My name? How curious you are! You don't have long to live and instead of begging, fighting, or praying you ask me a question. I suppose I owe you that, at least. I so rarely get to tell my tale. You won't believe any of it, of course, but I swear on my baby daughter's memory that every word is true.

The name I was given, and which for obvious reasons I no longer use, was Benjamin. My mother would call me Ben or Bennie, but my father was a stiff, and proudly religious man who only ever used my full and biblical name. I was born in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1835.

You see? I said you would not believe me. Yes, I am approaching two hundred years old. And if you think I look good for my age now, well, you won't get to see me later, I'm afraid, but trust me, I will look better still.

We lived on the coast, when we were on land at all. I was scarce more than a babe in arms when my father first took me to sea, and I quickly learned everything I could about the maritime life. My father was a respected man, and with his blessing I took captaincy of my first ship, Sea Foam, a study little brigantine, at the age of twenty one, and hauled cargo the length of the New England coast. At twenty-seven I was master of a three-masted schooner, then a bark, and then another, much larger, brigantine.

I can tell you don't know the meaning of these words. It's a shame. So much has changed over my long life, and not always for the better.

By this time I had earned enough to have shares of my own in the ship, and I was making much longer and more profitable journeys. On this occasion we had loaded in New York for a voyage across the Atlantic to Europe. I have never been one for superstition, but looking back I should have known. My greed had led me to take on a cargo of alcohol even though I was a lifelong temperance man, and my pride had led me to take with me my wife and baby daughter. The ship was trim and recently refitted, and despite my many years at sea I was filled with confidence. We weighed anchor and set sail in earnest on the fifteenth of November, and it was a mere ten days later that everything changed.

The ocean can always be capricious, but our voyage thus far had been good. We were heading for the Azores, due to be our first sight of land in the old world, but we never spied so much as a gull.

The trouble with a long life is memories. God's children we may be, but we cannot bear even a splinter of His eternal majesty. We accumulate memories from moment we enter the world and by our intended three score years and ten we are nigh full. So many old things I have forgotten, and so many new I have learned. Despite it all, though, and however long I may walk the earth, I will never forget that night.

I had the watch. The mate, my wife and child, and half the crew were abed. The moon was clear and the sky was filled with stars in the way only a mariner knows. The wind was light, with a gentle swell, and we were making way.

Then, from the deep rose a leviathan, at once as dark as pitch and glowing with a light so red it burned the eyes. I was, and am still, no papist, and had no rosary or crucifix to cling to, but I can say that I prayed with all my soul. The dark light became unbearable, and then everything was gone. No ship, no family, no crew, no cargo, not even my constant companions, the sea and sky. Just unending darkness. I still know not whether it was my prayers which saved me, or merely that I was on deck, and easy pickings.

I also have no idea how long it was before I could see again. It could have been moments, or it could have been years. Time had little meaning. Eventually, though, I found myself (well, not quite myself, as I will explain), in a room of sorts, curved, white and featureless like the inside of a blown egg. Around that time I first heard the voice.

I never saw the owner of the voice, and I am not sure I would have been able to comprehend him if I did. He spoke in Dutch, initially at least. I had a little Dutch, of course. It was hard those days to find a dockside inn or ships mess without at least one sailor from the low countries, and many had settled in and around New York.

I still remember the very first words in that booming voice. Het spijt ons. We are sorry.

Over aeons or seconds of that timeless time, I learned more about my captor or captors, and they, in turn, learned English from me. It seems they were not from our world. I asked if they were angels or demons, but they could not or would not answer. I know the stars, as any good navigator must, and soon concluded that they called home the planet we know as Mars.They wanted to learn about us, the people of the third planet. and learn to communicate ready for the day that we might, in turn, voyage to their home world.

It seemed impossible then, but now I find myself in a time and place where people are contemplating that very thing. Sometimes I wonder what they will find, and whether that meeting will ultimately be for good or ill.

Their ability to learn language was miraculous, but ideas can be more elusive. There were many concepts which they could not understand. Often these were ideas so simple and common to us that I had never thought to consider them.They might have the power to sail between worlds, but they seemed unable to grasp the idea of individuality, of one person different from another, or of birth and death. I can only assume, in my flawed imagination, that on their world they, or he, or it, are all one, with life everlasting. Do not be deceived, though. The one thing I am sure of is that they are not God.

