9
On the second rainy evening of my new residence, in a dark flat in London glowing only with the lights from my laptop and television, I finally decided to open the box, having had time to relax my mind and probably my soul. Carefully I opened the latches and pried open the maroon lid. Inside, it turned out, were notes, papers, and most of all a thin box of DVD recordings. The box sits beside me now, the most important tool in my knowledge of the monster which found me. I presume Landen extracted all the knowledge he needed from it. I like to keep it close though, to pour over it for anything I might have missed occasionally, and to remind me that it's still a mystery worth researching, worth spreading the word about, and that's what I hope to achieve by this account.
The contents of the box had been compiled by a Zoologist - Dr Nicholas Johannsen - of whom there was even a picture in the box; one of him with his wife and daughter. I supposed he had left it in there by mistake, but it added a touch of humanity to what was a compiling of the most otherworldly of material. Dr Johannsen was the first of the people in the 'Sussex batch' to find an artefact on the beach where we all had found them. The doctor's notes were extensive, and in here I found the explanation for the infant serpents, and for why I wasn't going to follow Emily Lau and Takeshi Inagi in their fates. It seemed the eggs behaved as a kind of gamete, working in pairs to start the gestation of a new serpent. Destroying mine had left Laurie's egg useless, while the doctor's own egg along with Jack's, plus Emily's and Takeshi Inagi's with each other, had birthed the two serpents I watched slither into the sea.
Perhaps most chilling of all was Dr Johannsen's description of the monster itself, pieced together from many accounts and strings of evidence, but it pertained to not much more than I'd amazingly bore witness too; that this thing was serpentine in nature, that it lived in the ocean, that there may be more than one, given the simultaneous nature of stories. Some notes bore sketches of the trees I'd dreamed of (and seen give rise to the infant serpents), describing them as a unique feature of the serpent monster's life cycle, as a disassociated gestation system which seemed to birth infant serpents. I wondered if Dr Johannsen ever knew about the islands of these gestation trees I'd seen in my waking nightmare. I don't know where Dr Johannsen is now, but if he's alive, I've vowed to return the box to him along with the picture of him and his family.
It was in a scrawled footnote that I found Dr Johannsen's hypothesis on the deaths associated with the artefacts; that the artefacts bewitched the minds of those who first touched them, that the victims buried the eggs at the trees of gestation, the wombs of the monsters' lifecycles?. And that, in some putrid way, the agents of the mother came and killed the hijacked worker, perhaps to preserve the secret of its lifecycle from predators who may remember.
I brought my laptop over and set it beside the box, and thereafter removed one of the DVDs and inserted it into the disc drive. The whirring sound started, and soon I was watching the contents.
The footage was from a deep sea expedition of the South China Sea, the divers and the team in charge speaking in a language I did not understand, most likely German. I watched the film move through colours of darkness; a reasonable shade of blue first, then a deep navy, and then almost nothing, unrecognisable as water if not for the spray of microbubbles in the field of view. The descent continued. I spotted the occasional sign of life - a pale looking fish here, or a shrimp floating away - but then, inexplicably the water began to lighten again - perhaps the diving craft had activated additional lights. I saw the bottom of the ocean, a vast expanse, growing nearer. And, in the dark blue void, I saw them once again: trees upon trees, stretching into the nothingness. And amongst them, the shadows upon shadows of serpentine monsters swam.
I leave this account with the hope that any who find their fates befallen with the serpentine monsters of the sea know they are not alone, and that perhaps the public at large will come to appreciate the gravity. I will continue to work with Landen to connect the events taking place around the world, and build the picture of our biggest danger yet.
###END###
About Jamie Campbell
Jamie Campbell is a British creative writer based in London with a focus on Fantasy, Thriller and Horror genres. Check out FountainsofInkCW.Wordpress.com (early stages) to follow his activity of short stories, creative writing discussion and, in the near future, full-length novels. He also operates a Wattpad profile at Wattpad.com/JamieCampbellCW and Twitter handle at Twitter.com/JCampbellCW
Along the Darkening Coast Page 9