The wind had no mercy that night. Kund Malir stretched before me like a forgotten promise, the highway’s asphalt dissolving into sand and shadow. My car’s headlights barely pierced the darkness; the desert swallowed everything else. I had been driving for hours from Karachi, hoping to escape the city’s relentless noise, its neon glare, its memories that clung like dirt under fingernails. But the farther I went, the more the world seemed to vanish, leaving only the road, the desert, and the ocean whispering somewhere beyond the dunes.
I had heard stories about Kund Malir before. Every traveler, every trucker, every local in Gwadar had a story about the coast: of ships vanishing in storms, of phantom lights bobbing on the horizon, of travelers who simply disappeared along the Makran Coastal Highway. They were all legends, of course. Tales to warn tourists, to scare children, to make the desert seem alive.
But legends, I was about to learn, have a way of walking off the page.
By the time I reached the stretch near the deserted Kund Malir beach, the moon had risen above the horizon like a pale eye. Its silver light fractured on the waves, scattering into jagged reflections across the sand. The air was cold despite the desert heat of the day, and the wind carried a faint smell of salt and something else, perhaps, or the faint odor of long submerged wood.
I stopped the car. My plan had been simple: take pictures of the beach at night, maybe camp for a few hours, and drive back before sunrise. But the isolation pressed against me. The highway behind me disappeared into the dunes; ahead, only blackness.
And then I saw it.
A faint light, flickering near the shoreline, too small and too precise to be a bonfire. It moved with purpose, sometimes vanishing behind a dune, sometimes rising higher than the waves. My heart was hammered. I should have driven past it, but something I don’t know what made me park and walk toward it.
The sand shifted under my boots like wet cement. With every step, the wind whispered. Not a sound you could hear with your ears, but one that slithered into your bones.
As I approached the flickering light, I saw her.
A woman, standing at the water’s edge. Her hair was long and dark, plastered to her face by the misty spray. She wore a flowing white dress that glowed faintly in the moonlight, wet at the hem. The wind moved her dress like slow waves. I thought she might be a tourist, lost or injured, until I noticed that she didn’t move like a living being. Her movements were fluid, silent, and precise, as though she were gliding over the sand rather than walking.
I called out. “Are you okay?”
No response.
I stepped closer. The light she held, a lantern? Or something else entirely flickered against her face. And in that moment, I realized something impossible: she was looking directly at me, but her eyes were hollow. Empty sockets.
I froze.
The wind rose suddenly, tearing at my clothes and hair. The waves crashed harder, though the tide had been calm minutes before. Her lantern flickered violently.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. Her voice was soft but carried across the beach like a scream.
“I… I’m just taking pictures,” I stammered.
“You came too late.”
The woman raised a hand, pointing toward the horizon. I squinted. Beyond the breakers, faint shapes moved. Ships, I thought, but not like any I had ever seen. Old wooden hulls, sails torn to ribbons, glowing faintly, listing as if caught between two worlds.
“They drowned here,” she whispered. “All of them. And none of them wanted to.”
I felt my stomach twist. “Who… who are you?”
Her head tilted. “I am the one who waits. I am the one who remembers.”
And then, without moving her lips, I heard it: a chorus of voices, faint at first, rising in an impossible crescendo. Men, women, children, crying, laughing, calling names. The wind carried them, but they didn’t seem to come from anywhere around me. They came from the water, from the sand, from the darkness itself.
“They were careless,” she said. “They ignored the warnings. They trusted the road, the waves, the stars. None of them returned.”
“Returned?” I whispered.
“Yes. Not even in memory. Not even in stories. Only I remember them.”
The woman turned and began walking along the shoreline. Her dress trailed over the wet sand without leaving a mark. The lantern swayed, casting shadows that seemed to curl into shapes and figures, twisted and human, reaching out to the sea.
I wanted to follow her, though every instinct screamed to run. “Wait!” I called. “Where are you going?”
“To show you.”
Her lantern illuminated a path across the beach. I walked behind her, unable to resist. The waves licked at my feet, cold as ice, though the air was dry. The sand beneath me seemed to pulse, like it had a heartbeat.
As we walked, she spoke again. “Kund Malir is not just sand and sea. It remembers. It remembers every soul who came and left, every promise broken, every life taken by the wind or the water. And it whispers… always whispers.”
I shivered. “Why show me this?”
“Because,” she said, “someone must.”
We reached a small cove, hidden from the highway. Here, the water was calm, but the sand was littered with strange shapes: fragments of boats, rusted anchors, twisted wood, shells cracked open like skulls.
“They were trapped between worlds,” she said, lifting the lantern high. The light illuminated ghostly figures rising from the sand and water. Their faces were pale, their mouths open in silent screams. They looked at me. Not angrily, not pleadingly, but accusingly.
“You see them,” she said. “You see what they endured. You remember, so they do not have to.”
I wanted to speak, to apologize, to run but my voice refused.
“They trusted the desert. They trusted the road. They trusted the waves. And they died alone.”
Her hollow eyes bored into mine. “Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I barely did.
The wind rose again, stronger, carrying a salty, metallic smell. The figures writhed and shimmered like reflections in broken glass. My chest tightened as if the sea itself had wrapped around me.
Suddenly, the lantern flickered violently. The figures dissolved into the wind. The woman looked at me, her expression softening. “You must leave now. You are not one of us.”
“But…” I began.
“But nothing,” she said. “Remember what you saw. Remember what you hear when the wind rises along the highway. Remember the loss.”
The lantern went out. Darkness fell, absolute. I could hear the waves crashing, but no longer carrying voices. The cove was empty, silent, except for the sound of my own ragged breathing.
I ran back toward my car, stumbling over sand and driftwood. The headlights blinked on automatically. I slid into the driver’s seat, trembling, and pressed the accelerator. The highway stretched endlessly before me, empty, silent.
I returned to Karachi at dawn. The city was waking in its usual chaos, indifferent to the night’s horrors. Street vendors set up carts; rickshaws honked; someone shouted across a street.
I tried to explain what I had seen to friends, but the words sounded insane. They laughed politely, offered cups of chai, and changed the subject.
But I knew.
Whenever the wind howls along the Makran Coastal Highway, whenever the waves crash onto Kund Malir at night, I hear whispers. Not in my ears, but beneath my skin, in the memory of the desert. Voices of the lost. Voices of the forgotten. And sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I see her. The woman in white. Waiting. Watching. Remembering.
I have never returned to Kund Malir.
But I cannot forget.
And neither, I suspect, can the desert.
Bio:
Syed Zeeshan Raza Zaidi is a Pakistani writer and cognitive neuroscience graduate student whose fiction explores the intersection of folklore, memory, and human psychology. His work often blends literary horror with cultural and mythic themes, drawing inspiration from South Asian landscapes and legends. He aims to create atmospheric stories that linger in the reader’s mind, exploring fear, isolation, and the unseen.