In the Dredge (After Skeleton Creek) [ONE SHOT]

The Escape

A/n: I own no images in this story.

We heard a loud boom and the door closed. We were trapped.

The instant this happened Sarah cried out

"Ryan! I lost the connection!".

We both freaked out and decided to find each other in the dark. Sarah pulled out a flashlight and shone it around the dredge. From what we could see there was nothing out of the ordinary. However, Sarah thought she saw something so she shone the flashlight over the wood planks and saw a triangle carved into the floor. She pushed it and a groaning sound came from the gears. They were starting to turn! We felt the dredge start to move. We realised it was moving down the creek.

Oh no!

Soon the dredge was going to go into the ocean! We quickly looked around the bottom floor of the dredge. We found a square piece of wood, a wrench and a spring. Sarah looked upstairs and came back down with a black piece of cloth, a hammer and a flashlight. She looked at the flashlight saw that it was exactly the same model as the one she already had. She freaked out and dropped it. It made a jingle noise that sounded like coins hitting each other. We opened the bottom of the flashlight and we found 30 gold coins with a passage of text. My gold, ye have found / Return what be mine and keep what be yours / Bush's curse be lifted / Leave this place and leave it to the Crossbones.

We didn't know what to make of this, we had so many questions.

What was the curse?

Was the Crossbones mentioned here related to the Crossbones we found out about in Skeleton Creek? I didn't think it was, but it was too much of a coincidence. The paper looked ancient. We tried to decipher the riddle but came up with nothing - that was, until I tripped. After we looked at the riddle we decided to look for more clues to get out. When I tripped I saw that right in front of me, somewhere I probably wouldn't have looked were 10 circular holes. We put a coin into the slot and it fit perfectly. We filled up the other slots hoping something would happen.

Nothing did.

Sarah figured that if there were only ten holes there must be more. She looked around and saw that there were another 20 holes in rows of tens. All three rows were in the shape of a triangle. The first question I would later come to ask myself when we got out of there, was how did we miss the triangle in the first place? I have no clue. Just another figment of the whole ghosts thing, I suppose. We filled the slots and another slot opened. It was the perfect shape for the piece of wood. We placed it in and a hole large enough for Sarah opened. She threw one of the flashlights into it. It was sliced in half by a large blade that came down from the ceiling. There was no way that we were going to get through that hole without some tools.

Our first task was to find out where the motion sensor was. I threw the spring in that I had found while Sarah shone in the area with her remaining torch. She caught a bit of movement in the top right hand corner. Since the sensor seemed not to respond when it was dark, she climbed into the hole and held the black cloth over the motion sensor. I passed her the wrench which, along with the hammer she used to block the blade. She left the wrench and the hammer under where the blade would be and removed the cloth. The blade triggered but was stopped by the wrench and the hammer. She threw the spring back to me. I walked back over to the gears. I was nervous about doing this. It was where Old Joe Bush had died.

I slowly reached my arm near the gears and positioned the spring. I let go and it fell into the gears. Right into place. As it settled it seemed that the pressure was too much for it. It was slowly compacted and crushed into a tiny circle. It soon fell through the gears and into the gearbox. Exactly as planned.

Now I don't know if you know heaps about dredge gearboxes, but I sure as hell didn't. My plan was for it to get crushed and hopefully get lucky when it came to the gears blocking it and jamming it. Well I did get lucky as soon the gears jammed and froze up. I felt the dredge stop moving and shouted out of joy. I walked back over to the hole and saw Sarah's face. "Nice job," she exclaimed. "It was all luck," I replied. She informed me that she was going to go to the front gates and find the bolt cutters and see what was trapping us inside. I made my way over the the gate and waited. From what she told me I can gather this. She retrieved her bolt cutters and looked at the gate. It turns out that the gates were fully barred. Prison style. She cut through all of them. She opened the old wooden door and I fell through from trying to listen to what was happening.

The dredge was stopped in the middle of the creek. We jumped into the water and started to make our way back to the town. When we hit the banks of the river, we found a relatively young man waiting for us. Strangely enough he looked like Old Joe Bush himself from the photo.

"Greetings children," he said. "I am Joe Bush." Sarah and I exchanged a look of surprise. "But... I thought you were dead sir?" I asked.

"Oh, I am very much dead child. In fact you were the ones that made it possible for me to move from this world to the next one. I was stuck in that dredge for ages. Thank you. I have removed the memories of this night from all in the town.".

"Thank you Mr. Bush" Sarah replied.

"No problem. Now, I must be on my way. Oh! I should tell you that since you are the ones that freed me, the gold in the dredge is yours.".

"We couldn't accept such a thing Mr. Bush" Sarah and I said at the exact same time.

"But you are being forced to, you have no choice in the matter. Now, on you go home."

This was the last thing he said to us, as he slowly faded away. Sarah and I looked at each other and started laughing. This was too good to be true. Also, we had just gone through a stupid, psychotic death trap. We were allowed to derive a little bit of pleasure from us surviving right? After we finished laughing, we started to walk to our respective houses, with our little secret night of escaping the death trap which is the dredge, and both of us a few million dollars richer.

A/n: Thank you for reading this pile of dog sh*t of a story. Thanks. I might continue the story a bit later but for now, no. I have other things that I am doing. Au Revoir!