Bogleech.com's 2019 Horror Write-off:
Return to The Sea
Submitted by Justin Best (email)
Return to The Sea
My name is Carl Richardson, I work as a reporter for a
magazine called Paranormal Pacific one of those weird stuff magazines you see
sometimes at local stores around north California, and southern Oregon.
Most of the time I just do the typical bigfoot, and UFO
sightings but my last assignment is something that I couldn’t possibly have
imagined. but I must let everyone know now before it’s too late.
It started when I went to a small town in north California
called Bayside city. It was one of those towns you would probably drive by on
your way from say San Francisco to Portland. The kind of town that you would
think you’d see the entirety of while driving past it.
I was there because there were stories about a ghost of a
young woman named Jennifer Hanniver. Jennifer was a young woman mysteriously
disappeared sometime in either the late 50’s or early 60’s.
Everyone had theories ranging from her accidentally falling
off a cliff to somebody murdering her and dumping her body in the ocean.
But one thing everyone agreed with was that sometimes at
night they would see her at night standing on the ocean like it was solid land
calling out for people to come join her.
I wasn’t sure if it was true or not but hey a paycheck’s a
paycheck, so I checked into a local hotel called the Mermaid’s Tail and rented
a room from the lady who was working as the concierge.
That night I waited all night at the beach waiting to see if
I could see Hanniver’s ghost, but it was getting to the point where I was more
worried about being mistaken for some creepy weirdo and arrested than seeing
some dead girl.
Just then when I was about to give up, I saw a faint figure
out in the ocean. Sure, enough there was a woman walking on the ocean. I could
barely see or hear her she was so far, but I remember hearing a faint mournful
cry of “Come, please come”.
I found what I was looking for, I zoomed in with my camera,
and took a picture of her. It wasn’t very clear because of how far she was but
it was something.
I emailed the picture to Bruce my editor, and he replied
with an email with a bunch of laughing emojis and the words “Are your insane
man, nobody’s going to buy that. It’s probably just some crazy lady swimming in
the ocean”.
I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I was going to rent a
boat and ride out to where I thought I saw her. That was until I heard a
weather report on the radio: “The national weather service has reported an
unusual fog front forming in the north California, and southern Oregon areas.
The event is expected to last until tommorow morning”.
“Well that’s just peachy” I thought out loud. I’ll have to
try again tomorrow night. I decided to just screw it, and stay in my hotel to
watch tv, and occasionally go out to eat. I thought it was going to be a boring
day until night came.
It started when the fog came in. It looked green, and this
is going to sound crazy, but I swear it was glowing on and off again in some
spots. And that smell I don’t what it was raw sewage, rotten flesh I don’t
know, and frankly I don’t want to.
I wasn’t the only one to notice the fog. A bunch of people
like a cop, some homeless guy, and a bunch of other people came out to see it.
I overheard some guy say, “What do you think that is Bob?” “Beats the hell out
of me Jim” was all the other guy could say.
Eventually somebody got the idea to walk into the fog, and
everyone started hearing the man scream in agony. Another person went in to
rescue them but when they touched the fog. Oh god I don’t thing I’ll ever
forget it.
It looked like they were melting into green slime. and the
slime started oozing towards the fog. I was taking pictures while this was
going on when the police officer ordered everyone to run back inside and close
their doors. and windows.
That night I just looked at the fog on the ground outside my
window thankful to whatever higher power that I had gotten a second story room.
I waited all night by the radio hoping the fog would pass but all the radio
said was “Residents are advised to stay inside until the fog event has passed,
and authorities can find an explanation for the mysterious deaths that have
occurred”.
Eventually I got tired, and fell asleep but as I did I swear
I saw the fog climbing up to my window, and I heard that same fain mournful
“Come, Please come, so lonely” only now it wasn’t just the girl’s voice it
sound like some weird mishmash of other people including I swear some of the
voices from the crowd that saw the fog.
That night I had a dream it seemed normal I got up, I went
to work, I went home. But when I got home, I saw what looked like the girl from
the ocean, she said “Hi honey how was work?” I replied “Oh you know same old
same old” but then I accidentally cut my hand, and when I went to clean the blood,
I realized it wasn’t blood, it was the green slime from the fog.
Before I could scream, I looked at the woman, and she was
melting into green slime, and I looked back at myself, and realized I was
melting into green slime. I ran out the door and realized everyone in town was
melting but acting like nothing was wrong.
I also noticed my legs were melded to the ground, and it
looked like everything not just me, and the townsfolk but seemingly the entire
world was this giant blob like creature.
I woke up screaming my lungs out but when I looked, I was
still in my hotel room, and me, and everything else was normal. But before I
could breathe a sigh of relief a SWAT team busted through my door and took me.
When they removed the bag from my head some G-man looking
guy started asking me some questions. The usual: Who I was, what I did, what I
saw. I told him everything and said, “It doesn’t matter if I tell anyone
they’ll just think I made it up anyway”.
The man thought it over and said “All right you’re free to
go. But we’re confiscating your camera, and pictures, and any other evidence
you have.”
After they let me go, I later found out that a third of the
town had disappeared. The people left over blamed the local power plants, and
chemical companies believing the fog was the result of chemicals being dumped
into the ocean, and an environmentalist group helped the townsfolk launch a
class action lawsuit.
I later did some research of my own, and I found out that at
some point the government sent a satellite called “Iris” to find evidence of
intelligent life in the universe but at some point they believed it fell into
the ocean on the way back, and haven’t found it since.
The reason I brought this up is one of the reasons for the
Iris mission was because some scientists believe that life originated in space
and came to Earth in meteorites.
This is going to sound crazy, but I have a theory of my own
now. We think that when life started out, it was trillions of small things, but
what if it was one big thing. a giant creature made from at least trillions of
the same cell clumped together.
But something happened to it, and it shattered, and its
cells broke off, and mutated into the bacteria that evolved into life on Earth.
And somehow someway that creature found out about Earth, and
us. And now this thing wants to put itself back together again.
Recently my mom, and my sister were on vactation somewhere
in Oregon, and they sent me pictures of rock formations they took.
At first it seemed like nothing, but one picture seemed to
show a weird looking rock formation way back where it was hard to see.