Ok, so I guess hey again. If you read my last post you understand that shit sort of “went down” over the summer. If you haven’t read my last post, well I guess the best way to explain it is that shit sort of “went down” over the summer. I’ll link it here, honestly you’ll be pretty lost so I kinda recommend reading it. Long story short, saw a giant thing on the beach, it made weird sounds, and we left.
What I’m writing right now is picking up just about two weeks ago. After about a few days of me and Griffin texting DJ trying to convince him to come with us back to North Carolina, somehow we eventually got through to him. Which, I’ll be honest I wasn’t expecting, like at all. Out of all of us he seemed to be the most freaked out by the whole situation. To be fair we were all pretty shaken up, I didn’t really hide my emotions too well but compared to DJ I was doing just fine. Pretty much everytime we brought up the whole situation he would just sorta shut down. It really fucked with him. But I guess he was also the one who was most intrigued by it. Despite how we all felt about the situation and how terrified we may have been, it was unanimous that we had to go back to confirm what we saw.
The whole trip was pretty short notice, by December 7th we had decided to go and by the 9th we had the house booked. We were even able to get the same house as last time. I mean it wasn’t like we were fighting with other renters to get a hold of it, not too many people are trying to rent a beach house in mid December. Not to mention since it was the off season the price was lower, which meant we were able to afford to just go with the three of us. We all decided to leave the girls behind because: 1) we didn’t want them to get freaked out anymore than they already were, and 2) they never even saw the Sand Walker, so in reality they didn’t really have much to do with it. Not to mention it was unanimously agreed upon that none of us wanted to get the girls involved just in case anything happened.
My Dad dropped me off at Griffin’s house the morning of the 14th. I got there around the same time as DJ and after Griffin’s parents made us some breakfast we were on the road. Griffin pretty much always had a smirk on his face and practically dripped confidence. The smirk was there, the confidence was not. It was almost like he was putting on a facade to hide something. I can only assume that something he was hiding was fear.
DJ had a different method of dealing with his anxiety. His eyes were locked on the road and he remained quiet for the majority of the drive. I wanted to chalk this up to him being focused on the road but I knew he was mentally preparing himself for the days to come. I tried to break the silence by playing some music. At most this helped drown out the awkwardness that had engulfed the car.
After the two hour mark it seemed we had settled in and DJ finally started talking. “So, how’s school been?”. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. Luckily this was all that was needed to get Griffin on a tangent about one of his funny yet somewhat bizarre college stories. This kickstarted what was a relatively normal car ride. Eventually we pulled into the driveway of the house and began to unload the car. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized just how each of us was affected by our encounter this last summer, and how each of us had approached this trip in our own unique ways.
DJ had unloaded his three bags: his backpack, his suitcase, and then a duffle bag filled with guns. Unlike last time where DJ had packed a spikeball net and lacrosse sticks, he must’ve decided that if anything were to happen this time he would be prepared. I shifted my gaze to the left and watched Griffin swing a case of water over one shoulder and his two bags over his other. It was here that I realized his idea of prepping for this trip was to put on as much muscle as possible. Just in the few weeks since Thanksgiving he had grown significantly larger. I on the other hand had spent my time researching different mythology, zoology, and cryptozoology. It seemed we had all played to our strengths to get ready for our return to the beach. DJ with his history of hunting, Griffin with his physicality, and me with my… I don’t know? Being a nerd I guess. You get the point.
We all grabbed our stuff from the car and then just sort of stood there. All of us looked out towards the beach, all of us, presumably, replaying the events of our summer vacation. The atmosphere was almost identical to the last day of our previous trip: cloudy, looked like it was about to rain, and nothing but the sound of waves crashing and seagulls chirping. The sound of the beach ambience was broken when DJ said “C’mon let’s go.” And then made his way inside. I went with shortly after, and then after a few more moments of waiting Griffin followed as well.
We unpacked our things and after settling in we went out trying to get some information from the locals. Unfortunately we didn’t seem to think that almost all of the houses would be empty on account of the majority of them being summer homes. After a little over an hour of going door to door looking for someone, the sun began to set and we settled on going back to the house before we lost daylight entirely. By the time we got back to the house it was about four in the afternoon.
