H A N K B E L B I N
About
The Monster out on the Ocean
First published May 2023. 12,500 words
Now available as an Audiobook
The dark monsters out there would suck me up when night came on, and they would carry me far across the sea and through strange lands where no humans lived. - Knut Hamsun
​
CHAPTER I - Captain Sir James Mapother Beaumont
Long ago, on distant ancient seas…
The rains wailed and the thunders roared. It was a dark night out on the ocean, and dawn was not yet nigh. The HMS Inferno lurched and heaved reluctantly through endless inky black waves and torrential rains. It was one of those small brooding sloop-o'-war ships that often navigated the area; with a thin keel and dirtied oiled sails to compliment its crude hull. It was the only frigate ship in the vicinity, returning to England after a brutal bombing raid of Nantucket.
The raid was successful and the ship had single-handedly sabotaged the whaling efforts of two colonial whaling ports, the sinking of four American frigates, and even the stealing of their flag. It was a remarkable and prestigious effort that would no doubt go down well in history. The war of 1812 may have been over but it did not stop the British Navy, nor Captain Beaumont for that matter, from wreaking havoc on the Americans in a sort of bitter retribution.
But as much as celebrations were in order, they were not home yet, and more trials laid ahead for the HMS Inferno. And he knew it.
The great and vengeful storm had seemingly been following the vessel for a few days now; as if it were born of the campaign they’d just finished. He’d spied its progress from the poop deck as it crept forward. It had loomed up over the horizon sometime last week, all laden with foreboding, and now, with nightfall, it had finally caught up to them. That bastard God, he thought to himself.
That, and so had something else caught up to them; something below the waves. A great obscene being from the darkness that no man had ever laid eyes on and lived to tell the tale. It was their judgement. It was the perfect time to come aboard for the being.
Gales and sickeningly peaking waves assaulted the grim floating hulk throughout the night. That was when the immense dark thing had swum up from the deep black trenches below the ocean floor where all manner of living things were given permit to exist and had chosen that ship alone to claw onto. It had purged up from the inky blackness like a fleshy torpedo and propelled itself towards the hull of the HMS Inferno, desperation in its movements. Its suckers slapped against the rough oak underside with a thud and it latched on there like some great slithering mollusc. And it waited. No one aboard noticed.
The rains hammered down onto the decks and the unyielding waves all around forced the ship to bank violently from side to side. Everything out there over the vessel’s sides was an inconceivable smudge of twilight blue. There were no stars, no moon, nothing. Only the various twinkling oil lamps across the decks gave any sort of illumination in the gloom.
Aboard was a crew of sixty criminals and buccaneers—all mercenaries, captured slaves from America, and runaways. They carried out their duties aboard like prison sentences.
Sir Beaumont, the ship’s Captain stood at the wheel watching them all; a veneer of arrogance across his gaunt and stoic face. He was the only man there by choice. The rain lashed against his exposed skin, but he didn’t care. In fact, he loved it. He was a tall, lean man with an impeccable and well-groomed presence. His sharp angular face seemed to be perpetually contorted into a grimace or a snarl, like a hawk watching its prey, and he stood there like a statue in the storm, watching them all.
Captain James Beaumont was a driven man—out to prove himself to the Crown, and to the world also. He thrived on notoriety and dreamed of being remembered as one of the great conquerors. Men gain identity from war. And he often fantasised about being revered along with Napoleon, Alexander of Macedonia, and Caesar. The great Caesar. He would become one of them. He could see it. It was so close to him that he could almost taste it in his spit. And each mission he completed only brought him closer to his dream.
Captain Beaumont demanded that the men worked through the night. They sailed determined through the storm that seemed to never end and they had lost a man to the seas in the small hours. He fell overboard and was never seen again. But, no one stopped to acknowledge his death and the ship continued on ambivalently. No sleep would be had for anyone and Sir Beaumont grinned to himself when he issued that command. They had set sail from Plymouth, England some weeks earlier for the raid and, on the return home, this storm would no doubt set them back a few more days. So whatever time they had lost out on the seas, they would surrender from their wages also. He tried his hardest not to smile in front of the crew at that decision.
It was a long and hard night for them all.
Mercifully for the men, however, the night did eventually end and the storm did too. It soon retreated up into the empty blackness of the near-dawn sky, almost as if it never happened to begin with. All traces of its presence disappeared. The sun rose in the morning shortly after, and the HMS Inferno sailed further through the interminable dawn fog and across the flat waveless Labrador Sea back towards England.
Captain Beaumont gave the wheel to the helmsman and retired to his quarters to gloat about his recent string of successes. Everything was going so well for him. He’d made the rank of Captain in two years. With this momentum, he would no doubt become Commander Beaumont within the year. He celebrated with a drink and went and shaved by the mirror whilst singing Latin poems to himself. As he did, the ship banked sharply and without warning and the captain almost cut his cheek when it did.
“Fucking useless scumbag,” he muttered as he stared at the ceiling of his cabin. When they arrived back in Plymouth, he would dismiss the helmsman—whatever his name was—with no pay.
Meanwhile, the thing below the waves, that slithering mass of darkness clinging to the hull, waited patiently for its opportunity. All aboard had no idea what was waiting for them. All apart from one.
​
CHAPTER II - Cavendish, the Reader
​
It was mid-morning two days later, and all the crew on the decks were busy. Everyone was sullen and angry. The initial joy of fresh employment and a new vessel to work on had long since faded into maddening boredom and frequent bickering. No one talked to each other unless necessary. Captain Beaumont had pushed and worked them all to the point of near-mutiny. He did this on purpose to expose the true character of those individuals he’d call his crew. As a means of passing time he often liked to evaluate people under pressure. And to elicit this, he would always push the members into stressful situations and simply watch them.
He would often stand alone on the upper deck and look down upon them all. As much as he tried to avoid the thought, he irrevocably viewed them all as cockroaches, expendable assets, useful idiots who would attend to the sails and duties obediently, like cattle; and all he had to do was dangle a few carrots in front of them. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to live a life so ignominious and devoid of any meaning as they seemingly did.
Everything was miserable. Some of the men were salting the decks, others were maintaining the ropes. The seas were flat and calm and the waves rapped gently against the ship. There was no sign of anything untoward.
Mr Cavendish, one of the low-ranking sailors, had decided to neglect his duties in favour of reading books instead. He could get away with it. He’d caught the captain doing some heinous things, and both had seemingly entered a silent pact never to address those things ever again. Sometimes, he’d sit upon the foredeck alone and look over the top of his book and, every so often, the pair would meet eyes.
That silent acknowledgement of ‘knowing’ shared between bitter enemies. If more were to know his little secret, there would no doubt be a mutiny. But because of this, the captain decided to tactically ignore and completely disregard Cavendish’s presence instead.
Both men chose to keep up the charade in front of the others. Cavendish wanted a wage and to be left in peace, and no one else would hire him. The captain wanted to take over the world. So both agreed to ignore each other because of their uses.
Cavendish was an incredibly odd person. There was something unmistakably ‘off’ with the man. He seemed to be ‘away’. As if his existence was part in this world and part in another. No one else quite knew why he was aboard. He rarely spoke and would often bury himself in his collection of strange and archaic books, as if trying to decipher something from them. Some of the crew would talk about him over their dinners and exchange stories of how he mumbled bizarre languages in his sleep. He’d dream of great black octopi and squids. Things that have no business existing yet still do. The cephalopods would speak to him in these dreams. And in these dreams they would communicate the demise of all man least they head the wisdom and pleads.
Cavendish would sweat and shudder as he experienced them all. He had tried on several occasions to warn people of this omen, but instead of praise, he was met with ridicule and laughter.
Because of this, since then, everyone else aboard chose to ignore him. But, in a strange and unexplainable way, he knew what he was doing was right. He knew he was onto something.
