Dark Waters

• Huon White, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

I like to come down here sometimes, to the beach, to escape from the hustle and bustle of city life and especially to escape from that dream that has haunted me for months. That dream about the thing that pursues me over hedge and brook and through dale and town. No I will not let it haunt me in the day as well as the night. Down here it is just me and the seagulls sitting and wheeling respectively where the water meets the sand.

Today as I walk down the beach I find something sitting half buried in the sand. It is a metal casket with the name USS Pathfinder III emblazoned on the top. Upon opening it reveals a waterlogged book so sodden that the words printed on it can only just be deciphered. I open it at random and with much difficulty begin to read what is written there.

Journal log entry #539 of Captain Karthen of the American submarine USS Pathfinder III: We are descending through the dark water. I thank the lord that we managed to escape that enemy ship. Even so we sustained three losses when struck by a depth charge. We must go ever deeper to escape from more like it. This is Karthen signing off for now.
Journal log entry #540 of Captain Karthen of the American submarine USS pathfinder III: I can see an outcrop of dark rock rapidly approaching us. Cut into the rock is a cyclopean chasm stretching down into the seabed for god knows how many miles. Cut into the rock around the fissure are carvings of the strangest sort. They depict creatures of indescribable horror entwined around and around by rings of bizarre runes that look as though they were scrawled by a madman. The water is bubbling as though in a pot. A strange emerald light comes forth from the chasm bringing with it whispers that invade every nook and cranny of our minds. Our engines are down, we cannot move! The pilot is screaming, his screams mingle with the whispers creating a horrible concoction of sound that attacks your mind as if it is wielding a knife. I seal this log entry in a casket and cast it through the airlock so that perhaps someone may find it and read of our encounter with one of the many horrors of the deep deep sea. Take heed stranger it is coming and it will come again.

These last few words are hastily scrawled as if by a shaking hand. No! Surely my dream cannot be connected with this note. Probably the note is that of a lunatic or drunkard. Yes that would be it. I look out over the water trying to expunge the horror that the note filled me with. But No! The water bubbles and froths as if boiling. A viridian glow fills my vision. I collapse to my knees screaming as whispers fill my brain.

It has come.