The Blue Hole

Visiting the Blue Hole was a rite of passage for kids in our town. It was in the woods, but only about a five minute walk from some apartments. So it had mystery to it, but really, help was just a quick dash away. We weren't supposed to go there, and most kids didn’t actually swim in it. But if you dipped a toe in or drank a handful of the clear water, it meant you were brave. It was stupid, and dangerous. But that’s what kids do.

As I kid I went to hear the scary stories. Many of the legends were about mermaids. Kids said that if you drowned in the hole, you would become a mermaid and live again in the underground rivers and caves. Darker tales told of drowned children who came back as horrible sea beasts. They would pull other kids under to keep them company in their watery graves.

The more credible stories were that thrill seekers would come to our town to explore the Blue Hole. One close friend even swore that they’d gone once at night, and seen someone coming out of the hole in scuba gear.

But the scariest story of all was a true one. Back in the day, the Blue Hole had been a popular swimming destination. It really was pretty in the daylight, and most days, it was calm.

But one day, back in the 80’s, it wasn't so calm. See, Blue Holes aren’t just lakes or ponds, they’re caves that have flooded. Ours connects to an underground river that eventually feeds into the great lakes. So when there’s been heavy rain, the underground river swells and pulls and creates currents that you can’t see on the surface. And back in 1985 a little girl by the name of Sandy Roberston was swimming with her friends when the current pulled her under. She’d been wearing a bright pink swimsuit, and the water was so clear, but in the seconds it took her friends to dive down, she was out of sight.

There was talk of sending a dive team in of course, but if the water was powerful enough to pull someone into the river from the surface, there was no way it would be safe to send anyone in for body recovery.

That's the same thing the police told me when my baby brother Eddie vanished, almost fifteen years ago now. He’d been just ten years old, and he’d told me that he thought he was old enough to go visit the Blue Hole. He said he wanted to go see if he could spot mermaids. I didn't tell our parents, I assumed he would go with friends. Well apparently he didn’t, and no one else knew what he’d been planning. The police listened to my story, but they seemed to think it was more likely he’d been abducted on the way there.

And now, decades since Sandy vanished, and with Eddie still missing, that's the same story the police have given in the wake of another disappearance.

Her name was Alice Jensen. She was twelve and her friends actually spoke with the media to tell them that she’d been visiting the Blue Hole. Her friends and family were trying to pressure the police into hiring a dive team, but they were still giving the answer that it was too dangerous.

When I got the news that another child had gone missing, I started to think about finally taking matters into my own hands. I live by the ocean now. I’ve got all the equipment, and I’m certified for cave diving. The local cops weren’t going to do anything, so I got a plane ticket, and went home.

When I arrived I had no desire to revisit any part of town. Eddie’s disappearance had soured my memories of the place. I stayed in my hotel until the sun went down.

I didn’t start to doubt myself until I was standing in front of the Blue Hole with all my gear on. I tried to reassure myself, we’d seen divers as kids, so clearly some people had decided it was safe. But who’s to say there weren’t other divers long dead down there, others who hadn't told anyone where they were going?

But then I remembered seeing Alice’s mother on the news. She was still wondering if Alice could be alive, and if she was, what that meant. And I knew that if I could spare them those years of not knowing, I would do anything. And maybe in that hole I would finally find answers of my own.

And with that thought, I stepped over the edge, and fell in. When I turned on my flashlight I swam straight down.

I quickly came to a bend in the cave. Above me, I noticed stalactites, but there was plenty of water below to avoid the sharp peaks. Then the passage narrowed, and though I’m thoroughly devoid of any claustrophobia, I worried about the sharp rocks catching on my breathing equipment.

A sudden current pulled me towards the spikes, and I had to grab hold of one to keep steady. I let go, washing down to the next one. But it quickly got so strong that I was worried I’d lose my grip, and then all at once the current took me. I tried to fight it, to look for something to grab, but found only smooth stone beneath me, the stalactites suddenly out of reach above.

I thought about how far this river went, and imagined my corpse emerging somewhere in the great lakes. Then, mercifully, the current slowed, but not enough that I could swim against it.