As he sat reading, he couldn’t shake the unmistakable feeling of something rotten in the air. It breathed on the back of his neck like ice. He tried to read on but there were strange vibrations all around. No one else seemed to pick up on them, but he wasn’t surprised. He looked up from his book and squinted.
What is that? Something in the air. Maybe the winds have changed?
There was something wrong with the voyage and Cavendish, as much as he tried to deny it, knew it already.
​
​
Time dragged on like a stone. The days were long and hard, and the men bedded down and rose again like the ticking of a clock. It was all so predictable. Cavendish had been navigating the decks and avoiding people as best as he could. He’d appear for dinner and breakfast, he’d stand by his bed when necessary, he’d work the cannons down on the lower decks, and then he’d slink off and hide somewhere to read his literature.
Still, he couldn’t discard that ill feeling in his stomach. Something was wrong. The hairs on his back prickled whenever he went down into the holds. When he was down there, and the ship would creek every so often, Cavendish, thinking it was a presence, would glare down into the twilight of the storage, but see nothing. Yet he knew deeply that something was wrong.
The vibrations in his mind pulsed. He felt its presence on him like a shadow. Something else was there, and he couldn’t explain it.
​
​
Then, four days later, it happened. Their day of judgement had arrived.
The morning was dull and grey and the men heaved about. As Cavendish worked his way through Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, he suddenly stopped and shuddered. He looked up from the book and felt the strange familiar tingling feeling crawl down his spine and over his skin. His face went white. He knew now was the time. The thing from his dreams would come now.
He set down his book and stood up and gazed across the slow dark waves. He’d seen this moment before, yet he couldn’t remember where exactly from. It was like a childhood nightmare that he remembered vividly, or maybe a fever dream.
Without warning, all aboard heard a vicious crunching coming from below the ship. The HMS Inferno suddenly jerked and tipped forward unnaturally, as if being held back by something. The keel writhed and the masts squirmed with the contradictory momentum. Then it rolled and stopped. The whole ship seemed to squeal and compress as something stopped its course. The men gasped in astonishment as they all slammed into the railings and the vessel came to a stop.
“Good god!” Someone blurted out.
No one replied for a pause. They all just looked around at each other, carrying that same look of fear in their eyes that men often do when they face their end.
“Must’ve hit a reef,” another replied cautiously.
“In the middle of the ocean?” Someone else questioned.
What followed was a sharp noise of squirming of wood coming from below the waves. It sounded like the hull was being pinched against a bed of rocks. It sounded like the ship had run aground, yet it couldn’t have.
The men aboard shared a confused glance, all of them wondering why the ship continued sailing if it had run aground.
Then, coupled with that crunch of wood, Mr Cavendish heard this bizarre grumbling moan emanating from overboard with it. The noise seemed to echo up from the water. His face went pale and his skin tingled as he cocked his ear to the seas—thinking it sounded like a giant groaning cow underneath the ship.
What the Devil made that noise? he thought to himself.
But deep down he already knew. He’d heard it in his dreams. It was the same sound. He’d heard that exact calling before. It was that same presence he’d felt for days. It was what he saw in his mind every night he went to sleep.
“Did you bloody hear that?” He muttered nervously to Mr Smith, unsure whether he was awake or not. But Mr Smith ignored him and continued scrubbing the deck.
“So it is real then?” Cavendish turned and asked himself. “It’s not just a dream. I knew it.”
In the dusty corners of his mind, he felt like he knew it already. He’d seen it in his dreams.
The HMS Inferno then strangely snapped to its starboard side twice and almost capsized. The men shouted as the tides flooded over the side before the ship valiantly rectified itself and drifted onward. The men gasped, grabbed a hold of the railings each, and looked at one another curiously. The strangeness of the motion had jolted something primal within them all: fear. The ship began banking ignominiously to starboard and no one knew why. Some men had begun pumping the bilge water out. Others tended the ropes.
Hewson, one of the idlers, leaned over the railing and stared into the bottomless indigo seas. “Must be an iceberg, Captain!” He shouted back lazily.
Captain Beaumont sighed and looked across the ship, towards the horizon, and dismayed at all of his crew’s ridiculous explanations.
“The lead line test conducted not ten minutes ago never reached the bottom, Hewson,” he said.
“We’re caught on summit’, sir! The rudder has definitely ceased to work,” Edmond, the helmsman to his side, muttered as he jerked the wheel from side to side. “It’s unresponsive, sir. Something must be wedged behind it. A bit of driftwood, perhaps?”
“Give it to me, you idiot,” Captain Beaumont demanded as he shouldered the helmsman out of the way. He then took hold of the wheel and tried the same, but it would not budge. For fear of losing credibility amongst his men, he tugged at it even harder, yet it would not move.
“Come on, you bastard!” Captain Beaumont exclaimed as he heaved with all his might against the wheel. Then, as he managed to gain some ground with it, the wheel suddenly tugged back, as if it were fighting him. He felt it. Captain Beaumont immediately snapped up and instinctually let the wheel fall from his grip. Then he took a step backwards in shock. Something was wrestling the rudder away from him down there. Something was clinging onto the keel of the ship—something alive. The helmsman saw it too. He looked at the captain and his eyes were wide with terror.
“I need a volunteer!” Captain Beaumont called out to the galley. “Someone with diving experience. There’s something caught in the rudder and I need a man to remove it. Double rations for a week for the man who does.”
The crew looked across at each other apprehensively. None of them trusted him. None of them wanted to go below the waves.
“I demand a volunteer!”
​
​
After that, the crew had taken a ballot as to who would go underwater in the dreaded diving gear. It was not a vote of willingness, but a drawing of straws. No one wanted to do it. In a suit made of lead and brass, one snap of the rope from the rickety lowering platform and that unfortunate soul on it would plunge down headlong into the salty depths of the void, swallowed up forever by the everlasting waves.
No one wanted to do it.
Curiously however, Mr Cavendish actually stood up and volunteered instead. Everyone about looked over at him like he was deranged. His brazen announcement was met with hushed chatter and everyone wondered why he would even dare to offer. But he knew. It was his destiny and he knew exactly what awaited him down there. He’d seen it in his dreams. That thing…
Its presence clung to him like cold mud up his legs. He had to see if it was real. He had to face it.
After the crew about had armoured him in his diving suit, he negotiated the gangway towards the levy point. The heavy boots he was wearing clanged against the rough deck as he lumbered unnaturally towards the winchman at the bow. He was trembling, but it was impossible to see under the diving gear. His suit was made of a brass helmet and a waxed leather overcoat with only a small tube protruding out of it for breathing apparatus. The captain and the men stood around him in a loose semi-circle. The congregation all watched silently as he stepped up to the plank. As Mr Cavendish held the helmet in his hands, he turned and faced his crew, and then spoke meekly.
“Observe my signals. If I tug the rope thrice, it means pull me up. Two tugs mean I’ve sorted the issue. One tug means I cannot fix it. Set the slack to two fathoms—twelve feet—so I do not snag on the underside of the ship,” he said, knowing exactly what would happen next.
“—The men know what to do, Mr Cavendish,” Captain Beaumont announced arrogantly. “Proceed with haste.”
“Of course. My apologies, Sir. One more thing…” he tried to say, merely to alarm the men of what was about to happen.
“Yes?”
“I think I know what it is…”
“—Well then get down there and fix it,” Captain Beaumont dismissed and gestured for the men to hurry up.
Mr Cavendish nodded reluctantly then put his helmet on, and two crewmen at his side fastened it for him. His heart pounded in his chest. He’d always hated the water, but more so now. If he’d not been caught stealing and forced to work on this squalid hulk, he’d never go anywhere near the ocean.
