CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "There's a Ladder in the Middle of the Ocean" Creepypasta

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by TheCrookedBoy: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Randi Sánchez Verduga: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZG...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

The festival season is Aangbroken, and that betekent mudder. And so, came Kim to come to comason.com. com. On the look at a waterdict tent,

a comfortable luget, oh, so, knus, and Lupeart print regalarze. Miao. Now, he has Kim not for the modder.

Net so as the dancing the moddermand there, oh, wait just even, has he now only modder on? Oh, yeah, only modder.

Drove blithe? Goar for. Find what you need you need to need on Amazon.com. It was discovered 25 miles off the coast of Maine by a lobster fisherman, the tip of a rusted wrung ladder, patinated and crusted with binacles, jutting up through the ocean's glassy skin. You haven't heard about it on the news.

You wouldn't have. The Navy buttoned it down faster than you can say Sempefortis. Sonascan showed the ladder descended in a vertical line for eight miles, at six miles past the ocean floor, disappearing into a newly-disclosed. of a trench that made Mariner look like the shallow end of a pool. Okay, I'm being facetious, but it goes without saying that higher-ups were concerned. Who the hell had built a ladder in the middle of the ocean?

Where this trench come from? Aliens, Russia? That's where I came in. I was a Metak officer in the Navy's Oceanography Program, working on experimental... Never mind. Not that it doesn't matter, it does. But if I talk about what I did, who I am and why I'm here,

I had no doubt wake up on a trap door with a noose around my neck and treason charges being read by a guy in a starched uniform. I figure there's a damn good chance that might happen anyway. Still, I'm compelled to document this because, well, people deserve to know what I saw. The things that haunt the back of my eyelids when I close them at night. I'm in a military hospital right now, laid up in my own private suite. I'm trying to heal, but without rest, it's proving impossible.

I figure getting this out of my system might help. I hope it will at least. But what are they saying, Shoshank? Hope is a dangerous thing. Anyway, I was never great at beginnings, but I guess I should start with the dive. We called it a submersible, but it was a suit. This was no Jules Verne, clunky, composite, seemed like a rock diving suit.

It was lightweight, pressure resistant, and equipped with all the bells and whistles that lent it its not unfair nickname, Iron Man. That's not to say, it was one of those skin-tied jobs you see scuba divers wearing. It looked more like those suits guys diffusing bombs in war zones wear. That aside, I was thankful there wasn't going to be a 60-pound oxygen tank misaligning my spine. The Ironman was equipped with an electrolysis filter which converted ocean water into breathable oxygen The whole shebang was invisible on enemy radars And could supposedly withstand a descent of this stature

Not that it had been tested Basically, I'd be crawling down an ominous 8-mile ocean ladder in an experimental suit That had only been tried in navy swimming pools My colleagues seized on this predicament Jokingly calling me Lyca in the air hours leading up to the dive. In case you're not familiar, Lyca was the dog Soviet shot up into space in the 50s, a dog who died. So, as I stood on the hem of a small Navy vessel, also experimental,

looking at the first few rungs at the ocean ladder, which sat 20 feet off the starboard, I wondered if this was my last taste of fresh air. I hope your lunch wasn't too risky, my colleague Matilda choked with a smirk. Blowing gas in that thing, you'll probably suffocate. I smiled, but behind my smile were nerves, raw, tingling nerves. I think she saw, because her hand landed on my shoulder. You'll do fine, Jones. This time, I smiled for real, hoping she was right.

A nearby tech asked me if I was ready. I nodded, and the bulky submersibles helmet descended me like a meteor. It really was Iron Man. The big window vise from the front of the helmet doubled as a screen, with oxygen and depth readings, as well as direct comms to and from my people above the surface. There was a POV camera which fed them my perspective as well, so they could monitor and record my descent, which had started an hour ago. I climbed down, rung after rung, daylight fading as it descended into the murky depths.

fish darsed past a little twist of seaweed rolled by it was all very pastoral and oddly existential the ocean I'm talking the vast naked depths of it is huge and never-ending look both ways and you see nothing but bluish green water and swirling walls of sediment a reminder of how incredibly small and inconsequential you are

it never much bothered me until the climb. Now, I'll never touch ocean water again. You good, Jones, Matilda's voice in my ear. Yeah, hon, I'm honky-dory. My deltoes are screaming. Should have put in those hours at the gym.

Where the hell are those taxpayer dollars going if you don't look good on a recruitment boaster? I felt a smile, creasing on my face. The budget we got, they used models for that kind of thing. What, you're telling me that strapping young stud saying, forged by the sea isn't a real seaman? What the hell did I join up for? I laughed.

