The Dark Somnium - This Is What We Found Deep Below The Ocean | A Compilation of Scary Ocean Stories

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Hey everyone! I hope you have a good weekend! here is a compilation of scary ocean and water stories for you all! Let me know what one is your favorite and what other kinds of compilation videos you would like to see!00:00 We Found a Secret Base at the Bottom of The Ocean20:22 The Many Eyes of The Ocean34:53 Waterlogged01:55:56 Dark Circles in The Ocean02:06:02 The Deepest Part of The Ocean Is Not Empty03:02:28 What I Saw Beneath The Riptide Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It wasn't until I found myself standing on the deck of an unmanned military ship, sailing out into the middle of the ocean, before I finally started to question the mission I'd signed up for. The exceptionally large sum of money had been the initial hook, but the allure of a top-secret mission was not something I longed for. Still, I had to ask, why had they chosen me? And where were we actually going? A good sailor keeps his mouth shut.

I remembered my sergeant telling me, than a decade earlier. Things had been so simple then. I followed orders and never questioned whether or not our actions were inherently good. In my eyes, I was doing the right thing, but the line between good and evil quickly blurred as I had gotten deployed. I know they told you not to talk to the crew, but I gotta ask, what in God's name made you sign up for this mission?

A man asked as I stared out at the ocean. He was well built, clearly a soldier, based on his posture. though his outfit didn't match the rest of the crew. I fit the profile, was all I responded. Do you even know where we're heading? I shook my head. That's probably why they chose you. The name's Ulrich.

I'm the leader of this mission. I looked over at him. I wouldn't have taken him as the man in charge. He looked well more like an enforcer, a man with more power than brains. His age fit, though, and his cold, emotionless demeanor was enough to tell me he'd seen a thing or two. I'm Sean. I'm guessing you're going to tell me where exactly we're heading. Down there. He said, as he pointed to the cold, blue ocean. I chuckled. I've never served aboard a submarine. If you think I can age you in underwater warfare,

you've chosen the wrong man. He smirked in return. That ain't it, Sean. We're going deeper, all the way to the bottom. I had to admit that the man had piqued my curiosity more than the initial briefing. Why? What's down there? Atlantis, what else? He exclaimed as if announcing a long-awaited reveal, the mythological sunken city. That's a real place? I asked, still awaiting the punchline.

No, of course not. At least not in a historical sense. The Atlantis We're visiting is a base built shortly after the Second World War. In anticipation of nuclear war, a lot of rich bastards wanted a safe place to hide. They decided the bottom of the ocean would fit. It had to be kept a secret, of course, only a handful of government employees ever learned about the project, and they've since taken the secret to their grave. The look on my face must have been enough because I didn't have to ask another question

before he started talking. The base remained a secret until a few documents resurfaced a couple of years ago. Apparently, we lost contact with the base in the 80s, alongside all the science put into the base. Can you imagine the kinds of things they kept down there? No, I said. That's why we're going down there. We're going to get the station back up and running and retrieve as much information as possible.

Two other men joined us, both clearly military. They were Jacob and Benjamin, the combat engineers meant to accompany us on the mission. As the ship finally stopped, Ulrich led us to the starboard side, where a strange vessel had been prepared. It looked more like a lunar landing probe than a sub, one with an exceptionally thick hull. Ever been in the depths?" Jacob asked as we were escorted inside. I shook my head, as did Benjamin. The truth was that the four of us were all strangers, carrying only fragments of information.

Due to the risk of leaking top-secret information, I half worried we'd be executed upon completion. The vessel shook as they dropped us into the ocean, but as soon as we'd fell below the surface, an odd sense of peace washed over us. The descent itself was rapid, with light quickly giving way to infinite darkness as we sunk into the depths below. A few instances of small talk broke up, but we quickly fell silent again with each creek of the outer hull settling under the immense pressure of the ocean. I felt tense the entire ride, and it wasn't until I felt an abrupt stop before I realized

we'd reach the bottom. I guess this is it, I said. All right, Jacob, initiate docking procedures. The rest of you gear up. I don't want anyone leaving this vessel without their atmospheric suit. You take point, Sean. Ulrich ordered. I nodded in agreement, and Jacob made contact with the docking station without much hassle.

From there, we could connect to the station's monitoring systems. Looks like the pressure inside is fine. Life support is partially broken, though. Only a few sections still have oxygen. We might be able to get them back up and running, but I can't promise anything. Jacob said. Any sign of life? Ulrich asked.

I couldn't tell you based on this alone, but without oxygen, what could there possibly be? Jacob asked back. Still, stay alert. Let's get this over with. My ears painfully popped as the doors opened. I raised my rifle and took the first step inside Atlantis. The station was running on its emergency backup systems, supposedly fueled by underground volcanic activity, but it mentally had a little more than emergency lights to guide our way.

The rest of them followed closely. As we exited the airlock, we found ourselves in a neatly decorated hallway that was more reminiscent of a 50s hotel than a submarine base. While the metal walls still stood exposed, they'd clearly put a great deal of effort into making the place feel like home. On each side of the hall were several metal doors, each marked with simple numbers and letters. Between each door hung a picture of one of the inhabitants, most of them scientists, some military. I don't see anything, Benjamin said.

Neither do I. Ulrich agreed. The comm should be in Section 7H, alongside the control room somewhere in the center of the base. We should deal with life support first. It should be right around the corner in 3C. The decoration made the station seem more gloomy rather than making it feel like a home. I suppose times had changed since then, but I couldn't help but feel like we were walking through a graveyard. This is the one.

Benjamin said as we opened the door to the life support system. Unlike the neatly decorated hallways, that room was little more than a generator room with machines and metal walls. It produced oxygen directly from water through electrolysis, essentially an infinite source of breathable air. Each showing habitability and biological activity. No sign of life at all. I guess we're safe for now.

Benjamin said, I lowered my guard ever so slightly while still staying alert. But shouldn't be hard to fix this. Benjamin said. Almost looks like someone purposefully sabotaged it, but they didn't do a very good job. All right, we'll go ahead and repair the comms. Are you fine on your own? Ulrich asked. Benjamin nodded.

Then let's go. Leaving our engineers behind, we kept moving toward the control room. So if the station went dark, but no one ever left, where are the bodies? I asked. Who knows if they got out? Might have fled and stayed under the radar," Ulrich said. On the way, I took a peek inside a few of the already opened doors. There were bedrooms and offices all neatly decorated to look like home, with personal effects

and unmade beds. If the crew had left, they clearly didn't bother to take anything with them. By the time we reached the central hub, about twenty minutes had passed. The station was massive, large enough to house at least 500 people, all of whom had just vanished without a trace. Then we walked by a door marked differently than the others. Z-9, it read, a massive jump if the rooms were marked alphabetically. In addition, the room was labeled Laboratory.

Should we check it out? I asked. Later, we need to fix the comms and upload the data. O'Rick ordered. But as we tried to proceed through into the control room, we were met with a sealed door that had been fused shut. Someone really doesn't want to let us in there. Jacob said, as he put down his bag of tools,

But I can get through, just give me ten minutes. I suppose we could check out the lab in the meantime. There might be some valuable information in there. Ulrich said. The two of us entered the lab. It was impressively large, with rows of table and hundreds of vials and equipment neither of us could recognize. There were a few typewriters, and what looked like ancient computers,

probably only meant to decipher messages. The tables themselves were empty. except for one occupied by a lump hidden under a large plastic cover. Ulrich went to gather documents while I went to the occupied table. I had to take a few steps back in pure shock as I dragged the sheet away. What lay beneath it was a disfigured being I couldn't even begin to recognize. It was about the size of a human with pale, smooth skin. In place of its head, it only had a hole with numerous long teeth that resembled blades

more than chewing components. The only other appendages were four thick legs that ended in spiky bones and multiple holes all across its body that resembled gills. But what truly worried me was the multiple gunshot wounds that had suffered, all of which only penetrated an inch deep into its thick skin. The actual cause of death appeared to be a massive hole in its abdomen, but what had caused it, I don't know. What the hell is this?

I asked. Ulrich turned around, holding on to a bunch of papers. His face lit up with confusion as he saw the horrific creature, but he didn't seem all that surprised. Listen to this. He began. 19th of October, 1978. The runners have infiltrated sector A and B. We've managed to seal off the sections, but it's not going to hold for long.

Ballistic projectiles have little effect, seeming only to briefly slow them down. The railgun has proven to eliminate the runners with moderate effect, but with only one still operational, we can't hold them all off. We've retrieved one of their bodies. Preliminary findings show that they're airless creatures. They filter oxygen directly through their multiple gills and have thick skin and unbreakable bones that... He trailed off. It just goes on to describe their anatomy, but check this out. They only flee when the secular appears.

As far as we know, there's only one of them, but it has proven impervious to all weapons. Should it break through the lockdown, we need to evacuate the station. He finished reading and just stared at me. What the hell is the secutor? I don't know, but we... Before I could finish that sentence, the sounds of fans broke the otherwise silent atmosphere, and with that, our radios lit up. Hey, it's Benjamin.

I got the life support working. Don't take off your masks. It's going to take a few minutes. until the air is breathable. All right, meet us in the control room." Ulrich said. We covered the mangled creature back up and went to meet Jacob, who'd already managed to break through the containment.

The control room was a circular area with tons of radio equipment and workstations. The floor was littered with small pieces of what looked like old wood. I bent down to pick one of them up, only to realize they were shattered human bones. "'Egh, guys, I think I found what remains of the crew.' I said with a nervous voice. What the hell? Jacob chimed in. We'll be fine. The creatures have to be dead by now.

Attach the transmitter to the comms and let's upload all the data we can get. Jacob went to work with Ulrich as I guarded the room. I kept thinking back to the creature on the bed. Based on the log, it had already been there for decades. But if that was the case, why hadn't it decomposed? And were there others? What was the secular? I took a peek at some of the documents Ulrich had taken with, but the section stood out to me,

one on the very last page. 30th of October, 1978. They've broken down our Evac systems. The handful of survivors that still remain are trapped. We're trying to send out a distress signal, but the surface isn't responding. The only solution we found is to flood the station with carbon dioxide. It doesn't kill the creatures, but it seems to put them into an indefinite stasis. engineers are already on route to destroy the life support systems. The control room runs on a backup

system, so we should be fine until help arrives. Based on the bones on the floor, it seemed like rescue never came. I listened to the fans humming and thought back to the fresh but ancient corpse. Just as I started to put the puzzle pieces together, another call came through the radio. There's something in here with me. I can hear them in the walls. Benjamin called out. What are you talking about? Ulrich asked back. As soon as the oxygen rose, I started hearing knocks inside the locked rooms and walls.

I thought it was the pipes or something at first, but then they started growling. Wait, what the... Oh, God, I see... A brief scream was heard before the radio cut out, and Benjamin went dark. Sean, you're coming with me. We've got to help Benjamin. Ulrich ordered, but before we could even get going, we heard muffled growls coming from within the hall, and some coming from down the hall.

Whatever Benjamin had seen, it was coming toward us in mass. Then, a few holes in the wall blew open without damaging the outer hall, and the first of the horrific creatures emerged. We'll hold them off. Jacob, get those comms working now. Ulrich yelled. I'm on it. Ulrich and I took position in front of the broken-up door and raised our rifles. A dozen creatures came running down the hall,

with more emerging from the holes in the walls. Their gills pulsated as they inhaled the fresh oxygen that was being pumped into the station. Before we could even open fire, the hallway was full of monsters. Where the hell did they come from? Ulrich asked. They were sleeping. The air woke them up. We did this.

I said, we unleashed a hail of bullets, most of which hit the creatures, but some went too far, forming holes in the wall. Luckily, the outer hole was far too thick to be penetrated. Our weapons were significantly more powerful than those used by the former inhabitants of the station, able to maim the creatures enough to render them harmless. There's too many of the things! I yelled over the sound of gunfire. How much time do you need? Ulrich asked.

It's already uploading. Let's get the hell out of here. Jacob yelled, but escaping was easier said than done, and before long we'd been overrun by the creatures. Jacob joined in and emptied a magazine into the horde with little effect. One of them managed to get through and bounced off the wall to pound Ulrich. With a single bite, it ripped the flesh from Ulrich's arm. He let out an agonized yell as he fell to the ground. I walked straight up and put a bullet in what I assumed was its brain, which flung it to the ground. With that, every single creature froze in place.

For a brief moment, the entire station had fallen into deafening silence. Then we heard it. A sickening, guttural growl coming from the distant hallways. It sounded almost human, but far too low-pitched, emitting a mixture between agonized pain and anger. Once the echo stopped, each and every one of the pale creatures retreated into the various holes and rooms of the station. What the hell was that?

Jacob asked. The secutor might take it. Ulrich groaned as he tried to stop the bleeding with a makeshift tourniquet. But let's not stick around to confirm. We quickly moved back toward the airlock, planning to destroy the life support system before leaving for good. As we turned the corner, we found long streaks of blood that presumably belonged to Benjamin alongside a few bullet holes in the wall.

Where'd they all go? I asked. The station had fallen eerily silent in the wake of the creatures. We stopped for a moment just to get our bearings when the silence was broken by a sickly crack that vibrated through the air. Though the echo made it hard to locate, it seemed to come from the direction of the airlock. We raised our rifles and proceeded with care. As we turned another corner, we found dozens of the creatures, all dead and torn to shreds.

At the end of the hall stood a large, humanoid figure with its back turned to us. It was the secutor. It held one of the creatures in its unnaturally long arms, which ended in little more than bony knives. Jacob tried to point his rifle in its direction, but I signaled for him to stop. Based on the notes we'd read, bullets wouldn't do a thing. But despite our silence, the creature somehow seemed to sense our presence. It turned around, still holding on to the pale creature. Its face held little more than two massive, black eyes and a poorly formed opening for a mouth. Covering its entire body was clearly visible red veins. It let out a note.

crow as it ripped the runner to shreds before it dropped the pieces of flesh and started rushing in our direction. Jacob raised his rifle for the second time and started firing while Ulrich and I retreated deeper into the station. Jacob, for God's sake, run! But he was frozen in shock, only able to keep his finger firmly pressed on the trigger until the magazine had emptied. By then, the creature had already reached him. It dug its hands into his torso with little effort and raised him into the air. Jacob let out a brief whimper, but had died before he even realized what was happening.

Still, his death provided a little more than a minute distraction for the creature, giving us almost no time to flee. We weren't going to be able to outrun the secular, and we both knew. As we passed one of the open rooms, Ulrich grabbed onto me with his remaining functioning arm. Get out of here. Bomb the shit out of this place. He said before pushing me into the room. With that, he too opened fire, hardly hitting anything other than the wall.

But he wasn't aiming to hit the creature. He just wanted to draw its attention. Run! Was the last thing he said as he started retreating away from the airlock, luring the creature away from me. I'd been given a chance to escape, but it had come at the cost of Ulrich's life. I only allowed myself a second of hesitation before spurting to the airlock and our escape vessel.

I sealed the hatch and tried my best to get the submarine moving with my limited knowledge. I took one final peek through the minuscule window, wondering if Ulrich had already been killed. Then I left Atlantis alone. The trip back was filled with a silence, only interrupted by the settling hull of the vessel. The mission had been completed, but so many questions still lingered, and I feared answers would be scant. At the surface I gave my mission report and was paid handsomely as promised. Ulrich, Jacob, and Benjamin all died at the bottom of the ocean. All for a bit of intel that will remain classified until the end of time.

I recommended they drop a nuke down there, but a part of me fears that we were never sent down there to retrieve research, but to confirm the existence of these horrific creatures. What they have planned for the future, I don't know, but I fear by delving down to the bottom of the ocean we've awoken creatures that were never meant to be found. And if they are brought to the surface, that will be the end of life as we know it." The following is a transcription from the audio logs of Dr. Warren T. McCormick. Log number 63748. Testing.

Testing. Good. Date is August 8th, 1998. I am attending therapist Dr. Warren T. McCormick. With me is the patient Darren Forrest. The patient has been admitted for six days now, with no attempt at speaking or communication of any kind in that time. Patient was found by the Coast Guard in a fishing vessel, no others on board.

I will be attempting to diagnose any psychological trauma, as well as any account of what happened aboard the vessel. Darren, can you hear me? Yes. Would you be willing to tell me what happened aboard the ship? Tempest fate? What happened to her? I'm hoping you can tell me that, Darren.

We were found on board the fate a week ago. None of the other crew have been seen since you left poor a month ago. What happened to them? Jesus. They're gone. They're all gone. You couldn't find any of them? I'm afraid not.

Do you know where they may have gone? God help them wherever they went. It was a fate worse than hell. We were out there for about a week when it came up in the next. We figured it was just some accident, had fallen off a ship or something in transit. What is it, exactly, Darren? What do you mean? It wasn't still there?

Damn thing taunted me for what seemed like in eternity, just there on the deck, waiting for me. There was nothing there when you were recovered. There was a fucking coffin right in the middle of the main deck. God damn it, how could it have not been there? Can you please start from the beginning? I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to say. We were out for almost a week, I think.

Routine run, just like we had done a thousand times. It was Friday, maybe Thursday? I don't remember exactly. We pulled up the nets and dumped them onto the deck, the usual. This time though, there was something big in one of the nets. a big thump when it hit and crushed quite a few perfectly good fish. Hank, our first mate, he went over first to look at it. Turns out it was a damn coffin.

We did some looking at it and noticed it was sealed up pretty tight. Captain Kern figured it had fallen off a transport boat or something. Maybe someone that died out of the country or something. Hell, maybe it was an old one from back in the day that got lost. Who the hell knows? Well, upon looking at it, we noticed it was sealed up good and tight, big bunch of heavy chains wrapped around it and a big old lock holding it all together, rusted and covered in Seagrime, had a bunch of nonsense carved into the top and sides of the wood.

Wasn't any kind of language I'd ever seen. Did you open the coffin? God, no! Not then, at least. Me and Hank, we said we should throw it overboard. Kern and Tommy, though, they said we should keep it and bring it into port, see what they wanted to do with it there. So of course the captain overruled us all.

We tied the thing off on the deck and left it there all night. The dream started when we went to sleep later. It was surreal, like something out of an old pulp novel. I was on the deck and there was a storm moving in, as it got closer and the wind picked up, of rain started. It wasn't raining like normal, though. Fish fell from the sky, rotten, decaying fish, some of them missing chunks or head or entire bodies. Then the lightning flashed and there was something huge in the clouds that I could see.

What happened to you in this dream? I woke up. There was another flash of lightning and I sat up so fast I about took my head off on the upper bunk. It was still dark out, so I got up and went to grab a drink from the galley. Notice the door up to the deck was open, so I went to check it out. Captain and Tommy were up there with a pair of bolt cutters trying to open the damn box. I ran up there and asked him what the hell they thought they were doing. Captain just said there were valuables in it, said he just knew it was something good.

Like the coffin was calling out to him to open it or some shit like that. That was about the point the chain snapped from the bolt cutters and the door. Tommy started throwing them all off. He gets all the damn chains off and takes a crowbar to the lid when it still won't open. By then, Hank had heard all the commotion and joined us up top. We were both pretty uneasy, looking at everything going on. This thing was shut tight, so someone obviously didn't want it to be open for a reason. Turns out it was nailed shut.

Big iron nails had been run through the outer perimeter of the lid, keeping it shut tight. Well, I'm surprised any water was able to get in there. Tommy and Captain finally got it off there, between the two of them, each using a crowbar. Was there anything valuable inside? The patient lets out an audible shudder at this point and seems to tense up, drawing in sharp breaths. Nothing of value, no, just a body, looked as fresh as the day it died. was the person in the coffin was standing right beside me on the deck.

I'm afraid I don't follow. It was Hank. Hank was in the coffin, dead as a fucking doornail, but he was there. Poor guy, looked in and immediately spewed his dinner all over the deck. It was so real. There's no way it wasn't Hank, you know, even though he was standing right beside me. So that was it. We saw that, we put the lid back on the thing and tied it down.

