That evening, I could not sleep. I was sharing a room with three male students from our traveling party of students. The alcohol we had drank up until two o'clock in the morning had worked its magic and two of them were sound asleep. Karanja, whom I had spent most of the afternoon with, looking for Ekime, lay wide-eyed on his back. Unknown to us, our thoughts were similar. We both wondered about Ekime and the mysteries of the dam. It was at 4 a.m that he finally spoke. "What do you think happened to Ekime? Do you think the two Arabs had anything to do with his disappearance?" he asked.
We mulled over that idea for a few moments before our thoughts were cut short by a shrill sound. It was the sound from the water that Ekime had described many years before. Of all the nights it had to be this one! The old woman Nasiche had told us that the sound only came once in a few months. The sound was just as loud and shrill as Ekime had described it. It was "like an orchestra of a million crickets." As we listened to the sound, scared stiff, my phone started ringing and made me jump in fright. It was Wacuka. "Are you guys listening to that?" she quizzed. "Yes." We agreed to meet at the foyer of the hotel in five minutes.
Wacuka was tip-toeing as she wrapped a long lesso around her shoulders to keep the chill out. A smiling Karanja teased her that she looked like a teenage girl trying to return to her parents house unnoticed after an illegal night out at her boyfriend's place. We followed the shrill sound to the dam, using a foot path that cut across undulating mounds of earth next to the water. Like most dams, this one comprised of a bell-bottomed wall on top of which was a road. Behind the wall, the lake of trapped water spread for several miles, reflecting the stars of the night in spectacular fashion.
The shrill was becoming louder as we approached the banks of the lake. Suddenly, a blue beam of light circled the surface of the water but did not break. It was not visible above the water. It appeared trapped by the surface tension of the water. What we were looking at defied the laws of physics. We slithered among the reeds to hide, getting ourselves muddy in the process.
Across the water, we could see a small watercraft emerge from the depths, seemingly capsized. It cut the surface of the water hull-first before flipping quickly upright and settling on the surface. It purring softly. Karanja lifted his head to look at its contents but I pulled him down quickly, afraid someone would see us. My heart raced as I tried to fathom what we were experiencing. The boat-like craft approached the edge of the water and anchored there. I could see that there were two mounds covered in blue cloth in the craft. As I adjusted my position for a better view, I realized that the two mounds were two men dressed in blue cloth. They sat upright in concert before standing up and walking across the reeds and disappearing into the night. I could tell that they were military men based on the synchronous movements they made. Their whole demeanor was also business-like.
The three of us lay speechless among the reeds, wet and muddy. I could hear Wachuka breathing heavily and everything about Karanja's silence said that he regretted being there. After a few moments of scared murmurs and arguments, we stood up and approached the strange water craft. We decided that we had come too far to walk away from whatever the thing was. Details of the craft became clearer as we approached it. It was about a meter wide and three meters long. At the bow, it had a console with engravings in place of buttons. The engravings reminded me of hieroglyphics and so I concluded that the craft had Egyptian origins. The two travelers had long disappeared into the night and there were no signs of them.
We were exploring the boat when suddenly it began to move. I think one of us had brushed a finger across one of the strange engravings. Wacuka tried to step out of it but it was rocking wildly and darting across the water that we all fell to the bottom. A glassy film of a phlegm-like substance shot from nozzles at all corners or the strange boat and bound us together. I struggled to free myself but the gooey web only became tighter with every tug. Eventually, we gave up struggling and stayed still. I could feel my bladder begin to loosen. I was scared to death! Just then, we heard the noise of running feet. It was the two Arab men, running towards the edge of the water and waving wildly at us. It was too late. The boat capsized and we began to sink.