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Kyle charged down the beach with his cell phone and stick held out in front of him. Katie ran at his heels, trying to angle her flashlight ahead of him. Pulling up the rear, Bryan lifted his rock with both hands and held it in front of his chest, ready to throw it at anything that drew near.
They followed the trail in the sand for fifty yards where it abruptly ended, trampled by many tracks the same size as the footprints they’d been following. Droplets of blood were splattered on the beach.
“That’s not good,” Bryan said, staring at the blood. His heart, already pounding away in his chest, sped up even further, his head throbbing under the stress.
Katie raised her light, aiming it down the same direction the trail had been moving. Several shapes stood in a rough circle further down the beach, looking down at something unseen between them. They appeared humanoid, though their limbs were too long, their necks too short, and their torsos pale and emaciated.
When the light fell upon their ashy skin, they screeched in fury and pain, whirling into an animal-like crouch. Their mouths popped open as they hunched down, their long, gangly hands digging into the sand. Rows of short, sharp teeth lined their maws, reminding Bryan once again of a shark.
“Is that what came after us in the hidden library in the church?” Bryan asked, his voice so low that he could barely hear himself.
“I think so,” Katie replied softly. “Except now we’re seeing their entire form. Apparently, the gate wasn’t fully opened when we saw them earlier. I think.”
Kyle pulled his weapon back, his arm at a ninety-degree angle like a baseball player stepping to the plate with a bat. “Whatever they are, they took Ben, and I plan on making them pay.” He started down the beach, his stride calculating, but not fearful. “It’s time to die mother fuckers.”
Taking a deep breath, Bryan raised the stone over his head and followed his friend. He prayed for the second time that night, hoping that he wasn’t marching to his death. Katie walked by his right side, the flashlight her only weapon. She held the beam on the small group of creatures, flooding their bodies with light, exposing more of their inhuman features.
Like the worm monster in the church, they had no eyes or neck. Their heads appeared fused at the shoulders, unable to turn without their upper bodies rotating. Their mouths opened even further back, looking as if they were about to unhinge. They threw sand behind them with their lanky hands, like a bull preparing to charge.
As Katie moved closer, the light seemed to agitate them more; they hissed in what Bryan hoped was pain. Slowly they withdrew, some trying to shield themselves behind others as they stepped backward. One stood in front of the group, its mouth chomping over and over as it continued throwing sand behind itself at a furious pace. Its shoulders seemed slightly broader than the rest and its arms a little more striated.
“So you’re the alpha, aren’t you, you chicken shit. Stop throwing sand like a little girl and step up,” Kyle said, spitting the words out. “Let’s see you take on someone that isn’t a defenseless nerd.”
“Dude, let’s not antagonize the monster!” Bryan never took his eyes from the beast in front of him, but tried to look at Kyle with his peripheral vision. He knew that Kyle was worked up, but couldn’t believe that he seemed ready to attack an alien creature with a stick.
“I happen to agree with Bryan. Perhaps we can—”
It leapt at them, clearing the fifteen feet between them in one jump.
Kyle was ready for it, and swung the thick branch like a lumberjack, breaking it over the skull of the monster. It tumbled forward, its momentum thrown off by the blow, and crashed into Kyle, knocking him back. Their bodies rolled over each other, shoving Bryan aside before he could react.
Katie moved in, bringing the bright light within a few feet of the creature as it rolled on top of Kyle, pinning him in place. Its skin darkened where the light touched it, searing under its intensity. The beast threw its head back, screeching in agony before gnashing its teeth at Kyle’s face.
He moved his head to the side, barely evading the chomping jaws. It pulled back and prepared to strike again, drool arcing through the air from the movement.
Bryan recovered quickly, lifting the heavy rock above his right shoulder and thrust the pointed edge into the thing’s temple. He felt the reverberation travel up his arm, jarring the rock from his hands. It fell onto Kyle’s stomach, pushing the air form his body in an audible whoosh.
The creature fell over, disoriented from the strike. Black liquid oozed from a gash that had been opened. It flopped on the ground, trying to push itself to its feet before falling again, its equilibrium thrown off.
