The small fishing town of Frishenburg was a quiet place, except when the tide went out and stayed out, exposing the ancient, barnacle-encrusted wreck of the Leviathan's Bane. They said it was a ghost ship, a whaling vessel lost to a storm centuries ago.Ben, a marine biologist new to the area, dismissed the local legends as charming folklore. He was ecstatic about the wreck, a perfect opportunity to study deep-sea marine life trapped in the hull during low tide. With the next low tide predicted to be the lowest in a decade, he prepared for a full night of exploration.As dusk settled and the water receded, a foul, coppery smell filled the air, a scent so potent it made Ben's eyes water.
He strapped on his headlamp, gear bag slung over his shoulder, and climbed down onto the exposed, slick deck of the ancient ship. The hull was a cathedral of wet wood and living history.He spent hours collecting samples, lost in his work, the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water the only sound in the vast silence of the exposed seabed. It wasn't until he was deep within the lower cargo hold, a place where the air was thick and still, that he heard it.A scraping sound.It was slow and deliberate, a heavy object being dragged across a stone floor. Must be a large fish or crustacean, he reasoned, though the sound was too rhythmic, too intentional, to be a mindless animal.
He followed the sound to a shadowed corner of the hold where his light revealed a heavy, rusted door. The scraping came from behind it.He pushed the door open, his light revealing not a stone floor, but a small, tiled room—an infirmary, perhaps. In the center of the room sat a solitary, archaic wooden chair. On the chair was a bound leather journal. The scraping had stopped.He approached the journal, the air growing colder by the second. As he opened the brittle pages, his light revealed frantic handwriting detailing the crew's descent into madness, their discovery of something "inhuman" in the deep waters, and their final entry: "It sings in the dark, and its hunger is endless. The tide is rising."Suddenly, a voice, wet and gurgling, whispered directly behind him, "The tide is rising."
Ben spun around, his light beam landing on the chair. The journal was gone. Standing where it had been was a towering, skeletal figure covered in barnacles and dripping with black water. Its head was a gnarled mass of driftwood, and in its hand was a harpoon, the point dripping with a dark, viscous fluid. The thing in its entirety was wrong—a horrific mockery of a man, cobbled together from the ocean's refuse.He dropped his light and scrambled out of the hold, the creature's slithering movements hot on his heels. As he reached the main deck, he looked out at the seabed. The water wasn't just rising; it was rushing back in, a wall of black ocean water moving with unnatural speed.He was trapped on the wreck.
The last thing the rescue team found days later was his camera, waterproof and still recording. The final frame was a selfie Ben had taken on the deck hours earlier, before the horror. In the very background, a skeletal, barnacle-encrusted figure could be seen climbing onto the ship, its vacant eyes staring directly into the lens.