The Salted Lullaby

My name is Arindam, and I am forty-two. I live with my aging parents in a small, nondescript town in the southern part of West Bengal, a couple of hours from Kolkata. My mother, always restless for new horizons, had read about a remote coastal village called Chandipur, far from the usual tourist trails. It was supposedly a place of crumbling fishermen’s huts, endless salt flats, and a beach where the sea receded a full mile at low tide, leaving behind a vast, glistening mirror of mud and brine. It sounded perfect to her—a chance to see something truly different.

We set off one sweltering morning in late May, our car laden with supplies. The road grew narrower and more potholed as we left the highway, winding through dense coconut groves and fields of paddy. After a six-hour drive, we reached the village. It was even more desolate than we had imagined: a handful of houses, a single tea stall, and the overwhelming smell of salt and fish. The beach, if one could call it that, was a strange sight. The water was nowhere to be seen; instead, an expanse of dark, wet sand stretched out almost to the horizon, dotted with tiny shells and the occasional stranded crab. Fishermen in loincloths were wading out, pulling their boats, which had been left on the dry sand hours earlier. We found a small guesthouse run by a taciturn old man named Karim, who warned us with a sly grin, ‘Don’t go too far out when the water is gone. The sea can be slow, but it catches up.’ My mother laughed it off, already planning to walk out as far as possible.

We spent the first day exploring the mudflats. It was an eerie sensation, standing where the ocean had been, the ground soft and yielding underfoot. My father, normally quiet, remarked on how the horizon seemed to curve differently, as if the earth itself was breathing. That night, I couldn’t sleep. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the distant, rhythmic hiss of the waves, which seemed to be trying to whisper something. I got up and walked to the window. The moon was full, casting a silver light on the wet sand, and I saw something odd: a trail of footprints leading from the water’s edge straight towards our guesthouse, but the footprints were far too large and oddly shaped, with long, thin toes that splayed out like a star.

On the second day, my mother insisted on walking out to a spot where a lone fishing boat was beached, almost at the low-tide line. We packed a picnic and set out, the sun blazing above. The walk was longer than it looked, and the sand shimmered with heat mirages. As we approached the boat, we saw that its hull was covered in strange, circular carvings, like a map of some ocean depth. My father traced them with his finger and said, ‘These are old sea signs, used by pirates and fishermen to mark dangerous currents. But this one here, it’s not for currents. It’s for something else.’ He pointed to a symbol that looked like a spiral with a dot in the center. ‘This is a symbol for a summoning, used in some coastal rituals. I read about it once in an old book.’ My mother just laughed and said, ‘Don’t be superstitious, dear. Let’s eat.’

As we sat there, the tide began to come in. It was not a gentle advance; it was a slow, deliberate creep, like a predator stalking its prey. We started walking back, but the sand under our feet had become quicksand-like, sucking at our shoes. My mother stumbled, and I caught her. That’s when I felt it—a vibration through the sand, deep and resonant, like a giant’s heartbeat. The water, which was still a hundred meters away, suddenly surged forward, covering the sand in a rushing sheet, reaching our ankles. We hurried, but the water kept pace, and soon it was at our knees. The guesthouse seemed impossibly far away. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the water stopped, receding as if something had called it back. We stood there, soaked, and I looked back at the boat. A figure was standing beside it, a tall, thin silhouette with long arms that hung nearly to its knees, and its head was tilted, as if watching us. Before I could blink, it was gone.

That night, my mother had a fever and began to speak in a language none of us understood, her voice taking on a deep, guttural tone. Karim, the guesthouse owner, came in when he heard the commotion. His face went pale when he saw my mother. He said, ‘She has been marked. The sea took her name. You must leave now, tonight, or she will be taken.’ I was frightened, but my father was skeptical, thinking it was just heatstroke. But as we argued, my mother sat up in bed, her eyes open but black as ink. She pointed a trembling finger at the window and said, in a voice that was not hers, ‘The Lullaby calls. You will all listen.’ The window rattled, and outside, the sound of the waves changed. It became a soft, crooning melody, a song that seemed to wrap around our minds, soothing and terrible at the same time. I felt my muscles relax against my will. My father’s eyes glazed over. The next thing I knew, we were walking out of the guesthouse, barefoot, our pajamas sticking to our bodies with sweat, heading towards the shore.

The moon was high, and the tide was out, exposing the vast sand flats. The water was so far away it was invisible. In the distance, we could see the lone fishing boat, and beside it, the figure. As we got closer, we saw that it was not a man but a creature of water and salt, its form shifting and shimmering. It had a face that was almost human, but with no features except a wide, lipless mouth that stretched from ear to ear. It began to hum, and the melody intensified. My mother walked ahead, her arms outstretched. I tried to scream, to stop her, but my body was on a leash. The creature’s mouth opened, and a sound like a thousand waves crashing filled the air. My mother stepped into the sea, and the water surged up to meet her, wrapping around her like a shroud. Then, with a final, triumphant chord, the sea swallowed her whole, and the water receded, leaving nothing but wet sand.

I woke up on the shore at dawn, my father beside me, both of us shivering and covered in salt. The guesthouse was gone—there was no sign of it, no trace of the village. Only the endless sand and the distant sea. My mother was never found. We eventually made our way back to civilization, but we are no longer the same. Sometimes, at night, I hear that melody, and I know that the sea has not forgotten us. It took my mother, but it left us a parting gift: a craving for salt, and the knowledge that there are places where the sea’s lullaby is not a song of comfort, but a call to the deep. I have sworn never to travel again, but the salt is in my blood now, and I know, one day, I will have to answer it.