He stepped onto the platform and was lowered slowly, clumsily, down the side of the HMS Inferno and then into the icy void of the Labrador Sea. For a moment, he simply floated. It was near-silent below the waves. Only the faint creaking of the ship’s hull could be heard.
Mr Cavendish wearily looked over his shoulder, back out at the murky grey-green of the water to his back, expecting to see something there, but he saw nothing. He sat patiently on the plank and tried to control his timorous panting. He could barely see five feet in front of him. The water all around was mottled with plankton and particles. The sea was like a great dark green syrup that he could scarcely see through.
After a few more minutes, the winchman above had manoeuvred Mr Cavendish to the rear of the ship. Bubbles pluming out from his breathing apparatus made it even harder to see down in the deep water and the contours of the ship appeared like a massive shadow through his visor. Padding the side of the hull, he moved towards the corner of the stern. His breaths were controlled but sharp. He breathed out through his nose and tried to slow his pounding heart. He trembled as he reached out for the sides of the ship. He just knew something else was there with him. Whatever it was, it was there.
The seas heaved against him, and he felt its pressure even in the suit. Below was and endless expanse of green and blue. Shards of dull light filtered down into it and Cavendish briefly wondered what was at the bottom. Skulls and death. Is this where we all end up? Mortar and stone? A mere grain of sand on an endless dead beach of time?
When he came to the stern he saw it. He peered down at where the rudder should’ve been. But instead, there was something else. There it was. It was real.
Mr Cavendish’s eyes went wide with horror and he almost fell from the platform. Through the dirtied glass of his helmet, he saw this obscene mass of writhing black tentacles hanging onto the stern. Against the jade palate of the seas, the thing first appeared like a giant clump of seaweed or kelp. But, as his eyes adjusted to the ocean's dimness, he saw this colossal octopus-like thing gripping the underside ship. It had a great barbed spine and a fierce pronounced face, like a black elephant covered in barnacles and seaweed. His heart leapt into his throat and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. It was all real. His dreams were real. The unknown squid-like entity of sheer blackness was so close to him that he could reach out and touch it.
Panic-stricken, Cavendish clutched desperately at the water about him, feverishly scrabbling for something to heave himself up onto the deck with. But there was nothing down there to grab onto. Instead, he could only float on the plank below the sea and bare-witness the abomination before him. Unassailable fear soon pulled him into a kind of dull paralysis.
It soon noticed his presence and it looked across at him. At the base of those tentacles was a horrifically bulbous pulsing head that lurched closer with four dark amber eyes centred in the front of its face. It had broken the rudder and now it was coming for him. One tentacle slowly released its grip from the stern and reached out for his helmet.
“Jesus Christ!” He shrieked in his helmet. “Please! Pull me up!”
He tugged and tugged at the rope but was met with no response. It was something so deformed and nauseatingly more alien than he could ever imagine.
“Pull me up! Pull me up, please!” He screamed. His cries were so desperate and forceful that the condensation from his voice steamed up the visor and he could barely see anything now.
It leaned closer and spoke. Its trunk reaching out to stroke Cavendish.
“TAAAKE ME TOOOOOO LAND…” It said to him in a laboured voice and it echoed through the waters.
“What?” Cavendish gasped, but the words were lost in his helmet. “I don’t understand.”
“TAAAKE MEEEEEE TOOOOOO LAAAAAND,” The entity growled as its tentacle settled gently over Cavendish's shoulder. Curiously, the gesture was not a threat, and instead had the unmistakable signature of desperation.
“TAKE MEEEEEE TO LAAAAANNND!”
“Good God! Pull me up! Please,” he shrieked again as he tugged at the rope.
Then, mercifully, he was hoisted back up once more and the thing below the waves disappeared from his view.
"PLEAAASE," it said before Cavendish broke through the waves.
​
​
After the men heaved Mr Cavendish onto the deck, he immediately bolted upright in the middle of them and scrabbled manically at his gear and tried to tear it all off with his hands. His hands slipped off the wet suit and only pulled away clumps of kelp. The men about him shouted and demanded that he calmed down, but he did not hear them. He instead imagined that the thing was somehow on his back now. He writhed around like a rabid dog, desperately tugging at his harness.
“Restrain him, for god’s sake!” Captain Beaumont commanded as he pointed to the feral man. “He’ll fall off the bloody side.”
Once the men relieved him of his helmet, he took one sharp gasp of fresh air and coughed.
“What did you see, man? Speak!” Phillips demanded.
“There’s something down there, sir! Something on the underside of the ship. It’s alive,” Mr Cavendish wheezed as a reply and the crew about looked at each other wearily.
“Did you fix the rudder?”
“There’s something alive down there!” He screeched. “It’s alive! I know what it is,” Cavendish said and the men about scoffed at the statement. “It’s an elephant. It has arms! Please! I knew it was real. You must believe me!”
Captain Beaumont turned away from him. “He’s hallucinating. He’s mad. Get him out of my sight,” he shouted.
“Sir, you must listen to me! It can speak! You must have heard its voice?” Mr Cavendish bellowed as he turned and lumbered after the captain.
“The only voice I hear is that of a madman.”
“It’s a great squid. It’s black. Our lives are in danger here! It wants to be—”
Cavendish fell down. Without even seeing it, he’d ran right into a low hanging-mast. He would have seen it if his attention had not been so fixed on the Captain’s back. With an awful crunch, he cracked his forehead on the side of the wood and collapsed onto the mid-deck with a thud. He’d knocked himself out and he didn’t make another sound.
“Get him down to the surgeon and sedate him,” Captain Beaumont said, standing over him as he did. “If he tries to move from his bed, kill him.”
The captain enjoyed that prospect. He now had an excuse to kill his enemy. They carried and laid him down in the infirmary below deck, and there he had strange inescapable dreams of the seas and what else could be lurking down there in the deepest depths of that inky blackness. He felt as if he were drowning, but not in water; something thicker, like oil.
If that thing was down there, what else could be? How many of them? What will they do to us all? He dreamed of every conceivable possibility and of the swells of nightmarish creatures not yet known to man, all of them following the ship, all awaiting their turn to strike and reveal themselves. And he could not escape from any of them. Voices assaulted his thoughts. They rolled and tumbled over each other, demanding his cooperation.
“What do you want?” Cavendish mumbled in his sleep. The voice of the thing replied. It was growing stronger.
He tossed and turned in delirium in the hammock, plagued by feverish terror. His nightmares were deep and steady and he did not wake up again for days.
​
CHAPTER III - And the Monster with us
Later that same evening, after the crew were relieved of their duties and sent back to their hammocks, Captain Beaumont had instructed First Mate Phillips to come to his quarters so they may discuss the day’s events. It was to be a secretive conversation. Cavendish’s performance had startled the crew, that much was clear. But there was something else wrong. There was something wrong with the whole voyage in fact. They didn't know what exactly but the men felt it instinctively. So both officers felt it necessary to conduct ‘damage control’ of the situation. If they were to make up for the time lost from the storm, then the ship could suffer no more setbacks, especially underperformance from within the ranks caused by fear and superstition.
After the captain and Phillips had eaten their meals in tense silence, they retired in front of the fire together and shared a bottle of Navy-proof Brandy. It was a tight little room with dark stained wood panelling all around, and the lonely little cot in the corner was the captain’s sleeping quarters. He needed no comforts. His particulars and personal effects were stored in a foot locker under it. Apart from that, the fireplace, and the table and chairs, the room was bare.
Captain Beaumont was brooding and untalkative, despite the sole reason for the invitation being to discuss the situation. First mate Phillips initially tried to lighten the gloomy and sombre mood by regaling the captain with stories of his and another officer’s antics in a brothel in Boston but was met with no response. Captain Beaumont instead stared at his tumbler and swirled around the liquid within. The cramped little cabin groaned and squeaked as the ship sailed through endless blackness and they sat there for a while drenched in silence and shadows, with only a dim swaying oil lamp in between the pair. The cabin seemed to get tighter. Clearly, something was angering the captain.
