Allow me to elucidate. I just wrote a quick horror story where two brothers are swimming in the Ottawa River, and one starts scaring the other with tales of the giant sturgeon that fishermen caught upstream. His brother swims away, brushes his foot on something, and becomes panicky, swimming to their raft. The first brother, of course, finds all this hilarious, until he is scolded by his mother and sent up to their cottage to help his father prepare supper. The scared brother, now on the raft, begins to realize his foolishness, but remains, slowly relaxing at the tranquility and natural beauty around him. He then swims to his dock. He gets up on the dock, where his mother still is, her face obscured behind a copy of Cosmopolitan, and he tries asking her a question. She doesn't respond. He asks her again. No answer. He then lowers her magazine, slowly, and screams. I was operating off the principle that the unknown is the scariest there is, but is this overdoing it? I tried to establish the tension and suspense in the mood, easing off a bit, and even taking it in a false direction with a sea monster theme in the beginning (the scared brother thinks of a thing he saw on Discovery Channel of a sea-dwelling dinosaur), but I'm thinking that this may just not be enough to go off. Thoughts? Could it be sinister enough to be spooky?
The unknown is always a good source of fear and the misleading beginning does sound quite interesting. Personally I think your story works well from what you've described.
Personally I like it, but there may be those that feel they've got invested only to be cheated at the end. Some people like their horror to have a face.
The first thought that came to my mind was,"The sea monster ate the mother and disguised as her", so unless you're trying to pull that angle, you might want to consider this.
Seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch, to be honest. Undescribed horror can be effective, but I think I'd want to see some sort of connection to what went before to not feel cheated. Otherwise it's kinda like one of those 'and then I woke up' endings, where there's just no point to the rest of the tale.
