I've never told anyone this. It happened when I was a young man, ready to take on the world. The sea was my street, and with nothing in sight for miles, it felt like I owned the place. Sometimes I brought friends with me, invite them for a tour of the old adobe. This was one of those times. My buddy, Johannes Bates, and a lady he was seeing, Elise Vega, on a leisure trip off the coast of New Zealand. We'd been sailing for about a day when we ran into a storm. Not the perfect storm, but something about it messed with our instruments. The compass turned erratic and our GPS put us hundreds of miles north of where we should have been. Then the clouds turned opaque, and I don't mean just dark and angry, I mean it felt that the sun itself had been turned off. 

I was afraid, but I did my best to maintain my composure. I figured the best course of action was to keep moving forward, stay on course. Our ship could handle the waves, and we would be out of this eventually. Johannes was trying to fight his fear too, a feeble smile on his face. Elise was the real trooper though. She was out on deck in an oversized raincoat looking through a telescope that was almost useless in the darkness. It was her that first spotted the other ship when the storm began to die down.

It was about the same size as ours; a medium-sized vessel for private use, and it looked very dead. A blanket of fog had descended upon it, giving it an almost paranormal silhouette. There was no light, nor were there engine sounds, even the waves refused to crash on its side. Perhaps it was waiting to be discovered, or perhaps it was silently hunting us, who could say? As we got closer, the lights from our ship illuminated its hull. We saw letters scrawled on its side, weathered down by wind and water. We made it out to be the Celeste.

None of us could believe it at first. The Celeste was a research vessel from Miskatonic University in Massachusetts. It had gone missing some five years ago and we remember it from all the headlines it had made. The famous archaeologist, Dr. Brandon Sim, had disappeared along with the vessel and five of his students. They had been big proponents of the R'lyeh theory, the idea that a sunken city in the Southern Pacific housed a being responsible for the madness and chaos of the early 21st century. One day, they abandoned their careers and went chasing the myth, never to be seen again. 

It was Elise who suggested that we explore the Celeste, and Johannes, eager to impress, insisted. I was not comfortable with the whole affair, but I saw no obvious danger and I didn't want the two pestering me for the rest of the trip. By the time we linked up our ship and saw the frightened writings on the cabin walls, it was too late. We were in, we were hooked. Painted in blood-like shades of crimson were the words R'lyeh and Really. I decided it was more of an unconscious plea for normalcy rather than an attempt at humor, as seen from the unfinished meal and moldy books that had been propped open. They had left in a hurry, taking the lifeboat with them. Whatever happened, happened fast.

"Gustaf, please come see this," called Johannes, his artificial bravery all but giving out to the terror bursting at his seams. He was in the radio room with Elise. They had been examining a bas relief when a soft, low drone began playing on the radio. It sounded like a foghorn, and for a good moment, I couldn't tell where it was really coming from. 

"You think it's the storm? The same way it messed up our instruments?" asked Elise. Was I expected to know? I don't think I understood anything that had happened in the last few hours! I simply took out my recorder and placed it as close to the radio as possible. I had several ways of keeping logs and this one turned out handy. 

It's funny. I think we would have stayed longer if not for the lightning, at least that's what I think it was. There we were, standing in the radio room and looking out to sea when the water itself lit up. It was like a giant floodlight that had been turned on beneath the surface, revealing secrets that none were ready for. We saw sharp shadows of unearthly geometry, stretching for miles to an unseen horizon. They dug deep towards a blinding abyss, and at that moment it felt like we were suspended on nothingness. I felt my legs give way, and I thought we would fall into the non-Euclidean chasm. We held our breaths as the shadows morphed and squirmed into what looked like a tentacled face! Then, as suddenly as it had happened, everything went dark again. We looked at each other, tacitly agreeing to call off the adventure.

I'll spare you the details of our return trip. Obviously I made it back safely to tell you this story, and so did the other two. As for the noise we heard on the radio, turns out we missed a good half of it, probably a consequence of that weird storm. We did figure it was some ancient tongue that only became coherent when sped up. I sent it to Miskatonic for analysis, and they told me it translated to 'In his house at R'lyeh... '. Whose house? Who's chanting this? 

God save the one who finds out.