On August 1st 2024 the Jacob Barnsley pushed off out of Gloucester under clear skies through thick summer air. On board were Captain James Duschene, a crew of twenty-eight, and twelve college students on a "Summer Ambassador Program". The program was a semester at sea intended to last thirty days. The ship was marked for interception by US Coast Guard legend-class cutter the USCGC Berquist after the university noticed deviation from its intended course without communication. The Coast Guard believed themselves to be taking part in a standard search and rescue. They came upon the Jacob Barnsley under a moon drenched starless night sky.
She was boarded and searched by Chief Petty Officer Donald Stratton, Seamen Keith Carlson and Josiah Battle. They found no living person on board. Among the personal possessions recovered was a black marble notebook belonging to 20-year old Dana Stratton of Sayville, New York. She had presumably intended to use it to chronicle her time on board the Jacob Barnsley with her boyfriend. This would be the only lead as to what exactly transpired that night.
*
I'M A SAILOR I'M A SAILOR I'M A SAILOR! omgomgomgomgomg this is HAPPENING i am a SAILOR I am on a BOAT I am gonna SLEEP and EAT on a BOAT and I'm NEVER COMING HOME! Ok... I'll probably come home. I already miss you (you were right about that) and I miss my cat (more than you but you get it) and I miss you and I'm the KING OF THE WORLD!!! By the way, the urge to do that on a boat gets much stronger the closer you get to the bow. The bow is the front of the ship by the way. By the way, I'm not sure how true this is, but I get the feeling one of the worst things you can do is call that the "front of the boat". No real sailor would do that. Port, starboard, below deck... all super important.
It didn't take that long for us to be so far away we can't see land. Shocking a little for me actually. Maybe a lot. I'm not gonna think about it. I'm definitely gonna think about it. Thinking about it right now as a matter of fact.
Julia does in fact get to bunk with me which is a little bit perfect for all the reasons in the world. It's just nice because this room is so small and without Daisy to perk her head up at any little noise I don't think I could sleep as well. So Julia is my hearing-ear human and she's fine with that. Her signing has gotten so much better I barely need to slow down anymore. She even signed some things I've never seen and showed me a bunch of Tik Toks that have been helping her feel a little more confident.
SO much to say. The SKY is so DARK! Do you know how many friggin stars there are? I wish there was a happy medium between seeing every star and seeing no stars because I've been trying to find Aries and I think I found it at least three times in three different places and I don't even think it's in the sky right now. It's not. I just googled it. It's not. The wifi here is terrible btw. I hate it here and I want to go home.
Thank you again for the little book. Very cutesy. This probably will be better than me sea dumping on you as soon as I get home and you were right about the pen. Turns out the service does suck and this could probably be all emails but this pennn is soooooooooooo fun to write with. Feels good. Okay. I love you. Goodnight.
*
Maybe not goodnight just yet. Things feel weird. It's just me and Julia in here and she had her airpods in and I thought she was like dancing or tapping her foot to something but when I looked down her foot was shaking like I don't even know. I thought maybe she was having a seizure but she just had her hands in fists on her ears and I think she was crying?? Probably homesick. I tried to get her attention but that wasn't working so I hopped down and shook her arm and she just kinda bundled up even tighter. Fetal position. She just kept her fists against her ears for what seemed like forever but was probably only a couple of minutes but a couple minutes of weird is an eternity. I'm back on the top bunk now obviously. I think she calmed down.
aaand she just ran out the door.
*
back again. So I got up to close the door because whatever emergency was happening meant don't close the door behind you. Maybe she's seasick. That's a thing. Probably sea and homesick. We're moving along but not really side to side. I should go see if she's okay. Then again she was being really weird to me and she knows how I feel about doors on ships being open. Not good.
