A/N: This story is strongly inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Most of the concepts and characters are his...though the humans are mine. Thank you to Bucue for betaing.

The Island

I stood on the shore and stared at the island, wondering if I was crazy, stupid, desperate or all three. I was taking a risk by staying. I wasn't on vacation and I had no idea when there'd be another ship out of here. The war was over and my editor at the Post expected me back. When the USS Mercy docked in the Philippines for its last mission, to safely evacuate Allied POWs, I called Henry and begged him to let me head up to Japan to cover the beginning of the occupation.

Henry wasn't enthused. He said that Japan was no place for a dame, and if I still wanted to be collecting paychecks I'd be getting on the next ship out of there and back to New York as soon as possible. I tried to argue with him. Japan wasn't exactly a woman's paradise but I knew I would've been able to make it work. But he was unmoved. The man was a decent boss but he sure could be a paternalistic ass.

Sometimes I wondered what my future was in this business. With the war over, they weren't going to need war correspondents like they used to, especially not female ones. My work was good - no, great - and I knew I could compete with any man on merit. But I had no illusions. I'd had to push extra hard to get where I was, using every means at my disposal.

Even getting on that hospital ship hadn't been easy. I basically locked myself in the bathroom right before the ship disembarked and waited there for a half hour. I was lucky the captain didn't throw me overboard when he caught me later. That was nine months ago. Seeing all that sickness and suffering non-stop for all that time, pouring it all out on the written page...I think it took something out of me. Still, it was rewarding, and the assignments that awaited me when I returned to New York would be nowhere near so. I wasn't looking forward to it.

But before I got back to the Big Apple, fate had one final destination in store for me...a small island amid the thousands of islands dotting the entire Pacific: Tongra. The military transport I'd caught a ride on stopped there for a few days to take on fuel and supplies for the rest of the journey to San Francisco.

Tongra was literally an island paradise. The beach was a brilliant white, and flush jungle trees covered most of the island. But as naval bases went, Tongra was basically a hole in the wall. It used to be a Japanese base of sorts, but they abandoned it even before our navy got there. I guess they didn't think it was worth holding. Nonetheless, the Allies deemed it could serve as a strategic supply depot for the island hopping campaign. With the war over, and most of our ships heading back stateside, bases like these would eventually be decommissioned and abandoned across the Pacific.

However, at the moment, I was less interested in Tongra and more interested in the island beside it, the one I happened to be looking at. The natives called it Tesok. It was really a micro-sized island, perhaps a few square miles in area. It was fairly distinctive in that there was a large volcano in its centre – or at least an extinct volcano. It was actually more like a plateau, because much of its cone was sheared off and it was completely flat on top with no opening to lead to its inner depths. The guys at the base told me that Tesok was deserted and the natives never went there. Apparently some of them had gone on a scouting trip over a year back, but nobody had seen anything out of the ordinary.

If the story I heard the night before had any truth to it, maybe I'd have better luck.

I was talking with some soldiers in the mess hall. One of the advantages of being a blue-eyed brunette in a male-dominated military was that it was easy to sniff out some good stories. And that's what the boys were doing...feeding me stories, telling me what life had been like on the base. With the war over, most of them would be going home soon. There was a sense of melancholy permeating the air, along with a sense of hope and relief.

Frank Hawkins, a profane but gregarious Texan who served as one of the base's guards, was regaling us with a tale about encountering a wild boar while off duty.

"So here I am running through the fucking jungle away from this thing. All I need to do is find a fucking tree to climb. But there was only these damn palm trees. Have you tried climbing a palm tree? There's like no fucking branches."

Everyone laughed at that. Hawkins was a big, 6'5'' gruff looking fellow and the image of him running around like a scared kitten looking for a tree to climb was quite a mental picture.

"So what'd you end up doing?" a dark fellow named Lucius asked.

Hawkins shrugged. "The only thing I could do. I turned around and made my stand like a man. Grabbed the biggest stick I could find...which turned out to be this fucking long." He held out a finger on each hand. "And here I am thinking, 'My fucking dick is bigger than that'."

The entire table roared.

Hawkins shrugged again. "Anyway, I tossed the damn stick, and when that thing came up to me, I just took a run at it. Pretty soon, I was doing the chasing, and it was the one trying to find a fucking tree."

The table roared once again and I just chuckled and shook my head. Truth or tall tale, the man could spin a good yarn.

But after the laughter died down, a quiet voice spoke up from the end of the table.

"I've seen somethin' around here. And it definitely wasn't no pig."

"What was it, Jack?" Lucius asked.

Jack Merrill, a pencil-thin older man from Atmore, Alabama, looked up from his cola. "It was something mighty queer. At first I wasn't goin' to say nothin'. I thought you'd think I was drinkin' some of that swill they got in the village." He gave a short laugh, though no humor was reflected in his eyes. "But since we've had a good chuckle at the expense of Mr. Hawkins, maybe it's my turn."

Hearing Merrill's somber tone, the table completely quieted and leaned in for his story.

"I was down by the beach, doin' some fishin'. You know me, as per usual. I was in my boat, just about fifty yards from shore, tryin' to catch the big one before we head out of here." He shook his head. "It was all calm-like and the sunset was in full swing. I'd just cast a last line out there when I saw somethin'...a dark somethin' coming from the direction of the island."

"What'd you see?" Lucius asked.

"Somethin' in the sky. At first I thought it was some kind of bird - a large, funny shaped bird. But as the thing got closer and closer, I realized I was wrong."

"Well, what was it?" a heavyset man by the name of Mike inquired.

