Author: N. Friedline, Word Count: 666
Featured in Spooky Archaeological Tales: Live Stream – BonFire Night 2022
A mapmaker paced along the shore of a tropical island. Each footstep in the sand marked on vellum with a quill of red ink. This was the last and most isolated island in a vast archipelago to be charted for the King who wished to see the edge of the world. After three months of exploration, supplies where low but with advice from local tribes they managed to survive on the bounty of the sea. The islands seemed to harbor no creatures whatsoever, not even birds.
Circumnavigating the shore, they came upon the two large wooden ships for the first time in weeks. Half of the crew sailed home then and there with the newly completed map, while the cartographer remained to explore for new and rare pigments. At camp that night the remaining crew drank the last of the rum, smashing barrels and chanting sea shanties around the crackling fire.
You awake the next morning alone to the smoking embers of a dying fire beneath an ashen sky. Deep grooves in the sand weave through camp leading to the palm trees at the edge of the beach. The plan was to explore the interior of the island, so the crew must have dragged supplies inland. The natives never set foot on this island and warned to stay close to the beach, but the tracks continue deeper.
The tropical forest quickly grew thick. Some of the trees hang oddly, covered in iridescent slime. After a long trek uphill, the land at the center of the island slopes steeply down to a grassy swamp. The small clearing at the center shimmered with freshwater!
Wind rustles the spears of tall grass, but there is something else, deeper, moving against the wind and getting closer. Startled, you fall backwards into the muddy slope, but it is too slippery to climb. Clambering for a foothold you kick something soft that grabs your foot and swallows up to the ankle, the knee, and all the way up your leg. Every muscular segment of this creature is as strong as a man. Viens of throbbing blood and gooey organs shift under its skin as it expands around you. It tightens its grip and yanks you into the swamp at terrible speed. Grasping at the blades of grass it only lacerates your hands.
The ground becomes wet and turbulent beneath you. Sliding over each other these creatures braid together in a tangled web of writhing flesh. Under drum tight tubes of translucent skin shadowy figures smothered with mucus try to scream. Artifacts entombed in slime reveal eons of lost cultures.
A gargantuan worm comes face to face, its pulsating circular mouth stretching out to taste our dripping red blood. It latches to your palm like a leech, opening your wounds with a sharp stinging pain. Mightier than the sword, you drive the quill into its neck and without a sound it recoils for a moment. Kicking free, you tumble over the heap of seething blind vermin. Dashing into the long grass each dewy blade seems to pull us back to a horrible death. Fleeing to the forest, some of the trees come to life lurching towards us!
Reaching the shore each frantic step sinks in the sand. Climbing into the ship with no crew, no hope of leaving this island. You peer back over the beach and see a horde of gigantic worms stretch across the sand and slither up the hull of the ship like serpents. Furiously lashing, a worm is cleaved nearly in two. It twists its own body until the skin snaps and it tears itself apart. Half of the terrible worm flopped dead on what remained of the ship while the other half squirmed back to shore.
A large wave rocked the broken boat forward and then drew it back to sea, away from the fleshy abominations. The battered ship sat crooked in the water and drifted slowly away… when the other half of the worm began to twitch.
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