After getting back to the house it was decided that we would go to this diner/barbeque place we passed on the way there for dinner. Since we didn’t have any luck talking to locals in the surrounding houses we figured that this would give us a chance to maybe get some more information. We also used this as an excuse to delay the inevitable of going back onto the beach.
Griffin drove us there and after getting seated we realized just how dead this town really was during the offseason. There were only eight people in the whole restaurant, three of which were us. We ordered and had all decided that it would be best if we wait to ask about the thing we saw over the summer until after getting our food.
Sadly the waitress wanted nothing to do with our questions, I guess she disliked the topic so much it prompted her to bring out the busboy to make sure after finishing our food and paying we got out immediately. So we ate our food, left the cash on the table and were escorted out. Before practically throwing us from the barbeque joint the bus boy, who was more of a bus man(standing about a foot over myself), said a bit of information that actually was of some value.
“Listen, I know what you boys are talkin about. Just drop it. It ain’t worth the trouble you’re gonna get in” I don’t think those were his exact words but this is close enough. The weird thing is he didn’t say this as a threat, he said it as advice. Like he was looking out for us. Like this has happened before.
After returning to the house we contemplated what to do, it was eventually decided that we would ignore the man’s advice and continue on with what we came to do. We rested for only about an hour then as we all sat there in the living room, I watched as the clock went from 8:59 to 9:00. It was officially as dark as it would be getting with only the moon lighting up the beach. I looked up at Griffin and DJ, they were just sitting there staring at the guns sat on the table. I guess I had to be the one to initiate shit now so, against better judgment, I mustered up a “You guys ready?”
They both lifted their heads to look at me, Griffin had a forced smile on his face, DJ was deadpan, ready to go. There were three guns on the table, one Shotgun, one Rifle, and one Handgun. I would go into the specifics but that is genuinely all I know. DJ had given me and Griffin a quick rundown of how to shoot guns in an open field we passed on the drive down to the house, plus he had taken us shooting back in high school when he stole one of his dad’s hunting rifles. DJ didn’t want us going into this without knowing how to use our guns so this little bit of shooting practice we underwent was the best we could do for the time being. DJ took the rifle because he was the best shot out of the three of us, Griffin took the handgun, and I took the Shotgun. Griffin also insisted on bringing a baseball bat that he kept in his backpack as he “wasn’t a huge fan of guns”. Honestly I’m not sure of what he planned to do with this but whatever made him feel better I guess.
It had been discussed previously that we weren’t here to hunt the Sand Walker, but just observe and if we’re lucky get a picture. But the guns were our contingency plan. Along with the guns, we each had flashlights on us and Griffin even had his GoPro strapped to his chest. We all looked at each other and knew it was time to go out there.
The cold air flooded into the house as we opened the door to the porch and looked out onto the beach. This gave Nothing but the sound of waves crashing and wind blowing. The only thing was we couldn’t even tell if it was authentic or if it was being replayed by that thing. And I won’t bore you with the details, because there are none. We were on that beach from nine until midnight and there was nothing. No monster, no weird sounds, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
This, for lack of a better term, pissed us off. It made us feel crazy, made us question what we all had seen. We decided we’d go back to the house and try again the next night. We didn’t get that chance though. Because on the way back as we walked through the sand we heard the roaring of engines. Initially we all thought it was the Sand Walker, until we then saw the light emitting from headlights fastly approaching. We all assumed that these were cops, which prompted DJ to dig his gun license out of his pocket and also had us begin to hide the other two guns in Griffin’s backpack.
As the lights approached we realized these weren’t cops, they were… just regular people. All brandishing guns, we fished the guns out of the bag and stood there waiting. The three ATVs were followed by a dune buggy. In total I counted seven men, all of which were armed. They got within fifteen or so feet of us when they let up on the throttles and the engines died down.
There were a few seconds of a stare down between us and the men, within these seconds there was nothing but silence. This silence was cut off by a familiar voice saying, “Oh these fucking guys again?”
I turned my gaze to face the voice and noticed that the man who was talking was the same busboy from earlier.