Sheesh, if I'd have known I'd get this much one-on-one with you, I'd have put on Iron Man a long time ago. I'm here too, came Bradley's voice. Imagine a drone operator, a gangly, pimply kid raised on call the duty. That's Bradley.

What do they say about three being a crowd? I asked. They say, you're closing in 500 metres, Bradley said. Jesus, already? I looked around, and it got in darker, the ocean around me fading into a deep dark blue that bled into a murky cloud.

I double-checked my tether, secure. It was a thick steel cable feeding through a pulley, a thing on rollers about the size of a brick which ran along the right out of the ladder. The tether was there, in case, for some reason, I lost my grip on the narrow, rusted rungs, because if that happened, well, anyone's in gravity? I shuddered at the thought of sinking down and down with nothing and no one to save me.

How's breathing, me till the rest. I smiled at the concern in a voice, looked up at the little black eye on the top right of the visor, a camera pointing down at me. They could see my face. I could, in theory, see them too, had they decided to be in fact. some footage onto my visor screen. But this was no time for screwing around and my visor was filled with numerical readings.

On the left side sat a small map detailing the ladder and my position, a red dot on it. I had barely made a dent. Just fine darling. The reason we weren't using a pod submersible, a single-man coughing connected to the above by a steel cable,

or was because I was on the lookout for any markings that might be edged under the ladder's metal skin, anything to denote its origin. So far, there had been nothing but barnacles, a crab-exic skeleton, and a thick patina of algae. When can our ladder slide? What can you throw a movie up on my screen? This is getting tedious. I was half joking, but not really.

It was boring as hell. One rung after the next. To make the descent faster, I was going to ladder slide, but I couldn't do that until I hit certain water pressure. Some geeky nonsense about how it would be easier to control the descent. The tether wouldn't be a problem there. The

pulley was built to eat through rocks and had been satisfactorily crunching through barnacles the whole way down. Once you hit a thousand meters, Bradley's voice, you guys pick that number out of a hat. The deeper you go, the greater the pressure bearing down in you is

makes it easier to control. Damn, how must I skip that day in school. I joked, partly. It was in the orientation, Bradley said, not trying to hide his irritation. I think he must have been jealous of my rapport with Matilda. I skip that too. Matilda chuckled. I smiled again, even though I hadn't been joking. Closing in on 750 metres, Leica, Matilda said, calling me that goddamn dog.

Better hope I've got a little more lock on my bones than rusky canines, I said, secretly hoping I was right. I'd hate for you guys to fish me up and just find my naked skeleton. You've got charm. That's got to be worth something, Matilda said, a smile and a voice. Is it worth dinner next week? Bradley groaned. God, you guys make me sick. I chuckled. Ah, don't get blue, kiddo. You can carry the rings at the wedding. Matilda laughed. Dinner first. Where? I know this great place called the base cafeteria. 8 o'clock Friday?

It's a date, I said, continuing down into the abyss. I had worked up a killer sweat by the time I'd reached the midnight zone, which sat just past a thousand meters. Murky blackness crushed in. It was suffocating, eerie. I clicked on my shoulder-mounted floodlights. Two powerful beams of light blasted forward and, Wham!

An ugly, deep-sea fish with a mouth of fangs that went whizzing by my head. I barked a pathetic yelp and joked back, nearly losing my grip on the ladder. What's wrong? You okay? Middle Dhrast, concerned. I'm fine. Satan's spawn just caught me off guard. Deep sea life?

The deepest. You ready to go for the slide? Bradley said. I hesitated. Suddenly not sure how I felt about plunging down at speed unknown into the deep, inky blackness beneath me. Wish me look, kids. Look, Bradley and Matilda said in chorus.

I sucked a deep breath, move my hands and feet off the rungs into the outer rails. And then, I slid. It wasn't as exciting as I thought, but it was considerably faster and less draining than climbing down. My eyes watched the ladder blur by, still on the lookout for any. markings. Once or twice I skidded to a stop, thinking I'd spotted something, only to discover it was nothing but deep-sea gunk caked to the metal. By the time I did see any markings, I was too far gone for anyone to care. I stopped, not sure what I was looking at. A strange simple edged directly into the middle of the rung in front of me. It looked like a weird cross

between Arabic and Chinese. Guys, you're seeing this? No reply. Finally, Mittles' voice. Jones, the footage is freaking out. You okay? I'm fine. Is this getting through?

Silence, no reply. Jones, you there? Mithilda, grown concerned. I said I'm cool. Bradley, distressed in his voice. Buddy, you're getting this? Just fine, can you hear me? I felt panic squeezing up my lungs.

