• When this is found, attached to my cold hands, I want the finder to promise himself two things. The first is that he will read every last word and that any form of skepticism will be tossed aside until he has read the entirety of these events. I am only writing this, so that you may be aware of what lies out there and what you will face when you travel the deep dark pits of watery hell that they call the ocean. But I know now, that it is just a burial ground for the weary travelers that trespass in her gardens... No one could know the true story until I am surely dead, for I know that they would find me before it could even finish dripping from my cursed lips.

    It started 70 odd years before on the coast of Norway, where a ship of food supply and geographers was being readied. I was only young, but I could remember the situation very vividly. These situations are never forgotten, no matter how old you are. The air was crisp and cold and it bit at your ears and nose until it felt like they were burning with rage, ready to fight back. I remember standing on the rocky crags that surrounded the bay in which we stationed. My father, older brother and I were just extra hands who had sailed there the previous year to help the crew, in which we were paid a vast amount of money. And my father would always say to us "Boys, when we get home, I'm going to send you to school and then buy your mother the biggest diamond she'll ever see in her life". I'll never forget his voice, and the joy he said those words in. We stayed in a small Norwegian village for the most part of the year, helping the geographers look for oil in the regions near the coast. My brother said they were crazy, but my father just looked at them as our financial aid. I was always interested in the work that the geographers did, with their expensive instruments and their immense concentration, though i never bothered to pursue the career, as my brother would call it "A pipe dream". We weren't rich, so we made due with work, but my father always wanted me and my brother to get a good education, so that we wouldn't be working all our life, like he is. I guess thats why we fit in so well with the villagers, because they were not much different from us.

    I remember in the village, there was a small wooden stave church that we'd visit every now and then to pray for our mother and any ships that were leaving bay. Many tourists came to pray at it, before they left so that they would have good sailing back to where they came. I never prayed though. I was too young to grasp the concept. I would just look at the wooden and brass ornaments that sat on the walls. There were many foreign creatures, such as lions and horned deer and squid. Especially the big depiction of a saint fighting a squid in the ocean. My father said it was the Kraken. An old lady used to sit outside the church and mumble about the Kraken, and if we didn't pray before we sailed, he would get us. Everyone ignored her though, and called her crazy and spat at her when she cursed them. And with that, I thought her as crazy as well and ignored her along with the rest, though the beautiful mural was hard to ignore.

    The day we were going back home, was very exciting. Not only was it the day we leave to see our families again, but it was also my brother's birthday. He was turning 18 and was finally a man. My father promised to get him piss-drunk enough to fall off the boat and fall in the water, which scared me a bit, but I never said a word. My brother was nervous than ever, even though he was talking about it for days until it came. He said that when he gets home, he's going to go drinking with his friends and then show his girlfriend a "goodtime". I was too young to know what that meant, and he'd always say "you'll know when you're older" and give me a mischievous wink. I never paid mind to it though because I thought it was just more of his tales and theories that he kept in his head and revered as superior. The first thing we did in the morning was go to the same stave church in the middle of town. The town folk prayed for us and gave us a breakfast that I could still taste today. We ate enough to last the the week-long trip we were taking home, but still managed to squeeze more in. And when the geographers packed their equipment up and loaded it onto the boat, we were off. I said my goodbyes to the land and the village and the church and to the villagers and waved the whole way back.

