Below

The Transmission

Hicks looked across at Chef in disbelief. "My goodness, it's spoken!" he said aloud, his voice breaking the silence. "And here's me thinking the cat got your tongue."
"Give it a rest," Milman told him, his chest and arms laced with sweat from rowing. "Chef was shaken up like the rest of us."
"But I don't particularly like his prediction," came back Hicks. "The part where he said the big bad monster is going to come and get us!"
"Look. We stand a better chance of surviving if we work together," Bree cut in. "This fog cannot possibly last forever."
"That's what we thought when we were on the cruise ship," pointed out Hicks. "The Wessex must have been travelling at a steady speed of 17mph for seven days and there was no end in sight for this fog!"
"This place. It doesn't feel right," began Marwa. "Theres something about it that scares me....something...."
"I feel it to," said Chef. "I think we all feel it. There is a power here at work. What it is I cannot explain."
"What time is it?" asked Milman.
Bree took out a phone from her pocket and checked the time on it. "It says 3am," she told Milman. "But that can't possibly be right. It should be dark now."
"That's because we are probably not where we think we are," said Chef, a hint of worry in his voice. "Do you remember what happened when we passed through the fog?"
There was a silence at first as nobody spoke. It was Milman who raised his voice.
"The electrical instruments played up on the ship," he said, recalling the events in his mind. "When Gorman, our head engineer phoned the main bridge, the captain told him the navigation instruments went nuts."
"Everyone's cellphone as well," confirmed Bree. "I still can't get a signal at all and now and again my phone keeps cutting out."
"But there was something else that happened," Chef told everyone. "Something that we all forgot."
"I can't remember," shrugged Bree.
"How did we all feel when the ship passed through the fog?" asked Chef.
Hicks thought about it for a while. "I was nauseous, a bit disorientated and dizzy," he said. "I thought it was a bout of seasickness but it went as soon as it came."
Marwa nodded as if remembering too. "I felt sick but I did notice the air aboard the ship was heavy, almost as if it was electrically charged. But it went."
"Yeah," nodded Milman. "Now you mention it, I noticed it too. But it soon went."
"So what you are saying is that something happened when we passed through the fog?" Hicks asked Chef. "Like we passed through something."
"I hate to mention this, but when Gorman asked the captain what our last coordinate readings were, he told us we were in the Saragasso sea in the area between the points of Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida," Milman explained.
Hicks suddenly burst out laughing. "That's really something," he howled. "You know where that puts us...?"
"Right in the centre of the Bermuda Triangle," said Bree, the realisation soon dawning on her.

I'm sinking again, dropping down into the deep blackness of the ocean. The light from the surface is fading fast and I'm dropping like a stone into a pitch black abyss to which there is no bottom in sight. I do not know whether I am dead or not but that dread feeling is there that something is waiting below for me, something vast, huge and ancient. I feel that it brought me here to thus place far away from the world I know.
This place, the darkness is its domain. It rules here just as it rules the surface.
Further down I sink. In the gloom I see bodies sinking. They are unmoving and I realise they are dead, sinking like stones to whatever awaits below...

