Called to Sea

“Called to the Sea”

Bret Loonsfoot

The frigid waters roiled around me, pulling and grasping - dragging me in all directions. The salt water stinging my eyes forcing them shut. My last panicked breath quickly depleted in my lungs. My Dad's startled shout was the last thing I heard above the cacophony of the waves and wind from a quickly appearing storm - suddenly extinguished - replaced by a cold, deafening silence as I was knocked from our small boat into the icy torrent.

My eyes strained to stay open but I didn't know which way was up. Endless void surrounded me. Vast empty darkness in all directions, but movement in the reaches too far to see.

My terror-addled mind was playing tricks. I felt alone, far from my Dad and the world I knew above, but still in the company of something I couldn’t quite see. An oppressing dread filled my chest. I couldn’t quite place it, but I felt hunted. Encircled by a presence with crushing dominion over the waters surrounding me.

In an act of desperation, I let out a scream releasing a torrent of bubbles past my left cheek. Clenching my burning eyes shut, I oriented myself towards the escaping bubbles. Kicking and clawing frantically, blindly, stars appearing in the space behind my eyelids.

Forcing my eyes to open again, maybe for the last time, I saw faint light above me slowly fading as my vision narrowed.

Each stroke…closer…to the freedom above.

Each second…closer…the terror beneath me felt.

My consciousness was fading as my oxygen-deprived body fought for life. The portal to the world I knew above was within reach. A panicked reflex overtook me.

 I looked into the abyss below. 

My heart leapt into my throat and dove into my stomach.

Teeth. Jagged, impossibly endless rows of teeth filled the murky dark blue space underneath me. A gaping maw emerging from the deep black. Larger than anything I could ever imagine lurking in the waves so close to the civilized world. Horrifyingly gargantuan, unbelievable in its overwhelming scope, completely filling my vision and drawing closer.

With renewed vigor fueled by fear, I closed the gap between myself and salvation.

I reached up and my head broke the surface…

I gasped for air - oxygen filling my lungs as I sat up in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets on my bed. The same memory of that fishing trip so many years ago still haunted my dreams. It had been years since that boat trip. But the dreams visited more and more often now, becoming more vivid, following me even as I wake. The cold water remains on my skin, the breathless dizziness and vertigo making me ill, saltwater burning my throat. Reliving the terror time and time again. Each time the teeth creep closer and closer. I feared what may happen when they finally overtook me.

That terrifying event ended with my dad fishing me out of the water moments after I resurfaced. The flash storm appeared and dissipated in just a few minutes - a freak tempest of fate that put me face-to-face with a presence I now feel increasingly often in my dreaming hours. The feeling of being watched and lorded over as an utterly insignificant morsel is unshakable and enduring even when I escape my nightmares.

The boat ride back to shore that day yielded no relief. My Dad’s efforts to comfort me were futile as I screamed at him to get us home - take us to land - get me away from here. I never dared to even swim in a pool after that day, an “irrational phobia” to some but a “rational means of survival” to me for I know what others do not - the waters hide secrets we can never unlearn.

My feet landed hard on the cold floor in my bedroom, suddenly bathed in a current of cool autumn air that drifted in from my partially open window and sank heavily to the ground. 

The sleeping pills from my doctor did nothing but pull a haze over my mornings leaving me less able to parse between the real and imaginary.

The psychiatrist and hypnotherapist were unable to wrest my terrorized and restless dreams from the dark nor help me to forget.

I had to do something drastic to remedy this. My Dad had tried to reassure me that what I saw was a panic-induced figment of my imagination. He said he saw nothing that day. Not a shape or movement below the waves even as he dragged my nearly unconscious form from the frothy blue-green Atlantic ocean, freshly stirred from the storm.

Maybe he was right. Was this all in my mind?

I decided that chilly October morning that enough was enough. It was time to face my fear and venture into that ocean again - I wanted to, no, needed to see it for myself. I needed to see nothing but the empty bottomless sea.

This wasn’t the first time I had this thought - to face my deepest dread. I had it all planned out a year ago. I took scuba lessons, got certified so I could stay down in the water as long as it took to convince myself that I was wrong. I booked a round trip plane ticket back to the place this all started.

I made it to the airport then chickened out. Sheer panic struck me at the thought of being near the water, much less that ocean again and I ran from the terminal and hailed a cab back home.

My nightmares only got worse after that. More frequent. More real. Every single night I found myself floating in the abyss, unable to find the surface, barely able to move, running out of breath, feeling the cold saltwater freeze me to my bones and fill my mouth and nose. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had exhausted my options and was left with just the one. I had to return to the Atlantic and prove to myself it wasn’t real.

