FROM THE REMAINS OF THE AIRSHIP “INTREPID”

FROM THE REMAINS OF THE AIRSHIP INTREPID
by Maxwell Marais

April 21st, 1883

Perhaps it is suspicion that has driven me to create this journal. Perhaps it is paranoia that I may not be seen again. But if that is the case, it is equally unlikely that anyone will find this account. Except, of course, for the off chance that a rescue mission may be sent down to these godforsaken Antarctic shores to pluck our bones from the ice. Due to a series of unforeseen storms, the wind currents that brought us here, quickly turned into a series of perilous and lightning-fraught encounters. It is a miracle the entire crew of the Intrepid weren’t lit aflame by some explosive leak in the ship’s gas bladders.

It is possible, I suppose, that this is why I have been so worried since we landed at Halley Bay. Neither chance nor circumstance have been kind to us on our aerial voyage, and the lingering thought that Fate herself may be set against our survival lurks in my mind, a constant shadow refusing the light of introspection. Obviously, I cannot outwardly entertain these suspicions among my fellow crew members. I am a doctor, after all, and it is my job, if not my duty, to be a pillar of logic amidst the plethora of airmen’s tall tales.

Our landing was safe enough, and no crewmen have found themselves sick or injured since the last storm we encountered around the southern tip of South America. I can only hope that our worst times are over. But the temperatures are already plummeting, and winter is setting in much sooner than we expected. It won’t be long before the first cases of frostbite are inevitably reported.

May 3rd, 1883

After an uneventful scouting mission, a larger group of crewmen were sent out on a longer expedition. It’s around six in the evening, and they’ve just returned to our camp. Time, now, is becoming increasingly difficult to determine without listening to the ship’s bells or glancing at a pocket watch. That is, if the gears haven’t frozen in place. The sun was clear of the horizon for little more than three hours today. By the end of the month, it will cast little more than a dull glow at the fringe of the slate-grey sky.

The expeditionary team, including the five badly frostbitten crewmen to which I am tending now, reported the discovery of some type of architecture half-buried in the ice. Ancient, they said. Half-crumbled to ruins. The remains of some hitherto unknown civilization which, by all rights, should not exist at all. Against the cautioning of the party leader, one Lieutenant Firth, a number of the team had gone and explored the thing. It was this unexpected lengthy exposure, he tells me, that was the cause of the frostbite cases. Those in my current care all bear stories of what exactly was inside this strange edifice, but from what I can tell, they all seem to vary. This is odd, because most of them still seem relatively coherent.

Most, but not all.

The worst of them was brought to me shaking and babbling through frozen lips. The poor man had one frost-blackened hand wrapped in a death grip around some bizarre tubular object which he claims to have acquired from within the ruins. His hand was a lost cause; the fingers cracked and shattered like ice as I prized the rime-encrusted tube free, and I have since had to amputate it just above the wrist. For the moment, he is half-asleep under the influence of the painkillers I dosed him to ease his suffering. If he does not regain his coherency during his recovery, he may well be with me for the remainder of our stay here.

May 6th, 1883

The object from the ruins was given to me to study. The crewmen simply refer to it as “the artifact” now, and it has attracted a great deal of dark rumors and suspicion. Being a man of science above all, the captain has entrusted me with trying to make sense of the thing before these whisperings get out of hand. Rumors lead to distrust, and distrust leads to mutiny, or so he says.

The artifact, from what I have been able to observe, appears to be some sort of brass-and-glass storage contraption, though of course I rather doubt it is made of those materials. The “glass” I mention is nearly opaque, and seems impossible to break or fracture, although I hesitate to apply all due force for fear of causing irreparable harm to the device. There are a few wire coils running the length of the outside as well. Whether they are to transmit heat or electricity, I do not know. It does, however, seem to have sustained some damage around the seal where the glass meets brass. The crew say it was like this when they found it, and it does not seem to be causing any leakage of the contents from within, these consisting of a thick greenish fluid and some type of… thing… floating at its center. It is not possible for me to say what it could be due to the beclouded nature of the glass.

But I cannot help feeling that it is alive. That it is, in some way I cannot quite fathom, watching me. Sometimes I think I see it move when I am half-turned away from it, twitching spastically with unseen appendages like a sleeping dog kicking its legs as it dreams.

May 15th, 1883

There is something beyond frostbite affecting the crewmen. Something stranger and, I fear, far worse. Those from the scouting expedition have not recovered from any amputations or other procedures I performed. It is as if their flesh is not alive. The incisions I make scarcely bleed at all, and when they do their blood behaves in a peculiar manner, sluggish, almost congealed like the icy slurry that laps the shores of this dismal and wretched continent. To my knowledge, one should not be able to live under such conditions. The heart should not be strong enough to pump the viscous fluid through the men’s veins… and yet still they breathe. I have found strange pustules, crusty-edged sores that weep a dark fluid from their centers, on several of their bodies. These festering cysts are unlike any I can attribute to a known and documented disease. I fear for them as I fear for my own lack of ability to treat this novel affliction.

May 21st, 1883

Today was the first day with no daylight. The pale twilight vanished quickly, giving way again to the darkness and the feeble stars, and I’m not entirely sure of the time as I sit down to write this.

