Undersea volcano washes deep sea limbless slime horror with a terrible appetite onto beach and into local town?
Sort of like the blob, this marauding slime with a voracious appetite was the top predator in its underwater environment (aside from a rare creature, nearly entirely made up of teeth) until a titanic underwater eruption sends it hurtling to the surface.
It makes its way into some marshes, where it feasts on snakes and frogs, until it makes its way into a local American town and is hunted back into the marshes and eventually (with fire) hounded back into the sea.
I remember that the creature was extremely sensitive to light, and could feel the light of the searching locals' torches through the black water of the swamps.
I believe this was one of a collection of short horror/sci-fi stories, and is quite an old story.
Is this ringing any bells with anyone?
story-identification short-stories
lesterlester
Rather Lovecraftian, but I can't come up with a specific story... – Adele C Sep 26 '12 at 22:35
It's almost certainly from the Cthulu mythos, but there are quite a few stories in that: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos_anthology – Donald.McLean Sep 27 '12 at 3:07
I'm fairly certain the story is "Slime", by Joseph Payne Brennan:
His best-known story, "Slime", follows a protoplasmic life form as it ascends from its home deep within the ocean and begins to prey upon coastal residents of a small New England town.
I read it in Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum many moons ago (late 70s), but according to the Wikipedia article, it's been reprinted at least 50 times.
Edit: publication info if you're interested - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?88069
Raven13Raven13
This is the exact story I thought of. – Kevin Howell Sep 28 '12 at 15:12
Copy of the monster museum is in the post as we speak. Thanks for the help again Raven! – lester Oct 1 '12 at 20:44
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