Slime
The slime was a deep sea creature that was effectively immortal, having existed since the time of the dinosaurs. The slime was inky gray-black in color, and prowled along the ocean floor, propelled solely by a desire to feed and add to its bulk. It was capable of forming tentacles to grab prey, although its favorite method is to form itself into a vague hood or umbrella shape. It ate everything from small fish and crustaceans to even other large predators such as sharks and giant squid.
One night, during a nighttime storm off the coast of the town of Clinton Center, an undersea upheaval propelled the slime up to the surface, where a tidal wave created by the storm washed it ashore. Confused, but unafraid - lacking any natural predators, it knew no fear - it oozed its way into the coastal wetlands of Wharton's Swamp and gorged itself on muskrats and other small animals, until the sunrise brings, for the first time, pain; unused as it was to light, the slime found that the sunlight burned its flesh, forcing it to bury itself in the muck of a murky pool in order to escape.
That day, a homeless man passing through Clinton Center, Henry Hossing, ventured into Wharton's Swamp with a bottle of rye whiskey he purchased so he could drink it in peace without being hassled by the local police, who didn't want him hanging around. He got drunk and fell asleep. Come nightfall, he awakened to an unexplained sensation of dread, assailed by a fetid stench and the sound of something slithering through the undergrowth. His campfire held the unseen menace off briefly, but soon died out, and the slime rushed forth from the darkness to engulf Henry, making him the creature's first human victim. Due to the slime's black color, from Henry's point of view, it was as if the darkness itself rushes out to claim him.
After this, it ventured onto the property of a local farmer, Giles Gowse (known as "Old Man Gowse" to the locals), and consumed his cow Sarey, before returning to the safety of the swamp's inky black pools come daybreak. Gowse's efforts to convince Chief Miles Underbeck that his cow had been taken earn jeers from the townspeople; despite the fact Wharton's Swamp has a reputation for being haunted, Gowse was more superstitious than most and regarded as insane by his neighbors, particularly his fellow farmer and sometime enemy Rupert Barnaby, who he encountered walking home later that day. Despite Gowse's warnings, Barnaby, who wasn't a superstitious man, went hunting in the swamp after dark with his dog Jibbe. He became the slime's second victim after his hunting rifle proved ineffective against it.
Jibbe escaped unharmed, and was found by Giles Gowse the next morning, whimpering and afraid. But still Chief Underbeck refused to take action, insisting there must be some rational explanation for the disappearances; Henry Hossing probably heeded Underbeck's warnings and moved on, while Rupert Barnaby knew the swamp better than anyone and was probably still out hunting. But come nightfall, Barnaby still hadn't returned, worrying Underbeck. A third attack occured when Dolores Rell and Jason Bukmeist went exploring in the swamp as a lark; Dolore was later found by a motorist passing through town, screaming that "the darkness came alive" and swallowed Jason up, similar to what Henry Hossing experienced just before he died.
Again, as daybreak comes, the slime returned to the shadowy safety of its newfound swamp home. No one believed Dolores, considering her insane. The day after Jason Bukmeist's death, the Clinton Center police combed the swamp. They found Rupert Barnaby's gun and Henry Hossing's hat. Underbeck seized on the rational explanation that Henry robbed and murdered both Rupert Barnaby and Jason Bukmeist, and ordered his officers to comb the swamp to find what he mistakenly believed is an ordinary human murderer... only for the slime to strike again once darkness fell, claiming its fourth victim, Patrolman Luke Matson, who was killed and absorbed in front of the unbelieving eyes of his terrified partner Fred Storr. Patrolman Storr would've shared Matson's fate but for his flashlight, whose beam repelled the slime long enough for his fellow officers to come to his rescue. However, he was left insane by what he witnessed.
Finally concluding that their adversary wasn't human, and that Henry, far from being the killer, was another victim of their unseen foe, Chief Underbeck demanded - and receiveed - backup in the form of US Army reservists from Camp Evans, who arrivde armed with machine guns and flamethrowers. Remembering that Storr's flashlight drove the creature away, Underback ordered huge searchlights erected along the beach and an enormous barricade topped with barbed wire, planning to flush the dark menace from the swamp and into the open area of the beach, where, hopefully, the soldiers could kill it. He also realized the killer, whatever it was, only came out at night; after a fruitless daytime search, the soldiers combed the swamp that night.
Meanwhile, the slime was thoroughly enjoying its new life as the apex predator of Wharton's Swamp, even though its hunger was neverending. As it surfaced, it found that it sensed more food... but this food, like its intended fifth victim the previous night, was armed with the one thing that it had ever hurt it, light. The slime for the first time in its long life felt fear and decided to flee the swamp and return to its more familiar hunting grounds of the black depths of the ocean. Underbeck's plan to flush it from the swamp was thus successful. The soldiers' guns failed to harm it. Their searchlights, however, burned its sensitive flesh, and it fled from the bright lights with increasing panic down the beach, with the Army in hot pursuit. Encountering the barricade ordered erected by Underbeck, it struggled to ooze over and became entangled with the barbed wire, and, just as it was about to wriggle free and escape to the water's edge, the lead soldier, armed with a flamethrower, opened up, torching the oozing horror, burning it to death before the horrified eyes of his companions.