Their means of communication is also most unusual. They do not speak in the way we do, with tongue and lips and throat. I don't know if they even have these things. Instead they speak to the mind. But to do that they somehow need to destroy and recreate those with whom they would converse. This, it seems had turned out to be more trouble here than they expected. As a first attempt they had tried this trick on another ship, many years before. It was from this crew that they had learned the Dutch language, but the recreation had been imperfect, with ship and crew not fully formed, in some way not fully of this world. They had abandoned that attempt, left that ship and crew to their half existence, and resolved to try again later, with new knowledge. By whatever luck, my ship and crew was that trial.

They were, I think, in their inhuman way, pleased with the recreation of my ship. It was, as far as they could determine, almost identical to the state it had been before their intervention. The same could not be said for the souls aboard. If individuality was a concept beyond them, then man, woman, and child were completely uncharted territory. The first crew they studied had been all men, and when faced with a family, it seems they just guessed.

They chose my mind to represent the crew, but recreated me in a body which seemed a mixture of my wife and daughter. I have no proof of age, having never lived through to count those days, but I would later guess at maybe six or seven years.

When I learned that I was alone, and that my wife Sarah, and my baby Sophia were gone forever, I wept for what seemed like days. I could not go back to the ship without them and so when the creatures had finally finished extracting what they needed from me, I begged to be set ashore. Then blessed darkness came, and I awoke, washed up, naked, on what turned out to be Flores, the Portuguese Island of Flowers.

Were it not for the continual reminder of my body, I would have counted the whole thing a dream. That and the three-and-a-half years which I later learned had elapsed since that unusual night.

I had nothing and knew no one, but I was taken in by a kind woman without children of her own. She loved me and named me Maris, because I came from the sea. It seems I had inherited the Martian gift for language, and within weeks I spoke the local dialect of Portuguese as if I had lived there my whole life. We were poor, so as soon as I was able I found work to help my new mother, first as a milk maid, then in a factory, rendering blubber into whale oil. I learned to live, and eventually to love, as a woman. I met a handsome sailor and in due time left the island to make a home on the mainland. I had children, two boys and a girl, who I loved with all my heart, and then the time came when the sea took my husband and I became a widow.

I had almost forgotten my prior existence in the love which developed for my new family, but as I grew older, so also grew a strange hunger. I had the desire, no, the need, to replenish whatever arcane power the unseen monsters had used to create this new me, and I came to understand that this required the absorption of a living soul.

This ability, the same that was used on my ship and me, can only be one of those ideas as simple and common to the Martians as man and woman or life and death to us. When they recreated me they gave me this gift, or curse, as a matter of course. Over the years since my rebirth I had practised this unexpected talent, on rocks and plants, insects, birds and even the occasional dog or other animal. Among those who knew me I had gained a reputation as a wise woman, perhaps a witch, who could heal injuries and breathe life back into cherished pets. I would take pains to point out that this was God's work, not mine, but rumours will always spread.

However, the time had come for something more than healing broken limbs. I have always considered myself a good and moral person, and could not face the thought of sacrificing an innocent, so I held off as long as I could. When I could bear it no more I said my goodbyes to my heartbroken children and left to seek somewhere new.

I came upon a small town where a man, crazed in some way or perhaps merely evil, had killed his wife and children and was threatening several others. I knew then, that this would be the path God had set for me. Nobody noticed one old woman among the worried crowd, and by the time I had done my deed his body lay, recreated but lifeless. I could feel the power flowing in me, and left at once to begin my own transformation. A crone entered, and a pretty young maid left.

This was to become my pattern. I would live each life until I found a case so deserving that I would be willing to leave everything behind again. How long I will wander the earth, I do not know. Perhaps, one day, there will be no more wickedness to be avenged, God will have no more need of me, and He will let me finally take my place among the angels.

And you. Yes, you are merely the next in the unending list. I will say that this modern world for all its distractions, has made it easier to find you. You have raped and murdered twenty-three women, and shown no shred of remorse. You were more than happy to make me the twenty-fourth, but that is not to be. Your life will soon be ended, and so, in a sense will mine. The woman I am now will no longer exist, but ending you will be worth it.

Oh yes. My name. Of course I could no longer use the name my parents gave to me, and I have had many names since. But for this God-given duty of mine I have but one name. I have taken the name of the ship whereon I lost my own life and my two loves. It is appropriate, is it not, as I use my gift from the stars.

You may call me Mary Celeste.