The Seashell

      Captain Brandon Burns briefly lost consciousness. His co-pilot had already been out for several minutes. Panic started to set in on the experienced pilot. He struggled to stay conscious.

      He thought he had already radioed in a distress signal, hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. Things were very, very foggy in his brain right now. 

      Brandon was flying the small private plane very low over the Pacific Ocean. He had to hold on to the controls very tightly as the plane nearly went down when a particularly turbulent crest hit the underside of the small plane. 

      The plane sputtered. The pilot knew he was in trouble. He sent another urgent “mayday” message over the radio. He wasn’t even sure the message was being heard. There was no response from the other side. Was anyone even picking up his distress call?

      His plane had departed less than two hours ago from the Arcata-Eureka Airport, which is located about 300 miles north of San Francisco, California. The plane was originally enroute to Los Angeles, but a very dense fog had suddenly set in just as they were taking off and a nasty storm was brewing. 

The pilot became disoriented in the storm and had started flying west over the ocean, instead of south towards Los Angeles.

As the storm started to brew and the dark clouds encircled the small plane, Pilot Brandon ordered everyone to put on their life jackets and warned them it was going to be a very turbulent flight.

      Suddenly, about an hour into the flight, smoke began filling the cockpit, along with it, deadly carbon monoxide. The co-pilot coughed and passed out. The four passengers were out as well.  

And with rain and wind gaining strength off the coast, the pilots and their four passengers found themselves over the Pacific Ocean in a rented Diamond DA-40, a lightweight, single-prop six-seater being mercilessly tossed about in the escalating storm.

All of a sudden, the radio crackled to life and there was radio static. It was the Seattle-based Air Traffic Control operator that had picked up their distress signal. 

Brandon complained to the Air Traffic Control operator: "It's really turbulent right now. The plane is full of smoke and I’m the only one conscious right now. Mayday, mayday! We are over the ocean. My instruments aren’t working. Mayday, mayday!”

At just below 200 feet, Brandon, following the controller's instructions, switched his radio over to the local common traffic advisory frequency to try and re-establish two-way radio communication.

Multiple times, the Air Traffic Controller tried to re-establish that radio contact, to no avail. Their radar showed the airplane moving south-southeast toward the jagged coast, less than a mile from the coast and a mere 100 feet above the surface of the sea.

Contact with the plane was lost.

###

      Sherry and Josh Renfro, along with their dog, Brandy, a border collie, were all on a long-overdue weekend in their rented beach house on the coast of Los Angeles, California. Every chance they got, the Renfros came to this same beach house to enjoy the sand and the surf and the sun.

      Sherry loved walking on the beach with Brandy running and splashing ahead. Sherry was an avid collector of seashells. She lined them all up on the porch of their rental cottage during their stay. She even slipped a few of her favorites into her luggage and took them home at the end of each weekend.

      The rest of the shells and rocks were tossed back into the ocean at the end of their stay.  

Since it was low tide, and she had been walking for a while, she had quite a collection of unusual looking shells and some interesting small rocks as well. 

      Suddenly Brandy started barking at a particular rock formation. 

      That was odd, thought Sherry. I wonder what she’s barking at. I don’t see anything.

      Sherry hurried over to the spot where the dog was barking. There was a very large, beautiful glossy pink conch shell. It had knob-like spines on the shoulder, a flared thick, outer lip and a mixed pink/orange colored opening. It was one of the most beautiful shells Sherry had found.

      She picked up the shell and held it up to her ear. Yep, she could clearly hear the sound of the ocean coming from the shell.  She and Brandy hurried back to the cottage to show Josh her new-found treasure.

      Josh was sunning himself on an Adirondack chair and just about ready to nod off when a shadow came over his face.

      He opened his eyes and saw Sherry standing over him holding out her canvas bag of shells and rocks collected on her beach tour today.

      “Look what Brandy and I found!” exclaimed Sherry. She pulled out the colorful conch and handed it to him. 

      “Wow, this is a beautiful specimen! I believe it’s the nicest one you’ve found so far,” said Josh, taking it from her hand. 

      “Let’s give this a real place of honor.”

      He walked up onto the porch and placed the shell on the ledge behind the flower pot Sherry had placed there earlier. 

