The Joy of the Whole

5th August 1897
Savile Row Hostel

No doubt by now news will have reached you of a discovery of a most peculiar kind in the South China Sea, a discovery saved from the obscurity of the back pages by the fame and notoriety of its chief author, one Dr Percy Carr - Dr Carr being a man who rose to front page prominence some months back for his illicit affair with the Earl of Essex's niece.

Had Dr Carr's gaze not strayed as it did I dare say the story would never have reached the general public as it did, bur perhaps we should be thankful it is so.

I write to you now, in this open letter, because I have information, information redacted from the articles of said expedition's logs, that I believe is of paramount importance to the public. I write not to create panic or to foment revolt but out of genuine and earnest belief that I must do so if I am to prevent a tragedy of a great magnitude, for it is what Dr Carr found on that expedition that I fear may doom us all.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself though, I should first introduce myself before I begin to put this sordid tale down on paper. My name is Nathaniel Tup, I am – or rather was, a research assistant of Dr Carr's on his expedition. It was I who catalogued the samples we collected, I who logged the good doctor's reports and I who helped him conduct his early experiments.

Dr Carr first employed my services when at the behest of Sir Reginald Blackwood he began to organise the expedition. Sir Reginald and Dr Carr have a history of acquaintance, Dr Carr having been employed by the Baronet's father some years before he passed away. Their relationship seemed one of amicable equals, whole-heartedly committed to scientific discovery in the fields of biology and medicine. To this end they jointly set about the research of immunology and virology, studying the sick and diseased but also the creatures, insects and compounds that seemingly caused their ailments.

Far be it for me to recount their achievements, as no doubt the papers have revelled in their past accomplishments in recounting this latest endeavour. Sufficed to say they are many, and this expedition of ours was meant to be the magnum opus of both of their lives' work.

It began late one summer's eve, just the year gone, when a young man came to visit the doctor, carrying with him a specimen unlike anything seen before and claiming to be just off a long-haul ship bound from China. He claimed to have found it in a curio shop on the mainland and thought maybe there'd be some money in it.

It was a large – some twenty centimetres in length and fifteen in diameter beetle-like creature, that oddly carried twelve leg-like appendages erupting from the underneath of its shell. It had no visible eyes or apertures but an odd line of fuzzy hair ran the line of the top – or atleast what we perceived to be the top, of its head, broken only by what appeared to be a deep, forceful wound as if of some impact – which we reasoned to be the cause of death. It looked to be some sort of burrowing insect, though the size and arrangement of the body parts tended against the thought.

Examination of the specimen led the doctor to believe that the insect in question was of paramount importance to his studies – and indeed that it's physiology may have held clues to other fields of science. After some months research of the specimen and it's origins, and the arranging of the doctor's personal affairs, Sir Reginald commissioned the doctor to hunt down a live specimen and if he could conduct experiments on it.

It took us some months but we reached our destination – a small island in the South China Sea, that I atleast, will not name. On his inquiry into the matter Dr Carr found that the Chinaman had bought the item from a European traveller who passing through a small chain of islands in the South China Sea came across the remains of the creature and passed it on to the shop owner for a small fee.

When we landed we thought the island barren, unpopulated, but it only took a few hours before we came across the indigenous inhabitants. Dark skinned tribesmen who had had little contact with the outside world, they welcomed us with some trepidation.

When Dr Carr made his inquiries into the specimen he was at first subtle, making vague queries as to the nature of life on that small island, but as the days passed on and we watched them live their lives and tire of that unremarkable island Dr Carr became more... forward.

It was only when he showed them the specimen that the mood changed.

At first they corralled us, some forty men – the expedition men and our sailors, as even with our guns they outnumbered us, but before long the doctor was able to calm them. In some broken form of their native dialect he explained that we had come not to destroy but to discover, to learn. That is when the mood changed again, and the real danger began.

They offered the doctor a trade. They would show us their secrets in exchange for the lives of our injured – they would care for and look after those of our party who had fallen sick and become injured on the journey – and there were several, and in exchange they would tell us what we wanted to know. It seemed odd at first, why would anyone willingly offer to take care of another's sick and wounded? But they explained that to them all are one, and for one to suffer is for all to suffer. The doctor remarked it was like some primitive socialistic society, and though at first repulsed quickly changed his mind when he realised that this simple, seemingly very one-sided trade, could give him everything he and the Baronet had been looking for.

Perhaps I should stop a moment to describe the island and the people a little as we first encountered them. They were a seemingly primitive people, wearing mostly long fabric dresses, shawls and tattered animal skins, displaying some amount of flesh among their number. Dark of flesh and narrow of eye they otherwise seemed keen and fairly eager, unlike many of the natives I'd heard about or seen before. Their diet, and general lives, seemed to revolve around fishing, farming and hunting the few small invertebrates that called the island home. The island is narrow, curved slightly and long, a series of small islets tail off from it, with some distance between it and the nearest island, making the shoals of fish that collect around the island very important to its people. We found much to our horror though that that wasn't all they relied on.

We had established a base camp half a mile or so from the village, but it wasn't till the third night after the deal that things took a turn for the worst. Our sick and wounded had been taken away, apparently to the far end of the island where they were to be cared for, and we had been invited to a ceremony of sorts.

It started off simple enough, the five of our party, watched as the tribes-people conducted some sort of elaborate choreographed 'dance', I don't know how else to describe it, it seemed almost like they moved on instinct, as if they knew where the others were at that one moment and moved with them. It was strange, very strange.