“These are the city boys I was talkin about.”
“We’re not from the ci-” Griffin was interrupted by one of the men.
Despite this being a beach town with a population that was made up of relatively normal suburban people, these men were different. These men were rugged, more callused, you could tell just from looking at them. They weren’t just regular people who lived in a beach town, the best way I could describe it is that they were more “outdoorsy” than the rest of us.
“What the hell are you boys doin out here?” One of the men said this as he held his gun. He didn’t hold it towards us, but he was ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
“Don’t tell me you’re tryna hunt this thing?” The busboy spoke up once again. “With a few guns and a baseball bat?”
I decided since it was originally my plan to come back that I should be the one to speak up, “We’re not trying to hunt it, we just wanted to know what we saw.”
The following ten or so minutes were filled with us arguing back and forth, mainly consisting of us three leaving for our own safety. Throughout these arguments we luckily were able to gain some semi-valuable information. This was more than we expected to get when we traveled house to house looking for locals to interview.
There were three main things we gained from this conversation. The first was that every year this thing procreates and that their “litters” can consist of anywhere between ten to twenty “pups”. The second thing we learned was that the older these things get, the more docile and tranquil they become. Only coming out every few nights when no one is around, eating whatever plants are readily available. The third thing we learned was more disturbing, the Sand Walker, while docile in its older age, is incredibly hostile and aggressive in its younger years. While its more mature counterpart is herbivorous, the diet in their earlier years consists of anything they can get their hands on, including animals and in the rare case people. This is where the “hunters” we had run into come into play.
They were equipped with enough guns and bullets to take out a small army. And it became abundantly clear to us it was because they planned on taking out an entire litter of sand walkers. They said they did this to protect their town. Apparently if these things ever got out and began to “wreak havoc” as one of the men put it, the tourism in their town would plummet and the lives of a lot of people would be ruined. So every year they would “take out” the freshest batch of sand walkers.
The three of us stood there, confused and processing what we had just learned. We tried to digest the information but it was too much.
“You had an encounter with the big one?” One of the bigger guys asked, we assumed that he was their leader because of how he positioned himself in the front of the group and how his voice carried a sort of authority with each word he said.
DJ spoke up, “Yeah, it just sort of…” his voice trailed off and he grew silent.
Griffin then took over as he realized DJ was shutting down once again like he always did when the subject was brought up. “It’s a long story. But with you guys hunting, the cops ever get calls about gunfire and shit?”
The leader just sort of chuckled “Well, allow me to introduce myself, I’m Blake. People call me Chief cause, well I’m the Chief.” He pulled out his badge and flashed it to us. I don’t know much about police badges but I’m pretty sure you can’t just acquire one so this dude was legit. “You boys ever shoot before?”
DJ snapped out of it, “Been hunting since I was ten.”
“You two?” the Chief asked.
I’m still unsure of why but Griffin lied to the man and told him we had a decent amount of experience with guns. Despite this, the Chief instructed one of the men to get us off the beach and back to the streets to make sure we were all good. The busboy hopped from his ATV and offered to take us back. But before we could even get a few feet from the group we were distracted by a sound. It sounded like a boat blowing its horn.
We all directed our attention to the ocean, but even with our flashlights, all ten of us were shining them across the horizon. But none of us saw anything. There was an eerie familiarity of this exact feeling, the feeling of looking out to find the sound of a boat but being met with nothing.This instantly sent a chill down my spine.
Then, suddenly, the sound grew, it no longer was just one horn, but like a symphony of shitty trumpets. It seemed almost as if a bunch of car horns were going off at once, like rush hour traffic. Then I remembered the sound we had heard a few months before. It was the tugboat horn.
I froze, I was absolutely paralyzed and stuck staring at Griffin and DJ. They too were frozen with fear. The mental prepping, the gun collecting, the muscle building, the monster research, everything we had all done to get ready for this trip seemed futile. As we were all overtaken with fear.
I was eventually able to turn myself around and I then saw the Chief yelling but I wasn’t fully able to make out the words. It was obvious that the other men were able to hear his orders as four of them promptly lit their flares they had pulled from their bags and threw them into various spots of the beach. This provided enough light for us to see fifteen or so miniature sand walkers closing in on us. I say miniature but these things ranged anywhere between three to seven feet tall. They were slightly faster than the one we encountered over the summer but still relatively slow.
