We had been searching for the blue hole for almost two years when we finally found it. A blue hole is a mysterious land formation, the mouth of the holes suggests the presence of a lake or a pond, but the difference lies in the depths. Blue holes are deep caverns that expand downward into extremely vast systems of caves that no man has yet been able to map out fully. Some stories say the gods lie down there, sleeping and waiting for the day when all the world returns to the ocean, others suggest it’s just flooded magma tubes from times immemorial. My crew and I were on our way to solve that mystery. But some things should remain mysterious.

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We arrived at the Devil’s Hole at dusk on the 5th of February 1770 and set up camp to allow for the first investigation to commence at first light. We were all gathered around the campfire, enjoying one of the casks of whiskey we brought down from Florida, probably a little bit too much, but hey, it was a long time coming. To my left sat the navigator, a burly but short Scottish sailor called William Cochrane, he had been a sailor for most of his life and proudly boasts that he was conceived, born and baptised on the waves. To my right sat my beautiful wife, Juliet, cradling my arm and drifting off into sleep, she was very fiery and insisted on overseeing the transportation of my diving pod, I was very impressed that she could lift that all by herself, damn thing weighed over a tonne. As we were finishing our final mugs of the whiskey, I looked in the distance and noticed that I couldn’t see the way that we approached from, but hey, I couldn’t see my feet either and was looking forward to a night with my 2 wives in our 2 tents so I didn’t think much of it. one thing stayed with me though, I had a strong feeling something was watching me…

The next morning, we woke up with heavy heads and began assembling the diving pod. I noticed that all seemed to be well with the pass we took to get here, however, our tracks had disappeared, maybe it was just a windy valley, heard a lot of those last night. It took most of the morning but eventually we were staring at a large reenforced brass sphere with a spool of wire coming from the top to allow for communication with the rest of the crew. There were portholes on all sides and one on the bottom and a thick hatch on the top. The mechanism was quite simple, I had invented a pressuriser that would allow us to match the pressure of the water we were in by pumping seawater into tanks at the top and letting air out, allowing for a very controlled descent into the depths. Pretty soon we were finally able to close the hatch and soon enough, Juliet, William and I were huddled close together inside, bobbing up and down in the water. William never seemed to have stopped drinking cos his eyes were bloodshot and his breath filled the small cabin. I couldn’t wait for the first descent to begin; we’d be able to pump the fumes out. I noted that just before we started our descent, we felt an extremely large amount of turbulence in the water, I thought it was quite odd that a pool like this had any motion at all so put it down to the current from the undersea tunnels.

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We started by taking inventory of all our food and water and air. We had enough for a 24 hour expedition into the hole, with a small amount for emergencies, that would take us into a small opening at the bottom and hopefully into something undocumented by science. William clumsily started the descent and we dropped an extra 50 meters than we would expect to on the first drop, so Juliet commanded him to switch with her on the small sofa so he could sober up. So far nothing was out of the ordinary, but when we finally reached the opening, we saw something incredible.

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We only had a few makeshift lights on the outside that didn’t really do much, inside we had a large floodlight that we could point outside to make observations, one was bumped by the cave entrance and we watched it fall into oblivion. But, we didn’t really need it. All around us there swam long glowing eels, their jaws silhouetted against the jet-black backdrop. The cave shimmered as bioluminescent plants highlighted walls in a glow of neon blues and greens. Fish of many sizes flitted in and out of crevices in the rock, dragging their beautiful colours into the caverns. We were awe-struck.

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As I was trying to identify some of the fish and was writing down descriptions, Juliet screamed. I hurried over to her and she pointed through the starboard porthole. Outside, inches from the glass floated two ghostly eyes and a gaping smile of glowing vicious teeth. Between the two eyes was what seemed to be a third, but it glowed brighter than the rest of the haunting face. I smiled back at it and pulled a stupid face to try to put Juliet at ease, but she kept pointing, her face growing more and more pale by the second.

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“Honey, this thing is tiny. Creepy sure, but it can’t be bigger than 20cm. We’re safe in here.” I chuckled to Juliet.

“I think we should get the light.”

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We pushed William awake and he lifted to the cushion to haul out the floodlight. We set it up and ignited the wick.

We peered outside. The small creature was quickly swimming away. All we saw was the craggy wall, strangely, no fish seemed to be living in this wall. Then, it moved. The wall unfurled into 8 large limbs, they floated through water like ink. The craggy wall threw up a cloud of dust as a large body shifted. The body slowly changed into a metallic brass colour and 8 glowing amber eyes snapped open and it slowly drifted towards us. There was large shudder through the craft as large suckers smothered the other portholes. Soon we were staring deep into a largest eye. We were paralysed by the stare, so transfixed that none of us dared to try to start the ascent. The thing just kept staring, the expression never changing, It seemed to be learning. William started slowly sobbing, but it soon changed into a strangling laughter. He was convulsing in pained euphoria on the floor when Juliet started mimicking him. Soon, we were all gabbling like idiots, unable to break the gaze of the thing. Slowly, the monster twisted itself and the huge beak of the thing appeared in the porthole. There was a fizzing noise as the floodlight died. I came to a moment of lucidity and dragged myself to the wire, tugging furiously to signal the others to begin dragging us out and started pumping pressurised air into the ballast tanks. William had turned to maddened choking on the floor, his face turning the colour of a grape and a smile twisted on his face. Juliet had passed out and lay there unmoving.

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Soon I could see the soft blue light of day as we exited that damned cave. Juliet was breathing but barely, and William had laughed himself to watery grave, his soul dragged to hell by whatever in god’s name that thing was. Whatever dwelled down there should never be witnessed by human eyes ever again. Leave it be, lest you feel the haunting laugh and deadly smile to a fitting fate.