The sound of running footsteps could barely be heard on the beach, not while the crashing waves were right next to him. Khamza had one job, to look after the tourist and make sure her visit to Plyazh Marrakesh went without a hitch. This woman, Nona, had an odd fascination with an old Soviet device, The Caspian Sea Monster. She had many other odd quirks about her, but this one prevailed over most. She must’ve come to see it be towed from the depths, but according to the Russians in town, it wouldn’t happen for another 6 months. Was he really supposed to believe that the tourist would stay that long?
“Come on, Nona, where have you gone?” He asked himself. It was already late into the evening, he knew he should’ve kept a closer eye on her, and yet, here he was, searching helplessly on a dark beach, with an even darker sea beside him. It was no more than a few minutes later that he spotted a light and his heart flicked with a bit of hope. He ran to it, praying that he would run into Nona, and to his delight, his prayers were answered. She was seen flickering a light into the sea. He ran at full speed to catch up with her.
“Nona! What the hell are you doing?!” He asked. He was indignant at that point, his frustration at her absence clear as day. Nona didn’t respond, flashing her light in a strange rhythmic pattern into the ocean.
“Nona! I asked-!” His angry words were cut short a brief moment later, the moment he stared into her eyes. There was not an ounce of light there, only a void of ever-expanding darkness. The iris, the sclera, and both eyes were pools of darkness that seemed to match the black sea shore before them. Nona stopped flashing the light and slowly walked toward him. Khamza slowly backed away until tripping on the ground and fell backward. Nona towered over him, looking down with her vacant eyes.
“I am calling…” She simply said before going back to flashing her light. Khamza lay there, confused by what he had just heard, but heard a sound coming from the ocean, one that overpowered the rocking waves. It was a large splash, but it was so dark that he couldn’t tell what made the splash. He looked and saw Nona continuing to flash the light, and decided to follow the beam into the darkness. For the briefest of moments, he saw something in the flashing lights, a tentacle, or was it an arm, a leg, a wing, a hoof? He couldn’t tell, but he somehow knew deep within, that this thing, this illusionary amalgam or parts, that’s who Nona was calling out to.
Khamza knew he had to do something before Nona brought this thing to shore. He got up and ran to her, attempting to wrestle the flashlight out of her hands. He got it out of her hands with almost no resistance at all, but now that he held it in his hands, he felt an extreme heaviness course through him. The flashlight felt like it weighed a ton in his hands, and this force moved from his arms to his torso, then to his legs, and down to his feet, pulling him down. Nona simply stared, her voided eyes meeting his. It felt like blankets of darkness were being put on top of one another. The night, the sea, and Nona’s eyes drew him deeper into the layers of darkness that were pulling him in.
“Use the light,” Nona started, “Call him. Call our lord.”
“Who… who are you talking about?” Khamza managed to choke out fearfully.
“The Caspian… The lord of these waves many years ago… We must free him, bring him more to join our kingdom below.”
Khamza didn’t know what to think of this information. “The Caspian?” Is that what the sea was named after? He had always thought they were a group of people. Suddenly, a chorus of voices could be heard, and as Khamza looked once again to the ocean, he saw the amalgamated forms sway in the water, beckoning Khamza and Nona to the sea. Khamza began to flicker the light, just as Nona did. They started to walk toward the voices, toward the arms and tentacles in the ocean, toward the sea, toward The Caspian.
The following morning, another man walked along the shoreline and saw something that made his jaw drop. After years of being trapped in the sea, the Caspian Sea Monster was free from its watery restraints, resting on shore once again as it did 40 years ago. The man went to the Russians stationed in the town who came to get the aircraft, and after a few days, it was returning to Russia once again. While everything went smoothly from there on, they couldn’t help but hear something, a voice of some sort.
“He will return,” some witnesses claimed to hear. The government, not even the local authorities took it too seriously. That was until one day, a body washed up on the shore. When they went to check on the stranger’s eyes, they were as black as the ocean in the night.
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