2. Davy Jones Locker
And the sea takes unto itself her own...
Should you chance to take a look at the sea one day when you're on the Atlantic side of the East Coast, you may see a rising sun coming up in the distance. A line, drawn by sea to cut it off from the sky, holds the fabric of reality complete with its existence. "That, lad," they used to say, "is The Horizon, and beyond it lies the Wider World." A fascinating picture of our natural wonders, unbelievable, certainly, that such a thing should even exist. The Horizon. Such a thing provides the cut off point of our vision; beyond that, the world doesn't exist, to you at least. One expects that there are still more things beyond, more people living their daily lives, without a thought about you, nor a care in the world for anything more, but the proof isn't really there. For beyond The Horizon, communication ceases to exist. Of course, in our day and age, that statement is no longer true. Radio and other such inventions have proved that a further existence beyond is fact, and that as alone as one may feel out upon the flat, silent ocean, one is really not quite as alone after all. But forget about our current livelihood for a time, where technology controls the world and keeps us hooked on by invisible wires, because some time ago, not very long, actually, when one thinks about it, The Horizon was the largest determining factor in getting information out; after all, with no radios and such devices, sailors had to rely mainly on their sight to navigate, and to accept messages from other sailors. If you couldn't see something, then you couldn't respond to it, and that meant that anyone in deadly danger with no one near by to spot them might as well have given up for lost. And yet, as technology continues to advance, there are times when these things seem to come back greatly. There are times when a radio provides you no safety, where sight is your priority, where The Horizon can be your salvation... or your damnation.
One of these places in our fascinating and mysterious world is a part of the sea that engulfs part of the Caribbean and stretches roughly between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Within this land, ships and planes have been reported missing with no sign of them ever returning. While vehicles travel through the area daily, there is a shocking number of disappearances that seem almost too coincidental to be as such. Within it, strange things have taken place, say some, while others scoff at such an idea. It is a polarizing place, and believers and skeptics of it run rampant across the world. And yet, the further we study it and the more we seem to understand of it, the less sense it seems to make. Theories there are galore, but there's no clear-cut path to truth found thus far.
I found such a place fascinating. From an early age, I had had a great interest in the area, more so than that of the average person. I had studied it repeatedly, each time devouring the information I already knew, and always hungry for more. To know everything about his world has been man's goal since the dawn of time, and I was helping to keep such a spirit alive. Every disappearance, every incident, every theory - I took them all in with a voracious appetite, like that of a man starved for days finally coming across a buffet, which is he is offered for no cost. So, too, did I attack at my meal of books and any other form of device that can store within it the knowledge of all one needs to know. I was starving, starving thanks to a lack of knowledge, filled with a hunger that needed to be fed, a thirst that needed to be quenched.
I majored in science, but that was little more than a cover-up for my real goal - to finally discover what it was that made the Triangle 'tick'. If I could do anything in my life, it would be to head out to that part of the ocean and do nothing but investigate it. It would require a team with me living out on the open sea for months on end, but I knew that if I had a chance to fulfill these dreams of mine, I would take it.
I lucked out when a scientific organization took a great deal of interesting in a book I'd written on the Bermuda Triangle, where I discussed in great detail my ideas for such an investigation. They decided to make it a reality, and gave me money, supplies, and a team of investigators. On August 1st, we would sail into the open ocean that lied beyond our horizon on a quest to find out just what made so many ships and planes disappear in its clutches.
The one thing that struck me most throughout my years of research was that the Bermuda Triangle was really little more than a graveyard. A graveyard of lost souls with an unknown fate; a graveyard that never gave up its dead; a graveyard that used mystery and a location at sea to provide cover-up for its true nature. It was a "Davy Jones Locker" to destroy all other parts of the sea referred to by that name.
And now I was heading out there, and the only question remain was whether I would make it back to my home, or if I'd be added to its inhabitants...