“The men are spooked, Captain,” Phillips finally announced, breaking the painfully long quiet.
“I know,” the captain replied in a hoarse voice and gulped his drink.
“Perhaps it would be prudent to dispel the rumours and present Mr Cavendish as a madman, whose words are not to be trusted?”
Again, Captain Beaumont failed to respond. Cavendish was already known as a madman. What would be the point of smearing him now? No, instead, the captain had his own plans. Firstly, he wanted to project a sense of concern and fear for his men before speaking. He reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink whilst also replenishing Phillips’ glass.
“Sir?” Phillips questioned gently. A deep frown carved its way down his face as he looked across at the captain.
“… This is my first voyage as a captain. Did you know that?” Captain Beaumont said as he set the bottle back down.
“I did not, sir, no.”
The captain nodded. “We set sail on a Friday, did we not?”
“Yes, sir. Friday the 18th of October.”
“Bad luck…”
“Forgive me, sir, but I believe that is merely a sailor’s superstition. Fables and stories told by the uneducated.”
“Mr Cavendish was incredibly specific with what he claimed to have seen down there… wasn’t he? A black elephant… an octopus…”
“Maniacs often do possess vivid imaginations, sir,” Phillips tried to dismiss with a wry grin.
“Do you believe him?”
“Good God, no!” Phillips squawked.
Captain Beaumont stared at him with cold sharp eyes. “… What if he was right?”
Phillips’ grin faded and he looked back at Captain Beaumont in bewilderment. “You can’t be serious?” He said.
“He’s a learned man. Those books he reads are like nothing I’ve seen before. I reckon he’s the best practitioner on the subject we have.”
Captain Beaumont necked his tumbler and winced as the alcohol slid down his throat. Then he looked at Phillips. His eyes were black and flat and held the distinct twinkle of something darkly menacing. He was hatching a scheme, and from the experience of working for him, Phillips knew it would be something completely diabolical and amoral.
“Phillips, I must have your word that whatever is discussed in this cabin, stays in this cabin. Can you do that?” He said earnestly, knowing Phillips didn’t really have a choice but to obey. To disobey would mean a forfeit of wages, demotion, and maybe even a court martial.
“Of course, sir. I am in your command, but I fear I’m not following where you’re going with this…”
“Mr Cavendish claimed to have seen something down there with him. Perhaps there is credence in that fact. So, we cannot let these rumours spread through the ranks. We must curtail misinformation. However… and maybe he is a lunatic, maybe the seas have driven him mad, but…”
“Go on, sir…”
Captain Beaumont grimaced artfully and looked away, pausing for measured effect. “It sounds quite ridiculous saying it out loud actually, but, earlier—when the rudder stopped responding—I attempted to steer the ship and something… something wrestled it away from me. Do you understand that? It was something alive, and it… it had a grasp on the hull. I could feel its strength through the wheel. What if Mr Cavendish was right? What if something is clinging to the hull of this ship right now? This is my first voyage in command, and I must confess that my knowledge of the seas and its inhabitants has its gaps, but that does not mean that monsters do not exist.”
“Could it have been a piece of driftwood?”
“Driftwood doesn’t fight back. It was a beast, Phillips. And it’s still here…” he said, selling the fear to his first mate.
Phillips put his tumbler down in startled amazement and stood up from his chair before pacing around the cramped little cabin.
“My God, why did you not say something sooner?” He said, trying to take the accusing tone back out of his voice.
“And scare the crew further? No,” he said, feigning empathy for his crew. “Their lives are at stake, and we must do something.”
Captain Beaumont was a skilled thespian, and when needed, he could express all the necessary emotions expertly. Fear, sadness, euphoria, empathy. But behind the facade, he felt nothing. Not even any regard for his own mortality. Just as long as his name was carved into the stone below his statues when he moved off of this miserable plane of existence.
“This is serious then. We must know,” Phillips mumbled.
Now was the time to stoke the fires of paranoia. “Do you truly want to know, Phillips? Do I? What if all those legends and myths of monsters were not myths at all, but accounts…”
Phillips fell back into the chair in astonishment and rubbed his furrowed brow.
“Heaven on earth…” he muttered to himself. “We need to find out soon, sir.”
“I’m sure we will soon enough…” he replied. “Something dark is aboard, and I believe it is not yet nigh until it reveals its face. But the men cannot know about this yet. We must know first.”
“Of course…”
“I want you to install only one watchman on sentry tonight.”
“One, sir?” Phillips repeated with clear puzzlement. Did he really suggest using one of the crew as bait? But, it was too late. He’d already agreed to obey the Captain’s orders.
“Let us see what might be out there…” the captain snarled and was barely able to conceal his smirk.
Phillips however could only afford a grimace as an acknowledgement of the statement.
After that, they all bedded down and everything was quiet for a while.
CHAPTER IV - Savage hearts
Sure enough, it happened in the small hours of the night. The sails had been heaved-in and everyone had bedded down for the evening. Only a sole watchman remained up on deck when it happened, as instructed by Phillips. Then, each man below was suddenly awoken from their sleep by this horrific confused wailing that echoed from up on the deck. Then the wailing changed into a guttural agonising scream as it vanished off into the night. There was gargling, then nothing…
Captain Beaumont heard it also. He’d been laying in his cot with his flintlock pistols at the ready. Without a moment’s hesitation, he bolted up from his bed and yanked the door to his quarters open before stepping into the frenzied second deck of the crew’s quarters. All around him men shouted and squawked at each other in confused terror. He was already immaculately dressed in his uniform and his sabre swung from side to side as he marched through them all. It was as if he’d been waiting for this moment his whole life. His tall vulpine frame glided past the men with a distinct tense purpose that only officers of his calibre seemed to carry.
“It’s the watchman, sir. Williams,” one of the crew barked at him like some rabid dog. He ignored it and continued on.
“Officer of the watch—take the wheel, come starboard 15 degrees and maintain,” he commanded to Phillips as he paced past the ranks of men all standing by their hammocks now. “McCormack, Devereaux, and Johnson, with me,” he then said without looking at any of them, instead knowing that they would follow obediently. “The rest of you—stand to!”
“Stand to!” Phillips repeated the order and the men all reached into their footlockers for swords and pistols. Each soul then produced their best arms and barricaded themselves behind their own possessions, shivering nervously, awaiting some kind of adversary they did not know yet.
“Lieutenant, once the course is set, take three men and investigate the holds,” Captain Beaumont said to Phillips.
Phillips nodded obligingly and the captain stormed off ahead.
Captain Beaumont then lunged up the icy steps like a gladiator entering the coliseum. He came up onto the deck and his retinue followed closely, all armed with their muskets and pistols, ready to attack whatever it was.
Yet, everything was quiet. There was nothing there. Certainly not the watchman. Only the rhythmic creaking of the ship’s hull gave any sort of definition to the silence. Strange.
They shone their lamps in all directions and spread out and searched the lengths cautiously. Captain Beaumont moved ahead alone. He stared down the sights of his musket as he crept forward, silently praying for something to jump right out in front of him so he could dispatch it. The waxing of the gibbous moon above gave a sort of haunting illumination to the whole scape.
His breaths came out in short controlled plumes of frozen smoke as he surveyed the emptiness. The gambit had worked. Something had indeed taken the watchmen. Now an enemy was confirmed, all that was needed now was to hunt it down. Captain Beaumont swelled with excitement. The icy arctic air all around clawed at his exposed skin as he moved across the now vacant deck, yet he felt strangely warm.
“Devereaux, check the forecastle,” Captain Beaumont said. “Johnson—the quarter-deck. McCormack—guard the stairs.”
