I think again and again of the wonder of those nimble hands. ~2000 words
Item Description:
Anomalous Item 701—metal cylinder w/ roll of paper. Weathered, rubber seal goo—contents good. Paper handmade? Blank at first—writing + drawings appeared in sunlight.
Date of Recovery: 7/10/1989
Location of Recovery: Mouth of gator (normal, nuisance) caught in drainage ditch behind CLARF
Current Status: Archived, needs testsFrom: CLARF Archives <archives@██████.███>
Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2026 11:41 AM
To: CLARF Research Staff - Distribution List <research@██████.███>
Subject: Pardon our dustGreetings,
As some of you already know, from the 1970s through early 90s, the Carson Live Animal Research Facility employed a single archivist. Near the end of her tenure, there was a massive influx of anomalous items retrieved from or near Research Sector 27. This resulted in many items being improperly stored and/or insufficiently described.
Beginning 5/12/2026, our archives team will conduct a thorough audit of all artifacts and records from this period. Please bear with us! Responses to non-emergency records requests may be delayed while we complete this project.
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⚠ FLAGGED FOR FURTHER REVIEW ⚠
OBJECT ID: Box 701
REASON: Contents do not match inventory listInventory:
A green, cylindrical aluminum container measuring 2x4 in, abraded and in poor condition
A typewritten description of Anomalous Item 701
A typewritten transcriptMissing:
The roll of paper mentioned in the item descriptionNotes: Three image files from the digital repository have been identified as potentially related items. The files were uploaded in 2001 (around the time the archives acquired a higher quality scanner and a paid intern) and possibly depict drawings from the original document. Aside from these, no visual record of Anomalous Item 701 exists.
The typewritten item description does not record the document's original language or the method used to obtain the existing English-language transcript.
The aluminum container is identical to a geocaching capsule sold by Buffalo Designs that has only been in production since 2022.
I tried to sleep. I could not. I write to ease my restlessness.
We finished cutting a fresh path to the well yesterday. The scent of fetterbrush hangs so heavily there that no one detected the stench of decay until someone stumbled over a body, some days dead.
It was like a turtle, but also unlike. Instead of long paddles, its limbs were stumpy and clawed and caked with earth. In life, it would have been more round than flat, and more like a stone in texture and color than a seashell. It was a little thing, just large enough to fill two hands, and it had been crushed by an immense weight.
We know of no creature, apart from our own kind, who could have accomplished this. If it had been one of the rambunctious young ones—always eager for flesh—it would not have been left to rot.
We waited for the cool of evening to disperse the blowflies and returned with a basket to retrieve it for study. My companions were two stout-armed trailcutters, one missing a finger and both scarred by misadventure. Nevertheless, as we approached the dead creature, we were overcome by dread.
Once, when I was very young, I was nearly struck by lightning. I was digging roots ahead of a darkening storm, and my skin began to prickle. In the same breath, I was blinded and deafened by a force that did not descend but split the air like it had been present since the beginning of the world. I clung quaking to the ground until I could see, then bolted home.
Last night I felt that same prickling in my skin. I wanted to run and keep running. Perhaps I was not alone, because, after a few moments of tortured progress, all three of us slowed to a stop. We agreed, without much conversation, to return home.
When dawn broke, our fear felt foolish, but the elders are not so certain. They have charged those who are willing and able to return to this place and keep watch through the night. Now mine begins.
The children gave me courage today. I was lying in the noon-warm sand, failing to sleep, when three little ones came scuffling over my back, draping themselves over me and one another to enjoy better access to the sun. I was eased by their ease. I could sleep and forget.
Last night, I saw an impossible thing: a creature from a time before memory. Its hunched, round body was covered in something like cottonwood fluff—not shiny-sleek, like feathers, but soft and full of movement. One of the elders called it “fur”. Its pointed head was streaked with black and topped with delicate protrusions of flesh that twitched and swiveled. Its eyes gleamed green and orange in our torchlight.
Most wonderful of all were its hands—furred and small, but so much like our hands that I felt a painful tenderness towards it.
The creature came creeping on all fours toward the whitened stones we had placed to mark the unknown threat—a threat it seemed not to sense. My own attention was so rapt that I did not feel death approaching.
The ground hummed a little, and my companion grasped my wrist, pulling me back. We saw nothing, but the vibrations increased. The creature darted forward—stopped—then darted back again, but not quickly enough. The air was displaced by some violent forward motion, and the creature was struck and crushed.
I closed my eyes and turned away, sick with horror. One of the trailcutters from the night before came and touched their brow to mine.
“I have cut the heads from snakes,” I felt the need to say. “I have opened the bellies of fish and cleaned them for the children.”
“Yes,” they answered. “This is not the same.”
Even now, I fumble to explain. I think again and again of the wonder of those nimble hands.
Strangely, throughout the whole ordeal, we never feared the danger would veer from our marked path. It moves as if drawn on a line—an invisible boulder ripped from stillness by an invisible hand. Racing but not pursuing. Killing but not eating.
Some six or seven nights have passed since I wrote last.
