“Dere be a storm comin’ in, alrigh’,” the warden calls, as he wrenches open the door on his way in from his post, “She be a big ‘un too, I reck’n. Not long now, she’ll be lickin’ at da sills and rattlin’ dese walls.” Another storm—and at a time like this. The inconvenience couldn’t be overstated.

You see, some weeks past, as night began to fall, a woman’s body was discovered floating in the bay. There had been a lone shipman in the dockyard that evening, preparing for an early start the next day. He said he’d heard a strange, almost nauseating noise, an unfamiliar thumping that he couldn’t quite describe, but waved off as he was pressed to continue with his work before dark. Once finished, as he began to walk back toward shore, he heard again that same thumping, that dreadful, incessant thumping he’d heard earlier and had tried to ignore. With some resolve, he followed the eerie sound along the pier, quietly and with measured steps as the noise grew steadily louder. Once he’d found where he thought was the source, he stopped and slowly peered beyond the creaking wooden beams beneath his feet and into the restless waters below. To his horror, in the waning light he saw a woman’s body, but disfigured, being thrown limply against the ancient wooden piling by the darkening, blue waters of the bay; loud, hollow thuds ringing out as her battered head was flung heavily against the daunting obstacle.

His story henceforth had been corroborated by other shipmen, as he’d hurriedly barged into a nearby lodge, crying out about “a woman, but surely a monst’r as well!” and gesturing wildly for the others to help him recover “what’s left ov ‘er.” Once the body had been retrieved, it was clear why the shipman had spoken so, for it had been carved apart in such a grotesque manner, few of the men could bear the sight for very long at all. There were purple bruises concentrated on her head and right shoulder, and thin, red scratches where her abdomen and thigh had repeatedly brushed up against the barnacle-encrusted piles. Oh, but her terrible limbs! Only the Devil could truly know what evil thing had taken to her, for each of her arms and legs had been deeply cut along their entire length, revealing pale-white bones set against raw, pick flesh.

It’s a quiet town, or so it used to be—it’s been abuzz with frightful murmurs ever since the first news spread. Worse, that incident wasn’t the last: there were two more bodies found in the following days, men those times, but limbs cut open in just the same way. Rumors are spreading of a monster in the bay, some immense creature, stalking into the dockyard at night and silently snatching people tending to the moored ships. Families are begging their loved ones to stay away from the water, but for most, there isn’t any choice. What times are these, that torturous nightmares undreamt now occupy the minds of the awake?

As the storm draws in, I sit in quiet contemplation. The wind whistles through the timbers, the walls stressing, bottles rattling from their places along the shelves. Suddenly, an overwhelming, animalistic groan wells up from somewhere near the bay, and in an instant, the lights throughout the building burst in a shower of glass, leaving behind only a singular, all-consuming darkness.