Was the comm system screwing up? My screen began to flicker, glitching out. I was growing concerned. Jones, you're not coming through. I reached up to my visor and gave it a smack. The readings on the screen momentarily realigned before spazzing out beyond control. Now, my colleague's voices were warbled. Words were lost, full of static.

Jones, can't hear you, are you? Guys, I can't hear you, fearing my voice. A low hum build to my ears, and then, silence. No voices, nothing. My helmet basked in the glow of the flickering screen. I lost contact with the world above. I froze, not sure what to do. Split between the symbol and the rung and the disconnect.

for my safety net. Well, that's not completely true. Remember the tether connected me to the wrong ladder. There was a little button on the polybox beneath the Lusite case. Punch that button and the polybox would zip me back up to the surface.

Okay, screw it. I was going back up. None of this was worth a damn if I didn't have my crew watching my back. I fumbled out an underwater camera stashed in the pouch of my chest, snapped a photo to the symbol, and began the 10-foot clobes.

back up to the playbox. That's... When I saw the mermaid, it flitted out of view, the silhouette of a man-sized fish. I froze, not sure what I'd seen. It had only been there for an instant,

etched in the beam of my floodlight. Then it was gone. Had I really seen anything? My breath was shallow, cold in my helmet. I looked to my right. The water was black and murky. I looked to my left and at first I didn't realize what I was seeing.

A wall of bodies. Hundreds of mermaid surrounded me. Their eyes glowing pinpricks in the light, their needle-sharp teeth jagged and yellow. They were awful, deep-sea things, the tails yellow and scaly, the torso's pale and emaciated. Instead of arms,

they had straw thin appendages with hooked tips. When my light hit them, they broke apart, darting off in the same. the darkness in a cacophony of shrill chitters. Jesus, I whispered, my voice hoarse, my throat like sandpaper. I looked up until the pulley box, five rungs away, the button taunting me, the button that would save me.

Or maybe, I was already past the point of saving. I didn't wait. I climbed, fast, fast as I could go, one rung after the next. Four wrongs, three, two. A shrill chittering split through the water. I looked at my left as a mermaid shot toward me. He took to appendages clawing at my suit. I grunted and threw up a defensive arm.

A razor shredded through my flesh. Blood plunded out of my ruined arm. I cried out. My suit beeped, screaming warnings in my ear. The mermaid flew off and in came another. I threw the button box on the pulley open about to slam it down when... A freight train barreled through my midsection. The horrible twisted face of a mermaid filled my visor.

It had torn me off the ladder. I floated and tangled with this awful creature. Its gills undulated as it chittered in my face. A great, eustrating sound that cut a bolt of fear through my stomach like an icy dagger. I grunted and jam my fingers into its gills, hating the way its flesh cracked as I twisted. Now the mermaid was struggling out to my grip. I was winning. Then I wasn't.

Something pounded into the ladder, drawing the polybox, and something else hammered into my back. It was like being caught in a trash compactor. A dozen of these things crushing in on me. I screamed, flailed, fought for my life. Then suddenly, the mermaids disappeared, tales flickering as they flew off into the depths. I was alone, completely alone. floating to the water, 10, no, 15 feet from the ladder. My suit was mostly okay, except for my arm which plumes blood into the ocean.

I slapped the split fabric which framed my mangled flesh. The fabric self-mended, sealing off my suit. Each section of the Iron Man was isolated, so if one part got damaged, it wouldn't compromise the integrity of the whole outfit, so water wasn't flirting my helmet. Yet, it very well could be soon. There was a crack in my visor. I quickly reeled myself in, closing in on the ladder and the pulley box, which was my last and final hope.

Then I saw it. My heart sank, my stomach dropped. The pulley was nearly hanging off the ladder's rail. It was closed to breaking off. If that happened, I'd simply drift, fall, die in this oppressive darkness. I moved slowly, surely, reallying myself in on the cable which rattled the box with each pull.

I was lassoing the excess cable around my elbow as I went. My hands reached out, fingertips skimming the wrong ladder. That's when I saw the shark. At first, I thought it may have been a mountain that slid off land some long ago year, left afloat these murky depths eternally. But no,

It was a shark The biggest living thing I'd ever seen in my whole life He must have been twice the size of a Boeing 747 A great pale monster outlined in my floodlights Eyes as big as swimming pools Its mouth I couldn't bear to think what might be in its mouth

Oh my God It filled my horizon Moving closer I was paralysed by fear My heart jackhammering in my cage like a manic construction worker. My hands reached out for the ladder, grabbed it wrong.