With that, they all spilt off and went to investigate every inch of the ship’s deck alone. That was when he’d found it. Captain Beaumont crept forward, past the capstan and the mizzenmast, and held his lamp outward. It was then that he caught something glistening on the deck, something catching the flickering of his oil lamp. Starting from over the side, there was a thick trail of gelatinous ooze that slid off across the deck and down one of the stairwells. Something had come aboard. He frowned, knelt down to it, and dipped his fingers in the thick white ichor before bringing it to his nose and sniffing.
“Jesus.”
He gagged and turned away from it. The slime smelt like rotten prawns, fetid water, sewage, and something else entirely. He grimaced and looked around, following the trail with his eyes. He shook the slime from his fingers and pondered. What beast could make that?
Devereaux skulked up behind the captain. He stared down in utter puzzlement at the thick trail.
“My God, Sir, what made that?” Devereaux crowed.
Captain Beaumont ignored it and both men waited in the eerie calm of the night. Then he heard it. As if to answer his question, a voice cried out.
“Sir Beaumont!” Phillips called from below deck desperately. “It’s Williams!” He squawked, the terror clear in his voice, and Captain Beaumont was annoyed at how weak he sounded when under pressure. With renewed excitement, Captain Beaumont stood up and lurched down the stairs, towards Phillip’s voice. It was coming from the holds.
Captain Beaumont bolted down and barged past rows of quivering people before he came into the dim and damp storage holds. He dipped his head as he avoided the jack rafters and dripping water, moving towards the faint glow of the oil lamps ahead.
“Phillips, what is it?” He said, calling out to the small semi-circle of people near the back of the room. They were all looking down at something. Rats swilled around under the boards below his feet and the air was moist and cold and sticky. It was the first time he’d been down here and he felt his uniform slowly becoming contaminated by the grim. Slowly decaying. That fact annoyed him even more.
“Move!” Captain Beaumont shouted as he threw people out of his way and stood next to his first mate. “What is it then?”
Phillips could not reply. Instead, he gestured down to the floor with his gaze. Captain Beaumont followed it to find Williams, leaning against the rum kegs at the back of the hold. When Hewson the idler caught a glimpse of him in the flickering oil lamp, he immediately turned and vomited. The man’s body was propped up next to the barrels as if he were taking a nap. But he wasn't, and something was very wrong. His head was missing, hacked off in fact.
“My God,” someone else muttered as more crew came to see.
They gathered around the corpse and all gazed down in stunned horror. Each was too shocked to even speak. Captain Beaumont however could only look down at the body and frown with curious awe. Something else had done that.
Around the neck were torn-up pieces of meat; all mushed and slashed up; as if had been gnawed off, or sawed off viciously. The lacerations all over his body were deep and went all the way down to the man's bones. He was a mess. Around the wounds were pools of thick bubbling liquid that smelt rotten. As if the man's flesh had already started to decompose. But that was impossible. He was alive and screaming not ten minutes earlier.
Sir Beaumont sniffed it carefully and pondered once more.
The smell was the same smell he’d noticed coming from the slime up on deck. Captain Beaumont did not tell anyone this though. Now was the time for damage control. He ordered an immediate clean-up of the scene and for the body to be brought to the infirmary. There was a monster aboard now.
​
​
CHAPTER V - Committing savage things
​
A brief funeral at sea was held in the morning. The remains of Williams were cast into the water and the men stood silently on deck watching as the coffin ignominiously sank into the dark waves. No eulogies were said. There were no words appropriate enough for what had happened. Something had done that to him. Whether it was foul play or not, not one knew, but something had decapitated him. And now they were all scared solid.
The morning was cold and wet and the fog drifted languidly through the sails. Some of the crew exchanged dull accusing glances as they stood on parade and the lone trumpet played its dirge. Was it one of them who did that?
Captain Beaumont however had not mentioned the word 'murder' nor suggested anything other than an accident. No interrogations were held, no impromptu court hearings. He'd seemingly made up his mind and decided to withhold that conclusion. No mere accident could do that to a man's body and he knew it. But everyone else aboard knew it too. Something was not right. The signs were apparent. It was an animal.
The men had all heard the stories of the deep, or those unspeakable encounters that generations of sailors had suffered before them. But none of them were ever confirmed. Now, they all could not help but wonder what if they were all true? Most of them began to believe that Cavendish was indeed telling the truth.
After the ceremony, it didn’t take long for the men to start muttering and talking amongst themselves. Soon the mumbled notions of paranoia and fear morphed into a public forum and the whole deck was shouting explanations to each other. It was clear now that no one aboard had killed Williams. No one had any reason to. Captain Beaumont stood up on the top deck, looking down upon them all like some concerned emperor. He let his mind wander and looked out across the inky slow-moving waves. Rain clouds were collecting just off the horizon.
First mate Phillips had attempted to quell the rising pandemonium, but there were too many of them talking now.
Captain Beaumont said nothing. He was so intrigued by what the unknown thing had done to Williams that he could scarcely think of anything else. Whatever it was, it was the perfect beast. The precision of its stealth coming aboard, the elusiveness of its movements, the savage force it used to kill him. If it weren’t for the slime trail, Captain Beaumont would have assumed that it was indeed foul play by someone else. There were certainly no other signs of its presence aboard. Just what in God’s name was it?
What it had done to his body was what he’d imagined hyenas to do to their prey. They don’t bother delivering a merciful death, like tigers—by going for the throat, no, instead, they hunt their prey down and start eating them while they're still alive. No, that’s not quite right. It wasn’t looking to eat the man. It was attempting to do something else with his body. But what? Perhaps it was disturbed before it could finish eating him? The absolute barbarity of it all set his teeth on edge. If only he could do that too. If only he could be permitted to be that cruel.
He’d often fantasise about possessing the unbridled strength of one of those supreme animals; like a great bear. He’d wished society had the bravery to let him become what he truly was: a monster, and that they would relish in his ability and prowess. He’d enjoy nothing more than to be walking around Trafalgar Square in his immaculate suit, and then discovering an enemy agent in their mists. By which point he’d unleash his ferocious bite and tear the man’s throat out with his teeth. That feverish will to kill. Majestic. Then all the people around would gaze at him in stunned amazement standing there above the corpse, drenched in his blood, and panting like a rabid dog. They would clap and revere the man like the common mob always do revere all great killers.
One of the idiotic crew members snapped him out of his daydream when he barked, “What about the slime on the decks last night? I saw it! That weren’t no person,” he said to the rest of the galley.
It was Devereaux, the squawking little scum bag. He was some descendant of French gipsy that somehow gained British citizenship. It didn’t matter anyway.
“Yes! I saw the wheel being wrestled back by something yesterday. Right after the big crash and that noise!” The helmsman added and Captain Beaumont felt his temples pulse with annoyance. He could see that he couldn’t deceive all of them now. Collectively they’d managed to put the pieces together.
“There’s something else aboard. Pure evil. A devil. Cavendish saw it. He was right, and we should’ve listened! We should ask him. We need to know.”
Captain Beaumont started to wonder how best to contain this situation. A slew of ideas came to him and he didn’t like the practicality of any of them. How best to advance his journey was the only question he’d need ask himself.
Then he realised what he needed to do.
Like the first gush of a morning wind, an epiphany came to him. It made his skin tingle as he thought about it more and more. The stretching empires of old were built on the backs of sacrifices. To build monuments, one would have to use blood for mortar. The ability of the unknown creature was apparent. But to what level could it operate to? Could it take on two men, five, a hundred? Could it handle armed men? Could it be caged or trapped? There would be no need for these rabid dogs before him if he could instead use that one perfect killing machine. He could take over the world with it at his command. But first, he needed to know.
“Let’s find out,” Captain Beaumont said quietly to himself and smiled.
