. . .
Date: July 22, 2007
Location: 11°22.4′N 142°35.5′E.
. . .
“CAPTAIN, KILL THE LIGHTS!” I hissed, “Hurry!”
My frantic words barely went past gritted lips but somehow, in some way, the Captain thankfully understood what I was planning.
Because just as the thing came barreling towards us, he managed to turn off the headlights then made a sharp swerve as he drove the submarine around then up, right into the direction which we came.
Then, there was a vindicated scream echoing powerfully around us–and I know there and then the sound it made was the same in the video; a warbling, wailing, inhuman sort of noise that made the hairs on the back of my hair stand straight as a particularly rough wave caused our vessel to jostle a bit, the glass rattling for a terrifying moment at the impact.
What made it even more terrifying is the fact that it seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Then, there was silence.
…Nothing but deafening silence.
Captain Tomes glanced at me and amidst the faint, beeping lights from our screens, I can see that his face has gone pale, so pale that it was worrisome, and his lips were shaking as he asked, his voice barely louder than the machine’s humming:
“Do… d-do you think it’s gone now…?”
No.
No, I don’t think so.
That would be easy.
That would be way too easy.
I shook my head wordlessly at him.
Because deep in my gut, I know–I just fucking know–that the being already knows that we have come looking here, looking and poking around in its domain and we’re going to be next if we don’t get the hell out of here quick.
And to be honest, it was rather despairing to be reminded that the only thing that has been keeping the two of us safe all this time is the submersible Diamond.
The Diamond wasn’t even officially tested to go way past the depths of the Abyssal Zone–none of our vessels are. And unlike the fallen crew members of the Submerged, Captain Tomes and I weren’t even equipped with diving suits, and I sincerely doubt the Diamond has actually some of those onboard.
We are literally just one step away from dying with only nothing but the submersible keeping us from death’s door.
For a second, I toyed with the idea of dying from drowning or the pressure itself would end us first. It would have been painful for sure, but it would be quick at the very least. Unlike that poor, would-be survivor…
A quick death almost sounds like a blessing.
Then, I flinched, appalled by my own morbid thoughts. What on earth was I thinking? Why am I already giving up so easily?!
For heaven’s sake, I’m a marine biologist for years, I’m with one of the very best damn Captains HQ has to offer. I should be thinking of ways how to help right now, think of an idea on how to get us out of here and definitely not feeling so sorry for ourselves when we still have a fighting chance to get out of this alive–no matter how small or hopeless it may seem.
“Captain, listen to me,” I deliberately kept my voice barely louder than the steady hum of the screens around us just in case it can hear us, “…I need you to keep moving the sub.”
I refuse to end up as a casualty.
His eyes widened, “What the hell, doc? Have you gone mad? We’re in that thing’s domain! There’s a chance it could see us moving around–“
“Better than sitting ducks,” I hissed.
The red dot blinked from somewhere in the distance, right below us. And I could have sworn I heard the torn apart remnants of the other submersible being flung on the side of the cliff’s drop, as though it was being shoved aside like a discarded ragdoll… and whoever did it, they felt most certainly angry.
My heart almost dropped.
The tempting urge to scream was suddenly stuck in my throat, building into an uncomfortable lump that I couldn’t dare swallow in fear I’d make a sound as another rough wave caused our submersible to lurch rather violently further up within the passageway we just descended from.
And as if mocking me, I glared as the scanner showed just how cramped the space is. One wrong move and it might alert the creature.
Fuck.
I hope we didn’t hit and crash on the sides.
“We have to move now,” I managed to say through gritted teeth. Captain Tomes bit his lip, “Captain, please…”
“Just… wait. It might notice us…”
“But…”
“Look, just trust me.”
God… damn it.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from yelling at him (no need to antagonize the Captain) as we both watched with baited breath as the red dot moved in what seemed to be a half-circle below us, it seemed to be lurking, searching, for what seemed to be like an eternity but in reality, was probably only but a few minutes.
Time seemed to crawl in a snail’s pace as we took note that the red dot below us seemed to finally–finally move away from us, slinking somewhere even deeper.
I swallowed, nervously.
“…Well?”
Captain Tomes nodded.
I sighed, leaning back into my seat as my heart began to calm down only to jolt right back up when the headlights suddenly flared back to my life, engulfing our submersible in a wonderful, pale light.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING–?!”
Captain Tomes jolted in his seat, “What does it looked like I’m doing?! We can’t move in the darkness like this. At this rate, we’ll crash straight into one of the–“
An incessant beeping caught our attention.
And the Captain’s words immediately died down in his throat when the red dot suddenly blinked right back into existence, a bright angry color gleaming mockingly back at is, almost with a vengeance… it was now heading towards our vessel with an insane speed.
“GET US OUT OF HERE!” I screeched.
“But… that thing’s no more than 200m away–?!”
“I don’t care!” I snapped, “Just step on it!”
At this rate, it will catch on to us quick and–
And–!
Visibly biting back a curse, the Captain steered the submersible upward, making me lurch right back into my seat, now pointedly not looking at the way the red dot seemed to be gaining on us at an alarming speed. It was only a matter of time before it catches up to us.
No. We can still make it.
We have to–!
Then, it made that god-awful sound again.
A sound that was torn between a scream and a wail that shook and rattled me deep within my very bones. It was that intense, powerful. Whatever made that sound was undoubtedly huge, furious… and it didn’t sound like anything humanity has ever known, let alone heard of before.
