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- [00:01]
Ben
Every week here at Haunted Cosmos we release a special story driven show called the Dusty Tome just for our monthly supporters over at Supercast. But while we prepare a brand new season of the main show in the Haunted Cosmos Laboratory, we decided to give all of you a peek behind the paywall. So welcome to a special release of the Dusty Tome.
- [00:55]
Brian
As years passed and the disaster was forgotten, the the lake, deep blue with serenity but terrible in the wrath of its storms, began to be called Caspian, and man came to find its size to warrant the moniker of an inland sea indeed. But on this day, the day of woe and trouble, where day seemed to fall beyond the thorny desert peaks on the sea's eastern side, the sea that swallowed the city was called just that, the sea, for it was all that those people knew of an ocean. They had not been to the shores of the other vast body of water west of Ararat or through the Bosphorus and into the realm of the Argive ships. To them, the world itself consisted of just their sea and whatever small inward stretches of land they had the gumption and gusto to settle. And it is in this state that the small force of hardy people dwelling in that neighborhood of the world, still so often forgotten about today, would come to taste their first existential turmoil. One among those people, the one who would survive the calamity to soon come, woke from his sleep that morning and cringed with a late sigh at the bitterness of the weather. He groped through his dark room and collected his gear that he would need before stepping out of his threshold and into the still sleeping streets of his home, that same city whose ramparts and stacked homes imposed its will so strongly on the water. The the trek from home to shore was a long one for our hero, and he often envied those who lived nearer to the fishing than he did. His was a daily commute that took him from the westernmost gate, through the forums and squares and temples that lined the central spine of the stone marvel, and finally out of the eastern doors where a desert of writhing and sinister blue water would meet him. Of course, though, as has been said, the water withheld its blue on that morning, opting instead for the inhospitable gray painted upon it by the drear of winter. As he trekked along, wooden buckets slung over back and woven basket bouncing against his thigh rhythmically with his steps, the myriad smells of the ancient world struck him consecutively and fully woke him up. The rot of the sewage, the soiled smell of the mildew and mold stuck in the standing water sections people knew not to go the freshly cooking bread from those who would soon be filling the markets and looking for a dollar, the sweet gu wafting from the hanging gardens, the blood from the sacrifices which had taken place, as was customary in the midmost of the night. All at once, not noticing it due to its familiarity to him, the man had moved from dragging himself through the damped and mossed over pathways to nearly dancing down them, excited to get his tasks done as quickly as possible so as to return home and enjoy the festivities with his family. That day was a day of feasting and rejoicing for the people of the city, for it was a day they remembered the gift of their city to them from the gods they worshiped. It was the sole reason why he was up as early as he was, and it was the sole reason he had found in the previous weeks to be happy or excited or anything in life. Miserable man. He exited the doors nearest to the harbor and loaded his tackle into his boat before shoving off from shore into an almost dreamlike stillness of the cold morning water. Once away from the lapping but frosted waves of the shore, all sound vanished and he was able to look back and gaze upon the triumphant city. He always did this in order to admire its splendor, but that day checked his routine and forced him rather to see the lifelessness of it. It was so early, and the world was so bereft of color that it looked rather more like a mausoleum than a city of men. The still clinging and thick fog and mist shifted its normally sturdy impression to one of uncertainty and translucence. The man wondered if the city he was looking at was real at all, for it seemed as though it might drift away like sand in a strong wind at any moment. Nonetheless, the ghastly version of his home remained and forced him, for perhaps the first time, to wonder if it might actually be a place of evil. The gods, so the tales told him, had given the city to his forebears as a gift for their devotion. They had taught those earlier men the ways of construction and worship and even music and warfare. They claimed always to be benevolent gods, but the man had often wondered if that was the case, why they seemed so insatiable to him. Many times over the course of his life he had heard the solemn proclamation of the priest saying that bulls and lambs were no longer enough for that season's harvest, that they needed to give the gods the blood of men to sate their hunger and need for surrender from their subjects. Each time that happened, he