The men about continued squabbling and bickering like children. Captain Beaumont stepped forward and prepared to enact his delightful plan. For it to work he would need all of them on his side. He knew now that he could not lie to them. Instead, he decided to appeal to their desperation.
“It is true,” Captain Beaumont said in his loud commanding voice to call for order. It boomed across the deck and all the men fell silent. He briefly imagined himself as like Marcus Aurelius standing before the angry mob after Caesar’s assassination. They would all indeed look to him for answers. What those answers were would be up to him.
“There is something else aboard. I have had my suspicions, but it has been confirmed after last night’s unfortunate events. As Devereaux rightly said, there were slim trails across the decks. These trails could only come from some form of animal. A predator. Well spotted, seaman Devereaux,” he said earnestly, even though it annoyed him to commend the man. It was an act all the same, but the thought of speaking to these men as if they were on his level made the captain’s brain itch.
“This thing has crept aboard and murdered one of our comrades—a man you all knew well. We cannot let this go. I stand here before you, not as your captain anymore, but as a fellow desperate survivor. Whatever this thing is, we cannot let it come back with us, nor let it stay aboard to pick us off at will. What it is, we do not know yet. But, Sun Tzu said, ‘Know your enemy’. And we must know our enemy,” he said and rounded it off with a long silence for effect. It worked and the men stood obediently looking up at him on the silent swaying decks.
“It’s hiding in the hold,” Captain Beaumont said in a much lower voice now. “Williams’ body was found down there, and there’s nowhere else for it to hide, so it must be down there. We must flush it out onto the deck. There we can corner and kill it or cast it back into the depths from whence it came. Up here we ourselves cannot be backed into a corner. I cannot lie to you, this will be dangerous, and we will suffer some losses amongst us. But, this will be a valiant effort, gents,” he said, using addressing them as ‘gents’ for the first time in the voyage. “There will be commendations and pay rises all around. Each man who takes part in this shall have his salary doubled when we land in Plymouth… There comes a time in every man’s life when they must decide whether to be good and just or instead to let evil go unpunished. The choice is entirely up to the individual. Those who do not want to take part, simply step to one side. No man aboard shall judge you. Those who wish to help me with this task, raise your hand now.”
As predicted, every single one of them raised their hand. It was almost laughable to Captain Beaumont how easily he could manipulate people. All he had to do was promise them a small amount of comfort and money. That was all. He didn’t have to prove it or give them a sample of it. Simply the solemn ‘promise’ alone was enough to get these men to do anything.
“Well done, men. I knew I could count on you all. I’d rather have no one else by my side for this task. We shall go down into the hold together and kill this bastard monstrosity. We shall flush it out and take it as a trophy back to England!”
The men cheered gleefully.
“May God’s light shine on us all. Arm yourselves, men; with whatever weapons you have to hand and meet me at the top of the stairs to the hold in five minutes. Uniforms are not required. You may fight in whatever is most comfortable to wear…”
The deck went quiet once more and the hushed winds ruffled the sails.
“Remember this day, gents,” Captain Beaumont said. “Remember this day. The day we said no to Satan. Dismissed.”
​
​
Afterwards, the men armed themselves with whatever they could. They all scurried around in their footlockers for tools, like feral badgers. Some produced muskets, others found flintlock pistols and sabres. It was all a militia gaggle of armaments. An irregular army of misfits.
Then they all met on the decks again. Captain Beaumont stood before them all and saluted their rag order. He then gestured silently for them to follow him. He led the men to the entrance of the hold like he was leading them to the steps of the guillotine. In a way, he was. The men were quiet and tense. Some shuddered, others snivelled. Captain Beaumont stood at the door to the hold and then gingerly pulled it open.
“Men, I salute you. You’re doing God’s work.”
He waited at the top of the stairs like he was on parade and ushered for the crew to go in one by one, pretending to perform a head count as he did.
“Once every man is in, then I shall come down,” he said brazenly. “We shall have no deserters now.”
After the last man had climbed down the stairs into the blackness, Captain Beaumont then, sardonically, casually, turned and bolted the door shut. He smirked and braced it with two barricades, and leaned against it.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” He said to himself. There, he pressed his face to the door and listened. “Come on. Show me.”
He could hear the nervous skittering footsteps of all the men below as they each investigated every crack and corner of the room. There were hushed talks also but he couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other down there. Then there was just silence. The vessel banked gently from side to side and Captain Beaumont stared at the dim swaying oil lamp ahead. Had he been wrong? Was there actually something else aboard? Could the slime just be from melted ice? But what about Williams? He was mauled and there were no signs of any bladed weapons. No, teeth had done that. Teeth and talons and claws. That much was clear. So where was it hiding? Maybe it had retreated back under the hull as Cavendish had said.
Then he heard it. One of the men below—he did not know which—cried out frantically. “Good God! What is that?” He squeaked.
Captain Beaumont then heard this massive squelching thumping and padding of something heavy against the decks below; something that sounded almost like the footsteps of a dinosaur. The tremendous bulk of whatever it was made the whole ship shudder. It was something rotund and heavy. Something was unfurling.
How the hell did it get aboard without making a sound? Captain Beaumont wondered as the incredible sounds piqued his interest. He pressed his ear to the door harder and listened intently. Bloody hell, what a glorious animal!
What came next was a frenzy of gunfire and screaming from below, accompanied by a choir of ripping and tearing. One by one the men screamed and cried out, and one by one their cries were cut short by that innominable presence. Each panicked voice was soon replaced by gargling shouting and death rattles. The gunfire below soon slowed, and then stopped as the men routed.
Some had tried to run away. They came back up to the door and banged on it desperately. It shook as they did.
“Open the door! Please! Open the door!” They all shouted as they slammed their fists against the rough wooden barrier. Captain Beaumont simply stood on the other side and grinned from ear to ear.
“Please! It’s coming up the stairs!” One of them said.
“Oh, God, no!”
Sir Beaumont listened keenly to the lumbering slippery sounds of the thing making its way up the stairs behind the last few men.
“For God’s sake! Open the door!” They all cried.
Then there was this strange oily gut-wrenching noise of something smothering the men’s cries. Their voices dissipated as if they’d fallen into the waves. After that, there was this unnatural chewing noise that made Captain Beaumont imagine something like wet paper being torn apart. Captain Beaumont could smell the puddles of blood wafting up from the other side of the door. The thick coppery smell slithered up his nose and he knew that not a single soul had survived the wrath of whatever this thing was.
Now there was only the thing. It stood on the other side of the door.
He could hear it breathing. It was a thick ribbiting kind of sound, like a toad breathing half in the water. It wasn’t doing anything. It simply waited there on the other side; almost as if it were listening to him breathe also. That thought alone intrigued him to the point that he didn’t know what to do with himself.
This thing is smart! It’s smart!
He pressed his ear to the door and tried to listen more closely. Adulation soon took him over and he laughed maniacally. This thing had just killed sixty men like they were nothing. The potential of such a force was palpable to him now. He laughed some more. With the force it had just used, Captain Beaumont knew it could’ve broken down the door… but it didn’t. Perhaps it understood that the captain had just fed it. Was it the first step in their bond?
“I will not hurt you,” he whispered. “Instead, I will give you more blood. You can have as much of it as you want. You can kill as many as you want,” he offered and thought of the sixty men he’d already sent to their deaths.
His only regret was that he wasn’t somehow there to see it all. He’d have exchanged a year’s wages just to be a fly on the wall when it happened—to watch this… this beast, tearing its way through the armed men like they were nothing. They’d shot at it and presumably tried cutting it with their swords but it won the battle with ease.
“You are safe here with me, beautiful one,” he said and waited for a reply. He then listened as the beast slithered away back down the stairs. Did the monster accept his offer? Of course, it did. He’d promised it war, and that was what it wanted. What a magnificent creature!