It was dark until it wasn’t. Only then did I start to feel truly afraid. There should not be light down here. The bend turned again and the current slowed to a crawl. And above me the light grew brighter over what looked like an air pocket.

As I broke the water’s surface I noticed several things all at once. I was at the edge of a shore, where the cave floor sloped above the water. There were lights down here, high powered fluorescent ones, like you would take diving. And on the walls there were drawings and writings covering nearly every square inch of the surface.

I took off my mask, and breathed in cautiously. The air tasted fine.

I hauled myself up to shore. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I began to take in the mural on the walls. There were drawings, both crude and detailed. And there were etchings. One that was particularly weathered caught my eye, and made my already nervous heartbeat skyrocket.

It read: EDDIE WAS HERE

I fell to my knees, and doubled over. He’d been so close. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I got up, and forced myself to look at the rest of the carvings, to try and understand what had happened down here, what Eddie’s final days had been like. But it didn’t make sense. There were a few other crude carvings, but most of what was on the wall was in paint, or what looked like chalk.

There were drawings of mermaids, with yellow hair and purple bikini tops. There was a drawing of two small stick figures with two big stick figures. The little ones had black hair, the mother was blonde. I think it was our family.

As I moved along the cave wall the drawings became inexplicably more complex, there were houses with detailed roofs and windows. There were trees, there was a dog that bore a resemblance to our childhood pup Lucky. And over and over again, drawn in various layers of intricacy and crudeness, was what looked like a monstrous merman, with long black fins, and one big glassy eye.

I came to a sharp bend in the cave, and felt my feet start to resist me. It looked darker past the curve, and there was a very real chance I was going to find whatever remained of Eddie.

And as I turned the corner, I heard a high pitched scream. I thought for a second it was me, but then my brain processed what my eyes were seeing.

It was Alice! She was alive.

She was in a dark offshoot of the cave, the walls behind her were plastered with more drawings, and there were old weathered crates behind her. Someone must have used this place for something in the past, but I didn’t have time to process that now.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” I told her, holding my hands up. “I’m here to help you.”

And she stopped screaming. Her eyes seemed to register that I was not something to fear. I vaguely noticed that there were food wrappers at her feet.

“Who are you?” she asked, but then quickly decided it didn’t matter “you have to get me out of here.”

“My name is Liam, I'll help you out.” I gestured her over “Come on.”

She jumped up. “Okay, we need to go, before he gets back.”

The words chilled me, and suddenly, everything made a truly terrible kind of sense.

“What do you mean, he? Who is he?” I asked but already my brain was putting together the pieces. There was food down here, there were crates down here.

Because someone was bringing supplies down.

And the drawings and the carvings, they got better, and more detailed. Because Eddie had gotten older.

“The guy who brought me here, come on!” She was grabbing me now and I realized with horror that I couldn’t get her out of here, not on my own.

And fuck, what a secure prison this was. Better than a basement, better than a shed, better than a shack in the woods. You could hold your breath to get in, but to get out, to fight that current without equipment, would be impossible.

“I don’t know if I can even get out of here, the current is too strong.” I told her, but I was more distressed by the sudden realization that those drawings and those carvings, they looked fresh.

“Is there anyone else down here? A boy, no, a man, he’s got a birthmark on his foot, it looks like a leaf, have you seen him?”

She took a second to process this “No, there’s nobody else down here, it’s just me and….”

“And what?”

“There’s no one else down here... alive.” She pointed to the path that led further into the cave. “He keeps the bodies,” she started to cry.

I had to know for sure, I had to see, “Wait here for just one second.” I walked out to the hallway, and started shining my light into the other room. But I stopped when I saw a skeletal leg, and a pink swimsuit, stretched out over a frame that was much older than the wearer had been when they arrived.

Sandy.

And suddenly I didn’t need to see Eddie’s body. I didn’t need to know how old he’d become down here.

Alice interrupted my dark thoughts. “He has a way out. He’s got a rope that he grabs onto to get through the current.” She grabbed me, pulling me out of my shock, but we both stopped at the sounds of sloshing in the water.

I pointed my light towards the sounds. “Alice,” I said, feigning calm “go wait in the room you were in. I’ll handle this.”

