May 27th, 1867

Today, I face that final end to which all men are inexorably drawn. As I pen this account, I am availed of no further delusion. I know my peril, and that it has lain ever before me. I believe that as of the present I have a rare moment of clarity. I am sure of this because of the grievous dread which hath afflicted my heart, where otherwise there would be fanciful ecstasy. As such, I write now with all speed to give as complete a testimony as I can before my sense takes leave of me once more. With what time and ink I have, I hereby pass to whoever peruses these pages this singular injunction:

Take heart, take haste, and take flight from this place!

Ah, but surely you will at once find grievance with this calling, bedazzled as you most certainly will be by this clandestine sanctum as I was. Ah, the irony of it! for the man of science considers the evidence of his senses his utmost authority. After all, is it not that which we can see and touch that constitutes our most realized vision of reality? Nay, I say, what could be further from the truth? If the evidence of the senses—of sight, sound, touch, and smell—are the foundational truths upon which we construct all comprehension, then how trivial the grand intellect of man is considering the inestimable ease with which these axiomatic senses may be cheated.

I digress. There is little time, and much to say. I tell you, put aside your lustings—for food, drink, and perhaps, though I pray otherwise, for affection. Read well my words! For the love of God Almighty, harken to me!

If you are reading this, then you have found yourself amongst the same harrowing haunt as I myself do now. Accepting that there may be those who are not familiar with my name, I am as celebrated a naturalist, author, and lecturer as has ever been this century, yet even I find myself baffled beyond comprehension by the chilling strangeness of this nameless fastness. A week’s solid investigation yielded no further comprehension, only further questions which I now fear will haunt me to my early grave, for alone of the few revelations I have gleaned, I am certain only of this: I am, and have been, a dead man walking. I will begin by telling you of what has befallen me, so that by my example you might be warned against a similar fate.

I was crossing the mid-Atlantic on a voyage from the isle of Britain to America, the second half of a ghastly lecture tour that would have taken me across the civilized world. My tour was suddenly cut short when a wrathful tempest foundered my vessel and left me adrift in the merciless sea. Mercy it seemed to grant me, however, when I found myself rescued and aboard a new ship, and oh good reader, what a ship it is!

How can one with mere English do justice to its magnificence? Tis a rival in grandeur to the SS Great Eastern of Brunel and Russel, grand in scale and grander in furnishments. Truly, it has no equal in all the seas of the world, unparalleled by any creation man has yet wrought this 19th century. Within its splendid decks is the finery of an English lord’s library and the elegance of an American lady’s parlor. Ah, to imbibe the richest of drink, to sample the most decadent of dishes, to dance beneath crystal chandeliers, and watch the sun set over the bluest sea! Truly, it appears to be a paradise, like unto that ever-evasive utopia which muses the great authors.

Perhaps, on reflection, it is Eden itself, banished to sea by God’s fiercest wrath, for herein I found both serpent and fairest Eve.

Twas she who rescued me, the fairest of the fair, my savior, my beloved Helen, whose eyes sparkle like the stars that have guided men home across the sea since time immemorial. My salvation she was, and my doom. Indeed, I am a doomed man, for I allowed that most meddlesome of organs to interfere with the calculating scientific method to which I have so diligently accustomed myself. My heart befuddled me.

Ah, to speak of love as the poets do! As a scientific man, I believed I grasped the chemistry and biology of the flitting feeling mankind foolishly refers to as ‘love’. Never have I been more mistaken. To be seized by such ardor, such passion as I feel when my beloved Helen offers me but the simplest smile, has revealed to me the verity that eluded an old addle-pate such as myself all these years. And therein, I now most grievously fear, lay the apple of my undoing.

Ignorance, I believed, to be found in emotion, but it is the opposite. Ignorance is found in the arrogance of the intellect, to wit this dreaded place as testimony, for it was by intellect that I was blinded so completely from the truth. I looked and believed that I beheld a ship. I trusted the evidence of my own eyes, only to find that evidence of no more candor than that of a blind man.

