The Eyes at the Bottom of the Drop Off

The darkness of shadows allows for the imagination to go wild. The line between wild imagination and terrifying hallucination, however, is thin and dangerous.

 

 

 

 

The Eyes at the Bottom of the Drop Off

 

 

 

 

The first day I saw it was May 13^th, 1998.

I don’t really know how to start this, and I definitely don’t know how to explain it, but I can tell you that much at least: it was May 13^th, 1998.

I was an only child, born and raised in Brainerd, Minnesota by two loving but dramatically different parents. My mother, an English teacher at the local high school, was born Canadian. She lived and breathed the cold, reveling in conifers, warm fires, and the icy aridity of the North. My father, on the other hand, was raised in Southern Florida. The ocean was his only brother, and it lead him to become a Marine Biology professor at a university not too far from our home in Brainerd. Despite their inherent differences, however, my parents made it work. The only time I ever saw them fight was when my father was offered a stipend to spend six weeks in Guna Yala, Panama studying the surrounding coral reefs. After two weeks of harsh words, cold shoulders, and tears, however, my mother gave in  

So, in the spring of ’98 our little family of three headed off, trading out the just-now-thawing land of the Northern Midwest for white-sand beaches of the Southern Caribbean. As a thirteen-year-old boy who had never set eyes on the expanse of the ocean, I was almost as ecstatic as my father.

We got settled into a tiny house on a tiny island, and we quickly grew accustomed to a consistent and regular routine. My father disappeared into the mysterious confines of the oceanic waters before sunrise, and he didn’t return until after dinner. My mother spent her days inside, her eyes either focused on a book or at the window, staring with a confusing concoction of emotions that to this day cannot be explained. As for myself, I spent my days exploring the enigmatic and tantalizing ocean depths little by little. I started off with the shore, tentatively poking a toe in as a test, and day by day I edged deeper. I investigated the entire area encircling our island, scouring through sea grass beds and coral reefs, quickly coming to understand the affinity my father had for this place. Three weeks into our stay at Guna Yala I reached a depth at which my eyes couldn’t quite make out the sea floor anymore.

And that is where my story begins.

I had been floating complacently, staring through my goggles as through I were staring into some entirely foreign universe. As I watched the edge of the drop off creep near, I began to feel the water cool dramatically around me, and I was suddenly encircled in an icy chamber of dark, blue nothingness. An intense shiver ricocheted down my spine, but it was caused by something other than the unexpected cold.

I held my breath for no particular reason, and I was engulfed in a world that was completely alien and utterly terrifying. Hovering above a cavern of darkness, I watched as the rays of sunlight penetrated the water and were consumed by some force I had never truly encountered before- a force that was strong enough to devour light.

The adrenaline was rushing at this point with such ferocity that I was in a strange state between euphoria and pure horror. Several times I found myself gasping for air simply because I was too entranced to remember to breathe.

That was when I saw it.

For a split second I was too petrified to move, but as I watched it near me I felt everything elapse in a frantic panic.

I flailed my arms about as I gasped and gulped for air, my mask filling with water as my snorkel fell helplessly from my mouth. The world around me had turned into nothing more than an image of salty bubbles, and all I recall is trying my hardest to swim back to shore as fast as I could.

I don’t remember exactly how I found my way back to dry land, all I know is that it felt like it took an eternity. I sat down on the sand, threw my mask off, and stared out at the abyss of blue as I tried to comprehend what exactly I had just seen.

The whole walk back to my house I spent trying to figure out how to put my experience into words.

And Dad is out there, I thought solemnly. He’s out there all alone. What if he sees that thing? What if it takes him away?

When I got to my house I just stood in the front doorway and stared at my mother for a long while. She sat in an armchair with a worn copy of Pride and Prejudice in her hands, and it took her a moment before she even noticed I was there. When she did, though, she looked at me with wide eyes, as if she already knew what I was going to say.