She obeyed, and I grabbed a sharp rock, as the monster who had stolen my brother rose from the deep.

I jumped at him before he could get out of the water, landing directly on him and knocking us both into the shallows. I stabbed at his neck as he tried to wrap his hands around mine. I scraped him up but the rock was dull, and his wetsuit was thick. Then he hit me, I hit him back, and I grabbed him, and pushed him under. He didn’t put up much of a fight. Or really any fight, perhaps I’d hit him harder than I thought.

I thought about letting up, I did. But I couldn’t get Alice out of here on my own. If I didn’t hold him under, if I didn’t kill him, then I would have to leave her alone with him. Really, it was her, or it was him.

And he’d been the one to take Eddie, to keep him down here for god only knows how long and for god only knows what purpose. So I held him under until the kicking stopped, until the bubbles stopped, and for longer after that just to be safe.

And then I went to go get Alice. I explained to her that I couldn’t safely get her out of here on my own. I’d need to get help and bring her a tank and a wetsuit, and she understood.

I started putting on my gear but found I’d lost a flipper in the fight. I didn’t relish the idea of taking a dead man’s equipment, but I didn’t have much choice.

His body had started drifting downstream, but was caught on a low hanging stalactite. I figured I should probably drag it to shore so the police would be able to identify him. As I hauled the man up, I wondered why he’d waited so long to grab another victim. Fifteen years was a long time to go for that type of person, at least from what I understood.

I pulled off his flipper, and my heart stopped.

On the top of his foot was a birthmark, one that looked distinctly like a leaf.

“No,” I muttered, “No, that’s not possible.” Alice looked over, concerned as I stumbled to the alcove that the bodies were in. Eddie would be there, wouldn’t he? I never thought I would hope to see my brother's corpse.

I shined the light in, and there was no Eddie. There was Sandy, a grown woman’s skeleton wearing the rags of the swimsuit she’d gotten lost in. There was another girl, she was smaller, wearing a purple bikini. And there was the fresh body of a grown man, bloated but still recognizable, and much, much older than Eddie would have been. And most disturbing of all, he was wearing the long fleece undersuit that you would wear for cold water diving. The kind you would wear under a wetsuit.

I ran out and grabbed Alice, startling her “Alice! Who brought you down here? Did you see his face?”

“Yes... I did.” She seemed unsure of my sudden instability.

I let go of her and asked “Was he young, or old Alice?”

“He was an adult.”

“No I mean, was he my age or was he really old, like wrinkly old?”

“He was your age.” She answered “And he had black hair like you.”

Fuck. I stopped asking questions then, and went over to take off the dead man’s mask. But I couldn’t do it.

“Did he… Did he hurt you?”

“No.” She said “I mean not yet, but you saw those people, he was going to kill me!”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Yeah. He said he brought me down here because he wanted a friend. He told me he was going to bring me paint from the surface, so I could paint on the walls too. But he went on and on about how he was afraid of the surface. He kept calling it that, ‘the surface’. It was weird.”

I was already flipping him over as she talked, and I started chest compressions. I had to take off his mask to give him mouth to mouth, but I tried not to look at his face. And really it was hard to see through my tears.

I don’t know how long I tried, but it was too late.

It took a day and half to get enough qualified people and equipment to go get Alice.

The cause of death for my brother was drowning. The old man had died of a heart attack, and between the two of them, they’d taken all of their secrets with them.

I had so many questions. I think Eddie must have decided to put on the old man's wetsuit after he died. I don’t know if he’d ever used it before, or ever gone to the surface. Had he been too afraid to finally escape?

I keep going back and forth and wondering if he’d meant to hurt that little girl. Had he become a monster like the one who imprisoned him? Or perhaps he’d donned the wetsuit and reached out for the first person he saw to give him some small level of comfort in that place. Maybe he just wanted a friend, like Alice had said. I don't know which possibility is worse.

I always thought I would have closure if Eddie’s body was ever found, and that all of those nights staying up, imagining the worst, would end. But now that he’s dead, now that I’ve killed him, I sleep so much worse than I used to.