Chapter 8: The Abyss Within

It started as a vague worry, the kind that creeps up on you in the quiet moments and takes root in the back of your mind. Clyde was missing. Not just absent, not just off tinkering with some machinery or lost in his thoughts - missing. Gone. At first, I tried to brush it off. The Leviathan was massive, a labyrinth of rusted hallways and cavernous cargo holds. It was easy to lose track of time, to get caught up in whatever project had grabbed your attention. Clyde was probably just deep in some corner of the ship, working on one of his sculptures or trying to coax life back into some piece of forgotten machinery.

But as the hours stretched on, a cold, creeping dread began to settle in my chest. I hadn’t seen him in over a day, and when I asked Slade if he’d seen Clyde, his response only made things worse. He shrugged, his eyes flicking away from mine.

"I can’t quite remember," he said, his voice distant, as if he was struggling to recall something that had happened years ago instead of just yesterday. "I think…maybe yesterday? Or was it the day before?"

Something was off. Slade was usually sharp, and hyper-aware of everything around him. But now, he seemed distant and unfocused, and the way he avoided my gaze made my stomach twist with unease. The Leviathan, which had once felt like a sanctuary, now felt like a cage - cold, rusted, and inescapable. The vastness of the sea that had once promised freedom now loomed like a dark, endless void. The water was unnervingly still as if the ocean itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. The sky was an endless expanse of blue, clear and cruel in its perfection, offering no comfort, only a stark reminder of how utterly alone we were out here.

For the first time since we’d arrived, I felt a deep, grinding sense of dread. What the hell had I done? How could I have thought this was a good idea - leaving everything behind and coming out here with two men I barely knew? What possessed me to trust them? To trust myself with this insane, half-baked plan? The ship groaned, the sound echoing through its hollow corridors like a ghostly moan. I looked down at the pages I’d been writing, at the words I’d so carefully crafted over the past few weeks. They seemed hollow now, meaningless. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a writer. I was just a man who had convinced himself that he could escape the world, that he could find something out here that didn’t exist back home.

But all I’d found was emptiness - a hollow, terrifying void that stretched out in every direction, both outside the ship and within myself. The calm sea, the endless sky - they weren’t peaceful anymore. They were oppressive, and suffocating. A kind of infinity that bordered on madness.

I buried my head in my hands, the weight of it all pressing down on me. Where was Clyde? What if something had happened to him? What if… No, I couldn’t go there. Not yet. Maybe he was just caught up in something, lost in his work, in some part of the ship that we hadn’t even explored yet. After all, the Leviathan was enormous, a labyrinth of forgotten corridors and hidden spaces. I’d barely scratched the surface myself. Once I’d found my little corner, I hadn’t bothered to see the rest.

But now, with Clyde missing, there was no choice. I had to find him. We both did.

"Slade," I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, "we need to find Clyde. Now."

Slade looked at me, his expression unreadable. For a moment, I thought he was going to argue, to dismiss my concern as paranoia. But then he nodded, slowly, almost reluctantly.

"Yeah," he said, his voice low. "Let’s go."

We started searching, moving through the ship’s labyrinthine corridors, calling out Clyde’s name. The Leviathan creaked and groaned around us, its old bones shifting under the weight of time and memory. The deeper we went, the more oppressive the atmosphere became, as if the ship itself was watching us, waiting.

We passed by Clyde’s sculptures, the twisted metal forms casting long, eerie shadows in the dim light. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watching us too, their hollow eyes following our every move. The air was thick with tension, every creak and groan of the ship magnified by the silence that surrounded us.

Slade moved ahead of me, his steps confident, almost too confident. He wasn’t calling out for Clyde. He wasn’t even looking in the same way I was. It was like he was going through the motions as if this search was just a formality for him. I tried to shake off the unease, to focus on finding Clyde, but the feeling that something was very, very wrong wouldn’t leave me.

We searched for hours, but there was no sign of him. Every empty corridor, every abandoned room only heightened my sense of dread. The ship felt like a tomb, and the more I searched, the more I feared what I might find.

Finally, we ended up in the main cargo hold, the vast space empty and echoing with the sound of our footsteps. I felt sick, the uncertainty growing in me like cancer. What if we never found him? What if something had happened? What if… I didn’t want to finish that thought.

Slade turned to me, his expression still unreadable.

"Maybe he’s somewhere we didn’t check," he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. Just an eerie calmness that made my skin crawl.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched, that something or someone was lurking in the shadows, just out of sight. The sea outside was so calm it looked like glass, the sky so clear it felt unnatural. A kind of infinity, stretching out forever, a kind of madness creeping in at the edges of my mind.

I swallowed hard, trying to push down the rising panic. I had to stay calm. I had to believe that Clyde was out there somewhere, that we’d find him, that this wasn’t all unravelling into some nightmare. But as the ship groaned and the sea lay still as death, I couldn’t help but feel like I was losing my grip on reality.