The sandy white beach was the kind seen in Hollywood movies. Sweeping palms leaned out over an azure sea. The wind, just strong enough to sway the trees into groaning, carried a hint of salt and flowers. But unlike the beaches in the movies, there were no bikini-clad shipwreck survivors-no tall, dark, and handsome men escaping the pressures of the real world.
There were simply two bodies, both clad in black.
As the yacht crew who spotted the men while sport fishing would later describe him, the first man had a pale, wrinkled body and a head of stark white hair that ran to his shoulders. He was last seen running into the forest, eyes wild and shouting something about the end of the world.
The second man, a priest, was unconscious by the time the crew dropped anchor and rowed to shore. The priest was taken on board and tended to. Three days later they found his bunk empty, the dinghy missing, and a quickly scrawled note on a piece of paper: Job 3:8.
One of the men, who had a Bible, opened it and read a verse that led them to believe both men they’d seen on the beach were lunatics:
“May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.”