The captain put some straps over the top to keep it closed since the nails weren't going back in. But the damage was done. Hank was in the coffin, and we didn't know what to make of what we had seen. I'm afraid that still doesn't explain the disappearance of your crewmates. Because I ain't got there yet. We all headed over to the galley and sat around the table for a bit, just passing a bottle of whiskey around and trying to rationalize what we had seen.

None of us had a better explanation than some shared psychosis. If that's what it had been, I wouldn't be here right now. The sun rose red that morning. You familiar with sailor superstition, Doc? I'm not, no. Red sunrise means death is on the horizon. Always a bad sign, no matter what. We should have turned tail and taken our asses.

back to port right then and there, but captain was determined to stick to schedule. We go that whole day with barely a damn fish coming up. The nets were practically empty and we were way behind our usual hall. As if all the commotion of the night before hadn't shaken us, though, this was setting us further back. So we decided to call it early, right around three or four in the afternoon, instead of sunset like we usually do. meets for an early dinner and then goes off to their separate quarters to sleep.

The damn dreams started again from you though. This time it was raining all these damn fish from the sky, and that big thing in the sky seemed even closer. I don't remember much of it, but there was something different in this one. I looked over the deck into the water. All these damn fish were falling from the sky, and out there in the surf were hundreds of bodies, maybe thousands. They were packed in tight, almost.

was blocking any view of the actual water. God, I still remember their faces. All of them, men, women, children, all facing upward with this look of pure horror on their faces. Mouths open in the loudest scream I couldn't hear over the storm. The thing that shook me though was their eyes. They didn't have any. None of them. Eyes were clawed out and all that was left were the bloody pits where they once were.

You could still see it, though. The wide look and the eyelids pinned open in fear. They died in terror, seeing whatever had taken their vision coming straight for them. I woke up because of the screaming. The wind was howling outside, and the rain was lashing the boat from every direction, but that scream pierced through all of it. I scrambled out of bed and up to the deck without missing a beat, managed to almost break my ankle going up the stairs while I was at it.

Hell, I wish I had, would have kept me from seeing what happened. Captain and Tommy each had one of Hank's arms, dragging him over to the coffin. There was blood all over the deck too, getting scattered by the rain and sea foam washing over it, but it was there, leaving a crimson hue over the whole boat. When they reached the coffin, Tommy held Hank while Captain undid the straps and pushed the lid off. The thing that was inside wasn't Hank anymore. It was like a mass of ocean grime. I could see shells embedded in parts of it, seaweed and urchins clinging in other parts.

The worst thing was that it was blinking. All over the body were eyes. All blinking at different times and darting in every direction. Hank was moaning in front of the coffin while the thing rose up out of it like some old vampire movie. Damn thing looked like it slithered out of their one fluid motion. it was standing right in front of Hank and reaching straight for him. Poor bastard, he tried to scream, but Tommy ran a knife straight across his throat before

he could make a sound. The thing from the coffin just put out its hands and just took him. One second he was there and the next he was almost absorbed into it. Then Captain and Tommy just stood there looking at it while it kept looking everywhere. And that was it? Fucking Ho! They cut out their own eyes next. Both of them pulled out some damn oyster knives they must have taken from the kitchen.

Oyster knives are dull as hell, meant for just prying the shells open. They took the knives and popped their own damn eyes out and gave them to the thing like a fucking offering. Then they just walked straight off the side of the boat into the ocean. I wasn't sticking around there any longer. I ran back to my damn bunk and locked myself in, had a gun in my foot locker that I pulled out and cradled. God knows if it would do me any good, but if push came to shove, I would rather a bullet than whatever that thing did to Hank. I remember seeing the sun come up through

the little porthole in my room. I waited until it was at least noon the next day before I tried to go check. The coffin was still there. The damn thing is still out there standing beside it, just looking in all directions still. I know it saw me. I could feel the eyes fall. on me as I went back down, as long as it didn't come after me. I stayed in the quarters from then on, only making the occasional run when the sun was at its peak to bring food back with me. I would peek out every once in a while and that thing would still just be standing out there, just staring.

Sometimes at night I would hear it whispering, like it was calling to me. Those were the nights I kept the muzzle of the gun pressed to my temple the entire time, I was telling myself to pull the trigger, but pussying out at the last second. It was speaking to me. I couldn't understand the language, but I knew it was sinister. A few times I would look out the porthole of my quarters. It was situated just below the water so I could see fish pass by and the sun filtered through the waves. Some nights Tommy and Captain would be out there looking in at me with their hollow eye

sockets, a big smile on their faces. They were waterlogged and decaying already, skin waxing and peeling from their bones. Captain tried to scratch the glass one night and I saw his fingernails break right off. I covered the window after that. Everything after that is a blur. I remember the Coast Guard coming into the boat and shouting for me. I thought it was just that damn thing playing a trick to get me out. I wasn't having it.

It wasn't until they busted in the door and wrestled the gun away from me that I finally let go. I don't think I had slept in days. Doc, you said they didn't find the coffin when they got me. That is correct? God knows what we did, setting that damn thing loose. I hope I don't have to see it. This ends the interview. My professional opinion is that the patient believes the story he is telling.

He is highly delusional, still speaking of continued dreams and a coming great flood that he saw in his dreams. I recommend intensive therapy as well as institutionalization until rehabilitated. This is the end of this tape. There's still boxes of these damn things to go through. I'll update when I find anything else good. You're 240 feet underwater, floating in darkness by the entrance to a deep cave. Before it stands a sign with large block letters and a simple warning. Stop. Prevent your death.

Go no further. Though Erie, you're an experienced individual with a license as an advanced open-water diver, with several trips within caves, you proceed, ready to map out thus far unexplored regions, only a trimixed tank and a mouthpiece keeping you from an unpleasant demise. Proceeding within, you are shocked by the overwhelming darkness. You turn on your flashlight, which gives you a good view of the clear waters, but it also creates a bizarre sense of being trapped within the narrow passages. A line has been attached by the entrance, serving as a passive guide into the network before you.

The plan is to extend deeper into the network of caves, but should you lose it, there is no calling for help, no turning back, no hope. You'll get trapped, panic, and inevitably drown. Despite this, you keep moving, deeper and deeper into the darkness. You eventually reach the end of the marked path, not even noticing the slight decline leading even further into the depths of the ocean. After 30 minutes in the cave, you check your residual pressure gauge, estimating the time you have left before surfacing becomes an absolute necessity.

Within your trimixed tank and a reserve, you have just over two hours underwater. One third was reserved for the journey downwards into the cave, which happened so far without incident, a generous margin of error. The second third is being spared for the upward trip, with a last third saved as a reserve. Then you glance at your dive computer, which lets you know that the depth has increased to almost 300 feet. Surprised, but not worried, you attach another point of the line, ensuring an easy trek back to the surface.

Below you lie a ground, void of all life, just fine dirt and sand dragged in by the current. While fishing up the line attachment, your tool slips, sinking down towards the sand. You react instinctively, pushing towards the bottom just a tad harder than intended. Though you're still in control, your sudden movement dislodges the dirt from the ground, causing a sudden silt out. Left blind, your heart starts to race and your respiration rate quickens. Adrenaline is the culprit, but you need to get it under control, lest the air in your tank run out prematurely.

Falling back on your training, you know you just need to find the line and pull yourself back to clear waters. You reach out your hand, knowing you left the line right above you, but there's nothing there to grab onto. The horrific realization does nothing but deepen your panic. You push upwards, frantically searching for your only rescue, but the network of caves is far more complex than you first anticipated. You end up swimming further and further away from the exit, away from the one guide you had. pass, ticking down with the pressure gauge, counting away the oxygen left in your tank.

By some miracle, you manage to escape the silk cloud. You can finally see, and just for a moment, you start to calm down. That is, until you realize that you haven't the faintest idea where you are. You peer down to notice you only have one third of your oxygen left, the last third you so desperately need for the ascent. Being nowhere near the exit, surviving has become a statistical impossibility. Though you're technically still alive, your death has been marked as a fixed point in history. It's only a matter of time before your air runs out, and you drown, cold and alone in the depths of the ocean. These are the harrowing experiences turning many a diver away from the dangers of the deep waters, and the few lucky enough to survive such an incident would

most certainly swear to never set foot in the ocean again. But, among those, a select few react with the exact opposite response, gaining a profound attraction to the concept of diving, needing to prove themselves against all odds. After surviving one of these cave incidents years prior, my soul was bound to the depths. In response, I took up rescue diving, swearing on my own grave to protect others from suffering the same horrific fate. Uh, hey mate, oceans that way, David pointed out as we headed in the direction of Darwell Woods. Yeah, well I'm just a pilot. Take it up with the team leader. The man shot back, barely audible over the sound of the helicopter rotor whirring above us.

Below were endless fields of green, with a dense forest just beginning to appear on the horizon. A spectacle to be witnessed from such a height. But in spite of its beauty, I longed for the dark depths below. David turned to the rest of us, lowering his voice in annoyance. Is he serious? Did he see us bored with diving gear? What does he think we're doing? There's water in the woods too, David. If the kid is drowned, it's up to us to retrieve the body.

If the kid has drowned, it's no longer an emergency. Andrew chimed in. Though callous, the man had a point. We'd been scooped up as an emergency response team, hearing the news of a young boy that had gone missing in the center of Darwell, presumably trapped underwater. Though details were scant, I too wondered why we were heading for the woods.

It was an area of, I knew intimately through many excursions over the years, which is why I knew the place had no large bodies of water, lakes, nor rivers. What do you think, Rick? Maya asked, pulling me out of my deep contemplation. I'm just trying to figure out where we're supposed to dive, and how deep the place could possibly be to warrant a dive team. There aren't any lakes in Darwell Woods.

Andrew explained confidently. Lived around these parts all my life. Never seen a damn lake. We're going somewhere else. He'd caught our attention because though we'd explicitly been recruited for a rescue dive in an area with no oceans nor lakes, Andrew didn't seem all that surprised. Oh, man of old age and great wisdom, please share with us your nuggets of information. Andrew, being his usual self, didn't even acknowledge Myers' quip. He just looked at each of us, as if asking a wordless question, uttered only in silence. We're not just recreational divers. Hell, we're not just recreational divers.

Hell, we're not even open water divers. We are cave divers. He then turned to me with a half smile on his face. Or what do you think, boss? Though the thought had crossed my mind, it wasn't an idea that sat easy with me. A hidden cave in the forest might have gotten waterlogged during one of the many recent storms, but the aspect of an unexpectedly drowned cave came with many unforeseen risks, such as strong currents, mudslides, and cavens.

And while I had no trepidation swimming around under water caves, one caused by flash floods sent shivers down my spine. We'd been flying for an hour before we reached Darwell Woods, gliding through the air at a low altitude, heading for a set of given coordinates in the dead center of the forest. I started to wonder how we could possibly land in such dense vegetation, but as we neared our destination, a large opening I'd never seen before revealed itself, one practically designed for aerial rescues. Small figures started to appear amid the trees, wearing bright, reflective vests. A couple of them came running out into the clearing, waving at us to put the helicopter down.

After a rough landing, we were met with half a dozen rescue workers. We stepped out with our tanks of various gas mixtures, wetsuits, and masks, met with almost relief by the crew greeting us. Who's in charge here? The crew turned to a scruff-looking, middle-aged man, who promptly introduced himself as Graham. He shook my hand and thanked us for coming, before gesturing for us to follow him towards the objective, situated half a mile within the forest. Luckily, the team helped us with the transportation of our heavy equipment, allowing us to gather strength for the mission. Once we started walking, Graham finally started to shed some light on the situation. We recalled two days ago after a 10-year-old kid went missing while camping in the woods with

his parents, leaving no trace behind. His parents had no choice but to seek help. But with no signal reaching this far into the wilderness, his dad decided to sprint the entire distance until finally coming upon a small town, where he borrowed a landline to call us. By then, of course, nightfall had arrived, making the search almost impossible. Having no luck recovering the kid's tracks, we figured he'd been snatched up by some predator or fallen off of the first. a cliff. It wasn't until the break of dawn that we realized how close to camp he actually had been. Once we'd reached the rescue site, we were met by two dozen rescue workers and evacuation equipment. A pile of dirt stood in the center, left behind, as they'd been digging down for

something I could only assume was a thus far undiscovered cave. Turns out, the ground around these parts is riddled with underwater rivers, creating a massive network of waterlogged caves. of which the kid accidentally stepped into, through a two-foot wide hole hidden beneath some shrubs, a hole just large enough for a skinny kid to slip into, but too small for a grown adult. Now we've been working on expanding the hole for our team to go down and extract the boy, but... That's all very unfortunate, but where do we come in? David asked impatiently. He came across rude, but I could tell he was just nervous about the aspect of diving into waterlogged caves,

created by strong currents. It wasn't a situation we stepped into lightly. Graham stopped dead in his tracks, annoyed by the interruption. If you'd let me finish. He almost demanded. David looked at me for confirmation. I just gave him a gentle nod. It was a polite gesture to make him shut up and command he diligently followed.

To better assess the area we were about to enter and to get proof of life, we sent down a camera attached to a rope. The hole extends 27 feet below ground in a narrow tunnel, before opening up into a massive chamber, which extended another 50 feet down into a large pool of water, which depths we're unsure of. And the boy? He survived the fall, and had even managed to swim to a small plateau along one of the cave walls. He's been sitting there for more than a day, waiting for a rescue. Graham went on, but didn't seem relieved by the statement.

And you're not happy about finding him alive? Well, we were ecstatic. But that deep down, we had no means of communicating with him effectively. And expanding the hole to be large enough for an adult to descend through would take hours. So, we pulled the camera back up and packed up a survival kit with water, food, heating blankets, and the like. We left him alone down there for another hour and a half while preparing it all. before sending it back down alongside the camera and a walkie. And?

I kept pushing, noticing a prominent feeling of unease in his voice. The boy was gone. Gone? Gone? Where? We don't know. The water levels hadn't risen. And there were no other visible ledges to hold on to. It was as if he'd entered the water again just to drown. All he'd left behind was the backpack he'd worn during the fall. Before Graham continued, he was approached by one of the rescue workers who announced that the expansion had been completed.

The hole now stretched four feet wide, more than enough for us to descend with diving equipment, but the hope of finding the boy alive was all but lost. Graham, when did you last see the boy? Four hours ago. That's when we requested the rescue divers. Pardon my bluntness, but what makes you think we can save him at this stage? He paused, scratching his head an uncertainty of what he was about to say next. The ground below is highly porous, as I said. And we suspect there are several other chambers connected by a network of caves. Our main theory is that the kid slipped into the water, got caught up by the current.

If he was lucky, he might have ended up in another air-filled chamber. I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe not, but until we have a body, we're going with the assumption that he's still alive. So the question is, are you up for the task? I turned to my team, standing stoically behind me. Apart from Andrew, neither of them wished for this particular job, but none were willing to back down from a challenge, dangerous as it might be.

Alas, with the limited information we had, it was my task to decide whether or not we'd risk our lives for a boy that almost certainly had perished in the waters below. As bleak as the situation might seem, as long as a sliver of hope remained, we had to try. We'll go down. A glimpse of relief appeared in Graham's eyes as he gestured toward the pile of dirt lying next to the hole into the abyss. Right this way. We promptly gathered around the four-foot wide hole in the ground, which extended down into an impossibly dark abyss.

For a moment, my thoughts wandered to the young boy, whose name I hadn't even bothered to ask. To me, he'd just been another body to recover. But, a part of me inexplicably clung to hope, I felt as if he still survived down in the caves, surviving the elements against all odds, in the dark, alone, cold, and afraid. Rick? You ready? I nodded, making sure my equipment was firmly secured to my person, before getting ready to attach myself to the harness. A metal tripod stood above the hole, with a winch ready to slowly lower us down into the cave

with our diving equipment and body cams. I'm going him first. Andrew announced, grappling his harness to the cable. While Andrew was the oldest and by far the most experienced member of the team, he wasn't the leader. It was a fact he was prone to forget, unwilling or ashamed to take orders from a younger man. We locked our eyes, silently battling over control,

but he stood firm, patiently waiting for me to comment on his insubordination. Just making sure the place is safe before you descend, boss. He'll take the lead from there. He half suggested, half ordered. Go ahead then. I said, knowing an argument, would do a little more than delay the already sensitive mission. Once Andrew had vanished into the darkness, I followed suit. The wench word to life, slowly lowering me into the hole.

On the way down, my equipment gently hit the edge of the rocky wall, causing me to squeeze my body tighter around the cable. I took a deep breath, preparing to be swallowed by the ground, the first bow of worry setting in my bones. Within a minute, I'd been completely engulfed by darkness. I activated my flashlight, inspecting the rocky surroundings that seemed to narrow in around me with each descending foot. Though not a claustrophobic person underwater, the bizarre echoes reverberating through

the air-filled caves sent shivers down my spine, every whir of the winch and every crumple of rock loudly shooting through the air. Then, as I finally passed the threshold into the chamber, the walls expanded in all directions. I exited the narrow tunnel to find myself suddenly hanging in an enormous void of complete darkness. Below, I heard a soft splashing sound from Andrew moving around in the water, 50 feet below. Andrew? I called down. How's it looking down there?

No response. The splashes had already fallen silent, which meant he descended underwater to inspect the area. All without waiting for the rest of his team. Annoyed, but not surprised, I spent my remaining descent scanning my surroundings. The space felt impossibly large, too large and wide for my beam to hit all edges of the cave. Even the plateau lining the water's surface lay shrouded in darkness, only visible due to the reflective surface of the boy's backpack. And as I got a tad further down, I noticed Andrew's nitrox tank and mouthpiece also resting on the plateau. Andrew?

I called out, realizing he'd gone under without his diving equipment. The distraction was enough that I couldn't prepare myself for the impact with the ice-cold water, which sent a shockwave through my body, even with the wetsuit protecting me. I quickly detached myself from the harness and swam towards the plateau, searching the depths below for Andrew's flashlight. Just as I started to worry, Andrew emerged from below the surface, jumping onto the plateau with ease, turning to me with his trademark smirk plastered across his face. What the hell were you doing?

I asked, as relieved, as annoyed by the man's antics. Sorry, boss. Just assessing the caves. He said in between breaths. You were supposed to wait. I explained firmly. Just trying to save us some time. He shot back.

Putting aside the disobedience, I refocused on the task ahead, trying to avoid another staring contest with a man too stubborn to be reasoned with. What did you find? Two tunnels. One on the east side, one on the northwestern edge. Both extend further down below. There's a mild current pulling between him, leading into the northwestern tunnel. Anything else? Yeah, some small animal carcass is scattered around, victims of the hole, I suppose. As Andrew described the situation, Maya and David had both descended into the waters, gently splashing into it. Damn, it's cold. Maya exclaimed, rushing over to the plateau.

We gathered around the solid surface. Andrew repeated what he'd discovered. We're going to head down the Northwestern Passage, follow the current to find the kid. Just follow our regular protocol, and we'll be back before dinner. So you're in charge now? I asked, immediately ashamed that I let him get to me. He glared back in return, enjoying the fact that he could get a rise out of me. Truth be told, there was a reason I'd been hired as the diving leader over Andrew, a reason from his past he didn't know I was privy to, one I struggled with all my might not to reveal

to him. Whoa, a dick measuring contest? David asked, trying to break the tension. Should I get a ruler or should we focus on the job? I'd get a ruler to be honest, but I left it on the chopper, so in the interest of saving time, maybe we should get going. Having David's joke as an excuse to break eye contact with Andrew, I returned my gaze to the water and sighed. Fine, what Andrew said, I'll take the lead. Never break line of sight. You got it?

Yes, sir. Maya said, none to follow her example. With that, we inserted our mouthpieces and dove under the surface. In the darkness, our flashlights were the sole method guiding our way. The water was perfectly clear, allowing our beams to hit the bottom on each side, only when shine during the light. directly into the tunnel did the reach of the beam prove insufficient. The animal carcasses Andrew had described were mere skeletons without even a hint of flesh left behind, but they didn't appear all that old, as if something had fed off the meat and left the bones behind.

