White Beach Part 3

In the morning I awoke and went to look more closely at the tree trunk at the centre of the clearing. It towered above me and its fish eye stared blankly at me. The symbols carved into it were strange. I hadn’t and still haven’t seen anything like them despite my later research into ancient languages and writing systems. They were entirely alien looking. Squiggles and lines and curves. One symbol did seem to stand out at me though and was oft repeated on its scarred surface. It finally dawned on me what it was. As soon as I recognised it I felt bile rise in my gullet and retched. I’ve included a sketch of it.


It was clearly an eye. An eye that had come to me in a dream. An eye that orbited a far off blue star. It was all too much. It was all so strange and terrible I had to get away from it. I stumbled away from the clearing and through a partial break in the grass. I stumbled and pushed my way through until the grasses started to peter out. They opened and I was confronted by the White Beach. I had fled from one terror to another and it felt as though it was a far greater terror that I now had before me. The beach was white with bones. Deer bones, fish bones, bird bones, turtle bones, shells, other bones, strange bones, broken bones, bleached old bones, pink new bones. The beach was made of millions upon millions of bones. Dark birds that could have been a species of crow, hopped from skull, to rib cage, to hip bone, pecking at dried, mummified flesh and congealed pools of what looked to be fat and fur. I fell to my knees and the words of the castaway washed through my head.

“They try to draw it here. They have tried for so long.”
“Their efforts are plain to see on the beach. So many millions of years have they hunted and sacrificed.”

What monsters could have created such a place? What dark souls had birthed such a landscape? A landscape of death, fringing a lake of such depth the water was like midnight even in the morning sunlight. I looked out across it and felt the burn of my throat. I hadn’t drank anything since the climb yesterday and my retching had scalded me. I knew I had to go to the lake which meant crossing that field of decay. I retched again but nothing was produced. I began to walk. I tripped on femurs and my boots slipped off of smoothed craniums. I snapped delicate ribs and crushed vertebrae. I came to the lake and scooped water up with my hands. Like the stream the water was pure and had a taste utterly sublime.

What happened next was very disturbing to me. I continued to drink as the sun rose to midday and… I’ve been checked now by medical professionals and therapists and I don’t believe I suffered lasting damage but I began to… fade… in and out as I sat on the beach. I could feel my reason coming and going. I didn’t lose consciousness I seemed to lose… some part of me. Like older parts of my brain rose to the surface, those animal parts, parts repressed and dragged down by civilization and our evolution. I’ve tried to think what the cause could be, whether it was the stress of my situation making me lose my mind, poisoning from the water which must have been contaminated by the bones or perhaps something… I have no definite answers. What I remember was that for something around 3 or 4 hours I drank from the lake and, my hunger now at such a fever pitch I was ravenous, hunted the dark birds that stalked the beach. I used bones. I threw them and knocked the birds senseless. I would grab them and then in those moments I felt most out of control I would grip their wings in each of my hands and tear them in half. I would tear and watch as their innards fell to my feet and then I would gnaw on their bodies. A great hunger had awoken and I had to quell that ache inside me. I don’t know how many birds I killed this way. I remember holding aloft a skull and taking aim at one of those dumb birds that had no fear of humans and had idled up to feast on one of its compatriots when I happened to look at the skull in my hand.

My blood was ice. It was a human skull. The eye sockets were locked with mine. The lower jaw was missing giving it a half-finished look. It stared dumbly at me and I felt the… poison of that place leave me as I regained my reason. The poison was replaced by fear. There were monsters in the lake. They made sacrifices to a god other-worldly. These ideas seemed cemented fact in my mind. No human being could have created such a place. This was not the work of one wrinkled castaway. A place where death stretched a mile or more in every direction and who knows how deep. It was beginning to get dark and I was on the White Beach. The true danger of my situation came and hit me like a runaway train. I had to hide. I had to hide from them. I ran from the beach and back to the clearing. I was no safer there. It was obviously where they worshipped their god, Yag-Ropth. Their holy site. I had to find somewhere where I wouldn’t be spotted and my salvation came in a large tree out of the clearing by around 10 meters. I climbed up it as the Sun set and lashed myself to a tree branch using my belt. I would have to try and rest there and pray that, whatever the creatures were, they wouldn’t find me high up in the tree.

As I sat panting in the tree, watching the night unfold around me, I managed to somewhat pull myself together. I took deep breaths and tried to shake the fogginess and fear from my mind. I took stock of my surroundings. I was around half-way up the tree, a good 6 meters. I still had the flare gun and rounds. I had a pretty good view of the surrounding grasses and the clearing was just to the left of me, the beach to my right, with my back against the trunk. These ideas of strange monsters and strange gods were losing their reality. I looked up at the night sky and didn’t see any gigantic blue suns. I almost laughed. I had only been on the island for three days and two nights and I had already started to lose it. It seems strange to think that now as well. I was so quick to lose myself. It wasn’t surprising the other castaway was talking of gods and monsters; he must have been alone for so long. Then again, I don’t think it was just the time and the isolation. I still think there is something about that place that… does things to a person’s mind. Perhaps the epicentre is that beach of bones; where it’s strongest, but I can’t help but feel that that whole island is cursed to some degree. I cannot allow it to be found, not because of me at any rate.

But to return again to what happened. I began to doze but again I slept restlessly. I woke up, sometime in the night, to the sound of splashing coming from the lake. Clouds had rolled over so there wasn’t even moonlight to see by. The splashing seemed to come from along the whole edge of the lake. It sounded to my ears, too irregular to be waves. Next I heard the faint crunch and rattle of things moving on the bone beach. Ideas of ancient monsters started to flood back to me. The crunching got closer and then was replaced by the swish of grass and a soft padding along the bare earth of the track. My heart was leaping out of my chest as they passed just under the branch I was strapped to. It was that dark that I couldn’t see what was moving beneath me but I could see that they were large shapes. They were moving towards the clearing.