Chapter 1: Depths of the Island

I cracked my neck, looking up my alarm clock, which read 11:13. I'd been at my computer for over 5 hours, and I hadn't found a damn thing. What was I looking for, you might ask? It's simple: evidence of the supernatural. 

The supernatural has always captivated me. The question of whether or not there are forces that could violate our known laws of nature is, in my opinion, the most important question. If the answer is "yes," then it means that centuries or even millennia of human knowledge is inherently flawed, built on assumptions made from an incomplete picture that was not even recognized as incomplete. Thus, the sooner one finds evidence of it, the sooner humanity can come to terms with its error. Oh, I'm sure some tried to send out evidence, but they were ridiculed at best and quietly tucked away into institutions for the insane at worst, their warnings ignored like a child too old to insist a monster lies in wait beneath his bed, and humanity once again turned a blind eye to the truth. Such is the reason why I find myself at my laptop, scrolling through forums and online communities dedicated to the supernatural, as the clock slowly ticks onward.

Now, most of what you'd find there is bullshit: people lying for attention or people devoting themselves to conspiracy theories that themselves were fabricated by the aforementioned people, along with people who use the supernatural to explain something they can't explain otherwise. Sometimes, vivid dreams or hallucinations lead people to believe that they experienced the supernatural when in reality experienced nothing but the delusions of their own mind. If we cast all those aside when we recognize them, we're left with the 0.01% that are likely real. Even most of those could never be proven, and are thus useless to me if I want to show the world the supernatural. Only a select few encounters seem to be repeated by the same cause in multiple people, and even then most of those are unable to be measured or empirically observed, or are in places that I cannot reasonably get to without significantly disrupting my life. With so much to sift through, it should not be surprising that I have spent several years searching with little success.

With this in mind, dear reader, you can imagine how even my tired body with its bloodshot eyes let out a whoop of joy when I saw an opportunity. Frantically, I scrolled through the post. My eyes widened as I continued reading. This was perfect! I turned off the computer, grabbed my keys and baseball cap (the Red Sox are the best and I will die on this hill), and bolted out the door. 

In no time at all, I was in my car, hurtling along the backroads at dangerous speeds. It was as if the spirit of exploration that had captivated Marco Polo and Columbus and the like had now chosen me to send to the next discovery to change humanity forever, and I was certainly not going to complain. Well, at least not until a sour-faced police officer gave me a speeding ticket and thought I was high, but I digress.

When I arrived at the beach, it was night. Lovely. As I hopped the chain-link fence, I half-expected someone to spot me under the light of the full moon, but if they did, nothing came of it. I stripped off my boots and socks, setting them down near the fence. I could go back for them later. With trepidation, I walked to the point where the beach met the ocean, gazing at the outline of the island against the horizon. As I set my eyes on the moon's reflection along the rippling water, stretching endlessly into the beyond, I walked directly in front of where the tide reached furthest. With my toes sinking slightly in the damp sand and the soft sound of the waves to ground me, I closed my eyes and walked forward. The first few steps were nothing special, but then another step finally and fully took me from the land of reason.

I opened my eyes, and found myself standing exactly as the post described: on the reflection of the moon in the water. Once again the spirit of exploration captivated me, and once more I sprinted forward. I don't think I could have stopped myself even if I wanted to, and as the surface of moonlight rippled beneath me as the waves rushed and receded, I ran, slowing only to take out my phone for a brief recording of myself running. Stashing it back into my pocket, I didn't even notice how close I was to the island until the moonlight ceased wavering beneath my feet and was replaced with mud. Only then did I finally slow down and stop, my chest heaving with exertion. When my lungs no longer burned, I looked up and took in my surroundings.

The only word I could use to describe what laid before me is unnatural. Oh, there were trees, and animals, and insects, and flowers, and vines, and moss, and mud, and rocks, and everything you'd expect from an island under the right conditions for life, and it was perfect. Too perfect. I brushed this feeling off as just a side effect of my exertions (not even God knows the last time I exercised) and walked forward, stepping past a fallen branch covered in lichen and beginning my search for the shrine described in the post. But that, dear reader, was pure folly.

