Schmerzen's Galleon

Enid Blyton, a famous 1930’s children’s book writer, once said “You’re trying to escape from you’re difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought.” In 2010, there were rumors about an abandoned battleship that the President ordered to be left out in the middle of the sea so that it would rot, “So that it would never be seen again” as they say. Thousands of people went searching for this mysterious battleship, curious about what was on it, curious to why it was left out in the middle of the ocean. Though it was never found due to the reassurance from the President that it was a “disaster waiting to happen” people lost hope in finding it but it was never forgotten…

It’s a beautiful day, but it’s also the day my brother and I plan to take our friends out to sea for a few days to party after graduating from high school.

“We’re gonna get tipsy,” my brother says to our parents, but we all know that it’s going to be hardcore.

“Dawn, if the boat starts to make a weird noise as it usually does, get your brother don’t just ignore it ok?” said my Dad.

“I know Dad” I quickly responded wanting to hurry and be with my brother, who left early to prepare the boat. I walked out of the house wishing my parents farewell as I hopped into my silver pickup and drove to the gas station to pick up the booze. Racing towards the dock, I drifted into the park and quickly open the back door carrying the liquor, turning around to see my brother, Alier and his old elementary school friend Robert, board the only boat that we own as I begin to carry the beers onboard.

Alier walks up to me with a worried face. “Wheres Dylan and Tom?” asked Alie.

“I don’t know, why are you asking me?” I responded with an annoyed look upon my face. A car whipped around the corner of the dirt road that lead straight to the dock.

“There they are, gosh Dawn why do ya gotta be so grumpy?” Alier said. Dylan and Tom arrived in their blue Honda and parked it next to the weathered pole closest to the dock, they parked so close it could have been kissing the smooth glossy paint of the small blue car. As I see the doors open I inspect the two sides looking for Dylan, and I spotted him in time to see him getting out with his white T-Shirt gently pressing against his skin making his body figure more defined and erect.

“Hey Dawn!” calls Dylan smiling from cheek to cheek, I walk over to him, scanning the back seat to see what he had brought, but instead I find him looking at me. “Did ya miss me?” he laughs.

“Oh shush, it was only twelve hours ago since I saw ya, but it seems like you can’t live without me,” I responded, laughing, I catch a small bright red flash in Dylan’s cheeks, but it fades as quickly as it appeared.

“Hey, Dylan! What took ya so long buddy?” asked my brother, “Oh ya know Tom here started to get freaked out about going on a boat for a few days.” Dylan responded with Tom quickly following after by saying.

“No, I was not, I just needed to take a moment to myself so I could get ready for these awesome days coming up ahead.” We all laughed knowing that Tom was just trying to cover up his fear that he was going to have to face it anyways. It was now getting close to sunset, we had already sailed off into the big blue just exploring, but always keeping track of our route. It was dark enough to light the fire pit in the middle of the ship, I had always thought it was interesting that it was on the ship, it made me ponder about if other boats had it since I’ve only been on our boat for as long as I can remember.

“Hey Robert you should tell a spooky story,” asked Dylan, Robert quickly agreed since he loved to tell scary stories, especially the ones that make you paranoid.

“What do you guys want to hear about?” curiously asked Robert.

“Well what about Schmerzen’s Galleon?” asked Alier ecstatic to see what Robert will come up with. We all started to sit upright as Robert cleared his throat making a noise that pierced the side talks making them bleed into silence.

“You all have heard about Schmerzen’s Galleon the ship that went missing, the secret left to rot in the sea, the boat that was said never to be found. Well, someone did find it, and they lived to tell the tale, but they weren’t in very good shape when they were found one man said the guy looked as if he went through a shredding machine and lived. Once they revived the man they asked him what had happened, and with his cracked voice the man whispered ‘Schmerzen’s Galleon’ the man went on about how he had seen a creature that was tall and had an almost glossy look in the sunlight. Its voice consisted of different men screaming and asking for help, he emphasized that the voices were different each time it opened its mouth and...” A loud noise came from the side of the ship interrupting Robert and also making everyone jump out of their seats, we all agreed just to leave the story at that and just to go to bed. It was a long night for me and I assume that it was for everybody else too. I couldn’t stop thinking about the loud noise, the story I didn’t care about I was more concerned with this weird noise that came out of nowhere what could it have even been to cause such a racket? We were far out for it to be the shore or a rock, maybe it was a fish or something floating in the water?

