|
"
30/5/09
I have been on the seas for twelve years and on this boat for five. I have seen about every kind of thing imaginable – from corpses to bloated sharks to what I still swear to god was a mermaid – but nothing prepared me for today. There really isn’t any way to write this that won’t seem like complete insanity or the lead up for a very bad joke – so let me just write it as it happened: Today, a talking monkey hired our boat. Ok, there it is. A talking monkey apparently contracted with our captain to hire our boat for a special operation. The captain had mentioned it – more mumbled it – a day earlier but I really thought he was just using some racial slur. When the thing scampered on board I almost shit myself – and then started to laugh since I figured this was the pay off to some practical joke. Then it looked me in the eye and said, “good morning.” I suppose its funny but I didn’t want to laugh – I just stared back at it until it grunted and scampered on up the plank.
The captain and I had a long talk that night with lots of rum and neither of us could get our heads around it. But, the captain swore it was legit. The deal started with a phone call, then the thing made the odd confession that it was a “monkey,” which the captain also figured was a joke or self-deprecation. Then they met to make the first monetary payment – the monkey apparently paid in solid gold – captain even had it double checked. So, the deal was done.
The only other thing that I feel worth writing – this monkey isn’t any curious george. Small, yes, but serious – even stoic. Eyes that have seen death and destruction and a grave sense of purpose that I don’t want to cross. We’ve briefed the men – of course they all cackled about banana boats but I’ve noticed that each one of them that has actually seen this hairy creature stow the wisecracks pretty quick. Two days out and we’re following the directions of a talking monkey off into the deep – god help me, I wish I was going mad.
01/06/09
Three days of hard sailing – engines at full – no idea where we’re going. The monkey keeps to itself – avoids the walkways and tends to climb up the outer works to get to the bridge and give the captain course corrections. Sometimes he can be seen sitting on the bow of the boat – well clinging to the bow really – nose out sniffing. He carries a leather satchel with a bunch of small electrical devices but sometimes he steps away – pulls out a handful of bones and rolls them on the deck before scooping them up and going back to the electrical boxes. I don’t think he’s noticed me spying but he does keep vigilant and often looks up at the sky as if expecting something. I can’t wait to get this done – bonuses for everyone the captain promises.
03/06/09
05:00:00
Full stop today but I wish we hadn’t. I guess I should be glad we’re at our ‘destination’ – not that you can tell this spot in the ocean from anywhere else. At least we’re half way to done. But Petey keeps briefing the captain about radiation readings getting higher and it seems like they’ve peaked here. The monkey and the captain had a huge argument as we moved into the high radiation area – ‘contracts were signed’ the little thing screeched and then with a look of pure malevolence it said ‘there will be consequences for a failure of will.’ There was silence for a long time – I honestly thought the creature was going to kill one of us and for a moment in spite of its small size I really believed he was going to be able to do it. But then the monkey looked down and said, “we’ll be quick. The ship should absorb most of the radiation. The men should be fine.” Then quietly and with a tone of ‘my final offer’ – “I’ll pay double.”
Captain is no fool but he loves money, especially gold. 24 hours were promised and the monkey agreed and scampered out.
12:00:00
Update: The monkey went overboard in – I find this whole thing to be totally unbelievable – a wet suit and diving gear. He rigged up several large wenches on the starboard side and then with an underwater bag of gear and the cables tied to his back he dove in. After he was gone I asked the crew if there had been any instructions – apparently he just said: ‘don’t touch anything no matter what.’
14:00:00
Hot as hell on the deck and 2 hours in I figured maybe the monkey had drowned or been eaten (can monkeys swim??). But he popped up right at 2 hours in and barked up an order – push the tarp over the side. Two of us pushed the large black tarp over the side and then he barked at us: “get off the deck – no one looks this way.” We headed over to the bridge and the captain reiterated – “monkey wants everyone out of sight – whatever he’s doing is his business.”
14:40:00
OK – I couldn’t help myself. I squeezed in between some piping on the starboard deck and crouched behind more rigging lines. By this point the monkey had climbed back onto the deck and was working on the series of wenches then after a few minutes he would dive back into the water before climbing back up and reworking the wenches. He did this several times and I was almost exhausted watching him but he worked like a man, well monkey, possessed.
19:55:00
This might get me fired, decommissioned, who knows. But I have to put this in writing just to have it in print and hopefully out of my mind. OK – still shaking a bit here but I know if I don’t write it now I’ll never sleep again.
Watched monkey for over an hour. Same routine – fiddle with wenches, dive into water, back up the cables, more work on the wenches. Then suddenly he seemed satisfied. He stopped for a good ten minutes – looking, sniffing, listening and I was convinced he knew I was there but then just as suddenly he began pulling the switches on the wenches and meticulously going back and forth between the wenches starting and stopping them. At one point I felt the boat pull just a little in the direction of the wenches and I realized we were pulling something BIG up. Maybe treasure or wreckage or . . . .well, I would find out soon enough.
After 40 minutes of slowly stopping and starting the wenches the black tarp appeared and the monkey’s activity went into high gear. Back and forth, onto the tarp, back to the wenches, back onto the tarp, over the edge, he scrambled like a beast possessed before finally the massive shape underneath the black tarp slowly was drug onto the deck.
At first it was only a big black tarp – maybe the size of a large shark and it had a kind of smooth curving organic shape. But the weight was more – you could feel weight pushing on the deck. The other odd thing – well odd at that point – was its smell. Not organic but not mechanical either – like bleach mixed with rosemary and ionized air and blood and puke and iron and a whole mix of things that my nose couldn’t process but I knew that something underneath that tarp was just wrong.
Then he pulled back the tarp. I really cannot describe what it was. Some sort of a creature – ok that’s not true it was not any creature ever known but it had black holes where eyes should be and a mouth like a jagged skull with teeth and a long sloping skull that curved back behind it. Its surface was not any real color – maybe like grey but a grey that has not existed in the world or in any imagination ever. But it was wrong. For a long moment I stared – unconsciously standing – I think I was waiting for my eyes to adjust to the illusion and feel that relief of when an optical trick rights itself. But the thing would not shift – it just laid there in all its horrific stench and wrongness and all I can say is that at that point I lost it and puked.
The hot bile blew up through my throat and onto my shoes and still I could not take my eyes of that thing-that-could-not-be and at that moment the whole horrific force of the word ‘otherworldy’ hit me. And I puked again.
My trance was broken by the realization that the monkey was staring at me – cold pitiless eyes. The only thing that overwhelmed my fear and trembling at the sight of that thing was the sudden awareness that the monkey was going to kill me.
But then he looked away and barked, “go.” I ran back to my room where I threw up several times and fell to the floor and trembled before finally deciding that the only way to keep any semblance of my sanity together was to write this down and hope the nightmare would stay in my journal.
|