"I don't know. Whatever was left of that sun was going down quick, and I couldn't tell you its exact details. The only thing I could be sure of was its shape...like the fact that it had wings. But I'll tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't no bird, and it wasn't no beast, at least not one to be found on this here earth. But I wouldn't call it a man, either. No sir, not by a long shot. It had arms and legs like a man, and a man-shaped head and body of some sort. But in no way was that thing a man."

Merrill paused before continuing. "When it got to me, it stopped, about 30 or 40 yards in the air. It just stood there in the sky for a minute or so, its wings flapping...just hovering there, looking down on me, like it was judging me from on high. And for that minute, I didn't breathe. Oh Lord, not one breath."

"And then what happened?" Lucius urged.

Merrill shrugged. "Nothin'. Nothin' happened. As quickly as it came, suddenly it left, turning around and headin' back to that island. Somewhere around there it disappeared...or at least I think it did. I was too busy getting the hell out of there to know for sure."

"But what the fuck was it?" Hawkins demanded.

"Like I said, I don't know." Merrill shrugged. "I know what you might expect me to say, a God fearing man like myself. A devil. A demon. Well, those are the easy answers, even if it had no horns that I could see. But I say it doesn't matter. All that matters is that the Lord let that thing come within a stone's throw of me and let me live. And if I go to my grave not knowin' what it was, and not knowin' what its face looked like, I'll be goin' a happy man, of that you can be sure."

Once again, he paused and looked at each of us in turn. "And if there's another thing I know, it's that when our ship finally sails out of here, I won't be lookin' back. No sir, not for one second...that I promise you."

I wasn't sure if the guys at that table really bought it. But even if they did think it was a bunch of malarkey, they didn't say anything. I got the sense that Merrill was a guy who they all respected and who wasn't normally given to wild flights of fancy. But there was one thing in particular that supported Merrill's story somewhat.

I was talking to Lucius afterwards. According to him, Merrill usually went fishing on almost a daily basis, without fail. That's how much he loved it. But Lucius confirmed that he hadn't seen Merrill go for the past week, and only now did Lucius know why. I thought, whether or not Merrill actually saw that creature, it was safe to say that he certainly believed he had.

But there was another reason why I gave Merrill's story some credence. In recent years, it'd become clear that the world was a much more complicated place than people had believed. And by that, I didn't mean just this war and the build-up to it. I meant recent discoveries of unparalleled magnitude that revealed secret chapters in human - and nonhuman - history...

Unexplained tales of entire populations being set upon by strange beings and other unnatural phenomena.

Mysterious coastal towns in New England, Florida and Portugal inhabited by human hybrids whose ancestors had mated with an intelligent species from the depths of Earth's oceans.

Fossils and artifacts found in primeval rocks across the world, ancient vestiges of an age before even the dinosaurs.

A prehistoric city discovered deep within the darkest reaches of Antarctica, a city that no humans could possibly have built.

These revelations - and others - had been downplayed and buried under the events that had shaken the world throughout the last fifteen years: the suffering of the Great Depression, the rise of authoritarianism and aggression in Europe and Asia, and finally the breakout of the greatest war humanity has ever known. But now I believed that the world would finally wake up to the fact that we were not and never had been alone on this planet. It would be hard to hide it anymore, when all these incredible findings could now be photographed and put on paper and film for the entire world to see.

Of course, if there was one person who refused to wake up, it was Henry, my editor. I'd heard of some of these phenomena through my work as a reporter, driven onward by my interest in the paranormal and the unexplained. I'd begged Henry to let me pursue some leads I'd dug up. But no, he wouldn't have any of it. According to him, if I wanted to waste my time on fantastical wild goose chases, I could do it without getting paid by the New York Daily News.

But now I finally had my chance. And I was going to take it.

The island was about two miles out. I had to get going. I'd wasted too much time this morning getting everything all ready. It was already past noon. By the time I got there, I'd have maybe a few hours of exploring before I had to return. I wasn't eager to row my boat back in pitch black. It was early October, and in this part of the world the sun went completely down well before 6:00 pm.

Thinking it'd be a good idea to have a drink before I got going, I opened my backpack, got out my canteen and took a sip. I was careful to make it only a small one to conserve it. It was extremely doubtful there'd be any drinkable water on the island. Or food. That's why I'd managed to wrangle a few bottles of water along with some salami, cheese and bread from the kitchens in the mess hall. All they cost me was the promise to get in touch with Corporal Housley when I got home. Good thing I had too much sense to give him my real phone number.

Commander Maddox, the head of the base, had been reluctant about letting me use a boat. It wasn't so much he didn't trust me but he was concerned about a "little lady" like myself being able to row all that way and back. I might've felt insulted but he was a lovely older man who had a fatherly air about him so it was difficult to feel too aggrieved. He asked if I wanted to be escorted to the island on one of the motorboats, but I graciously declined. I felt that if I was going to find something, I was going to find it by myself. And in the crazy event that there was something out there - something not exactly human - I had a nagging suspicion that the military wouldn't react too favorably to it. So I didn't tell anyone what I was actually going there for. As far as they were concerned, I was just gathering info for a story on the history and geography of the South Pacific islands.

Despite his misgivings, Maddox ultimately agreed that I could use any of the boats that were just lying on here the beach. Apparently the base wasn't too worried about theft by the natives. Or maybe with all the other vast costs of this war, a few two-man dinghies were simply not worth worrying about. The boat I'd chosen appeared to be in the best condition of all of them. It looked okay, but there was no way to be sure until I got out into the water and tested it in action. The last thing I needed was for it to spring a leak on the way there. The island was quite a ways out and I had no illusions about my swimming ability.

Shaking my head, I took one last sip and placed my canteen back into my backpack. And then, grasping hold of the front of the boat, I slowly dragged it across the sand and into the waiting water.

Crazy, stupid, or desperate, I was on my way.

To be continued...