 I've been technical diving for the better part of a decade. Something about the ocean and all its unexplored wonder has always drawn me to the deep. An entire uncharted alien world lurks just beneath us, just waiting to reveal its mysteries to those daring enough to take the plunge. I guess you could say that diving is my passion. It has been my entire adult life. Now I can't even bring myself to go near the deep end of the pool without having a panic attack. It all started when one of my best buddies approached me with the idea to go on a little excursion. Todd had a fairly formidable boat that he carved out a living with by engaging in let's just say less than legal activities. Anyway, some reputable character that Todd helps move cargo into the country had told him about a cave several miles off the coast of his own country. Truth be told, no matter how much time I spend on the background of how we found ourselves a hundred feet below sea level, I'll still never understand why or how I agreed to such a misguided idea. It hardly matters now. At 99 feet below sea level, the pressure on your body normally felt by the atmosphere is quadrupled. The sunlight feebly attempts in vain to penetrate the blackness. Darkness rules there and creatures of the dark are all that inhabit it. I checked my depth and air pressure gauges and looked up to see Todd hand singling me to follow him to the mouth of the cave. I flutter kicked silently forward floating just above the seaweed and silt covered ocean floor. Going in as much of the world as my low profile narrow lens mask would let me. When we reached the mouth of the cave, Todd dropped to the floor and clipped his line to a formation near the entrance. This is a very important step in cave diving. That line was our only way back out of the system. I held my lights on my hands while he worked, but my gaze drifted back to the mouth of the cave. The darkness was just as oppressive as always, but there was something strange. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time. The ominous black maw was somehow more intense than it should be. Then I heard it, a low pitched roar from out of the deep. A thunderous echo sounded from so far below. It was a whisper by the time it reached us. It's the strange thing about hearing when you dive that far down. You don't just hear, you feel, you feel it in your chest, in your bones. The noise echoed through me and I felt my stomach drop. We hadn't come this far for nothing though and we dutifully pressed on. Todd held the line and made entrance first and I followed behind my hand trailed along the line as it unfurled. With graceful strokes, we kicked only about 30 to 40 feet into the system before my light caught a silver glint out of the backdrop of darkness and neutral toned rock formations. Todd signaled that he saw it as well and we stopped. Kicking myself over to it, the narrow beam cast itself on the object. The eerie silence was broken only by the soft rhythmic beat of our exiles as we bubbled up to the roof of the tunnel. The glint revealed itself to be a scuba tank half buried in the silt. Many cave divers bring along spare safety rigs. Last thing you want when you're 100 feet down enclosed by a rock ceiling is to run out of air. But who would leave this behind? We clipped it off to our line with the intention of taking it back out with us when we made the return trip. Delving deeper into the system, we came across our first fork. Todd signaled to me. He was asking which way I thought we should go. My light panned back and forth between the two tunnels. It was smothered by the abysmal nothingness no more than 10 feet ahead. The ever present pressure continued to squeeze me like a python coiling around its prey. It was oppressive. I felt a slight current brush the cold dark water across my skin. It came from the left tunnel. I gestured to the left and we continued our exploration. We were 110 feet deep here. Even as an experienced diver, the pressure became taxing. Several kick paces in. Something caught the focused beam of my light. It was unnatural. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the rocky stalagmites within my narrow beam of vision. I gracefully kicked over to it, careful not to stir the silt at the bottom of the cave floor. Once stirred, silt takes a considerable amount of time before settling again. More time than the air tanks afforded us. If I thought my vision was limited before, well a silt storm would mean complete and total blindness. Reaching my point of fixation, I settled and focused upon the thing that had caught my eye. Pulling it from its sunken place in the sand, I found it to be a diver's slate. Divers can't communicate verbally underwater. So what can't be signaled through commonly recognized hand motions? Divers will write on a slate and pass to one another. Shining my narrow beam onto its surface, I made out the hastily written words, size, refrigerator, smooth black skin, dolphin-like, but some humanoid features, opposable thumbs, question mark, chilled. I passed the slate to Todd, who read it and after glancing worriedly towards