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At the coastal edge of Windle Rock, there lies a dock.

I have seen this dock in all manner of atmosphere. Rain and shine. Dust and snow. Windstorms, thick sleet, standstills. Days so hot it is hard to understand… and evenings so dark one can scarcely imagine there had ever been such a thing as “light” at all. But through everything, the dock had been a constant. It may get wet in storms, and collect drifts of falling snow—which then crystalize into a jagged maw of hanging icicles. It may dry out in the sun, or be too slippery to stand upon, come the sparkling suddenness of an Irish spring shower. But it is always there. And, I suspect, it always will be. Even after the world is long dead, or the sea long dry, it will be standing on the beach—staked into the ground—forever.

However I must add that the sinister solitude of this lonely dock had always deterred me. I have lived in Windle Rock all my life, and am privy to many an unfortunate or frightening circumstance, as begets the village too often. Yet this one dock, with rope and tire buoys hanging off the poles, and ancient rusty nails sticking halfway out of the sides of each plank… it all made the thing seem haunted, if I may use such a superstitious word. As if walking across it would be no different than stepping into an abandoned chateau at the edge of a dim forest, or scouring the treasures of a long-buried tomb.

I had never seen anyone fish on it.

I had never seen a single boat come to its edge.

I had never so much as seen another person walk across it.

But despite these ominous circumstances, one night I left my cottage and made for the dock. I knew I needed to see for myself. I needed to determine if it truly wasn’t any different than subjecting oneself to the supposed phenomena of a haunted locale, or midnight cemetery. After all, that had only been my assumption from afar. And I did think, for a while, that it may have been informed by the verisimilitude of Captain Claiken’s empty lighthouse, dark for years since his untimely disappearance. It cast a sad, ghostly shadow over Windle Rock. For he had never been found, and no ships had come to shore since his apparent death some forty years ago.

That is, until the night I walked across the dock.

For you see, I did it. I dressed myself, and stepped onto its planks. For fear of falling into the cold sea this time of night, I had put on a life vest. Though I was hardly thirty at the time I was not the greatest swimmer, and I’d inherited a joint inflammation from my poor late father, who died under duress in which he was not able to save himself, simply due to the pain of moving his arms. I hoped not to repeat such folly.

The dock squeaked beneath my shoes. It felt too light to be able to hold me. With each step, I did not get the impression that some kind of horror lie at the end, or a troll waits beneath it. Only that this dock was very old, and people stayed away simply because it was unsafe.

But then, when I’d reached the end, I noticed that the moon had disappeared.

Then I stumbled back in shock, for I saw what it had gone behind—

A enormous vessel. The oldest of luxury steamships, back from an era where they bore three large, red smokestacks, and had just recently been capable of becoming so large. I did not see this ship on the horizon, coming to shore. I simply walked to the end of the dock, and it was there.

I looked up at it in awe, and sudden fear. How had I not seen this thing? I rubbed my eyes, blinked several times, I even splashed my face with water from my canteen. But this ship was truly there. So vast it dwarfed me hundreds of times over. Larger even than the cruise liners of today… the largest ship I had ever seen.

And it beckoned me.

I know not why, but suddenly an urge had tempted me so strongly it felt primal. A persisting insistence, that this ship need be boarded.

So I boarded it. These days… I don’t recall exactly how. Maybe there was a boardwalk that it had dispatched. Or a ladder. Perhaps, even, a rope—and with newfound strength I had I simply climbed. It is a mystery to which I still have no answer.

But what I do know is this;

I was aboard the ship, and it did not leave the shore. In fact, it did not move at all. No steam rose from its chimneys. No waters roiled beneath its hull. The sea was still, the doldrums of calm before the storm. I wish, with all that I am, that I could forget the storm soon to engulf me.

Aboard this ship, I witnessed a ghastly display. The likes of which I had not seen since, and for that I am glad. For the first thing I noticed in its rotting halls was exactly that—the dilapidated, ruined look that had taken over the walls. Stains, spills, puddles long dry.

I approached the passenger’s quarters, which was hotel-like in its presentation; many a wallpapered corridor, with electric ceiling lights that had fallen into disarray, broken and busted and battered. The paper of the walls was splattered and shredded, and in some places there were even holes where one could see clear into other rooms. I had naught but my electric torch, and the dreary look of the place was already starting to bother me something awful. The dock may not have been haunted, but this vessel most certainly was. I need not look to the closing doors or hear distant footsteps to know. Phantoms had already begun appearing before me.

