The Bogey Hole

I don't know what brought me to the bogey hole that day. The sky was overcast and a cold south-easterly had been spitting sharp little beads all morning. Not the typical sort of day you'd walk thirty minutes to take a dip. But I grabbed my towel and started the hike in that aimless sort of way you sometimes do, without paying much mind to the weather.

The bogey hole was a local ocean bath at the bottom of a cliff. Officially it was the "Commandant's Bath", after the sadist who had half a dozen convicts cut it out of the rock, but no one called it that. It jutted out into the sea such that it was surrounded on three sides by the Tasman. The only way in or out was a series of worn, slippery steps cut directly into the cliff face, which opened up to a narrow rocky path that ringed the pool. The only concession to safety was a half-hearted chain fence that hung at about knee-height and ran down the steps and around the pool, and even that was decades old and decaying.

The weather had kept even the handful of mopey teens and wannabe influencers away, and except for one old fella relaxing in a corner of the pool it was deserted. I stashed my gear in the small overhang near the stairs, and then just stood at the edge of the water, looking out to sea.

At low tide on a calm day, the waves lapped gently at the edge of the pool. Not today. Today, the sea was smashing against the rock pool like an angry animal trying to claw a thorn from its side. I had never seen it so chaotic before, not without a thunderstorm at least. The bath was protected from the worst of it, but for a moment I thought better of getting in. Then I saw the old man turn to watch me, still sitting calmly in the far corner while the waves occasionally crashed over him. I jumped in.

There's not really a better way to get into the bogey hole, I reckon. One moment you're on the edge of the ocean with the wind screaming, and it feels like you're moments away from being swept into the maelstrom. The next moment the world is still and silent.

I sat at the bottom of the pool, eyes closed and holding my breath. I rocked gently against the sandy bottom of the bath, the cold water prickling my skin numbly. I knew I would have to surface shortly and move around a bit, but for the moment I sat there and enjoyed my little zen moment.

That's when I first heard it.

A voice seemed to call out from the far end of the pool. It ebbed and flowed with the waves, soft and distorted under the water so that it felt like I could almost understand the words. The voice sounded concerned, and I thought perhaps the old man was calling out to check I was ok. Still, something about it put me on edge.

I kicked out and pushed myself to the surface. For a split second I saw the blurry figure of the old man at the other end of the pool, but the salt water and wind bit my eyes and I blinked. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, and when my vision had cleared I saw… nothing. The old man was gone.

When I was little, my cousin had died in an accident. He was young, maybe thirteen. The funeral had been devastating. My uncles and his older brothers were all strong men, but the casket they carried down the aisle looked so heavy. They walked in silence, but tears streamed down their faces. I watched them, sick to my stomach. And then, just as they drew level with me, I felt the insane urge to laugh.

I felt that same feeling now, staring at the spot the old man had just been. Short, sharp breaths wracked my chest, but no air seemed to be getting in. My vision tunneled into the far end of the pool, and the world was suddenly as silent as if I were still underwater. My ribs began to throb with the to just laugh, laugh away this situation and bring the old man back, just like at the funeral all those years before.

And just like at the funeral, I crushed the urge. Instead, I swum over to the spot where he'd been, clumsy awkward movements that probably looked more like a dog paddle than a proper stroke. He hadn't been washed away, of that at least I was certain. People standing on the far edge of the baths had been swept away before, but it would take a massive wave to break over the wall and pluck a man out of the pool. Not even a single wave had crashed over since I had jumped in, let alone one that size.

But he wasn't in the bath anymore either. The overcast day and cloudy water meant the pool wasn't perfectly clear, but I could almost see through to the bottom of the pool. I probed wildly around with my feet, kicking up sand but feeling nothing.

I glanced toward the overhang where I had stowed my towel, but I couldn't see anything belonging to the old man. Had there even been anything there when I had stowed my kit? I couldn't remember.

I reached for the edge of the bath and heaved myself up, looking out to sea. The water outside the bogey hole seemed to have suddenly gone from wild to utterly savage. Waves leapt and chopped chaotically across one another, breaking across the rocks and sending spray metres into the air. The ocean bath seemed to be in another world, untouched by the storm.

If he had been ripped out there I would have no chance of spotting him, and even less of helping him. Even so, I started clambering out of the pool, trying to get a better look. I pushed up, but my foot slipped on the edge of the pool and I started flailing wildly. Instinctively I grabbed at the rusted chain running around the edge of the bath, but the chain gave way and I fell with a crash back into the pool.

Help me.

I whirled around underwater. Something dry and rough had brushed my ear. The voice had been so close, as though someone was just behind me.

Help, HELP ME!

No, not behind. Below.

The bath floor was still empty except for sand, but I swam down anyway. I strained my eyes against the stinging salt water, sweeping my hands around in the sand, searching for anything.

HELP ME, HELP ME, HELP ME!

The voice no longer sounded distorted and weak. It was old and gravely, and so loud now I could barely think. And now there was a pounding, a deep, jarring pounding, from somewhere below the sand.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

The thumping and the screaming clawed over each other, rattling in my skull. I was flat on the floor of the bogey hole now, lashing out wildly through the sand and to the ice cold stone floor of the bath, searching for something, anything.

There! Something solid and coarse, laid into the rock. A ring, an old iron ring. I gripped it with both hands and tried to pull, but it didn't budge.

— HELP ME, HELP ME, HELP ME

— THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

— HELP ME, HELP ME, HELPMEHELPMEHELPME

My vision was getting dark, and my body felt too heavy. I braced my legs against the walls of the pool and heaved with everything I had. Finally, gratingly, ever so slowly, the floor of the bath shifted.

The voice went silent.

---

It took the police nearly an hour to arrive, and that again to open the door. I didn't want to be there when they found him. I wanted to close my eyes and wake up somewhere else. But instead I stayed rooted at the foot of the cliff, staring as they worked to open the door.

What they pulled out of the bogey hole was strange and grotesque. It didn't even look human. I thought perhaps it should have looked blue and a little bloated, the body of someone who had just drowned. But it was dark green and purple, its head bent down and its arms and knees twisted up to its chest. It looked small and hard and oddly brittle, almost like old dry wood. If it wasn't for the fingers, I would have thought it was a statue, a prank left for future generations to find. But no one would have carved those fingers. Half as long as they should have been, the ends were splintered and split, shredded against the bottom of the stone door.

They couldn't tell how old the body was. Decades old at least, maybe more. They didn't believe me when I said I'd seen the old man, that I had heard him calling for help. The stone door had been a foot of rock, there's just no way you had heard anything beneath that. But they hadn't believe me when I first told them about the door either.

I couldn't sleep that night. I just lay in bed staring at the ceiling. If I looked anywhere else, things seemed to flit at the edges of my vision. The smell of the ocean clung to me and made me feel sick.

The police rang again the next morning. I answered, still laying in bed. I studied the spots on my ceiling blankly, answering the same questions again and again. I struggled to hear her sometimes, to focus on what she was saying, but it didn't matter. Even as exhausted as I was, I could tell she didn't believe me either.

At the end, she asked me if there was anything else, anything I forgot to tell them. No, I replied. She hadn't believed I had seen the old man, had believed I had heard his rusted old voice screaming at me, begging me to help him.

She wouldn't believe that I could still hear him. From somewhere far beneath me, I could hear him thumping. And below that, faint and distorted, like a scream coming from far beneath the water. HELP ME.