Getting out of work was easy enough. Couple of sick days well spent. I’m sure it was exceedingly believable that I was feeling ill because I looked worse each day I was deprived of rest. My job as a computer programmer certainly wasn’t served by lack of sleep. I was making mistakes that cost the team time and money to fix. Code made sense to me. Rules and algorithms that were nothing like the unexplainable supernatural horrors that consumed my nights.

 I commissioned a private scuba trip for the following day. I’d arrive tonight, get my hotel, then take the boat out late morning to spend the day offshore.

I arrived around six o’clock in the evening and checked in without issue. The town was not how I remembered. It was summer the last time I was here and the town brimmed with life. Where tourists once crowded the streets with vendors peddling their kitschy t-shirts and souvenirs, there were wet, empty streets blanketed with a misty fog. Coronas of light emanated from streetlights and cast their eerie yellow light upon nearby buildings, almost all of which were shuttered for the season. The charm of the quaint seaside town was replaced by a damp feeling of loneliness and abandonment. 

I sat on the balcony with a burger I had ordered from the hotel’s “Off-season limited menu” and stared out into the setting sun. I watched the shadows cast from the buildings grow taller, reaching into the ever-darkening white caps.

The dreamy twilight was juxtaposed by intense dread filling me to the brim, but I couldn’t look away. Night fell quickly but I could still hear the whisper of the waves just beyond the foggy dark. It seemed to go on forever.

 I felt drawn towards the hazy blackness extended before me. A cold wind whipped up and shook me from my trance. My burger had long gone cold. How long was I just staring into the distance? I felt suddenly displaced, utterly alone, and perilously vulnerable. I felt as though I was being watched by some untold presence just beyond my sight.

Retreating from the balcony I slid the door closed and tossed the plate of uneaten food onto the bureau. I turned on the T.V. and flipped through the channels until I found a light-hearted sitcom I was very familiar with to try to take my mind off of my grim task the next day. 

My exhaustion tore me from the waking world.

Before I knew it, I found myself back in that blue hell. I was floating timelessly in the empty. Immediately, that familiar crushing presence washed over me. 

Crushing anxiety crashed into me like nothing I had felt prior. Looking down, the maw was larger and closer than I had ever seen it. I could hear it groaning hungrily as it lurched towards me in slow-motion, yet impossibly fast. I thrashed and kicked my way towards the surface. I had to get to the top but the light was drawing further and further from me. I was being pulled down. The maw was close enough now that it was sucking me in. 

Palpable, intense fear overtook me, gripping every part of me down to my soul. It was too real. Currents rushed past me, dragging me helplessly towards doom. Sharpened shadows passed around me as my peripheral vision was filled with an all too familiar view.

Teeth. 

On all sides.

The massive entity had me floating deeper into its colossal mouth. I watched in absolute horror as all hope of escape was swallowed with me. Wholly and completely. Silently and breathlessly I screamed as the cold black darkness consumed me. I watched as the last remnants of light escaped my vision and my world became nothing, never again to be seen.

Icy water washed over me interrupting my restless sleep. I awoke screaming from my dreamt demise lying face up on the dark beach, tide rushing back past me into the ocean. I sat up quickly, digging my heels frantically into the wet sand in an attempt to escape the dark waters ahead of me. Inelegantly I retreated back to dry land as I stumbled and collapsed, face-first into a mouthful of sand.

Gaining some of my mental faculties back from the sleeping world, I stood back up and took inventory of my reality. The inky shroud of night still covered the sleepy town. 

Where was I? What happened? How did I get here?

The darkened facade of the hotel loomed ominously behind me. I stood cold, wet, and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, now soaked through and clinging uncomfortably to my body. 

Did I sleepwalk? I’ve never done that before in my life.

Shamefully, I considered getting a ride back to the airport - now - and leaving this behind me. Try to live my life. Try other options to get past this torment. Tuck tail and run. I couldn’t do that again. I don’t run from my problems. I always stood up to bullies and did what I thought was right. But I feel so powerless and unable to act.

I stood frozen in fear and contemplation, waiting for the world to end, or for the dark waters to finish their grisly campaign against my life by pulling me closer and closer into its drowning depths, filling my lungs with saltwater and passing me off to feed the creatures dwelling in it. I resolved to go back to the hotel room and get warm. Then I could figure out what to do next. 

Exerting all of my willpower, I succeeded in making myself move, backing away one step at a time from the beckoning waves that lapped at the shoreline with feigned innocence. My foot touched the grassy brush on the perimeter of the beach and I ran - full out to the hotel.