I can feel something thick and wet dripping from my ears.
For a moment, I thought I was only imagining it but when I caught sight of the way the Captain roughly swiping on his left ear, followed by a muttered curse, I knew it to be true now.
Our ears… they’re bleeding.
“Isn’t there something we can use to lure it away from us?!” I raised my voice to be heard over the sounds of its ear-splitting scream that seemed to go on and on, “There has to be something we can use!”
“Now that you mention it…”
He suddenly turned off the headlights.
“FUCKING YES, WE DO!”
A slightly hysterical laugh suddenly went past the Captain’s lips–it almost scared me–just as he slammed his hand with a resounding smack on a button.
A second after, the headlights shut down.
Only the eerie, hazy glow of our screen remained.
The sudden darkness freaked me out more than I cared to admit... though I was so sure the Captain heard the unmanly squeak that still slipped past my lips which he thankfully made no comment of.
If my heart hasn’t felt like it has dropped before then it has most certainly dropped down to my stomach now.
“What…?” I blinked, “What are you doing?”
I realize after a second that the submersible is still moving up, albeit slowly… it was way too slow for my liking. And I immediately cursed the fact that returning to the surface is always slower than going down.
“We’re going to trick that fucker into thinking it still got us on its radar,” Captain Tomes explained, his eyes blown wide and fixed on the way the red dot was reaching to us closer and closer than ever before despite the fact that our lights are completely out, “…for now, I need it to get close enough.”
“Don’t be stupid. That’s too risky–!“
“What other choice do we have?!”
I reigned in the sudden urge to punch him in the face, jerking my arm awkwardly about at that, “I don’t know! You can just… just fire the thing damn it!”
“But this is the best damn shot we have!”
It was less than a hundred meters now.
Holding my breath, I stared with wide eyes as the glass in front of us shook and rattled with the force of its scream, ferocious and unyielding. Any moment now, I fear the glass will crash and break right in front of our faces just as it had done with–
Captain Tomes slammed his fist on another button.
And a brightly lit decoy suddenly flared to life like a homing beacon. It flashed somewhere behind us as it was fired straight from our submersible and out into the dark waters of the deep.
It was smaller than our submersible.
And it was moving way faster than us.
I craned my neck to the side to hear as the loud, incessant beeping noise the decoy was making rapidly beginning to quiet down as its distance grew farther and farther from us… until it descended past the red dot and right back down into the pitch-black depths from which we were just from only moments prior.
For a scary second, the red dot didn’t move.
Then, with another sinister-sounding scream that thankfully did not damage the glass in front of us more than it already had, something suddenly slammed right behind the submersible that caused me and the Captain to be violently jostled on our seats (luckily we weren’t thrown right out of it) as the creature jetted itself forward.
For a moment (I swear to God, my entire life just flashed before my eyes) as a swaying tendril–longer and at least thrice bigger than the vessel we were confined in–that I vaguely recognized as what seemed to be an appendage, a… tentacle of some sorts suddenly moving and groping past the glass, casting web-like cracks to start appearing all over it that I truly feared that our efforts was all in vain, that we had been found.
But it only used our vessel as a momentum as the creature seemed to propel itself back down right after the bait.
Then, Captain Tomes laughed, weakly.
I stared, “…What the fuck just happened.”
“The fucker fell for it–hook, line, sinker–that’s what happened,” he managed to say through his laughter, “We did it. WE DID IT, MAN!”
My lips wobbled, “L-Let’s just get out of here…”
“Yeah…”
Casting a quick glance at the sonar screen, I let out a shallow sigh of relief as it showed and proved that the creature was now rapidly moving away from us… again.
But the idea of it coming right after us so suddenly, just as it had done earlier, like some demon crawling from the darkest depths of hell lurked and remained in the forefront of my mind. And it scared me, chilled me right to the core, especially when I recalled the way it had brutalized the Submerged as well as its hapless crew, the way it had chased down and tortured the lone survivor like a cat playing with its prey.
I stared almost unseeingly but still faintly aware as the depth modulator’s numbers slowly turned lower until it reached to 18000m.
The knot in my stomach was still tight, not quite unraveling even as Captain Tomes informed me that we are now out of that damned cliff. We are still in the depths where the Submerged has been attacked, after all.
We’re still not safe.
With nothing else to distract me, I busied myself with comms once more despite the huge possibility that comms were still most likely down, “Doctor Tetsuya Origami speaking,” I muttered, tiredly, “HQ, over.”
No response.
There was only a harsh static that made me wince, more so when I was painfully reminded of the fact that there was this weird and thick, sticky feeling that was blood that had been dripping from my ears, now rapidly cooling on the side of the skin of my neck.
Then, there was radio silence.
Captain Tomes sighed as we went past the fallen vessel we came down for, the vessel we were supposed to rescue… I know now we were too late to do anything, let alone save them. How could we have helped them when we barely saved ourselves? We never stood a chance.
They never stood a chance.
A voice, one that was barely audible suddenly crackled to life.
And the noise was so abrupt, so unexpected that it made me, and my partner sit up straight to attention in our seats just as the sounds of what seemed to be a hundred voices coalescing as one wafted through our cramped vessel.
It was a sound that made my heart lurch, as though someone was trying to wrench it open inside-out.
I didn’t understand the words.
…Let alone could I even recognize the language.
But somehow, in some way, I know…
(Distantly, I can feel my ears pounding with the promise of bleeding yet again… because that tune, that melody–)
It was the same tune that monster was humming.