“Oh my God!!! Hurry the f**k up Eric, it’s coming!!”
“Dude!! Don’t stress me!! I know, just give me a sec!!”
“Oh God Eric… it’s coming! It’s outside!!!!! It’s gonna break the door… ERIC IT’S HERE.”
***
I wish we never tampered with that cursed device… No! I wish we never found it in the first place…
Ironically… I wish I could go back in time and fix all this… But going back in time was what started this nightmare in the first place.
Last year during a vacation, we were a group of friends. Me, Eric, John, Elizabeth, Cindy, Madeleine. Oh yeah… and Phillip.
We were celebrating our summer together to mark the end of education, we had all finished college, and my old man always said: either you go big or you don’t go at all.
Now I wish we’d settle with a party instead, getting drunk at some random dudes home in some suburban s**t hole.
However, that’s not the point, the point is what we stumbled across during our stay, we were 3 days in and we were enjoying our stay.
Tropical weather, exotic drinks and food, cheap alcohol and a nice hotel, the usual when you are having a blast during a vacation.
We were at this local restaurant we had found two days prior. Just finished up our food, we were chatting, drinking beer and Eric was just about to finish his joke.
“…and then when he came back, they…”
“Guys! Look at this!” Cindy said, coming back from the toilet, slightly intoxicated from alcohol holding a brochure.
“Diving lessons.”
“We are so doing this tomorrow,” Phillip said.
“God dammit Cindy… You ruined my joke… Right before the punchline.”
“I am so sorry baby, how can I ever live with myself again?” Cindy said sarcastically.
Cindy and Eric’s been dating for two months now, I give them 6 months at best. Eric’s… shall we say, love for women is too strong and Cindy… well Cindy, if Cindy were a movie character, she’d be portrayed by Paris Hilton. Enough said.
Anyway, back to the story.
“I’m in,” John and Elizabeth said in unison.
“Do what you like guys, but me and Madeleine is going shopping tomorrow.”
Or… Madeleine is going shopping tomorrow. I’m casual damage. If you know what I mean.”
“Dude we all know that Madeleine is going shopping tomorrow and you don’t have any say. Madeleine can shop whenever she wants any other time, isn’t that right Madeleine?”
Eric boldly said while making a mocking face to go with that mocking tone leaning towards Madeline like a smug little s**t that he were.
“Am I the only one that gets these urges to slap Eric in the face, with a bottle from time to time?”
“Absolutely normal,” John said.
“Alright I’ll go, just move your smug a*s face outta my space you dumbwit,” Madeleine responded slightly annoyed.
“Yes!” Eric said, celebrating with a victory pump.
The day after we woke up and ate breakfast together, everyone was ready and some of us more hyped than others.
We met up at the docks awaiting our diving instructor.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Of course I am Eric, I know how to read a brochure, for a fact, I know how to read in general,” Cindy said in a way that made it sound like she were slightly retarded.
“Hello friends!”
Everyone turned.
“I am instructor Jorge.”
I’m not gonna go in much detail about Jorge, as he isn’t too relevant to the story. Just very f*****g strange… I mean, come one, who the f**k introduces themselves like that? ‘Hello friends, I am Jorge.’ Pft… I remember how stupid it all was… Jorge… Heh.
Eric at least had his fair share of fun on Jorge’s expense, trying to ‘subtly’ make fun of him.
Jorge didn’t seem to mind or care at all, just kept on talking and showing us how the gear works and kept on talking and instructing, while Eric made talking motions with his hand in unison with Jorge’s talking.
“Everyone got that?” Jorge said.
“Alright let’s do this,” Eric said.
“You wait, I help you last,” Jorge said.
Everyone laughed.
Madeline went first, then Elizabeth and Cindy.
When we were all dressed up in our gear and Jorge went over to make sure everything was in order, he turned back to Eric and said.
“I am sorry, but I must go back and get another tank, this one is no good senõr.”
“Yeah sure dude,” Eric said laid back as ever.
“Dude, he is planning on drowning you,” John said when Jorge had left.
“Shut up John, not funny!”
Didn’t take long before Jorge returned with another tank, it looked slightly worn out, older…
Eric looked a bit worried and if I didn’t know better, he looked as if he had second thoughts about this whole deal.
“OK, you ready?” Jorge said with a smile.
“Y… yeah,” Eric said, looking at the tank.
