Shipwreck in the Dark

With flashlights illuminating their way, four friends ventured into the ink-colored cave. The rock was black, with flecks standing out here and there of metallic shine, giving a slick look that threatened slipping along the floor.

The two tall men were at the end of the group, with the two women carefully leading the way. First through every narrow doorway, Savannah kept her hand up to let the men know how much they needed to duck, and how wide the tunnel beyond was.

This was the first time anyone had come down this side branch, as it had only just been uncovered after a partial cave collapse earlier in the season. The four friends were professional cave explorers, working with cartographers around the world to slowly map the hidden cave systems, and to find safe passages for new adventurers. Given their experience, both with each other and caves as a whole, their team was selected to adventure down below.

As they went, the men, Gerad and Phil, placed high power, compact lamps to mark their way and provide a clear path if they didn’t make it back by the designated time.

Passing through the narrow entrance, the four friends found themselves weaving down a path that was wide and spacious by most cavernous definitions. The stale air had a vague musty smell, but as they walked they all noticed that the musty smell seemed to disappear, and a slight breeze could be felt, coming at them straight on from the path ahead. They could almost walk two by two. They could tell, based on their experiences, that they were going deeper, down into the earth. Not only that, but Darcy halted the group for a moment, pointing out the dripping sound that was so faint, their footsteps were covering it up.

After working their way deeper and past ledges and crevices, the dripping noise started to get louder.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

It wasn’t the normal, quiet tink that’s made by a small amount of water dripping off a stalactite into a shallow puddle. This sounded, to the group as a whole, like water dropping into a pool or some kind of large body of water. The air picked up to a breeze, lightly moving the baby hairs sticking out around their heads. Suddenly their light beams were disappearing into a large space just in front of them.

The women, still in the lead, entered the large cavern, and both froze, with beams pointing straight ahead. Gerad was the first to stumble into Darcy’s back, with Phil doing the same to him.

“Oof,” gasped Gerad, “y’all, why did you stop?” Gerad adjusted his headlamp to quick check that everyone was standing.

“Look.” Darcy lifted her hand to follow the direction of her beam. Both men swung their heads and looked at what the headlamps had revealed.

“Is that a ship?” Phil asked.

Later they found out that the 60-foot ship before them was called a brigantine. Their lights hit the hull, broken and missing in places, and the sails, several large squares that were puffed from the slight breeze whistling through the cave.

Garad and Phil pulled out the remaining lamps and started to lay them down as the group - in silence - approached the ship. As they got closer, they saw that behind the ship and just barely lapping at its one side and back was a huge lake. Or, at least they assumed it was huge, as their light bounced off its surface, but it never hit a wall or anything else but dead air.

“Hey, Phil, don’t those lamps have a 300-foot radius?” Savannah asked, keeping her voice down in case there were bats or some other creature to disturb.

“Yeah. We put two down on our way to the ship, and we’re laying out six more.” Phil said, nodding to Gerad who had already split from the group, moving off to the side to light up the ship.

As the three remaining friends grouped tightly together approached the base, they all felt their shoes sink a bit, and looking down they realized that around and below the ship the black, smooth surface had shifted to a black sand that glittered their light back at them.

Gerad, placing the last light as close as he dared to the water, jogged back to them, also noticing the sand beneath his shoes. However, from his vantage point, Gerad noticed something that the others didn’t. Through one of the holes in the hull, and thanks to his light placement, a shadow moved. Slowing down, Gerad kept watching to see if it had some kind of a regular movement similar to the sails slowly billowing.

He didn’t see anything else move.

“Thank’s Gerad, now we can see the whole thing,” Darcy said, breaking her stare from the ship and slowly walking along its side. “Were you able to see another wall?”

“Nothing, but something did move on the ship,” Gerad responded, nodding to the ship as he looked up its tall side.

“Oh god, not bats again.” Savannah piped up.

Everyone in the group was still whispering, one of the benefits of a quiet, echo-y chamber, and they started to chatter about what they were seeing on the ship. Old, a few boards missing, no way up or in. Taking out cameras, they started to photograph everything they could, from the sand to the lake, to the boat, and how large the chamber appeared to be.

With the flashes on, they lit up the space and the ship. Unbeknownst to them, something moved from one side of the ship to another and peered out.

“So, are we going to talk about the fact that there is a full pirate ship down here?” Gerad asked, letting his camera drop to his chest and hang on its strap.

“Well, there is water here, and we are within a few miles of the coast - could be this is an old hideout, and it was abandoned here,” Savannah said, no longer keeping her voice to a whisper. The bats would have stirred by now with all of the cameras if there were any.

“If by a few miles you mean sixty, yeah, sure.” Darcy quipped. Savannah only grunted in response.

“Maybe it’s a ghost ship that haunts the sea on dark, moonless nights,” Phil stated, with a straight face.

The rest of the group looked at him, then each other, then back at him. “Where did you hear that, man?”

Phil shrugged, “I read a lot of ghost stories. I figured that’s a better theory than the pirate ship, given that line of thinking could mean there are pirate zombies.”

“You know,” Savannah said, “your weird things usually make me feel better, because there is no way that you could be right, but right now it’s just annoying.”

As she waited for a response, her back to the ship, everyone else noticed that, while they still felt a breeze, the sails fell flat. Then, all four heard a rhythmic creaking coming from the ship. Savannah turned, then started to slowly back away. “Guys, I… I think that could mean another cave collapse might be on the way.” She whispered.

With that, the whole group turned and started jogging back, leaving the lights for the next, larger crew. They were only the scouts, and they didn’t have any problems getting there.

None of them wanted to go back.

Later on, Phil was looking through the photos, sending them to their boss, when he noticed something in one of the holes. Zooming in, he could see an eye in one, and an arm with only skin and bones, and possibly holes in it like the ship.

Based on the photos that had the arm in it, it looked like something was waving at them.