This morning, my mate returned from the shore with some others, lugging great loads of seaweed. I felt my fog of fear and sadness lift at the sight of their face, red eyes shining bright as holly berries.
With their party came two travelers—skilled swimmers and surf-riders, who were very learned in the wider history of the world. They had seen sights and handled artifacts that sounded strange to us, and, as they had already shared in our labors, the elders decided to confide in them.
Another furred, masked creature had been killed the night before and retrieved that dawn for burial (a waste, maybe, but we can not be sure their flesh or skin is safe to use). The taller of the two travelers, who grew a bright, orange crest, gently stroked the dead tail.
“I have never seen a living one,” they said. “I did not think any still lived.”
“They come only at night—always in the same place,” an elder replied.
The turtle had been first. Then the black-banded, clever-handed ones. Then, two days past, we saw a long-snouted, pale face with wet, pink flesh quivering around its nostrils. Like us, it trailed a long, scaled tail. As it came closer, we saw four smaller, identical faces peeking over the hump of its back. I crawled away and stopped my ears with grass. Later, they told me that some of the little ones had rolled free, unbloodied, and scattered into the night. We never found any sign of them.
“I think I know what it is,” said the orange-crested traveler. “But we would like to experience it for ourselves.”
My mate will join our watch, too. Their company and the hope of some answer to this sad strangeness give me peace. I think I will sleep a little.
We were not visited by life or death last night. The air was pushed aside and something did rumble past, but all it left in its wake was a foul smell and the faint sound of music.
When it had passed, the smaller traveler, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke.
“Did you see its eyes?”
We glanced at one another.
“No.”
They spread their arms and said, “Placed this height, this far apart. Round and large, full of blueish light.”
We shook our heads, amazed.
Then the taller one said, “You are haunted by a road.”
Taking turns, they told us a strange, unfinished story. A story of beings who walked upright and spoke, who delved and span and made shelters for themselves, as we do—who reshaped the world with their making and doing.
“They could travel very far, very fast, carried in structures made for that purpose. And when their great tapestry of dwellings sickened, and the waters ran restlessly over the face of the earth, a small number tried to flee to the stars and were smashed to pieces against a wall of their own making.”
We were silent at this. The smaller traveler spoke again.
“It is as you thought. The creatures were not hunted.”
“Why are they here?” my mate asked. “And how?”
But neither could answer.
My mate keeps this record. They are sleeping. I do not want them to wake!
I like doing, not writing, and I do not care for making pictures (I do like to look at theirs).
But I will tell what we saw last night.
We went to the road and saw an elder of elders. An old, old ancestor on four legs. Small as a child. So like a child that I almost crossed the markers to seize it. The others held me.
The ghost trod its tail and crushed its legs.
When the ghost was gone, another thing came. Bigger than the masked-faced or white-faced things. Tawny fur, tall legs. Two points of flesh and many pointed teeth. It gripped our forebear in its mouth and left the road.
Some of us heard words—from the elder’s mouth? Who knows. I will write them, but there are some I do not understand:
now all the world stretches out
flat and hard as a kitchen floor
lights flash and little things skitter
and scratch unyielding baseboards
desperate for a place to hideI am not writing for myself anymore. I write with the hope of sharing these memories.
Yesterday, as dusk approached, many more of us joined the watch than on any evening prior—only a few stayed behind with the children. Even after the sun fell, it was warm. The air was damp and thick with insect song.
After the last trace of pink had faded from the horizon, one of the travelers stood at our boundary’s edge and said, “You were unseen, but we have seen you.”
Then both of them stepped into the road, and lied down.
A murmur of horror ran through our gathering. We had not made a plan or discussed any change to our pattern of watching and waiting.
I felt my mate move at my side, and before I knew what we were doing or why, we had both crossed the boundary to join the travelers.
It may be that I was the only one trembling. That familiar dread returned—and now I knew it was the fear of being struck dead. Not by a fellow’s angry blow, or the maw of a hungry predator, but by an unpredictable, uncaring, unknowable force.
One by one more of our kin joined us, without a single word exchanged, and we began to understand what we were doing. We lay flank to flank, then bellies over shoulders and heads and tails in a tangle. This was not an imitation of death. We were not joining the creatures in that way.
We were a barrier. We were a nest, a burrow. A safe place to hide.
Darkness and silence settled over everything, disturbed only by our breathing. I felt something pressed against me that was not my mate or any of our companions.
It was fur. I had only touched the fur of dead things—but this moved with life. Something soft leaned against my back, and something soft curled at my neck, and I felt a wet snuffling in the crook of my arm. Then a hot breath.
A breath, and then a voice.
“The first of our kind was full of tricks—they beckon to us from the moon.”
And another, deeper voice said, “Once we wove through the very margins of the word of god.”
“It is warm,” said another, and sounded content.
The rumbling and crushing never came again, and neither did those strange and wonderful beings. We cut the path to our well a second time. As we finished our work, for just a moment I thought I heard the patter of racing feet—four feet, or eight, or more—a sound that was not cut short, but carried on and on into the far distance.
I hope my words find you. I want you to hear it, too.