By Joshua Vise – August 16, 2024

Published in Eldritch Encore: The Innsmouth Volume by CultureCult Press. Lulu: Paperback or EPUB

Despite not being exceptionally deep when compared to the Norwegian Sea which adjoins it, the Barents Sea still presents challenges that only the bravest or most foolhardy are willing to face. A constant gale blows in from the northwest, and the rogue waves it generates have been known to capsize the few fishing vessels that prowl the waters in search of schools of cod. Disruptions in the polar vortex create unpredictable weather phenomena, leading to freezing typhoons that form and dissipate in half the time it takes similar storms to develop in the Atlantic. Shifting currents and temperature changes have stratified the water column within the ocean itself, with each layer capable of traveling in different directions. This creates an unfortunate circumstance in which objects that become submerged in the icy water tend to be “sucked” immediately to the bottom, a phenomenon that many fishermen and oil workers claimed to have seen with their own eyes. It was in this harsh world that the Signus Magnolia could be found.

The Signus Magnolia was a singular place. Situated over 150 kilometers north of Skarsvag, the world’s northernmost fishing village, the Signus Magnolia was the largest oil platform operated by Equinor, Norway’s state oil company. The most isolated of the four derricks that ran the length of the Signus underground oil pipeline, the Magnolia was also its most profitable, pumping on average 7,000 barrels per day, all of which was fed to the mainland via its three sister derricks. The stolid 87-member crew cycled in and out on a twenty-eight-day schedule, and the rare visitor that accompanied them to the remote location, whether arriving by ship or by helicopter, was treated to the ominous sight of the large structure materializing out of a perpetual icy fog. Comparisons to lost cities were often made, as if the Signus Magnolia was some conglomeration of El Dorado and Atlantis.

And yet, if the collection of engineers, systems specialists, mechanics, drillers, and crane operators could be uniformly described as disinterested and unfriendly, the four-man team that comprised the saturation diver crew was seen as downright sociopathic, even by the standards of their mates. They were the isolated among the isolated, spending 21 of their 28-day shift 310 meters below the platform, in a diving bell fed from the surface with a mixture of helium and oxygen, and kept at a continual nineteen times atmospheric pressure. A special hatch allowed them access to the ocean floor, where they maintained and repaired the wellhead system in near-zero visibility at temperatures hovering just a few degrees above freezing. When not working, the team ate, slept, and did what little socializing they deemed necessary in a space the size of an average bus, with an intercom and video feed system their only connection to the surface. Their ascent from the depths took nearly a week in order to prevent decompression sickness, and the other crew gave them a wide berth the few times they were found on the platform. Nikko Halvorsen, the operations manager in charge of the entire rig, and a humorless and God-fearing man, once remarked that he had never met a group of men more suited to working halfway to hell.

Despite their notoriety, the individuals that comprised the team were consummate professionals. Pim Westerduin, Kevin Osbourne, Nassar Safavi, and Werner Koepp were recognized leaders in the field of saturation diving, and their work, individually and collectively, was of the highest quality. Complications were minimal, and resolved with a meticulous hand, a necessity given the lethality of a mistake made at that depth. Progress updates were fed to the surface with regularity, their contents always short and to the point.

Given this reputation, it was no small matter when, eighteen days into a shift, the team failed to check in at their designated interval. Matti Saarinen, the lead systems specialist and communications engineer, attempted to reach the team over the intercom, but his efforts were met with silence. This issue immediately reached crisis level when control room operators realized that the video feed had also failed. Bizarrely, rather than static or a lost connection, the image feed from the bell was one of pitch blackness, as if some object had been used to cover the lens. Adding to the strangeness was the fact that the oxygen/helium feeder system was still functioning normally, maintaining the pressure required to keep the crew alive.

Halvorsen was immediately summoned and apprised of the situation. Pumping was halted, and men were ordered to stand watch on all sides of the derrick, scanning for signs of debris or bodies that would indicate an underwater rupture or implosion. Lacking the ability to reach the team directly, acoustic microphones were lowered into the water in the hopes of hearing any sign of activity from the submerged crew. Unfortunately, all of these efforts failed to reveal anything good or bad about the fate of the divers.

Regardless of the source or severity of the issue the divers faced, Halvorsen himself realized that he had only two possible options. The first, and the one that might have initially seemed the most expedient, was to remotely activate the capsule’s emergency ascent process. If this command were to be carried out, the diving bell would immediately seal off the exit hatch and jettison ballast. The bell would remain pressurized as it rocketed upwards, reaching the surface in approximately ten minutes. This would allow Halvorsen to ascertain the fate of the men most rapidly, and aid them if possible.