"Hey, wake up sleepy head," came a female voice.
I open my eyes and see Bree looking down on me. She offers me more water and helps me to sit upright. I see Milman and Chef are still rowing. Marwa is sleeping and Hicks is trying the radio they have on the lifeboat. The fog seems a lot more thicker and I can only just make out their forms.
"You okay?" asked Bree. "You been out for quite a while."
I hand back the tankard to Bree, my eyes trying to pierce the gloom. The water is still very calm and the silence is unsettling. If this was the Atlantic, the sea would be quite active, with big waves, squalls and the odd breakers. I can only just recall the conversation they had with the native Indian, Chef, that there was something very odd about this place. I still cannot understand the nature of this same persistent dream I keep having but it unsettles me even more each time I experience it.
"Yeah, just feel so weak and tired," I reply to Bree.
Bree nodded as if understanding. "You remember anything about what happened to you?" she asked me.
I shake my head slowly. No matter how hard I try to remember, nothing comes to my mind.
"I really don't know. Just feels like one black hole of nothingness."
"You should rest more," suggested Bree. "Theres no telling how long you been out in the water. We got enough food anyway for five days. Hopefully we should find a way out of this fog."
"You believe we are in the Devil's Triangle?" I ask Bree.
She shrugs her shoulders as if not knowing.
"I'm not jumping to any conclusions. But after everything that's happened so far, it does suggest that we could have passed through some kind of portal. An interdimensional gate. But that's just science fiction talk."
"If we passed through some portal, where are we exactly?" I say, thinking out aloud.
Again, Bree shrugs. "I don't know. Some alternate reality, maybe some other planet we were transported to. But it could well be we are still on planet Earth lost in fog. The Atlantic is a big place."
"And the Wessex? From what the other survivors say, it was attacked by some something that came out from the fog and was dragged down with over a thousand passengers. It must have gigantic to pull down a cruise ship."
Bree sat back and took a drink of water. From her eyes I could see she looked exhausted, as if she had not slept in a long time. "When I was a little girl, I always read stories about sea monsters. My favourite was the Kraken, a huge mythical creature with many tentacles that could pull down vast ships with their crew to the ocean depths. I always thought it was a myth...until..."
Her voice trailed off and she looked away as if the memories of what had happened on the Wessex were too harrowing to remember.
"Do you think a Kraken attacked the Wessex?" I asked her.
She looked back at me, a glint of fear in her eyes. "I don't know what attacked the Wessex. There was too much fog and a lot of screaming and shouting from the passenger's. But I do know that whatever sank the Wessex was big and I really hope we can put as much distance between it as we can...Whatever it is..."

About ten minutes later I hear Hicks shout out. He had still been messing with the radio on the boat listening to endless crackling static to pick up any radio frequencies out there in the fog. From the look on his shocked and bewildered face, it seemed like he had made contact. The radio was no bigger than a cellphone and what made it so different was, as Bree had told me, it picks radio waves via satellite.
Almost immediately Chef and Milman stop what they are doing and crowd round Hicks. Bree is already there and even Marawa is awake now listening in on what Hicks has picked up on the radio.
Hicks turns the device onto loudspeaker for everyone to hear.
"Hello?" says Hicks down the device. "Is anyone receiving me over?"
There is still a sea of crackling and buzzing static. It's hard to make out any other distinguishable sound from the static. I see the anxious looks on everyone's faces, their hopes rising as if Hicks had made contact.
"Hello...?" comes a voice from the radio. More static follows, then for a brief second the voice comes  back, only this time much clearer, the static almost dissapearing. "Hello, who is this...over..?"
"Hicks Layman. We are survivors of the cruise ship the Wessex. There's six of us on a lifeboat. We are adrift and require immediate rescue...over..?"
There's more static on the radio and even my own heart is beating fast as we all eagerly await the reply.
After a minute or so the voice comes back, but it's almost barely audible from the static interference.
"Damm signal," curses Hicks as he tries to adjust the frequency on the device.
"This is....Lieutenant..Commander George Worely of...USS Cyclops...we are lost in this fog...I repeat...we are lost...."
Hicks looks at us all, confusion clouding his features. Milman goes almost white as a sheet and even the expressionless Chef looks rather startled. Bree herself looks like she has just seen a ghost. Only myself and Marawa are confused as to what is going on.
"Does that mean there's another ship lost here?" Marawa asks everybody.
She's looks at everyone expectantly but only gets a moment of deathly silence.
"Tell me I did not just hear that?" says Milman looking clearly shaken up.
"That can't be right," Hicks says, shaking his head in disbelief.
He tries the radio again to pick up the frequency but there is just static.
"George Worely was the commander of the USS Cyclops," Milman said.
"Yeah and so they must be lost like us!" says Marawa, her hopes rising. "We just need to pick up the frequency again and find out where they are."
"I'm not sure you read up on your history but that can't be possible  what I just heard," said Hicks, switching the device off.
He slumps back down staring blankly at the radio.
"The USS Cyclops was launched 7th May 1910," explains Bree to Marawa. "It was a proteus-class collier, about 542 feet long with a crew and passenger capacity of 306. On March 1918, the ship along with all its crew dissapears without a trace in the same area we are in now...The Devil's Triangle."