This is the first time that I have committed Edward Manus’ true account, as he recalls it, of the incident of November 19th, 1801, to paper. I have never once since then spoken of what occurred while on that ill-fated voyage. Only now, prepared to die as I am, do I after thirty-six years of grueling deliberation pass on his truth. If his testament is read, it will be clear why I have kept my silence in all these lamentable years. I do not expect my words to be understood, for even with my own eye-witnessed experience, I still, after all this time, have only a man’s inadequate comprehension of what was discovered.

The official report filed with the authorities was, for the most part, true. The ‘Old Venerable’ set sail from Port Glasgow on calm waters on the morning of the 14th of November 1801, trailing a course across the Atlantic with a consignment of various goods. There was a crew of eight men in total, myself as captain included. The first four days of voyage passed without incident, but on the fifth morning we awoke to fog.
I was roused from sleep by Charles, my first mate, and when we came above deck, we saw the vaporous curtain that had consumed the ‘Old Venerable’ in the night. From where I emerged on deck in the center of the ship, both prow and stern were obscured within the miasma. I ordered Charles to ensure all hands were accounted for as I deliberated on the best course of action. He returned, accounting for all aboard and as he spoke the ship suddenly reeled forcefully, throwing us both to the deck. Staggering back to my feet, I tore towards the hull and peered over; in the gloom, a great, jutting rock was discernible, looming dark within the swirl of the fog. We could see that it was a landmass of decent height, a veritable island, which until then had been veiled entirely by the elements. Francis and John, deckhands both, I sent below deck to ensure the hull had not breached in the collision, while Charles and I headed to my cabin to consult our maps. They returned promptly, informing us there was no damage, either to the ship or the goods in the hold. The maps meanwhile noted no marking of any island or land mass in these waters. At least, the waters we thought we were in. For at the time, blinded by greed and the ambition of being noted in the annals as discoverers of some hidden isle, we did not realise just how lost we had become. To our mortal folly, we did not deliberate long on the matter. We decided, rather, I decided, to investigate this bountiful rock. We gathered up what meager provisions we deemed necessary and impulsively went ashore. The stone was slippery, water trickled off its surface as though it had only just been saved from the tide.

‘Explains why it’s not on a map’ Charles said, indicating it.
‘If we’re quick,’ I had told the crew, ‘and in luck we’ll use the tide to get back on course after taking anything of value we find. We might even get to name the place.’ My words sent a ripple of excitement through them. It pains me to recall the euphoria I felt as we discovered the downward stairway cleft into the center of the tiny island. The stone around the entrance towered above us and from its gaping portal, the stink of the deep was offensive. We lit our torches and peered within the entrance way.
We thought we had uncovered something truly marvelous. Charles stepped quickly inside, flashing an eager grin as he took the torch from my hand and carefully made his way down. With that, we followed, taking care of the brackish water licking at our boots on the descent.

‘Care on the step, lads!’ he called back as he reached the bottom. He stepped through an archway and his torch illuminated a purposefully built chamber. The odor of the deep grew more pungent, catching in the backs of our throats. I heard Charles restrain a cough as the other men fanned out into the room. He coughed forcefully once but quickly regained his composure, pulling his shirt above his nose. I looked around the murky room that was now bathed in amber light. The stone here was smooth and wet, I leaned closer to the wall noticing faint but intentional scratchings. The scratchings were there by design. The intricate details, I realised, covered the entirety of the surface in an ornate arrangement. I ignored the excited drone of the men as I tried to make some sense of this place. When I could not, an instinctual fear squirmed in my stomach like an eel. As it wriggled, Charles broke into a hacking fit.

