Entry 1- May 25th, 20XX

First Officer Emilia Sharif of the R.V. Theseus, logging in response to today’s events. On the way to McMurdo we passed by a previously uncharted island, roughly 50 kilometers due north of Ross Island according to our navigator, though he seemed unusually unsure of his guess. The whole crew was uneasy about this strange island.

For whatever reason, Captain Black decided that this island merited investigation. When I pointed out our lack of equipment or dedicated team for a survey, I was rebuffed. As such, we’re approaching the island, which I decided to name “Tartarus”.. I felt it went with nearby Mount Erebus.

Entry 2- May 29th, 20XX

My unease with this island was well-founded. Our helmswoman had trouble landing the ship properly and we were nearly beached. The Theseus is undamaged, but not in a good condition to go out to sea, and not long after we got here some unexpected storms came in. Seems that the Captain will get his investigation after all.

He’s been odd ever since he saw this mountain. Captain Black’s normally a warm and personable kind of man, even on his off days. Ever since we got here though he’s been distant and unresponsive. He hasn’t been eating either, and doesn’t leave his room except to stare up at that mountain.

I don't like this place. It’s so damned cold you’d think it was Winter already, and the stars seem dim even on cloudless nights. There’s not a single living thing within a hundred meters of the coast. Every night I’ve been having persistent nightmares about something, and I know it’s about something that’s here. We really should be leaving now, storms be damned. We’re days overdue at the coast and they’re going to need those supplies sooner, not later.

Entry 3- June 2nd, 20XX

This morning, Captain Black and our geologist Dr. Irons went up the mountain. When they came back down the Captain was absolutely giddy with excitement, the doctor less so. Black was babbling madly about “Opening the Door” and when I asked who it was he didn’t respond.

Dr. Irons was white as a sheet, and didn’t even stop to look at me in her mad dash back to the ship. I headed up the mountain to get my own answers. I don’t know what I was expecting really; maybe some interesting new fossil or some frozen corpse that Black was talking to.

What I found was a pair of huge black doors at the end of a shallow cavern. All around the door were spikes protruding at odd angles, and the door had strange pictographs carved into it. The precise meaning was unclear, but the sense I got was that all this was some kind of warning. It brought to mind nuclear disposal sites; this was a universal sign to get the Hell out of dodge.

For whatever reason, I took the time to inspect the door more closely. All over the walls were humanoid figures killing one another and fleeing from some enormous thing. It was enormous, large enough in the representation of the scene to dwarf any of the humans and utterly alien in form. It reminded me a bit of a sea urchin; radial and spiny. Beyond that though there was no resemblance to anything earthly at all.

I inspected the door to see what it was made of (A sample Dr. Irons took earlier showed it was made of depleted uranium alloyed with something unrecognizable) and I felt something as I did so. There was the vaguest sense of a pulsation on the other side of the door, as something breathing, or the sound of a heartbeat. I swear I saw that door writhe ever so slightly in harmony with those beats.

I don’t know what courage kept me up there so long in the presence of that door that seemed to lead to Hell itself, but after a minute or so it finally failed me and I ran back down the slope. When I got back down I found Black had returned to the ship, and had locked themselves in their quarters.

I quietly convened with the rest of the crew, and found I wasn’t alone in my discomfort with the island. It seemed that all of us except Captain Black were growing increasingly uncomfortable here, and not one of us had the slightest interest in staying. We were unanimous; in the morning we were going to speak to the Captain and tell him we weren’t going to stay on this day a minute longer.

I can’t wait to get off this damned island.

Entry 4- June 3rd, 20XX

4 members of the crew are dead. I don’t know how I’m still alive. I guess I should start with how the day started. Captain Black announced to everyone at breakfast that we were going to start excavating the site we found. When I pointed out that the Theseus isn’t equipped for that, that we don’t have any anthropological specialists to analyze a find like that, and that we’re already late for our actual mission, he just stared at me and reasserted what he wanted us all to do, and headed back to his room.

The crew and I exchanged a silent look, and I told them it was time to tell the Captain we were confining him to quarters. I had most people return to their own cabins, though a few who were reluctant told us they weren’t going to stop us, but they were going to get to work making improvised explosives for the mission anyway. I guess they were expecting us to back down. I know Dr. Irons would’ve rather we done so.

I had expected a fight, and was concerned Black would attempt violence. I grabbed our deicing flamethrower and put it on, arming the pilot light. It wasn’t really meant for this kind of use, but his recent actions had made me wary.

The aforementioned Dr. Irons, two of the other crew, and myself all went to the Captain’s cabin. We knocked, and came inside. He was sitting naked at his deck and writing something furiously. I saw that he was looking that much more sickly, more ragged than he already had been. His already pallid skin was almost translucent now, and his veins were much more visible and darker than was natural. I remember all that now, though the events following it overshadowed it at the time.

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I told the captain he had to stand down. That we were leaving Tartarus, heading straight for McMurdo, delivering our payload, and leaving. I wasn’t going to let him keep us bogged down all because he was obsessed with this bizarre ruin, and that we were all in agreement that this place was bad news.

He then stood up, and told us that he was sorry we felt that way, but he would force the issue if he had to. He then proceeded to writhe, and twist as his flesh began to melt off his bones, which I saw were black. I stood frozen still in horror to take in the abomination before me; a skinless, vaguely humanoid being standing at around seven feet tall. Its maw was filled with identical, saw-like teeth. Its face was featureless but for two skeletal sockets that held no eyes. Its limbs were distorted and spindly, all ending in six razor sharp claws. On its back were a pair of black bony wings, connected by a thin membrane of cyanotic-looking flesh.