“What happened?” She asked, throwing her book on the end table and rushing towards me.

I opened my mouth to reply, but I still hadn’t found the words. My mother grabbed me by the shoulder and the back of the neck, cradling and interrogating me with the same intensely confused stare that she had had for the past three weeks. All I could do in response, though, was maintain that petrified gaze.

“M-Mom,” I finally stuttered as the image of the beast became clear to me. I began to see it- feel it. I continued to fumble for words. “I saw something. In the water. It was… It was big.”

My mother let out a sigh and hung her head, acting as if she were relieved.

But no, she can’t be relieved, I thought. If I can just explain it to her she’ll be the opposite of relieved. She’ll be horrified. Even more horrified than when I first walked in the door.

She patted me gently on the shoulder and smiled. “Oh, honey, it was probably just a big fish. You really had me scared there for a second. You came in looking paler than the moon and you had me worried that somebody died or something.”

I shook my head. “No, mom, you don’t understand. It was really big. And it had tentacles and suction cups as big as my head and teeth and-”

The eye.

My mother leaned over and grabbed me comfortingly by my arms. “Listen, sweetie, I promise you that it was nothing. It sounds like you just saw an octopus. They’re more scared of you than you are of them, okay? It’s alright.”

With that she was off. In a matter of seconds, we had turned back time; my mother was sitting with that same book in her hands and I was left in the doorway, still petrified and still confused, but this time I was ignored.

Soon after that encounter I began telling myself that I hadn’t really seen what I thought I saw. I kept the images from my mind, I never brought it up again, and whenever my father asked me how I was liking the ocean I continued to tell him how much I loved it.

My mother must have noticed that I was no longer going on my daily snorkeling adventures, however, because a week after the first sighting of the beast I found myself being dragged out to the ocean, my father insisting that “you’ll never get over it if you don’t realize that it was a silly and unnecessary fear to begin with.”

I was shivering that day. It was 85 degrees outside and I was filled with a cold that could not be explained. My parents both had a hand on me, and I felt as though I was being led into the labyrinth of the minotaur by the two people in the world who were supposed to do all they could to protect me.

This is it, I thought, the first touch of the ocean against my toes sending an uneasy tremble up my legs. This is the end of us.

A large part of me wanted to do nothing more than rip free from the grasps of my parents, sprint back to the confines of dry land, and call in for the soonest flight back to the intercontinental United States.

But, instead I followed them into the waters, allowing the naïve part of me that believed parents were always right take over. I put the mask over my face, stuffed the snorkel in my mouth, and followed the smiling and encouraging face of my father.

At first it was fine, and I was sure that what I had seen a week prior was nothing more than a strange hallucination.

It must have been the sun. You were just dehydrated is all. I’ve heard of things like that. It happens.

Corals and seagrasses danced by, filled with fish and crabs that darted away as we loomed overhead. Just when I was beginning to feel at ease once again, I saw it; emerging in the distance like a daunting shadow was the drop off.

I stopped where I swam and just stared, terrified of seeing the eye of the beast again but unwilling to look away. My parents continued for a way before they realized that I was no longer in tow.  

My father waved his arm for me to come forth, the muffled words “come on” spewing out of his snorkel. I felt my body being compelled forward into the darkness, but when I looked at my mother and saw that same, confusing gaze, I stopped once more.  

And that was when I saw it again.

There was no moment of petrified immobility this time, though. I pointed and I shouted, my body a floundering mass of fear and my voice coming out of my snorkel as a gurgled scream.

The beast bubbled out of the darkness in a fit of dark, black tentacles. Its appendages were easily as thick as an SUV, with suction cups large enough to draw the life right out of you. It moved slowly enough to tantalize with its gruesome grace, but fast enough that it could get you before you even saw it coming.

My parents looked, but they didn’t respond. Whilst I flailed in my spot, they simply peered directly down at the beast, and then looked back at me with confused and furrowed brows.

