The dark blue waves of night lapped at the slick black hull of the ship, cradling us in its angry arms. It had all started as a simple science expedition, but only God knows now how it will end. Carlos is at the bow near the spotlight. He keeps tracing the outline of the thing in light, as if just by looking, he could figure out what it is.

It was nearing dusk on the 14th day of our journey when we saw it for the first time. No one on the deck could make out what it was, and I swear I couldn’t even see it right. Like my eyes were rejecting what was there because it simply couldn’t be. But there was no denying it, in the middle of what should have been an endless expanse of empty ocean, some kind of structure was poking out of the water, rising to dizzying heights and stretching down to unknown depths below. Carlos said it looked like a talon sticking up into the air, but that doesn’t quite describe it. Even from miles away, you could tell that the surface wasn’t smooth, but impossibly intricate, and full of rich carvings and textures. The work is too fine and we’re too far off to make any sense of it, but the effect leaves the thing looking like it’s shimmering, or at times, even undulating if the light hits it just right.

We reported it immediately and were told to stand down. The government decided to send in some special teams to investigate. Some of the men were angry and wanted us to go in anyway. We were, after all scientists, and naturally many of us were eager to get a look. But I decided to be cautious and told the men we’d wait, and get out chance, without the risk of being arrested for disloyalty when we got home.

That first night passed without incident, and the next day too, other than repeatedly explaining why we were waiting to an increasingly anxious and eager crew. It was the next night that we started to hear it.

It started faint at first, then got louder as the night went on. It was plaintive, yet somehow animal. A soft mewling wail, that grew in strength for a time, then suddenly cut short followed by a strange low rumbling. No one was sure at first where the sound was coming from, but as the night wore on, and the sound got louder, it became clear that it was coming from the thing sticking out of the ocean.

Many of us didn’t sleep that first night, and a few men even tried to jump overboard, as if they could swim out to it and make it stop. As the sky lightened for the dawn, the sound grew fainter and finally stopped.

The next night was even worse than the first, the call becoming more urgent, and the rumbling aftershocks becoming deeper and more insistent. I was wondering how long it would be before there was a mutiny on my hands, when Carlos turned on the spotlight. I don’t know why he did it, maybe he was just bored, or he thought he would be able to see something none of us had before, but for whatever reason, he trained the spotlight on the thing, and the calling became nearly inaudible. We looked at each other in shock, and laughed at our good fortune. It would be the last few nights of good sleep I’d get for a long time.

A few days later, the special team arrived, and it was clear at a glance they were not scientists. Hard, military men, getting ready for a mission they’d never trained for. We helped them as best we could and watched them speed off toward the thing, wondering what it was they’d find.

But we never found out what they found, cause they never came back to the ship. We waited on the deck until well after dark. It wasn’t until after midnight that we noticed there was no sound from it that night. Caught up in waiting for the team’s return, we had forgotten set up the spotlight. But for some reason, the silence that rolled across the ocean’s surface was worse that the sound we’d been hearing night after night.

We called in to our superiors what had happened, but they did’t seem as surprised as I would have thought. They told us another team was already in route, and that we were to continue standing down. We did what we were told and waited for the next team. The next night it started up again.

That was a few weeks ago, and the second team as come and gone, disappearing just like the first. The funny thing is, we can’t get any response from home now. Something in our communications equipment must have gone bad. I have our best man working on it, but he doesn’t seem too optimistic, since he can’t even find out where the problem is.

I’ve been spending the past few nights at the spotlight, just watching it and thinking about what it wants. What does it want from me? Even the sound of it calling has a certain beauty to it I never would have noticed at first. It’s almost like a song. A song calling out to me to do what no one else can. We may have orders to stand down, but then, those orders may have been changed, and we just don’t know it yet. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I feel like it’s time to make a command decision. We’re going in at first light. Just listen to the call, and you’ll know like I do, that it’s what we have to do.