Hi there. I'm calling from St. John's. My name's Timothy Pierce, and I'm a fisherman. Been working these waters my whole life, same as my father before me. What I'm about to tell you happened back in October of 1873, but I remember it like it was this morning. My hands were still shaking three days later. I was out fishing off the eastern end of Belle Island in Conception Bay. It was October 26th, late morning. The water was calm, maybe too calm. I had my small punt with me, just a little fishing boat, nothing fancy. Been using that same boat for five years. I was checking my lines when I saw something floating on the surface maybe fifty yards out.
At first I thought it was a sail from some wreck. We get debris out there sometimes after storms. Or maybe part of a boat, floating timber, something like that. But there was something about the way it moved in the water that didn't sit right. It wasn't drifting like wood does. It had this strange, almost deliberate quality to it. I rowed closer to get a better look. The thing was massive, reddish-pink in color, and it was just sitting there at the surface. I pulled up alongside it and reached out with my gaff to poke at it, see what it was. hate when debris gets in the fishing lanes - Marcus' That's when everything went wrong.
The moment my gaff touched it, the creature came alive. It reared up and I saw this beak, this horrible parrot-like beak, easily as big as a six-gallon keg. The thing struck at the bottom of my boat with that beak, and I heard the wood crack. Then these arms, these enormous tentacles, came shooting out from around what I realized was its head. Two of them wrapped over the gunwale of my boat. The arms were thick, maybe three or four inches around, covered in these sucking discs. The creature started pulling my boat down. I could feel the whole punt tilting, water starting to come over the side. I grabbed my hatchet, the one I keep for cutting lines, and I started chopping. I brought that blade down on one of the arms as hard as I could. Then again. The flesh was tough, rubbery.
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