You may have heard of the Bermuda Triangle before. It goes by a few names, depending on who you ask. Some call it ‘The Devil’s Triangle’ or ‘Trianglulos Diablos’ in South America. No matter what it is called, the stories that come from that godforsaken place are true. I never believed them of course, but that was until I had my own experience. One that will haunt me until the end of my days. Let’s start from the beginning. I will let you judge for yourself. This story begins in the pit of sorrow that is my life in Tampa, Florida.
In one of the many days of sorrow that blended together at this point, I get a text from one of my old buddies from Highschool. For privacy’s sake I will refer to him as James for this recollection of events. Knowing what I know now, I should have ignored it. Perhaps I could have saved them. I should have deleted his number and went about my sad life in solitude. I wasn’t happy, but I would give anything to be in the state of mind I was in back then.
The text was pretty much him asking how I have been and saying he was getting some of our old friend group together for a deep-sea fishing trip. At the time, I had nothing better to do so I happily accepted. It was scheduled for a month out.
Fast forward in time a bit. I got my fishing license, I got my gear, and I drove up to the dock outside of Miami they sent me the address to. It is around 4am and I see James, as well as two more guys I knew from Highschool. Let’s call them Kyle and Matt. After a bit of catch up, we are off. The boat itself wasn’t anything crazy. Maybe 35-40 feet long. Plenty of room for 4 people. After driving for a couple of hours James stops the boat and cuts the engine. We bait our hooks and begin to fish. Nobody was very talkative and the boat was mostly silent so I decided to make some small talk with James.
“Why are we fishing here?” I asked James, desperate to break the awkward silence that held its grip firm over the boat. He glanced up at me and smiled.
“Because nobody would dare fish out here. We don’t have any competition.” He laughed.
He could tell I looked very confused because he withdrew a map from his back pocket and unfolded it. On the map was a triangle over the Atlantic Ocean with a x somewhere in the middle. “This is where we are.” He said pointing at the x. “It is the Bermuda Triangle. One of the most dangerous waters on the planet.”
I looked out at the ocean. I had heard a few stories here and there about the Bermuda Triangle. Aliens abducting people, Sea Monsters eating entire ships, stuff like that. The water was a little choppy where we were but other than that nothing out of the ordinary. It just looked like a normal ocean to me. Those tales had to be for children. To scare them into believing the world is more unexplored than it actually was.
“Maybe we don’t have much competition because the fishing is shit here” I laughed as cast another line out. Nobody has even had a bite yet.
“Don’t worry, just be patient. The fish will come.” He replied as he too cast another line.
We must have been there for over an hour at that point and the sun was starting to rise over the horizon. Not even a nibble yet. Looking around at everyone else I could tell they shared the same disappointment.
“Alright.” James said as he walked to the wheel. “Let’s move somewhere else and try again.”
James turned the key and instead of hearing the engine fire up, we just heard clicking. He walked to the front of the boat near the anchor and opened a compartment where I guessed the battery was. (Apologies as I am not the one to ask about boat design.)
“Shit.” James sighed as he slammed the compartment shut and put his face into his hand. “Battery is dead.”
Kyle and Matt looked at each other in disbelief.
“We can call for a tow, right?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, but it’ll take them hours to get here and even longer to get back.” James replied angrily. “What a waste of a day, and not even any fish to show for it. Get comfy boys we are going to be here for a while.”
While James was calling for a tow, I sat on the front of the boat and just looked into the clear blue water. I never realized how beautiful it was until this moment. You could see at least 10 feet down before it started getting fuzzy. Even spotted a few tiny fish swimming near the surface. As my gaze drifted upward toward the horizon, I spotted a large rock with trees in the distance.
“Look!” I shouted while pointing at the rock.
Everyone in the boat turned to see what I was looking at.
“Holy shit! An Island!” Kyle shrieked as he scrambled to grab James’s map he had left on the dash. He frantically looked at the map closely before looking back at us in shock. “Its not on here. The island is undiscovered as far as this map is concerned.”
“No way! Give me that!” James angrily grunted and snagged the map from Kyle and looked over it, his eyes just as shocked as Kyle’s when he looked back up from the map. “Well don’t just stand around! Grab a fucking paddle!”
