After the great flood in the early 21th century, we began to receive strange rumours about a mysterious religious movement that had started to spread along the east coast of Africa. A movement with frightening resemblance to the supposedly long-extinct Ogdoad cult.

Were there still practitioners of the secret rites of The Old Egyptian Kingdom? Was this an unknown living tradition, or had some of the lost books of Prince Neferkaptah finally been discovered?

We were hoping to find this cult, and thereby find clues to some of the ancient mysteries of Toth. Due to the unexpected and frightening events described in this article, the investigations werw interrupted when we accidently stumbled upon an even stranger and darker mystery...

Here is the report from our investigator:

Travelling with us were also four South African poachers. The South Africans were in their sixties and travelled with a considerable arsenal, which made them a valuable pray for the airport's security staff.

In the commotion we managed to escape with only some routine bribes to get our visas and luggage.

Beira was founded in 1890 and quickly became the Portuguese colony's main port. Natural disasters and civil wars have hit the town hard. The formerly prosperous port and tourist paradise is now decayed and partly ruined. Fishing has become increasingly important for the poorest populations survival.

We're meeting our ethnologist at Restaurant Mira Mar near Praça da Independencia, right next to the Indian Ocean. 

No Frenchman shows up, and when the clock has passed 11 AM, I give up and start walking back to the hotel. It is now pitch dark.

There are no streetlights and my guide suggests we should take a taxi, but the cool evening breeze persistently invites me to a stroll by the moonlit sea.

From the beach, I think I hear cries and shouting. Sometimes drowned in the roar of the waves, but now and then carried by the wind. I climb up on the concrete barrier, which I guess is there to protect the road from the cyclones of the Indian Ocean.

On the dark beach I can barely make out a group of white-clad creatures running around gesturing and falling over. I can see some of them standing on their knees, swaying, with their hands stretched towards the sea. Someone seems to be preaching or maybe leading a prayer. The group answers with shouts and chanting in a language made out of sounds that don’t seem to belong in this part of the world, or on any part that I’m familiar with. Further along the beach, I think I glimpse more such groups. My guide says that this is a new Christian movement that in recent years have gathered many supporters in the region. The cult is apparently centred in the abandoned Grand Hotel Beira. My guide is now noticeably nervous and we finally decide to take a taxi home.

Early the next morning, I try in vain to contact our ethnologist and decide instead to see whether the night's activities on the beach has left any trace. At the place where I, only a few hours ago, saw the strange white-clad crowds, the sand is now completely trodden on by the fishermen, who since dawn have been dragging their nets along the beach. I decide to follow the shore south bound, hoping to find traces of one of the other groups I thought I caught a glimpse of in the dim moonlight. The beach is full of crumbling concrete foundations and the rusting wrecks of boats that were left behind by the Portuguese.

I cannot find anything on the beach that cangive me any clues as to the night's rituals and I begin to consider walking back to thehotel. I realise that I have walked quit a distance, and between the beach and the town now lies a vast swamp. My guide has told me that somewhere along the beach there is a small fishing village with a fish market and a road leading back to town. A large flock of seagulls circle over a place that is still obscured by a distant sandbank. Hoping that this is the fish market and the shortcut back to town, I continue a bit further.

It is the fishing village. The small settlement consists of a few simple sheds made from wreckage and rusted oil barrels that have been hammered flat. The numerous wrecks stranded at this spot have also become homes for many of the fishermen and their families. The old rusty ships have become a part of the small ramshackle village. At sea fishermen are working in traditional canoes made from hollowed out tree trunks and on the beach the catch is drying on tarpaulins or nets.

The dense odour of rotting fish rests heavily over the narrow street that disappear in the direction of the towering decrepit buildings that constitutes Beira’s distant silhouette.

I’m walking along the small winding road leading away from the beach and all the time I can hear the fishermen crying out for me. FromI hear the fishermen crying out for me. From the attention I get when I leave the shore and walk through the ship-necropolis, I understand that my presence here won’t go unnoticed. The street becomes a narrow alley. The path that I had hoped would lead me to the city has brought me straight into a maze of decaying sheds. The rusty tin houses creeps as close to each other as the dirty street allows. Junk and debris fills the small yards and the narrow alleys. Dogs and chickens scavenge the rubbish heaps that line the road. The city feels disturbingly distant.

Suddenly, someone grabs my arm. I turn and see an old man dressed in a baseball cap and shorts. He wears a tattered t-shirt with an advertisement for a French car brand that is scarcely visible under all the dirt and fish blood. He smells maybe of alcohol and probably wants me to buy some of the fishes slowly rotting beside him in the hot sun. I try in my very poor Portuguese to explain that I am not interested. After numerous incomprehensible selling arguments he disappears into what I assume is his house.