A new day arrives but in a startling way than any I’ve seen, I am tossed out of my bed and onto the carpeted floor where I stand up to see out the round window that we had hit something vast. Running up to the top deck, I stare at the immense object towering over us.

Tom interrupts the silence by saying “Guys... is that what I think it is?”

“B..ut that...that can’t, that can’t be,” Alier says stumbling over his words.

“Schmerzen’s Galleon,” Dylan says, finishing Alier’s sentence. There is a short pause where we all just stared at the ship,

“Let’s go on it,” Robert says excited.

“Yea, imagine all the cool stuff on it” I respond agreeing with Robert.

“You guys are crazy, remember Robert’s story?” Tom said in fear and disbelief

“Oh be quiet Tom it was just a story” reassured Dylan. No one moved towards the eerie ship for a solid minute until I gathered all of my confidence and jumped onto the battered ladder hanging out of the side of the battleship. Dylan jumped on after me along with Robert who looked back to see Alier and Tom still standing in fear upon the boat.

“I’m sure they will come later on,” says Robert, once I climbed onto the massive deck I saw that the boat looked like it was left in a hurry, there were boxes all over the battleship, broken and tattered.

“Come on guys let’s find out the real reason this battleship was left here,” says Dylan, as if he was the leader of our tiny and ignorant party. We split up, Robert heads to what seems to be left of a Radio Tower, Dylan finds an open door and investigates, while I go below deck following yellow lines that say “Office.” Once I get below, I find a dark substance in the shape of a handprint on the right side of the wall, thoughts race through my mind, what could it be? Is it oil? Is it just dirt, or could it be blood? I conclude that it might just be oil, due to the fact that the engine room is just down the hall, so I don’t think much of it. I reached the end of the yellow line it pointed to a rusty door with a round window, which seemed translucent with all the dust covering the outside of it. Using all of my energy I pry the door open to see one table against the west wall and a desk against the other with shelves covering the back wall, they were all torn with years of not being cleaned. Yet the folders on the shelves were neatly organized all still intact. One folder layout upon the desk, it was left open to a particular paper I walked over to see a picture of a vault covered in what seemed to be ice and frost. The description of the picture had a bizarre word that I would have guessed was another language if I hadn’t recognized the Latin root word “Anti” the description stated “Antiobliviscor.” The paper had a big stamp over it reading “Classified” but I read it anyway, it said that it was a highly intelligent creature, a monster that took what it wanted and left nothing to live. The rest was just instructions on how to transport and clean it so I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was super interested in finding this Antiobliviscor. I wanted to see it for myself it was probably dead or the government must’ve found it already dead.

I rushed back to the top deck searching for Dylan, and Robert, but instead I found Alier and Tom starting to climb up the ladder. “So you guys finally decided to join our investigation huh?” I said startling Alier.

“Oh gosh Dawn, you scared me and no we decided that we could use a walk around this humongous deck,” said Alier trying to play off his fear.

“Uh-huh, you do you, big bro,” I said. I had walked into the direction that I had last seen Dylan heading in, I came closer to the door and saw a kitchen almost completely covered in dust, luckily for me the dust was thick enough for footprints to appear clearly. I followed them into another door where they disappeared further down the hall, without hesitation I started roaming in the same direction. When I got about two minutes into roaming room to room I heard a loud bang behind me I quickly turned around and saw Dylan laughing at my frightened face which quickly turned into anger. I shoved him but he was stiff with muscle, it made it almost impossible for me to even move him.