felt a churn in his stomach that bid him run away from all of it. But he never did, of course, on such a deathly morning he wondered how he had not gone through with his plan to flee, looking upon the points of the towers and the rough edges of the walls where the prostitutes lived. And that light let him see for the first time that it was not only the gods who were menacing their gifts now looked menacing too. A shiver sent down the man's spine, and he turned once more to run not from the city that raised him, but from the idea of running from the city he was surely growing to hate. The hours of the morning waxed, and still the weather did not change. Still gray prevailed, and mist and fog and a cold wind blew over from the eastern shore, hitting the man with a constant push and urging him to work even faster. This the man did, and sure enough was finished with his haul before midday, and despite the foreboding thoughts of evil and flight from his home he had suffered earlier. He looked forward to coming through the dense fog and seeing the familiar spires once more as they welcomed him back to a city at revelry. Surely he would hear the trumpets blare for the beginning of the festival, and the parade would trace down the streets he had walked earlier that morning with royal pomp and finally some rich color to be brought into the monotonously colored day. But what he did not expect to find was precisely what he found stillness and silence hailing from the gates as his boat was pushed along by the wind back to the docks. He boarded her in. There was no trumpet blast, no shouting, no strange fire lit up the tower of the temple to the bliss of the gods. No maidens dancing on the walls, and no soldiers lifting their swords in triumph over the city they guarded. It was eerie noiselessness that rattled the bones of the onlooker as he approached even closer, close enough to count the stones that made up the fortified wall. A sudden change in the day's setting gave him a start. From the west as well as the east, the wind swirled to a torrent until his boat was spun round and round. Black clouds rolled swiftly in to replace the gray blanket over the world, and and lightning tore from its tumorous robes down into the trees on the shore. When the boat stopped turning, the man realized that the wind had wiped away the fog and mist, and though the clouds had certainly brushed a swatch of charcoal over everything, he could at least see more clearly the city that nursed him and all the land surrounding it. He could Also see the sea now stretched out like a dark canvas to his rear and hiding, for it seemed incapable of doing anything else. Nameless things in its depths. And here the hero was dealt a blow by the gods he never forgot, for he looked intently into the water that remained before him between he and the dock and noticed the shape of buoys all along the surface. They had not been there earlier, or perhaps they had been, and he had not seen through the fog. But these strange vessels were now everywhere, blacker even than the water reflecting the sky, and he was headed right for them. As he neared the first line of these objects, he saw a stringy substance wafting off of one into the water, and it made him wonder if they might not be tubular water plants he had not seen before. But they were not this. He brushed his oar upon the first one he was to pass by, and bulging and bobbing with gross lifelessness. The buoy turned over in the water and a face that he knew stared back at him with thin lines of black hair floating behind it. It was the face of his wife, what's more, in the peels of bleached white lightning he could see past these surface bodies and into the shallows of his home sea, where there lay yet more dead. The sea floor could not be seen between the stacked bodies of drowning worshipers to the gods, his countrymen, what manner of plague had passed, what cruel judgment had left him alive while all his people had perished in the night or in the morning? It seemed to him as though earlier, when the city appeared more like a cemetery. He had been right, for that is what it had become. And now, surrounded by the gently swelling waves of the dead, he turned back towards the city in time to see the promontory it stood upon open up beneath it like a hungry Charybdis in her shallow home to swallow up whatever lay above. The city, even to the top of its tallest spire, sank in an instant into the onrushing torrent of waves, to the sound of crackling thunder, and as it seemed to him, ethereal laughter of some deep voiced thing that drifted on the wind, he narrowly escaped going under the waves himself as they rushed to fill the void. And as the seas calmed once more and he looked up from the boat, he saw the slipping lights of Will o'wisps drifting down from the first beams of the sun through a small crack in the sky, past his shaking form and into the water to join the dead. As each line of light fell like a leaf past him, it too seemed to laugh a laugh of divine carelessness, of wicked and selfish, almost childish joviality. The city had perished, and only he remained a forgotten chapter on the banks of the Caspian.