I perceive it now. My doom is here upon me, perhaps lurking just outside the door of my berth this very instant. A doom so perilous, so insidious…nay, I cannot even write of it! No sane, rational mind would pay heed to such words but rather ascribe to them at once the madness with which they ring. I can only hope then, in absence of a fully truthful account, that you will heed my warning on the gravity of its words alone, for the truth is stranger and more horrible than any fiction. And so, I say simply again, flee! Flee from this place!

This lonely isle, this weirding hollow…I looked and believed I beheld a ship, but this is no ship. It is a snare. A most cleverly laid trap. As all utopian paradises have inevitably fallen into lairs of suffering and tyranny, so too has this precious paradise collapsed into the cold tomb in which I shall surely rest, unless my senses can somehow be unshackled from the miasma that ever besets them. Is Hell indeed a place on earth? for I believe I have found it here.

A most sinister snare it is. By the allure of my beloved was I diverted from scientific inquiry which might have revealed to me the nature of this place from the first. Here at last, too late, I wonder: why is she here, alone aboard this desolate vessel, sustained by unhallowed power all these many years? Nay. I cannot. I will not even entertain the possibility of her willful culpability. It must be as she has told me: that she is entirely ignorant of the danger that lurks beneath us, night and day. She is then the naïve puppet of this great, deceptive power. Nevertheless, be she innocent or guilty, there exists no greater instrument of that enemy’s power than she herself, for with her allure this paradise is such that no man, even of most stoic resolve, could possibly resist. But I say you must! Resist, as I did not, blinded as I was by single-minded pursuit of her, lest the noose tighten beyond loosening before you even perceive the peril that awaits you!

Perchance, however, you shall not suffer such distraction as I. This I say, for if you have had the gravest misfortune to arrive at this dreaded place, I shall have since found a way to take flight, and my lady with me. This, I solemnly swear! for I shall not abandon my poor, deluded Helen to endure this torment in solitude once again. Her great fear of the ocean which encompasses us and her stalwart conviction that we must not abandon ship I shall somehow overcome, in the name of my boundless devotion, even to the damning of my own life. Should I perish having saved her, then I shall not have died in vain. She shall be free, and I shall no more live with the black visions of terror which have afflicted my mortal eyes.

Of such visions, do not wonder, dear reader. Do not even allow yourself to ponder the question of them, lest they somehow find a way into your mind and you see what I have seen. Do not wonder. Do not think.

Should my oath be fulfilled, you shall find this opulent, drifting lie abandoned, for apart from myself and my beloved there exists aboard this ship no other living soul. Availed of the snare of a woman’s attraction which ensnared me, you shall face only the vices of gluttony and greed aboard this impossible wonder, for I assure you that regardless of the time that has passed since the penning of this page, whether it be days or years, you shall find this vessel in the same condition as it is this 27th day of May of the forecited year, just as it remained the many long years that my beloved Helen endured in isolation before my arrival. Such is the mystery of this ship, the abnormality of it.

Once more then, I abjure you, my good fellow or lady, by all the powers that be, if you should find yourself a victim to the passions, to their compulsion to keep you aboard this ship, to feast from its tables and drink from its bottles, I tell you rather, flee! Flee with all haste! for you shall find no satiation on this ship. It is no ship of miracles as it seems, but rather a ship of nightmares, so black and fathomless that I dare not recount them. A great, shadowed hand bears a quill of blackest ink, poised to inscribe your name upon the scroll of destiny, and with but a flourish it shall end you, lest you linger here too long.

Flee! Flee for your life! The darkness which herein lies is beyond all mortal understanding, contestation, or resistance. I pray that these words may find you before the eleventh hour, that you might yet abandon all enticement before it claims you. As for me, I am already lost. My devotion to my beloved Helen is as inseparable from me as my right arm. I must find a way to convince her of the truth, to compel her to depart with me. By force if I must, I shall remove her from this dreaded lair! Perhaps then, she may understand. I can only pray to Almighty God that she shall hear me, that our love shall be strong enough to free her from this delusion which holds her unwittingly captive and so dooms us both.

As this may well be the last record in this journal, I shall close with a final injunction, and a final hope. Leave this place and never return! Tis not your mere life that here is forfeit, but your very soul. With every last breath that remains in my body, I shall endure. Perhaps then, I shall find a way. On the morrow, I may rise to a brighter dawn.

I am yours most sincerely,

David J. Magnuson