The morning was unseasonably balmy for that time of year. A radiant sun blazed in the cloudless blue sky, brazing Tommy and his mother as they lazed on the worn patch of an army blanket spread out on the grassy bluff overlooking the New England ocean beach. The bright sands below were already dotted with early Sunday bathers and sun-worshipers who, from Tommy's lofty viewpoint, looked for all the world like ants converging on the sweetness of a sugar sea.

Tommy watched his mother's eyelids flutter as she fought the tug of drowsiness, saw her yield to the overpowering force, her eyes closing at last, and heard her regular breathing deepen. She lay peacefully, the storybook she had been reading to him resting in the crook of her left arm, her auburn hair in whisps across her face. He loved his mother, Tommy did, slumbering there amid the rich fragrance of Spring wild flowers. But he was six years old and growing restless.

Slowly Tommy stood and shuffled closer to the bluff's edge. He shielded his eyes with his small hand and squinted out across the endless expanse of gleaming waves. A curious disturbance troubled the waters about a hundred yards out, just beyond the breakers. Its shape was odd. Briefly Tommy imagined he saw in the darkness beneath the glistening surface the angular, scaly haunch of a hideous sea monster.

A retired sailor named Ben Brewster sat on one of the higher dunes puffing a favorite pipe, his tattered blue sweater draped like a shroud over his thin shoulders. He was the first to observe the creature rising from the churning waters. Old Brewster leaped to his feet and screamed "Run for your blessed lives!" at his neighbors nearer the shore. Pandemonium erupted on the beach. Alarmed cries and frightened replies wafted up to Tommy on the gentle offshore breeze, but softly, without the force that might waken his mother.

There was really plenty of time to flee the hideous thing as it pushed through the thick foam and waded toward the beach, towering ever higher as it came. Most of the bathers were safely away by the time it emerged with thunderous clawing feet upon the dry sand. But a few people, like Walter Gray in his pinstriped walking shorts and white canvass deck shoes, were just too astonished to feel a proper fear. Oh, they got out of its path, of course, but circled around behind to see just what the hell it was.

The creature was peculiar. The witnesses would swear they had seen it somewhere before, in a comic book or the fantastic conjurings of some B-grade horror movie. Whatever forces formed those fearful, scaly sinews had studied Godzilla, Rodin, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but not much vertebrate biology or physics.

Walter Gray must have believe it to be some sort of Hollywood publicity stunt, for once he'd had a chance to view the improbable beast from every side, he began to laugh so hard he fell to the sand and rolled about clutching his sides. His unexpected contempt threw Tommy into an unaccountable rage as he watched from his lofty vantage.

Suddenly the monster wheeled on Walter, plucking him from the sands with lightning dexterity, and bit off his head. Any further thought of frivolity drained away as quickly as did Walter Gray's life blood. The remaining curious, suddenly sobered and far from safety, stampeded from the bristling beach, but for some the realization came too late. With incredible agility the monster sped back and forth across the blazing sands, biting off heads, twisting limbs from bodies, ripping torsos open with horny claws, and devouring a few in a single gulp.

The leviathan lumbered away from the shore, ascending the fragile dunes, and at sand's end, began scaling the nearly-vertical rock cliff that lead up to the meadow where Tommy watched with growing alarm. When he lost sight of the beast under a rocky overhang, the boy hurried back from the brink to the refuge of his mother's blanket. On the edge of that threadbare fortress he made his stand, a comic book hero, feet planted, a last line of defense between his mother and the menace that approached.

Suddenly a massive forearm reached over the rim not ten feet from where he had sat, dug foot-long claws into the crumbling soil, and pulled the sea monster's horrible bulk up after it. Terrible yellow eyes blinked sideways and leered down at the minuscule warrior and his supine mother stranded on their pitiful life-raft blanket amid a sea of churning wild flowers. A gore-coated tongue flicked through hideous, dripping jaws. The monster started forward.

Tommy raised a tiny, trembling fist and challenged in a piping whisper, "You'd better leave my mommy alone!"

Tommy's mother stirred at the harsh sound. She stretched, the storybook falling from her arm, but she did not awaken.

The massive, scaly tail quivered with indecision. The monster snorted, pawed the ground, grunted and hissed, then it winked at Tommy, spun around, and loped up the trail that led to the county access road.

Two summer cottages front on the short stub of two-lane linking the beach with the Village of Swainsport. Both were totally demolished. The Edwards' cedar-built cabin looked like it had been picked up and smashed against the ancient oaks which stood behind it. Higgins' home was more substantial. Jose Villalobos, crouched behind his pickup, saw the monster burst in through the north wall and out again through the south side, leaving the shattered shell to collapse behind it. Fortunately, neither was occupied.