Though a peculiar thought, I had no way of communicating it with the team, except a point and gesture, which wouldn't have served any purpose but to worry them further, so I ignored the sight. my team into the northwestern passage, with Andrew swimming by my side. Withstanding the current proved to be an easy enough task, and I turned around frequently to make sure the team didn't split up. Maya swam in the middle, with David at the back, carrying the end of a line still attached to the plateau. Should we end up getting lost, we only had to follow the cable back to safety. After a few minutes, following a gentle descent, the passage took a steep dive into

the abyss. From there, it split up into several small small. smaller tunnels, with the largest of them, all being the only way to head straight down. The current we decided to follow, of course, took the path downwards. I glanced at my depth gauge, which displayed a depth of 32 feet. It reassured me, knowing we still had almost 100 feet to work with before being forced to ascend. We paused with the rest of the team turning to me as they awaited orders. I nodded, turning to dive down further as the depth gauge counted up.

We moved with the current through the descending passage, ignoring any diverting tunnels, twisting and turning into a messy network of caves. We only stopped once every so often to attach the rescue line along the wall. At 70 feet down, I noticed something different hanging alongside the otherwise lifeless cave wall. A deep red vine clinging to the crumbly wall's surface, with small roots digging into the side, resembling blood vessels. A sort of plant I had never before seen. where no life was supposed to have developed.

I pointed to the thing, more curious than anything, but the rest of the team seemed uninterested, all eager to keep the descent going. Once we reached 80 feet, the pit finally turned horizontally, with a slight downward slope, several side passages extended on each side, some even returning back up into dead ends. More vines hung along the walls, each bigger than the last, stretching out from the tunnel we were following. Wondering how its surface felt, I decided to touch one of them. It was squishy, but rough, like hundreds of threads tied together, akin to exposed muscle.

It twitched in response, releasing its roots from the walls and retracting ever so slightly. I realized then that it wasn't a plant, but some sort of fleshy appendage appearing to feed off the wall. While distracted by the odd growth, Andrew had taken the lead. delved further into the tunnel with Maya and David in tow, the latter just giving me a quick glance to ensure I didn't fall too far behind. Having no voice to order a halt, I had no choice but to follow behind. By then, we had already been in the water for 40 minutes, carefully following the main current through the network of caves. One third of our allotted time had

passed, though finding our way back would be an easy task. With a safety line guiding our way, we weren't about to turn back anytime soon. On the chase, to take the lead from Andrew, I realized just how narrow the passage had gotten. Even if I sped up, I had no way of getting past the rest of the team without risking getting stuck. So I was left in the back, waiting for a path to open up once again. Distracted by the increasingly claustrophobic cave, I failed to keep a close eye on the depth gauge. With the slope going at an almost invisible decline, I didn't really think much of it. Not until I started to notice the first signs of nitrogen narcosis, an undying feeling

of anxiety not warranted at that stage during the mission. Unknown to us, we'd managed to reach a depth of 150 feet, a fact the rest of the team hadn't appeared to notice, despite our many experiences with exactly such situations. I reached out to touch David's foot, only to notice him getting pulled away by the increasing strength of the current. Then the passage came to a sudden end, leading into another pit in the ground, one which Andrew dove head first into, going deeper into the cave. I tried to break, hoping they'd notice, but the current pulled me in as well. It plopped us into a large underground chamber. Once more, I felt as if we were floating in a void of vast darkness with the bottom

of the room endlessly far below, out of reach of our lights. We were now 200 feet below. We were now 200 feet below the surface, with God knows how much space beneath us. On the roof above us, I noticed how thick the growths had gotten, turning from vines to massive stems, with dark veins running along them, leading deeper into the caves. They pulsated along the wall, sucking the little nutrients they could from the walls. I waved at the team, starting to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis take a hold of my body. Where the rest of the team might have felt a drunken sense of confidence, I was to feel. was suffering the opposite effect. I wanted to abort the mission and return to the surface,

but Andrew was fixated on the idea of reaching the cave's end. He gestured to a point far off on the other side of the chamber, where the current seemed to be leading us. There hung a faint light emerging from another opening in the cave's walls. Though within reach of the remaining air we had, it meant a further descent of about 50 feet. It was a risk I wasn't willing to take without suitable gas. While Andrew kept wordlessly insisting, Maya and David drifted to my side, both realizing the dangerous situation we were about to enter. If we kept diving, we risked getting disoriented enough to lose our orientation, ending with the four of us drowning in a cold tomb. Knowing he stood no chance of convincing us, Andrews started following us back up to the hole in

the chamber ceiling, where we'd secured the last line attachment. But before we could reach the hole, David, too, noticed the bizarre growths on the walls. He got closer to inspect them, reaching out his hand and gently touching them. In response, a dozen smaller roots detached from the wall, but instead of retracting away like I'd witnessed in the shallower parts, these roots reached for David, rapidly wrapping themselves around him. With Maya and Andrew already swimming through the exit in the ceiling, they didn't notice David's struggle.

Large amounts of dust and dirt emerged from the crumbly walls where the roots detached, causing an instant silt out. I tried flashing my lights at the rest of the team, but the emerging fog was too thick for my beam to penetrate, so I pulled the knife from my belt and started slashing at the vines wrapping around David. The growths were easy enough to cut through, but the sheer number of them made it a futile task,

and, with more emerging, pulling David further down into the depths, I knew I stood no chance of saving him. Still, in absolute desperation, David latched onto my hand, pulling me down with him, Again, I tried to cut the vines away from him, but in the chaos, I managed to drop my knife, letting it sink into the infinite abyss below.

Getting a final glance at the depth gauge as we got pulled down, I realized we were just shy of 300 feet below the surface. Nitrogen narcosis had become an absolute certainty. I felt my body grow weaker, terror setting in my soul alongside a sense of absolute hopelessness. I could tell David was experiencing the same effects because his grip slowly. loosened, finally letting go of me, before the creature snatched him away towards the light and the wall. There I hung in the void, no longer knowing which way was up or down.

I could feel my mind quickly fading away, darkness occupying my peripheral vision. I knew then that I was going to drown. But then I felt something wrap around my arm, reaching out through the cloud of silt, not a vine, but a hand, pulling me away. Too confused to understand, much less fight it. I let my mind slip into a deep state of sleep, no longer worried what would happen to me. Seconds, minutes, even hours could have passed before I finally regained consciousness. I was still underwater, being dragged through narrow tunnels, with the depth gauge showing

a slowly decreasing number on my wrist. I looked up to find Andrew pulling me by the arms, dragging me back to safety. Once we finally breached the surface, Maya and Andrew wrapped me in my harness and attached me to the cable. As I ascended up from the cave, I started to regain my senses. I wondered what I'd seen down there, if it had been a product of my feeble mind in the depths or if it had been real. But David had been taken. That wasn't a hallucination, and I failed to save him.

The rescue team in the forest immediately tended to me, but the nitrogen narcosis had caused no lasting damage. And as the rest of my team reached the surface, the initial despair and confusion had turned into something else entirely, an incessant feeling of anger. You killed him. I mumbled, still too weak to shout. Andrew approached me, bent down to my level, and spoke in a hushed tone. What was that?

It was your fault. You killed David. I let out an accusation directed at him for failing to check his depth gauge. I just saved your life. Andrew said as he helped me up on my two legs. A life that wouldn't have needed saving if you just let me take the lead. I was trying to find that damned kid. I paused, noticing a crowd of people gathering around us.

Though they hadn't yet heard the content of our argument, it was easy to notice the animosity between the two of us. I leaned in closer, lowering my voice to a mere whisper. You know this is why I'm in charge. Don't think for a second that I don't know about your past reckless behavior. This is what happens when you're the one in charge. Stop it, please. Maya said, coming between us.

What happened to him? Where's David? Ending our standoff, we both turned to Maya. Neither sure had to explain why David hadn't come back with us. He, I began, still not entirely sure what I'd experienced down in the depths. The growths, they, he was taken by them. What? Maya asked, confused. David got lost in the silt out.

I couldn't find him. He must have followed the light in the depths, thinking, It was one of our flashlights. That's not what happened. I shot back, almost yelling. These things down there, they wrapped around him and pulled him away. The rescue team stood idly by, staring at us in disbelief. None of them had realized just how deep the caves were.

Much less could they comprehend the horrors that existed within the network. Though I must have come across as crazy, I no longer cared. It was a hallucination caused by the nitrogen narcosis. Andrew responded, but his usual. confidence seemed just a tad faded. With him diving into the silt to save my life, he too must have seen the tendrils wriggling around. He just wasn't ready to admit it. Even so, I paused to consider the fact that David might just have drowned. I looked to Andrew, clear doubt filling my eyes, a fact that just strengthened my own resolve. It had to have been real. I made a mistake.

Andrew finally admitted. I didn't notice the decline within the cave. And because of that, David got swept away. He went on, directing his attention to the entire rescue operation in a ruse to regain some control of the situation. We're not giving up, because amidst the chaos, we found an air pocket just 50 feet deeper than we managed to get. If David truly did follow the light, he might still be alive. Hell, with the current leading directly past it, I'd bet on the kid being in there too. Whatever Andrew was playing at, it didn't put me at ease.

Down at these depths, there was no way either of them had survived. Even if the light did emerge from an air pocket, who's to say it held breathable air? It's not over yet, he said as a final note, before leaving the crowd behind to get more equipment. What are you doing? Getting Trimix gas. For what purpose? Anger arose within me. As if David's death hadn't been enough, Andrew.

still seemed to intend another futile dive into the horrors of the depths. But it wasn't until he confirmed it before a whole new world of fear came crashing over me. And as he spoke these words, I realized that our nightmare was far from over. What do you think, Rick? We're going to get David back. Do you actually think David's still alive? Maya asked, as I strapped on a fresh tank of Tri-Mix gas. Though slightly heavier, it would allow us to reach far greater.

depths within the cave without running the risk of nitrogen narcosis. Not a lot of time had passed since our quick ascent back to the surface, and though it hardly sufficed for a second dive, we didn't have time to waste. I'm sorry, Maya, but I don't think so. I saw him get taken. By what? There was something else down there in the water. I couldn't tell you what it was, and I'm not sure I even want the answer to that question.

Maya turned to Andrew for confirmation. He strapped some tape around his knee, which ached after the rapid ascent. He'd wounded it two years prior due to an air embolism caused by a rapid ascent. He was eavesdropping on our conversation. He noticed Maya's trepidation in returning to the depths, worried more that we might perish in the effort. It'll be fine. He said, with an odd sense of confidence. I wouldn't ask you to do this unless I truly believe David was alive.

Just let me go first. If something goes wrong down there, Just turn back and leave. Don't risk your life on my count. Though the words felt genuine, they weren't directed at me. There was still a prominent sense of resentment hanging in the air between the two of us, but having no choice but to work with me, Andrew attached himself to the cable without further quarrel

and initiated a second descent into the depths below. Once he was out of sight, Maya got ready to follow, purposefully placing herself between Andrew and I in a futile attempt at preventing further. the conflict. I pushed her aside, not ready to let her descend unless she knew the exact risks involved in the mission. You don't have to do this, Maya. I can do this alone with Andrew. She shook her head. David was my friend, too. If he's alive, I have to try. I understand, but this is going to be dangerous. I just need you to know that, I explained, noting her use of past tense in describing

our lost crewman. Of course I know. David wouldn't know. David wouldn't gotten lost if it wasn't dangerous. I'm aware of the risks. Rick, just let me go. I couldn't stop you even if I tried. I chuckled, trying to brighten the mood, but Andrew was going first on this one. I just need you to watch out around him. If he tries going too deep again, don't follow.

It's not worth the risk. She gave me a gentle nod before attaching herself to the cable. A second descent had started, and she kept eye contact with me up until the very moment she got enveloped in the darkness. I was the last in line, being spared the struggle of leadership following my nitrogen injury. Still, I followed the two of them down into the caves, not sure if any of us would ever return. Hit by the freezing temperature of the water once again, I let out a few gasps in shock as I prepared to submerge. I quickly inserted my mouthpiece, letting the trimix gas fill my lungs as I dove under.

Attached to my belt hung the end of the safety line we'd attached during our prior trip. Through it, we'd be able to send our video and audio feed in lieu of wireless connections. Though direct contact remained impossible, at least the surface crew should know what happened to us should we fail to resurface. We followed the Northwestern passage again, quickly descending with the aid of the safety line, not needing to think twice about the paths we could take. But even though we'd been down there only an hour or so prior, the atmosphere with the in the tunnels had noticeably changed. The same fleshy growths we encountered last time had

reached much shallower parts of the cave. Worried, I pointed them out to Maya and Andrew, signaling as best I could to not touch them under any circumstances. They both nodded in agreement, and we carefully proceeded downwards into the pit. The narrow corridors preceding the open chamber were completely entangled in the growths, narrowing the loomen even further, as if the walls were progressively closing in on each other. It made it almost impossible to traverse without disturbing the vines, causing us to graze them on many occasions. Luckily, the smaller ones just retracted into the wall without prompting an attack. It appeared that only the thick, well-developed growths maintained the ability to harm.

Even so, total avoidance remained our chosen strategy. Next, we delved into the open chamber. As before, the vast emptiness hung below us. A harrowing sight without a visible end. Transfixed, I felt shivers crawling down my spine, wondering what kind of nightmares existed in the depths. Checking my dive computer, I noted that we'd return to 200 feet below the surface. Had we still carried nitrox tanks, we'd have started to experience the advanced stages of nitrogen narcosis, but with Trimix, we still had quite a distance to go. For now, we remain safe.

At the front of our pack floated Andrew, unimpressed and unbothered by the abyss below. His mind was fixated only on the strange light emerging from the hole in the wall, but at least this time, he waited for the rest of us to follow him deeper into the caves. He would frequently turn around and wave for us to hurry up and join him, never straying out of sight. Though I appreciated the sentiment, I wasn't sure if it was a strategy of self-preservation or teamwork. But as I made my way towards the opening, something down in the depths caught my attention,

barely visible from the absolute deepest part of the chamber. There, several hundred feet below, I noticed several cold blue lights dangling in the water, almost dancing around each other in a captivating symphony. A loud rumble emerged from their origin like an ancient voice crying out into the void. I glanced at my team, wanting to wildly gesture and announce my discovery, but my body refused to cooperate, paralyzed by the distressing sight below. The more I stared, the more I felt my body succumbed to an unknown force. I tensed up, frozen from a sense of dread that only increased the further I descended.

While Maya and Andrew had headed straight for the cave, I fell behind, unable to drag my gaze away from the depths. I started to sink, so desperately trying to fight back. But instead of fearing my incoming demise, I felt oddly relaxed, almost welcoming death as a dear old friend. My depth gauge counted up, quickly reaching 300 feet, 310, 320. In mere minutes I'd be overcome with Narcosis, leaving my body forever in the depths. But before reaching the point of no return, both Maya and Andrew rushed over to pull me back to shallower parts. Breaking the line of sight with the lights, I finally snapped back to attention, trying

to convey what I'd just seen with body language alone, but it was no use. And once I glanced back down, the lights quickly faded away. I had been lured in by their glow and would have diligently sunk to my death, if not for the quick intervention from my team. Confused, I tried to refocus on the mission. I followed Andrew back towards the opening in the cave wall, ready to figure out if the place truly held an oxygen bubble that could have kept David and the young boy alive. Gone were the claustrophobic halls of the Northwestern Passage.

Instead, we followed the current into a large tunnel filled with beautiful warm light. It emerged from plant-like structures on the wall, stems extending with yellow bulbs at the end, each bulb covered in villi wriggling around the water, snatching up small particles. Like the vines on the wall, their touch resembled that of exposed muscle, clearly a part of the same ecosystem as the flesh vines. We hovered in place, all in awe of its beauty, though seemingly harmless, we were We tried our best to refrain from touching them, though an occasional graze still occurred without consequence.

For a moment, we just existed in their world, experiencing a delightful sense of peace, as if the dangers of the depths no longer posed a threat. But with our residual pressure gauge slowly ticking down, we decided to keep moving, floating through the brightly lit hallway. The malignant vine still existed among the lights, but appeared to be held back by the glowing bulbs, Only a few dared to stretch out into the tunnel's loom in looking for anything that might float by. In the distance, an odd reflection appeared on the cave ceiling. One we immediately recognized as the water's surface.

Against all odds, an air pocket had formed in the waterlogged caves, existing in almost impossible conditions, but whether the gases within were breathable was a question left unanswered. All we could do was pray as we proceeded with haste, clinging on to the slim, possibility of David still being alive. But something happened as we neared the surface, a change almost imperceivable at first, as if the lights were starting to dim. Maya was the first to take note, turning around to assess the situation. Sure enough, the bulbs that had basked us in warmth only moments before were starting to

retract into the wall, causing the cave to progressively darken, and as they pulled back, the vines started to emerge in mass. Within mere seconds, the cave opening had completely closed up by the sheer number of vines, blocking our only escape route. With each passing second, more of the bulbs folded in on themselves, allowing more vines to fill the lumen. Only then did we realize that the entire passage was about to close up. Either we breached the surface immediately, or we'd get entangled in the flesh-bound organism.

Panic rising within us, we quickly swam for the surface, which was still some distance away. All the while, the vines grew thicker and more. more numerous, moving toward us at impressive speeds. Andrew led first, glancing back at us to make sure we hadn't fallen behind, but in doing so, he hadn't noticed vines appearing directly in front of him. Too slow to react, he was grabbed by the appendage, which subsequently started wrapping itself around his shoulder. He pulled his knife out and swiftly slashed through the vine, to which the rest of them

responded by sending dozens, all of which wrapped around Andrew. I rushed over to him, pulling out my own knife, slashing at the flething. But there were just too many of them. And before long, I too was trapped in the entanglement, immediately immobilized by the vines' surprising strength. Maya remained as the sole-free diver, but the vines were quickly reaching for her too. One of them managed to get a hold of her head, ripping out her mouthpiece in the process, which vanished in the chaos.

Running out of air, Maya panicked as she desperately searched for it on the floor. But it was no use. Using the last of my mobility, I pointed to the surface, signaled. for her to leave us behind and save herself. She locked eyes with me, shaking her head and started pulling on the vines with her bare hands as they slowly tried to squeeze the life from us. It was futile. Sorrow filling her eyes, Maya was left with no choice but to rush for the surface, not knowing

if the air above could even sustain human life. The tendrils wrapped tighter around us, some starting to stab through the suit, digging into my flesh. I wanted to scream, but I fought to keep my mouthpiece in place, lest I dream. I drowned in the hellscape I'd voluntarily entered. But with the pressure building up around me, the pain growing in intensity, I felt myself fading away. The last thing I saw before finally losing consciousness was Maya escaping up into the air pocket,

the only one not ensnared. All that would follow was eternal darkness. It's an odd sensation to feel your life slipping away. I had expected flashes to appear before my eyes, filled with highlights and mistakes from a life gone by, but instead I was left with only a single thought occupying my fading mind. Had I chosen the right way to die, or should I have spit out my mouthpiece and let the cold water take over my body? As a diver, I was well acquainted with the concept of drowning, and as horrific as the idea

might be, it's a risk you take each and every time you dive beneath the ocean's surface. You're trapped underwater, knowing that the minuscule amount of air left in your lungs amounts to the very last breath you'll ever take. Even should you welcome your premature death, your body fights it with all its instincts, down to the very last second. It refuses to let you inhale, tensing up to prevent water from entering your lungs. You start to notice the oxygen in your blood diminishing, replacing by an unrelenting feeling of sheer panic as your muscles start to burn and your mind turns hazy.

Little by little, you fade into the darkness, left only with the knowledge that you're about to die. Then, as you finally fade into an unconscious haven, the true nightmare begins. Your body falls back in pure instinct, making one last attempt at gasping for air, except there is none to be found. You open your mouth, pulling in the icy water encasing your body, knowing fully well that it will only hurt you more. This is the point where your experience might differ, as one in ten people react violently

to the water entering their bodies. As soon as it hits your larynx, it closes up, refusing to let neither air nor water inside. Those are the people that suffocate, drowning without a single drop of water touching their lungs. The remaining nine and ten people suffer a different fate, allowing water to wash inside, causing an immense feeling of burning on every surface the water touches. A jolt of adrenaline is released, your body's way of begging for you to keep fighting the inevitable death, and only then are you finally allowed to slip away. sinking into unknown depths as your body ceases to function.