Scrambling for the rock, Bryan pried it from Kyle’s hands and slammed it onto the back of the beast’s head with all of his might. A sickening crack filled the air as its skull took on a misshapen appearance, caving in at the point of impact.
Without another sound, the creature fell to the sand, its body twitching once before lying still. Bryan picked up the rock again and held it ready, prepared to deliver another blow. A putrid smell wafted up from the corpse, catching his breath for a second before he turned his head away, trying not to retch.
Katie came up beside him, rapidly moving the flashlight from the seemingly dead body, to the group of things further down the beach. They had moved closer during the fight, but had stopped when their leader had fallen. Now they stood in place, pawing at the sand and snarling.
Bryan noticed his hands had touched the black ichor that had come from the beast as he held the rock. Its viscous texture and rank stench made his eyes water. He held it at arm’s length, trying to keep the smell as far away as possible, but not wanting to drop the only effective weapon they had.
He tried to clear his thoughts, needing to concentrate on the pack of ungodly creatures standing only a few yards away.
“What do we do about them?” he asked Katie. He had just killed something that no one else had ever seen, yet he still found himself deferring to her for answers.
“I think my curiosity is satisfied,” she said. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“I didn’t come down here to satisfy your curiosity – I came here to find Ben.” Kyle struggled to his feet, holding a hand to his stomach where the rock had fallen on him. He bent down and lifted one of the broken pieces of his stick, holding it by his side.
Katie kicked at the creature on the ground, trying to determine if it was truly dead. Another blow to the ribs produced no result and she trained her flashlight on the group further down the beach. They recoiled as the light hit their pale skin, screeching as they shrank away.
One of them tripped over something on the ground behind it, and rolled backward head over heels, before popping back to its feet. It bent down and struck the object it had fallen over, the blow sounding like a celery stalk snapping.
Kyle fished his cell phone from the sand and shook several grains free. He held it out in front of himself and marched down the beach, showing no fear. “What is that?”
Katie remained silent, but followed his lead, pointing her flashlight at the creature as it slapped at the object again. She gasped as they drew near, holding her free hand to her mouth, but not averting her eyes.
Bryan recognized Ben’s clothes as he came up beside Kyle. The angry beast stopped striking Ben’s dead body and recoiled away from the light, snarling as it went. Blood covered his shirt, dark and thick around his collar, where his neck still seeped. His head was missing.
“Goddamn it,” Kyle said. He stood in front of the body and stared down at it, his shoulders slumped, his stick dangling from his hand. “No one deserves this.”
“They took his head.” Bryan looked up from the corpse at the murderers as they continued their retreat. He wanted to vomit. The site of the headless body before him seemed too much to bear. His vision wavered as he stood there.
That was when he saw the water behind them. Katie’s light bounced off its still surface, reflecting further into the emptiness above it. No waves crashed on the shore. Even with the beach under their feet, Bryan hadn’t expected to find such a massive body of water without the typical sights or sounds that accompanied them.
He grabbed the end of Katie’s flashlight and pointed it left and right, inspecting the edge of the beach. Though they couldn’t see too far into the darkness, Bryan felt that they were staring at an enormous body of water, obviously an ocean by the smell of it.
One of the creatures bent down and lifted something from the sand, holding whatever it was out in front of its body. Bryan couldn’t stop himself from dry heaving when he realized what it was.
“Oh my God – that’s Ben’s head,” Katie said, her voice trembling.
“You sons of bitches!” Kyle charged them, his stilted movement betraying his rage.
The creatures fled, running down the beach to their left; leaving the one holding Ben’s severed head by itself. With a guttural growl it heaved the head into the ocean, before chasing after its pack.
Kyle stopped at the edge of the sand, watching as the monsters sprinted away at a pace he knew he couldn’t match. Bryan and Katie ran up beside him, eyeing the new ripples in the water. They all just stood there, trying not to burst into tears.