‘Charles?’ I heard someone say. I turned, Charles’ mouth was locked in a grimace, his body shuddering with the effort of suppression.
‘It’s just the smell,’ he choked, failing to hold it back. His body erupted in violent convulsions as his throat seized, he dropped his torch which hissed its extinguishment as it hit the brine at our feet. His eyes bulged as he doubled over, gasping and sputtering.
‘Charles, Gods man, are you alright?’ he couldn’t answer me, every time he tried his malady intensified. He spat a gobbet of thick, black blood into the water, the men stepped back.
‘Charles!’ He snapped his head upwards to me as a cascade of blood-laced vomit spilled from his mouth. I recall how the men shouted in fear and grew frantic, Francis and John snatched Charles by the arms, tugging him back to the doorway.
‘To the ship. To the ship, I say!’
A scream, the sudden excruciating noise of it reverberating instantly around the tight room,wrenched free from Charles. He stumbled and fell once more, thrashing like a dying beast in their grip.
‘Give us room, give us room!’ John cried. Another, more savage, painful, screech burst from Charles; his convulsions ceased, and his head lolled limply on his neck as he finally collapsed, face down, into the murky floor. I stood there, stricken, all I could do was watch as John approached Charles’ still frame.
‘Charles?’ He did not respond. John reached for his neck, searching for his pulse. In an instant Charles lunged, flipping John over and pinning him to the floor. Blood spilled from Charles’ eyes, ears and nose. He smashed John’s skull into the stone beneath the water, exploding it with a sickening crunch. Yells permeated the small room, we all flinched back instinctively. Before any of us could muster a reaction, Charles was on his feet. The torches we held began to collectively gutter and in the rapidly fading flame I looked upon Charles’ blood-soaked face. A snarl of furious bestiality was on his lips as they split apart before my very eyes. The torches died. The subterranean chamber rang with the terrified unison of our cries. We raced for where we thought the stairs to be. Hands grasped for me in the dark, I battered them aside though I knew not to whom they belonged. An animalistic roar sliced the din of our retreat. In the chaotic darkness, a dirty emerald light began to blaze from all around me. I saw, with bleary eyes, it was the carvings on the walls. Their sight sent the eel in my guts into a panic, but what I’d seen set its teeth to raking my innards for an escape. Charles, illuminated by the sickly glow, in what seemed to be maniacal glee, clawed and ripped scraps of flesh from his face with hands that were distending even as I beheld them. I pushed harder, forcing crewmates out of my way as we swarmed up the staircase like vermin. We spilled out but rather than reaching the open air, we came into another chamber, far vaster than the last. Its walls were etched with the same scripture, now lighted with the same dull glow and its walls were lined with doorways that spilled sickly, disorientating light. I froze in confusion. Another gurgling shriek from beneath us jolted my reeling mind. It felt like I was drowning in tides of hysteria. I chose the closest doorway to me, and I ran. I ran and did not look back. Even as agonised screams assaulted me.

I fled through the passageway, through a plethora of chambers and labyrinthine corridors choked with sea-fog in that deep hell. When I could run no more, I fell, tucking my destitute body into a cavity as best I could. My head was excruciating from the illuminated carvings that beat my senses into muted submission. My ears burned for any scrap of a sound of the crew as I cowered against that wall. I cannot truly recall how long I lay there, but in time, all evidence of them ceased. The screams stopped ringing, and the noises of men plagued by horror stopped echoing. Then I heard it. From the passage I had just come, the sound of disgusting, choking breaths and knelling, aberrant footfalls.
I rose and peered out of an empty archway in the chamber I was in, the gleaming flicker of scripture now dancing along the frame and trailing light down the stone hallway. The hammering footsteps were muted in the murk beyond. Perhaps Charles had tired or lost my trail? Or perhaps what he had become had glutted itself on John, Francis and the others. To my shame, I hoped it had. In the bowels of that abyss, that thin, malignant sliver of hope was all that spurred me. I turned, fumbling through the archway, catching my sodden garments on the stones’ edge and ripping them. The oppressive miasma in that place forced its way into my nostrils, its unnatural pungency cloying my throat with unnatural fumes. Instinct and that evil hope pushed me onward; a desire to live, to escape, to see my wife and son again. I willed my breath to come in silent gasps as I finally spied the stair that we had descended. The sounds and smell of the sea issued from beyond it, from down a corridor swaying with the light of smoldering alien text. I could flee, make it back to the ‘Old Venerable’ and escape. I crossed the corridor quickly, and like a petrified fool, I took no pains to conceal my rush for salvation. Then the rasping began.