Burdened with this intimate knowledge of drowning, I had chosen to keep my mouthpiece, allowing my death to come from ensnarement. Had I made the right choice? Death should have already taken hold of me, but yet my spirit remained firmly locked within my body. I opened my eyes, not sure how much time had passed, wondering how I hadn't yet succumbed to my captor. The passage had long since fallen dark in lieu of the glowing bulbs, leaving only the beam from the flashlight to light up the wall before me, where a dozen vines floated in the water, content to have caught its prey.

A shadow appeared before the beam, one not recognizable by my tired eyes. It was only when it came right up to my face before I realized it was Maya. At first I thought I was dreaming, my dying mind hallucinating an impossible rescue, but there she hung, wearing a mouthpiece, cutting me from my entanglement. Several of the vines had already dug themselves into my body, and though Maya tried to pull them out, they refused to budge. She could only cut them away, leaving their stems still ingrained in my body. How she managed to extract me without waking up more of the appendages, I didn't know, but she had managed to free both me and Andrew, getting both of us up into the air pocket above.

It's safe. You can breathe here. She said as she pulled out her mouthpiece. We had been pulled up into an air-filled chamber, covered in a much denser set of the same fleshy growths. Maya stepped between them, making sure not to touch their hostile appendages. But without water surrounding them, they appeared more docile, making a few attempts at latching onto us. How did you— I began to ask, not needing to finish the question, before Maya gestured to an air-filled passage extending deeper into the air pocket. Before it lay pieces of diving equipment, identical to ours.

It was David's, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen. It was fused with the vines. I had to cut it all out. I just took his mouthpiece and came back for you. What about David? Maya shook her head. I don't know. But it doesn't matter anymore.

What do you mean? It took me over an hour to get you loose. Even if we find David, we won't have enough air to get back to the surface. We're trapped. I glanced at my residual pressure gauge, and sure enough, only a fourth of the gas remained. Andrew confirmed. None of us had the faintest chance of getting back to the surface. We were starting to realize that though we had survived the attack, we'd been tossed into a different kind of tomb altogether.

What about the crew? David clearly made it up here. He might have followed the path to another exit. Though hopeful, it wouldn't be a likely situation. Seeing as we hadn't died immediately from decompression, the air held the same atmospheric pressure as the water, which meant the air inside the cave had no connection to the air on the surface. The question was, where did the oxygen come from, and how long would it last? I don't know where it leads.

I was busy saving your sorry asses. An act I greatly appreciate, but... Andrew started, only to be cut off by a pained groan. What's wrong? Ah, the vines! He said, inspecting his wood. wounds. Huh, that's...

There were large holes covering his suit where the vines had penetrated, but despite the many wounds, there was a surprising lack of blood. Upon closer inspection, we realized that each hole still had pieces of the organism stuck inside, seeming to have fused with the surrounding skin. Checking my own body, I realized that I too had patches of flesh that didn't belong to me, fused to my skin. What the hell is this shit? I asked.

Andrew didn't respond, seemingly intrigued by the injuries we'd sustained. So that's how it is. He muttered to himself. What was that? I asked, but got no response. We're alive. Let's focus on that. I said.

Andrew just nodded, unbothered by the strange growths attached to his body. So, do we have a plan? Not really, but we also don't have any options. Except for following the cave. We glanced at David's abandoned diving equipment, wondering why he'd left it all behind. If the man had attempted to traverse the cave, the question remained how far it extended. Whatever the case, it was our best and only possibility, and though our chances of survival remained slim, we clung on to that hope for dear life.

I attached the safety line from my suit, letting my camera transmit the last bit of footage before going dark. Though not improving our chances, I felt slightly better. knowing that the surface crew knew what had happened to us. At least our story would exist to be told, and it might prevent others from meeting the same tragic fate as us. Well, here goes nothing. Who wants to go first?

With nothing more than our flashlight to guide our path, I took the first steps into the dark passage. Like the waterlogged tunnels below, the walls and floor were covered in the flesh-bound growths, ready to ensnare us by the smallest provocation. Though more docile above water, we refrained from coming into contact with them. Maya pushed her way past me, quickly assessing the many wounds that covered my body. You really thought I'd let you go first? You're a mess.

Both of you, in fact. I'm taking the lead on this one. I glanced back at Andrew, who seemed surprisingly content with the idea of someone else leading the charge. He just nodded in agreement, rubbing the foreign flesh fused to his body. A knot formed in my stomach as soon as we entered the passage, only to immediately realize that it sloped downwards, as we were forced further down into the abyss. With no way of knowing the exact gas content of our surroundings, we had no way of knowing how the increase in pressure would affect us.

Maya led the group with purpose, marching on without hesitation into the deeper sections of the passage. Though narrow, it was tall enough for the ceiling to be obscured in darkness. Andrew moved at a slower pace, purposefully falling behind to get a moment alone with me, so that he could ask about our shared experience in the entanglement. Does it hurt? I hadn't thought about it since we started walking, but as I focused on it, I realized that the immense aching I'd felt less than an hour prior had completely vanished.

Actually, it doesn't. I let out, surprised. But you feel something, don't you? Puzzled at first, I tried to. to focus on any changes in my body. Only then did I realize just how healthy I actually felt. Despite the many cuts, stabs, and bruises, I didn't feel wounded. Quite the opposite, I felt stronger than usual, amped up like my body was running on pure adrenaline, but without the accompanying jitter. I just stared back at Andrew, speechless, to which he responded with a subtle smirk.

Interesting, huh. Interesting isn't exactly the word I'd use. But Andrew, Andrews. Andrew didn't stop there. He seemed almost gleeful to be infected by the foreign tissue, as if he held answers that I wasn't privy to. It creeped me out, but I couldn't deny the physical comfort I felt with the creature existing within me, as much as the thought itself disgusted me. What do you remember from the entanglement? I don't.

I don't know. I passed out. I only woke up when Maya had freed me. I didn't. Andrew said, almost proud. I was awake for the whole thing. What did you see? I finally caved and asked.

He shot me a smile, one with genuine happiness, rid of all malice. Something beautiful. What was it? He'd gotten me genuinely curious, with a side of anxiety prevalent in my chest. The way he spoke just felt off. It lacked the fear that should have been present, considering the dangers we were in. If I told you that, Rick, you wouldn't believe it. But once you see it for yourself, you'll understand what I mean.

With that cryptic statement, Maya had noticed our hushed conversation and paused to interact. What are you two on about? Nothing. I automatically responded, worried she'd think we'd gone mad. A question I was starting to ask myself. We'll save your breaths for walking. We don't know how much oxygen this place has. Fair enough.

Andrew said, continuing to appear unbothered by the situation we found ourselves in. We must have walked in silence for half an hour before the cave finally opened up into another large chamber. Like the rest, the floor, walls, and ceiling were covered in small growths, interspersed with small, dimly lit plants. In the middle of the room lay another bizarre structure. A meat flower stretching up with flaps of flesh and a crown of tendrils. Something was occupying its middle, an object we'd only recognized once we got closer. It was David, lying lifeless in the middle. His body dissected and hardly recognizable.

Oh, God! Maya let out, rushing to his side. I joined quickly after, but Andrew remained in the back, staring at the remnants of what had once been his colleague, showing no form of distress. He's... He's dead. I let out, stating the obvious. His body had been torn to pieces, most of his face removed and his innards absorbed by the

fleshy structures. Several of the appendages appeared to have dug into his body as if trying to connect with him. In the process, he had bled out, at which point his body had been mostly digested and absorbed by the organism. There was nothing left to be done for him. What the hell is this place? Maya cried. Having sensed our presence, the tendril still attached to David's

body started to let go. At first we didn't notice, distracted by the loss of our friend, but sooner had they let go than they'd chosen new targets. With Maya being the closest to David's remains, she'd become the primary object of their desires. It was a fact I realized all too late, as the tendril struck at her, just barely missing as Andrew jumped in to pull her away. Watch it! He yelled as he pulled her to the floor with him, just nearly dodging the appendages. Maya, while still gasping for air and panic, remained unharmed. You all right? He asked as he lifted her back to her feet.

Yeah. She said in shock. Thank you. Andrew. Don't mention it. I remained by the strange growth in the middle of the room, staring at the wriggling flesh that had tried to murder Maya, yet had left me be. Andrew might have saved her, but had made no attempt at removing me from the situation, as if he knew only Maya would be at risk. To test the theory, and in a moment of profoundly stupid bravery, I took a step closer to the tendrils.

With that, they stopped wriggling, just turning to me as if inspecting my body. I moved closer, allowing them to get a better grasp of who and what I was. They seemed oddly interested in the parts fused to my body, carefully inching closer without striking out violently. Rhythm! Maya yelled, moving to physically remove me, only to be held back by Andrew. Let me go! No, he needs to do this.

Andrew explained confidently. But their argument didn't even faze me. I was too hypnotized by the tendrils before me. I felt drawn to them, connected by an unseen force, as if letting them touch me was my one true destiny. Maya kept yelling, punching Andrew to no avail. He'll be fine. Trust me.

Then it connected, attaching itself from the cut wound. still attached to my wounds from the entanglement. Within an instant, I felt my mind dissolved from my body, leaving it behind as I entered an entirely new experience of life itself. Gone were the physical boundaries of my human form, joining forces with the organism within the cave. I could feel every inch of the cave around me, see through my eyes on the wall, each harvested from those unfortunate enough to fall victim to the vines. Miles and miles of twists and turns, below the entirety of Darwell Woods, stretching far beyond. It was all there for me to see. So much death, so much life, a fragile equilibrium under the threat of an unknown, evil entity

so far away. In the span of just seconds, I saw thousands of images of thousands of places, all within the cave, entire ecosystems existing in a parasitic symbiosis. The death and life merged to one, and then I saw the depths, the same pit I had seen in the underwater chamber, extending endlessly far into an infinite abyss. Down there, even I had no sensation. Yet there was something else, unknown existing in the depths, the same blue lights I saw before, and they terrified me to my very core. My mind moved back to the air-filled caves, spiraling down, observing each inch in mere seconds, and amidst it all, I saw the child, hidden in the deepest pit of the cave, trapped in the fleshy growths. That's where my domain ended. A part of the

hybrid I stood no chance of accessing, controlled by a creature far stronger, more ancient than anything known to man. But despite it all, I knew exactly where to find it. As abruptly as the journey had begun, I felt my mind retract into my body. The tendrils detached, and I fell powerless on the floor, gasping for air. Welcome back. Andrew said, not surprised in the slightest. I saw him. I managed to get out between breaths.

What? Who? The boy. He's alive. Where is he? The center. He's at the center. I let out, still struggling to breathe.

Confused, Maya looked to Andrew for answers, but even he didn't seem certain. What's he talking about? I actually have no idea. Once I'd gotten my breath back, Andrew and Maya helped me to my feet. It took a while, but I slowly started to feel at home in my own body, as if the excursion through the flesh had been nothing but a dream, but only leaving hidden knowledge not meant from mankind. Is this what you meant?

I asked Andrew. Is this what you saw in the entanglement? He shook his head. What I saw was a mere glimpse compared to you. You've been chosen. for what? I asked, annoyed at the constant riddles. I have absolutely no idea. That is a journey for you alone to find out. I'm not here to find myself, Andrew. I'm here to save that kid. I saw him. I know where he is.

How is that even possible? I don't know. It's like these things showed me. I could feel everything while connected. It was weird. And you can lead us to the center? I can. What are we waiting for? Lead the way. Andrew went on, just a tad too enthusiastic. Nevertheless, we started moving, with a freshly printed map of the place ingrained into my own mind, I knew each twist and turn we had to follow to reach our destination. It was a trek that would take hours down to extreme depths that we might not be able to withstand, but we had to try. I took the lead, unnaturally energized by the connection I'd felt. Andrew was just a challenge. just as excited, walking by my side, while Maya grew weaker, the first to experience the signs

of increased pressure. Why and how Andrew and I could withstand it was only explained by the fused growths to our body. What did it feel like? Andrew asked once we'd gotten ahead of Maya. Strange. I said, not wishing to delve into the subject any further. Do you understand it now? What this place is?

I don't care what this place is. All I care about is getting that kid and getting the hell out of here. Andrew paused, staring at me with a semblance of shock in his eyes. Are you sure you want to do that, Rick? Do what? Leave. Because I don't think you do. I think you understand the importance of this place.

And having seen what you saw, there's no going back. You are one with this place, just like me. Though I couldn't understand what he meant, I did understand exactly how he felt. Since escaping the clutches of the entanglement, I had lost all sense of fear of the place we stood within. I felt at home, as if I finally existed in a place I belonged. But it was a feeling I couldn't accept, and when I had to push aside if I wanted to stand any chance of saving the child. Did you know that would happen to me when you let me connect with the tendrils?

Or did you just let me dive in to see what would happen? You already know the answer to that. Then why pull Maya away? Hell, why didn't you dive in yourself? Because Maya would have died and I wasn't chosen. But you already knew that. Why are you trying so hard to deny yourself this? Why are you so desperate to leave?

Andrew argued. Before I could answer that question, Maya interjected. I know I'm slow, but I'm not deaf or stupid. So I have to ask, have you fucking lost your mind? you want us to stay down here? Andrew turned to her, sighing carefully before answering the question. I'm not asking you to stay, Maya. And once we reach the center, you have my word.

I'll do everything in my power to get you back home. But I'm staying. And I think Rick will too once he comes to his senses. Is he serious? Maya asked me, gesturing to Andrew. I don't know what he is, but I'm not staying in this housecape. Now, stop with the chatter. I don't want to hear another word.

I ordered. Andrew lifted his hands in defeat, keeping his mouth shut. With peace finally present in the cave, we could proceed further into the depths. As we walked, I'd glanced down at my depth gauge, which rapidly counted up to well over 500 feet. At those depths, any gas resembling trimics would have caused severe narcosis, which meant the gas filling the cave must have been closer to Helenex. But with our voices, not taking on the comedically high pitch caused by helium inhalation, the composition remained unknown, able to keep us alive despite the pressure. But with Maya growing weaker, the trip was taking far longer than estimated.

The only bright side was that it gave us time to think and observe our morbid surroundings. I started noticing pieces of human and animal anatomy spread across the walls, eyes, ears, organs, vessels, all seemingly. extracted as spare parts for the cave wall. Is that a gas tank? Maya asked, as she noticed, a bit of metal sticking out from the wall, partially submerged beneath the flesh. Looks like it, but it's a model from several decades ago.

1974, to be exact. Andrew chimed in, pointing out some text written on its side. So I guess we're not the first ones down here. But hopefully the last, I said, hoping to end the discussion. Let's keep moving. At the increasing depth, the growths on the wall grew thicker, covering every inch of visible surface. It squished beneath our feet as we progressed, periodically trying to snatch onto Maya while

leaving Andrew and me alone. We'd been integrated into the symbiotic system, recognized as part of the cave, but Maya still hadn't been connected. A process she stood no chance to survive. Hold on a moment. Maya said, out of breath. The pressure was getting to her. A process she was desperately trying to fight without success.

She sat down on the least dense part of the cave, trying to catch her breath as the vines reached up to grab her. How far is it to the center? Andrew asked, showing genuine concern towards Maya's condition. This passage takes us straight to the center, only a 15-minute walk left. I explained, gesturing to one of the many tunnels in the wall. And that's where we'll find the kid. I nodded.

What exactly are you planning to do when you? you find him. What do you mean? You want to free him, right? How do you intend to achieve that, seeing as he's been merged with the flesh, reaching a stage far beyond whatever happened to us in the water?

We'll use Maya's knife to cut him loose, worked for us. Andrew's side, not convinced of my plan. I'm not sure I can let you do that, Rick. What the fuck are you want about? Do you really not see what this place is, after all this time? If you free the boy without a replacement,

Everything in these caves is going to die. I locked eyes with the man, wondering if the last bit of humanity he held on to had vanished from his soul. Let it die, then. I said as coldly as I could. Maya struggled to get back on her feet, discomfited by the conversation. I let her get behind me, getting ready to perceive into the cave before Andrew kept the argument going. I won't let you do it. I just can't. Well, fuck you, Andrew. Stay as long as you want, but we're saving the killer. and getting the hell out of here.

I turned my back to him in protest, proceeding deeper into the cave. I made sure to let Maya get some headway, but as I took my first step into the narrower passage, I felt a heavy hit to the back of my head, sent pummeling to the ground. I was dazed by a newly formed wound on my head. I turned around on the ground, met by Andrew standing above me with a knife in his hand. He'd hit me with its handle, attempting to stop me without actually murdering me. I thought you dropped that in the cave. I said, more surprised than afraid.

David didn't need his anymore. So, I got a spare. Reacting quickly, Maya launched at Andrew, punching him in the face. Though it connected, the punch barely moved him. He just remained in place while Maya threw another punch, one that did a little due to her weakened state. There's no need for that. He said calmly, but she struck again, this time getting blocked.

Andrew grabbed Maya by her neck, pushing her against the cave wall. covered in flesh. Upon making contact, dozens of vines started to wrap around her, causing her to sink into the wall, only until her head was visible. All the while, she struggled to get free to no avail. Relax, Maya. They won't hurt you. I made sure of that. I promised to get you out of here once we reached the center, and I'm a man in my word. I won't let anything down here hurt you. But I can't let Rick destroy this place. Leaving her entangled in the wall, he approached me. Now, we'll his knife with intent to kill. He held the knife close to my chest, bending down on one knee next to me.

If this place dies. He began, but it was a sentence I didn't let him finish. Instead, I kicked him in his weakened knee, instantly sending him groaning to the ground. Still dazed, I got to my feet jumping on top of him to stop him from rising, though much larger than I, he was in too much pain to fight back. Punching him in the nose, I managed to get him to drop the knife. For the next few seconds, we rolled around on the ground while I tried to get the upper hand, but once the shock from the pain had worn off, Andrew quickly regained control. He punched me in the face a couple of times before diving for the knife on the ground. I don't want to hurt you, Rick, but I will if I have to.

Andrew said, pointing the knife back at me. I charged at him again, grabbing onto his knife-wielding arm. I tried to tear it from his hand, but he wouldn't let go. Last shots! He groaned in the struggle, but I refused. He started pushing it towards me, slowly, but certainly, inching its way towards my guts. I felt the blade tear through the suit and cut into my skin. The adrenaline coursing through my veins wasn't enough to fight the shock of having a piece of metal stabbing through me.

I felt my grip on Andrew's arm weaken, and before long I fell limply to the ground, unable to fight on. He loomed over me as I pressed against my wound, feeling the warmth of my own blood poured down my abdomen as I slowly bled out. I didn't want this, but you left me no choice. Fuck you! I shot back using what little remained of my strength. My vision started to blur and the pain just kept worsening. I felt the ground beneath me start to move, tiny veins pulling their way up my body.

A sharp shock shot through me and I felt the appendages dig their way into my wound. I screamed in agony, but alongside the pain, I felt something odd began to take hold around me. I could feel the room, each and every tendril. I waited, almost hoping for Andrew to finish the job by slitting my throat, but he seemed frozen. Stop it! He let out. I tried to focus my vision, just barely seeing Andrew getting ensnared by the growths in the cave. They wrapped tightly around his legs, growing upwards at impressive speeds.

Along the way, they dug themselves into his flesh, causing him to scream. He fell to his knees, allowing further growths to dig themselves into his. his torso, tearing him apart from the inside. His cries turned to dark as blood filled his lungs, and within seconds, he had been reduced to a pile of mangled meat fusing with the cave walls. Rick! I heard Maya yell, the wall around her retracting as she was freed. Then the tendrils released from my wound, pulling quietly back into the ground, leaving

me with a gaping wound in my abdomen. I had been spared, even saved by the same monstrosity we'd been fighting. But it was a rescue that would be short-lived, as blood continued to pour onto the ground. Oh, my God! She let out as she realized how badly I was injured. I am fine. I lied. Help me up.