While we stood there staring at them the Chief scrambled to us and rushed us into the dune buggy. He pulled my ear to his mouth and yelled, “Stay up there and get fucking ready!”
Then, all hell broke loose. Each one of them opened fire. The flares resting in the sand grew obsolete because of how much the muzzle fire lit up the beach. The sound of the tug boat horn switched from a low rumble to a more screeching cry. Originally I mistook this as a cry of pain, but I quickly realized that it was actually a battle cry of sorts.
DJ hopped off the buggy and began to do what he could in order to help. Me and Griffin on the other hand were still in total shock. I guess DJs experience with hunting had prepared him for this kind of stuff because he had some sort of instinct neither Griffin nor I possessed.
I still could barely move. My hands shook with fear and my palms were cold with sweat. I turned my head to Griffin whose mouth was hung open and eyes wide with awe. My gaze then shifted to DJ whose face displayed a different kind of expression, his eyes narrowed and his teeth were gritted. He had taken his fear and turned it to rage.
I tried to keep count on how many bullets it took to take just a single one of them down. The most I counted was around fifty. The least I counted was around twenty. There was the rare occasion where one of the “pups” got too close to one of the men and they would all shift their fire to focus the approaching threat. Their synchronized fire and organized demeanor made it obvious that they had done this many times previous to tonight.
After ten minutes of nonstop gunfire it finally began to die down. Once muzzle fire stopped, the beach became illuminated by the low red glow produced by the flares that had now become slightly suppressed by sand that had been kicked up from stray bullets. With a call from the Chief, four of the men then began gathering the bodies and dragging them to form a pile. They did this while the busboy doused them in gasoline.
The chief then walked up to us, and said something to the effect of “Sorry bout that. Didn’t expect them to come out so early. Guess we got them excited.” He laughed as he said this and then lit a cigarette. Then he made some joke about how we had probably never hunted anything like that before. Honestly I don’t know exactly what happened because of how my eardrums were filled with what I can only describe as the roar of war. It was the gunfire, the screaming, the sound of the battle that had just been fought. The strangest part about all this sound was that it somehow managed to be even louder than before, despite us all having been in the center of all of it.
This sound was so powerful that it genuinely forced me to the ground. As I sat in the sand with my back pressed against the buggy I plugged my ears. Even then, I was unable to escape the sound of gunfire. I looked up and realized even the chief was stunned. He winced as he covered his ears. We all turned our gaze to the direction of the sound. That’s when we saw it, the silhouette of the Sand Walker. This was the supposedly “docile” and “peaceful” mature version, who at that moment was charging us. While I still wouldn’t consider its pace fast by any means, it was significantly faster than what I had witnessed over the summer. We could barely make it out but it couldn’t be anything else.
There was a gap in the roar of mimicked gun fire, and in that moment I could hear the Chief mutter the words “What the fuck?”. The cigarette that hung from his mouth dropped to the sand which promptly ignited the trail of gasoline that had unknowingly been building as the busboy too was frozen with fear. Within seconds the pile of corpses erupted in flames. The stench filled our noses and the flames illuminated the beach. With these growing flames we could finally clearly see this goliath charging us. It was maybe twenty yards away but it was gaining speed.
Guns were drawn and tube men quickly opened fire once again. But unlike the pups, this one didn’t go down as quickly. The seven hunters, eight including DJ, were blasting bullets into this thing. One after another, there wasn’t a second where it wasn’t being pierced with someone’s shot. Despite this, it didn’t stop, it hardly even slowed down. Stray fragments of sand and rock sprayed from the Sand Walker with each bullet hit but it seemed to just be filled in with some of the excess it carried upon its body.