Captain Beaumont stepped away from the bolted door and went up and back to his quarters. This calls for a drink, he thought giddily.
He kicked off his boots and sat at the table. He poured himself the last of the brandy and then switched to whiskey and thought about his next move. The notion of sailing back to Plymouth now to resume his duties had completely left him. What an extreme waste of his potential that would be. If he could only learn to harness this thing’s abilities then he could wage war on whomever he liked. He could be the new Henry Avery. Someone who disregarded his life in the Royal Navy to go on to become the next great conqueror. His destiny was so close now he could almost reach out and touch it.
But, he would have to devise a strategy on how to negotiate with the animal first. Perhaps it could speak? It certainly understood him. Maybe he could bargain with it once he found out what it wanted?
Captain Beaumont swigged the rest of the tumbler and pondered. He would keep the beast in the hold for now. The ship drifted on aimlessly without any course.
And then he heard it: a strange and pained voice coming from below, from the infirmary. It was a man’s. Cavendish was awake.
​
​
CHAPTER VI - The Devil has come Home
​
Cavendish had bolted up in his cot, drenched in a cold sweat, and he felt his heart racing in his chest. He cried out in the darkness instinctually then calmed when he realised he was alone. The sweat ran down from his forehead and he felt delirious still. It took a while for him to remember where he was. He looked around blearily and tried to shake his brain into motion. He’d only awoken because of… that voice. The thing’s voice commanded him to wake up. It had called to him. It had demanded his presence.
Cavendish forced his eyes open fully for the first time in a long time, and he looked around at the room he was in. It was quiet and no oil lamps were on. That was strange. No watchmen were doing a roaming sentry either. Through the haze of the dimness, he saw that the door at the end of the room was open, swinging back and forth aimlessly.
“Good God, what is this?” He said, clearing his throat as he did.
He could see out of it, down the gloomy swaying hallway, and all the way to the back of the orlops. It was night now and there was no one else there. He simply frowned and stared down the length of the ship. Was he still dreaming?
“Where is everyone?” He said to himself.
The ship creaked rhythmically against the practicable tides and he heard no voices from up on deck. Yet he was sure he’d heard something come into the room.
“Hello?” Cavendish called out skittishly.
Then he heard it.
“TAKE MEEEEE TO LANNNNND!”
It came from above. His blood ran cold. He snapped up to the ceiling above his hammock and screamed. There it was, the thing from the sea. A great mass of slippery black tentacles was hanging upside down from the rafters like some hideous bat. Oozing ichor from its churning mouth dripped down onto Cavendish. He reeled back into his quilt like a scorned child and screamed and screamed until he could breathe no more.
“Oh, God, no! Please!” He shouted
The giant thing slithered closer to him and leaned down. Its four evilly gleaming eyes shone with horrible intelligence. The thing from the sea was there. It was real.
“TAAAKE ME TO LAAAAAND,” It said and its voice gargled as it did.
“I… I… knew you were real. I’ve seen you. Please don’t kill me!”
The thing swelled at the insult.
“TAKE ME TO LAND!”
“Where’s the captain?” Cavendish shuddered and just about managed to ask.
“CAAAAPTAIN GONE, CREWWWW… DEAAAD. Captain made me kill them,” it said as it leered over him and licked hungrily, its mandibles clicking fiendishly.
The thing then gestured to the open doorway. It was now filled with the shadows and shapes of the men standing there, the men who’d been trapped in the hold, but they were men no more. What remained of their bodies were nothing more than shells, vessels for the unspeakable desires of the thing from the seas. Where their heads should’ve been were now these pale crab-like bulges that protruded from their necks. The thing had laid its eggs in their necks.
Rows of them stood silent and motionless, facing Cavendish.
He screamed again as he faced them all. Phillips, McCormack, Johnson, Smith; all of them dead, all of them apart from the captain.
"BAAAAD PEOPLE.”
“Noooo,” Cavendish whimpered as he looked upon them. "Oh please, God! Save me from this! I don't want to die."
"THEY TRIED TO KILL ME. PLEAAAASE, TAAAAKE ME TO LAAAAAND!” The thing threatened in a guttural frothy voice, the loudest yet. But Cavendish was beginning to understand that it was not a threat, it was a plea for help. If the thing wanted to kill him then it would have done it by now.
”To land? Why?" Cavendish asked, wiping away the snot and spit from his face.
"NEEEED SHEELTEERR…" the thing replied, and its voice crooned out in such a laboured pained tone that it made him sigh.
Cavendish sat up in his hammock. He looked at the slithering mass of midnight tentacles and felt something else within him now: curiosity.
“Why?”
"PLEEEEEASE," the thing wept. “I NEEEED TO REST.”
Tears rolled from its tormented yellow eyes, and Cavendish's gaze vacillated between all the tentacles stretched out there across the ceiling, and back to the head. And he knew the monster would not attack him. He sat in the hammock completely taken aback by the ruined deformity and the sheer pathetic desperation it held. Suddenly all fear and repulsion of the creature left him. It was soon to be replaced by a great pity. What this monster was, Cavendish could not know, but the evidence of its sufferings was so terrible and apparent that a great aching sadness came over him like a cold wave. He could see it in its eyes. He realised that he was looking upon one of the universe's cosmic tragedies, something that had been dealt a great injustice. It was like a massive elephant caught in a poacher’s trap. He shrank back into the hammock with the shame of it all.
Cavendish sat up from his cot and asked, “Good God, what happened to you?”
The beast squirmed and breathed out a long and laboured breath.
“YOU THINGS. YOUR KIND CAME. HUNTED US. KILLED US ALL. My whole family is dead now; because of you. I am the last of my kind. I am pregnant.”
Cavendish reeled back at the statement. “Pregnant? What are you?”
"We were a race of under-gods whose knowledge and wisdom have stretched backwards infinitely. We have silently documented empires rising and collapsing. We have marshalled the development of worlds. The coruscating gleaming cities of the water realm, whose jewelled spires stretched upward into unbroken blue. We have witnessed it all. Now, all dead. I am the last one. The ports your kind bombed were harbouring me and my family. Now, I am the last one. My children must survive. You must help me find land. I need a cave in the shallows. Sanctuary. You MUST help me.”
“I can't. How do I know you won't kill me once I do?”
“How many times I have seen the factions of beings devolve into mindless savagery? Soon, the barrier between their world and this one will dissolve. Then there will be no refuge. Unless I restart my race. I must govern and educate their progress, lest the entire universe collapses under its own bulk. You must help me.”
“I don’t know if I can…”
“Please!” The beast begged one more time.
As Cavendish thought deeply, his gaze vacillated towards the opened doorway, and there, he saw coming forward through the unmoving ranks of the dead men, Captain Beaumont. He was alive. He slithered out of the shadows and into the room like a snake leaving its den. First, Cavendish saw the glint of the pistol barrel outstretched, then the captain’s arm broke through the shadow, then his face. Captain Beaumont was grinning to himself as he stepped towards the end of the bed.
“You little bastard,” the captain smirked. “I knew there was a reason I kept you alive.”
The beast saw him enter and retreated instinctively. It coiled in on itself like it was some scorned puppy. Those broad slippery tentacles that seemed to stretch confidently across the whole ceiling now reeled in and disappeared under the bulk of its own body. It hung meekly from the corner of the room like a terrified owl and quietly watched the whole thing. Captain Beaumont turned and looked at the monster for the first time.
“Wow! It’s even more beautiful than I could’ve possibly imagined. Look at the strength of it,” he said as he came closer to the thing, awing at its pulsing ability. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Please, don’t kill me,” Cavendish whimpered.