- [11:09]
Ben
In the summer of 1946, a man named Ahmed was living in the coastal city of Turkman Bashi, where he made his way by fishing in the Caspian Sea. One day, as he waved goodbye to his friends who drifted to their own spots in their boats, he marveled at how lucky he was in the grand scheme of things, to have such a group of people in his life who loved him and who he also sincerely loved. The times were not easy for these people in those days, and he knew the tumultuous nature of his providential setting would have already taken a much greater toll on him had he not been gifted with these people. As the Second World War had ended, a thing which, he discovered many people who fought in it did not realize actually affected people like him in that part of the world. The Soviets entered into the borders of Turkmenistan and began imposing their own order. The ways were hard and the future uncertain. The shifting sands of political power and the godless regime of both the Soviets. And though this was unbeknownst to Ahmed, the Muslims quickly turned the desert hellscape they lived in into a powder keg. Desert hellscape, which at any moment was fit to burst from the internal pressure. But these political games don't come into this story. That day was a day that began so casually for Ahmed. As was his custom every day, he had woken up before the dawn and had stepped quietly out of his home and slipped through the small houses of his neighborhood down to the shore. There, of course, he had chatted with his fishermen friends in the darkness of the morning before pushing his boat with a silky sound of scratched water into the Caspian until it rose to his hip. Then, as has been said, he turned and waved to his friends. His plan had been to return from his daily expedition before noon. That was his custom, and he was well known to stick by it no matter what. And so, when Ahmed's boat did not appear on the horizon at noon, his family and friends perked up and kept an extra eye peeled for it. But even past sunset, it never arrived. Ahmed, in a way shrouded in mystery to this day, had been lost. Right away a search was launched and the fishermen families of Turkmenbashi pulled together to comb their section of the Caspian. All through the night, of course, the darkness made this exceedingly difficult, and by the time the sun rose in the morning, nothing had been found. Still, the search continued. Well into the middle of that next day, and just before the family truly began to despair, his boat was discovered floating aimlessly near the small inlet to Garabaghaskul basin. Searchers rushed up, hoping to find a weary and somehow presumably confused Ahmed lying down inside. Instead, to the sound of their hearts dropping into their stomachs, they only found his net and tackle placed very neatly in his boat. And that was it. There was no Akamas. The boat showed no signs of any struggle, and as far as any of them could tell, it had been found in a relatively normal area for him to have gone to. They couldn't figure out how he could have fallen into the water in such a way as to not disturb the things in his boat, and how he could have been so clumsy as to let his boat drift far enough away from him to where he couldn't swim to it again. Ultimately, the man was presumed dead by the villagers and his his family held a quaint but very honorable service for him. Where most of the other fishermen came to pay their respects to this respectable man, thus ended Ahmed. Life eventually rolled on and the time of mourning gave way to a wounded family that nonetheless persevered through the hardship and carved out a decent life for itself. That was, until Ahmed came back after nine years. In the spring of 1955, a man stumbled through the fishing village of Turkmenbashi and eventually leaned against the doorway to his old home where his family still lived. He was worn and weathered and clearly out of his wits, but he was most assuredly Achmed. He was also, though disheveled after a journey, quite healthy. He wasn't starving or emaciated, and he appeared to be wearing the same exact clothes he had worn on the day he disappeared. Sure, the clothes were faded now, but after a nine year sojourn, heaven knows where they were nonetheless in remarkable condition. In he came to the gaping mouths of his family until he collapsed onto a couch and slept long and hard until the middle of the following day. When he woke, he appeared to be sincerely himself. He spoke like Achmed, of course, looked like him, and he even walked like him and gesticulated like him. Things only a family can really confirm were again and again confirmed in those first hours by his people. The trouble began to start or restart, though, when they began asking Ahmed where he had been for all that time. To their horror, he replied by asking what they meant. That he had just had a normal day of fishing and had returned at his normal time around noon. Ahmed had no memory whatsoever of his nine years absence from his home to him, it had been just a few hours of work that had passed without anything to set them apart for special recollection. As family and neighbors wondered at this, they began to notice that Ahmed, though certainly himself, was not quite the same man that they remembered him to be. Where he had been jovial and outgoing before, he was now reserved and even seemed a bit paranoid. He seemed, to them, haunted by something he either could not remember or could not describe. In the first days of his return, he would often be seen staring off into the reaches of the Caspian like a statue. After having torn himself away from concerned and inquisitive friends that had missed him and counted him for dead, he mumbled under his breath. He appeared to tremor in episodes that were frequent but totally unpredictable. As this went on, his family grew less and less content to let the massive discrepancies in his stories lie for the sake of joy of having him back. They turned the screws to him, pressing him to dig deep into his mind and search out the last thing he remembered before coming back home to sleep on that day in 1955. Despite all of his efforts of focus, though, for the longest time he could only remember a sensation of things going dark and fuzzy. He spoke of