I was in such a panic from the gunfire that I hadn’t realized where exactly the Sand Walker was running to. Its path was lined up with the ignited pile of sand walkers, in front of which was DJ who stood firing his rifle from atop an ATV. Griffin must have caught on to this because suddenly he drew his gun from his holster and began rushing to DJ. As he ran he frantically fired into the approaching beast. I quickly realized that the few bullets from Griffin wouldn’t be nearly enough to do any harm. I too tried to run but my feet wouldn’t move. I still was paralyzed with fear and the roar of gunfire was still being matched with the cry of the monster. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t move though because once I finally got myself to move the Sand Walker finally reached them. Griffin stood there clicking his gun that had already run out of ammo. Griffin reached back and in a single motion pulled his bat and swung as hard as he could into the monster. It didn’t even fucking flinch, it hardly acknowleged him. Griffin drew back once again and his face dawned a furious expression of rage. I watched as the Sand Walker haphazardly swung its arm into Griffin which flung him through the air. He flew thirty or so feet where he landed somewhere in the dunes. Griffin’s attempt, while futile, gave DJ enough time to fire his final two shots into its head. These two well placed shots did stun the beast but within seconds DJ too was launched by a single blow from the Sand Walkers arm.
Watching my friends, both of which I consider brothers, both of which were much more equipped to deal with a threat of any scale, being man handled by this thing set something off in me. It was only at this moment that I realized we really could be killed by this thing and that prompted me to open fire. I began shooting, round after round. I can still feel how much the shotgun shot back into me and how much it hurt each time it slammed against my shoulder. But my shots only seemed to get its attention as it then changed its attention from my two friends to me and the rest of the hunters.
The men continued to fire, and so did I. After the butt of the shotgun stopped firing back into my body I realized I had run out of bullets and began stumbling backwards away from the approaching beast. I hadn’t been keeping count but at this point a hundred rounds had to have been fired into it. Luckily, in its frenzy, the Sand Walker had stumbled into the flames which distracted it momentarily and allowed for a few of the men to get a couple clean shots. This must have inflicted enough damage to provoke some sort of fight or flight within it which forced it to retreat. As it then began moving down the beach all of the men stood there, eyes wide and guns following the trail left as it ran.
What I just described may seem like it was a lengthy ordeal, but in reality I imagine it lasted no more than thirty seconds from the time we saw the grown Sand Walker charging us to the time it began to retreat.
As we all stood there Griffin came stumbling from the dunes clutching his stomach in pain. Hanging loosely from his torso was his now shattered GoPro. Two of the hunters ran to DJ and helped him to the dune buggy as he too clutched his torso.
Nobody said anything, it was silent for minutes as we all tried to collect our thoughts on what the fuck had just happened. The smell of the burning corpses was now replaced with the scent of gunpowder.The flares that once lit the beach were now almost completely buried by sand. We could only see what the fire and the lights of the atvs illuminated.
We didn’t wait for the sun to rise. After a few words with the men, we just packed our shit and left. The ride back was quiet, even more so than the ride there. I drove this time as DJ lied in the back seat. Griffin and I let him sleep as he seemed to catch the brunt of the damage. Luckily the only injuries we sustained were a few bruised ribs for DJ, the wind knocked out of Griffin, and the bruise on my shoulder.
I pulled over at a rest stop to grab some drinks and use the bathroom about two hours into the drive. When I entered the bathroom after paying for my water I caught a glimpse of Griffin staring at himself in the mirror. I was able to notice it momentarily during my occasional glance over at him while driving, but it became clear while looking at him in the glare at his reflection that he had been drained of every ounce of his cocky frat boy charisma, and had now displayed a deadpan and defeated expression.
I said the only thing I could think could possibly give him any semblance of hope, “We didn’t die, and we’re not going back.” Griffin gave a half smile, turned, and hugged me. Once we made it back to the car we gave DJ pain meds and some snacks purchased from the rest stop.
We got back to Griffin’s house at 8 AM. And I was back at my home by 8:30. When I got back I stood in my shower for thirty minutes and just ran over what we had just gone through. I was mainly worried about how Griffin and DJ were doing. As I stepped from the shower I looked at my phone and saw a text message from DJ in our group chat. It read Fuck the Sand Walker and FUCK NORTH CAROLINA. This was followed by a text from Griffin We fucked that mf up. Love you boys.
Fuck the Sand Walker and Fuck North Carolina.