Dr. Irons was the first to react, and the first to die. She screamed in horror, and the abomination leapt on her and flayed her alive. For a few agonizing moments I saw her skinless face screaming in terror, the eyes bulging out of their sockets as she let loose a wail of inhuman pain. It seemed a mercy when the horror wrapped its jaws around her skull and crushed it in its maw, swallowing up the brain matter with an inky black proboscis.

I finally remembered I was carrying a weapon, and let loose a jet of flame at the abomination. It let loose a silent shriek of pain, and then bounded down the hallway. In spite of my own fear, I charged after the thing, the two men I’d come with following behind. We chased the thing up the corridor until we came to a broken window, and saw the recent signs of something leaping into the nearby Antarctic water.

We made our way back to the mess hall, the two men carrying what was left of poor Dr. Irons with them. When the rest of the crew saw us, all conversation stopped. I told them what happened, and while a few were skeptical the state of Dr. Irons’ remains convinced them.

I had the ship’s doctor, Ballard, wrap Irons up and store her in sick bay. While most everyone thought the abomination had fled, I was convinced it was still going to try to open the sealed chamber up the mountain— and probably kill us too, if it could. We rigged up more flamethrowers and a few Molotov cocktails, and. A few people had put together improvised explosives and we had those locked up. I wasn’t convinced they’d be useful against the thing, but I had to admit they were good as a last resort. We set up guards around the radio, the ship’s control room, and the engines. I took personal watch over the radio- failing everything else, we could at least be rescued.

A few people—Ballard especially— were concerned that more of us could turn into those things. I told them that seemed unlikely, just going off logic; Black was the only one affected as we came here, and even now everyone else was fine. There had to have been something wrong with Black long before we came here. No-one else had affected, and hopefully no-one else would be.

Entry 5- June 4th, 20XX

Half the crew is dead. Nobody saw the thing that used to be the captain, and I’m not sure we have a chance to survive at this point. I’ll try and turn this into a comprehensible log entry— starting to doubt I’ll get a chance to write another one. When we woke up, some people had already been lost, and it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened; we found two burned bodies in the engine room, and the third guard, Williams, that had been stationed there was openly carrying his flamethrower with him.

He bragged that he’d saved us all, that the other two men were really monsters in disguise like the captain had been. We tried to humor him, and Ballard took a look at their remains. There was nothing physiologically unusual about them, and no sign that they had attacked Williams.

When I told him he had probably killed two innocent people, he went berserk; before I could try to disarm him, he pulled out a Molotov and tossed it at Jan, our ship’s steward. The poor bastard half burned to death, but he was still alive. He’s still alive now, thankfully. Ballard is a Hell of a doctor.

Before he could burn anyone else, I tackled the man and slammed his head into the floor. His skull cracked, and Ballard wasn’t able to resuscitate him. He’s dead now, in the sick bay next to Irons.

I thought that’d be the end of it, but that was just the beginning of the day’s troubles. Pretty soon, everyone was wondering if maybe Williams was right, and I was another one of those things and trying to cover it up. I tried to point out everything wrong with that, but it didn’t matter.

I don’t know if it was just the natural paranoia of the situation, or if it was some effect of that Thing or being so near to this strange ruin. Everyone started getting more paranoid and violent, except myself, Ballard, and a couple other members of the crew. I don’t know the pattern, I couldn’t find one for the life of me.

There was quiet for a few hours, then around noon the chaos started. Half the crew got whatever sharp objects they could find and what Molotovs they had and started throwing them into every room. The mess hall was lit on fire, and soon the deck descended into a bloody melee.

I couldn’t keep up, I couldn’t keep track of how everyone died. About half of the men got burned to death by the other half, and there was no peaceful way to subdue the rest. In the end only myself and Ballard were left unfazed. I have about 12 living crewmen with burns of varying degrees of severity recovering in sickbay, as Ballard tends to them.

I checked on the store of explosives we put together. It was missing. I think I know what the thing is planning. I don’t know if we’re going to make it out of this one alive.

Entry 6- June 5th, 20XX

I’m alive. I don’t know how I did it, but I’m alive. When I found out the explosives were missing, I knew I had to head up the mountain to head that thing off. I left Ballard and the surviving crew behind and took our one remaining flamethrower and all our remaining molotovs before heading up the mountain alone. The thing was there, busily arranging the explosives in a pattern around the door there.

It noticed me as soon as I got there, and it leapt at me with an inhuman quickness. I don’t know how I found the strength or agility to dodge the thing, but I did it. I heard one of its claws tear the metal, and I realized it had punctured the gas tank. I was now leaking kerosene.

I didn’t have much else to do but shrug the thing off. The thing tackled the gas tank and started tearing into it. I took a look at the stone frame before me and saw that some of the explosives had been placed at ground level. Acting on impulse, I grabbed one, primed it, and tossed it at the horror.

The thing burst into flames. It let out an unearthly shriek as it fragmented into smoldering pieces, and its skull landed not far from me. I didn’t get anywhere near the thing, and moved back towards the door.

I pulled the explosives off and stashed them. I didn’t give the remains or the door a second glance as I headed down the mountain. Right now we’re on our way out of this island, heading down to McMurdo since we’re in no shape to limp back home.

As I write this, I’m holding the fragment of the door Irons took. It had chipped off long before we got here.

Whatever’s on the other side of the door, it can’t be kept there forever.