He continued laughing until he could catch his breath and say “What? Don’t like getting scared.” I rolled my eyes at him and carried on wandering down the dark hall, he followed behind me still snickering.

“Dylan, I found a folder below deck it said that the ships cargo was something called an Antiobliviscor, it also stated that it was dangerous, do you think it’s still alive?” I asked

“An Antiobliviscor? That sounds a little suspicious, but it can’t be alive so I wouldn’t worry about it” Dylan concluded. We came across a sharp turn in the hallway and I had quickly turned the corner when all of a sudden I tripped over something, I looked back seeing Dylan’s face horrified over what I had tripped over then looking over the white rigid structure of a skeleton lying on the floor. I gave a worried face to Dylan realizing that the folder was right.

“Dylan, you know what this means?” I said

“It means that this battleship was left out here not because it was broken, but because they didn’t want to deal with this thing,” Dylan said answering my question.

A scream came from the other side of the ship, it was so loud that it sounded as if someone was screaming right next to us. We rushed out of the hallway coming onto the deck looking fearful around trying to find the origin of the scream, my eyes focused on Tom who was standing in the doorway of what seemed to be a hallway, Robert raced out of the Radio room where he stood frozen in the doorway and Alier peaked out behind some boxes, even though he was a little far away I could still see that he was pale in the face. We all as quickly as our numb legs could carry us, tried to get to Tom to see what had caused him to be so spooked. I was the first to be by Toms side and as soon as I peeked over him to see, I regretted it, there were skeletons all over, exactly like the one I had tripped over, they were spread about the hallway, some were shattered and some were missing half of themselves. The rest of the guys made it with the same reaction I had when first arriving.

“What would have caused this?” asked Alier.

“Antiobliviscor,” I said as if that one word could have answered my brother’s question.

“What’s that supposed to be?” asked Tom “an Alien” Dylan answered, as quickly as Dylan spoke Robert followed after by saying “that’s bull, you guys are just trying to scare Tom by using my story.” I couldn’t pick out the right words to tell them what was the truth so instead, I took them down to the Office, to that folder… Once we got to the room I pointed at the folder which was still lying on the dusty desk, they all cramped by the desk flipping through the folder and reading the same paper I did. We all wanted to know more so we spent the whole day looking through all the files on the shelf, but came up with nothing more about the “Antiobliviscor.” It was agreed on, that we get on our boat and head back home instead of finishing our investigation and our celebration of graduating. All of us reached the top deck walking back to the side with our boat closely drifting by.

“Guys I’m so ready to go to. ’BAM’ A loud noise comes from behind us, interrupting Robert, which also made all of us quickly turn around to look, it was dark outside now but the moon painted a figure standing in front of the door we had come from.

It was tall, glossy with the moonlight shining upon it, it’s eyes… glowing bright in the night with a vivid color of yellow and with them it just stared. I didn’t know what to do and it looked like no one else did either, we stood there for what seemed to be ages. When one slight cry broke the nerve-racking silence. It moved, swaying back and forth picking up speed as it drew in closer, moving in such a motion so agile and precise it made me shiver with fear. We tried to move out of our frozen positions, trying to move faster than the thing that was quickly growing eerily closer. It seemed as if we were all reading each other’s minds because we all ran towards the radio room and shut the door behind us, the only bad thing about this room was that it had windows almost on every wall. We found different places to hide behind what seemed like was out of sight from the windows when It walked slowly past the first window taking each step carefully, watching, and waiting for movement in the darkroom, its eyes bleed into the glass making it seem like it was burning a hole into the windows. It slowly passed the last window checking to make sure it hadn’t made no mistake, and then disappeared, with a sigh of relief we all relax on the spots where we were kneeling. We silently waited a few minutes before we started to whisper to each other our plan of escape.