Forgive the careless manner in which these words are penned, for I can’t help but shudder as I write. They drew close. Its sound crawled downwards from the top stair. The pulse pounding in my veins was as cacophonic then as it is now. From what pit of an unimaginable hell had this abhorrence been spat forth that it could navigate the lunacy of that island? I doubled back, picking up pace, frantically searching for deliverance. I remember with harrowing clarity how my heart threatened to rupture in my breast. I slipped back into the hallway I had come from, hoping and praying to God that this wretch, this thing, had spared the others. By the time I thought myself concealed, there was no trace of that rasping breathing, only the constant dripping of that dank place. I allowed myself to hope it had gone and as I waited, miserable and pathetic, I thought, for the briefest moment it had. Then it came again, closer. The guttural rasp of air through a violated mouth carried to my ears, less than three meters from me and the terror of it slipped its hands around my throat. That noise… It was like nothing the world had ever birthed. The palpitations threatened to overcome me again, a tightening sensation crawled numbly down my left arm. I was unsure if I was exerting extraordinary will, or if I was frozen in a grip too strong to overcome. I resolved to run. I hardened the fabric of my soul. I drew in one final silent breath. Silent, but not silent enough. For then, it found me.
I took a solitary, bracing step forward when I heard it. Rather, I felt it. This thing, for it could be described no other way, spoke to me. Not in a language of man, no syllables devised by a sane mind. A noise, a tumultuous discord of painful noise like the roaring pistons of a steam engine imprinted in my mind like the numbing cold that follows a severe burn.

‘You have released me.’ It hissed inside my head. ‘Now leave here, Edward Manus.’ It’s speech violated me in a way I cannot describe. ‘Leave my jail. It no longer holds me. Take with you the knowledge of me.’ Warm blood trickled into my beard from my lips, I recall the fecund taste and sight of its discoloration as it shone in the dark light of that corridor. The pressure threatened to rip my head asunder. My immediate thought; ‘What has it done?’. A thought. Yet… It heard me…
‘You are merely a herald, Edward. Your crew are mine to conduct. A song must have a choir.’ The melodious satisfaction in it made bile rise in my gullet.
I heard its breaths cutting through the thick smog of that nightmare scape. It’s titanic footfalls slapping against the wet floor. Silhouetted in the haze, I could see its shadow as it pressed towards me. Its presence crushed the air out of my lungs in painful heaves. Then it emerged and I beheld the countenance. It was primordial. Humanoid and utterly bestial. An elongated and ravaged jaw, slit to bloody shreds, retracted and displayed a blossom of teeth, human, bestial and demonic. Pallid, wet skin shifted translucently, taking on hues the sight of which forced the built-up bile from my throat out of my mouth in a stinging expulsion. I at last seen Charles’ begging, tortured eyes. But those orbs burned with utter, uncaring malice. They stared at me, but somehow, through me. It saw me. Everything that constituted the man that was Edward Manus. Every thought and emotion, all the shards of his sanity. And eviscerated them.

‘Leave, Herald.’ I did as it commanded.
I vaguely remember staggering up the steps, but it was then that delirium took me. I do not recall feeling the spray of the sea on my skin or the smell of saltwater as I was spat out of hell. I do not recall manning the ship on the impossible journey across the Atlantic. As though from watching with eyes submerged beneath water, I recall looking back, I recall Edward Manus smelling the scent of putrefaction and the echoes of shrill breath, birthing the deliberate sound of a song. A beautiful, haunting song.
The rest of the events happened exactly as was reported to the authorities on my – no, Edward Manus’- arrival in New York City. He sailed alone for the remainder of the voyage, making port a sniveling, pitiful lunatic. In that time, he digested what he had done; he led seven men to a fate no one would believe. And then he left them. Men he had been at sea with for years. Left them. Now that shame is sung, a staccato note in that damnable song. John. Francis. Charles… What did I lead you to? No matter the narcotics Edward Manus thrusts into me, no matter how deep the lacerations he inflicts on my arms, he will never cut the memory of that shame from me. We will never forget. I will never forget.

I have spoken only the truth. My last words, my final, sober warning to the world. In my years of privation since, I have lost everything. Faith. Health. My wife… My son. All I have is intoxication. For only in the mixture of narcotics was there a succor to be found from the music. That seductive melody, constantly playing at the periphery of my mind. It has played its perpetual, lyrical dissonance. Demanding my focus, demanding I listen, that I lend my voice to the chords that it insists I play. In defiance of its melody, I have known some miniscule exoneration. But now it has reached its crescendo. Years of endurance, years of refusal to play to the monster’s melody, I can no longer resist.
The eyes! I see them. I see them now. Eyes beyond the window! Forgive me, Charles… please, forgive me.

Report by Superintendent James Smart, November 19, 1837, Calton Police:
Letter found in the vandalized room of former Captain, Edward Manus, alongside double-barreled shotgun, blood on and around the writing desk on which was found this letter and the log of the ‘Old Venerable’, dated 19th of November 1801. Scattered notes and journals, many of which pages were torn, discovered at the scene have been filed with Calton Police for thorough investigation. No body discovered, investigation underway.

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