feeling as though he had been floating underwater, surrounded by dreamlike shadows that softly called his name in distorted voices. As weeks began to pile up since his return, he started to share new memories with his family, unsettling memories that he didn't know whether or not he could trust anymore. Flashes in his mind, like scenes from a camera, played before before him and seemed to be so real. Leaning over his boat to see stringy, flickering lights deep within the water, shadowy humanoid figures moving around under him and stalking his boat like aliens from a water world. They were just images, glimpses, but they seemed to Achmed at least, to be an invaluable piece of the puzzle he was now also intent on solving. Or so they did at first. Once again, time continued, and the glimpses seemed for a while to increase in their vivid sharpness and frequency. The problem was that each time he had one, it sent him deeper and deeper into a well of despair, paranoia, fear. Ahmed, for all of his willingness to answer his people's questions or try to, became even more reserved about these things. He became crazed, almost reclusive. Eventually he refused all altogether to speak about his time at sea, or about the sea at all in general. He apparently evolved to hate the place that he had lost himself in, always whispering frantically about the voices in the water, the shades in the deep and their lights that flickered with temptation and promise. The man who had returned effectively from the dead was now suffering a down spiral of death by mania and memory of some unspeakable thing that had happened or been done to him by unimaginable horrors in the waters of the Caspian. He refused to go near the shore, saying that if he did they would take him back, or at other times saying that he told them he would never go back and that if he broke his word there would be hell for him to pay. Achmed lived for another handful of years until he finally died in the 60s. He ended his life a polar opposite from its beginning of joyful extroversion. He died a recluse and hermit, a lunatic of the fishing village and a portent of doom to the young fishermen who would pass him and hear him warn them never to fish alone in that cursed water and to never fish in the early morning when the waters were covered in mist. He told them, implored them, even with a pathos in his eye that rivals any other man, not to disturb the silent parts of the water that sat above the deepest reaches of the sea. For there he would say where the other worlds are and they will get you if you let them Post Millennialists often talk about creating generational wealth, but where do you even begin to turn that vision into reality? Stone Crop Wealth Advisors is here to guide you. They'll demystify the wealth building process and equip you with the strategies needed to secure a lasting legacy for future generations with faith based portfolios. 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- [21:34]
Brian
Hey Ben, I just read that our great grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry skin as a moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant?
- [21:43]
Ben
Maybe it's Grandma's butter recipe. Or maybe it's gray toe tallow.
- [21:48]
Brian
Their tallow products are 100 organic and naturally contain the good stuff your skin craves. No mystery there.
- [21:55]
Ben
So say Sayonara Sammy to kitchen experiments and say hello to Healthier skin Gray Totalo Trusted by Skin Envied by Great Grandma's Butter Recipe.
- [22:08]
Brian
For more information and to get a sample pack, check out gray toad tallow dot com. Don't forget to use the code COSMOS15. That's all caps COSMOS15 for 15 off your order. Ben, my only question to you in this chapter of the Dusty tome is just what did a Caspian Sea ever do to you?
- [22:34]
Ben
I. Great question. As I've said before on this show and on our main show, I sometimes just like to look at Google Earth, peruse around the neighborhood of God's creation. And I was like looking, you know, and I, I found the Caspian Sea and I was like, you know what? I don't know anything about the Caspian.
- [22:54]
Brian
Sea, but it has a cool name.
- [22:56]
Ben
But I guarantee you that it's a really. Because I don't know about it. Yeah, it's probably a super mysterious place.
- [23:02]
Brian
It's got to be. Any sea is going to be mysterious.
- [23:04]
Ben
It reminds me of like Lake Baikal, but a little bit different. Lake Baikal is this very old place, very old lake. There's a lot of memory there. And I felt the same about the Caspian, but it's less mainstream, I guess. And so I started just looking at, you know, what are the folk folklore of the Caspian Sea. And those things came up and the, and the story of Ahmed especially, I was like, that's insane.
- [23:29]
Brian
Come on, Ahmed, tell the people, warn the people. So look, why are people not listening to Ahmed? There's still people going on the Caspian Sea. That's, that's the Shades house.
- [23:38]
Ben
Yes.
- [23:39]
Brian
So they're going to take you down to the death, steal your memory and deliver you back like a decade later.
- [23:43]
Ben
So look, the point is you hear a story about Ahmed and the flickering lights under the waves and the people with weird voices that were calling him. And then you hear kind of the myth that was like only kind of loosely formed on the Internet about the city and the antediluvian or just post diluvian world that sank into the Caspian. And you start to think like, yeah, why not, why not, why not? A city of ancient memory, demonic hordes, preternatural creatures that like, is still almost haunting the Caspian Sea and calling unwitting Muslims from Turkmenbashi into its depths. Don't be a Muslim and don't live in Turkmenistan.
- [24:30]
Brian
We're so culturally sensitive. That's one of my favorite things about Haunted Cosmos is, is really just our cultural sensitivity. Oh, I knew it, I knew it.
- [24:40]
Ben
I know that you love our Japanese honor.
- [24:43]
Brian
This literally has nothing to do with Japan, but I somehow knew that the next word out of your mouth would.
- [24:49]
Ben
Be, oh.
- [24:53]
Brian
Hey, Ben, can you pass me the butter?
- [24:55]
Ben
Yeah, sure, man. Do you want the White Camel butter or the Golden Cow butter?
