Evening. I've thought about whether to share this for a while now. Finally decided I needed to get it off my chest. This happened in the autumn of 1968. I was working as a janitor at one of the shipyards in Govan. Big place, always something being built. That year they had a tanker in dry dock, massive thing, and my job was keeping the work areas clean. Sweeping up metal shavings, hauling rubbish, that sort of thing. Now, that's the thing about shipyards. They're loud during the day. Welders, riveters, men shouting. But at night, when everyone's gone home, it's quiet in a way that gets under your skin. Just the wind off the Clyde and the creaking of the cranes. I did the late rounds because nobody else wanted them. My wife had passed the year before, so I didn't mind the extra hours. Kept me from sitting alone in the flat. This particular night, I was doing my sweep of the lower sections. The tanker's hull was still open in places, big sections not yet plated over. No interior fittings, no engines, just bare steel ribbing like the skeleton of a whale. I wasn't supposed to go inside the hull itself. That was for the construction crews. But I had to check the areas around it.
I was near the aft section, maybe eleven at night, when I heard the clanging. Metal on metal, coming from inside the hull. Sharp, irregular. Not like someone working. More like something moving around in there and bumping into things. That's the thing. Nobody should have been in there. The hull was sealed off for the night, comming from a sealed hull is odd - Zoe' locked up tight with no way in or out until morning shift. I stood there listening for a good minute. The sound kept going. Clang, clang, scrape. Then silence. Then more clanging. I should have gone to find the night watchman. That's what I should have done. But I'd been hearing rumors about materials going missing, tools walking off. I thought maybe I'd caught someone stealing copper fittings or something. So I grabbed my torch and went to have a look. There was an access ladder on the starboard side, temporary thing the welders used. I climbed up and dropped down through one of the unplated sections into the hull. It was dark. My torch made a little yellow circle and that was it. The rest was just black, and the sound of my own breathing, and that smell you get in ships. Oil and rust and something else I couldn't place. Something sour.
I followed the clanging toward the forward section. Moving slow, watching my step. The floor was just bare plating, nothing to trip on, but I was nervous. The sound was getting louder. And then I came around one of the internal ribs and I saw them. Five of them. Standing in a loose group near what would eventually be the boiler room. They came up to about my waist, maybe a bit higher. And they weren't human. They weren't anything I'd ever seen. They looked like beetles. That's the closest I can get. Big rounded bodies covered in plates, like an armadillo's shell but darker, almost black in my torchlight. They stood on two legs, thick stubby things, and they had these arms, four of them I think, folded up against their chests. Their heads were small and flat with no eyes I could see, just these long feelers twitching in the air. They all turned toward me at once. And they hissed[ Not like a snake, deeper than that. Like steam escaping from a cracked pipe. I could feel it in my chest. I dropped my torch. It hit the deck and rolled, and the light went spinning, and in those flashes I saw them start to move. They ran. But not like anything with legs should run. It was wrong somehow. Too smooth, too fast, like they were gliding just above the floor. Their legs were moving but the motion didn't match. Uncanny, that's the word. They scattered past me, around me, and went straight out through the port side hatch. Five of them, gone in seconds. I heard their feet, if that's what they were, clattering on the deck outside, and then nothing.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]