Ed Rummidge, the village butcher, was the first to see the creature lumbering down Main Street from the east. He began shouting and waiving his arms, but it was too late for the shoppers in Lytton's Grocery. The scaly nightmare burst through the plate glass window, trapping seven inside. It toyed with them (like Tommy had once watched his cat Amanda torturing a cornered field mouse) and finally, one after another, chewed off their heads.

Tommy's mother awoke abruptly, as if from a troubled dream. A cloud had passed in front of the sun, and she shivered in the fresh ocean breeze. She looked at Tommy and smiled, but the boy seemed to be lost in daydreams of his own.

Martin Coulter's old ‘51 Buick skidded into the monster's left flank. With Mr. and Mrs. Coulter inside, the beast picked up the antique automobile like a child's plaything, clamping it under its left forearm, and poked its right through the windshield, slicing the scaly flesh on fragments of broken glass. The cuts seemed to infuriate the creature. Long after the Coulters had been torn to pieces by the groping claws, the monster seemed intent on tearing the automobile's insides out.

Tommy's mother sat up and pulled her sweater close about her shoulders. She looked out to sea, then down at the beach. Her brow furrowed. "Tommy, where is everybody?" she asked.

Maurice Evans sneaked out the side door of the firehouse, right up behind the hideous creature as it troubled over Coulters' broken automobile, and emptied both barrels of his twelve-gage into the back of the bobbing head, without apparent effect. From across the street Patrolman Bud Simington fired six rounds from his service revolver point blank into the hulking beast as it tore Maurice Evans limb from limb.

"They all left," said Tommy as the sun reappeared.

His mother squinted into the bright sunlight. Something appeared peculiar about the way the few remaining bathers were strewn about the beach.

"A sea monster scared ‘em away," Tommy volunteered.

"Oh, Tommy!" His mother turned to confront him. "You know there's no such thing as a sea monster."

The primordial beast hesitated for just an instant, but it was time enough to let Bud Simington escape with his life.

"Sure there is, Mommy. I saw it myself. It climbed right up here." Tommy pointed to the freshly turned soil near the cliff.

The nineteenth and final fatality of that grisly morning was Billy Bunderson, the local paperboy. Poor Billy was legally blind from birth and supplemented his SSI income with Sunday morning newspaper deliveries. Returning home from his route on his chrome-plated bicycle, he never saw the thing coming. He was stomped to pulp beneath the massive lizard feet on the sidewalk outside Livingston's barbershop.

"I knew I shouldn't let you watch those old monster movies on tv," Tommy's mother remonstrated.

"But I saw it . . . ." Tommy was near tears.

Patrick Sean McBurney was beating the shirt off old Everett "Doc" Livingston at their traditional Sunday morning checkers match when they heard the commotion outside the barbershop. Doc threw open the front door, and that caught the monster's attention.

"What the hell is that thing?" Doc screamed and dove back inside.

With a single crunching swat the front wall was gone. The roof shuddered, but held. Doc grabbed McBurney and dragged him to the back wall.

The beast crouched down on its stubby forelegs and poked its snout into the rubble, leering, ready to finish them off. McBurney and Doc were trapped.

"Tommy! Shush! There are no sea monsters, and you know it!"

The monster stopped, as if undecided. It stood up, poking its head through the old skylight.

To this day McBurney can't say what made him think of it. He'll shrug and claim it was divine inspiration. He snatched those long barber shears and Doc's pearl-handled comb off the counter next to him and held them up in front of his face to form a cross.

"Well, maybe it was some kind of giant octopus," said Tommy.

Before their eyes the monster began to melt, to shrink, to evaporate. It lost its dark umber hue, contracted into a massive sand-colored lump with protruding tentacles radiating regularly from the center, each pocked with exaggerated hissing suction cups.

"No, Tommy," replied his mother with a gentle firmness. "Octopuses don't come out of the water. Ever. You really didn't see anything, now, did you?"

"Yes I did, Mommy! It came right up here! Maybe it was a crocodile."

The thing on the floor of the barbershop darkened in color, elongated. Its surface grew quilted. Two enormous, tooth-lined jaws formed and yawned menacingly.

"Tommy!" his mother insisted. "I want the truth! You didn't see anything, did you? You made it all up."

Tommy paused in thought.

The thing in Livingston's barbershop shrank before the eyes of the astonished onlookers.

"No, Mommy, you're right. I'm sorry. I didn't see anything."

It disappeared without a trace, evaporated into thin air. McBurney cradled the scissors and comb in his trembling hands like relics of the True Cross. Doc Livingston just stared at him from across the devastated barbershop.

"That's a good boy, Tommy." His mother gave him a big hug, then brushed the hair back from his ruddy face with a reassuring hand. "I'm happy you've finally grown up enough to admit to telling a fib. But heaven knows what's going to happen if you don't learn to control that imagination of yours."