This has been the third time now that I try to upload this but, then again I don’t know what is still working in the mainland. I suppose many have now seen whatever has unfolded during last night, but I thought I ought to write my own piece. I don’t know whether it will be useful but at least it will be a good way to deal with the terror I’ve experienced for the last couple of hours.
I have been working for at least a couple of years as a crew member for a famous brand of ferries, known for their cheap connections between all the Scandinavian and Baltic Capitals. Our tasks most of the time consist of things written on specific checklists or administrative work through the ferry reception. In a few words we help with the boarding tunnels and departure of passengers, and we are the ones you usually ring up to in case of any sort of bother. It’s definitely better than a call center but it pays you quite enough if you’re like me and you are trying to pay the bills in Northern Europe. Sometimes they even refer to it as a “white trash cruise”, but at least I can’t say the same for their salaries.Combining online lessons and generally a free place where to sleep can be an underrated, yet stressing nonetheless, career to consider.
I’ve been through all the routes offered by the company, and I know by heart all the routes and the timetables offered by the company; I can even give you a list of every cheap place for a snack for each port.
It was my fourth time along today’s route from Stockholm to Tallinn, a usual 17-hour journey between late afternoon and early morning, specifically the most boring version of it being one of the side effects of the long Scandinavian winters. You could sleep through the entire journey without encountering a single beam of sunlight and you would see almost nothing outside even when still in the gulfs of either city. If it were a normal situation I would advise such a journey in winter but I don’t think now it matters anymore.
The journey had started in an uneventful manner, leaving Sweden and going through the fjords before entering the Baltic Sea proper. I could say it was an even calmer journey than usual, since there were very few people aboard - November not being in a touristy season above all things - and I had spent most of the time aboard working on a few projects on my computer, managing to carve up a corner with a table and a plug-in charger in the restaurant area. Not really a quiet place but that type of ship didn’t have a study area so I had to adapt regardless.
Working on the computer was the main way to keep me awake - the route had us stopping at Mariehamn, the main settlement of the Åland Islands at 1 in the morning, and that time at least passed very quickly. Even when you are bored staying in the same place lets you see all the different types of people and stereotypes you could think of: drunk Russians, divorced couples, men pulling up women with the unmistakable tinge of alcohol or kids running around in a sugar rush. Regardless of the situation, everything of the sorts usually stops after the Ålands, when the performances and shows aboard finish and everybody goes back to their cabins to sleep.
The first lights of the small harbour started appearing from the black of the night, and as usual in those days of winter the cold and humid sea breeze hit my face like a cold shower would do.
The whole thing was supposed to be simple, expecially in this time of the year, for generally the staff of the harbour would switch on the lights of the station as we arrived, let the usual twenty people on board after checking in and leaving us switching everything off once again. Rarely would anyone get off on this island if not a very niche portion of tourists.
The whole place since our arrival felt wrong. When you arrive at the Åland Islands you would usually see the city of Mariehamn with at least a few signs of life, like a car or a person going somewhere, distinguishable by the street lights. The town seemed silent, there was no movement I could see from the balconies of the ship; but most of all the lights of the port station were off, where only the dim light of the vending machines could be spotted through the glass facades of the building. Regardless of fear I had to go, thinking that the ship stopping there had meant that the captain was sorting out the situation. Only a few hours ago I received the confirm of another story altogether.
We stopped at the harbour at exactly 00.50 as indicated on my watch. The preparations had stopped after a few minutes however because of the absence of the ground team, which was supposed to secure the entrance of the ship with the access tunnel. I could see our group captain talk to the officers in the ship with an increasingly worried expression, until he finally spoke.
“They are telling us to go check in case of emergency and report back to the captain. We are staying for ten minutes and then we will leave and the matter will be passed to the Finnish police”.
It took a bit but to put it in a few words we followed the procedure of using of using emergency ropes to temporarily bind the end of the tunnel to the ships entrance and then we used the commands on the tunnel computer to force the door open, after which our group of five crew members of that night shift started our exploration with emergency torches.
The longest five minutes of my life unbeknownst to me began. We walked inside the main room through the tunnel to find it completely empty, barely lit by the combination of lights from the ferry, the vending machines and the street lights from the town. It was as if it had been frozen in time, and characterized by an eerie silence partially filled by the humming of the machines. The seats were empty and apart from a series of pieces of trash, like newspapers or papers from the harbour restaurant it had seen as if nobody had been there for at least half a day.
