Story 7 Message in a bottle

Story Seven. Message in a bottle.

It was a cold winter’s morning in February 1976, I was 27 and had just returned to Ireland from Australia. I was walking on Tramore beach in county Waterford when I saw a half buried green bottle in the sand. Seeing a bottle on a beach was always exciting for me, having traveled the world and been known to send out dozens of bottles with messages in them from beaches as far away as Fiji, Tasmania, Malaysia etc. But of all the bottles that I had picked up not one of them ever contained a message.
I picked up the bottle and sure enough it did have a piece of paper rolled up in there. I eagerly pulled out the paper and something else came out with it, a small green stone. The message said, There are thirteen precious stones in this bottle, take the stone of your choice, place the rest back in the bottle, write your country’s name and the date on this letter and throw it back in the sea with the outgoing tide within one week of finding it. Tell no one. When the last stone has been removed, place the note back inside, seal the bottle and return it to the sea. When the bottle returns with the countries listed I will be freed from five hundred years of captivity.

Well, the first thing I did was to laugh, I thought, ok guys, where’s the hidden camera? I felt I was being watched. You’re not going to make a fool of me, I thought. So I casually continued my walk carrying the bottle. I wasn’t going to give those watching me a laugh at my expense, but inside I was excited. I would wait to get back to the privacy of my room to further examine the bottle and it’s contents. I even took the long way back to the guesthouse giving those pranksters something to think about, we’re not all gullible idiots. But inside I was burning up in wild anticipation, for a start the bottle did actually look extremely old, the paper was definitely not like anything I had ever seen and the stone looked like an uncut emerald.
I got to the guesthouse and went straight to my room.
I examined the bottle and contents again. For a start the inside of the bottle had been turned opaque like it had been sandblasted to give the impression that the hard precious stones swirling around in there for all those years had worn the shine off the glass. If it was a prank then someone had gone to a lot of trouble to carry it out. Nice try again lads, I said.
I studied the note, the paper was definitely old and the handwriting was extremely authentic looking and definitely old style. The bottle had been recorded as having been in twelve countries with an original date of Saturday September 25, 1796, and even more remarkable was, the bottle had never been recorded as having been in the same country twice.
I did a quick calculation, if this was genuine the bottle had been going around the world for 180 odd years and had only been found twelve times, I had been the thirteenth and the last stone was mine to keep. It had to be a joke I thought. The last place it had been was Norway but it had originated in Morocco, then Angola, Argentina, South Africa, India, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Russia and now Ireland.
I ran a web search on the dates and I found out that the 25th of September 1796 was indeed a Saturday. If it was a joke then someone had indeed been meticulous in their details. I’m a goldsmith by trade and I examined the stone again, it was definitely an uncut emerald. I looked at the dates on the note, Angola 1811, Argentina 1826, South Africa 1841, India 1856, Australia 1871, Indonesia 1886, Philippines 1901, Japan 1916, China 1931, Russia 1946, Norway 1961, Ireland 1976. I studied those dates for any significant pattern. I was shocked to discover that this bottle gets discovered every fifteen years without fail, never before and never after, but fifteen years on the nail.!
What Have I got here? I asked myself. I studied the note again, “Tell no one,” it had said. My mind was whirling. It has to be a joke, but what a joke, it’s incredible.
I lay on the bed, my mind in a turmoil, the thing that was puzzling me the most was the tail about being imprisoned for 500 years. I certainly didn’t believe in the old genie in a lamp thing that we’ve all seen in movies.
What have I got to lose? I thought, I’m the last one on the list and I’m supposed to keep this stone. The bottle goes back in the sea tomorrow with the outgoing tide and I keep the stone.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind, surely if it had been a joke the pranksters would have said something like, “If you don’t follow these directions you will be cursed for life.” I looked at the bottle again. “How will I know that you made it back to Morocco?” I said. Will it ever be made known to me? You’re crazy, I thought again.
I examined the inside of the bottle again the frosted glass was certainly what you would expect from having hard precious stones swirling around in there for a couple of hundred years, I mean, had the bottle been clear and unscratched on the inside then it would certainly have been a joke.
I scrutinized the paper again, held it up to the light, this was definitely old paper, I was almost afraid to write on it but I had to follow the instructions. I thought about asking if anyone in the house had a fountain pen, it didn’t seem right to be using a ball point pen but I did, I simply wrote, Ireland 1976.
There was a knock on my door, “Dinner is being served sir,” the voice said.
I pushed the note into the bottle and dropped the stone in for safekeeping then corked it before placing it under my bed.
            “I’ll be right there,” I said and went into the dining room for dinner. We sat at the table trying to make small talk with the other guests but my mind was elsewhere.
The weather had changed dramatically and the wind was howling outside. “I’m glad we don’t have to go out tonight,” someone said. With that the power went off. The house owner went to the front door to see if the other houses were also in darkness. He came back in a panic. “Quick, quick, the sea is rising, we have to get to higher ground, I’ve never seen it so high, it’s almost on our doorstep, quickly everyone into your cars.”
I immediately thought of the bottle and ran to my room but in the pitch black I couldn’t find it. The others were shouting for me to come. I had no choice but to leave it and flee.
Apparently that was the worst storm to hit the area in a hundred years, and two days later when we got back to the house it had been destroyed by the high seas. Everything was gone including the bottle, I was in a rage but there were people far worse off than me and I stayed for a few days to help clean up. I was secretly looking for the bottle but I never found it. Why didn’t you just put the stone in your pocket, I thought. I was angry with myself.


            Well, life goes on as they say and years passed. I got married and we decided to go and live in America in 1988. We settled on the Jersey shore about an hour south of New York city and bought a house three blocks from the beach. It was beautiful. I continued my beach walks. I had our little Jack Russell Fiona, she also loved the beach and we’d walk for miles every day. Life was good, but dogs weren’t allowed on the beach so we’d sneak down early in the morning.
One day Fiona raced off ahead of me and was digging furiously in the sand, I was afraid it might be a dead seagull or a rotting fish so I ran down to where she was digging. Low and behold it was a green bottle similar to the one I had found in Ireland.
I washed it off with seawater and uncorked it. I almost collapsed, the same note and stone and my handwriting from 15 years earlier. I had to sit down on a log. I looked at Fiona, “Do you know what you just found?”
I held that same green stone in my hand again. It was 1991, fifteen years exactly since I had discovered it on the beach in Ireland. This time I wasn’t letting it out of my sight, whatever entity or spirit that planned this, meant for me to have a second go at it.
I was bursting to tell my wife but I couldn’t, all those people before me had kept up their end and I would have to also, I had already screwed up once.
I brought the bottle home and wrote below my last caption, America 1991. This time I kept the stone and went straight down to the beach. I waited for two hours until the tide was going out and flung the bottle as far out on the waves as I could.
            “Good luck to you buddy, sorry you had to wait another fifteen years but I hope you’ll be freed now.” Fiona just looked at me as if to say, what was that all about?
I just smiled.
“Maybe someday we’ll find out little one. Maybe someday it will all be made known to us.”