I'll give her a few minutes then maybe check up on her but I know if it was me crying or puking I wouldn't want me chasing after me immediately. We're both adults mostly. Maybe I'll just "brush my teeth" and maybe just see a little bit how she's doing and she can tell me all about it. She'll probably want to sign but between me and you I would love if she would just let me read her lips. Her possibly pukey lips. Her hands better be clean. She said the fingers were the lips of the hands the other day and I laughed my ass off. You had to be there. Maybe I bring her towel with me but then there goes the plan because how do I have her towel with me when I'm innocently brushing my teeth?
*
She wasn't there. Sorry, it's later. She wasn't there she wasn't in the bathroom. I walked back and I can't explain it but everything is starting to feel a little off. We're not exactly encouraged to go wandering off on our own after dark and for every reason you can think of I don't want to go off by myself. Maybe she's just being dramatic. She's super uptight about some things I can imagine her looking off for some other bathroom to puke in or going outside to puke over the side of the ship, but they were huge dicks about throwing stuff off the side of the ship and that includes puke. I know for a fact it has more to do with puke stains than littering. Would she go looking for me? Of course she would. She's my hearing-ear human ffs! Ugh. Okay. Here goes.
*
I DON'T KNOW WHERE ANYBODY IS. EVERYBODY'S JUST NOT ANYWHERE. I didn't look everywhere but there are lots of open doors and a lot of empty rooms. Maybe they all went out to look at something? Maybe they're all puking? There was Alex and Garrett across from us, Girl Alex and Shannon next to them and Dan and Tristan next to us and NOBODY is IN THEIR ROOM. A macbook was open, phones on the bed, just POOF. I don't know what to do. Daisy would never do this to me.
*
I can not. I don't even know how to begin to tell you anything at all. I don't want to tell you anything at all. I just want it to be over. I don't know. I don't know what happened I don't know if it's over but there is something very fucking creepy happening and it's too much to write but I'm losing my shit and there's absolutely no way I'm falling asleep any time soon and I can't not watch the door and I can't just stare at the door.
Julia came back. She came back and she was talking so fast I couldn't tell what she was saying. Her hands were moving so fast I thought she was signing but she wasn't she was just very very excited about something. She was gone probably not even that long but it felt like forever and I don't know if writing this makes it feel more or less real so just if you're reading this and it doesn't make a lot of sense just imagine how I feel writing this all down on a ship in the ocean and you just watched a couple people jump into the ocean and you're hiding from your friend because she's absolutely lost it.
She comes back and she runs to me and her eyes are the size of the moon. They're huge and they look a little cloudy in a very not normal way and she's just trying to drag me out of the room but I fight her off and try and get her to tell me where everybody is and what's going on and she can barely stop fidgeting. So she's talking and signing and eventually I get her to just say what she's trying to say because she kept trying to sign things she didn't know and the words weren't exactly much clearer either. She gets calm enough and she tells me that I need to come outside and see it. She couldn't explain it but something like because I couldn't hear it I would have to come see it. That it would all make sense when I saw it but it was a shame that I couldn't hear it because then she wouldn't even have to be talking to me about it. She said if she didn't have her airpods in she could have heard it clearer. I'm just like in shock. SHE is supposed to be the normal one! She's so fucking boring all the time and now she's finally enthusiastic about something and it's whatever THIS is. Apparently it was some noise. So like, in desperation I'm like 'yes sure I'll come with you' and I start to follow her and when I say she was RUNNING it's because she RAN from the room to outside. So I'm keeping up with her a little bit just so she's not out of my sight and we get outside and she tells me to wait because there are a few more. I'm just thinking "a few more of what exactly?" but before I can even say anything she's running around like a maniac.
She comes back with two dudes I have never seen before and they both seem a little out of it but definitely one more than the other. I'm sitting against the wall wondering why I didn't just run back to the room but I don't know, I felt like if I waited for her to come back maybe things would settle down or maybe the people she was coming to get would know what the hell happened but of course they didn't. She gets back with these two dudes and kinda has us stand in a row with our backs against the wall and she stood in front of us. One dude had airpods in still and the other had those noise cancelling headphones around his neck. He seemed a little more normal but definitely we both were wondering what the fuck.
