed him on the sofa and turned on the news.

“Breaking news!” said the announcer on the TV. “Dogs and cats are being attacked at Trout Lake. We suspect that a coyote is responsible for the attacks.”

Snowy was wriggling in his blanket, so Maralyn reached in to comfort him. But when she put her hand on him, she felt something wet and slimy. Then, Snowy bit her and she yelled in pain.

Maralyn felt as if red-hot needles were boring into her hands. She threw the blanket off, and sitting there instead of Snowy was the biggest frog she had ever seen. She screamed and chased it out of the house.

The next day, Maralyn found herself heading to Trout Lake on her lunch break again. She walked over to the place where Snowy had been attacked, and that’s where she was last seen.

Her friends were worried and a search party was launched, but after a couple of weeks the urgency died down. When the police eventually offered their opinion, they said that a cougar or coyote might have killed her in defence and dragged her into the lake. Or, they said, she might have been kidnapped. But there was no evidence, so the case stayed unsolved.

One night, two officers were dispatched to look for Maralyn on all the docks around Trout Lake. Their names were Officer Johnson and Officer Pierre. Pierre noticed a strange disturbance in the water. Then, the reeds rustled apart and a frog-like figure stepped out and looked over at the officers. “This is impossible,” said Pierre. Then, a second frog-figure stepped out. It was wearing a name tag. The name on it was Maralyn.

Nobody ever saw those police officers again. But the next time somebody reported an encounter with giant humanoid frogs, they described seeing four of them. And three of those frog people had name tags on: Johnson, Pierre and Maralyn.