“Look!” I shouted frantically through my snorkel, resisting the urge to flee as the beast grew closer.

They looked again, but they responded with the same, confused frown.

See it quickly, I begged, before I see the eye again.

The tentacles were drawing nearer now, and I was beginning to become fully aware of its power. As the tips of its appendages flicked around in the water less than five feet from my parents, I could almost see it grabbing them by the ankles and yanking them down into its lair in one fluid, sweeping motion.

My father raised his head out of the water and spit out his snorkel. “Kirk,” he stated firmly. “There is absolutely nothing down there. I don’t know what games you’re playing, but I don’t like it.”

The tentacles were now only a foot from my father’s ankles, and he was completely oblivious. I let out a terrified shriek as I saw the suction cups lace around his pant-leg. At this point my mother had also lifted her head out of the water and began to lecture me, but I continued to ignore them both as I was entirely entranced by the freak show below.

The beast was all around me now. Its tentacles splayed out in all directions, completely absorbing the sea floor with a sheet of dense, slimy black. As it drew even closer I was able to make out its body, and I came to the horrible conclusion that it wasn’t any type of octopus at all. Its body was covered in a thick layer of mangy, straw-like hair, and its mouth sported an impressive layer of teeth the size of Grizzly claws.

It’s a monster, I thought gravely as I watched a tentacle wrap around my mother’s leg too. She was wrong. This thing was way more than just an octopus, and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. They were right about everything, and there never seemed to be an obstacle that stood in their way, but this time they had been wrong.

As the creature came even further forward I saw a glint, and I realized that this thing didn’t have one eye, it had eight, all reflecting (devouring?) the rays of sunlight that reached it. They all looked up at me with such intensity that I was overcome with the same sensation that had consumed my being the week before. I began to shake all over, my veins felt as though my blood had turned to sluggish ice, and my head was filled with an inexorable pain that catapulted all the way down to my toes and back again.

While I was trapped in a staring contest with the monster below, I saw the bodies of my parents propel down into the darkness with such speed and grace it took me a second to register what was even going on. Their bodies were bending and contorting at angles that seemed impossible, and through the bubbles of air they expelled, the last thing I saw was the sad glint from my mother’s pleading gaze. It was just me and the beast at that point. From the corner of my eye I saw a thin tentacle edge toward my arm, and it was at that moment that I spun around and thrashed for shore.  

By the time my body hit the sand I was a mess of tears, convulsions, and helpless wails. I threw my snorkel off, crumbled to the ground, and cried into the earth. Whether I was sobbing over the loss of my parents or over what I saw in the depths of those hellish eyes, I am not sure. But what I do know is that all faith I ever had in anything was shattered that afternoon, and I was nothing more than an empty body of a thirteen-year-old boy, questioning the reality and importance of anything in a world that was shrouded in a cloak of ambiguity and fear.

“Kirk, what on earth is the matter?”

The voice of my father shook me from my trance, and I lifted my head up.

“I’m worried about him, Dan,” my mother mumbled, looking at me with those eyes once again and pressing a warm hand to my face. “That wasn’t normal. This isn’t normal.”

My body was still convulsing as I looked back and forth between the two of them. They were there. They were alive. But how? I had watched as the tentacles from perhaps the Devil himself suckered onto the two of them and dragged them into the blackness that masked the ocean floor. I had seen it all with my own two eyes, and I knew it wasn’t a dream, because I had felt it.

“Kirk,” my father grabbed both sides of my face with his hands and looked at me sternly. His face was two inches from mine and I could smell his breath, falling in hot puffs on my nose. “What is going on?”

“You d-didn’t see it?” I stuttered.

Both of them looked at me with furrowed brows.

“See what?” my father asked.

“The thing! The monster at the bottom. It lives in the drop off, dad. I saw it; I swear I did.”

