So. The facts.
The facts as currently known essentially consist of images of a thing. And when we say images, we don’t mean photographs, or video, or anything as concrete as that. There exists no objective, literal imaging of this thing – only eyewitness descriptions which lack a certain verisimilitude due to the mpaired mental states of those making the reports. What we mean to say is that those making these reports are not necessarily reliable reporters due to the trauma of what they claim to have experienced. However, while their words cannot absolutely be trusted, the facts of their physical condition can be, and thereby lend a certain amount of credence to the descriptions given. Furthermore, these accounts embody literally the whole of our data set, and we have to start somewhere.
So, the facts.
The facts of the witnesses’ physical condition are…unpleasant. Most subjects of this particular class of things that go bump do not survive the encounter. Coroner’s reports detail massive tissue damage, arrays of lacerations around the head and neck of the victims, some two or three centimeters deep, inflicted by extremely sharp instruments, and accompanied by bruising and contusions suggestive of simultaneous application of ligatures. Which is to say that the deceased look as if their faces and necks were wrapped tightly with something like concertina wire, except that there is no evidence of any metal having been in contact with the wounds. There is in every case non-human organic residue found in the wounds, suggesting that they were caused by some kind of animal. The coroners all report being relieved that they do not have the task of identifying said animal, or indeed making any more conjectures about causation than is suggested by the physical remains. Cause of death is inconclusive, being to all appearances a combination of asphyxiation, exsanguination, and shock. By themselves, any one of these would not have been sufficient to cause death, according to expert testimony. And the three symptoms together also do not seem absolutely sufficient, but there is no other evidence to lead to any other reasonable conclusion. That has been the inevitable phrase: “no other reasonable conclusion.”
If we move onward from these few, incontrovertible, physical facts, we are forced into realms somewhat more speculative, more subjective, more open to doubt. By sifting and synthesizing, collecting and collating, interviewing and integrating, we have begun to create an image of this particular class of phenomenon. The points of agreement are these: the thing is anthropomorphous. It is between four and eight feet in height. It strikes after dark, in areas generally untrafficked by other than solitary humans. It is immensely physically powerful. It causes a sort of paralysis before it ever strikes, attributed by some to a pheremonal toxin and by others to a purely psychic assault. And, while generally anthropomorphic, its head is in fact composed entirely of tentacles covered in sharp, triangular dentifrices.
Less certain and therefore even more open to contention is the assertion that this thing is not in fact anthropomorphic, but rather a mass of such toothed tentacles without a central body mass of any kind. This is the major point of diversion from the above points of agreement, but forms a statistically significant number of reports. It is possible that there are in fact two different entities in play here, which do not definitively share traits and tactics and prey; but data is insufficient to support this conclusion at present.
Those who have survived the assaults have been horrifically disfigured, and in fact their wounds track perfectly with those victims described in the coroners’ reports. There is no explanation as to why these individuals survive where the others did not. But then, as the coroner’s reports indicate, there is no reason why the deceased victims should necessarily have died rather than not, given the absolute scale of the injuries. The speculation, supported somewhat by the survivor’s descriptions of paralysis preceding the attack, is that there is indeed some sort of assault upon the mind of the victim – an assault not on the brain, which apart from the usual decay due to traumatic death is unharmed, but upon the mind itself as separate from the attack upon the body by the dentifrice-equipped appendages – and that the survivors possessed some sort of mental strength or defense that the deceased lacked.
This is an avenue of inquiry which we must most actively pursue.
These, then, are the whole of the facts at our present disposal.
This task force is therefore convened with the express purpose of seeking more data – of any kind – with which to formulate and pursue a strategy to counter the depredations of this cryptid or xenomorph or transdimensional traveler, or whatever it might in fact actually be. Because the one thing we know with true and absolute certainty is that these deadly interactions have been increasing in number and frequency, and we have no reason to believe that this particular trend will not continue.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s go to work.
