I volunteer as a Paranormal Investigator on the weekends for “The Fortean Society,” to facilitate my quest to debunk pseudoscience, quackery, superstition and ignorance.  Last week I received a call from a local dock-master about a series of alleged Werewolf sightings on Tybee Island.

     The missing pets and howls could easily be attributed to Coyotes of course, but not the eye witness accounts. After hanging up with the dock master I pulled out my quartz pendulum and asked it if there was a Lycanthrope on Tybee Island. It began to spin clockwise, indicating “yes.”

     I loaded The Company’s snub nosed .380 pistol with the company’s silver bullets and threw it into my ditch bag. Then I drove the company “Ghost-mobile,” (Volvo 740) to Tybee Island Marina and parked in the lot just before sundown. There on the hard-packed gravel was a de-masted 1976 Cape Dory 25, painted turquoise and florescent green with orange hatches. It was graffitoed and stenciled with arcane symbols. It read over sixty-five Milligauss on the EMF meter. There was an extension cord tucked into its slats, but that much radiation would indicate a large residential breaker or HVAC unit, not a boat.

     I climbed up the ladder leaning against it with an Ultra Violet flashlight to have a peek inside. There was a smell of decay emanating from the boat. Something howled from the direction of the bridge. It didn’t sound like a Coyote. The companionway was littered with blood stains, fish spines and turtle bones. I turned on the U.V. light. There were Egyptian Hieroglyphs painted with reactive paint on the green parts (later Identified as the Masonic formula of Abracadabra). On the forward hatch there was a unicursal labyrinth, with an Aleph in its Minotaur Machia.

     From the stacks two Great Horned Owls screeched, before flying towards me silently. I beamed the Harpies in the face with the Ultraviolet Light, and ducked inside the boat. There was a gaping hole in the roof where the mast had been stepped. The Extension cord wasn’t even plugged into the pump on the floor, but it had been recently. Around it were the bones of various small animals with wet fur still intact. The boat was still full of equipment as if it had been left in a hurry, or someone was still living in it. In the glove box I found a Yellow Mead notepad. Tucked into its dust cover was a G.A. driver’s license for a “Gregor Smith,” of 1434 Audubon drive. Beneath it was a zip lock bag full of dried flowers. I left the boat as I had found it, sans notepad and flowers. It turned out to be a Captain’s Log. The following entry explains a few things. Primarily, it explains how all of the inhabitants of Cedar Key F.L. went missing on Christ-mass eve 2024. No bodies were ever found, despite ample evidence of foul play. Cedar Key was a small fishing village that jutted defiantly into the Gulf of Mexico. According to, “Visit Florida.GOV,” it was destroyed by a series of hurricanes in 2024. As for the ships de-masting and the Lycanthropy, they are explained by the log entries that come after this one. I have taken the artistic license of transcribing it in the third person.

Interlude/Log:

Friday, December 20th

     A complete stranger had just gifted him a new Dinghy in Pensacola the very location where he had lost his last Dinghy. He towed it behind him with ropes. As he sailed away from Carrabelle F.L. en route to Tarpon Springs he noticed that the Dinghy was dragging, because the portside, aftermarket D-ring had come unscrewed. He pointed into the wind and re-attached it, hoping that it wouldn’t happen again. He wondered what kind of Amateur would make such an unnecessary adjustment.