Favorable as this method may have appeared, Halvorsen understood that it came with its own set of drawbacks. For one, there was no way to know if the men were currently inside the diving bell. Activating the emergency ascent while divers were in the water would simultaneously lock them outside of the capsule, ensnare their breathing hoses, and drag them to the surface at the same speed as the capsule. Outside the safety of a pressurized environment, the rapid ascent would cause gas previously dissolved in their blood and body to come out of solution, forming bubbles in their tissues, causing extreme pain, paralysis, and death. Furthermore, even if the bell were to reach the surface rapidly and be retrieved successfully by platform crane operators (a task itself not guaranteed to be successful given the average conditions of the Barents Sea), the crew members inside would still be subject to decompression safety measures, meaning the capsule would have to be manually depressurized slowly over the course of a week before it could be opened and the divers seen to.

The only other option available was to assume that the bell’s communications failure was simply that: a communications failure. The men, once realizing that their ability to contact the platform had been compromised, would be able to activate the capsule’s ascent controls on their own, returning to the surface in either six days or ten minutes depending on their own assessment of their situation.

Ultimately, the unenviable task of choosing a course of action was Halvorsen’s. After a brief phone call to Equinor executives, it was decided to err on the side of expediency over prudence. If there was no communication or sign of life from the crew by the time of their next scheduled check in twelve hours later, the emergency ascent procedures would be triggered. In the meantime, the platform was cleared of all nonessential personnel and materials, measures taken in anticipation of a dire situation on deck. The Norwegian Coast Guard was alerted, and stood ready to assist should the need arise. All that was left to do was to wait and see how the situation unfolded.

It was to everyone’s great relief, particularly that of Halvorsen, that roughly eight hours before the deadline, the bell’s ascent system was triggered manually from within. Moreover, the system was operating at its normal, six-day pace. To all those concerned, the evidence pointed to nothing more serious than the failure of the comms system, and that the crew, aware of the severity of an emergency ascent, had taken actions to extricate themselves safely. The pumps were restarted, and most normal routines were resumed, with the derrick workers assuming that this situation was little more than another sign not to become complacent with life in such an extreme environment.

The first indicator of things not being as they seemed within the capsule made itself known three days into the six-day journey to the surface. As the vessel drew closer to the underwater microphones, sounds akin to that of human voices in conversation were heard. Muffled as it was due to environmental factors, the equipment operator was nevertheless able to isolate these voices, and came to the disturbing conclusion that the sounds were not that of four distinct individuals, but of one single voice chanting, murmuring, and occasionally shouting in an unrecognizable language. The managers attempted to downplay the significance of the sounds, explaining to themselves and to each other that the acoustic recordings were not reliable enough to capture conversations through the thick hull of the capsule. Furthermore, had there been any serious emergency, especially one resulting in the loss of some of the crew members, the remaining divers would surely have chosen to ascend under emergency protocols rather than at their current, leisurely pace. At a time when very little else could be done for the divers, this wishful thinking allowed management the sense that they indeed had a handle on the situation. It was a tactic that would not survive the next disruption.

More than any other crew member involved with monitoring the diving bell’s ascent, Matti Saarinen seemed particularly affected by the strange utterances. He worked tirelessly on different methods to reestablish contact with the bell. When he wasn’t at the communications controls himself, he ran back and forth between other engineering stations, troubleshooting systems, investigating options and contingencies, and attempting to repurpose drilling and pumping equipment in order to aid the stranded team. His machinations became nuisance enough that Halvorsen demanded that he confine himself to his own station. While this order kept Saarinen out from under the feet of the other workers, it did little to dampen his sense of duty to the divers, and he spent every waking moment monitoring the progress of the capsule from his console.

Neither Halvorsen nor other members of the operations team were able to determine exactly what set off Saarinen. Later inquiries addressed to Equinor executives were rebuffed, citing privacy concerns related to employee health. Internal communications between the rig and Equinor detailed how on an early morning shift, approximately twelve hours before the bell was slated to surface, Saarinsen was apparently able to reconnect the video feed to the capsule, though this could never be conclusively verified. One technician on duty in the control room reported the incident as follows:

“The night shift was proceeding normally. Joren (Lewandowski, pump supervisor) and I were in the break room making coffee, when suddenly, we heard a scream. It was as if someone had been stabbed in the gut. We ran into control, and found Matti attacking the video monitor. Before we could stop him, he pulled it from its panel and threw it to the ground. Nikko grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him into his chair. He asked him what he saw, but Matti’s only reply was ‘Not dead!’. He (Nikko) attempted to secure Matti’s attention, reiterating ‘The team’s not dead’, but Matti shouted ‘Not dead yet!’, and ran from the room.”