I made for the spiral stairwell to a higher level. As I strode up the decrepit steps, I spied movement in the darkness below me. Mystified, garish shapes—that of people in attire many decades passed. Bowlers and stove-pipe hats, bonnets and bows. Little boys with sailor’s caps, and little girls with frilly dresses.

They were not easy to see at first, hardly shadows that swam out of sight when pinned to the wall by the beam of my torch.

Then, something tumbled down the steps. I nearly tripped on it—it stopped against my foot, and I grabbed the rail to steady myself lest I tumble and fall. I pointed my light down, and felt my stomach churn.

Resting right on the toe of my right foot was the eyeless head of an old wooden doll. Plucked from its body, kicked down the stairs.

This has to be a warning, I thought at the time. But another thought occurred to me. Was this, instead, a cry for help?

No sane person would have stayed in that ship any longer, and I wish I hadn’t. But instead, I marched on.

Down a new hall, I heard crying. I heard murmurs in the walls, and more than once I swore there was breath on my neck. But when I turned around, nothing was there.

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However, I was determined to find the body of this doll. Maybe, if I had, the spirits of this place would be appeased. No departed soul willingly stays in the land of the living… unless they had departed with a less than favorable end. Something quite sinister happened on this ship. What I traveled through was a kind of floating tomb, and if I found the body of this doll, I may help at least one sad soul find peace and move on from this nautical mausoleum.

But after a time, I started thinking differently.

Perhaps it knew where the body was. It was leading me to it, and not simply wishing I found it for them. As I held the little head in my hands, small as a golf ball, I noticed the occasional door open just slightly ahead of me. Nerves inflamed, chest tightening, I peeked into these rooms… and found my route continued through them. An entity was leading me, and it intended I see something in the bowels of this ship. I walked ever forward.

All of this stopped when it led me to the kitchens.

I poked my head in. At this point, I was convinced it was a dream, and had gotten used to the presences that stared at me from the corners and holes of each room.

But if it was a dream, it was a vivid one. For what I saw in that kitchen will haunt me to this very day.

I first noticed the doll’s little body on the ground. Lying on checkered black and white tiles. Shattered plates and rusty silverware lie strewn about the room, as did many bottles. I knelt, which was hard for my pained joints, and lifted the little doll from her place of rest on the floor. Her dress, as far as I could tell, was supposed to be yellow. But it had withered to a worn, stained brown. I stuck the head back on, and stood.

“There,” I said. “She has her head again. I hope this has pleased you…”

But then, I looked up.

My sense of disquiet got worse. Frightened is not the right word for it… instead, the whole time I explored this ship of specters, I felt disturbed, and the writing on the wall—quite literally—made the feeling sink into much a deeper pit.

Painted on the wall in what I can only suspect is a combination of kitchen liquids, was a portrait of quite a loathsome face. Its mouth was open wide, as if to swallow. But its eyes were on the door in which I came through, the very doorframe I stood before. And thus, they were on me.

It was more horrible and accursed than any of the phantoms I’d heard and seen in the dark. And I spied runes of some kind, written beneath it. They looked none like any rune I had ever seen, not Nordic or Sumerian or even Egyptian. An alphabet entirely new, unreadable to me. But suddenly, as I got closer, I felt a swelling headache. My vision wavered somewhat, and I could suddenly make out what some of these runes meant.

The God of Infinity consumes Ki.

Why this phrase imbued such horror in me, I do not know. Whether the horror had come from me now knowing how to read alien runes, or the sudden appearance of more visible specters hiding in the corners, or a mix of them both—such an explanation is lost in the folds of my tortured psyche, or had sunk to the depths of the water below.

But I do know, in my struggle to collect my senses and leave the room, I kicked a bottle of some kind. And when I shined my torch and looked at the label, I affirmed two things;

One, that the ship and passengers truly were from a bygone era. For the label was styled in a typeface so long dead it looked like the prop of a Victorian film. And when I lifted the bottle to read it, the year 1899 had been hand-painted on the side, still visible beneath long streaks and scratches.

And two—

That what I was holding was a bottle of cleaning chemicals. Not the container of some kind of condiment, beverage, sauce or spice. It was a bottle of soap.