Trying to conceal the pain I was in, I let Maya pull me up. Before us lay an unrecognizable mess of human remains that had once been Andrew. I bent down, muttering a few profanities as I picked up the blood-covered knife. The cave. She began trying to comprehend what it just happened. Why would it save you? I don't know, but we have to keep moving. We don't have much time.

Come on, it's not far. Weak, but unwilling to surrender, we proceeded through the last set of tunnels toward the heart of the cave. The passage twisted and turned before finally ending in a massive chamber lit up by thousands of glowing plants. In the middle stood a large, flesh-bound monolith, pulsating akin to a beating heart. At its base hung the small body of a young boy, fused with the flesh. No sooner had we entered than I fell to my knees, weakened by the blood loss. I struggled to get back up, noticing the connection I had once felt to the cave start to fade. In the presence of a new, far stronger being, I was being discarded.

Is he alive? I nodded, though appearing dead, I had felt his life surging through the flesh. What remained was only the question of how to release. him. What now? We'll cut him free, I said. As I uttered those words, the ground beneath us abruptly woke to life, wrapping around us in an instant.

We tried to fight it, but in our collective weakened state, we didn't stand a chance. After all this, we'd reach the end only to be effortlessly neutralized. Do not touch the child. What the hell was that? Let us go! Maya argued as the ground started swallowing her knife. Let you go. With what can you bargain?

The child in the flesh spoke in unison with the walls, his tiny voice barely present. I stopped fighting, knowing any form of protest would be futile. But this one is different. It has been assimilated, yet it does not understand. The warden said, referring to me, while I couldn't understand what he meant, the more flesh wrapped around us, the more I could start to feel the cave skin. in within my mind again, its vast intelligence, its emotions, its memories. What is this place? I asked, sounding surprisingly calm.

This is the bastion of life. The warden explained, matter-of-factly. You call this life? All the people that had been killed, and for what? We saw the bodies! The feeble concept of morality won't serve your cause down here. Those dead were the sacrifices needed to keep the body. The depths quiet.

We required their flesh. We required their knowledge. The emotions within the being were foreign, most of them not following concepts known to mankind. And though the sensation overwhelmed me, one emotion stood above all, prominent in each corner of the cave. Fear. Why are you afraid?

We fear the lights. What lights? These plants? We fear the lights in the dead. steps looming beneath us, and soon they will rise. A flash of the waterlogged chamber emerged in my mind, filled with blue lights hanging hundreds of feet below. Even when connected to the flesh, I could not access that region of the cave, as if it was

a separate entity to the organism itself. But what they are and why the warden feared it remained an unanswered question. But with time running out and the life slowly draining from my body. My thoughts turned to the child and how we could free him. The warden needed a suitable body to keep the place alive, as Andrew had said, and each life taken in the name of the cave had been to find one strong enough to sustain the place without perishing. Those who were incompatible had only been absorbed as spare parts, victims of a dire necessity masked as evil.

Then I realized why the cave had saved me over Andrew, because my connection to the place stood unparalleled. I was chosen. With that realization, I felt the flesh loosen around me. I fell to the ground, free, as did Maya. She gasped for air, finally able to take a deep breath free of the constraints. Why did you let us go? She asked, surprised, but it was a question I already knew the answer to.

Rick? I stared at the child, knowing what choice I had to make. Someone had to take his place, and the person could only be me. If I gave myself to the cave, it would let the child go. Maya, I need you to get the kid out of here. But I don't... What's going on? I'm staying.

Are you insane? You can't! It's the only way the warden will let the child go. Someone has to take him back home. I don't even know how to get back out. Don't worry about that. This place will show you the way. Tears filled her eyes, both from fear and sorrow.

I can't just leave you. I gestured to my wound. I wouldn't make it back even if I wanted to. In the end, Andrew had gotten exactly what he wanted. I was staying. I reached out to hug Maya, whispering that it would be all right. She didn't respond. She just held on to me in doubt.

For a while, we stood in embrace, before the warden spoke up for the last time. This place can sustain your mind, but your body will perish. Be quick before that teal is lost. The flesh loosened around the boy, letting him fall limply to the ground. Where the tendrils had been fused, mere marks remained. He was unconscious, but definitely alive. Feeling my body surrender under its own weight, I stumbled over to the fleshy monolith, grabbing onto it as I gave Maya one last glance.

Then I connected, my body, slowly sinking into the organism, becoming one with it. With that, I gained full control. I could open a path back to the entrance. I could keep them both alive as they were transported to the surface. Maya lifted up the boy, looking me in the eye as my body started to disintegrate. In only a minute, the person I had once been would be fused with all those lost in the cave. But it was something I could gladly sacrifice, knowing they were getting back home.

Using the last of my voice, I just asked Maya to tell my story, to let the world know that parts of me still exist and to leave this place alone. After all, the evil committed was little more than an act of desperation to keep a far greater threat from emerging from the depths. But even though I am staying back to fight an unknown enemy, I have a feeling this nightmare is far from over. I will do my best, but a time will come where this place will fall, and once it will be a time will come where this place will fall, and once it does, the world as you know it will cease to exist. It started three months ago, the dark spots in the water. I'm residing at my seaside cottage, my own personal getaway that I purchased three years ago. The back deck looks out on the sound along the shore of the outer banks of Northern Carolina.

It's always been one of my favorite vacation locations, and when I published my third book last year, the royalties allowed me to buy this cottage. I don't have any neighbors. I specifically wanted it that way. I planned to write my fourth book here and wanted to ensure peace and quiet while I worked away at it. There's a little pier that stretches out into the sound from beneath my deck. The sound of the water, gently slapping against the wood, stimulates my creative mind like

nothing else can. I was sitting on the dock a couple of days ago when I noticed it for the first time, the dark spots in the water. They were circular in about four feet in circumference. I counted four of them, about twenty feet from where I had to be. 20 feet from where I stood at the end of the pier. The sun was setting, strips of blank cloud colored by scars of brilliant soft orange. The water caught the light and made it sparkle, a twinkling of stars on the gentle surface,

except for the circles of black. Those patches seemed to absorb the light, sucking it down into itself. I was curious, and I speculated that maybe the water was just deeper in those spots. I sent my glass of water at the end of the pier. ice clinking against the rim like muffled bells. I didn't know what to make of my discovery. Instead of dwelling on it any longer, I went inside, determined to finish another page of my book before I went to bed.

Outside, the water filled with two more dark spots. The next day, the sky filled with angry storm clouds, and I sat by the big bay window, clacking away at my keyboard as the rain crashed into the ocean before me. Most people don't like rainy days, but as a writer, I feel they are my most productive. The cozy atmosphere, the steady pitter-patter of rain, the rolling thunder. All these things spark my creativity, and the words just come pouring out like the water from the clouds above. I was watching the waves, circling the next scene in my book and thinking, when I spotted

the dark circles again. One of them was right at the end of the pier, another five spread around it. I idly tapped my finger against my desk watching them. They had moved since yesterday. I discarded my theory of depth change and instead wondered if it was a school of fish. It didn't explain the way they sucked in the light, but I wasn't an expert on the ocean and its many workings. I stood up, allowing myself a brief break from my work and went to the door.

I opened it, the overhang shielding me from the rain and breathed in the wet air. The air was fresh, smelling of new rain and ocean salt. I breathed it in and winced, the wind suddenly carrying a new odor. fowl and sharp, burning my nose with its repulsive aroma. I covered my face with a hand, trying not to gag. It was sharp, like vinegar almost, and I felt my eyes water. I slammed the door closed and retreated back inside. I went to my desk and took a seat, wiping the remains of the smell from my nose.

I looked out into the water. The dark patches of water had moved closer. That night I couldn't sleep. I had woken only an hour after going to bed and couldn't will my mind. mind back into sweet slumber. I went to my back deck and stood in the darkness, watching the water, letting the repetitive lapping of waves slow my mind. It was something I had done before when I couldn't sleep, my mind still buzzing with ideas

and worries. The wind whipped my hair across my face, a warm breeze filled with ocean scents. The moon spilled its white light onto the water and lit the tiny peaks of rolling waves. I listened to them smack against the pier before me and breathed in the atmosphere. When I heard humming, at first I thought it was just the wind, but as I trained my ears, I realized it was coming from the water. It was soft, but there was a definite melody to the low rise of deep vocals. It almost sounded like chanting. My eyes settled over the dark patches of water.

I didn't even notice them there in the night, but when I actually looked, I could see the light of the moon around the edge of their murky perimeter. But no light filled the center. Instead, it remained as black as the deepest corners of space. The humming was definitely coming from the ebony patches of still water. Something about the ominous sound chilled me to the bone. A slow, sad tune that carried in the wind with haunting purpose. It raised the hair on the back of my neck, and I leaned down over the railing to get a better look.

The circles were close to the wooden edge of my house, where the water met a wall just below my deck. The pier stretched out from that wall, resting on the surface of the sound like the surface of the sound like a red carpet. I took the steps down my porch and walked under the deck to the pier. My bare feet patted across the wood and the sound of humming became more pronounced. I looked to my right and saw a few of the circles slowly moving back and forth like they were being carried on the tide. What the hell?

I thought, staring out. That's when something stirred the surface of the water. It came with a sudden splash and a slice of white froth. In the center of each circle, something emerged for split second. It was so sudden and the darkness so deep that I couldn't see what it was, but it scared me half to death. It had all happened seamlessly and in sync. At the exact same moment they all had mirrored the exact same action. I didn't know what it meant.

I didn't know if I was dealing with animals or nature, but I knew I was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. I raced back to the deck, my ears filling with this strange, sad humming. As I was about to go back inside, I was slammed with the awful stench again. I wretched as the wind carried it down my throat and felt my eyes tear up. I grabbed the door and pulled it open, desperate to get away from the horrific smell. I stumbled inside and slammed the door. I stood against it, breathing heavily.

Then I heard something heavy thunk onto the pier outside. It came in a rush of water and wait, a loud exclamation in the night. Eyes widening, I turned and looked out the sliding glass door. In the moonlight I saw the source of the dark circles. It stemmed from a huge conch shell. The walls of its curling spiral so dark it made the night glow around it. Worming out of the opening was a long coil of pink flesh, shining with dripping water. It was thick and oozing, like an infected tongue, and at the end of its two-foot span

was the torso of a person. It grew out of the pulsing, shining muscle, and its face was bloated and waterlogged. Its eyes were black, and a smile riped up its face like a deep gash on its nose. noseless face, and it was humming. The notes carried in the night air filled me with crippling dread. It was a song of death, a prelude of carnage. It pulled itself along the pier towards my house on long, fingerless slabs of squirming flesh.

They smacked wetly along the wood as it dragged its huge shell behind it. The grating sounds screeching my ears. Even from behind the door I could smell the creature. It was the same awful reeking plague I had smelled earlier. As I watched in whore, another one pulled itself out of the water, humming and grinning, hoisting its giant shell out of the water like a hole of a ship. Water spilled over the pier in great waves as it followed the first one. The humming continued, gaining in volume, and I suddenly was overcome with the urge to just stand and listen. The notes churned my stomach, but I had an unexplainable urge to wait for the creatures to reach me.

Suddenly, the horror of the situation crashed down around me like a wave at high tide. I snapped out of my trance and slammed my hands over my ears. I couldn't let them get to me. I had to get away. If they reached me, I knew I wouldn't be alive come morning. I didn't know what these things were, what they wanted, but the terror rose like bile in my throat. I grabbed my car keys as another one of them pulled itself up the barrier beneath my house. I could hear it flopping onto the strip of sand beneath my deck, and I knew I didn't have long.

I practically kicked the front door open and raced to my car. I jammed the key into the lock and twisted, throwing the door open. I heard something crashed from inside and realized that the first one had just broken in. The thought of the monster pulling itself through my house sent a bolt of adrenaline coursing through me. I dove into the car and started it, slamming the gear into reverse. I turned on my headlights and my heart thundered in my chest. One of them was in the open doorway, its worm-like arms sliding along its frame.

It was grinning at me. A deep hum echoing towards me. For a split second, I almost pulled back into the driveway. But the fresh adrenaline was enough to force reason upon my confused mind. I gunned the engine and raced towards town. To this day, I have no idea what those things were. I told the police and the local wildlife rangers about my experience, but they don't believe me. To them, I'm just a new resident.

I'm used to the ways of the ocean. I put the house up for sale and haven't returned to it since. I don't dare. I tried talking to the local fishermen about the dark circles in the water, but they cut me off as soon as I mentioned them. They told me I shouldn't talk about such things, hushing me with a quick wave of their hand. They get a look in their eyes that scares me, but also tells me that I'm not insane. I don't know what I've witnessed, what those creatures were or what they wanted.

Just thinking about it terrifies me. I know one thing though. I'm never going near the ocean again. Something tells me I'd hear humming. Something tells me those creatures would return to catch the one that got away. The ocean has its silent caves, deep, deep, quiet, and alone. Though there be fury on the waves, beneath them there is none. Over the course of the last few weeks of training, I had memorized nearly every facet

of the Tuscany, every dial and every readout, every knob and screen and nuance of structure. and the quality of the personal submarine's craftsmanship never ceased to astound me. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, this little beast, designed with such care that even the equipment on the hull could withstand more water pressure than the sea could muster up at any achievable depth. It was my Pegasus, my Trojan horse, my very own Apollo 11, and inside this matrix of layered synthetic foam, I would follow the ballast to the gratuitous and unexplored depths of Higgins Ma.

I began the separation sequence, and the deep diver fell from the escort and dipped beneath the surface of the Pacific with silence and grace and a few knots of speed, and then I was consumed in a whole new world, albeit one I had frequented, that of the sea. Schools of fish swam by me, and when their cloud passed through a sun, and they were in a sun, It glinted silver, and beneath them swam rays that rolled their wings to the beat of the current, and out in the rocks crawled the crustaceans and sat the plant life that spruced up all the whitewashed stones there like holiday ornaments. But I had an appointment to keep, and the oxygen tank was a demanding clock, so I dove right

on past the old reef and out into the open waters where the seabed couldn't be seen for many, many miles yet. The Maugh, Ruben had said. Fifty thousand feet below the surface, Booker. Fifty thousand. Do you know what that means? Means it's a whole hell of a lot deeper than the Challenger Abyss. He nodded at that.

Are you ready to make history? Was I? I thought I was. I'd prepared for this lonely dive and nothing else for some years now. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work and study in the field, and so tight was its grip on my mind that I often dreamt of it in my sleep, of what I'd find at the bottom, and what it would mean, and what monstrous things might take offense to my presence there. No, no.

I shoved that thought aside. Tuscany was all the protection I needed in that regard. It offered technology on the bleeding edge in lieu of a heavy hull, and that was enough to withstand enough water pressure to crush bones beneath skin and inches of steel. What animal had jaws more powerful than the ocean itself at fathom? So I hit the thrusters, and down I went, like a bullet to the pitch. I eyed the depth meter as much as I did the sea. 100 feet, 200.

Sharks and turtles and uncountable fish swam past me. Three hundred feet, five hundred feet, seven hundred, a thousand, twelve fifty, the inverse height of the Empire State Building. 1500, 16. The water began to blur and grain up and darken as the sunlight struggled to push on through. 2,025, 3,032, where the light no longer shines. And soon all the light I had to glow the path ahead and down were the lights of the Tuscany. I continued the descent for hours.

The pressure meter ticked up in spasmatic bursts, but up it went. Up, up, up, up, soon ticking past the point where the weight of the sea would have crushed the steel of another vessel. One mile down, 1.3, 1.6, where even sperm whales hit their lowest dive. I could now claim with confidence that no mammal on earth was as deep down at that very moment as myself, and still I dove. Two miles, 2.1, 2.2.2.2. The water was as black as space now, except for where the lights of the Tuscany pierced through

it, and the thickness of the fluid made it look like ink or oil or some kind of alien sludge that smeared up against the reinforced windows and slimed its way across the hull. Things were tight down there, despite the vastness of it all. Yet I still dove. Thirteen thousand feet, the abyssal zone. Pressure stands at eleven thousand. PSI, I saw an angler float by, and it was startled by the sheer volume of light spread by the Tuscany that dwarfed its own bioluminescent glow.

It swam away, and I dove further. Fifteen thousand feet. Three miles. Three point one. Now things get interesting. Mankind had visited these depths almost infrequently enough to count the expeditions on a single pair of hands. I was now ranked among an illustrily.

few explorers, and although I wasn't the first to hit these marks, I'd hit the deepest one yet before this journey was over. I was determined, and I was capable, so I checked the depth chart, 16,281.4 feet, nearly halfway to the world record. The Tuscany continued to dive. Twenty thousand feet down, the Hoddle zone. Pressure here is eleven hundred times what it is at the first time. the surface, 22,000 feet, 26, 29,000, the height of Mount Everest, 30, 30.5, 31, the same distance from

the surface as a commercial airline at the peak of its flight. The Challenger Deep, what had previously been the lowest recorded place on the seabed, sat at roughly 36,000 feet below the surface, in the depths of the Mariana Trench. No light from the sun had ever come close, and to the best accounts life existed there, but only sparsely, and the pressure is unspeakable. But I was going somewhere vastly deeper, even than that. All we know is we found a canyon. Ruben had said, dwarfs the grand, sitting dead center in the Pacific seabed, about 12,000

kilometers west of Hawaii and another 900 south, and near as we can figure, some 50,000 feet straight on down. 36,000 feet. I was now tied for the world record. 50,000 feet? Why the hell are we just now seeing it? 36.5. I did it.

My heartbeat swept up to a faster rhythm. I was officially a world record holder. No human being in recorded history had been as deep below the surface as I was at that very moment. The new seabed scanning technology helped, gave us a more detailed topographical map. map of the hydrosphere than we'd ever had before. And once we got back the results, we took a look, and there it was, just waiting for us, inviting us down.

37. So what's down there? 373. Hell, Doctor, if we knew that we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 379. I suppose not. 38. 38.5.

The awful spirits of the deep hold the whole person. their communion there, and there are those for whom we weep, the young, the bright, the fair. Higgins Ma, according to the best information available to me at the time of departure, is a pit, roughly a full kilometer across. It begins at approximately 46,000 feet below the surface, and is estimated to bottom out at Higgins Deep, a small valley that sits at its base, some 5,000 additional feet below that. The ma is the largest and deepest such formation in the hydrosphere, and yet its dimensions and location are the only things concretely known about it.

That, of course, is where myself and where the Tuscany come in, 43,000 feet down. I hit the floodlights underneath the Tuscany, and the glow washed over an alien landscape that likely hadn't seen light in over a billion years. There were mountains here, mountains, ones that rivaled the Alps and wild arches and plateaus that stretched far off to a murky horizon before being shrouded by seawater. I even saw life down here in the depths. A squid-like thing of simply monstrous size swam on by my boat.

It stopped for a moment, and during that moment I thought it might have taken offense to me. But after looking hard at the Tuscany and brushing a tentacle down the port side, it swam off in search of other things. I descended further. 44,000 feet, 45. And then, all of a sudden, there it was, the maw. My mouth hung by the jaw as the sheer scope of the beast came into view. It was a breathtaking sight to behold. A monstrously large and equally dark hole in the crust of the earth that plummeted to

inconceivable fathoms. I descended a bit further, 45-5, 46,000 feet, and Tuscany fell into its yawn. Somehow things were even blacker in the depths of the thing, even though sunlight had long since been blotted out. 46-5, 47, 47-2. I began to become aware of a low current pulling me downward. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was unexpected, and it was therefore alarming, and yet I couldn't bear to pull myself back up.

Not yet. I'll turn around if it gets too bad. So down I went, deeper and deeper and deeper still into the cavern. 48,000 feet, 485, 49, 491, and then I saw it, a glow. I squinted and dimmed my lights to confirm the intuition. What in the name of God? It was there indeed, a dim reddish purple, then green, then purple again, and then blue, floating on a mist of current some few thousand feet down.