The two of them exchanged a look, and I knew they didn’t believe me. For a minute there was a silence, that agonizing silence that fills the awkward void between parent and child when both are confused on how to correctly approach a situation.

They didn’t see it, I thought. But how? How could they not see it? It was right there. If they didn’t see it that means I’m crazy. It means I’m loony and kooky and all sorts of messed up in the head, and that’s just not okay. Because I’m not. If I was crazy would I have felt what I felt? Would the eyes make me feel the way they did? Crazy people see things, but they don’t feel things, do they?

My head hurt, and all I could do was hang it, listening grimly to the awkward quiet that sat in between my mother and father as they partook in a mental conversation that usually meant one thing �" I was in trouble.

 

 

For years after that I never set foot near the ocean again. I spent the rest of our weeks in Panama firmly trapped indoors, sitting near my mother’s side with a book of my own in my hands.

My parents never tried to talk to me about that day, and I was happy to never bring it up again. If it hadn’t been for the continuous and extreme oceanic nightmares every night, I would have been completely happy to never think about it again.

We returned to Minnesota and everything went back to normal. I lived the rest of my young life as far inland as I could be, and pretty soon the image of that strange, demon creature was no longer part of my concern. When I was 18 I graduated high school and started college at Gustavus University for Psychology. When I was 22 I graduated on honor roll, and when I was 24 I married a beautiful woman named Nora. We moved to Duluth, Minnesota together where I got a job as a child psychiatrist at a local ward, and our lives were smooth from there. In fact, for seven years following that, the only time that the octopus-monster entered my mind was when my father died on a boating excursion in July of 2013. But even that was just a hiccup.

Six months ago, however, the nightmare of my youth reared its ugly head once more.

I had begrudgingly gone to the Bahamas for the bachelor party of one of my best friends. A group of nine of us had gone along, and we rented a private yacht for five days. I refused to get in the water, and I refused to tell them why, but on the afternoon of day five, the tempting grips of beer and whisky were strong enough to convince me otherwise.

We weren’t doing anything too strenuous, and we never ventured far from the yacht. It was just nine of us guys, drunkenly floating around, holding our beers above the tides as best we could while bullshitting about past stories. The immobilizing fear I had felt after first falling into the water didn’t take long to dissipate, and pretty soon I was laughing carelessly along with the rest of them.  It felt normal again. It felt right.

About two hours in, though, I began to feel something. I can’t explain it, and I’m not sure I ever will be able to, but it was a feeling like nothing else I had had since I was thirteen years old. A daunting terror (knowing?) began to make my hands shake, and the Corona in my right hand plopped into the waves and began to sink to the bottom.

“Man,” Andrew exclaimed with a drunken sigh. “What the hell did you do that for? That thing was almost full.”

But I barely heard him. He was miles away. They all were miles away. I was alone with the ocean, just as I had been alone with the ocean 19 years prior. All I could hear was the unnerving lapping of waves, and an incessant, high-pitched ringing that was beginning to give me a headache.

It’s down there.

I looked around for the yacht, but I couldn’t see anything. Everything was beginning to go black. I spun around and around, emitting pathetic wheezes as I attempted to shout for help. I was having a heart-attack or a stroke or a �"

It’s back. Look.

I can’t explain what possessed me. Here I was, my fear of the ocean drowning my ability to remain calm, forcing me to writhe like a man under attack, and suddenly my head went down into the water. Everything had been black up above, but it all became clear again once I put my body under.

I know how crazy this sounds, but the salt didn’t hurt my eyes. They felt as a neglected flower must after being forced to go weeks without water. I looked down at the rocks and sand twenty feet beneath me, and my gaze followed it as it sloped deeper and deeper, leading off into an abyss �"

The drop off.

All was still, and all was silent. The only sound was the soft and rapid pounding of my heart, reverberating throughout the calm waters like a distant and ancient drum. I faintly became aware that I had become a combatant and the dark blue of the Atlantic had become my arena. This moment of quiet was nothing more than the minutes of nervous anticipation the gladiators must have felt when waiting to see the eyes of their adversary.