And around it, I saw other bottles of soap. Rat poison, old-world engine oil, pesticides and crude, harmful chemicals. I stomped around the counters and sinks, attempting not to look at the forms in the room, growing ever clearer, but the bottles. There were hundreds of these bottles, but none of them were for mustard, or ketchup, or pepper or salt, and—

I started running. I looked closer at each of the walls, walking down the hall further, making for an exit. There were stains everywhere. Why? Why should there be so many stains? Had it flooded? Had this ship sunk? But if this vessel had sunk, then…

No. It hadn’t sunk. I had spied no holes on the hull outside when standing on the dock, or any holes inside that led to more than other rooms.

Yet everywhere bore witness to spills of some kind, violent in nature so as to have painted the walls and ceiling, dripping down in larger puddles on the floor. Though all of it had dried, I found myself so sick I wanted to vomit.

But if I had, I would be no different than the passengers.

The poor passengers, who had only wanted meals on their lovely cruise, but instead were violated by terrible doings, terrible atrocities. Not cooking, or baking, or fine dining. But poison at the hands of wicked, rune-scribbling chefs.

I followed a horrible trail of dried paste. Something slick in grime and filth—and heavy, at that—had been dragged through the hall, trail long dry. It led to an exit, which I plowed through at speed that certainly conveyed my urge to be rid of the place. The pair of doors at the end of the corridor swung back, squeaking with a hideous whine. I stepped out onto the massive deck.

Out here, under the light of the moon, I could see them. The passengers. They had never left.

For how could they?

I had not seen such a ghastly sight since. But the quiet, unsettling mystery of the shadows and phantoms in the ship were not the only form in which I saw the passengers…

…For out on the deck, they lie in piles. Thrown hastily into big mounds of rotted bodies, each of them so bloated and sickly the sight of their faces made me wheeze. I wished they had been but bones, but I was not so lucky. These bodies looked as if they had died last week, and had just started to rot. But the poison had done blasphemous evils to the dead.

Cheeks and bellies and hands had swollen, with many so round they’d ripped the seams of their clothes. Eyeballs bulged, looking opposite ways. Tongues hung from their mouths as swollen green sponges. Every pile and every body was covered in paste-thick, stale vomit. Among other fluids, I’m sure…

I was so taken with the horror of these corpses that I hadn’t realized how close to the side I’d gotten. But when I did, and I looked down, I realized that my idea of horrible was foolish and small.

Bodies drifted on the surface of the sea, all around the ship. From the lighthouse to the shore, to the dock and back. A miasma of death, man woman and child, so numerous it was absurd.

But then I swept around—

For a body in one of the piles was wriggling. A little girl, down at the bottom.

I shan’t speak it. It was too awful, too barbaric—

She looked just as bad as the others, but was still breathing.

She gasped and grabbed at me from beneath her pile. Bulging eyes, popped halfway out of their sockets, desperately looking around. Her tongue was so large it had split the sides of her lips, and she moaned in a closing, sickly throat, unable to close her chapped, stiff mouth. She retched and heaved, eyeing me, as if begging me to drag her out. But no. She was reaching…

…for the doll in my hand.

I stumbled back, and fell.

It was a cruise liner. The fall was hundreds of feet. I shouldn’t have lived. And sometimes, I wish I hadn’t.

For when I fell into the water—freezing and cold—I floated back to the top, due to my vest. And I felt them all around me. The bloated, icy bodies—skin like leather that swelled and tore at the slightest disturbance. I kicked and paddled, shouted and struggled. The water was so cold it felt hot. And I was so hot I felt numb. My skin had most certainly blackened with the hell of frostbite, but the hell of waterlogged bodies tearing around me, like the popping of many balloons—was worse than any sea or any cold.

…

After, I did in fact wake up in my bed.

I was absolutely shocked at how vivid the dream had been. Never in my life had I dreamt such clear atrocities or visions. I was standing in that ship’s halls, I could feel everything I touched, I could see the dilapidated walls, roaming phantoms, bloated bodies. And I could still hear those eldritch words, about a God of Infinity who consumes…

What was it?

A part of me feels this is wrong, but a part of me also feels this is right; for all I could remember… was that the end of the phrase… had something to do with… “Earth.” The very world itself. “A God of Infinity consumes the world.”

And as the words made themselves apparent to me, while I was sitting up in my bed, I suddenly felt sick. The headache from my dream returned, and I realized I was lying next to a kind of spillage that had soaked into my mattress, very cold and wet, mostly beneath the blankets.

I lifted them. And saw, in horror—

A sopping wet doll, with a tiny round head.

I wish, to this day, that it had been wet because of seawater.