A gentle weight settled on his head—his father's hand, a familiar anchor in the swirling chaos of his dream.
"It was just a nightmare, Sumit. Go back to sleep," his father's voice was a soft murmur, a sound meant to smooth over the jagged edges of fear.
Sumit nodded, the trust he had in his father a heavy, warm blanket. He slid back under his own covers, the sheets suddenly feeling cold. He wasn't tired, not anymore, but obedience was a deeply ingrained reflex. He closed his eyes for their sake, feigning a peace he was far from feeling.
But sleep was a distant shore he couldn't reach.
He heard the soft click of his bedroom door, followed by the sound of his parents' voices, thin as whispers, leaking from the other room. He couldn't make out the words, but the texture of the sound was wrong. It was heavy, troubled, stripped of the easy cadence of their nightly conversations. This was a sound that belonged to the shadows.
Curiosity, a sharp and insistent hook, pulled him from his bed. The floorboards were cool beneath his bare feet as he crept to the door, pressing his ear against the wood. He caught only fragments, disjointed and confusing: his father was packing, a journey to a place whose name was swallowed by the quiet. But the urgency—that came through sharp and clear.
He couldn't stand it. The not-knowing was worse than any monster from his dream. He pushed the door open.
"Papa… where are you going?"
They froze, two statues caught in a sliver of hallway light. Fear flared in his father's eyes before he expertly smothered it, replacing it with a weary smile. The hand returned to Sumit's head.
"It's nothing, Beta. Just some urgent work at the company. I'll be back before you know it."
The words were smooth, practiced, but his father's eyes told a different story. They were fixed on his mother as she handed him a worn leather bag. Then, his father pulled her into an embrace that seemed to last too long, a hug that felt less like a greeting and more like a final, desperate prayer. As he released her, he breathed two words against her ear, so low Sumit almost missed them.
"Call him."
And then he was gone, swallowed by the night.
Instantly, his mother moved to the small prayer altar in the corner. She lit a single clay diya, its small flame trembling as if in fear of the oppressive dark, and sat before it, her lips moving silently.
"Maa… why are you praying now? It's still nighttime," Sumit asked, his voice small in the still house.
She pointed a finger at the wall clock, not turning to look at him. "What time does it say?"
"Four o'clock."
"And what time do I begin my morning prayers every single day?" she asked.
"Four a.m.," he mumbled, the answer automatic.
Her tone snapped, suddenly sharp and familiar, the comforting edge of her everyday strictness. "Then remember that. If you're late for school again, you'll have me to answer to."
The jarring switch back to normalcy startled him. He scurried back to his room, but a chill followed him. From his window, the world outside looked alien. The darkness wasn't just an absence of light; it was a presence, thick and suffocating. The usual night sounds—the distant bark of a dog, the hum of the old refrigerator—were gone. The world was holding its breath.
"Are you in bed, or do I have to come in there?" her voice sliced through the silence.
He dove under his blanket.
Two hours later, her prayers finished, she padded softly into his room. Seeing him finally asleep, a deep, painful sigh escaped her. The mask of the stern mother fell away, revealing a face etched with a sorrow so profound it seemed to carve new lines into her skin. Each step she took towards the basement was heavy, weighed down by questions that clawed at the inside of her mind.
Is this the end of our time? Will they ever forgive what I did? Will they even have me back?
Lost in the labyrinth of her past, she reached the basement. The air was thick with the scent of dust and forgotten things. In a dim corner, she shoved aside brittle cardboard boxes, her hands disturbing decades of settled dust. There, almost invisible against the concrete floor, was a faint iron ring. Part of a mechanism, a secret kept in plain sight. With a grunt, she pulled, and a heavy section of the floor lifted away.
The hollow space beneath exhaled a gust of cold, earthy air. From its depths, she retrieved several wooden boxes, each handled with a reverence that suggested they held more than just memories.
Her breath hitched as she opened them one by one. Frantic now, her hands trembling, she sifted through the contents—yellowed papers, drawings of strange symbols, books with faded, brittle spines. But what she was searching for wasn't there.
"It has to be here… It must be…" she whispered to the shadows.
Only one box remained, small and plain. She pried it open. Inside, nestled on a bed of faded velvet, was an old button phone, a fossil from a bygone era. It looked dead, its plastic casing cracked, its screen a dark, empty void.
Her hands shook as she pressed the power button. Nothing. Again. Nothing. The silence in the basement pressed in, thick and mocking.
Then, a change. A faint, golden light began to shimmer around her hands, like captured starlight weaving itself into existence. She closed her eyes, her lips forming words from a language older than the house, older than the town itself. The light intensified, delicate but unbreakable, coiling around the dead phone. She opened her eyes.
She pressed the button one last time. The screen flickered to life.
With trembling fingers, she navigated to the contacts. There was only one entry, a single word: Brother. The call log showed the last connection was four years ago.
She pressed dial. It rang once. A click. The line was open.
Two seconds of charged silence stretched into an eternity.
Her voice, when it finally emerged, was a ragged, fearful whisper. "It's started… He took him… and now… now he's coming for his son."
