Chapter 478

The salt spray stung Kai's face, a familiar bite he'd grown accustomed to. The lineup at Waimea Bay was unusually sparse, a strange sight for a late July morning. He paddled out, the turquoise water a deceptive canvas hiding the darkness below.

Usually, the bay was teeming with other surfers, a friendly rivalry filling the air. Today, it was as if the ocean itself held its breath.

The first absence had been dismissed as a late start. Then two more, seasoned wave riders, didn't return. There were murmurs at the shore, but most locals simply shook their heads, a superstitious fear playing out in their eyes.

It was "the bay" they said, like the place itself held malevolence. Kai tried to remain rational, pushing away the unease that threatened to grip his chest.

He glanced back at the shore, the palm trees like silent sentinels. He noticed Keanu wasn't there. They always went to this spot together.

Kai began to think he had to find Keanu after surfing his waves, maybe something held him up. He began to bob gently with the sea, his board an extension of his thoughts. He was determined not to let a little unusual emptiness get to him.

He caught his first wave; a six-footer rolling in smoothly. He rose to his feet, the water rushing around him, an invigorating energy as it surged and crashed and subsided back.

But something was not correct with the wave. A cold dread sunk in his stomach. The usual sounds of the water felt oddly silent like the bay had just given up its music, and he could hear no one around him.

Kai continued on his ride, feeling his senses peak. His eyes darted to every inch of the water looking for movement or anything unusual. It felt like the ocean was holding its breath and expecting some sort of violence.

When his ride came to an end, he felt an eerie calmness sweep through him like a blanket and the feeling settled with every movement he made through the water as he bobbed gently like a cork.

The silence pressed in, a suffocating presence that seemed to amplify every creak of his board. He spun around and looked to the empty expanse, then at the sparse people by the beach.

Every action he made felt slow as if the seconds moved as molasses through a narrow crack. Something in the bay felt altered. There was a hollow sensation pressing down.

He began to paddle to the right of the bay to search the outer perimeter. Nothing. All was empty.

As if he was completely alone on this large piece of the ocean. There were usually birds cawing or screeching at each other above him but they were not present now.

It felt like the entire natural life of this particular beach gave out at once, as if God snapped his fingers and shut off life at the switch, and it scared him.

The sky above had begun to adopt an odd shade of gray as if it were going to rain, but not the kind he knew. A rain from the underworld was more of a feeling, a thought that brought with it a very unnatural sensation.

The very fibers of him trembled as if a cold wind had gone directly through his soul. It all felt so incorrect, all felt so bad.

Kai shivered involuntarily despite the warm air, a chill that burrowed deep beneath his skin. He called out Keanu's name, but his own voice seemed to disappear, swallowed by the immense space.

There was a presence surrounding him, not just a feeling, something he was unsure was ever there. He felt eyes, and felt his own pupils begin to shake and roll in fear.

His breathing turned rapid. Kai took off into the other side of the bay to the far left in a fast paddle; searching frantically now, anything, to find an answer.

He did not care for waves anymore, for sport, for fun. All he cared about was leaving now, as far away from this space. The presence grew stronger, but also now so palpable it was now making his physical body struggle with fatigue.

He passed by his familiar point of break and looked over his shoulder, the shoreline a smudge in the distance now. The area beyond the surf felt even more profound than usual; and so heavy.

He was no longer looking for Keanu but now merely attempting to not succumb to this awful feeling of doom that settled in the bay. Kai wanted answers and an escape all at the same time.

A dark shape emerged beneath his board; vast and imposing, moving slowly, and it sent a bolt of pure terror through him. It was larger than any creature he'd seen and as it grew closer, his blood ran cold, an unshakeable, deep-seated chill setting into the bone.

Its outline formed what seemed like something from his worst nightmares. Panic clawed at his throat, the sight causing a primal scream that was swallowed instantly by the dense, silent air.

He tried to paddle but his body seemed numb to his commands. He pushed and strained at each oar, but the water acted like glue to his board, an unstoppable suction as he watched the leviathan begin to surface towards him and from it, and from it.. a collection of smaller hands rose.

These hands seemed so strange; slender and pale and with pointed, claw-like nails and no body at all. And then the full scale of the monstrous presence showed itself to him; and that was when his true fear finally settled in, for Kai had just witnessed a dark sea deity he had only ever thought about in myth.

The deity had now appeared, hungry and ready.

He closed his eyes tight but this seemed to do nothing as his pupils felt like they were open against their will as his eyelids were translucent now, and he was no longer able to blink at all. He could hear himself screaming, but all sound was completely swallowed as he had expected.

This was no longer real but now a new place, an interlude in existence, and for Kai, a horrifying eternity.

He wanted to paddle away from this, his entire body wanted to swim as fast as he could away from this, yet, it was clear he could not. He now understood fully what others have met, for this presence seemed to possess time and place, bending everything, and nothing seemed capable of stopping it.

The hands crept closer, their movements like spiders on water as they now grabbed at his board.

His mind screamed as they attached to the board with impossible strength as it began to sink and drag him deeper to a dark that only nightmares have conjured. He fought, kicking and flailing at nothing as they sunk and brought him down to meet its dark maker.

But no human was going to resist such a presence, this was always planned for him; from before, he had existed to meet this moment and be apart of its strange existence.

The world turned to a dull green, then pitch-black as Kai plunged into the deep, his desperate struggles feeling small. He felt his legs, his chest, his entire form pulled down, farther and farther down he went, his lungs burning, and then he had met the main entity.

Kai found himself directly beneath the monster now, looking up to meet a mass that covered what appeared to be the horizon line beneath the sea.

The pressure crushed his eardrums and something within him ripped as he could not hold the air from his lungs and a large collection of pale creatures surrounded him. He no longer knew which was the sea or which was himself.

And then it went cold; so incredibly, intensely cold; for time itself had been suspended here in this darkness and the dark deity had all the time.

He met eyes so incredibly dark, so impossibly large, and that was when the real pain set in. For Kai had understood; what happened here; how and when it had happened, what his purpose was; his being pulled by those wretched hands.

Every moment and second had now converged as one grand story of a brutal end, to meet those dreadful dark eyes.

The smaller pale hands crept onto him and began to crawl throughout his entire being as they picked and tore away every aspect that once held Kai's human soul; and there, beneath the monstrous dark presence he gave up. He no longer wanted to resist or even breathe.

He wanted it all to end but did it? Could it end? That was his final true thought.

It seemed every thought he ever had, every memory, every interaction, was all replaying in his mind in that last moment of a life; he watched a collage of his family's faces, old loves he once knew, times where his laughter could have lit the night and moments where sadness clung so deeply to the core of his person.

They had become just echoes in the sea now.

He had no idea that others had met a similar ending before him; many had before, for this creature had an entire society beneath this space of dark abyss, of stolen, lost and terrified souls. Kai's existence would now take a new and vile form; to torment those to come.

It was his place and now was forever sealed within him. He would meet others of a similar end.

Days turned to weeks, the bay continued to present an eerily calmness. There were a few who had noticed; of course, those who always ask the wrong questions.

They attempted to dive, to search, to make something that was clearly there, to now not exist. They returned empty handed, for there is no human power able to grasp something beyond that.

They too had become part of it; forever in a constant loop; now no longer existing. They had to wait for more.

More had to be consumed. There would never be a limit.

Time itself did not matter for the darkness itself had become an abyss without end, just more lost souls and many more victims for this grand being to consume for eons to come. The ocean held its secret, deep beneath its cold surface and Kai, among many others, would forever be a part of the monstrous tale.

He was no longer. They never are. And the cycle repeats.