Monthly creepypasta: The Secret Sea (Patreon)

NEW: $5 patrons and up will get some short, weird fiction writing every single month! These will be collected and "published" at the end of the year! Many are "list format" horror because that seems to be what I'm best at. Hope you don't mind weird lists of things with a loose narrative!

------------THE SECRET SEA--------

 On the early morning of April 12th, 2004, professional cave diver Wallace Howard Hodgton of Wakulla County, Florida was separated from his group during an exploration of the local Indian Springs cave. Presumed dead, he would be found again on January 23rd, 2021, floating unconscious but alive in Devil's Eye cave many miles from the unconnected Indian Springs. He would regain consciousness six days later, with vivid memories of a strange and physically improbable environment.

 According to Wallace, he believed he had taken a familiar path on a routine dive he had conducted "dozens of times," but suddenly found himself in an unrecognized and undocumented tunnel. Attempts to retrace his path and search for recognizable landmarks were unsuccessful, and he eventually breached the surface beneath the open sky, surrounded by a vast expanse of water.

 Though he had entered the cave at high noon, the sun was now low in the sky and behind a covering of grey clouds, leading him to believe it was setting. At no point during this experience did the sun set any farther or otherwise move in his recollection.

 He could not see sign of land in any direction, which should only have been possible many miles out to sea, but the water was fresh, drinkable, and roughly body temperature. This water was "flawlessly crystal clear," but beneath him faded to pitch darkness. Its surface was also still and flat, and he notes that even his own motions did not make waves or ripples.

 Wallace believed that he may still have been swept out to sea and suffering from audio-visual hallucination, and began swimming North, towards what should have been the Florida coastline. He is unable to recall how much time may have passed, but that he never grew tired or hungry.

Wallace was able to recall encountering the following "animals" and other phenomena, in order:

-A uniformly bright white butterfly, including its body and eyes, drowned on the water's surface. He would go on to pass by "dozens" of these and occasionally "clumps" of them, but would never observe a living specimen.

-A transparent, broadly flattened animal matching descriptions of a Leptocephalus, a larval eel, roughly the length of his arm. These would remain common, ranging from a few inches to many meters in length, but would ignore his presence.

-A man-made signpost, worn and wooden, with nothing written on it. The pole descended all the way down into the depths, and he estimated that he could clearly see several hundred feet of it before it faded into the darkness far below. As he passed, he felt certain it was turning to continue facing him.

-Something similar to a tremendous stalk of white kelp floating horizontally in the water, each end disappearing into the opposite horizon. It was not possible to judge its relative size or distance through the utterly transparent water. Though there was no current, the "leaves" undulated slowly.

-Something resembling a white eye in the darkness below him for several seconds. He could not determine its depth, size, or surrounding body shape before it disappeared. He notes that he has never been fearful of danger and was too fascinated to be alarmed by most of his encounters, but this one made him feel suddenly nauseated.

-Several large, red spheres covered in sharp spines, floating at the water's surface similarly to naval mines and roughly volleyball-size. He was careful to swim around these, but was startled at one point when he evidently disturbed one and it emitted a sound similar to a "train whistle" before plunging straight down. As it descended, he could see what resembled humanlike black "lips" on top of the sphere, and that they then curled into a bright white "smile."

-Something foul smelling that resembled a swollen, grey and white frog as large as a man, floating on its back, with no obvious mouth, eyes or head. He believed it was dead until its stomach began swelling and contracting rapidly, producing a croaking sound. He heard a chorus of similar calls echo from all directions for several minutes, but could never see another of the drifting bodies.

-A car of unknown make and model hovering a few meters under the water. Its four doors were open and its headlights were on. There were no license plates or other markings and no other signs of human life.

-Another of the white "kelp stalks," rising straight up from the depths before its opposite end continued out of the water and up into the sky, vanishing into the clouds. Wallace could now observe that this stalk was "big around as a truck tire" with "leaves" at least two meters in length. Far below the water, he observed a loop of the stalk tightly wrapped around a huge, mottled pinkish shape "like a raw thanksgiving turkey," unmoving. He noted that the "leaves" of the seaweed-like organism were sunken deep into the flesh of this strange corpse.

-A dark shape in the foggy distance that he nearly mistook for a person, but this shape was moving "like the lizards that run on water" and did not respond to his calls. Instead, he heard his calls echo back to him from high overhead. Though the running figure displayed no reaction to Wallace's own voice, it abruptly fled at an accelerated pace as his voice was echoed, and this echo would continue repeating his words as it "followed" the running figure, fading into the distance.

-His first encounter with the "turkeys" in a living state, encountering a group of the creatures that reached up to the size of a blue whale, in his estimation. These had long, turtle-like flippers for appendages and an open, dark hole at each end of the body, with mottled pink and brown flesh. Thin-legged white "spiders" were clinging to some of these animals, with leg spans he estimated up to three meters.

-The first animal he found "instantly terrifying," which he described as a hairless, earless, grey-white "dog" with clawed forelimbs "held out like eagle wings" and stunted hind legs, similar to those of a bat or a pterosaur. It had "grinning" jaws and pure white eyes, its body "stiff as a corpse" with no obvious means of propulsion as it cut rapidly through the water, circling him several times before disappearing into the depths. He estimated its arm span to be at least ten meters. He would see a few more of these creatures in the depths, never approaching him again.

-A long mass of black hairlike material rising from the depths and floating on the surface. Through the water, he could see many more of these tufts, like a "swaying forest" just under the water's surface. Wallace felt incredibly uneasy, giving these hairs a wide berth.