I resumed the dive to chase it. 495, 497, 499. The glow, whatever it was, was getting deeper and wider and prider. Soon it filled up the whole path down and ahead. I dimmed the Tuscanese underlights to their lowest setting, and by 50,000 feet I could see that the glow was coming from somewhere not directly beneath me, but off to the left and and around a wide corner. This cave isn't a straight pit.

And sure enough, the hole bottomed out there, and then opened up to its left. Holy God! It was a cavern chamber, at least a full kilometer up and deep, and side to side and across, and only the enormity of its radius maintained the darkness of it. Despite the presence of thousands of floating bioluminescent pods, the pulsed purple and green in blue and red and dimmed in the interim. I took the Tuscany in deeper, and her camera's word to life. Calmly, the wearied seaman rest beneath their own blue sea. The ocean's solitude are blessed, for there is purity. The cavern became darker still when the pods faded into the water

behind the ship, but there were more things to be seen here than rocks. Tuscany, about a quarter hour, after entering the chamber, soon floated on by a bizarrely rope-like plant of utterly impossible size, one that appeared to stretch nearly across the height of the cave and grew wider at the base, although the bottom of it was shrouded in blackness. I took the submarine in for a closer inspection and hit her lights to their fullest setting. My heartbeat slammed, there were suction cups on it, Each one as big as the Tuscany herself, and they writhed and pulsed across and down the length of what was now very clearly a tentacle. In a panic, I shoved Tuscany back and away from the thing, but when I tried to turn around,

the base of the hull collided with the beast and stuck fast to one of the cups. I gunned the thrusters and could hear a wet tearing sound as the machine ripped itself free from the cup's grasp. But then the tentacle came to life. It whipped and whirred and smacked around the cavern and pressed itself to the roof, and then it fell down, deep beyond where the darkness blanketed the floor. Come on, baby. I hit the thrusters again. The Tuscany rocketed off the way it came, through the darkness and off towards the pods, whose glow I hoped would afford me an opportunity to shut the lights off the ship and make my escape, if I were so lucky. But very soon I began to hear and feel the movement of something unspeakably titanic rolling across the floor of the chamber.

It rumbled and thundered and shuddered and shook, and soon clouds of dirt and rock flew up out of the black pitch and blanketed the view forward, and I could hear boulders smack against the ceiling of the cave before sinking again to where they'd been. The sound had erupted across the entire breadth of the cave at once, My eardrums nearly burst, and likely would have had it not been for muffling of the explosion provided by the walls of the Tuscany. The submarine shook too, but she held her integrity well enough for me to fly on past the floating pods, some of which were now knocked about on their sides and rolling, and back towards the yawning

mouth of the tunnel that would take me back out into the open deep sea. The Tuscany buckled and rolled with an impact. The tentacle, I realized, had shot up from the grower. ground and hit the bottom of the ship between her ballast, but luckily it knocked her with force upwards towards the tunnel. I rolled Tuscany with the hit and managed to regain some control, and I boosted the thrusters into the turn and up again, now back into the maw. Then I began to climb.

52,000 feet, 51, 51. So what's down there? Come on, baby, come on, don't you fail me now. Don't you fucking fail me now? Hell, Doctor, if we knew that we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 50.5.50. 49.9. 496.

Tuscany ascended with panic speed, and all the while she did it, I could feel the rumbling of the tentacles pursuit in the walls of the pit. It smashed its way on through the tunnel and whipped and thrashed, but Tuscany was too quick a runner. 47-5, 47, 468, 464. 6'4,46,000 feet in climbing high. I suppose not. Tuscany burst out of the maw and was about to rocket straight on back up to the surface,

but then the tentacle flew out beside her, nearly smashed in her front window. I bent the controls to the edge of their set casing, and Tuscany tanked to the left and up a bit and missed the ground by inches. I hit the lights again to navigate the labyrinth of rocks as I struggled to remount the climb. But in the light of the ship I saw it. These weren't rocks after all. They were other ships, massive vessels, Imperial warships from ages past, bent and crooked and broken at the bottom of the sea, pulled down here by whatever it was that now threw its back to my devouring. The tentacles smashed along behind me. Main mass and battlements and flat decks and rusted

iron and wooden boat holes were splintered up and tossed to the wood. winds of the sea, never again to reconvene. I took Tuscany through this nautical graveyard with far, far too much speed for my safety. Under the ship towers we went and threw cannon mounts and past the blades of dead engines and around upended rudders. The cacophony of my flight and the destructive path set by my hunter awoke the life in the place. Fish washed out of holes and Cabins and captain's quarters and deep deck stair flights and soon joined me in my effort to escape. But it seemed there was no escape to be found here.

The entire ground for countless miles shook and rumbled with seismic force. It was thunderously loud, and it picked up speed and violence with time. Tuscany finally flew up to miss a splintered crow's nest atop the mast by less than a foot, And finally, used that directed momentum to put away distance between the seabed and herself with as many knots of speed as her thrusters would allow without bursting from the effort. The depth charge began to rise. 459, 452, 45,000 feet, 448. Come on, you motherfuckf- The water itself seemed to shift with the sound, and then, out of nowhere,

Tuscany was no longer the only thing spilling light to the abyss. An orange glow flashed across the sea, and for an instant illuminated nearly the entirety of its vastness. Then it blinked, and then flicked on again and stayed active. I shut off Tuscany's lights to preserve every molecule of power for the ascent. Forty-four, forty-three-seven. Beside me in the glow, I could make out other creatures retreating too, ones of spectacular their size, again, that mankind had never catalogued and that I, sadly, would not have time

at all to study. There were city bus-sized manta ray-shaped things wrapped up in clouded wisps of transparent jelly, and even that squid, the size of a building all flying upwards in a mass panic, I led the charge. 43-1, 42-8, 42-3-42-42. I looked behind me and down through the rear window. The ma I had moved. God Almighty, I was in the Leviathan's throat. I was in its fucking throat.

I saw its tentacle tongue lash out of the maw and collect enough fish to feed a small town. Tuscany rocketed ever upwards as the Leviathan whipped even larger tentacles behind it and gained speed with the force of a hurricane. The Leviathan opened its maw yet again and spewed forth. forth its tentacle tongue, and with it whipped up several Olympic swimming pools worth of water into a Gale Force maelstrom. The mammoth squid was caught in its fury, I saw, and then it vanished into the pit forever when the moss snapped shut with a thunderous echoing snap. The Tuscany, meanwhile, continued to rocket upwards and managed to escape the world pool

by a foot. 39-5-39-387-382. 38,000 feet and climbing. But the Leviathan pursued me relentlessly, riding on the flood of its own current. Its tentacles, each dozens of feet across and a mile long, beat the water back and tried to gain speed for their host. 37-36-4. Tuscany had proved her worth with speed, and the pressure gauge now fell in jumps.

It remained in the red and would for some time. It was falling steadily, even as the depth charge rose. 29,000 feet, 283, 275. But the Leviathan hadn't given up the chase. Not yet. I could feel it doubting its efforts. The displaced water rocked the Tuscany, and she buckled and rolled in the synthetic current.

Then I heard the maw open up behind me, and water began to whip and swirl itself into a frenzy by the ocean load. I punched the thrusters to the breaking point. Come on! The encasing syntactic foam was pressed to its limits. The reinforced glass began to chip ever so very slightly, but the chips broke into cracks, and then those cracks began to crawl across the width of the windows. I checked the gauges.

Twenty thousand feet. Nineteen eight, nineteen four, nineteen three. The ascent was slowing. Come on, baby. Come on, come on, come on, please God. Be with me now. Be with... In the orange glow of the Leviathan's eyes, I could see how quickly the water was slipping

by Tuscany and getting swept up into the maelstrom. The submarine began to sway port to starboard and shudder and shake. 17-4-17, 17,000, 16-9, 16-3, 16-1, 16, I watched the gauge with a nauseating desperation. 1595, 1592. I could feel her slowing to a crawl. Come on, come on, come on. 15925, 1594, 1596. And that was it.

Tuscany was caught, and no sooner did the depth charge begin to slip than did I feel the whole submarine lose all sense of control and tumble backwards and around. I was thrown out of my seat and smacked my nose. nose against the roof of the pilot sphere. Blood exploded, and it drenched my shirt and sprayed the glass in the entirety of the control set. I grabbed my face and began to apply pressure to slow the blood loss, but Tuscany again flipped ballast over ballast to starboard in the whirlwind and spilled me into the hatch ladder.

I felt my shoulder dislocate and my kneecap smack into the bottom rung. My head swam, and still Tuscany tumbled backwards. The cracks on the window spread faster. 163, 164. I could smell the inside of the maw through the hull of the ship. But then, all at once and not a moment too soon, I got an idea. It wasn't a particularly good one, but hell if it wasn't better than nothing. I managed to limp and tumble my way to the controls and grip the handles as the ship rolled.

Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait. Now! The sound of the roar was so close. The sound of the roar was so close, every last control surface in the sphere rattle in its case. My eardrums rattled too, but then I flared up the thrusters again, full blast and at an angle. And the Tuscany shuddered and flipped and shook, and, with fortune, fell straight out of the maelstrom with inches to spare.

I felt the edge of the Leviathan's maw grazed the starboard side, and the impact again sent me into the roof while the ship rolled end over, end again. I smacked my ribs up on a dip in the alcove and fell back down into the seat, head first, and then out onto the floor. I managed to right myself with my good arm and get my bearings. I was free, but only just. The Tuscany banked and tumbled again and rolled, slower now in the absence of the whirlpool's flood current. But not yet in control of its pull. I tried to steer away, but it was hopeless.

The ship flipped around the back of the Leviathan's Titanic Ma. and up over its head as the beast flew on by underneath me like a freight train. And for the first time since catching the monster's eye, I began to fully appreciate the magnitude of its size. Its back was an endless, snake-like, and sharp fined spine the size of a minor mountain range. And only quick maneuvering moved Tuscany away from the jagged back fins that chugged up towards me and sliced up in the sea itself. They missed me by feet, and the blast of the current they'd swept up sent the submarine reeling

backwards, off a bit further and into relative safety. I quickly dimmed the lights to their lowest setting and caught my breath as the full form of the Leviathan washed on past me. It stretched far away into the abyss below for well over a mile, and dragging away behind it were thousands upon thousands of tentacles, a forest of the things, each the size of a six-lane highway and tipped with razor-sharp hooks and a flurry of wing fins. It took a full three minutes for the beast to pass by me fully, and then it curved around in the other direction and swam off in search of other things to devour.

The form soon slipped away into a shadow, and then it was gone. I surfaced hours later, having allowed the battered Tuscany to take its time with the journey. She was solely responsible for my escape, my quickest. thinking be damned. A marvel of engineering indeed. Once I did break the surface, I dispersed a distress beacon and then promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, I was picked up by the Coast Guard some hours later, a few hundred miles southwest of Hawaii, and pulled from the near wreckage of my submarine and taken to a hospital on the mainland. It was there that I woke up a full day later. As I recovered, I heard some isolated chatter of tremendous

seismic activity near where I'd been, and how the whole ocean floor had changed and moved and shifted form. But I couldn't care less. I told the bastards what I knew, and on top of that, they have the Tuscany and they have all the recorded evidence. And you now know this recorded account. What everyone does with this information is entirely up to them. All I know is that I won't be doing any more diving anytime soon.

I've come to the realization that mankind has more than enough space to expand throughout and live upon and thrive in, above and near the surface, and on land, and in the skies, and soon, hopefully, out there amongst the stars. But there are things in the sea that hold ownership of the deep, and perhaps it's best to leave it that way, for all our sake. The earth has guilt, the earth has care. Unquiet are its graves, but peaceful sleep is ever there beneath the dark blue waves. The USS District of Columbia deployed its cargo, a two-man Eisenhower-class Navy stealth

sub called Agingort, on which I served as navigator alongside Engineer Lovell, and once it was loose, it slipped away into the Pacific and began to part with its escort. The sea was in shambles here. There were dead fish and splintered boat holes floating in the current, but it was far from unexpected. It was recently estimated, in fact, that since that Leviathan awoke some months ago, it has critically disrupted over 400 trillion cubic tons of water and all the life therein, and was becoming a potential threat to shipping lanes as well as naval operations.

It has been classified for these reasons, and others has a severe now. national security threat. And so the Navy built the Agingort on Tuscany's blueprints, and selected Lovell and myself to man it, and then instructed the pair of us to hunt down the Leviathan and lure it up from the deep so District of Columbia can move in for a swift kill without exposing herself in the chase. For some hours after we entered the sea, there was little else but quiet there, and the hulking mass of the District of Columbia as it followed. But then, Then even that faded into the seawater, and when it did, Lovell and I found ourselves alone in the midst of the ocean.

He descended the hatch ladder from the operation center and joined me for a moment in the sphere. So, Lottner, you're the nav. How do you plan on finding this thing in the middle of the ocean? I said back. I'm already tracking it. You see that? I pointed up at a corridor of seawater that was moving north and that carried on for miles. been following it for some time.

Lovell pursed his lips. Didn't realize there was a draft that big out here. There wasn't, I said. Until earlier this morning, that Leviathan swam on down this way a few hours ago, and it left this as a little present for the two of us. Well then, we'll be sure to thank it. How much longer before we see the damn thing? Not long.

Look at those fish. I nodded towards a school of the things. You ever see anything like that? He shook his head. They look panicked. And they're swimming towards us for a reason. Closer we get, more we'll see. Just wait.

And we did. What started as an isolated school of fish soon became several. And then the nautical retreat boiled over in scale and number into a mammoth seething cloud of life all whirled up into a frenzy and pushing desperately south against the riptide like birds from a storm cloud or the onset of winter. The two of us said not a word until the crowd broke. The Agencourt again found itself floating in the open and quiet sea. And then I brought Agencourt to a full stop, and Lovell said,

Holy God. Ahead of us, and not more than two miles off, was a titanic mass of shadow, unmoving, and so breathtakingly huge that not even all of its edges could be fully seen. It was the Leviathan. Blue whales and dinosaurs themselves paled in comparison to this monstrous, mountainous thing. And as Lovell and I sat and stared at it, it made its first move, a turn away into the depths behind it, followed by a sharp dive. In doing so, of course, the silhouette of its full form came into view, and the sight of it stole

the breath right from our lungs. We couldn't have said a word at that moment. even if we'd known the words to say, we simply stared out at the thing and did our unworthy best to appreciate the magnitude of its vastness. It was as long as they'd said it was. An enormous slithering serpent thing whose tail broke into a thousand other tales that drifted and curled and dragged lazily behind it and fell deep away into the blackness. But seeing it in person was altogether a new experience.

saying another word to me, Lovell hopped back to the ladder and climbed up to the operations room. The Agingot to District of Columbia. I heard him say. This is Lieutenant Lovell. We've located the Leviathan. 33.934 by negative 153.457.0. We're giving chase, but it's moving fast and is moving down. Look to the riptide.

Advise the district follow our mark, but stand by to engage until we've brought it back up to you. I gunned the thrusters as he spoke, and followed the slipping shadow away and into the deep. Twelve knots of speed, twelve point two, twelve point four. Agingot crawled and then cruised, and then ran with all haste in pursuit of a monster. Lovell came down the hatch ladder a few minutes later. District is en route. Making speed? She's moving, but she's not coming out in the open till we've got this fucker where

she wants it. Any idea on that front? A moment passed before I said. You seen the footage from the Tuscany? Bits and pieces, yeah. Well, the pilot caught the Leviathan's attention, and it chased him straight up to the surface. But he made it, didn't he? Yeah, by the skin of his teeth from what I hear, gave up deep diving altogether.

What's your point? The point is, Agencourt's faster than the Tuscany. If we can get the thing to chase us, we can outrun it, and then get district on its flank. A couple of torpedoes to her side, and boom, we have ourselves a 300,000 ton museum piece. There was another pause, and then Lovell broke it with the worst question of all. And what if district can't put a dent in that thing? You saw how big it is? Well then, I suppose we'll need to find another ride home.

The Agingort filled up her ballast and followed the Leviathan down into the depths of the Pacific, past where the water stopped the sunbeams at the gate, and before the agoncourt And before long, all that could be seen was nothing at all. From that point forward, it was the boat's humble capacity for Sonor that kept us moving in the right direction, with an occasional nudge from the monster's own flood current. Lovell broke a long silence. What's the plan? At the moment, I'm just trying to get the damn thing's attention.

The closer we are to district when it notices us, the better. But as it stands, we're getting in too deep. way too deep. And we were. By the death chart, we just passed fifteen thousand feet, and we needed to get things turned around. Go ahead and strap yourself in. He did in the passenger chair behind me, and then I hit the front lights and gun the thrusters.

What the hell are you doing? Like I said, I'm getting its attention. But then I stopped, and I eased back on the thrusters. The lights of the Agencourt spilled their glow to the whole of the abyss, and they found it empty. Where the hell did it go? I dialed up the brightness of the lights and brought the boat to a full stop. I don't know.

We scanned the water for hints of movement or shadow, but there was no movement, and there was nothing but shadow and silence. I moved Agincourt from a rest to a light cruising speed, and her searchlight swept and swooped and cast themselves to the rocks. Nothing. Damn. Well, unless... I hit the lights off.

Now what? What is it? There's no way in hell something that big just disappeared. So where did it go? I blew the ballast and adjusted Agencourt's heading for the surface, and then I gunned the thrusters harder than ever. It didn't go anywhere. It knew we were here all along. It just dragged us down into the dark to shake our tail.

What? A thing that size is afraid of being hunted? It's not being hunted. We are. Agingort lifted herself up through the water with as much speed as she could muster up further running, but time was against us. Up ahead, we saw the shadow of the Titan moving fast to block off our escape. It was the difference in shade between deep twilight and midnight black.

We gotta move, I said. See if you can't raise the district. Lovell unbuckled his seatbelt and flew to the hatch ladder and climbed it in two rungs at a time. And not a moment later I heard the static of the radio as He lifted a hail. Help of Columbia, this is Agingort. Do you read me?

Over. Static, even audible in the pilot sphere. The sheer bulk of the Leviathan was blocking the signal. Keep trying to raise the escort. I'm going to get out from under this thing and clear the way. Hello. Hello, District of Columbia. This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agingort.

Can you read me? Over. The Agingort banked hard over to her starboard flank, and I allotted her all speed for the escape. knots flat, 17.3, 17.5, 177. I looked up, the Leviathan shadow bathed the whole of the seabed in its mass. Still, we ran. Hello! Hello! District of Columbia! This is the USS Ackin Court. Can you hear me? Over! More static. 19 knots, 192, 19.4. The Agingort was moving faster than most vessels already, And yet, the shadow above us had not struggled at all to keep us within perimeter.

So big was its source. 21 knots. District of Columbia, this is Agingort. Can you read me? Over. Respond. Still nothing. 219.

212. I looked up. The shadow was murky and ill-defined, but I could make out the monstrous alien forest of its mighty tentacles, which wrapped and curled and spread out on all the shadow. directions in the absence of movement. It looked like a black star seen through a bent lens of time. But it was slipping back behind us. Agingort was more than a match for speed. 23-5. Hello, District of Columbia. This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agencourt. Can you read?

Still, I heard static, but there were bursts of clearer sound too, just barely over the threshold of audibility. We were getting into the clear and quickly. 25 knots, 253, almost too quickly. Hello, District of Columbia, this is Agencourt. Do you read? Over. Can you hear me? I looked up and back over my shoulder.

258, 259, 26 knots. Fuck. The Leviathan wasn't pursuing us after all. It was moving back up. I fired up all of Agingort's lights and thrusters and blew her ballast. We began to climb. Lovell! What is it?

Any luck on the radio? None yet. Why? Leviathan's not moving after us. It's going up. Good. District will hit it when it gets close then. It's not gonna get close.