We got our gear on and started diving, and it was amazing. You’ve probably seen a lot of it on the TV, people filming underwater and stuff like that, it can’t even compare. Just amazing, that’s all I can say.
Halfway in, I remember being slightly separated from the rest of the gang and Jorge. While exploring some corals, I saw Eric started to make weird hand gestures towards me, I tried making out what he was trying to signal. When it went up, for me that he wasn’t getting any air, he started look like he were having a stroke in slow motion. That’s when I swam over to him and grabbed him by the arm. I thought about bringing him to the surface but we were too deep. That’s when I spotted a cave entrance, I crossed my fingers and hoped that it led to cave with at least a dry spot. We managed to pull through and when we got up Eric removed his head gear, he was grasping for air, it sounded like he was possessed by a demon or something. We laid down couple of minutes and after a while Eric broke the silence.
“F*****g Jorge! I knew there was something off about that guy!! I knew it!!”
“Dude’s f*****g warped in the head, look at this tank. It’s empty.”
“You don’t say… At least John gets to say called it, after this is over.”
We both chuckled a little before getting up on our feet. We looked around and it was dark, good thing these flashlights strong and effective in these dark environments.
“What a cozy little place,” Eric said.
“Yeah I’m just gonna go look over here,” I said, while walking over to a part of the cave not illuminated by our lights. That’s when I found it… and this whole ordeal and nightmare was set in motion.
The remains of someone sitting upwards, leaning towards the Rocky walls with a strange device in his hands.
I could hear myself gasp while flinching.
“What’s up?” Eric said while making his way over.
“Dude, holy s**t!!”
I crouched down inspecting his diving gear.
“It’s old… He’s probably been here for a while… Look at the gear, looks ancient.”
After inspecting the gear it was the device in his hands that caught my attention. I reached out for it while imagining the skeletal remains spontaneously coming back to life and grabbing my arm with his other arm. Instead what happened was, its arm falling off as it didn’t want to let go of the device. The crack resonated through the cave.
“Eew,” Eric said as he stood there observing me.
“Looks like an old pocket watch, what do you think it’s worth?”
“Let me see,” Eric said while grabbing it greedily, looking up and down trying to figure out how to open it.
“Looks like it could have belong to f*****g Jesus lol. I know for sure this isn’t something from the last two or three centuries, it looks like some really old a*s device, could be worth a fortune. Could be something from ancient Greek or something.”
“Alright, let’s head back and inspect it further once we get back to the hotel,” I said.
“Yeah and remind me to shove this tank up Jorge’s a*s once I get a hold of him,” Eric uttered.
I gave Eric one of my tanks and installed it into place as Jorge had instructed earlier. Then we head for the mainland were we were met with the rest of the gang, all worried sick.
“Oh thank God!! We were just about to call in the coast guard,” Madeleine said while embracing me.
“Baby!! Are you okay?? Are you hurt?? I’m never letting you out of my sight again!” Cindy weeped fanatically.
“Where’s Jorge?” Eric said.
“He said he had protocols to attend to once you guys went missing and disappeared saying he’d come back as soon as possible,” John explained.
“Well yeah he ain’t coming back,” Eric said, “let’s go grab dinner and I’ll explain everything at the table.”
***
“Hahaha holy hell, you kidding right?? He actually did that?” John laughed.
“Dude do you think I’m just making this up? Of course he f*****g did that, I almost died.”
After a good meal and a couple glasses of wine, we kinda let ourselves forget all about today’s events as we went back to laughing, telling jokes while having a good time.
After telling them about that strange device I found, it went around the table for everyone to inspect.
“What do you think it is,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t know but whatever it is I’m going to crack it open one way or another,” I uttered.
“Hang on!” Phillip started twisting and turning it in different ways as it made cracking sounds and he made a final twist.
It slowly flew open, we all observed in awe. Inside was a set of gears unlike anything I’ve ever seen, you might imagine the inside of a clock, but this was something else. This was some complex stuff impossible to comprehend, the amount of gears and small gears the size of sugar-corn to some others in regular sizes, they were all turning the same way, to the right.
“Let me see, give it back,” I demanded.
After not getting any wiser on the matter we all figured we’ll put it aside for now and just enjoy our vacation. It’s not until a couple days more we were to meet the horrors that came along with it and the aftermath of exploiting its power.
To be continued…