-One of the "kelp" floating near the surface, still with no visible end. This was impossible to pass without swimming beneath it, a prospect the experienced cave diver found uncharacteristically frightening. When he did submerge for the first time, he was met with a "cacophony of sounds; squeals, trills, zaps, groans, creaking, thrumming, like a jungle full of exotic bird calls." These sounds were clear even through not only the water but through his wetsuit and earplugs, and he felt he could judge their direction and distance to a degree that wasn't natural. He surmised that the water conducted sound in a clearer way than any documented environment, feeling he could "hear the way we're really supposed to." From this point onward, he began swimming with at least one ear partially submerged, listening to the various calls. He noted that the "kelp" behind him sounded like "angry bees" and that a passing school of the transparent eels sounded like "thousands of little windchimes."

-An unpleasantly loud creaking sound, similar to a rusted metal hinge, was soon revealed to be the sound of the "dog things" as several of them shot past him. He would eventually swim by a "feeding frenzy," the creatures some distance away but large enough to be plainly visible through the clear water. They were feasting on a pale blue "log" of meat, and he noted that the clouds of blood sank straight down rather than billowing out into the water. Large numbers of the glassy eel-like animals were present, scavenging small tissue scraps, and he could see a number of rounded whitish shapes farther below, obscured by the blood sinking into the dark water. Though local fauna paid him no mind, he felt an intense fight or flight response at the sight of the "log."

-Noting a comical tuba-like sound, Wallace slightly changed course and traced this "flatulent orchestra" to a pod of the "whales." Having made no progress following the motionless sun, he opted to follow these animals for an unknown amount of time and would observe several behaviors, including a tendency for smaller individuals to swim circles around larger specimens and the same adult pairs, distinguishable by their markings, to swim with their front flippers in nearly constant contact. They did not appear to "flap" or "wave" their flippers in order to swim, but he noted that their anterior and posterior orifices visibly pumped in unison.

-At some point in following the "whale pod," the animals began emitting a more frantic, higher pitched sound and spread out from one another, what he calls a "slow motion panic" as a deep droning sound began to come from seemingly all directions. He soon observed dark shapes rising from below and recognized the clumps of black hair he had encountered earlier, filling an area as far as he could see in every direction. The whale-like animals became visibly entangled in the rapidly rising material and he felt certain he'd be "swallowed up" himself, but the mass soon began to retreat in the depths before surfacing, taking the entire "whale pod" with it. He reportedly felt a profound sense of loss, more than felt rational to him, as though he had lost close friends or family.

-What he believed at first to be a human skeleton hanging beneath the water, face-down and limbs dangling, but more "apelike or maybe catlike" on further inspection. Through the perfectly clear water and with no other frame of reference, it looked only inches away, but when he noted the limbs descending out of sight, he estimated it to be many times larger than any animal observed thus far. As he passed over it, light reflection suggested that it was encased in a membrane of tissue almost as clear as the surrounding water, and it became evident that the appendages were moving, albeit in extremely slow motion. He surmised that it may have been walking on an unseen solid surface, but that each "step" took what felt like a full ten minutes of what may have been an hour that the massive object remained in his visual field. He observed absolutely no other organisms during this time. 

-A "horrible mass," like a globular tangle of viscera, that pulsed through the water like a jellyfish and emitted soft "gasps." He was "paralyzed with fear" when it opened a "humanlike eye" on one side, which turned toward him, but it continued on its way. Following this organism was a shoal of recognizable large fish species including catfish, sturgeon, salmon and a swordfish, among others, but all appeared "mostly eaten," many reduced to only heads. These "swam" after the huge "jellyfish" by an unknown means of propulsion.

-Another "feeding frenzy" of the doglike creatures, tearing apart another of the "meaty logs." He noted round, whitish shapes once again scavenging the underwater rain of blood, now closer to the surface, and felt repulsed by their "humanlike eyes and toothless mouths," which he believed to be the source of a piglike squealing. As the "dogs" fed, the object rotated, and he was more disturbed to realize its resemblance to a finger, with both a fingerprint and massive nail. 

-After a lengthy period of no new observations, he was elated to see what appeared to be a man in a boat, though he grew more concerned when the figure did not at first respond to sound. As he approached, it appeared indeed to be an ordinary fisherman adrift in a small boat, a Caucasian man he estimated to be in his thirties or forties. The man stared straight forward and did not respond to sound or questioning. Wallace felt something was "just not right" and began to back away, when the occupant of the boat evidently opened its mouth, without turning to look at him, and emitted his own name in his own voice. Wallace proceeded to "swim away from there as fast as was humanly possible."

-His last reported encounter was with a "wall" of the undulating black hair, and attempted to go around it, finding its circumference seemingly endless. He had decided to swim in a different direction when he felt his foot tangle in a stray knot of the material and entered a "blind panic" at the sensation, involuntarily shrieking. At this, a recognizable white eye opened some depth below, and he recalls "just screaming and screaming" as he made out the rest of a pale blue, humanlike face slowly turning towards him. He vividly recalls the eyes widening as if with shock, and the mouth opening into "just a circular black hole" before he blacked out.

 Upon his retrieval from Devil's Eye cave, Wallace is reported to have repeatedly uttered "see the secret sea!" while he remained unconscious. He has since maintained that what he experienced had to be a lucid dream or hallucination, but his actual whereabouts during his disappearance remain unknown, and his physical condition presented several anomalies. His bones and muscles exhibited atrophy consistent with spending many years in a weightless environment, but none of the detrimental effects of prolonged submersion in water or extensive sun exposure. Wallace does not recall eating, but showed no evidence of starvation. His hair and nails had grown very little and his teeth were healthy except for his lower left molars, which were missing with no sign of forcible removal or any history of dental extraction. 

 Wallace's lower intestine was found to be obstructed by a clot of black, human hair of unknown identity. The longest of these hairs were 103 meters in length when fully unraveled.

 Wallace has refused further interview or study and has since retired to Nevada.