“Guys we are so dead, we’re going to die, I don’t want to die, not hear not now” frantically said Alier

“Keep it together we’re going to make this, don’t lose hope yet” Dylan reassured us but everyone knew some of us weren’t going to make it out alive. It was decided after a long while that we were to open the door and quickly run to the boat, Robert was going to exit first because he was the fastest person, but also who knew how to untie knots quickly so that he could unhook the boat from the battleship.

“Okay ready guys on the count of three we’re going to run to the door, one...two...three,” said Alier, everyone got up as if we had practiced it over and over again. Robert reached for the handle of the big iron door, but as soon as he did the whole plan went south, It was standing there watching us then it grabbed Robert and was gone. Tom grabbed the door and shut it quickly, we could hear screams in the night no doubt that they were Roberts, he kept on screaming for help it was agony listening for what seemed like forever. We just stared at each other pale and terrified, I could see that my brother was shaking, Tom was hanging on to Alier and Dylan was next to me, holding me protectively.

“I..I think we should find a way out the other way,” Dylan said trying to change the subject,

“How can you just move on from what just happened, how can you just forget about…” Alier paused trying to keep in his tears, he was trying so hard that he began to shake profoundly.

“No, Alier I didn’t mean it like that” Dylan tried to explain, but Alier was filled with too much sorrow to even listen to him. After a while we all slowly crept towards the other door this time we were cautious, looking around trying to see if anyone could spot movement. Dylan opened the door, one inch at a time, listening for things, making sure that it was safe. Finally, the door was open, it was dark but the moonlight coming in through the windows showed nothing in the dark. Creeping down the hallway we passed five different rooms which seemed like some important people had lived in them but by the time we got to the last room we heard Roberts voice, we heard him crying for help it was loud and coming from outside.

“ROBERT IM COMING” yelled Alier, my brother ran back into the radio room and onto the deck. Dylan chased after him trying to tell him to stop, but Alier stepped out of the safety of the room. My brother, realizing he was tricked stood staring at the things eyes, which begins to rush towards him quicker than he could tell his legs to move. I watched as it picked up my brother above his head and started to pull him apart, I tried to run out, but Dylan held me back, I listened to the painful screams of my brother as it tore my brother in half. I dug my face into Dylan’s shoulder, who shut the door this time shutting it for the last time. I whimpered, trying to forget the horrific sight, a scream interrupted my thoughts, It sounded like the creature had mimicked my brothers scream. It made me shed tears onto Dylan’s shirt, Dylan cursed under his breath, but kept on leading us back into the hallway. We made it back to the last room, but this time going past it into a stairwell that lead below deck. Once we were below, two hallways were leading in two different directions one hallway had a yellow line on it saying ‘Loading Bay’ the other hallway had a blue line saying ‘Storage’. Dylan looked at me and then at Tom who had been quiet ever since the thing had showed up, but I don’t blame him, two of his best friends are dead because of it. I was furious, I wanted it dead, I wanted it to suffer the way it made me suffer, but I don’t need to focus on it right now, getting out was more important.

“Which way?” asked Dylan.

“Storage,” said Tom with no hesitation, but anywhere was better than the deck so Dylan and I didn’t object. We started down the hallway to see doors scattered all about the hall. Tom lead us down it as if he knew where he was going in the dark.

It was long and too quiet for me to mentally handle so I asked Tom “Are you alright?”

It took Tom a couple of minutes to respond but once he did, he said: “No Dawn, my friends are dead, your brothers dead, and now we are going to die.”

“Tom stop putting her down, she knows that she was just trying to be nice” Dylan quickly said after.