Bryan felt his feet step on something hard, like a slab of concrete or an oddly flat rock. He grabbed Katie’s light again and shined it at his feet. He stood upon a four-foot circle of stone, with the same symbols carved into it that they found underneath the altar in the church.
“Uh, guys, you might want to check this out.” He stepped off the engraving and stared at it in disbelief. “What did you say this stood for, Leviathan?”
“Oh shit,” Kyle said, looking down at it. “Who put this here?”
“It’s called the Sigil of Baphomet. As you recall, the symbols at all five points of the star are Hebrew letters that translate into Leviathan.” She bent down and ran her hands over the surface of the stone. “This appears to be incredibly old. How it got here, or who put it there... I have no idea.”
The light from Kyle’s cell phone reflected back to them from more ripples in the water. These were significantly larger than the ones caused by Ben’s head, and they came slower as if from further away. Bryan looked up from the stone, trying to see over the water and into the darkness beyond.
“I think there’s something out there.”
More ripples came: faster, larger, lolling onto the shore. They increased in size, lapping onto the beach, pulling the sand back into the water.
“What the hell?” Kyle asked.
All three of them took instinctive steps backwards. Bryan wondered what other horrors they could possibly see next. He wasn’t sure his mind could take much more. The stench that had been surrounding them all night intensified, causing tears to flow once again. The source of that awful smell drew near.
Katie held her light above her head, trying to get the beam shining at a downward angle as far out as possible. The dark water roiled heavily the further they looked, bubbling and churning out into the darkness.
“This can’t be good,” Bryan said, walking backward up the beach. “I don’t think I want to see what’s causing that.”
An enormous tentacle breached the surface, rising so high that they quickly lost track of its tip. Water splashed from its dark, slimy skin, splashing back to the ocean. Barbs ran down the length of its underside, wobbling in the air. In an instant it came crashing down across the top of the water, spraying the dark liquid in its wake.
The end of the tentacle landed on the beach, only a dozen feet from where they stood. Its tip splayed open, the skin separating to reveal a circular mouth, lined with small, pencil-length teeth. The flesh that had covered the mouth flapped as they moved around, globs of unknown goo dripping from them.
Bryan’s mouth dropped open, the rock falling from his hands, as he watched the tentacle slide back into the water. Its large girth, easily three feet wide, cut a deep swath through the beach, the mouth chomping at bits of sand as it went.
He struggled to move his limbs, knowing he should run with everything he had in the opposite direction, but felt planted in place. If one appendage could be that large, what could it possibly be connected to? He heard a low groan and realized after several long seconds that the sound came from him.
Dozens of tentacles exploded from the surface, showering them with water. Some were so thick and long that Bryan thought they looked like the trees in the forest they had come through.
“Run!” Kyle turned and sprinted up the beach, pulling at Bryan’s shoulder as he went.
Katie was already ahead of him, struggling to run through the sand. “Bryan, run!”
Bryan tried to spin as Kyle pulled him, but his feet tangled and he fell on his side. He rolled to his back and shuffled backward using his hands and his feet. With Katie running up the beach with her light, he was enveloped in darkness as he tried to look back at the monstrosity emerging from the ocean.
As he continued backpedaling, his left hand fell into a warm liquid, his butt brushing against something solid. After a moment he realized he’d run into Ben’s body, his hand dipping into the blood pooling by his shredded neck. He started screaming.
How long he sat there, against the headless body of an arrogant equipment technician, he didn’t know. It felt like ages, but was probably closer to seconds. Drops of water sprinkled all around him, and the sounds of waves crashing grew incredibly loud. The ground shook with massive tremors, some so hard they lifted him from the sand.
He could see the tentacles then, slamming against the ground and retracting into the water, dragging massive amounts of sand with them. More rained down, higher up on the shore each time, pulling whatever nightmare they were attached to closer to land. Bryan looked over his shoulder to see Katie running toward him with Kyle trailing behind her.
She aimed her light at the massive beast emerging from the ocean as she ran. Bryan stirred to his feet, glancing back at the ocean as he did. Through the cascading water, he could make out an enormous shape emerging from the surface.
What he saw stretched his mind to its outer limits.