From a deposition recorded by the Wabasha County Sheriff’s Office. Witness name withheld at the witness’s request. Date of statement unrecorded.
I will tell you what I saw and I will not tell it again after this.
It was past midnight. No moon. I had gone to the river to check my lines and I am telling you that as a fact, not as an excuse for being out at that hour, though I understand it may sound like one.
I heard it before I saw it. Not a sound exactly; more like the absence of sound. The frogs went quiet first. Then the water seemed to quiet, which I know makes no sense, water doesn’t quiet, but that is what it felt like. Like the river was holding itself still.
Then I saw the eyes.
Two points of cold light, low at first, near the ground, and then rising as whatever they belonged to stood upright. Greenish. Not firelight; I know firelight. Not a lantern. I have no word for the color except to say it was the color of something that has no business being light at all.
It was large. I cannot tell you how large because I had no way to measure it against anything I trusted in that moment. Large enough that the dark around it felt smaller. There were other points of light; along the shoulders, I think, or where the shoulders would have been on a man, though I am not prepared to tell you it was a man. Along the jaw. The hands, maybe. Floating in the black like the pieces of something that had come apart and not entirely remembered how to fit back together.
It did not move toward me. I want to be clear about that because people have asked and I think they expect me to say it chased me or it reached for me or it made some sound. It did none of those things. It stood at the river’s edge and it was still, the way a stone is still, the way something is still that has no reason to hurry.
It turned its head. Just that.
I do not remember the walk back to town. I do not remember arriving. My wife says I came through the door without opening it first, which I believe, because my shoulder was bruised for two weeks after and I have no memory of how.
I am not a superstitious man. I want that on record. I have worked this land for nineteen years and I have seen bears and I have seen men do terrible things and I have seen the river take people it had no right to take and I did not flinch at any of it the way I flinched at that.
Whatever it was, it knew I was there.
Whatever it was, it let me go.
I do not know why and I have thought about nothing else since.
The statement ends here. No follow-up interview was conducted. The witness departed Wabasha County within the week and did not leave a forwarding address.