It's gonna come up right underneath the boat. Sub won't be able to use its armament at that range. There was a pause. 23 knots now. We lost speed when we moved up. 23-1. Oh my God, my God. Move!

Move, God damn it! Move! Get us up! There! Just keep trying to raise the ship." 25.4 knots, 257. The massive shadow of the Leviathan was moving up into the brighter waters, and I could see its tentacles falling into line as it gained speed.

Agencourt continued her climb, and gradually, as she did, the waters began to brighten. The pressure gauge began to fall, and the Leviathan, now swimming fast far above and to the left of us, came closer into view. Then did I understand fully. District of Columbia stood no chance, even in an unfair fight. This beast was unstoppable. Hello, hello, District of Columbia, this is Agingort. Can you read me? Over. Respond. Respond. Fifteen hundred feet to the escort's test depth.

Hello, Jim Cort. It's District of Columbia here. Reading. Over. We're moving. Listen to me, Lovell said. Listen to me. Ensign. We're telling you. We do not have the Leviathan in tow. I repeat, we do not have the Leviathan in tow. It got between us and is heading for the coordinates I listed earlier. If you're there, you need to fall back immediately. Do you copy? Leave now!

A thousand feet, 800, 750. Breaking up, the coordinates listed, tie 3.4 by negative 150. Point four, ending by package. Wait, wait. District of Columbia, do you copy? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the USS Agon Court. Are you there? Do you respond?

My heartbeat kicked up into my throat. I knew that sound. The roar of the Leviathan from the Tuscany tapes. Clearly the beast had exhausted its usefulness for stealth, and that could only mean a single thing. Damn it. Lovell joined me in the pilot's fear. Jesus, what the hell was that? We're too late.

That's what it was. We're too fucking late. And we were, although Agingort's current speed swept us in closer before I pulled it to a full stop. It was a stop with a view, though, a helpless and terrible view. We saw the mountainous back of the Leviathan, and its great maw covered with the shield wall of its writhing tentacles, absorbing a series of torpedo charges from the escort sub. It discharged a flurry of Mark 48s from the pods. torpedoes left on rockets and detonated in waves.

And for a fleeting moment, I thought it might be enough, if properly targeted, to turn back the Leviathan or wound the damn thing or something. But the beast took the hits and only crawled forward, and before long the sub only had its ballistic arsenal. Nothing appropriate for a fight like this. It began to throw its whole effort to a retreat, but in Ohio class is a hulking mammoth, Football fields in length and nearly 19,000 long tons of metal and rivets. It is fast, but not fast enough.

The District of Columbia was doomed. Try to raise the Dixon. I said, and my voice trembled when I did. District is dust. As I said it, the final torpedo in the Columbia's armament cache was launched. It sped through the water and trailed the skipping, sputtering wake and hit a tentacle and exploded tremendously, but fruitlessly upon it. And then after a moment of silence, the Leviathan unraveled itself, and its tentacles blocked

out the last of the sunbeams at dusk, and they swirled and curled and wrapped their vastness around the hulk of the district, and then the vessel was gone. God damn it. I pulled Agingort away from the feasting with all speed, 20 knots, 20.1, 20.4. Hello, USS Dixon, do you read? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agencourt. Respond. Over.

22 knots. Hello, Dixon. This is the USS Agingort. Over. Requesting a pickup. Do you read? Over. 23.

I felt a rumbling and a shaking and a mighty displacement in the water behind us. Agoncourt buckled and rolled. I looked behind me. 23.5. 236. The Leviathan had finished its. meal and was turning around, its tentacles alone forced a flood of riptide, and then, God Almighty, there it was.

The maw. It was big, hideously, monstrously, impossibly big, a yawning canyon and a mouth all the same. What the hell is this thing? 24.1 knots of speed. 246. The Leviathan opened its eyes, and Agingort was suddenly awash in an orange glow. Lovell! Hold on, Dixon. What? 26. Knots. Cancel pickup.

What? Why? 263. It sees us. Tell Dixon to get itself to safety. We'll try to shake this thing in rendezvous. 268. 27. Dixon, do you copy? Over. Loud and clear, Agingort. 27.5. The Leviathan's tentacles flew into form behind it as it gave chase. 277.

Listen to me. We are currently heading northwest with the... All speed, the USS District of Columbia has been destroyed. We- 27-9. I'm sorry, say again, over? The Columbia is gone. Affirmative. The Leviathan destroyed the USS District of Columbia.

We are now- I gunned Agencourt's thrusters for all they were worth. They groaned and protested, but they did their best, if only just, 30 knots, 30.2, 30.3. Even if the ocean itself seemed to be draining into the thing's mouth by the lake load. Come on, baby, come on, come on. Agingort, this is the Dixon actual. Confirm the destruction of the District of Columbia, over. 32 knots.

Yes, sir. The Leviathan took everything district had to throw at it, sir, and then it just ate the ship. 32-9. We've located your beacon, Agingort. The destroyer group is moving into rescue and engage. My heart stopped. 23 knots. Lovell!

I know, I know. Dixon, are you there? Captain Gillisley, do not. Do not engage, sir! Do not engage! I promise you, sir. There is nothing short of a fucking nuke that can stop this thing. Get that destroyer group to safety, and we will meet you there.

Negative, Agencourt. You brought this thing into the open. We'll handle it from here. Gillesley out. 34 knots in climbing. Dixon, respond. Over! Agoncourt flew admirably, but from the sound and from its own effort,

it rumbled and it shook, and it swam against the might of the current. 34-7.35. The Leviathan was gaining. Whether that meant it was moving swift or simply dragging the sea itself to its yawn was unclear and irrelevant. All I knew and all I cared about was that Agencourt was failing, despite a mighty effort to put distance between herself and her hunter. It was a race against time and all the odds, and it was a race we were losing. 36 knots. 36.1. Every dial and needle and needle and a little. and stick and lever rattled in their sets, and my eardrum shook, and upstairs I could hear levels screaming in range and pounding the side of the control desk with a wrench.

37 knots, 373. The closer the Leviathan got, the more speed we needed just to keep ourselves alive. It was like being caught by the pull of gravity on the edge of an event horizon. One wrong move, a simple mistake would doom us. I began to see the shadow of the Ma creep over the ship. Agingort was nearly at capacity now. 39 knots, and it wasn't enough. Agingort to Dixon!

Agoncourt to Dixon, do not engage. I repeat. Lovell paused when he heard the static. Once again, the mass of the Leviathan blocked our signal. There was nothing we could do to stop it. The water rushed into the maw and Agingort went with it, tumbling helplessly and desperately, and with its thrusters flaring with all their strength of arms and all their force. Lottner, he said.

Are we? The force of the explosion, from an anti-submarine ship-to-ship missile undoubtedly, expanded through the sea and seemed to set the whole ocean ablaze. The Dixon had arrived. Yet another explosion went off, and it shook our ship to the core, and the Leviathan rerouted its course for the surface with the demonic speed. Behind us by not more than a few hundred feet, we felt its mass as it moved. Undersea waves were unleashed that enveloped and consumed the Agencourt and sent her tumbling ballast to ballast and left her nearly belly up in the water before she rolled around again. The explosions were getting closer. Lovell, don't they know we're down here?

I don't know. They might have lost our beacon with the radio signal. What does that mean? It means they think we're fucking dead. Can you try to raise them again? I don't know. I'll... There was a mighty flash of light and then...

The force of the latest depth bomb washed through the sea and through Agencourt's battered hull and into her cabin. It sent me reeling despite my restraints. My ears rang and reported back nothing but that ringing, and the ship buckled and tumbled and groaned and shuddered and shook, and the lights flickered, and the alarms blared, and the panels flashed red. I unbuckled myself from the toppled chair and rose to my feet, shakily and stumbled over to the controls.

The explosions were no further off than before the last one, but my ears struggled now to report them properly. Everything was muffled, everything swam, my head, my vision. I fumbled at the controls and found half unresponsive and others blaring. I heard myself shout. Lovell, can you raise the diction? I kept fumbling over the controls, dials and readouts and panels were in their off-state. I tried boosting the thrusters, but heard only the clicking of the controls.

It's set. Glovel, you there? I could hear my own heart more so than the battle. Glovel? And gradually the shock began to fade, and when it did, it gave way to something worse. Fear. Lovell! I ran from the control set to the hatch ladder and looked up.

A droplet of water hit me in the eye. Then another, and another, I started to climb. As my hand hit the top rung, it slipped on fluid, but I grabbed it tighter and pulled myself into the operation center below the hatch. Lovell? There was no response. Of course there was no response. Lovell was sitting in an unnatural angle against the far wall, and his eyes were still and shut,

and a bit of blood pulled from his right ear and down onto his shoulder, where it was washed away by a steady trickle of seawater from the bent hatch that became a stream, that became several. The lights flickered again. I reached my friend and knelt down next to him in the water. Lovell, hey buddy, hey, can you hear me? I heard not but the slightest, quietest whimper, but it was drowned out by another sound quickly, the roar of the beast, and then one far more ominous even than that.

I heard rushing water from down below. When I looked over the edge, I saw the ocean inside the pilot sphere. It was rising up to meet me, but I could only see it from a sunbeam that struck through the hatch. I grabbed a wrench. Lovell, we're at the surface. I can see the sun. It's right there, buddy. That's home.

Just sit tight, okay? I climbed the two more rungs on the ladder and swung at the hatch with a wrench. It bent up ever so slightly. I swung again. An inch of progress. The water crested the threshold of the operations room. Lovell whimpered. Hang in there, buddy, okay?

I swung again. The light shut off for a final time. Agingort tumbled and groaned as she died. Come on, please Jesus, please God! The hatch began to bend a bit more, the sunlight brightened, and the water from below now had reached the midpoint of Lovell's upturned service boots. I felt a release. Got it! I had forced a hole in the hatch big enough to put a hand through, but then water dumped inside at twice the rate of the surge from below.

I turned my head and slid down the ladder and stumbled back as it began to pool up. What the? Then I looked up. up through the hole, and only once I did I realize the mistake. We weren't at the surface, we were merely close to it, not more than a hundred feet away, but many, many feet too far. Water flooded the operation room from both ends and washed me up against the wall next to Lovell. The ocean threw itself to our beating, and it pounded us in waves and torrents and buckets.

I couldn't breathe for seconds at a time, but I grabbed Lovell's hand, and he squeezed it with all the strength he could, just enough to bend his fingers around the side of my palm, and then we began to float up to the ceiling. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm really, really sorry. I tried. I heard no more explosions from the battle not far off, just the triumphant roar of the Leviathan and the rush of water and my own ragged, heavy shaking breaths. I pressed my lips to the ceiling and sucked in all the air that was there to breathe, and I could feel level slip beneath the surface, and the water tightened up around my chest, and then it was over my face.

Then a shadow fell over the hulking bones of the Agencourt's hull, and I felt a slamming impact, and a rush, and then, and then... They're inside! I opened my eyes up. They hurt. I didn't know where I was, I didn't know when it was. I knew nothing at all, in fact, but I heard footsteps and saw a shadow. And then I felt something grabbed my shoulders and hoist me up.

A bucket's worth of seawater fell from my shirt and hair and face. What? You're okay. You're okay. Lieutenant Lautner, was it? Hey, come here. It's okay. We're going to get you out of here, okay?

Ensign. Tell him we got a survivor. Yes, sir. I don't. I don't know. It's okay. Lovell. What's that?

Lovil. Is he, um, I don't, I don't remember. I can't. I started crying in pitiful, racking, heavy, messy sobs. Hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay. Can someone help me out here? And then I started to slip. Hey, I'm losing.

And then everything went black. I woke up in a hospital bed. For more than a day I was delirious, but once I came to, I was filled in as I, in turn, was able to recall my story for a report. From what I was told, the following had happened. The Dixon had been destroyed, lost with all hands, along with its escorts and of course the District of Columbia. All told, the Navy lost more than 700 good men in the operation.

Among them was a lieutenant named David Scott Lovell, in the deadliest day in the history of the Navy at peacetime. But I learned something else as well, based on the important mark alongside Agingort's wrecked hull. It is evident that after feasting on the Dixon, the Likson, the Lerner Leviathan hit Agingort and knocked her clear to the surface where another ship, the Arleigh Burke destroyer found her rolling in the surface with a broken hatch. The Navy will undoubtedly make an effort to cover up this story and explain away their losses

as a disastrous training failure, but I'll have no part of that, nor any further efforts to hunt down that Leviathan. No, this story needs to be told. For those men lost, and for Lovell, surely, and for you. Like the pilot of the Tuscany before me, I've accepted the fact that the thing down there should not be disturbed, and neither should it's home. For the love of God himself, do not venture far into the deep, deep pit of the wild Pacific.

For all our sakes, I reclined in my chair, enjoying the hot sun on my face. The waves before me crashed with rhythmic purpose, and I felt myself growing sleepy. Siegles cawed overhead, the air smelled of salt and sun-tan motion. Things were good. I sat up, rubbing my eyes in the afternoon heat, and dug my toes into the sand. I watched as a father helped his little boy build a sandcastle, and I smiled. What a good dad. I took my sunglasses off my head and slid them onto my face, standing.

and stretching. I loved the beach. It was impossible to be worried about anything here. I had come here for the weekend, my little ocean front cottage standing timidly behind me. I had purchased it a year ago, my recent business ventures allowing me some of life's finer luxuries. If only I had someone to share it with. Perhaps later in the evening I'd chance a trip to the local bars and see if I could round

up some company. I minded the isolation. After all, it was hard to feel lonely when surrounded by such beauty. I rubbed the back of my neck. My fingers came away, coated in sweat. I tossed my sunglasses onto the beach chair and slowly walked towards the water's edge. Frothing residue lapped at my feet, followed by the dying reach of a small wave. I laughed. It felt amazing. Smiling, I charged the rolling mass of sparkling ocean. As the water splashed around my waist, I took a deep breath and dove under. I came up gasping, wiping my eyes, skin glistening in the sunlight.

I waved to a group of girls who were body surfing to my left and dove under again. The green water peaked and sloshed around me as I swam further out, enjoying the exercise. I felt the sleepiness drain from my body as my muscles heated. I flipped over onto my back and continued to stroke out to sea. closing my eyes against the brilliance of the burning sun. Eventually, I slowed my backstroke and floated on the surface, letting the tide rock me in its arms. My ears filled and emptied with water, and I listened to both worlds, the one above and the one below. The ocean had always filled me with a sense of wonderment.

We were one, but separate, two sides of the same coin. After some time, I lifted my head from the water and shook clinging diamonds out of my hair. I blinked against the salt stinging my eyes and realized that I was a lot further out than I thought. The shore was a deceptive stretch of cool brown sand that remained an uncomfortable distance away. I realized I couldn't touch the bottom. I dove under, trying to gauge how deep the water was, and when I surfaced, I felt my heart began to race. I was entirely too far out. I forced myself to remain calm and started to swim towards shore.

There weren't many people in the water and I didn't think anyone could even see me out here. I focused on my strokes, keeping my head down and my arms moving. I could feel my muscles begin to burn and I chanced to look towards shore. It appeared as if it hadn't moved at all. Swallowing hard, I dove under water and began to pull myself through the swirling green. I kicked my legs out and jetted myself towards land as effectively as I could muster. When my lungs began to ache, I reached for the surface and came up spurting. Again, it appeared as if I hadn't swam at all, and that's when I felt the pull around

my legs. I was in a riptide, a nasty one. My body felt drained and the beach looked impossibly far away still. A nest of worms wriggled in my stomach and my breathing became frantic. I tried to fight off the panic, but it was like trying to. to stop an avalanche. I frantically tried to recall what I was supposed to do in a situation like this. I didn't want to scream for help for fear of tiring myself out to the point of exhaustion.

Weren't you supposed to swim parallel to the shore or something? Taking a deep breath, I dove to my left. With each stroke, I felt my body get heavier. Soon my arms felt like slabs of stone and my legs like cement anchors, and then I went under. worked against me, filling my limbs with fire. I tried to pull myself to the surface, but only managed a mouthful of salty ocean. I gagged and spun underwater, my lungs pounding against my chest, my heart beat a desperate cry in my ears. I managed to find surface again, but it drained what little adrenaline I still had. I sucked down one gasp of air before I went under. My limbs were

useless, completely spent. Soon my head began to ache from a lack of oxygen. and I snapped my eyes open in horror, searching for the surface. A dark green haze filled my vision, terribly claustrophobic. It pressed in around me, and I felt the riptide pull me back into its merciless jaws. Darkness began to fill my vision. My chest howled for air, but the water held me with wet chains. I felt myself begin to fade, pulled apart in agony. My body sank deeper and deeper, and my hazy eyes searched hopelessly for a savior.

Just as the black rushed in on me, I noticed something beneath me. It was a mass of sparkling color, like a cloud filled with neon electricity. It stretched out below me like a storm, flashing and winking like it was the broken remains of some natural phenomenon. Right as my feet were about to enter the mass I passed out. And cold on my face, moving darkness, a voice. I focused on the voice. pulling my subconscious towards it with all my willpower.

The black began to fade. Light, color. The world swam in an explosion of blurry motion, and then I blinked. I sat up, gasping, eyes popping open. Sweat poured from my face, and I scrubbed it from my eyes. Where was I? What happened? I looked around and saw I was in some kind of hut.

Hey, take it easy. It's okay. I spun around towards the voice behind me. My heart clawed up my throat and I stumbled off the cot I'd been resting on, horror ripping across my mind. A naked man sat before me, but he was mutated. The skin beneath his eyes dropped down his cheeks, exposing angry red muscle that oozed with clear slime.

His nose hung from his face, dangling like the trunk of an elephant. He was bald and the top of his head was slid open. I watched in terrified disgust as a second tongue extended from the opening and licked moisture across his scalp. Drule dripped down around his ears in thick trails. What the fuck? What's going on? Where am I?

I screamed, backing myself into a corner, wood and straw poking at me from the wall. The man stood up, his nose swaying like a piece of melted taffy. It's all right. It's okay, you're safe. You've made it. You're here." I stared up at him with wide eyes. What are you?

Where am I? The man put aside a wet cloth he had been using to wipe my face. He held up his hands and approached me, squatting before me, a smile on his face. I am Lovell. I was the one that found you on the beach. I'm so happy you're here. We've been praying for this moment for... His eyes rolled in one.

Oh, we've prayed for so long. I held up my hands, stopping him, grimacing as the second tongue slurped across his head. The drool leaped down into his face and dripped slowly across his exposed muscle beneath his eyes. You need to tell me what's going on. I said, trying to collect myself. The last thing I remember was drowning. I got caught in a riptide and something weird in the water. The man, Lovell, smiled.

I can't even imagine what you're going through right now. But the important thing is that you are here. You've passed through the red cloud. You've done what none have done before. It's not much, a mere pen prick in its mass. But you can show us how to do it. You can show us how to get through. I was shaking my head slowly, mouth open.

Stop, stop, stop. Wait. Please, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know anything about this. I was just taking a swim in the ocean and got pulled under by a riptide. My mind was spinning with confusion. What the hell was this person talking about? Red cloud, tearing a hole through it.

I wasn't following, and the constant twist of unease in my gut wasn't helping. Lovell nodded, understandingly. It's only natural you're a little scrambled. I can't fathom what the red cloud did to you as you passed. The suffering you must have endured. It really is a testament to who you are, what you've come here to do. I licked my lips, head aching as I tried to comprehend what was going on. Who I am.

To my horror, Lovell reached out and stroked my face. Why, you're an angel. Come to save us. You're here to show us the way to heaven. You've broken the barrier, passed through the red cloud, and now you will lead us back with you." I blinked, confusion blasting through my mind like a cannonball. I tried to sort my thoughts, tried to piece together what had happened to me.

Everything felt wrong. Everything felt different. My head ached and I clutched my temples trying to focus. I had been swimming. Then the riptide. Sinking. down into that darkness, sinking down into that strange cloud of light. Had that been real?

Or had that been something I imagined? My dying mind conjuring up some strange hallucination? Suddenly, Lovell reached out a hand. Come, the others will want to meet you. You're going to be their savior after all. I let him pull me to my feet. I couldn't make sense of any of this. What was happening to me?