    The boat was not the biggest, but by no means, it was small. A big metal barge which seemed to part the ocean at high speeds carried us across the Norwegian sea, past thousands of snow covered islands and past the arctic sea. The crew was a mismatched bunch, with about 30 men working in it and 10 geographers studying their findings. The most memorable were the ones we shared a cabin with. The cabins held 8 beds each and had a dark and in no ways homey feeling. You could hear the boat creak and croak in the dead of the night, but you learned to ignore it. My father slept in the bed closest to the door of our cabin and me and my brother shared the one next to his. Next to ours was James, or as my dad called him "The Swami" because he was a follower of Gandhi. James kept to himself most of the time, unless he was asked a question. After James and closest to the window on the other side of the door was Stanislaw and across from him was Casimir, his brother. They were both burly Polish men with thick accents who mostly spoke to each other. My brother would always complain because he didn't know what they were saying. Next to Casimir was a guy around my brothers age, Daniel Wilson. They grew fond of each other and I even sort of looked up to Daniel. He was the son of one of the Geographers and was working on the boat to pay off a debt he owed his father for dropping out of military school. His eccentric attitude really opposed my brother's and we always called them "Night and Day", Daniel being day and my brother, the pessimist, night. Then there was Daniel Edinburgh, a fellow of German decent, who we called Ed to avoid confusion of the other Daniel. Ed was on a missionary trip to see the Church. We'd often seen him there but never spoke to him until we shared a cabin. And lastly was Stephen, with a PH and not a V. He was very cautious that we didn't get confused about that and would curse if we did. My dad called him "Steve" once and he almost chewed his head off. It was just Stephen with a PH.

    Days went by and what seemed like months had us wandering the ocean. We soon docked at a bay and what we thought to be Denmark. The ship was also being used as a delivery ship, so we had to make a detour in Denmark to deliver Rations of fish from Norway. Every country had been hurt by the great depression and so we all did our best to help out. When we left there, it seemed a bit odd. Normally the weather would be getting warmer, as it was going towards spring in the seasons, but the air just seemed to stay frigid. We could no longer see land from all directions and I feared we were lost. Daniel seemed to notice and he said "Cheer up! You'll be chasin' the girls back home soon!" his Scottish accent thickened from which he came. My brother was still sick from his birthday and had seemed to catch a cold, so he was sick in bed for the most part of the trip. Daniel was the only one close to my age, so I followed him around and he showed me some tricks and facts of geography. He had an interest in it as well, but like my brother, thought nothing of it. We soon went to the cabin and had a poker game with my father and "The Swami". He said that normally he wouldn't gamble, but we weren't betting anything, so he played. I had to go to the bathroom, so I left the cabin and headed down the halls of the boat. Thats when I heard the voice of Stephen. He was panicked and almost pulling out his hair, close to yelling at the other person. He mentioned something about a shadow underneath the boat which moved at an unorthodox speed. The captain, who he was talking to, just told him to lay off the alcohol and sleep off his drunkenness. Stephen stomped off irately grumbling and pushed me aside not even noticing.

    When I got back to the cabin, I saw Stephen praying at his bed. "He's been doing it since he walked in the room" My father said, continually looking at his hand. "And if he doesn't stop, I'm going to lose it" My brother continued, laying in bed as sickly as ever. "Relax there! Just be glad he's praying for all of us... right Stephen?" Daniel reassured. Stephen just ignored him. I could see the sweat falling from Stephen's face and I began to think he had gone crazy. I stared for a bit, standing at the door until he opened his eyes and darted them right at me. His gaze was a mix of fear, death and forgiveness all in one and they still pierce my mind to this day. I quickly jumped back to my seat at the table and went back to my poker hand.

    The night grew ominously and we all fell to sleep as quick as it came. And I honestly had the strangest dream I will ever have. The crazy woman from the church was cursing at me and yelling at me in Polish and then she was engulfed in water and drowning. I couldn't save her, as much as I tried. My father held me back as I watched her drown, saying there was nothing I could do. And then I awoke to shaking in the boat. It woke everyone and it felt like an earthquake. Stephen was still at his bedside praying and it seemed he hadn't stopped. Another bump. His praying grew quicker and more rampant. We all ran to the deck of the boat to see what it was. The captain said he saw nothing. It wasn't a rock, for there was no land. And no fish could be large enough to do that.