- [24:59]
Brian
No, not that butter.
- [25:00]
Ben
Well, what other butter is there?
- [25:02]
Brian
I'm talking about Design Butter. Who specialize in digital product design. Whether it's a mobile or web app, David at Design Butter can help make sure your product is best on the market. Design Butter helps you identify problems your users are having and makes the experience better, which results in more sales, return customers, and a level of trust that makes your brand memorable.
- [25:24]
Ben
Dang. Design Butter. I can't believe it's not actual butter because it's so dang smooth.
- [25:29]
Brian
Sounds like they need to head to designbutter.com for more information.
- [25:39]
Ben
Brian, do you want to know what I've been drinking more of lately?
- [25:41]
Brian
I actually woke up this morning and thought to myself, I want to know what Ben's drinking more of lately.
- [25:45]
Ben
Coffee. Can you believe that?
- [25:46]
Brian
Unbelievable. I thought you were into tea.
- [25:48]
Ben
No, no, I'm into coffee now. And you know who makes the best coffee in the world?
- [25:51]
Brian
Who?
- [25:51]
Ben
Is it Squirrely Joe's Coffee.
- [25:54]
Brian
Oh, are that. Is that that thoroughly Christian business that doesn't hate you in everything you believe in?
- [25:59]
Ben
Yes. Not only that, but they also love their neighbor by donating many of their proceeds to a worthy cause called Operation Underground Railroad.
- [26:06]
Brian
Man, everybody should check out Squirrely Joe's Coffee at Squirrely Joe's coffee dot com.
- [26:11]
Ben
That's right. Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Share coffee. Serve humbly. Live faithfully.
- [26:22]
Brian
Man, Ben, I knew we were handsome, but I didn't know we were that handsome until I saw our recent Haunted Cosmos thumbnails.
- [26:29]
Ben
Yeah, your skin looks so velvety smooth.
- [26:32]
Brian
I mean, it's unbelievable. Chris at New Dominion Design Company did an absolutely fantastic job not only on those thumbnails, but on our recent book cover as well.
- [26:41]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. And if you need some design work from Chris, you. You should go to newdominiondesignco.com get started there, and he'll serve you right, man.
- [26:49]
Brian
He will make you look 50% as handsome as Ben, guaranteed.
- [26:57]
Ben
So anyway, hope you guys enjoyed that third installment of this off season's dusty tome recording. And we'll see you back for episode four. We're hard at work on season five of the main show. And remember, by the time season five, episode one drops to the public, our page, our. Our patron supporters on supercast at the upper two tiers. Will have full access to the entire season.
- [27:21]
Brian
Whole season.
- [27:21]
Ben
So if you are impatient and can't wait, become a Supercast supporter. You'll have the whole season before you know it. But until then, we'll see you next time.
- [27:31]
Brian
We'll see you next time. Mist covered the rolling waters of that ancient sea. The gray and the cold of the winter in those days pierced even to the deepest roots of the water and tinged them all with a crisp. I can't do it. I was looking at Ben. I was doing it for him. They're saying Doge Micro.
- [27:57]
Ben
Martin just said.
- [28:01]
Brian
All right, dudes. Okay, here we go. As years passed and the disaster was forgotten, the lake blew with. What? The what?
- [28:16]
Ben
That's where the elves were born.
- [28:21]
Brian
Okay. As years passed. Okay, okay.
- [28:32]
Ben
Dude, you don't understand how untethered my writing is.
- [28:36]
Brian
This is the worst thing I've ever had. This is the worst thing I've ever had to do. This is like my kryptonite. Oh, gosh. You've gotta include some of these outtakes. Oh, too much editing. But it'd be really funny. Be like, ben, stop making up Tolkien adjectives into adjectives. Challenge level impossible.
- [29:06]
Ben
Okay, here we go.
- [29:10]
Brian
Whoo. What's more, in the peels of bleached white lightning, he could see past these. Okay, go up. The later Ben gets in an episode of the Dusty Tome, the more typos there are because his little fingers get tired from typing so quickly. I can see it. Like, it's legitimately. I can feel what's happening. I can enter into his mind. And he's trying to get to the. To where his mind knows he's going.
- [29:45]
Ben
Floating aimlessly near the small inlet to Garabag. Oh, frick. Can you pause it? I don't know. Sorry. Go down a little bit. What is that word? Garabago. Gaba G. School basin. Gabagool basin. Dude, I won't be able to. I could take 20 tries. I wouldn't be able to do it. To inlet to Gabagool basin. Gabas. Gaba. Garaba G. Okay.