Creepy Short Stories

The Cats of Juniper Valley

The Cats of Juniper Valley

They put up a tall fence covered with black tarp and topped by barbed wire, surrounding Lake Collette at the center of Juniper Valley, so that no one could see what they were doing. Two of the three local cop cars were stationed 24/7 at either end – one to the east, one to the west. This all went on for three days while some unknown, official body did what needed to be done, then, overnight, the black barbed-wire fence was gone, replaced with one of the normal chain-link variety.

A few middle school kids dared Kevin Whitter to apply a pair of wire cutters and sneak in. My little half-brother knew Kevin; the kid claimed to have seen unmarked vans and a bevy of sunglass-wearing government agents with automatic weapons surrounding a team of scientists in hazmat suits, dragging a the carcass of a monster out of the water. The monster had ten legs, the skin of an alligator, and the body of a squid. Or the body of a shark. Or matted fur, or feathers, or teeth.

It changed per telling. And it was all bullshit. I'm guessing Kevin Whitter either chickened out before doing the deed, or else was picked up by the cops as soon as he approached the fence.

At the end of the three days, some early risers in Juniper Valley reported witnessing unmarked cars heading east on Skylark Road, towards the highway and the air force base and the Palmdale airport. Whatever government agency was operating behind the blockade, searching the lake, they were gone without a trace by the time the sun was up.

And whatever they found, they weren't telling. The cops were clueless; all they told us townsfolk was that, due to a bacterial infestation, we were not to swim in the lake until further notice.

I will never swim in the lake again. And I hope to God they killed them all.

*****

I stayed in Juniper Valley during the summer, with my father. He and my stepmother loved it there, loved the isolation and the small-town lifestyle. Though I would hesitate to even call Juniper Valley a "town." It's an unincorporated cluster of ranch-style homes planted like a pimple amongst the Sierra Pelona Mountains.

In the 90's, the population of Juniper Valley and the surrounding hills was eight hundred and change. There was one general store in town, one gas station, one church, and one dirty little inn with a bar/restaurant. Anything else one might need could be found in Palmdale, a 45-minute drive east, through miles of gridded power lines and golden flatland, dotted with silos and scrap metal.

The town resembles a bowl, with Lake Collette at the basin, and streets and houses arranged around the edges, along the slopes of the surrounding hills. Calling Lake Collette a "lake" is also stretching things a little bit. Its a sag pond, right on the San Andreas Fault, which cuts straight through Juniper Valley. During droughts Lake Collette would drain to a glorified puddle, a mossy marsh of waist-high weeds.

There were quite a few rainy years during my childhood. Lake Collette would remain a proper body of water then, even in the midst of the hot, dry summer. I'd look out my bedroom window at the lake, below the dim circles of light cast by the two street lamps on Skylark Road, pitch-black like a tar pit. On moonless nights it seemed depthless, and I felt as though it could be a kilometers-deep well. A black hole. It could suck me in, swallow me whole.

I grew up. My months in Juniper Valley became skull-crushingly boring. My dad and stepmother worked, my half-siblings went to summer school, and my friends were seventy miles away. The nearest library was almost as far, and the rabbit-eared TV picked up three channels: local access from Palmdale, the Bible channel, and assorted infomercials.

It was my step-grandmother who told me about the Willfell Animal Sanctuary. She went to church with the lady who ran the place, a retired park ranger named Kathy. The shelter was a non-profit funded solely by donations, with an all-volunteer staff. Kathy owned an acre of hillside land off Skylark Road, just west of town, a fifteen-minute walk from my father's house.