After fleeing, Saarinen forced his way into the Signus Magnolia’s substructure and into the winching room. There, he attempted to disengage the clutch lever, which would have immediately sent the bell plummeting to the ocean floor. It was only his unfamiliarity with the equipment that prevented him from succeeding, and he was restrained by crane operators on duty before being locked in his quarters. Even confined to his room, he beat on the door, crying and screaming horrific, nonsensical statements. This psychotic break in a member of the crew proved also to be the breaking point of Halvorsen’s patience. After consulting with the rig’s medical officer about the effects of the bends with twelve hours remaining in the decompression schedule, he ordered the emergency ascent system to be activated.

Men on deck reported a large plume of bubbles thirty meters off the northwestern platform leg, the result of jettisoned ballast. The cylinder surfaced less than two minutes after the order was given, and the fast rescue boat was dispatched to secure the crane’s cable to its topmost hard-point. Members of the crew observed from a safe distance as the crane lowered the chamber to the platform’s deck. There was no indication of a breach, and the underside hatch door had been properly secured. All of the cabling necessary to sustain life-support systems appeared intact and functioning.

The bell itself had no windows, as generally visibility at depth was too poor for them to be of any use, so there was no way to ascertain the fate of the men inside the bell without physically opening it, something Halvorsen was still reluctant to do despite having issued the ascent order. He approached it carefully, knocking firmly three times on the hatch door frame. Halvorsen’s knock was answered not with a knock, but with a sharp, metallic scratching sound, loud enough that he initially assumed the unsecured structure was sliding against the platform surface. He backed away just as the hatch door exploded outward, its mangled panel skidding across the rig and crashing into the side of the well scaffolding.

The creature that emerged from the black depths of the chamber flew in the face of biological science, and far exceeded the rational mind’s ability to comprehend or describe. It spilled through the hatch frame, its dark, gelatinous mass puddling where it landed. The center bubbled and writhed, and a ring of fanglike teeth emerged, pulsing open and closed, consuming the atmosphere around it. Great tentacles extended from the fleshy, amorphous shape, stretching outward in all directions as if taking in its surroundings purely through the sense of touch.

The crew of the Signus Magnolia erupted into hysterics, with men fleeing in all directions. Some climbed the scaffold in an attempt to escape. Those closest to the control quarters darted inside, barricading the entrance even amid the screams of those still attempting to force their way in from outside. Several men, fearing the unnamed horror on deck even over the certain horror of the Barents Sea, foolishly leapt from the platform into the icy waters below. Their bodies were never recovered, their corpses lost to the downward sucking force of the subsurface currents.

Even amid this chaos, this roiling mountain of eyes, teeth, and tentacles never strayed from its purpose. It showed no interest in the frenzied panic of the primates around it, instead continuing to feel its way to the outer limits of the rig. A single tentacle, having latched on to the edge of the structure, excited the attention of the rest of the amoeba, and all of the eyes turned their gaze in its direction. The shoggoth roll-slithered its way forward, trailing a viscous coating of fetid pus over every surface it came in contact with, before finally spilling itself over the side of the rig and disappearing underneath the waves.

The hysterical panic of the men gave way to a deeper dread as they struggled to comprehend what they had just witnessed. Halvorsen was the first to shake himself from the grip of insanity, and immediately turned his attention to the contents of the bell. He peered into the capsule for only an instant before ordering the crane operator to raise it from the deck and cast it into the sea. The operator dutifully complied, and the ruptured chamber dangled haphazardly in the air for only a moment before being released into the ocean. It bobbed briefly on the surface, foam bellowing from the hatch as seawater flooded in, before following the nightmare-creature into the darkness.

Nikko Halvorsen never revealed what he saw when he peered inside the capsule, and his contract was terminated by Equinor for failure to cooperate in the investigation surrounding the disaster. Lacking a definite answer, rumor and speculation quickly filled the void. Some conjectured that it was the corpses of the divers, partially digested by the demonic entity. Others stated that he had found the crew of the bell fused together into a single living mass, a fate that everyone agreed would justify his actions. Whatever the truth was, Halvorsen took it to his grave only three years later. The suicide note next to his body contained only one cryptic line:

“That which has not been seen shall never be seen.”