I want to take this opportunity to disappear, but a lot of people have gathered and are watching me with great curiosity and anticipation. Before I manage to slip away, the man comes back out with a small dirty bundle. He gives me the bundle. -Quinhentos, he says, holding up five crooked fingers. - Sovenir turistico. I open the bundle and find a curious clay sculpture. The strange idol is approximately 12 inches high and depicting a woman with a fish's body carrying a small pot. I notice that the creature has a third eye in the forehead. The idol has at some point cracked, and has been glued back together with some sort of glue. I have never seen anything like it.

- Dagon, says the man, - Quinhentos! The easiest way to get out of this situation is simply to pay. But also, the little ceramic mermaid has raised my curiosity. I find a two hundred meticais banknote in my breast pocket. - Duzentos, I reply. The man mutters, but takes my money and disappears back into the shed. When I turn around I see the crowd quickly scattering into the nearby alleys to the sound of exited whispers and shouts.

I continue with hastened steps along the street I hope will take me quickly back to the city. But the little street turns to the northeast. In the corner of my eye, I see how two oddly shaped men with a disturbing shuffling walk disappear into the shed that I just left. More shouts. Whispers among the people I pass.

Suddenly I have company. Do I need anything? A guide? How do I feel this morning? The weather is fine, yes? Where am I going? A group of four or five young men have joined me. One of them is talking to me with a persistent smile. A little further up, the street disappears into a small grove. I notice a careless lookout that with varied success is hiding in the bushes. My present direction suddenly loses all attraction.

 I start running and turn off into a narrow, winding alley before my newfound friends have understood what has happened. I’m now running in the direction I believe to be north. My escort has become pursuers. I hear cries and shouts in many different languages. It's hot. The thick odour of rotting fish is suffocating and the smoke from hundreds of charcoal stoves stings my eyes.

The alley widens into what might be called a small square. In the centre of the square a group of men are standing. They talk loudly toeach other and to the people who have gathered nearby and seem agitated. They are pointing at the bundle that hides my peculiar mermaid. Their bulging red eyes and spluttering voices make me feel uncomfortable. They had probably expected me to stop. But I don’t. One of them falls and I continue to run. I am suddenly on a wide market street, crammed with hundreds of people, goods, vehicles, animals and carriages. I turn around and see my pursuers hesitate. I stop running, but walk as fast as I can towards the city, which is not far now. I turn around now and then and see how my pursuers still follows me from a distance.

Are they robbers? Is this just a local gang that did not appreciate visitors in their territory? Or do they want the little statue of the strange fish creature?

I leave the rusty shantytown behind, and with great relief I finally reach the edge of the city. I'm still being followed and have no intention to showing my pursuers the way to my hotel. My unexpected salvation is Beira’s central police station. In front of the building a group of policemen are smoking cigarettes. I’m immediately stopped. They have to see my passport. I lie about where I live. I give them a false telephone number. I see how my pursuers, now a sizeable crowd, have stopped and are observing us from afar.

The policemen suggest that I should offer them something to drink. They are kind enough to show me to a nice place. Any other day the situation would have felt uncomfortable, but now I feel relieved. My helpful guides each receive a bottle of coca cola that they put in their pocket to drink later. They watch me drink. I thank my guides for helping me find the bar, give them fifty meticais each and is left alone.

Through the bar's toilet, I manage to sneak out a small backyard that is also the bar's kitchen. A small door leads to a new street and I quickly find my way to the hotel where I stay for the remnants of the day.

I am awakened some time in the night by loud voices from the street. In the morning the hotel porter says that Camisas Branca, the white shirts, has been seen in the streets during the night. There are rumours of assaults and break-ins. -This is unusual, he says, they tend to stay on the beach.

No one else wants to tell me anything more about the White shirts. My French ethnologist seems to be devoured by the earth. The local museum does not have the time to receive me, and the traces to the Ogdoad cult that I was meant to investigate all seems to be swept away. The city has closed it self to me.

I travel back to South Africa with the strange feeling that I either barely escaped a strange adventure with my life, or that I've just been running away from some angry fishermen.

Had I been saved by my cunning and experience, or was it just my imagination that was chasing me through the decrepit shantytown? In my luggage rests the strange little idol as a reminder of what I experienced in the moment that I ran through the maze of rusty sheds an early morning in Beira…