by Jake Clyde

“There were only five of us picked up in that muddy- oily- Mediterranean.” A ghostly voice hisses from the wire recorder.

Autumn leaves spiral in to the air as a sleek brown sedan thunders down the road. Henry awkwardly reaches behind himself and grabs for a stack of photographs; his left hand holds firmly to the steering wheel. He hands off the bundle to his passenger, Richard Anderson.

“Two children died last week in Nabeul. They turned to rot from the inside out-so did their dog. The children claimed to have been stung by a huge red and blue jellyfish that washed up on the northern shore.” Henry clammers.

Anderson is a slight man of his late thirties. His glasses are made from tortoise shell and the lenses are thick; they distort the size of his small brown eyes. He closes the wire recorder box and places it behind him on the back seat. He licks his thumb and forefinger then riffles through the photos.

“These are underwater photos?” Anderson asks.

“These are images from the SS Solon, a merchant vessel that was sunk during the war. Three years ago I think. Some are underwater, some are from other places.”

“What does this have to do with those children?”

Henry adjusts his rearview mirror and pumps the gas. “Look at the last photos in the stack-the bottom three.” He says.

Anderson slides the last photograph in the pile up to the surface. He examines the image of a piece of wood that has the letter O-L-O-N stenciled across it. The next two photos have similar wooden panels with various characters of the word, Solon.

“These are cargo crates from the merchant ship?” Anderson asks.

“Yeah. The one on top is a photo from a box found on the grounds of a German medical camp that was servicing the seventh army near Normandy. The camp and the surrounding area were ordered burned to ground when the allies found that crate. The second one is from Malta, it was found at a loading dock…also razed. That last one was part of a makeshift table in the house those boys died in. If you look at the texture of it you can tell that specific piece of crate was driftwood.”

Henry reaches behind himself again, this time producing a second set of photographs. “These are the photos of the ‘jellyfish’ that those boys were stung by. The beach in Tunisia can get covered in jellies this time of year, but there were only three of this color and size. When the local French authority took the ‘things’ in to a lab they found pieces of fur, reptile scales and human teeth inside of them.”

The images of meaty red blobs flash in Anderson’s eyes as he whips through the photos.

“Why are we investigating a war time wreck-and what exactly do these things have to do with a sunken merchant vessel?”

“This is the problem-and it’s very much off the record-that boat had naval officers on it, so it wasn’t exactly a pure civilian freight. The French government has asked us about what’s washing up on their territory and the official answer has to be, ‘We don’t know. It was a civilian ship’. You, as an expert, have been asked to prepare a report that will satisfy our needs and answer the questions that the French have about what happened to the Solon. We’ve already told them that strange things float up from underwater, like that blubber they found in Florida fifty years ago. We officially said that it must be a coincidence. We’ve sent a team of military experts to remove the specimens for testing.” Henry says.

“Is it a coincidence?” Anderson Asks.

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