I started to pour myself up when the pulley box broke free of the outer rail. I looked up and slipped. My hand slipped. My other hand shot out, grasped the ladder, and then a rush of water blew me away. The shark was passing, and I was sinking,

propelled downward by the force of the shark's movement, displacing impossible. tons of liquid as it swam. I flailed, grunted, screamed. The readings of my visor still flashing warnings. Then I was being sucked down into the depths. The shark continued on. I drifted down.

The ladder slowly, painfully pulling away from me until it faded from view. I tried calling to my people above, screaming into my helmet. At some point I stopped, realizing they were long gone. And to them, so was I. I sunk for years. It felt that way, at least, left to die, a prisoner of the ocean, stranded in a world of darkness. After a while, still sinking, I blacked out. I jolted awake at the bottom of the trench, in the ruins of a great city.

Pillars of rock, spies of stone, the husks of incredible mausoleums and coliseums, rose around me, greenish in their eon-old patina. The city filled the trench as far as I could see, which was oddly far, seeing as a strange, glowing orb filled my vision. It was an impossible sun, a green ball of light, pulsing and bubbling with heat, hovering off in the distance, bathing these alien depths in ethereal light. I stood up. A thin tangle of blood trailed up from the fabric from the gash of my forearm.

I knew it wasn't a mortal cut, but it was nasty and left me feeling woozy. I clenched it tight with a Velka wrap and looked around. There was nothing but dead buildings stretching endlessly. Ugly, deep-sea fish cut through vacant windows and doorways. I wondered the city for a while, looking for signs of life or any vestiges of the ladder that it brought me here. I found neither. I walked for a while. hours, days maybe.

I slept some. I awoke and walked more. Time must have worked differently down there. The atmosphere felt languid and disorienting. I'm not sure how long I spent wondering. I found sprawling pictographs on the inside of a domed building. They depicted an aquatic people that once ruled this underwater world. I saw 100-foot epages of multi-headed, dragon-like beasts

with a multitude of clawed legs and a variety of gills spread out across its form. Among them were other, smaller statues of the beast rolled into a ball. Sometime during my interminable sentence spent in that sunken kingdom, I realized the ball statues were depicting the beast's likeness as an infant, curled up in an egg. That gave new meaning to the glowing green orb on the horizon. Sometimes, after staring at the green sun for hours, I thought I could decipher the outline of the fetal beast wrapped in on itself, pulsing with life, waiting to be born.

Eventually, my mind slipped away from me. I heard voices, Matilda's, Bradley's, a barking dog I thought might have been like her. Sometimes I spoke to them. Other times I didn't, just grateful for the company. And then, after a long, long while, I died. I was brought back to life on a lobster boat. Two grizzled mariners, with accents like molasses, found me floating listlessly and pulled me abroad. They scraped off my suit and resuscitated me on the fish-gut-strewn deck of their little lobster tug. They thought

I was dead. My skin was cold, pale as a fish belly. Then I blinked to life. I took a rattling breath of fresh air, savouring the salty taste of my tongue. up at the real world and the two men around me. All I could do was cry when I was brought to a hospital, then airlifted to the one I'm in now. Matilda came to visit me immediately. She asked me what had happened, I told her.

I could see in her eyes that she didn't believe me. I wouldn't believe me. I was gaunt, my hair long, my beard scraggly. I looked like I'd survived a lifetime and a desert island. except for the fact that I was ghostly pale and not sunburned to a crackling brown. But it was good seeing her, until she looked me in the eyes, told me I'd been missing for eight months. Military man after military man came to visit me,

higher-ups and crisped uniforms weighed down by medals. I was interviewed until my head spun. My story never changed. I told them to check my handheld camera. I learned it was never recovered. Whether they didn't believe me or didn't want to wasn't entirely clear. I had my scar to back of my story, and my time spent missing. I told them to send another man down,

but they gave me some bureaucratic word vomit about how the risk assessment blah, blah, blah. Apparently, that suit I'd taken down wasn't cheap. Who would have thought? In the end, none of what I said seemed to matter. Perhaps they figured me for a deserter, who took their top-secret tech and defected to God knows where, Tramador maybe. All I know is that at some point or another, I was declared insane and ordered to a stint of convalescence, where I remain. I've tried to make sense of it all, but I can't.

I wonder about the ladder and whether it was built as an invitation to that underwater place or as an escape. Since I've gotten back There's been a hollow ache In the centre of my chest A low hum in the pit of my soul It's constant It's dread Dread of what I've seen

Dread and what might become of the world If that thing ever rises To reclaim its kingdom I've come to the end of my tale And I still don't feel any better Every time I close my eyes I see that green sun I see it pulse up

and flickering with life. And I know for certain. It's an egg.