     As the sun set, he attached a solar lantern to the lifeline that ran over his compass and set it to glow red, so he could keep a bearing in the dark without relying on the yet invisible stars, or his chart plotter. He knew that sleep was out of the question on this night, because he had to sail over one hundred and sixty miles in one stretch. He put on his life jacket and clipped in. Then he began abusing carbonated energy drinks. At approximately nine of the clock he was sixty miles away from land when he noticed the Dinghy was crippled again in the exact same way. In his anger he considered just cutting the Gift horse loose. Instead, he pulled the rip cord on his engine, putting it in forward to maintain momentum and control after he furled sail. He knew he was moving too fast to operate on it in these choppy seas. He reeled the tender in and lashed its painter tight against his starboard side with its bow attached to a dead eye and its stern to a cleat on the gunwale then tried to screw the D-ring back in. However, with frozen fingers in four to five foot seas this proved impossible. He planned to board the dinghy to work from the inside with two hands. With this in mind, he put on a headlamp. When he put one foot on the beam of the dinghies dagger board sheath, he was gripped by fear for his own life. Stress affects the Vestibular system. Furthermore, without special orientation his cochlea could not calculate rotational movements or acceleration. Without kinematic data he became disorientated. As his sensorium received conflicting signals from his Vestibulo-Ocular reflex he became seasick. He tried to hold it back through sheer force of will. He refused to let his life to be governed by fear of life or death. Eventually, he hung his head over the gunwale and gave into his weakness. Afterwards he felt relieved but weakened. He lay down in the cockpit with his head towards the growling engine. His back cramped up and then his toes and then his entire muscular system convulsed in premature rigor mortis. He felt hot, then cold, then wet and he wasn’t sure if these were hallucinations or not. “You must get up,” he commanded his disobedient body for hours. He watched his mast and spreaders cross Canis Minor and Athena. He slithered off the Lazarette onto his knees and dry heaved over the side screaming into the monstrous black, indifferent waves. The Waning Gibbous Moon rose red in Cancer occulting Regulus. The winds increased to twenty-five knots. 

     Knowing he wasn’t in any shape to single-hand in this type of weather, he said a quick protection spell to remind the elementals of the pact, before retrieving his Waterford Crystal bowl from the glove box. He dipped the bowl into the gulf. It already seemed to glow infernally, but that was just bioluminescence. He took a vial of Squid ink from his sink, turned spice rack and infused the bowl with a pipette of the sepia tone.  He ran his wet thumb around the smooth edge of the bowl making it hum in the note of “B.” Then He Scryed into the bowl by the light of the red lantern and waning moon. The thin veneer of his consciousness began to crack leaving his subconscious bare. He gazed into the swirling ink seeing the fractal equation that governs the homogeneity of the stars, and their reflection. He chanted some words, (redacted here) in a long-forgotten tongue. Sound travels faster through water than through air and he was calling to the depths. Moments later a shimmering green light shone out of the water beside him. “What is your request,” a monotone female voice gurgled from the water. “I am in need of crew; persuade your Smiling Python to animate the shell of Panfilo de Narvaez for me.? He asked. “You know the cost of my services mortal?” she asked. “Yes,” he replied. The Green light turned Turquoise and hovered in the air beside the boat. It was now a transparent oval with a red halo.  The specter of a large man with red hair was looming there. “How can I assist you?” he boomed in Portuguese. “I need you to speak in English. Re-attach my Tender properly, hoist the sails and take the helm.” Narvaez did as he was asked. They fell off the wind a little and picked up speed. Gregor relinquished the helm to the specter. At first there was some Yawl but they didn’t broach. “It’s been a long time, I’m a little rusty,” Narvaez said with a Portuguese accent. “You died in the year Fifteen Twenty-Eight did you not?” Gregor asked to the ghost. Narvaez replied, “No, what makes you think that, there were survivors?” Out of six hundred there were five survivors. Your treasurer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca said you were blown out to sea on your raft, just south of what is now known as Galveston Island Texas.”

“Is it that easy to feign one’s death in this age, Feiticeiro? One man’s account of a ship at sea is all that is required?”

Gregor was lost in thought. He decided to go below to boil water and make a sea sickness curing tea out of some Flowers he had harvested.  When ingested the flowers released Sculpomine, the active ingredient in Drammamine.

“How does history remember me?” Narvaez asked.

“It doesn’t, because all your expeditions were complete failures,” Gregor replied. The sun rose and they followed a line of crab pots all the way to the Sea Horse Shoals with the lubber line bearing 150 degrees. Then They Furled sail and motored through the labyrinth of the Cedar Key Shipping Channel, dropping anchor in the bay south of town. Gregor was so exhausted by then he went to bed without eating dinner, forgetting that he had neglected to close the portal to Xibalba.