“Alright Christopher Columbus” Matt muttered and opened the compartment next to the wheel to begin handing out paddles. We all frantically swiped at the water with the paddles, our curiosity desperate to explore what waits for us in the unknown. We inched closer and closer until eventually we could see the ocean floor. We tied the boat off to one of the trees near the water and made our way onto shore.
The island itself was much bigger than I had thought. It wasn’t just a couple of rocks and a tree; it was an entire shoreline with loads of trees leading into a forest. I checked for any signs of human life but did not see anything other than beach and trees. We might have actually been the first humans to set foot here.
“Let’s split up and explore!” James commanded. “Kyle, you are with me. Matt, you and Ethan are together. We meet back here in one hour.”
And with that we were off. It was about midday at this point and even in broad daylight the island gave me the creeps. Just a random island in the middle of nowhere never explored before? In the BERMUDA TRIANGLE at that? Everything that is happening to us is the groundwork for a horror movie in my opinion. Matt and I explored around the left side of the island through some trees. What was odd was that there was no sign of any life at all. No birds chirping, no insects, nothing. Just trees waving ominously in the light breeze that galloped along the path.
Then suddenly, Matt grabbed me and threw me down below the undergrowth and laid down next to me.
“Hey what the he-“ I began before Matt forced his hand over my mouth and put a finger over his mouth as if to say be quiet. I thought he was joking but the look on his face was one of fear and panic. He then slowly pointed forward through the bushes and took his hand away from my mouth. I took a peek.
What I saw horrified me. A humanoid creature with abnormally long arms and legs squatting down on the ground in a clearing. If it were to stand up, it would probably be upward of 8 feet tall. I could see huge talons peeking just around its body as it ate its meal. Whatever this thing was, it was not a friend. It was something straight out of a nightmare. The creature was hunched over but I could only see its back and not its face. Matt and I lay there frozen, unable to move out of fear of the creature hearing us.
We must have lay on the ground for longer than I could keep track of before the creature finally stood up. As I predicted, it was wall above 8 feet tall. The talons looked sharp as razors and about 6 inches in length each. Now that it was finally standing, I could see what it was feasting on. Or at least what was left of it. Laying in front of the creature was a pile of bones, with the flesh cleaned off completely. Every last bit of meat. The animal was the size of a pig. Maybe it was a pig but I was not close enough to tell. The creature’s beady red eyes on its squished face looked around the clearing menacingly as if looking for more food. The air was dead silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Matt and I both held our breathe just in case.
“Matt! Ethan! Where are you?”
My heart dropped as James’s voice echoed across the clearing. The creature perked up and turned into the direction the sound came from. Matt’s eyes darted in my direction with panic sweeping over his face. There was some rustling in the bushed across the clearing followed by James and Kyle stumbling through the trees laughing. They both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the creature towering over them. The looks on James’s face is a look I still see in my nightmares. The creature let out a deafening roar and swung forward at James with its sharp talons. I looked away and heard a scream, the sound of slicing, and a plop on the ground. When I looked up, I saw James’s head rolling across the grass, with his lifeless body crumbling over like a tree after it had been chopped down. Kyle instantly broke into a run into the trees behind him and at the same moment, Matt grabbed my wrist and drug me back into the trees, heading toward the beach. I looked back to see the creature take off after Kyle, roaring as it dove out of my view. We sprinted as hard as our legs would carry us and began making our way to the boat.
When we got to the tree that the boat was tied to, we noticed the boat was gone. Matt and I looked around in a panic.
“Did someone steal it?” Matt cried with fear. “We need to get out of here.”
“The battery was dead.” I replied as calmly as I could. “Nobody could have taken it.”
We looked out over the water and all energy drained from my body. Off in the horizon, was our boat floating away. Kyle was the one who tied it and it must not have been a good knot.
Matt and I looked at each other in shock. I tried my best to keep my cool as not to panic or we would both end up dead. Chances are we would be spending the night here. And the SOS call for a tow was for the boat, not the Island, we could only pray they would see the island when they found the boat.
“Come on, lets see if we can find Kyle. If he is still alive that is.”