The Book

I pulled out dad's notebook once I was done spreading out the charts. Dad had written most of his notes on the cave in complete, and total gibberish. Not just sentences that I couldn't understand, but some other language entirely. I still couldn't figure out what language it was. Jack still didn't know I had this notebook.

He'd thrown it out, but I'd grabbed it. Dad had been writing in his notebook daily before he died. The beginning made sense for the most part, but then it got confusing. Some of the notes about the cave made no sense whatsoever. One note in particular caught my eye.

The cave doesn't show itself to everyone. It didn't make sense, but my dad had to have known what he was saying when he wrote it down. Then again it was the last phrase in this book that wasn't in that weird language gibberish. There were only three pages of the gibberish at the back of the notebook. The rest of it was notes on the best diving spots.

Why did dad become obsessed with some cave at the end? That was half of the reason I wanted to go find this cave so bad. If we found it maybe we'd know why dad had been so obsessed there towards the end. I picked up my phone to look at the time. It was 9:15 already.

"When did it get so late?" I leaned away from the charts on the desk as I pushed the chair back, "I'll just go to bed then."

I stood up pushing the chair back the rest of the way. I clicked the light off. It didn't matter if Jack got home before I went to bed anyways. He would be back in the morning regardless of what happened at sea. I got in bed, and settled in under the covers.

I let my eyes drift closed. My room was small, and life was hard with how we lived now. Work, and sleep all the time. There had to be something else for us. We couldn't live this way forever.

I opened my eyes, and picked up my phone off the desk setting the alarm for 4:30. I wanted to be awake before my brother for once. I needed to be awake before him tomorrow so he couldn't try to get out of it. It was easy to fall asleep once my alarm was set. All my troubles could wait until tomorrow.

I dreamed of the ocean. Lately it was all I dreamed about. Reefs that extended deep into the depths, and the fish that lived on, and around them. It wasn't all that weird that I dreamed about diving deep into the depths of the ocean since I spent so much of my time in the water anyways. Sometimes I would dream about places deeper than anything anyone had ever seen.

Places so deep that the only light would come from the creatures that lived in the depths. My alarm pulled me out of my deep dark dream. It wasn't a scary dream, but it was pretty odd because even in the deep dark dream felt better than the life I was living right now. It felt almost welcoming. I wondered briefly why I dreamed about things like that.

Welcoming depths of the ocean verses real life possible dreams. I guess I could let it go. I could dream about whatever I wanted. It didn't really matter what happened in my dreams. That was the nicest thing about dreaming after all.

I drug myself out of bed, and headed downstairs quickly. I got most of the gear ready before Jack even woke up. I could hear the pump for the water go on as he got in the shower. I threw the gear on a cart, and wheeled it from the shop to the dry dock. With the bay doors open it was no different than having the boat on the docked in the marina itself.

The upper doors, and the lower doors when they closed made the dry dock. Once the pumps pushed all the water out. Jack always brought the boat in at night. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to steal a decrepit old boat that was barely holding together most of the time. It always hurt my brain to look at that boat.

It was a damn good thing that most the people we brought on our boat didn't know much about boats. I ignored Jack's footsteps as he came down the stairs. I still had work to do before we could set off.

"Did you eat yet?" Jack spoke up suddenly from the door.

I almost jumped at the sound of his voice since I didn't hear him come in.

"No," I checked over the equipment again, "Been busy."

"I'll make breakfast," Jack went back up to the apartment.

Looks like he's not in the mood to help me. It was his typical not wanting to go through with it stuff. Let me do the work by myself, and hope I give up. Jack always pulled shit like this when he wanted me to give up. For some reason he thought that I wouldn't be willing to work for things he didn't want me to have.

Like my own fucking car. I still hadn't convinced him I needed a car yet. My birthday wasn't far away, and I got my license last year, but even that was a hard sell for my brother. I'd convinced him though, and soon I'd be 18. He wouldn't be able to do shit about anything I decided once I was 18.

Too bad I didn't have enough money to do much of anything without a solid job. The whole diving gig was pretty lucrative in the summer, and did okay on the holidays. The rest of the time it was a total joke. We'd keep jumping up with the money we got during the summer, and once we got some repairs done we'd limp on until the next bump in business.