Tom quietly says “Whatever” under his breath while rushing ahead, I looked at Dylan with a worried face. Although Dylan was too paranoid to look at me, we started to come upon a turn in the rigid hall when those dreadful eyes peered around the corner. In the dark, I could make out it putting its hands out then stretching like slime onto Tom, Tom who was trying to scream but was so paralyzed that whenever he tried it came out as a shrieking breath. Dylan grabbed Tom’s open hand trying to pull him out of the black goop, I clung onto Dylan pulling back with him. I could see Tom’s face fill up with tears as the tar grew from below his shoulders to his face then with one swift movement, it pulled Tom into the darkness. Dylan and I ran to the other hallway which opened into a big room with a small crane and boxes everywhere, we could hear a silent scream coming from behind but didn’t know exactly who was screaming and we didn’t want to find out. We came upon the Loading Bay which had a small control room just off to the side.

“I wonder if we can block the entrance with the boxes and metal that are already on the crane” I suggested.

“Yeah, why don’t you go see what you can do while I try to look for a weapon” responded Dylan, we went our separate ways, but never straying too far from each other, when I reached the control room I found a button labeled “Emergency Release”

I yelled to Dylan “There is an Emergency Release button but the crane isn’t in the correct spot” before Dylan could respond I looked up to the sound of Dylan falling to the ground and sliding towards the exit, but he had clung onto a metal bar sticking out of the side of the crane. The creature stepped into view coincidentally walking directly under the crane. Dylan was in the way. He looked at me and then the crane, he knew what he had to do, I looked at his terrified face which went calmly still. I saw his lips move I could make out him saying ‘do it’ when I hesitated he started back up by yelling.

“I love you, Dawn, when you get back home can you tell my parents...” The Alien was pulling harder which made Dylan slip a little bit and making him pause mid-sentence.

I tried yelling back as quickly as I could “How does that help me make the decision” He laughed at me and then repeated himself ‘do it”’ I became overtook with fear when the thing looked straight into my soul and I accidentally hit the button. I burst into tears while running toward the pile of metal and boxes to see half of Dylan sticking out of it motionless.

“Dylan...I love you too...I’ll...I’ll tell your parents that you love them, hopefully, it’s close enough to what you really wanted to say″ I gently placed my hand over his cheek, bending down I placed a soft kiss upon it, gathering myself together, I quickly ran up deck to see the sun was rising. I was so relieved at the sight of it I had nearly forgotten what the sun was uncovering, I saw the parts of what used to be my brother, that half torn body lying cold on the metal deck but I had no time to walk over and morn I wanted to get out of here. I untied the knot that was holding our boat to the battleship, I didn’t take my time on carefully getting onto the boat, I just jumped into the water and slowly climbed onto the boat. Once I got on, I raced towards the controls the keys were left in just barely hanging out, pushing them in and twisting. I started the boat. I was so frantic to get out of this place that I floored it, I kept on going until I couldn’t see the battleship anymore. I kept on thinking about what I was going to tell mom and dad, plus what about Robert’s, Tom’s, and Dylan’s parents? They won’t believe me...I’m alone, everyone’s going to call me “crazy”, “a lunatic” they will say, that girl who said an alien attacked her, a girl who did nothing to save her friends and her brother. ’BANG’ I turned around and looked at the smoke rising from the motor, I walked over to investigate and noticed that there was this black this tar-like substance on the motor. I knew what it was It can’t be… I killed it, I heard a creak in the wood I slowly turned my head seeing in the corner of my eye all black and then the ocean roaring next to it. Fully turning my head I stared at those fatal eyes, those eyes that I despised so much. It just looked at me and I at it. I tried to scan the area around me for something, anything I could use, then it clicked in my head the thing wasn’t wet. It was made of something I had never seen but I knew it wasn’t solid, it must’ve stowed away on the boat but that couldn’t be possible I smashed the other one, or was there two of them? It started to scream using Alier’s cry, so I ran at it while it wrapped itself around me, but I was going so fast that I kept on pushing.

“DIE ALREADY” I yelled while tackling it into the water before my eyes it dissolved into the sea crying out to the sky, it gave the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard, it was so loud that it made my ears bleed. I got back onto the boat breathing heavily and wiping off the black slime that was all over me. “Good, you’re supposed to be dead anyway,” I said thinking aloud and with that, I started heading home.