I’m in my room, staring at my computer. A blinking light bulb in obvious sequences is on a website. Me and my friend took three months to find this website. It’s morse code obviously.
Following each flash and pause I get a string of numbers.
39.879204, -106.016998, is what I manage to decode, or at least what I think it is.
“Holy shit! We did it man! Fuck yeah!!” I said, absolutely pumped. These were coordinates obviously. And we just solved a treasure hunt that has never been completed ever.
My friend speaks as we are currently in a discord call and I’m sharing my screen. “Kind of anti-climatic… I mean all this stuff, and it ends with morse code?” Pete pauses. “Oh well! We did amazing man!”
I was quick to search up the coordinates.
“No.. No fucking way, these coordinates are by where we live man!” I said gleefully. “We are going to be rich!!”
Pete didn’t speak for a bit, I think he was just dumbfounded from how it was close to where we were located. “Dude, we are going there tomorrow, for sure.” And immediately after that, we both played some games before leaving our call and heading to bed. I’ll update you all when we start walking.
I’m going to hate this. Turns out, upon looking at Google earth, it was in a forest. And to be honest I hate hiking. But, the prize for just walking like what, 99 kilometres? Yeah, sounds worth it to me.
So I took my parents van and went to pick up Pete, who brought the camping gear since we planned on staying at least one night in the woods.
Afterwards we drove to the forest, parked on the grass, and started heading out.
Me and Pete started hiking through the forest, and I was grumbling about the long distance to the destination. “Why does the treasure have to be so far away?” I complained. “I’m exhausted already, and we still have like, 97 kilometers to go…” I say begrudgingly
“I know, man, it sucks,” Pete agreed. “But we can’t give up now. We’ve come this far, and we’re almost there. Just think about how good it will feel when we finally reach the treasure! And then, we can relax.”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right. It’s just tough, you know? I didn’t realize how far we’d have to hike to get to these coordinates. It’s like they’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Pete chuckled. “Well, maybe they are. But that’s part of the adventure, right? The journey is just as important as the destination my friend, and we’re getting to see some amazing views along the way. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and we’ll get there eventually.”
I nodded, feeling a little bit better. “Thanks, man. I needed that pep talk. Let’s keep going and see what else this trail has in store for us.”
Pete has always tried being like, philosophical I guess? Or just he sounds smart, well he is smart, wait… Fuck just, he’s smart, very smart.
Eventually, we got close, but since it’s winter and night is approaching, we decided to camp for one night. Me and Pete set up our tents, sleeping bags, and a campfire.
I sat by the campfire with Pete, talking excitedly about the possible treasures and rewards we can find. We were approaching the coordinates and I felt the excitement surge through me.
“I can’t believe we have finally solved it,” I said, taking a sip of my hot cocoa. “We are pretty close now, just nineteen more kilometres and we will find our rewaaard!!” I spoke again, smiling.
“World’s first to solve it too man!” Pete replied. “But why don’t we discuss our possible findings Josh?”
We spent the rest of the night discussing the different possible rewards we could receive for completing the treasure hunt. Some of the items on our list included rare coins, precious jewels, and even ancient artifacts.
“Wait, imagine if we find like twelve solid gold bars?” I said, my eyes shining with excitement. I followed up. “We would be like billionaires!”
“Or… What it we find… Diamonds…?” Tom added. “That would be even better!”
The amount of money we were going to get is insane, right after this finishes I’m moving out of my parents house and buying my own car.
We continued to talk about the potential rewards until the fire started to die down and we were both exhausted. We crawled into our tents and fell asleep, eager to begin our treasure hunt in the morning. I’ll write more tomorrow when we find the cords.
Good news! I think we found the spot, looks like my morse code translation was right. So we have our shovels, and I think we found something.
We hit something while digging, a wood plank. So we digged all the way around it, and we were exhausted. But a big, human sized chest laid in front of us, right side up. It was super wide too.
“Let’s try picking it up, k?” I say. Pete responds, “Kk!”
We did a count to three and attempted to pick it up, and it was very heavy, too heavy. We only exhausted ourselves more trying and splinters covered my hands.
I sigh, “Let’s try opening it?” And open it did, we did open it.
And that was when we opened Pandora’s Box.
Inside the box was a hole and ladder leading down. No, upon looking inside, it isn’t a hole at all. It’s literally an entire underground area, below the surface.
I immediately had bad vibes from the places. But Pete spoke first, “No way, the reward must be down here! Come on! We got lamps so it’s all good!” Pete took initiative and started climbing down the ladder.
I wanted to mention how this wasn’t a great idea, but I didn’t say anything and just followed.
“Ow, fuck!—” Pete said as jumped off the ladder and, gripping his hand.
I looked worried and hopped down too. “What’s wrong shit what happened?” I asked worryingly.
“There was a damn jagged rock, fucking hell.. Let’s move on..” a red liquid slowly dripped from his hand, probably blood.
I wrapped some of the gauze we had around his hand to protect it, then we turned our lamps on and continued forward.
Honestly this place is weird, tunnels surrounded us and no clear path was in sight. Up, down, left, right. Perhaps this was apart of the treasure hunt as well?
Then there was a loud thud that echoed out from behind us.
“Was that like the thing that was came in here fr—”
“No, definitely not, that was closer. We need to hide Joshua.”
Pete interrupted, and honestly that scared me, he didn’t sound this serious ever. We both hid in different tunnels straight across from each other. And it was quiet, awfully quiet.
“Maybe, maybe it was the ches—”
That moment I just saw Pete getting dragged away to the dark abyss behind him.
“JOSHUUAAAAAAAAAAAA!!” He yelled, I couldn’t save him, he vanished before my eyes.
“PETE?? PETEE??” I started hyperventilating and immediately ran back to where we came from. Right, left, down, up, I wrote down where we walked so I just followed that and I made it.
But the thud wasn’t the door closing, it was the ladder being broken.
“YOU FUCKING SICKO!! YOU PSYCHOPATH!!” I started clawing at the wall trying to climb up, and I cut my hand just like Pete did.
“AHH FUCKING, AHHHHH!!” I shrieked and fell back in pain. As I looked to my left, breathing rapidly. I saw it. A white, pale, skinny creature, it’s tongue long and fingers elongated. I started crawling backwards immediately.
I screamed, “Get away!! Get the fuck away from me!!” I hit a wall fast. As the creature’s slowly approached. “Joshua. I have deal. Let you live. Help me.”
I live?? It’ll let me live if I help?? “Yes I’ll help, anything!!” It started blinking… No this was familiar, it was morse code.
-… .-. .. -. –. / – — .-. . / ..-. — — -..
I don’t understand morse code. But I nodded slowly and it let me go.
Please, help me, you know the coordinates. Bring people, bring a ladder, help me. Bring a group, ten, save me, please I beg, please, I’ll starve. My food supply is low, and I don’t know if this message will send, low signal.