“You can speak to it, can’t you?” He snarled, turning his back to it now. “I was listening in the whole time. I didn’t hear one word from it, but you had a good dialogue. It understands you, doesn’t it? That’s why it hasn’t killed you. It talks back to you too, doesn’t it!”
“She does understand me…”
“She?” Captain Beaumont chuckled. “I see you have already mated with the ghastly thing then? Go on then, how do you do it?”
“No. She told me. She needs help. She—”
The captain waved him away with his pistol. “Bollocks. That’s the difference between men like you and me, sailor,” the captain scoffed. “Where the weak man sees pity and the need for charity, I see opportunity. I see purpose.”
“You lead sixty men to their deaths.”
The captain waved the argument away with a snarl. “It’s not about us, it's about the monuments we leave behind. The world was built by incredible men who used a disposable workforce. I am one of those incredible men.”
“She won’t help you. She's—”
“This thing managed to kill sixty men in under a minute. Imagine what I could achieve with it in one week, two, or even a year. Think of the empire that would be built on the foundations of those campaigns. Ancient Rome reincarnated. We could storm Washington. This darkness must be unshackled. Used.”
“She doesn’t want to do that…”
Captain Beaumont then pointed his flintlock pistol at Cavendish, aiming square at his nose. The bastard was actually imagining shooting him already. His eyes glowed with unnatural excitement like two grey stars. If he didn’t need him, Cavendish had no doubt in his mind that he would be dead already.
“I don’t give a fuck what it wants. Tell it I wish to make a deal with it,” Captain Beaumont growled and cocked his pistol. “Tell it I will help it, if it helps me.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t? Are you disobeying a direct order, sailor?”
“She’s… she's pregnant. She needs our help.”
“Pregnant?” The captain exclaimed. “Haha! Now, this is interesting. So you did mate with it?” He said, and then considered. “No matter. The ladder to power is ascended only using leverage. And now I have mine. Tell it I want its help, or I will kill its offspring in front of it,” Captain Beaumont growled.
Cavendish simply looked at him, docile. Instead, like a dam giving way, the thing from the ocean unfurled before the pair. The beast suddenly became virile at the threat. Its dulled yellow eyes smouldered with a burning hatred. She dropped from the ceiling with a thud like an immense black bat and then loomed over Captain Beaumont. He gasped as he looked upon the giant alien-like being poised and ready to strike.
“Good God,” he whispered as it reared up on its tentacles and towered above him, and he knew at that moment that his position of power had just been discounted. He’d overplayed his hand. His usual brutish methods of threatening and hurting did nothing to advance the negotiations. Instead, it had only cost him everything. This thing was beyond any mortal man and he realised he was foolish to think he could ever control it. The dominant species aboard was no longer a human. He’d been so enamoured with the thing's potential and what it could do to his enemies that he’d failed to consider what it would do when threatened: do what any animal does when threatened.
There was a sound of something ripping.
Cavendish watched on utterly horrified. The captain winced at something and his head dipped into his chest. At first, it looked like Captain Beaumont’s spine had shot out from his back. Cavendish was unsure of what he was even looking at initially. How is that even possible? His spine is on the floor?
Something black took its place in his body. Something wet and dripping. But then he saw that massive dark barb protruding out from the captain’s back. The thing had plunged one of its razored tentacles right through his sternum, past his ribcage, past his organs, as if he were made from cooked fish.
Indescribable pain seized every inch of the captain’s body. All he could do was hold his mouth open in agony. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t fight back in any way. All he could do was stand there and look upon the raw malice of the monster. Its glowing yellow eyes twinkled with horrible sapience as it stared down at him and he knew the thing relished in killing him.
If his body wasn't already shutting down, he’d have heard behind him the hysterical cries of Cavendish. But instead, all he could focus on was the burning pain in the centre of his chest and how this was not how he wanted to go out at all. He’d imagined himself fighting valiantly until the end twenty years from this moment. He’d dreamed he’d die in combat, perhaps with this magnificent creature by his side; the officer who’d unleashed the darkness of war, and everyone would remember his name for it. But that clearly wasn’t what was about to happen.
He swallowed hard on his torment and reached for his sabre. If he could just get one good swing on the bitch’s face, then that would suffice for a heroic end. At least then he could take comfort in knowing he went out with a fight. But he was weightless. Every last inch of his being was in unbearable pain. The strength and resolve he once had was now completely absent.
The beast then hoisted him off the floor and pulled him nearer to it. Captain Beaumont hissed in pain. As he contended with his anguish, a great sopping maw of teeth and pulsing claws opened up in the centre of the beast’s head. Captain Beaumont stared down into it and thought of the deepest pits of hell.
The thing’s mouth soon enveloped his head and wrenched it from side to side like a great tiger devouring its prey—and with a sicking crunch—it bit through three-quarters of his skull. The captain had tried to scream but the sounds were soon muffled inside her smothering jaws.
After it was done, the thing threw his headless body to the side and lurched over Cavendish once more. Its great wet head craned down and those four piercing eyes glared at him. It was so close now that Cavendish could smell its rancid salty breath.
“Please. I’m not with him,” Cavendish whimpered, holding his hands up in front of his face.
“You will help me,” it said. “You will take me to land. You will steer the ship and take me to land.”
Cavendish grimaced and realised that he didn’t really have a choice. This was his best chance of surviving. But why had the monsters spared only him? What did his dreams mean? Why could only he speak to it?
“I saw you in my dreams,” he muttered to the thing.
“As I did you,” it replied with a strange warmth.
“How?” Cavendish asked, unsure of whether he truly wanted to know or not.
The thing leaned down closer like a father explaining something to his child. “Beneath this realm, there are channels through which greater things than the ideas of men are conducted.”
Cavendish nodded, seemingly understanding.
“We must move. There is nothing to stop me from killing you once we find somewhere secluded. But, I give you my solemn vow that I will not. You are one of the few good. You are an architect. You must live on. I promise I will not harm you. Let me show you.”
The monster reached out and gently brushed one of its oily tentacles across Cavendish’s forehead, and when it did, the connection opened his mind beyond comprehension. In an instant, he saw the multiple truths of the universe and all its hidden secrets. Those who were here before humans and those who would inherit the universe when humans are gone. Dead souls still alive. All of them. He always knew he was connected to something else.
​
​
CHAPTER VII - And the wreckage is left behind
​
Weeks later, the HMS Inferno was discovered anchored offshore in the northernmost regions of the Faroe Islands off of Scotland. It was a great rocky expanse with jagged cliff faces, harsh and bitter seas, and deep lagoons and inlets. Somewhere things could easily disappear. Across those shores were thousands of caves. The ship was discovered by a band of pirates and was found to be in perfect working order, yet the crew of the vessel were nowhere to be seen. No one had any idea how the ship had made it that far north undamaged and without a crew.
After the pirates had come aboard and stepped across the decks in the swirling mists, a strange darkness crawled over them all, and they all soon realised that they didn’t want to know why the ship was there or what had happened to the crew. There was a heaviness in the air that put fear into the bravest of the pirate’s hearts. It wasn’t the presence of life that scared them, it was the absence of it that did. The stark emptiness of the dead ghoulish ship made the pirates terrified of the things they could not see but acknowledged nonetheless. It was soon abandoned once more and the pirates headed back to the nearest port to drink and forget about the unfathomable misery they’d just witnessed.
No one quite knew what happened with the ship; it has remained forever a mystery and fable told amongst sailors. ‘Follow orders or you’ll disappear like the HMS Inferno and its crew.’
The wreckage of the HMS Inferno remains there still to this day and no one else has ever gone near it. Now, its ancient hull squats there alone on top of the spiked rocks, slowly decaying into the rough seas. Until it finally does rot and collapse into the black waves, it stays there and serves as a grim reminder that there are dark unknown monsters out there that we do not yet know about. But some things are best left unknown.