I walked cautiously through the liminal, half-lit hallways of the hotel. Eerily silent and vacant. I caught sight of an old, ornate clock on the wall. The hands indicated the time was 3:25 in the morning. Arriving at my room, I found the door slightly ajar. Too drained to figure out if I had left it open while sleepwalking, or if some intruder was awaiting inside to spring his sinister ambush. I brushed it off and slipped through the doorway, leaned back into the door, closing it as I crumpled to the floor against it. Debilitating weariness washed over me, robbing me of consciousness.

Nothingness. Cold. Black. Empty.

Sunlight broke through the sliding balcony door opposite of where I had fallen asleep. The golden beams of a new day pierced my eyelids and resurrected me. It wasn’t the best sleep, but It was more refreshing than most nights. I felt renewed in my intentions of seeing out my plan. The grim implications of the horrifying dream I had last night, followed by the inexplicable waking in a different place, and subsequent dreamless sleep were severe. I would face it. This needed to end one way or another.

Later that morning, I arrived at the marina where the boat I was to take that day was waiting. “Blue Betty” was painted on the vessel’s dirty surface alongside a pin-up style woman in a flowy blue dress. With a deep breath of reassurance I boarded the small boat out into the ocean.

The sunny cloudless sky did little to lighten the daunting task ahead of me. Each second I felt as a prisoner headed to the gallows. Dread built up in my chest as familiar sights and smells made my dreams feel all too close to the rational world.

Through my growing discomfort I managed to ask the boat captain if he ever ran into anything strange in this part of the Atlantic and his response contained nothing of note. Drunk kids on their party boats and the rare whale sighting did little to persuade me either way. I might have thought I saw a whale if I could imagine one as large as the creature I saw ten years prior. But I shook off that idea. I know what I thought I saw - and it wasn’t a whale.

When we reached the area I approximated as the spot I fell in the water all those years ago, I asked the captain to come to a stop. I donned my scuba gear and told him I’d be back soon - even if it was a hopeful, half-believed statement. Part of me thought I would see nothing, and would be able to live on knowing I had imagined everything. All of these sleepless nights would have been for nothing but at least I could be released from this nightmare.

But another part of me feared that I would be faced with the same sight that visited my sleep more times than I could count. Drifting through the darkness towards a being so daunting it was beyond comprehension. A flash of teeth, and an absolute panic as the safety of the water’s surface seemed so, so far, no matter how hard I tried to reach it.

I sat on the side of the boat, gave the “OK” sign to the captain, and pushed myself backwards off the side of the vessel.

I floated weightlessly under the boat for a few moments to get my bearings, then began my descent into the dark below.

Soon, I could hardly see the light above and a familiar oppressive feeling fell over me. An intense pressure, the creeping cold fingers of the Atlantic breached my skin, gripped my bones and a sickening ball of anxiety hung heavy in my gut from the inexplicable feeling of being stalked. I looked all around me but didn’t see a thing. Not a single fish, piece of debris. Nothing. 

I did start to feel better with each passing moment as I surveyed the area around me. The deep blue fading into a navy and black as it stretched infinitely. I looked below and saw nothing.

I would stay a few more minutes. I wanted to be sure. I needed to be sure. I floated silently for what felt like a lifetime. The only sound was my respirator, and the loud beating of my heart in my chest. The sound was grounding, it made me feel alone and relieved.

Then I heard something else. 

Far away I could hear a groan. Deep and threatening. First I thought I was imagining it. My isolation was causing some sort of auditory hallucination, but moment after moment and degree by degree it became louder, deeper. It resonated in my chest and made me feel insignificantly small - dwarfed by whatever was large enough to make such a sound. Just then the distant shadowed water to my right side seemed to shift. I oriented myself towards it and strained my eyes to pick up any subtle movement. A terrifying realization occurred as I stared into the shaded blue.

The wall of shadowed water in the distance was getting closer. A deep dark mass was moving closer to me. The groaning continued as I sat pinned with absolute horror. Darkness itself was on the move.

Each moment…closer to the colossal shadow…

Hyperventilating, I watched as the mass was nearly upon me, and it shifted. The darkness split horizontally, revealing a deeper black than I had ever seen. A void that threatened to pull me in. My heart nearly stopped beating when my eyes finally wandered to the outside edges of this new terrifying sight. All around that opening to the true absolute darkness of the world we didn’t know was a very familiar sight. One I had seen again, and again, and again.

Teeth.

The newspapers the next day were less than sensational. Your standard fare news, local sports and happenings, a fall festival reminder for next weekend, and a blurb on page three.

The headline read:

“Search begun for missing boat ‘The Blue Betty’”