I admit before long the hour weighed on me – I am not a man accustomed to nights, and the liquor they offered us did me no good, several of the others fared worse and fell very much asleep, but it was as the night reached its zenith that they bore their secret upon us.

Out came a seemingly normal fellow from among their number, stripped down to a simple piece of garb that covered his loins, upper legs and just below his stomach. We thought it odd but before Dr Carr could query it – he, like I, seemed to be struggling with consciousness, our guide motioned us to be silent.

Then we sat there, and watched in silence, as the change came upon him.

I will tell you the change I saw created a terror within me unlike anything I have ever felt before, or shall likely ever feel again. At first the man seemed to stretch and tug at his skin, he flexed his arms. Then his skin began to convulse, to slip along the seams, strands of mucous forming in trails across his flesh, then it began to tear. His shoulder blades were the first to split, he let out a soft cry, and they split asunder, I let out a stifled scream and his chest began to erupt, bursting open to reveal a small chitinous mound at the centre of his body – where another man's organs might have been.

Where you might expect blood to be pouring from now there was none, the man split like the opening of a flower, and where you would expect organs and arteries and veins some sort of fibrous growth clung to the inside of the flesh. He was hollow inside, save for that thing. As quickly as it had begun it was over though, the man's flesh came back together in a moment, and the stifled scream I had let out roused one or two of the others from their half-slumber. Believing it nothing they fell back to sleep in a moment and I and the doctor were left aghast at what we had just seen.

I say I and the doctor, but even now I am unsure of his reaction, while I have no doubt an expression of sheer terror was painted across my face, I am not so sure of him. If anything the events that followed have pushed that belief even further into doubt.

Our guide, noticing our reactions smiled, and attempted to calm us. I could not be calmed, even as he explained what we had seen and explained that it was part of 'being of the whole'. Terrified, I ran back to camp, perhaps making the mistake that cost four other men their lives, but I was too blind with emotion and shaken in the head to realise my mistake. I believe I collapsed shortly after returning, and it wasn't till the next morning that I began to recall what had happen and learn from the doctor what I had seen.

After I had left, our guide had explained to the doctor what we had seen. It was a most glorious of things, a living god, a creature that could bring happiness and joy to all who experienced its touch. The thing he described, in shape, resembled the specimen we had bought, and Carr was elated by this, he was ecstatic at the possibilities for his research. He heralded it as possibly the greatest discovery mankind has ever made: a creature capable of healing all wounds. I called him crazy, stark-raving mad, I queried whether he had witnessed the same horror as me – a man torn apart from the inside like that!

He tried to question my ethics, my reputation as a scientist – after seeing such horrors he brought science up! It was almost unbelievable. I decided to keep my peace though, remembering the others. I queried him, he said little other than that they had returned before him, he desperately wanted to steer the subject back to what he had discovered, to what he had learned that night. I'm sure he was aware of my distaste for the subject, but it did nothing to blunt his passion.

He talked for hours about what he had learnt, explaining to me the peculiarities of its physiology, how he wanted to classify it as an insect but at the same it carried enough qualities and aspects so completely unlike an insect as to defy classification. It was, in short, alien to anything we knew. I admit I baulked at all this, I had come into this expedition as a scientist, an explorer, believing I was the assistant to a man making ground-breaking strides in the field biology and medicine but what I had seen turned everything inside me against being a scientist, against being able to objectively distance myself. I was the monkey in the tree, terrified by the night, and I could not restrain it.

I was about to leave, to sleep off what I had heard when he stopped me, his tone changed suddenly, he became almost ecstatically jubilant – oddly so, he began to proclaim the advances to come, the joy we were all about to experience. If he had not have had me by the arm at that moment I would have most certainly have left but he went on, he began to explain that we, and by 'we' he indicated humanity, were about to come into an age-old legacy, one left to us as a gift. What he had been shown – what he had been railing on at me for near two hours by now was not merely some 'creature' but a consciousness, a being, and we were about to inherit it's power, if we could only make the sacrifice needed.

By this point I began to get worried, Carr took on the same gleeful smile our guide did as we witnessed that thing emerge. No matter how many times I tried to steer the topic away he kept coming back to it, and then he began to speak of the 'joining' and our 'essences mingling', at this point I began to think again of the others, and those we'd relinquished into their care, and I wondered now where they really were. The Doctor would not hear of it though, claiming I was losing my nerve as a scientist – it was then that I left, but not before I saw something that turned by stomach and sent cold shivers down my spine. It was only for a moment, only for a second, but just inside the doctor's collar I thought I spied - just for the briefest of moments, a thin trail of mucous running down his chest.

I'm not proud of what happened next, perhaps Carr was right about me, but terror took hold of me, I fled, stole a boat and with the money I still carried with me found a series of ships to take me close to England once more.

Thinking back on it now my mind is clouded with doubt, I know what I saw – even if intoxicated, and I know that something had changed in Carr, but another part of me worries that I was too reckless, too quick to run. Perhaps if I had stayed I could have investigated those who disappeared.

It's plagued me for all these months, I thought perhaps Carr's expedition had been lost at sea or stayed on the island, till I saw the early post come in this morning: 'Carr's expedition on return journey, heralds discovery that may change the face of the world forever'.

I can only hope that this letter reaches your Honour in time, and that you consider these not the ravings of a madman, but the records of an endeavour and the discovery of a horror that may consume us all if we do not act with haste.

Your humble servant,

Nathaniel Tup