     The next morning, by the light of the sun, Gregor could tell from half a mile away that Cedar Key was only hanging on by a thread. A generation ago, real estate developers had conspired to cut down the mangrove forests to build what were now Air Bed and Breakfasts on the beach. Then they acted surprised when three hurricanes, (Adelia, Helene, and Milton) had struck them directly in the course of thirteen months. Gregor broke fast in the companionway and sipped coffee out of a steel cup. According to his cell phone, there was no marina in town, no grocery store and no library. He thought there was something wrong with his phone not believing that such a place existed. So he rowed under the remains of a bridge to a dinghy dock near the ruins of a marina. He tied onto a cleat and walked around. It was a town made of rotten boards and rusty nails. Around “Avenue C,” was a complex of former bars and gift Shoppe’s? Across from a bar called, “Thirst Cow,” On an empty Cement slab was a garbage can full of marine grade canvas.  He began to remove the blue canvas from the can when he heard a voice from the porch query, “What are you doing?” Gregor turned around and answered, “It’s in a trash can, that makes it trash right?” The man went into the bar to retrieve a gun. Gregor put the canvas back and walked away. He pulled a square of paper out of his wallet that read “Casah, Adoda, Somos, Adopa, Hasac.” The words were written in a double acrostic so that they read the same from every direction. He placed it on his forehead underneath his hat.  He had only travelled a few dozen steps when he heard the voice from directly behind him again. “I said, what are you doing?” “Digging through somebody’s trash is all.” Gregor said. “That’s Chris’s trash not mine, so now you’re going to jail for looting, we don’t mess around with looters in this town.”  The man reached under his shirt and unclasped the holster of a pistol with matte black finish. A thick fog descended then. It coagulated like a shroud around Gregor adhering to his garments obscuring his person. The fog reduced visibility to fifteen feet. Gregor couldn’t see the man either. The man said, “you’re going to prison for this!” Gregor walked back to his boat and rowed away. He rowed through a murmuration of Effrets.  When he was back at his boat he called into the void, “Ichel, mother of the depths, are you present?” The water began to bubble. Something scraped the boat from below. Then the boat shuddered. “I have no offering to give you but this town; I dedicate it back to you and all the warm blood within its bounds!” There were no vessels about, but a large wake erupted onto the shore as a mighty host of giant crabs mounted its craggy rocks. When I say giant, I mean that the Pereopods of their lateral spine were fourteen feet apart from each other. With arms outstretched they were over twenty-five feet wide. They had Turquoise pincers with quinocridone red tips. Their Chelipeds were brown with red spikes. Their Antenna, compound eyes and rostrum glowed with cerulean blue light. The carapace of their Cephalothorax was brown with glowing blue veins.

     “I think its best that we be going now,” Gregor said to Narvaez. Gregor turned on the chart platter and could see the giant crabs in the fish finder’s sonar. “Hoist the anchor for me, will you?” he asked Narvaez. A wake of Effrets laughed malevolently and descended on the boat. One perverse Imp swooped down to steal something or other. Gregor made the sign of Voor at it and it tried to bite his fingers. It flew away on its bat wings and replied with a gesture that in ancient Rome was called, “Digitus Impudus.” Narvaez dropped the Anchor into its bit and Gregor said, “Narvaez, thank you for your service, now return to those habitations from whence you came.” Then he rang the bowl again in the note of B. Narvaez gave a salute and disappeared, before the portal closed with a whistle and a pop. From Cedar Key an air raid siren sounded and an ambulance wailed. In the distance there was the sound of people screaming, glass breaking and gunshots.

     I threw the Notepad and herbs onto the driver-side seat of the Volvo and put the keys in the ignition. A large quadruped animal emerged from the Spartina on the edge of the marsh fifty yards away.  It walked under the stacks and approached at a sprint. It appeared to be a mature Black wolf, with a Feral Pig hanging from its mouth. It looked at the Cape Dory and dropped the pig. Before heading straight for me. I put the Volvo in forward and accelerated towards Highway 80. The Wolf ran in front of the car and jumped. I hit it doing about thirty miles per hour. It cleared the hood and cannon-balled into the windshield. The safety glass instantly shattered into a thousand slivers. It held onto the roof rack as I drove down the gravel road. When I stopped at the turn to wait for traffic it tried to enter the vehicle from above. I put three rounds into it point blank. The last shot knocked it off the hood onto the road. I ran it over, as I turned into traffic. As I drove away I saw it try to get up and then fall over. I don’t think there’s enough silver in those bullets.