Hidden Between the Seconds

Reader: if you have come across this bottle and manuscript upon the fair and firm sandy shore; rejoice. However, if your ears are still full of the murderous murmuring of the waves, if your horizon is the horror of black empty leagues, or if you are otherwise adrift in an abysmal coffin,take heed. Sailor, merchant, fisherman; flee the treacherous main, which hide the blackest horrors of the abysmal deep, creatures leaked from the gibbering mind of an alien god...

My name is Jonathan LaForge, and a fortnight before, I would, like you, dear reader, have dismissed these warnings as the ravings of a madman. To true, what I have seen has shaken me to such an extent that I would deem myself mad, if not for the photographs. Of course, I have shewn them to no other mortal. The sea-water has ruined them all now. Small mercies indeed, I shudder to think the panic they would have unleashed upon the world. 

I had no desire to sail, indeed, the farthest from it! I was content to cower in my laboratory for several weeks upon my discovery, but they have forced my hand, and I could not remain. Mine being an island country, all regions within fifty miles of the shore, I had no choice but to pray to God and entrust myself to a ship bound for the continent. I had arranged, though hasty and vague correspondence, lodging in Zurich, quite far from the oceans. Alas, it was not to be. 

In the crossing, there was a storm of the like no sailor had seen before. The sky was cloudless, deep and blue, but the sea, the sea rose and fell with such uncanny and supernatural fury, that several sailors dropped to their knees to beg mercy from the Lord. The first mate disappeared, and we lost seven sailors. The rest of the crew all edges that they were washed overboard, albeit, in waves and circumstances which could not possibly overpower such men. 

Now, we are crippled. Mastless, and without a rudder, there is nothing to do but write and wait, and the sea stirs yet. 

I am a photographer, or rather, I consider myself a photographic engineer. My expertise, the culmination of my career, was the development of specially designed cameras which could, through an elaborate engine of mirrors and switches, capture images in a highly rapid sequence. I have made several studies of the motion of the flapping of the wings of a hummingbird, for instance, and photographed events which are much to rapid for the human eye to comprehend. The feat is not difficult to achieve. Optical science has determined the human eye can comprehend an image which lasts longer than 1/15 of a second. I have pushed my camera to capture images separated by a mere 1/100 of a second!

Word spread of my achievement, and I was shortly contacted by a group of naturalists to photograph an usual phenomenon on the isolated shoreline west of the capital. That was three weeks ago. 

The beach was nothing out of the ordinary, high white cliffs surrounding a pebble beach where huge walrus were known to sunbathe. These walruses, I learned, had an unusual behavior of leaping to the sea, an event I secreted myself away in nearby bushes to observe. I spent several rather boring hours until I saw what the naturalist had spoken of. One of the largest bullwalruses of the several dozen lounging on the beach suddenly lifted itself in a very erect manner, and turned quite rapidly and unnaturally. This all occur ed very quickly, and the surrounding animals because rather startled and spooked, barking loudly. Then the bull walrus abruptly leaped into the sea. This was no ordinary leap. From a stationary pose, this massive animal gave a great shudder and shot out, perhaps fifteen feet, to fall into the water. It was so astounding a feat, I dropped my small traveling camera. I failed to notice, at the time, the unusual churning of the water by that particular spot of beach.

I returned the following day with my full rapid-capture camera, and set up the device, rigged to a shutter and with enough film to capture the entire sequence. The event repeated itself- this time with different walrus, one slightly smaller than the one I had observed the day before. After the spectacle, I packed my equipment and returned to the studio immediately, eager to develop the film.

Methodically, I carefully separated the film, cutting the moments before and after, and concentrating only on the second that the leap took place. Trimming, developing, treating with the various chemicals and washes of my trade. Finally, satisfied that my work was up to the standards of Science, I trained my ocular enlarger on the first frame, and shouted in shock and alarm, instinctively flinging myself away from the cursed prints. 

There was something there on that beach. In front of me. An indescribable, alien horror. There are no words to describe such a thing in a language which has never guessed at the obscene and insane dimensions from which this hellish thing must have slithered. It was horribly strangling the walrus with something not quite tentacles, and not unlike mucous white rope. What had been mistaken as leap, as it became horrifyingly clear, was actually the monstrosity yanking the walrus off the beach into a gaping maw of putrescence, fetid with hundereds of squirming little polyps so terrible I dared look no closer.

The worst was yet to come- in the last three frames. It clearly shewed three of them slithing onto the shore.

I have serveral conjectures as to why they are invisble to the human eye- perhaps, like certain newly discovered types of particles, they regualarly phase in and out of existance, and it only cosmic folly, or mercy, that they phase at a rate which is perfectly out of synchronization with our own, that they exist between the infantessimal moments which comprise the seconds, that they hide between the seconds of the day. In such a way, my camera could discern the unholy thing my eye could not.

But then, as the sun burns down upon my head, making my vision swim, perhaps it more to do with mercy after all. They say that when Columbus landed upon the west indies, that the natives could not actually see his ships, their being so simple that such an alien construction was simply uncomprehendable to the eye, rendering them invisible. 

The boat shakes again, and the small waves rocking the boat claim sailor after sailor. I shall not be long for this world, but as I curse my existance and my fate, harken to my final word: flee.