She's in front of us now and she's talking to the airpods guy and I'm getting like every other word but she's saying something about what he received and asking if he heard enough. Then she points into the sky and says "There. Look there" and by this time her eyes are just white and everything is just so fucking intense. I barely want to look but airpods guy is STARING at the sky. Julia goes to the next guy and asks 'are you receiving anything' and he looks at me and he has no idea what to fucking do about anything and neither do I. I'm trying to talk to him but all I can really manage that I think he'd understand is "I don't know" which I say like twelve times. He looks at me because I think he finally gets that not only can I not hear but we are as clueless as one another about whatever the hell is happening.
That's about as far as he made it.
Julia looks back at airpods guy and says something and airpods guy gets behind headphones dude and has both his arms around him from the back. Eyes white as ice cream. He's saying something like "it's okay it's okay you'll be fine" and he's also looking pretty fucking happy and he's backing up toward the rail and at this point I am fully freaked out so I start backing up in case I need to run from this dude and before I can even figure out anything at all he leans back and flips over the side of the ship into the fucking water. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN AND HE JUST JUMPS IN HOLDING THAT OTHER GUY.
Me and Julia stare over the side and I look at her and she looks THRILLED and I can tell my mouth is just wide open because of whatever we just watched combined with however she's acting and the water barely looks like water. It looked like an ocean of something else. Like anemones. Like imagine the ship is in an island of humongous spiky black tentacles made of black light and you wouldn't even be able to see them if they weren't moving. I look at Julia and she looks at me and now she's just smiling laughing almost crying like she's so happy. She gestures to the sky again and signs "Look" and I don't even know what to do so I look and the sky is pretty normal except between the moon and the horizon there's a spot with no stars and a dark spot in the middle. It was pretty beautiful thinking back at it now but at the time I look at Julia and I'm so fucking scared and now she's trying to tell me things like "better this way" "this is it" "i swear this is good" "ascension" "higher level" and I don't know when I started but I just ran back to the room and somehow made it and I felt the door and could feel her banging on it and haven't felt to see if she was still banging but I'm so fucking scared and I don't know what to do except I can't go to sleep and what the fuck was anything I just saw???
So there was the eyes of airpods guy, the whole jumping into the ocean murder I just witnessed, the black island of anemones and the little hole in the sky. And what Julia is doing or wants from me I have no idea but I'm pretty sure she wants me thrown into the ocean. She might even want to be in the ocean herself but she must have seen those humongous anemone arms. There was no splash. They just kinda landed and floated and the arms took them in. Airpods guy first because headphones dude was flailing around but eventually a tentacle around his head and he stopped kicking and down he goes.
*
I'm still half watching the door. I can't feel anything behind it. She probably jumped in. I feel like she jumped in. She must have.
I keep thinking of that hole in the sky. I know I'm not the best at words but that's all I can see it as. Like a tiny eclipse. Maybe the size of a dime but all black with light around the edges. Beautiful light. The light of all colors. Just dancing. I keep thinking about the hole and I feel the hole and I feel the light dancing around the edges and I feel it in the center of my chest. I can feel the hole and I can feel the beautiful light dancing around it like my heart is wrapped in silk. So warm. The hole is so warm. I feel like I have wings. Big warm wings. I'm crying. I locked myself in this room and meanwhile there's a big hole in the sky that's singing and saying the most beautiful things to everyone who can hear it and oh my God I can HEAR IT and here's me locking myself inside to protect myself against who? Julia? She loves me she will always love me. I can feel that as well as anything and I know what we want. We want the same thing. We're made of the same stuff. We were so lucky to be on this ship.
I'm going to go outside. I need to introduce myself to it. It's not a hole at all. It has so much to teach us, so much to show us. I can feel it. It's bigger now. It's closer to us.
It seemed to scary but it isn't.
It feels so right.
Everything is going to be ok.
I think we're safe.