The men continue to struggle, weak and seemingly in vain. Their ulcerous sores worsen by the day. There is something moving beneath the scabs and putrefying flesh, something that flounders and writhes beneath the cracked and flaky skin (something alive?).I have no idea of what to do to heal the damaged tissue. Now I only attempt to keep the men in as little pain as I can manage. But I know that my medical supplies will only last so long. I cannot cure them; the guilt plagues me.

They are not themselves anymore. Most rarely speak, and when they do it is only the vague mumblings of the half-conscious, unaware of their surroundings. On the rarest of occasions, I hear words or phrases in a language not their own. Tongues I do not recognize. Other times they only scream.

For most of the day (if it is still day, with no sun to tell it by) they are motionless. But occasionally I catch one or more of them trying to rise from their cots, to leave my ward and walk about the ship. Searching, it seems, seeking. Even the powerful cocktail of opiates in my supply only barely manages to keep them down. Their resilience is both astounding and perplexing.

Additionally, though I cannot say in confidence whether or not it is related to my wandering men, the chief engineer has reported a sudden deficiency in the fuel supply. Unless we begin dismantling the ship midair once we take flight again, we will not be able to make our return voyage. This information was only given to the captain, myself, and the other higher-ranking officers. We cannot tell the crewmen yet, especially with our suspicions that the missing fuel has not disappeared so much as been deliberately taken in an attempt at sabotage. The others do not know who to suspect, but I have my hypotheses.

May 25th, 1883

I have spoken to the man who brought the artifact. Our conversation was brief, and shortly after he lapsed again into a catatonic state, but in the time we spoke he grasped at my coat with what few fingers he still possesses and whispered to me horrible things… he told me what lies beneath the ruins (but it is impossible! It cannot!). Sleeping, he told me. Dreaming. His voice did not sound his own. I hardly recognized him as we spoke. Not as himself, not as a member of our crew.

He is changed.

We have not spoken since, and his condition worsens by the day. I am certain he will perish soon.

For the other afflicted crewmen, I am ashamed at my inability to treat them. I cannot prevent their deaths, only postpone them, and I hesitate to do so now that the possibility of our return looks so very bleak. Is it ethical, is it right to keep them alive only to suffer so as they move inevitably towards death?

May 30th, 1883

One of our men was found half-eaten on the ice in the dusky twilight of noon. The ship is in chaos and in fear, and the captain has only barely managed to hold everyone together. It is a thin, drink-bribed sort of acquiescence we exist in now.

It will not last long.

There are things I should not, I cannot say if I wish the crew’s tenuous trust to hold; I cannot tell them that the marks in the man’s flesh were of human teeth, not animal as they suspect. I cannot tell them that the man who brought the artifact onboard is now missing from the sick bay. And I cannot, I especiallycannot tell them that I found one of the suppurating lesions under my own arm this morning.

Not yet.

Not ever?

June 3rd, 1883

More sores.

It is cold. Frigid. Our heating oil is running low.

 It would be a terrible lie to say that I do not now fear the men in the sick bay. I have been guilty of clinging to the delusion that these are men to whom I can give succor, but no more. No longer. I care for them, yes, I treat them as best I can. Perhaps it is noble to attempt to help them, even as my own condition worsens. But I am afraid. I fear becoming like them, even as I struggle to understand precisely what they are.  

But I have lied to them all before. About myself. About the man on the ice.

About the artifact…

But it would do no good to confess this lie any more than it would to confess the others.

The artifact is watching me.

I am sure of it now. Watching me.

The sores are moving.

Like something beneath my skin is waking

(And the thing below the ruins, does it waken too?)

June 17nd, 18–

I was standing over a dead crew member when I awoke a short time ago (dead, eaten). There is blood on my shirt (blood on my shirt?).

Blood on my shirt, crusted, browning, and I know it is not mine. I ate him (did I eat him?). The taste of iron is still on my tongue. There is flesh stuck between my teeth. Strings of tissue. Threads of cornsilk.

I cannot be trusted to care for the sick now. Not now, no. Not like this. Can scarcely trust myself (the taste of iron is still on my tongue as it pushes at the strands caught between my molars).

I am going to take the artifact onto the ice. Onto the ice, myself and it, to freeze, to die. I believe it feeds on the warmth.

It feeds on the men.

Onto the ice.

[date illegible]

Onto the ice. Onto the ice (dead, eaten, blood on my shirt).

Even now I watch my fingers blacken (to freeze, to die, myself and it). They are stiff, wooden… no not wooden, brittle, like ice. The ice! Oh, how gripping its embrace, how sharp its teeth! (to freeze, to die)

It will have no warmth, the artifact, it will not feed. Will not feed. I ate him. Ate him? It feeds on the warmth (it cannot awaken).

It will freeze (I will freeze) all will forget.

I am a liar and a murderer both. Even now the taste of iron lingers…

I’m sorry, so sorry.

There must be no rescue.

No one must find me.

They cannot find this. They cannot know. Cannot discover (it must not awaken).

It feeds on the warmth.

Forget the airship.

Forget us all.

Please.

Fiction © Copyright Maxwell Marais
Image by ImaArtist from Pixabay

Maxwell Marais is an author and illustrator living in Montreal, Canada. When they aren’t frantically scrawling down the weird fiction and horror that crawls out of their brain, they can be found attempting to summon (with limited success) horrible abominations from beyond our world. Their works can be found in such publications as The NoSleep Podcast, Thuggish Itch, and Black Hare Press