Josephine - 15 August, 1878
After weeks of unsettling whispers trickling back to Ravenwood Manor regarding some monstrous water serpent terrorizing the eastern banks of Tittesworth Reservoir, I could no longer ignore the mounting evidence that a genuine aquatic anomaly may be afoot. Multiple eyewitnesses, from local fishermen to weekend picnickers, described harrowing encounters with a shadowy undulating form stretching an impossible thirty feet in length gliding just beneath the surface before whipping suddenly towards any who dared wade too deep into the placid waters. Victims universally recounted an overwhelming aura of malevolence and dread emanating from the creature's presence as it zeroed in on their location, a suffocating psychic pressure to flee its domain at once or risk worse than mere drowning enveloped in its coils.
The last straw came when a trio of schoolboys playing hooky from Sunday mass nearly met a horrific fate after their rickety dinghy apparently garnered the monster's interest whilst exploring a fog-shrouded narrow inlet. Per their tearful account, a "glistening black serpentine form thick as a horse's torso" began tailing the small vessel as they rowed, the surrounding waters frothing in its wake while an eerie keening sound pierced the mists. Luckily they made landfall before the aquatic horror fully breached, only catching a nightmarish glimpse of a humped back and single glowing amber eye "burning with ancient hatred" which would haunt their dreams forevermore.
I knew I must confront this mysterious entity myself and either document its extraordinary existence or at least dispel local fears with a thorough overnight investigation. So under the auspices of a ladies' charitable picnic luncheon, I packed my rucksack with both mundane diving supplies and more arcane instruments attuned to uncovering supernatural phenomena - a silver-wrought mariner's astrolabe on loan from the family antiquities collection, a lead-lined Grecian urn marked with warding runes protecting any contents, sounding weights with silk-wrapped iron chains to plumb the depths, jars of purified sea salt, frankincense, and black mirror shards to anchor any summoning rituals. If nothing else, I hoped the varied tools could help narrow down precisely what manner of being lurked in Tittesworth and how best to address it.
The investigation proved more eventful than I ever anticipated. Staked out on a secluded rocky promontory from dusk till midnight, I laid an extensive array of scrying bones and runestones amidst black candlesticks at cardinal directions, petitioning whatever ancient spirits watched over those waters to reveal their secrets. But after hours without even a ripple out of place and only a few small fish surfacing mockingly, I resolved to take a more direct approach. Donning a drysuit and tethering myself to a sturdy oak with a long rope, I waded chest-deep into the languid reservoir, all senses on high alert.
And then, an otherworldly chill beyond the depths' natural temperature shift breathed across my neck, while the hairs stood upright as if detecting an electrical charge skimming the surface. Subtle at first, the sensation steadily increased until I pivoted frantically expecting a dark mass to be rushing in my periphery - yet even beneath the mirrored moonlight only endless inky ripples greeted my headlamp's beam. The waters seemed to churn of their own accord however, and gauging it auspiciously safe to activate one of the more potent relics, I uncorked the Grecian urn and tossed a handful of salt/frankincense into the froth intoning a revealing incantation rumored to draw out any malicious entities from their hiding spots.
A hellish guttural shriek promptly shattered the nighttime silence, impossibly loud as if echoed from a vast cavern but emanating from directly below! Frantically I tried to retreat toward the shoreline when the rope at my waist drew taut as if snagged on something immovable. Twisting around, I came face to face with a giant unblinking amber eye glowering beneath the polluted foam...attached to a reptilian viridian brow that appeared deceptively serpentine while simultaneously bearing almost human contours. It glared balefully for only a split second before the watery apparition shredded apart like oil film, but the overwhelming sense of primordial rage and outrage at my psychic disturbance lingered palpably.
Shaken but determined to retrieve concrete evidence, I managed to activate a magnesium flash lamp and plunge it into the roiling reservoir where the entity brushed past. In the blinding electrified eruption, a nightmarish silhouette of an elongated ophidian outline undulated into the abyss and out of sight. The surge also inexplicably severed the ensorcelled rope tether like a razor, sparing me an equally abrupt watery demise had I not immediately high-tailed it to dry land.
Though I cannot state conclusively what elusive spirit or demon makes its lair in Tittesworth's treacherous tides, the encounter confirms beyond all doubt that an ancient aquatic denizen with clearly malicious intent coils in the shadows eager to punish mortal minds foolish enough to cross its territory unaware and ill-prepared. Whether a cursed Pagan relic, a vengeful primordial deity, or something stranger from the Silurian epoch, I can only bid the good people of the nearby villages to appreciate its ominous majesty from a healthy distance and pay that piece of the waterways all proper respect lest more lives be lost to mercurial whims. There is ever an eldritch ecology running parallel to our own with laws defying conventional awareness - I count my lucky stars to have escaped its deadly grasp myself with limbs and sanity intact. Future expeditions must approach only operating at the height of metaphysical caution. But for now, this sleepy corner of the moors appears to host one mystery best left to its murky depths...