Awareness settled in around me as I stood, and I realized we were in a windowless hut made of straw and wood. The sand beneath my feet rose to swallow my ankles, and I deducted we must still be on the beach. But what beach? And who was this disgusting man before me? Who were the others? What did they expect of me? I can see you're having a hard time remembering.

Come. Let us go outside. Maybe once you see, it will help rattle. your memory. Bewildered and uneasy, I let him lead me through the door. Sunlight erupted across my vision and I winced, shading my eyes with my hand. I squinted, letting the world settle. I froze.

Lovell stopped before me and turned, his second tongue rolling across his bald head. He smiled. Behold your flock. He said, spreading his arms. I was standing on a sand dune above a beach filled with people who looked just like level. They were all looking at me with awe in their eyes, a thousand naked bodies all with drooping noses and slits in their heads, tongues rolled in and out of their skulls, creating a constant

squirting sound that echoed across the expanse of sand. Slowly, they all got down on their knees and bowed their heads in silence. What the hell is going on? I muttered in shock, eyes growing wide, heart thundering in my chest. And that's when I saw something in the sky. Past the congregation hanging over the ocean. It was a long black chain that extended from the heavens, two or three hundred feet from shore.

At the end of the chain was the motionless, charred body of a man, but he was huge, at least nine or ten feet tall. The chain was wrapped around his neck and his dark, crusted head rested on his shoulders in complete stillness. My eyes traced the chain up the length of the sky and it disappeared through the clouds. Where am I? I whispered. My stomach squirming as new fear surged in my gut.

Lovell stepped towards me. You're here with us. Don't you remember? We've prayed for you to come. begged God to send an angel to lead us to him. And now you have. You've emerged from the red cloud. broken through its dark walls, and come to lead us to heaven."

No, I whispered. No, that's not true. I don't know anything about this place. I'm not an angel. I'm just a person. Lovell pointed at my face. You're wrong. Don't you know how beautiful you look?

Your skin, your eyes, your hair. He placed his hand over his naked. chest. When I found you on the beach, I almost fainted. You're the most beautiful angel we could have dreamed for. You're perfect. I swallowed hard, backing up. Stop talking like that. I'm not an angel. I'm just a normal fucking person. Love will frowned. Please, don't speak like that. You've just been affected by the red cloud. It will fade. You will remember who you. You will remember who you You are. I pointed towards the massive, charred man in the sky.

If I'm an angel, then... Then who is that? Level turned and I could see him visibly tense. That's the hanged man. He is what you've come to deliver us from. I shook my head. What is he? He watches over the red cloud beneath the water.

He is our warden, our oppressor. He is our gatekeeper. If anyone tries to break through, he will stop them. Lovell looked at me and his sagging eyes grew dark. He is the shadow of God. The darkness that grew behind the light of the Lord, he is evil incarnate. This was all too much. I couldn't digest it.

Couldn't wrap my mind around this bizarre ataxia. I just wanted to get out of here, get away from this nightmare and go back to my beach house. The strange mass of people kneeling before me, the red cloud, the hanged man, I could feel madness approaching, all constructs of reason and understanding crumbling before me. Please, I croaked. Please, I just want to go home. I don't belong here. This isn't right. Please.

Suddenly, I saw hardness enter Lovell's eyes. You need to stop talking like that. You came here to save us. You came here to lead us through the red cloud to heaven. You're going to take us back with you. We've waited and prayed for this day for an eternity. You can't turn your back on us. You're the only one who's managed to make it through,

to make it past the hanged man. You have to show us the way. I cried, suddenly overcome with a wave of dizziness. No, I'm not the one you've been praying for, please! I put my hand to my head, the heat from the sun splitting my mind in two. I blinked and began to see patches of darkness. I stumbled backwards, blinking sluggishly. I'm not your angel.

I blacked out. I awoke in a rush of heat. My face felt damp and my mind swirled between worlds. My eyes snapped open and I immediately sat up. Sweat dripped off my nose and my throat was dry and parched. I pulled a hand across my eyes and blinked. Lovell was sitting beside me, his long nose hanging from his face like an infected skin tag, his second tongue slowly coating his scalp with saliva.

As I raised my eyes, I saw there were others in the hut. They stood by the door watching me, their eyes oozing clear slime that dripped down the their drooping cheeks. Hot today, isn't it? Lovell said from his place by my cot. Are you feeling okay? You fainted on us. I shifted on my bedding and wearily eyed my guests by the door.

They seemed to be in awe. My stomach turned as I watched drool leak down their skin across their naked bodies. The tongues squirming from their heads looked like bloated worms and I tasted bile on my tongue. They want to hear you speak. Level said quietly, placing a hand on my thigh. They want to know what to do. I jerked away from his touch and shook my head. I told you, I'm not an angel.

I don't know what this place is or how I got here. I can't help you. I'm sorry. As I spoke, Lovell's eyes grew hard. He reached out and grasped my thigh again, his grip now firm and commanding. You spoke with cold authority. It's time you fulfilled your duty. We don't want to hear any more excuses.

Show us how to get past the hanged man. Show us how to get to heaven. He stood and motioned for me to do the same. Come, let's go outside. I rose with him, not sure what else to do. We walked towards the door and the others stepped aside to let us pass, bowing their heads slightly. No matter what I said, it seemed they were stuck on the idea that I was some kind of angel.

We went outside and I stopped dead in my tracks. The congregation was lying down on the beach, hands at their sides, like rows and rows of forgotten corpses. When they saw me emerge from the hut, they stirred to life, crawling to their knees where they remained, hands on their naked thighs. They were waiting. Behind them, over the water, the hanged man remained motionless, his body static at the end of the long chain.

Come, you must speak to them." Lovell said at my side, placing a hand on my shoulder. No! I whispered, feeling uneasy. No, you don't understand. I can't help you people. Lovell's grip turned to iron, pushing me forward towards the dunes. Come, it's time you showed us the way.

I stumbled forward, my bare feet burning in the sand. The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky, and I saw thousands of eyes. saw thousands of eyes follow me as I walked along the dunes, hopeful, desperate eyes. I watched them below me, the beach alive with movement as their tongues slithered across their bald heads, cooling them from the sun's burning light. I looked past them towards the hanged man, squinting to catch any sign of movement. He remained mobile, his huge, charred body dangling helplessly from the chain. His eyes remained shut and his chest still.

As far as I could tell, he was dead. Maybe there was something to that. Maybe that was the answer to my problem. These people, how long had it been since they attempted to pass through this red cloud? How long had it been since this hanged man had last stirred? I continued to be led across the dunes, sweat pouring from my face. I felt like I was suffocating. throat a dry strip of sandpaper. It was impossibly hot, I could feel my skin cooking beneath

the intense light, and I ran my tongue along my cracked lips. What did Lovell expect me to say to these people? As the burning sand danced between my toes, I was struck with a thought. When am I going to wake up? I almost laughed, but the sudden humor died in my dehydrated mouth. I looked behind me at Lovell and the little party following us. They looked excited, they looked hopeful, it made me sick. I had no plan, no idea what was happening to me. I had grown an army of followers who thought I was some kind of savior. I was trapped in a nightmare and I didn't see any way out.

One moment I'd been drowning and the next I was standing before a congregation who expected some kind of sermon from me. They expected me to reveal the path to salvation. What could I say that would make them understand? What could I do to show them I wasn't an angel? This is God." Lovell said suddenly, squeezing my shoulder. We were standing at the peak of a large dune, a platform to spread my voice to the waiting

subjects below. I felt my stomach shudder as I looked out on the thousands of people on their knees looking up at me and the ever-present hanged man, dead and silent over the ocean. I shot a look over my shoulder at Lovell, swallowing hard. What do you want me to say? I gasped. Lovell spread his hands. Anything you want.

Tell us how you got here. Tell us how to follow you back to heaven. Tell us how to get by the hanged man. My back was slick with sweat and I wiped a coat of it off my forehead, turning back to the audience below me. My heart was thundering in my chest and my breath blew sour across my tongue. What should I say?

How would I get them to understand? Questions rolled across my mind to the point of madness. I fumbled for words to say, but they died on my tongue. I could feel myself growing scared and then frustrated. What the hell did they want from me? Fuck. This is insanity. I cleared my throat.

I'm not your angel. I yelled, my voice carrying. down to them. I don't know how I got here, but I can assure you that it wasn't because of your prayers. I heard Lovell and the others behind me audibly gasp. I continued. I don't know where I am or who you freaks are, but I'm not your savior. I got caught in a riptide and sank into a cloudy light in the ocean.

I thought I was dead. Maybe I am dead. I heard Lovell growl something from behind me, but I thought I was dead. I ignored it. I don't know how to save you. I don't know how to get to heaven. I'm not the one you've been waiting for." I pointed across the ocean.

And that thing? Your almighty hanged man? He looks dead. And here you are, cowering on the beach, trembling in fear. You want to make something of yourselves? You want to transcend to a better life? Well, stop being such fucking cowards and do it. I was shaking.

My fists clenched by my sides. sweat dripping from the tip of my nose. I was angry, a sudden surge brought on by the sand and heat, the continuous insistence that I was some angels sent here to deliver them. Lovell reached out to grab me, but I shook him off, pointing towards the water. Stop waiting for a miracle and fucking do it yourselves! I'm not your goddamn angel! I was suddenly pulled down by strong hands and I fell to the ground.

Sand was kicked into my face as a chorus of angry voices loomed over me. My arms were pinned to the ground and I lashed out, furious and scared, losing myself in the waking nightmare. A foot plowed into my stomach and my will to fight left me along with most of my breath. I lay gasping, blinking against the sun. A shadow fell over my face and Lovell stared down at me with fire in his eyes. What have you done? I can't help you, you f-fucking freaks.

I spat, wriggling against my captors. It didn't do much good. Good. Lovell shook his head at me and then stared into the eyes of the others. They nodded to him, a silent conversation passing through the air above me. Get off me! I growled. Let me go!

Lovell leaned down and placed his lips to my ear. If you won't help us, then we'll find another use for you. I stopped struggling and turned to look into his eyes. What the hell are you talking about? Lovell licked his lips. If you won't show us mercy. perhaps the hanged man will. Perhaps an offering will change his mind.

Perhaps an angel is the price we must pay to cross to the other side. Let go of me! I roared, chest heaving. You're all insane! You don't know what you're talking about! Love will raise a hand to the others. Get the boat. It's time we float to eternity.

My brothers. A cry of joy went up, followed by an even louder exclamation from below us on the beach. I cocked my head in the sand and saw the mass of people standing, smiles on their faces. They pumped their fists into the air and began to chant. My blood went cold as I listened. Sacrifice. Before I could speak, I was roughly hauled to my feet, hands slapping and gripping me. I was pushed down the dune, a hard shove in the middle of my back.

I went sprawling, hitting the slope face first. I coughed and spat as millions of burning shards scraped across my cheeks as I tumbled, rolling over myself to slide to a stop on the beach. Immediately the mass was on me. A hand tangled in my hair and pulled me to my feet while others grabbed me and began to drag me to the water's edge. I screamed and fought, panic rising in my throat like a burning volcano. I looked over my shoulder and saw Lovell striding towards me down the dune.

A sick smile on his face. I was filled with terror at how quickly they had turned on me. The more I struggled, the rougher the crowd became. Fiss pumbled my body, nails raked across my skin, blood and slime spattering my face. I coughed and weezed, blinking through it all, my vision filling with thousands of wriggling, moving bodies. Flesh pressed against me and my ears filled with the roar of a growing riot. My feet tripped and stumbled against the onslaught, and I finally felt.

I felt a rope slide around my neck. Pain ignited around my throat, a circle of sudden fire as they began to drag me towards the ocean. Blinking through blood, I trained my eyes ahead of me towards the sky, and my heart stopped in my chest. The hanged man's eyes were wide open, and he was looking right at me. Fear coursed through me with the force of a raging hurricane, and I began to scream an absolute horror. The hanged man's eyes were were huge and swollen. His irises two red orbs in a pool of blinding snow. Color shot from his sockets like searchlights, twin-red funnels that filled my vision and summoned my darkest nightmares. I tried to scream, but my cries were severed by a jerk on the rope. The earth beneath me thundered with a stampede of feet and a hurried rush to the water's

edge. I reched and felt my eyes bulge, my mind dimming from the lack of oxygen. The rope was removed and I was dragged to my feet. The world swam as I tried to focus on the bouncing, swirling ocean of people before me. Their long noses swayed on their faces like pendulums and their second tongues coated their scalps excitedly. I heard a great cry rise to my left and I weakly turned my head. They were pushing a small craft into the water, a flat construction of wood with a single

mass that unfolded to reveal a great sail. My arms were pulled behind my back, and I felt my hands bound. I gripped my teeth as rope cut into my wrists and I was yanked towards the boat. I coughed and fought to stay upright, my feet splashing into the ocean. Lovell was climbing onto the craft along with three others. He reached down and pulled me up, then tossing me aside like a sack of dead meat. He turned to the mass of people on the beach, raising his voice. Pray for us.

Pray for mercy. Pray for mercy. for salvation. A roar went up at our backs as we were pushed out to sea. Water splashed over the crudely constructed frame and I gagged as the sea salt rushed up my nose. I was pulled into a sitting position and shoved against the mast. My bangs dripped into my eyes as I looked out into the sky. The hanged man had raised his head from his shoulders and was watching us approach.

The red light that shot from his eyes blinded me and I turned away. It's dancing across my vision. Horror and fear filled me, and my battered, shaken body offered no comfort. It didn't have to be like this. Lovell said behind me as he dug an oar into the ocean. The other three followed his example. Their dripping faces watching me. Fuck you!

You've all lost your minds! The water slashed across the wooden planks as we continued to draw closer and closer to the hanged man, his massive body dangling from its heavenly chain like a big. bait on a hook. He was waiting for us, hovering above the surface of the sea. His eyes never leaving us. As we approached, Lovell raised his hand to the others and they stopped rowing. The craft slowed and I chanced to glance up, feeling a dark stirring in the back of my mind,

like something was poking around from inside my head. The hanged man loomed over us, suspended a dozen feet above the calm waters. The craft was consumed in red light. I felt fear and terror boil in my brain as I fought to control a sudden surge of haunting images that flashed before me like morbid photographs. Lovell got down on his knees, followed by the others. His voice shook as he spoke. Please, we come in peace. Spare us a moment and listen to what I have to say.

The hanged man remained a statue of dark fear. Lovell continued, visibly shaken. In exchange for passage into heaven, we offer you this angel who has come to us promising salvation. I whipped my head to stare at him. Lovell shot me a look and pressed on. He has offered to rid us of your presence, but we knew there would be no passage unless you deemed us worthy. So instead of following this angel in a revolution against you, we offer him up to you as a token

of goodwill, as a token of respect, as a rite of passage. Please take him as payment and let us pass through the red cloud into heaven. He bowed his head and spread his arms, waiting. You fucking liar! I snarled. Silence! Lovell hissed. The air filled with mounting tension as seconds ticked by.

The sound of the water sloshing around the boat seemed to consume me. I shut my eyes and focused on it. Shaking, trembling, feeling the red light wash over my skin. Suddenly I heard a collective gasp and I snapped my eyes open. There, in the water below us, was a massive, voluminous, close. cloud of sparkling red light. It extended out into the ocean like a titanic patch of fog, a swirling dance of color that churned beneath the surface. Lovell stood, eyes wide. He is allowing us passage.

The others stood staring at one another, mouths open in complete shock. Immediately they sank back to their knees, heads bowed and began to sputter thanks and praise to the hanged man. They postrated themselves on the boat, gushing with wonderment and promise. Suddenly, Lovell grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. I hope you rot in hell. I growled as he pulled me over to the mast. Quite the contrary. He said, yanking on me.

He motioned for the others to help him, and I suddenly felt the familiar coil of rope around my throat. I coughed and struggled, but was silenced with an oar to the stomach. I vomited, the bile spilling out over the deck. I craned my head to look behind. me and saw they had thrown the rope over the mast. They were going to hang me. I stared up at the hanged man, his huge, terrifying eyes boring into my skull.

His charred skin absorbed the sunlight around him as I fought helplessly against the ropes tying my hands. This was it. This was the end. Lovell was suddenly behind me. He whispered softly into my ear. I will cope. I hardened, feeling a sudden ray.

rage burn within me. I turned my head, my voice hard steel. No, you fucking won't! I slammed the back of my head into his face as hard as I could. I was rewarded with an ear-splitting scream as he bent down and clutched his bleeding mouth. I stepped backwards and grabbed his dangling nose with my bound hands and ripped it from his face, screaming in defiance. The tube of flesh tore from his head like strings of melted cheese and blood exploded from the gore left behind.

Sank to his knees, howling as blood poured from the holes in his face. The others on the boat froze, surprised and revolted by what I had just done, the rope going limp on the deck. I charged the side of the boat and threw myself towards the water, as I flew through the air seconds before I splashed into the ocean. I watched in horror as the hanged man dropped from the sky like an anchor releasing. I hit the water and immediately went under. My vision obscured by the murky depths.

I wriggled like a dolphin trying to free my hands, but it was hopeless. I trained my burning eyes to the red cloud beneath me. Frantically, I wriggled towards it, feeling my lungs hammer into my chest. Suddenly the water illuminated with red light. I whipped my head to my left, bubbles exploding from my mouth, and my eyes widened in terror. The hanged man was rocketing towards me through the water, his eyes filling the depths with their haunting crimson color. The chain slithered behind him.

A twisting coil like a coal-black snake. His hands reached out towards me, his fingers nothing more than slivers of nightmare darkness. The sight filled me with crippling fear, and I used it to jet myself forward, down deeper towards the cloud of phasing red. My ears suddenly filled with a muffled, haunting roar of fury, and I felt my mind quiver and splinter. I blinked, fighting off the sensation, reaching to the depths towards my salvation. I had almost reached the cloud. I kicked towards it with all the might I could muster, screaming, leaving a trail of howling

bubbles behind me. Suddenly I was jerked backwards and I felt pain shoot through my leg. I turned around and saw the hanged man grasping my leg, pulling his body up mine to stare into my face. My world swam and shook with the darkest, deadliest hell and I felt all resistance drained from my body as his eyes consumed my soul. My mouth dropped open in a silent scream, as red began to fill my head and uproot every fear I had ever had.

I felt madness began to rip my mind in two. Suddenly, through the agony I heard another sound. I heard splashing, a muted rush of churning water. The hanged man turned to look towards the surface. I followed his gaze, mind fading, darkness approaching. and the others had dove into the ocean and were frantically swimming towards the red cloud. The hanged man roared and looked back at me, then back at the fore. Snarling, he released me and my mind shimmered and then refocused, the red leaving my fractured

brain in a rush of heat. Still bound, I watched as the hanged man raced to stop the others from entering the red cloud. I watched as he tore them apart. I watched as the water filled with red, as the last bit of consciousness left me. I watched the red faded to black, and I floated down into the depths. I don't really remember what happened after that. I don't remember the in-between, not even the darkness. There was just nothing.

The next thing I remember was getting CPR on the beach. It was the father who had been building a sandcastle with his son. I sputtered back to life, screaming and vomiting up gouts of salt water. I lay there on the beach, weeping as an ambulance was called. I was rushed off to the hospital and cared for, questioned, and given some much needed rest. I've never really fully recovered from that experience. I'm still not entirely sure what happened or where I went.

I don't know if what I went through was even real. It's been over a year now since that incident and I've come no closer to discovering the answers. Was the red cloud real? Were those people, those creatures real? Or did I experience some fearful hallucination between the reality of the living and the dead? As time passes, I want to discard the horrors I went through as something my mind conjured to stay alive.

I want to believe that the nightmare world I went to was just some horrific dream I used to fight off death, but I can't. No matter how much I want to deny that terrible. place beneath the riptide, I just can't. Because you see, after I was rushed to the hospital, the father who resuscitated me came to visit, and he told me something. He told me that when he found me, my hands were tied.