me, tucked it away in his gear pouch. We pressed forward. As we neared the end of the tunnel, the walls began narrowing until they pressed against my shoulders. At one point, it became so narrow that I had to remove my tank and pass it through the opening before trying to slither through myself. For a brief moment, I became stuck. The familiar panic set in. I took several slow breaths to calm myself. Then, I exhaled every bit of air in my lungs and at last managed to become just slender enough to barely push myself through. On the other side of this obstacle, the system opened up. We found ourselves on a small ledge that dropped off into a large chamber. Shining my light around the perimeter, I noted the horizontal boundaries. Turning my narrow beam down towards what should have been the floor of the chamber, my light was snuffed out by overwhelming blackness. To this day, I have no idea how impossibly deep it could have stretched. I settled down to the bottom of the ledge to peer over the edge. The moment my knees touched the sand, I realized my right knee was landing on something hard, reaching into the sand. I grabbed it and pulled it from its burial place. It was a video camera, clearly a high-end one too. Whoever made it this far before must have wanted to document their expedition. Fumpling with the buttons, I switched it on and positioned my light on the playback screen so I could see the last recorded video. The video started and I recognized the sight of the obstacle we just pressed our way through. The frame reached the end of the ledge we now found ourselves on and then began panning around the room. It's eerie to watch a video underwater, with no sound. It had all the effect of a silent horror film. The deja vu sense I had seeing the surroundings that I was currently in didn't put me at ease. The frame then panned down to the bottom of the cavern and back up from the abyss to rest on the figure of a diver positioned next to the cameraman. Clearly it was the dive buddy of whoever was shooting. The diver in the frame looked toward the camera when suddenly a strange dark figure shot across the frame and out of view. At first, the diver appeared just as he was a moment before. Then he clutched his throat. He clasped both hands to his neck as if he was choking. Then wisps of dark red blood stretched out from around his grip, like malevolent fingers spreading their reach across the dark water. The figure rocketed across the frame again from a new direction and out of sight. The diver's mask and regulator were gone now and so was a large haphazardly torn portion of his face. The camera frame shook in obvious shock as the blood swirled violently, dying the water in view. The still twitching body floated limply forward until the figure rocketed by again and it was gone, dragged down into the black. The frame peered over the ledge until it was smacked violently and the screen turned black. Out of the silent nothingness, a roar exploded into being. Startled, I dropped the camera. To my left, Todd motioned to go back the way we came. Kicking with all my might, I made it back to the narrow passageway and began the arduous task of shoving myself through. Barely getting through the obstacle once again, I turned to help Todd. He passed his tank through to me and I grabbed it. He fit his head, then shoulders through in a panicked hurry. His body filled up the entirety of the passageway and I could see only his head poking out through the rocks. But before he could gain any more ground, his head jerked in a sickening way. Bubbles exploded from his regulator as he screamed in pain. Blood seeped through the opening and began staining the water red. Helplessly, I tried to tug him through. But as I pulled, I felt something pulling back the other way. Todd's regulator flooded the chamber with purged air bubbles as his screams of pain propelled them violently towards the roof of the tunnel. The regulator dropped from his mouth and his head dropped lifelessly down. Horrified, I realized whatever that God-forsaken thing was, it was on the other side. The lifeless corpse of my friend was the only thing barring it from pursuing me. The aquatic roar sounded loudly as more blood poured into my side of the obstacle. I realized this was my chance. It is with shame I admit that I left my friend there, so I'd have time to make my escape. My heart pounded as I swam with all my might to the mouth of the cave system. Foolishly, I made an emergency ascent to the surface, not stopping to decompress. It was worth the risk of the bends just to get the hell out of that damn water. It's been a month since then. I finally recovered from the bends after spending what felt like forever in a hyperbaric chamber. I can no longer bear the thought of swimming, let alone diving. I can't even explain why. All the proof I had of that wretched thing is buried in that cave with the body of my friend. I couldn't keep this to myself. I barely cling to my sanity, as is, I had to tell someone, somehow. So, I'll post this here. Hopefully this will be a warning to all those seeking the mysteries of the deep.