Needless to say, we were scared; and looking at each other’s frightened faces didn’t help either, but that was soon going to be our first thought as we took a look at the outside. All the streets were quiet and still as we could see from the entrance, even having a shock as the automatic doors opened to let in the night breeze of the frigid Finnish autumn.
At 1.00 it was time to get back to the ship, and that’s when it happened. One of the crew pointed at the window while his mouth opened and started changing into a terrified expression.
“Titta! Titta!” He said in the only Swedish that I was able to understand, as if he wanted to shout but he couldn’t.
We all took a look outside and we saw them. The scenario of the empty city was the same as far as we could see thanks to the lights, but looking a bit beyond, towards where the city centre was located, we could see that the lights were off and we could see what seemed like cat eyes but human-sized, and perhaps oversized compared to a normal human, staring at us, while a dark black silhouette surrounding them made them seem like humans, and yet it was standing there. One, which then became two and three and so on as more shadows appeared from behind each new one, until they were in the thousands. We all felt those were malign entities, and our gut feelings told us that something very wrong had happened on the island. It was a standoff of a kilometer until one of our crew started slowly backing off towards the ship, and without even the time of following suit all hell broke loose.
They suddenly ran all together like a pack of beasts, making all the street lights in front of them explode and make the dark black of the night advance at an incredible speed. For each room of the harbour we made they advanced of three blocks. We barely made it to the security block that the horde entered the main hall, and as we ran towards safety and time seemed to slow down, with our team captain shouting things on his transmitter I turned back to see an absolute horror. Their glowing red eyes were popping out of every dark corner of the hall, with each body being recognizable only through different shades of black. Some were deformed while others seemed more normal, and while some looked like children others were undescribable apart from the unnatural range of expressions. They watch. They may seem to cry, look with curiosity, gaze at you with contempt, but they watch, and they walk towards you, louder and louder. Their steps were almost overwhelming, and they left this sensation that even if they were silent, they were screaming of thousands of unknown languages. But really, it was impossible to recognize if the ones screaming were your own senses.
We all jumped into our ship as the other members cut and burnt with lighters and anything they could get their hands on the strings, leaving the ship to continue its journey towards the sea. We only managed to saw one last time those figures as we discovered in horror that they stopped at the beginning of the tunnel, but thousands more could check us from the now dark quay underneath the elevated tunnel.
We all cried together for half an hour before finally meeting the captain, who explained us of the few information he was able to gather: the last inputs on the register were that last afternoon at 5, when the sun went down, and any attempt to contact the port gave no answer, though the worst news was that nobody was answering on any radio wavelength of any port. Stockholm, Tallinn, Åbo, Helsinki, Riga, everything was in complete silence. Even the other ships gave no answer to our messages, from digital to Morse code. He had even checked our equipment but it simply worked. The problem was not on our side.
The captain then dismissed us, setting up the checklists for the arrival of the following morning. I left knowing in my heart that this would have snowballed into a catastrophic panic attack if the passengers weren’t properly instructed as soon as they woke up. Sure, some were awake when we arrived on the island but there seemed to be no signs of commotions, and even the few awake ones, the only ones giving me mental sanity right now, were more concerned about the price of a whiskey at the onboard bar.
It was a tough night to bear. Going though the Baltic Sea meant that we had to go through an area without internet connection for at least five hours and I have dreamed of those eyes for all night; and indeed I am writing this now that we are approaching the port of Tallinn. On my part, the people don’t suspect a lot yet, although a few seemed to be concerned after not receiving an answer to their calls for family or anyone. One of the few perks of the info point service is that you have a grip on the ship situation as a whole.
I am scared however. The social medias, including also Reddit apparently, websites, television, you name it, everyone outside of this place has seemed to stop posting anything overnight; it has been my first time in my entire life that I have seemed to witness Internet death. Although worst than all I’ve also found out the ferry captain has not received any answer from Tallinn, only “disturbed signals” as he described them.
The distant Estonian shores are enveloped in fog as we approach in the middle of the morning, and I am scared of those things waiting for us in that harbour, too. I simply don’t want to die, or join them.
We will be now approaching the port in 15 minutes, I hope for the best and I hope anyone here on Reddit will answer. If anything happens next I will update the situation.