As I wandered the forest, I wondered how so much could fit on such a tiny island, and my breath quickened. Something is definitely up here, I thought, and shivered as I took pictures and videos. When I got the word of this out, I could be the herald to humanity's next step in exploration and research. What more could I ever hope to accomplish? I wandered on, growing thirsty as I went, my throat protesting with each noise I made and each swallow of my own saliva. I stumbled into a clearing and saw first the clear pool of water. With only a moment's hesitation, I knelt down and drank deeply from it. When my throat no longer felt ragged and dry, I finally raised my head, and in the water's reflection to my right I saw movement. My head shot up, my eyes wide.

It was a rabbit. A fucking rabbit scared me. It looked at me, unnaturally still, head cocked to the side. It stomped its foot and hopped away, going right towards a large spotted snake. As I watched, the rabbit paused, opened its mouth, and belched out a purple cloud at the snake. Immediately I could hear the snake writhing as the rabbit jumped into the cloud. It only took a few seconds for it to clear, but when it did the snake was mangled and torn, parts of it melted away as if by acid, with the rabbit tearing at the snake's flesh with its sharp teeth. It looked up at me again, twitched, and went back to the snake carcass, squealing in delight. I shuddered and turned away, my stomach threatening to expel the water I had just drunk. I stood up and continued on my way, wandering the forest that now seemed ever so slightly malicious.

Now that I had seen a darker aspect of the island, I saw it everywhere. Over there on my left, the vines on a tree were moving, strangling a rodent that struggled fruitlessly in their clutches. To my right, a red bird's beak unhinged longer than any snake could and swallowed a smaller bird whole. Even the very ground seemed to be altered, as it looked to be sloping gently upwards as I walked but my feet disagreed, feeling as though I were walking on a flat surface. I could hear the soft rush of waves on the shore, but I was certain I was deep in the deceptively large island. At that thought, it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was. I hadn't made a trail, I had no way to find the beach again. I checked my phone after I took another picture, and of course, there was no service. The person who made the post had seemed like it was so easy to find their way back out, but was it pure chance? My breath quickened, as did my pace, and I headed forward, eager to find what I was looking for so I could document it and get off that island where danger seemed to lurk in every corner.

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And just like that, there it was. A cylindrical stone structure towered above me, hiding the moonlight as I stepped into its shadow. The shrine. Adrenaline pumped in my veins as I ran to the shrine, its massive hieroglyphs unreadable to me as I hurriedly took my phone out and snapped so many pictures I lost count. I turned on its flashlight and began to search for a seam, one that would indicate a door for me to open. Once again it seemed the surfaces of my surroundings sought to trick me, as the seemingly smooth surface of the shrine cast shadows from my phone flashlight where there shouldn't have been any, and when I ran my hand along it I felt ridges and angles that my eyes contradicted. I kept searching, and felt like I'd walked a mile just feeling the surface of the wide shrine when a noise right behind me made me jump. I whirled around, swinging my fist at whatever had managed to creep up on me.

Nothing was there. I looked all around and I saw nothing. Another noise behind me, and it played out again. I shuddered and kept searching, eager to get inside the shrine and escape whatever trickery this land was playing on my mind. At last I found a seam, so thin it was nearly invisible save for the slightest shadow cast by the flashlight, but when I ran my hand over it nothing was there. I tried again, still nothing. Thoroughly unnerved, I began waving my hand wildly on the surface of the wall, the laws of reality toying with me. Though to my eyes it was still smooth, unblemished stone, my hand caught on a straight crack. Working my fingernails into what I felt, I almost recoiled when it seemed that my fingernails sank into smooth stone with no trace left behind, but I persisted, finding a good fingernail-hold and yanking.

The seam about a foot to my left swung open a section of wall to reveal the inside, lit with ethereal orbs that hung in the air, emitting a gentle light not unlike the moon. I went to go into it, but smacked into an invisible wall of what I quickly realized must have been solid stone. I shifted about a foot to my right and tried again, passing through the stone as if it were but air and entering the shrine. I looked back just in time to see the door, now directly behind me, swing shut. I felt the shock of the stone sliding home, but I heard nothing. Quickly, I started recording a video as I walked forward, looking around the shrine.

