The Emerald Abyss

1

The first thing you notice about diving is the lack of senses available to you. You can’t smell underwater, and your hearing is muffled. All you can rely on is your eyes, and even then, the water is murky and the light only goes so deep. 

This lack of perception only added to the fear and paranoia that was already coursing through me as I nestled into the rock and coral on the seabed. 

I had been submerged for over half an hour and was desperately trying to control my breathing to make the air in my tank last as long as possible. But there was no avoiding the fact that I was terrified. 

My heart was pounding in my chest and my knuckles had gone white as I tightly gripped the small diving knife in my right hand, ready to lash out at the first threat. 

I was fighting the temptation to look around for any sign of my pursuers, knowing that the quick movement was more likely to give away my position.

What should have been a simple recovery dive had turned into a desperate fight to survive. My partner had been shot and was possibly dead, and at least two men were looking for me. My only hope was that they would leave before I ran out of air. 

I tried to control my breathing. Slow it down to give myself the best chance possible. But it was hard. I was an experienced diver so could handle the panic that builds inside you when something goes wrong. But seeing Michael get shot. The blood. It was making it hard to calm down. 

2

The sun hung high in the sky after we had spent the best part of the day salvaging the treasure aboard the Santa Ana, a Spanish Treasure Galleon that had sunk back in the 17th century. We had been lucky. Michael had found a journal that helped us track the course of the Santa Ana and it was just a case of following it until we located the wreck. 

Michael always stayed with the boat. He had named it the Unreliable. He had a sarcastic sense of humour. I was the diver. I went down and explored the wrecks that we salvaged and gathered treasure to be brought to the boat with the winch at the back. 

Michael and I had been working together for years, making a steady living as treasure hunters. Not a real career, my mother said, and not a way to meet a ‘real’ man. But I loved the ocean, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. 

It was our fourth haul of the day. Michael was busy operating the winch and I was swimming up to the surface alongside the treasure, making sure nothing went wrong. I can only assume the noise of the winch and his focus kept Michael from noticing the other boat that approached the Unreliable at some speed. 

By the time I pulled myself up the ladder, Michael was already on his knees with a bloody nose with two men standing over him with guns. One of them grabbed me and pulled me into the boat before dropping me on my hands and knees, my gear weighing me down. 

“Where is the treasure?” He asked me while pointing a gun at my face.

I looked at Michael before looking at the pile of treasure piled up on the floor. 

“It’s right there,” I replied, looking up at him. 

“I won’t ask you again,” he said while pulling the hammer down on his gun. 

“Maybe the real treasure is the friends you make along the way,” Michael interrupted with a smirk.

The man quickly twisted his body to aim his gun at Michael and pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening. Blood splattered over the bottom of the boat, mixing with the seawater. Michael collapsed back into a heap. 

I screamed in shock and anger. 

The man turned back towards me, bringing the gun to bear. I acted quickly, grabbing a handful of coins from the pile and flung it at him. The treasure hit him as he brought his hands up to cover his face. 

I took my chance and quickly dived backwards over the side of the boat, Narrowly missing the winch. I quickly returned the respirator to my mouth and started swimming towards the ocean floor. 

The two men followed me to the edge and fired into the water. I could see the trails left by two of the bullets as they passed me before I was too deep and the water resistance protected me. 

My heart was pounding in my chest. I dived rapidly, desperate to get away. My legs were kicking as hard as they could while my arms took big scoops of water. That was when I saw the rock formation and moved to take shelter. 

It wasn’t long before two divers followed me into the ocean. Splashing ungracefully before activating their spotlights and moving towards the Santa Ana. Whether it was to search for me or more treasure, I wasn’t sure.  

My only hope was to hide amongst the rocks and hope they didn’t find me. I had my knife but didn’t like my chances one against two. So I waited and focused on regulating my breathing. I didn’t have a full tank to begin with, and who knows how long they would search. 

3

I could make out the murky shadows of the bottom of the two boats from my hiding place. They were almost directly over the shipwreck of the Santa Ana. 

I could track the spotlights of the two divers searching for me as they headed back to their boat. I could understand their reluctance to stay down here. It was getting darker with every passing second, and we had already brought the bulk of the treasure up to the Unreliable before they ambushed us. Everything except the Eye of Kukulkan, a brilliant green jewel over two inches long, that I had hidden in one of the pouches on my belt.  

