“I used to think the crates we were unloading were dead animals until I was rigging one for a lift. The buckle from a hoist accidentally smacked the side of the crate and I heard a scratching noise from inside. The crate got unloaded to Malta around midnight. The dock workers were all wearing gas masks and thick gloves. Some of the other crewmen had told me about strange things they’d seen onboard, but they only got talking when they’d had a few drinks; that’s why I didn’t pay much attention to the stories.

“It wasn’t until three months at sea that I saw something with my own eyes. We were asked to hoist a crate from the aft hold and dump it overboard. It had that smell to it; that rotten smell of the dead animals. The officers were acting strange and trying to hurry us. As the crate got half way up the hoist the arm began to buckle. One of the cables snapped. The thing shattered open and something that looked like blubber spilled out on to the deck. The captain told us to hose it off the side.

“My job was to sweep the bigger pieces in to the ocean. I walked up to one of the bigger chunks and when I started to push it with the broom it let out a gassy fizz. That caught me off guard and I froze up. That’s when I saw it-an eye. It was mostly black like shark’s eye and it opened up from the middle of the mount. It actually rolled back and forth like it was looking at us. I pushed that thing off the edge so hard I almost lost my footing.

“I didn’t want to ask any questions about what I saw because I don’t think anyone but the scientists and maybe two of the officers had any answers for me. They wouldn’t have told me anything, so I didn’t bother drawing attention to myself.

“For the next week I had nightmares about it though. Not so much because I was afraid of what it was, but because it would’ve had to have been one of the animals at one point. That was the only explanation I could muster, and it scared the hell out of me.”

Joseph pauses. The rain falls heavier drowning out any other sound. The twilight fades away in to a dark night sky.

“About a month later I was assigned to assist Doctor Klein grinding dirt off of switches on the machine in the forward hold. We made small talk, things about our brothers; we were both from the cape. After the work was finished we hurried out of the heat and ended up playing cards on the bow. That’s when I got up the nerve to ask what the animals were for. He changed the subject, but he did talk about the thing in the forward Cargo hold. He said that the boxes were some kind of adding machine.”

Anderson stops writing. His awkwardly enlarged eyes wobble through his glasses. His fountain pen makes a small puddle of black ink on the paper. “Did anyone from the crew ever go in to the room past where the animals were kept?”

Joseph stands up from his chair and coughs in to his handkerchief. He begins to pace around the room as Anderson’s eyes float side to side- eerily tracing his steps.

“For the next several weeks we were escorted by naval cruisers because some merchant ships had gotten sunk by u-boats near where we were. We didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary until the escorts left us. We started to make our way down past Europe and into the African coast when we hit rough weather.

“The ship was rolling up and in to the waves; sea spray was blinding the deck crew. All it took was a few good waves and the weakened crane tower started to snap. I had secured the animals and was climbing out of the hold when I heard the crane fittings buckle.”

Joseph uncurls his fingers and stares at the deep scars that cross his palms. The mangled flesh must have healed nearly an eighth of an inch too shallow to ever appear normal again.

“I knew it was coming, so I released my hands and slid down the ladder. My palms got split from the friction. When I hit the ground a pane of glass struck me on the head and shattered.

.