It was tall, but it was not nearly as wide as what the outside of it hinted at, with a small circle of land holding a smaller pool of water. The orbs of light moved about as if through a will of their own, casting dancing shades of light here or there when the light of several orbs converged, making it nearly impossible to keep track of the hieroglyphs carved into the walls. With nothing better to look at, I knelt at the pool of water, shining my light down into it.

The water erupted violently, splashing me as I shrieked. I scrambled back as a dark shape rose out of it, uniformly black in a way nothing natural or even man-made could ever hope to be and towering above me. It looked less like a form than a shadow, and yet when it expanded I recognized it for what it was: a massive hand. My breath caught in my throat, and I turned and ran, banging on the stone in the hopes the door would open before the hand would reach me. A slab cracked open, and I shoved at it with all my strength, swinging it open. That night, however, Fate had a different plan than I.

The hand grabbed hold of me, crushing my body in its seven fingers, and it pulled me back and into the water. I saw a massive cave, filled with light and dotted intermittently with the orbs of light, before I followed the hand clutching me and my eyes traveled along its arm. The water beneath the surface was perfectly clear, and my eyes hadn't stung, yet I wish it had been filled with salt and brine, that it had scarred my eyes and left them dead and rotting, for that would have been a kinder fate than to see the infernal creature below. It brought me to its bulbous head, pitted all over with dark holes, and then those holes had eyes. So many eyes, all glittering with an alien emotion, and I knew this wasn't malice. No, I wasn't enough to it for malice. This was… amusement. And in those amused eyes, I saw the Truth. I saw Creation, I saw the birth of humanity, I saw the terror of the others who had glimpsed this damnable thing, I saw the Others that roamed the cosmos, and I writhed, wanting nothing more than to look away but unable to break the profane gaze that warped my mind and set my head shuddering uncontrollably with the visions it shoved into my brain. As if in response, the bony hand crushed down on me, and all went black. Then, the world returned. I was laying at the precipice of the pool, my head hanging down and grazing the surface, and then I ran.

I scrambled to my feet and sprinted away from the fiend and its unholy revelations, yet the phantom of its bony grip still clutched my body, and its multitude of eyes remained burned into my vision as I sprinted through the forest, banging into trees and rocks that shouldn't have been there and passing through things that should have been there. Acute angles behaved as if they were obtuse and vice versa. When I chanced upon the mud beach and the rippling path of moonlight I redoubled my efforts, sprinting along the light as I fled the abomination whose vision I could feel following me, though as I glanced back there was nothing, not even the island.

When I reached the beach I finally stopped, collapsing on the damp sand as my lungs violently protested at what I'd put them through. As I lay gasping, I felt the corner of my phone dig into my stomach. My phone, which I had not stopped recording with. I lurched back, away from my phone that hid a glimpse of that thing. But then, doubts crept into my mind. How much of what I experienced was real? Was it all some sort of fever dream? With trembling fingers, I stopped the recording and opened the files app, going to the video and opening it. I skipped around a bit and hit play.

It was there. Its eyes again glaring at me, and I felt my mind responding. Instead of insights, though, I felt a voice. Come back. It was as if one of my thoughts had gone rogue and decided to speak directly to me. I screamed and cast the phone into the water, humanity's advancement be damned. I ran to my car and drove home, shaking so violently I almost hit several other cars.

And this brings me to where I am now: huddled in my bed, typing away at my laptop to warn you as I only barely control my shivering enough to type at all. I can hardly even drink a glass of water without feeling as though I'm connected to that profane… creature? No, not a mere creature. A cosmic God, and a lesser one at that, if the visions it showed me were accurate, and a God nobody should ever see. Humanity, in its unending inquisitiveness, has always wondered how to learn more, but not whether it should. As I finish this post, I leave you with a warning: don't look for it. If something seems a bit too strange, flee. Don't try to understand. Don't investigate. Don't look for what you're not ready to see, for it may drive you mad. Please, dear reader, don't make my mistake.

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