The words had barely left her mouth when the phone erupted in a violent crackle, a spark of blue electricity jumping from the device before it went dead for good. A jolt of pure terror shot through her, but it was followed by a wave of relief. The backlash hadn't harmed her.
Breathing heavily, she began the arduous task of hauling the boxes out of the basement. By the time she was finished, the suffocating black of the night had begun to soften at the edges, bleeding into the grey of pre-dawn. The first birds began to sing, their tentative chirps a stark contrast to the night's silence.
Only then did the tension in her shoulders ease. As if she knew help was on its way, or perhaps because the contents were a poison she could no longer keep, she began feeding the boxes to a fire in the courtyard. She watched, her expression unreadable, as her secrets turned to ash and smoke.
"Ma… what are you doing?"
She spun around. Sumit stood by the gate, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his hair a chaotic mess. She forced a smile, a brittle thing.
"My little king… you're up already?"
"Already? Ma, it's seven o'clock," he mumbled, a yawn splitting his face.
Her eyes widened. School. In her frantic rush, she had lost all track of time. She tossed the last of the box's remains into the roaring flames.
"Go, get ready. Quickly. I'll make you something to eat."
She hurried inside without another word. Sumit lingered, his gaze drawn to the dancing fire. That's when he saw it. A single page, spared by the flames, fluttering near his feet. He bent and picked it up. His breath caught in his throat. It was a drawing.
A drawing of a gnarled, ancient tree.
The same tree from his dream.
His heart hammered against his ribs, but a strange instinct told him to be silent. He quickly, furtively, slipped the page into his school notebook, the secret a cool, heavy weight against the other pages, and ran to get ready.
Later, as she handed him his lunchbox, her voice was clipped, her movements sharp. "Come straight home after school. No wandering off with your friends. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Mummy," he promised, and fled.
Once he was gone, she returned to the fire, ensuring nothing but ash remained. She swept the ashes into a clay pot and discarded them. As she turned to go back inside, her gaze fell upon the diya she had lit hours ago.
It was still burning.
A fragile, watery smile touched her lips. He's still alive. Clinging to that one, tiny flame of hope, she began her chores, her heart a silent drumbeat of a single prayer: Maybe, just maybe, he will come back.
Sumit's day was a blur of forced normalcy. He read his lessons, shared his lunch, and played cricket as if the world hadn't tilted on its axis while he slept. He kept his promise, heading straight home the moment the final bell rang.
But as he walked through the gate, he stopped. His mother was packing, clothes and household items strewn about in a chaotic rush. And standing beside her was a man he hadn't seen in years.
"Uncle!" Joy erupted in his chest. He dropped his bag and ran, launching himself into the man's arms. This was the uncle of his early childhood, the one of piggyback rides and fantastic stories.
His uncle laughed, a deep, rumbling sound, and ruffled his hair. "There's my champion. Go on, get changed. We're leaving soon."
"Leaving? Where are we going?"
"Your uniform is drying on the roof. Go get it and pack a bag," his mother interrupted, her tone leaving no room for argument.
Sumit hesitated, a dozen questions on his lips, but one look at her face sent him running up the stairs.
The moment he was out of earshot, his uncle's smile vanished, replaced by a grim hardness. "He's in the city," he said, his voice low and urgent. "We have to be gone before sunset. The prayer protected you last night, but he knows you're here now. Tonight will be different."
Her lips trembled, but she fought back the fear, giving a single, sharp nod. "Yes."
"Take Sumit. I'll get the bags in the car."
She gathered the last of their essential belongings, her hands moving with a desperate efficiency. After locking the house that had been her entire world, she stepped out onto the street. Sumit was already in the back seat, his face a canvas of confusion, glancing between the two adults, sensing the raw, unspoken fear that crackled in the air between them.
As they pulled away from the curb, his uncle's eyes fell to the small clay diya cupped in her hands. She was shielding its flame from the wind, her entire being focused on keeping that tiny light alive.
He said nothing. He didn't have to. He understood. It was her last, defiant piece of faith.
Miles and miles away, her husband had arrived.
The land was a corpse. The soil was pale and cracked, leached of all life. The air, thin and sharp, carried a cold that had nothing to do with weather and everything to do with absence. A profound, suffocating darkness pressed in from all sides.
He walked on, the crunch of his boots the only sound in the dead world.
At first, he thought it was the wind, a high, thin whistling. But it wasn't. It was voices. Distant, ghostly whispers, their words blurred and indistinct. With every step he took, they grew louder, sharper, coalescing into a symphony of torment. Cries. Pleas. Screams. Dozens of them, then hundreds, a tidal wave of sound that crashed over him from every direction.
You did this to us… they shrieked, the sound vibrating in his bones.
…and now your debt comes due!
His chest tightened, the air growing heavy, each breath a struggle. Yet he pushed forward, his knuckles white as he clutched a small clay lamp—a twin to the one his wife now guarded in a moving car.
And then, the flame in his lamp did something impossible. It didn't flicker or dance. It bent, unnaturally, stretching horizontally as if some unseen mouth were trying to suck the very light from the wick. It strained toward the impenetrable blackness just ahead.
His breath caught. He couldn't see what was waiting for him in the shadows.
But he could feel it watching.
He took one more step forward.
And the darkness took a step to meet him.