    "The Swami" seemed to be meditating now and his calm demeanor seemed to silent everyone. His soft humming soothed our souls and we all felt the wind breeze caress our skin in the dead of the night. The moon was almost completely covered and the stars bled light onto the deck. It was beautiful and I remember thinking that my mother would love it out here. And then I saw it. It spanned for at least 100 feet and stalled in the water for 10 seconds. The water slid down the smooth side and trickled off the scaly side and we watched in awe as it floated beside us. That was all we could do. Until it went down and under. The silence was still eminent, until Ed said "What in gods name was that?"

    I closed my eyes and started to cry, not knowing what it was I saw. The tears flooded my face and my father hugged me close to him until my tears soaked his shirt. Daniel's face turned completely white and Ed started to breath hard. Like Stephen, he dropped to his knees and started to pray. For an hour we stood in almost pitch black darkness, huddled together. The Polish brothers had moved back to the cabin a half hour before as well as most people from all the other cabins except for the geographers and a few others who were either yelling at the captain, or praying on the deck with Ed. My father, brother and Daniel were talking about how much they missed home and how the sooner they get off the sea, the better. My tears had dried now, for a while and I just listened as the murmurs of people talking rang through out. Someone had brought some coffee and my father let me have a cup. It was bitter and not very good to the taste, but I still drank it. It made me feel older and more like a man, drinking it in it's natural flavors.

    And then a splash of water crashed our ears and what I saw was unimaginable. It looked as though it reached the heavens, with the water glittering off of the scaly side and smoothly sliding off the other. And within a second it wrapped around the boat and ripped off a good portion. Pieces of wood and metals flew into the air and what seemed like an explosion caught the pieces on fire. I watched as James"The Swami" fell into the water, lifelessly with a metal pipe lodged from his temple and coming out of the side of his jaw. I can still here the cries of men as the creak of stressed metal crunched and crushed them, the blood curdling screams ending quicker than they started. Blood spewed onto the decks and the boat began to sink quickly. Those who were far enough away not to get killed by the debris managed to jump onto what seemed to be the remains of a floating emergency paddle boat. The others fell to their death. My dad grabbed me and threw me on the paddle boat and then grabbed Daniel who was hanging onto my brother. Only a small amount of us were left, enough to count on both hands. The Polish brothers were in still in the cabin, but somehow Stephen managed to escape and was praying as he flopped into the boat. The ship had almost completely sunk as the dark shadow flew underneath us, causing a light wave. For minutes it was silent except for the prayers of Stephen. Everyone was scared to death waiting for the next strike. It was the longest moment of my life and I remember not even having the ability to cry, I was so scared. I was shivering enough to shake the whole paddle boat.

    And as we drifted into the sea, we didn't sleep. When the light came, we silently sat for hours. No one spoke and half the people on the boat died in the silence from either loss of blood or pneumonia. My father had let his eyelids close and stay and that was the last we heard of him. I still didn't cry. We threw all the bodies off the boat and watched them float away, face down. Stephen, Daniel, another fellow and I just stared into nothing. Until Stephen managed to pipe up. And as clear as a crystal, he said "What we saw there... can never be mentioned. What we saw, never happened. The ship hit an iceberg." And we all silently agreed. With that, I never spoke of it until now.

    So now, as you read these final words, I want you to know. I did go to school, and I became a geographer. I moved away and never spoke to Daniel, Stephen or my brother since. The creature that we thought we saw out there is real. And since then, I have never ventured towards the ocean at all. The memories from that day have echoed in my head for too many years. I wake up in cold sweat and have never been able to tell anyone about it until this moment and now I can rest. The second promise I mentioned, is that I the man who finds this book shall throw it into the ocean, so that the beast that took the lives of 36 men that night will know that he has claimed another. The old lady at the church had been said to have thrown herself out to sea that very night. And I should have killed myself as well, for living through that hellish nightmare every night was worse than death. But I know thats what he wanted. And though these are my last words, I hope that you, finder of this book, will know never to cross the beasts territory, for he will get you.