      “I’ll put it behind the pot, so it won’t slide off and fall and break,” he declared.

      “It looks great there. And we’ll be able to see it from inside as well,” Sherry said.

      After dinner, Sherry and Josh were enjoying their second glass of Riesling wine on the porch of their rented cottage. Brandy was at their feet.

      “What a gorgeous place to vacation,” said Sherry.

      “Yes, it really is relaxing and a great place to decompress from work. We should come here more often,” Josh commented.

      They both yawned and decided it was time to retire after their day of sun and beach and swimming.

      Sometime during the night, Brandy, who was sleeping at the foot of their bed, started to growl.

      Josh ordered her to be quiet, but Brandy, who was normally extremely obedient, did not stop growling. The growling only got louder.    

      Josh got up and thought Brandy needed to go outside. But Brandy didn’t follow him to the door; she jumped up at the window sill where the conch shell was. She pawed at the glass furiously.

      That’s odd, Josh thought. She hasn’t done that before.

      Josh opened the window that Brandy was pawing at. And as he opened the window, he heard very faint voices. 

      Voices? He wondered. Where would voices be coming from?

      He then decided to open the front door. Brandy raced through his legs almost tripping him up. She ran over to the conch shell and started barking.

      Josh went over to where the shell was and he could hear something. He looked around, but there was no one in sight. He was alone with the barking dog.

      He commanded Brandy to stop barking and to sit.  She obeyed immediately.

      Just then Sherry came out onto the porch.

      “What are you doing out here?” she asked, yawning sleepily. “I heard Brandy barking. Is everything okay?”

      “Brandy started growling, and then she ran to the window and starting pawing at it. I opened the window and then I heard voices. So I came out here to see where the voices were coming from,” Josh explained.

      They both got very quiet and listened. And there they were: voices. Very faint voices.

“Now I hear voices, too!” said Sherry, startled. 

And Brandy started to bark again.

      Still barking, the dog ran over to the conch seashell again.

      Josh picked up the shell. He heard faint voices. He held the shell up to his ear for several seconds.

      “Oh my god,” he said. “Sherry listen!” He handed her the conch. “Hold it up to your ear.”

      She did as he asked. 

      Then she quickly handed the conch back to him like it was a hot potato.

      “There are voices coming from that conch shell!” Sherry exclaimed in a scared voice.

      “Yes, there are,” Josh agreed.

      “What are they saying?” Sherry asked.

      Josh held the conch up to his ear again for several minutes.

I hear someone saying, "It's really turbulent right now. The plane is full of smoke and I’m the only one conscious right now. Mayday, mayday! We are over the ocean. My instruments aren’t working. Mayday, mayday!”

      Josh and Sherry immediately called 9-1-1 and informed the operator that they had an emergency and to send a policeman right away.

      Within a couple of minutes, a sheriff drove up to the cottage and asked what the problem was.

      Josh said it was too crazy to explain. He quickly related the story that his wife had found the conch seashell that afternoon just a short distance from the cottage.

He told the sheriff to hold the conch up to his ear and listen. The sheriff looked at Josh incredulously, but he took the conch from Jeff’s hand and he listened. His eyes grew wide.

After a couple of minutes, he radioed to the Coast Guard that there was a mayday message being sent.

      “Don’t ask me how I got the message,” the sheriff snapped, not wanting to relate the unbelievable story over the radio waves.

      The sheriff gave the Coast Guard commander the coordinates of the cottage.

      The Coast Guard responded immediately and started searching off the coast in the area near the rental cottage of Josh and Sherry Renfro and their really smart dog, Brandy.

      The next day, the sheriff returned to the cottage and informed the couple that six people, a pilot, co-pilot and four passengers had been rescued about 20 miles off the coast. 

      Their small plane had gone down into the ocean, but a small raft onboard had deployed and all six had regained consciousness after they hit the water and were able to climb into the raft and were rescued by the Coast Guard!

      The plane and everything else in it went down to the bottom of the ocean.

      Josh and Sherry and the Sheriff all looked over at the beautiful specimen of a conch seashell sitting on the ledge near the flower pot where the voices had come from.  

It was silent now.