I stared through the murky water, praying that they would take the treasure and leave. There were thousands of dollars worth of gold, silver and jewels on the boat already. Besides, how could they even know about the Eye, we barely knew about it ourselves, just a vague passage in the diary. Michael had been so excited about it when he found the diary. Part of me thinks it was the only reason we came out to the Santa Ana. 

But the man’s questions about the treasure. Could he have meant the Eye? Was that what they were after? What they shot Micahel for? What they were hunting me for?

4

We had discussed the Eye of Kukulkan on the journey out. Micahel was taking care of the boat while I checked over the diving gear, making sure everything was in order. Michael didn’t usually talk about the treasure we were after in specifics, rather focusing on the Dollar value it would bring in. But he seemed unusually focused on the Eye. 

“It’s supposedly taken from a Mayan temple dedicated to Kukulkan,” He was telling me. “But it is supposed to have a deadly curse.”

I hadn’t been giving him my full attention, but that did cause me to look up. 

“Cursed?” I asked. 

“Yes, supposedly, the Eye will take the life of anyone who tries to remove it from the temple it was stored in,” Micahel replied. 

“And did it?” I asked. 

“Well, the journal said 13 men died on the way back to Campeche.”

“That doesn’t sound like too many,” I said sarcastically. 

“Out of 16,” Michale added. “And the other three died after reaching Campeche. But by then the Eye had been loaded onto the Santa Ana ready for transportation back to Spain.”

“How did they die?” I asked. 

“I’m not sure. The journal didn’t say. Probably not anything unusual if no one thought it worth writing down.”

“So probably not a curse then,” I said sarcastically. 

“Who knows,” Michael said with a grin. “The Santa Ana did sink after all, with a loss of everyone onboard.” 

“That is true,” I said. “In that case, if I do find the Eye of Kukulkan down there, do you want me to leave it so we don’t suffer the same fate?”

Micahel turned on me, his smile completely gone and replaced with a fierce frown. 

“Are you mad?” He yelled. “We need to get the Eye.”

I was shocked at his reaction, we usually had a fun and relaxed working relationship. I had never seen him so worked up over a particular piece of treasure. 

“It must be valuable then?” I asked him carefully. 

“Huh? Oh, I suppose so,” he replied, his face softening. “But it’s not about the money, we need to recover the Eye.” 

“Not about the money?” I asked him sceptically. 

But Michael had turned back to the controls and didn’t look like he had heard me. His eyes looked unfocused like he was deep in thought. 

In hindsight, maybe I should have been more concerned. But once we arrived at the shipwreck, his focus returned and he was as efficient as I had always known him to be. 

But a part of me had still been worried about how he talked about the Eye. 

5

I snapped back to reality and looked at my watch. I had been down here for over an hour at this point and I had stretched my oxygen as far as it would go. But instead of the fear that gripped me previously, all I felt was a serene calm. I held the Eye of Kukulkan up to my face and let the light reflect off it. I momentarily questioned how it got into my hand and where my knife had gone. But those thoughts were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the jewel. The light danced across the surface, captivating me. It was almost hypnotic.  

It was getting harder to breathe. Each intake carried less and less oxygen. Deep down I was screaming at myself to start swimming for the surface. To take my chances on the open water or try and get the boat started before they noticed me. But I couldn’t risk that they would take the Eye away from me. I couldn’t lose it. I had to keep it with me. 

The emerald green light reflected off my diving mask, giving my face a sickly green glow. It felt like the light danced around me. I smiled and the last of my resistance faded as I accepted my fate. 

The Eye would stay with me. Forever. 

I gripped the Eye of Kukulkan tightly in my hand as I took one last deep breath, dragging what little air remained in my tank. I reached up and pulled the respirator out of my mouth before humming and exhaling. I closed my eyes and held the Eye of Kukulkan tightly to my chest as I took my final breath, filling my lungs with seawater.

My body’s instinct was to thrash and struggle, but it was as if the jewel had even managed to suppress that and my body slowly fell to the seabed. 

As my tank hit the soft sand my hand struck the rock I had been taking shelter by, forcing it open. The Eye drifted away from me as I tried to reach out, but the current pulled it away. 

Cursed, Michael had said. 

I saw the green light reflected off the jewel one last time as it was drawn away from me, almost as if under its own power, before I closed my eyes forever.