The Eyes.

And, as if on cue, the long, black tentacles I had nearly been able to forget emerged from the shadows. It wasn’t frightening this time, though. It was something different. Their grace stuck me with a strange sense of admiration, and they folded out like a blooming flower, beckoning me forth into some sort of chasm.

It’s different this time. It knew you were coming. It was waiting for you.

I’ll never truly know why I did, but I edged closer to it. Perhaps it really was nothing more than an innate sense of curiosity, or maybe it was more. Maybe there was some profoundly dark force out there, one that I’ll never fully be able to comprehend. It felt as if there were two hands on me that afternoon. One holding me down, and one pulling me deeper.

I creeped closer with minimal effort, and as the beast was revealed to me I noticed that it looked just as I remembered it. The tentacles all converged into one, giant, hairy body, and the eight eyes of my adversary glistened from the shadowed sea floor. We sat there in that stale-mate, reveling (revolting?) in the feeling of imminent death.

My heart was beginning to race faster than I had ever felt it pound before. My head throbbed with a pain intense enough to blur my vision, my body convulsed in a fit of petrifying cold, and my mind raced with the same thoughts that overwhelm soldiers at the front line of battle; a war was about to begin. 

But, there was no war. As the tentacles swarmed around me and the monster flashed me a victorious grin, my vision began to entirely black out. The last thing I remember seeing was my father, trapped in the vampiric fangs of the beast, one hand outstretched toward the surface as he begged me to come down there. Blood flowed from my open mouth and pooled around the bottom, creating an impenetrable sheet.

I remember shouting back to him, telling him I was coming. I was going to save him.

And that was when it all went black for good.                                      

 

 

I don’t know how many days passed, but I woke up in a hospital. The doctors had told me that when my friends finally pulled me out of the water I was unresponsive and blue as a popsicle. I had been flailing and thrashing like there was something hurting me, but they all attested that there was nothing around. Apparently Jim had tried to grab me and tote me back to the yacht, and I had whipped one hand around and smacked him across the face. He had a bruise on his right cheek to prove it.

I had nearly drowned, they said.

For four days I couldn’t even speak. I danced around in a silent ballad with the doctors and nurses, unable to focus on anything as images of my father’s impaled corpse plagued my mind. I woke up every morning seeing his blood on my hands, and all I could do was sit there. The doctors would come in to give me breakfast, I would look up, and when I looked down it would be gone.

This infiltrating fear shrouded me, shadowing my every move and ultimately determining my every decision. The Eyes are following me, and they’re trying to bring me back to it. Even as I sit in the white, cold confines of Ponderosa Hill Mental Institution, it tries. These walls are thick, but it’s working its way through. I hear it chiseling and chipping away, wearing out the brick little by little. Pretty soon it will be right here in the room with me, and there will be no avoiding it.

I have your father, it tells me. I have your father, and I want you too. You’ve seen what I have down here and you’re curious for more, aren’t you? You haven’t even seen all of the drop off, buddy. Just imagine what lies at the bottom.

There’s something out in the depths of the Atlantic. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not sure than anybody will ever know what it is, but it’s there. They can stick me in a strait jacket and shove as many pills down my throat as they please, but it won’t erase the feeling that still haunts me. As soon as they produce a medicine that fixes feelings, I may be able to be seduced into a tranquil, zombie-like state, but as of right now I will write and I will rave all that I can. Because people need to know. People need to be aware.

Not everyone may see it, but it’s there. It lurks in the land in which man cannot reach, and the further we push the harder it retaliates. Pretty soon somebody else will see it too and my “ranting” won’t seem so crazy. Other people will begin to see the Eyes, and for all we know that may be the beginning of the end.

 

 

Kirk Johnson

April 7, 2017