Chapter 4: Rohan's Mistake

Chapter 4: Rohan's Mistake

The story of Dev was a poison that seeped into the marrow of my bones. For three days, I existed in a twilight state of hunger and terror, a ghost in my own home. Every creak of the floorboards was the squelch of a watery footstep. Every shadow held the shape of a gaunt, dripping figure. The intermittent drip from the kitchen had become my personal torturer, a deliberate, patient metronome counting down the seconds of my sanity. I was withering. My lean frame was becoming skeletal, my eyes sinking into dark, hollowed-out sockets. My mother watched me, her face a canvas of helpless agony, pressing glasses of water and milk into my trembling hands, which was all I could stomach.

The gnawing emptiness inside me was no longer just a craving; it was a living entity, a parasite with a singular, screaming desire. It wanted heat. It wanted oil. It wanted the satisfying crunch of fried batter. It whispered promises of relief, of satisfaction, of blissful silence if I would just take a single, golden-brown bite.

But it was Rohan’s silence that scared me the most. Vikram was a fortress of denial, Sameer a prison of fear, but Rohan had simply vanished from our network. He wasn't answering calls or texts. He was the youngest, the one who’d tried so hard to be brave by throwing the bottle. I imagined him alone in his room, wrestling with this same demonic hunger, with no one to tell him the story of Dev, no one to warn him of the hook he was about to swallow. The weight of that possibility became heavier than my own suffering. I had to warn him. I couldn't let him walk the same path as Dev.

Summoning the last of my strength, I pushed myself off my bed. The room swam for a moment.

“Where are you going?” my mother demanded, appearing in the doorway as if summoned by my intent. The smoldering herbs in her hand did little to mask the panic in her eyes.

“Rohan’s house,” I rasped. “He’s not answering. Ma, he doesn’t know. He might think it’s just hunger.”

“You cannot leave this house!” she commanded, blocking my path. “The threshold is protected. Outside… you will be vulnerable. The pull will be stronger.”

“And what if he gives in?” I shot back, a desperate fire flaring in my chest. “What if the creature gets what it wants from him? Will it leave me alone then? Or will it just get stronger?”

The question hung between us, ugly and unanswerable. Before she could reply, my phone, lying on the bedside table, began to vibrate, a harsh, jarring buzz in the tense silence.

The screen read: Rohan.

A wave of relief so powerful it made my knees weak washed over me. I snatched the phone, my thumb fumbling to answer. “Rohan? Are you okay? I’ve been trying to call you!”

“Hey, Arjun,” his voice came through, and it was jarringly… normal. Cheerful, even. The frantic edge I expected was completely absent. “Yeah, man, sorry. I just needed to clear my head. My phone was off.”

“Clear your head? Rohan, you have to listen to me. This is real. What we saw…”

“Whoa, slow down,” he laughed, a brittle sound that didn't quite reach his eyes, I was sure of it. “I talked to Vikram. He talked some sense into me. We were drunk, man. We saw a shadow, maybe a log in the water, and we freaked ourselves out. It was a mass hallucination or something. We’ve been acting crazy.”

He was parroting Vikram’s exact words. The desperate, aggressive denial had found a new host.

“No, Rohan, it’s not in our heads!” I insisted, my voice cracking with urgency. “My mother, she knows what it is. It has a name. The Jal-Pishach. It’s a…”

“A what?” he chuckled again, the sound grating on my raw nerves. “A Jal-Pishach? Seriously, Arjun, you’re starting to sound like my grandmother with her ghost stories. You need to relax. You’re just scaring yourself.”

“It’s the hunger, Rohan, isn’t it?” I pressed, my heart hammering. “You’re hungry. For something fried.”

There was a slight pause on the other end. “Yeah, actually,” he admitted, his voice dropping slightly. “I have been. Starving. But it’s probably just from the beer. All I could think about was food. In fact…” His voice brightened again with that same false cheerfulness. “My mom just made a huge plate of pakoras. The whole house smells amazing. I’m about to dig in right now.”

The world tilted. “No!” I screamed into the phone, a raw, ragged sound. My mother lunged forward, her eyes wide with horror. “Rohan, don’t! You can’t eat them! It’s a trick! It’s not your hunger, it’s the creature’s! It’s how it gets its hold on you! There was a boy, Dev, years ago, he…”

“Arjun, you’re actually insane,” Rohan’s voice was cold now, laced with irritation. “You need help. I’m hungry. I’m going to eat.”

Through the phone, I heard the distinct, crisp crunch of a pakora being bitten into. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard.

“Rohan?” I whispered, a cold dread washing over me.

“Mmm, that’s good,” he mumbled, his mouth full. “You should really have something to eat, man. You’ll feel…”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone, the silence on the other end more terrifying than any scream. I had failed. The hook had been set.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of agonizing dread. I didn’t sleep. I just sat on my bed, staring at the wall, waiting for a dawn I knew would bring terrible news.

It came with the morning cries of vendors in the street, pierced by something sharper. A woman’s wail. It was a sound of pure, undiluted grief that cut through the neighborhood buzz. My mother appeared at my door, her face ashen, her hands pressed to her mouth. She didn’t need to say a word. I knew.

I ran. I ignored my mother’s calls, bursting out of our protected gate and into the street. The air, no longer filtered by sacred smoke, felt thick and heavy with the river’s damp presence. The pull in my stomach intensified, a triumphant thrumming that seemed to mock my every step.

A small crowd was gathered outside Rohan’s house. Murmurs and whispers rippled through the air. “Just vanished.” “From his own bed.” “The police are baffled.”

I pushed through the throng of concerned neighbors, my eyes wild. Rohan’s mother was being held by two women, her body wracked with sobs. His father stood by the open front door, his face a stone mask of disbelief. A single policeman was taking notes, looking more confused than authoritative.

I didn’t need to go inside. I could see it from the path. The bedroom window was open, its curtains fluttering in the morning breeze. And leading away from it, stark against the dusty ground, was a trail.

Footprints.

They started just below the window, where the earth was soft from a leaking drainpipe. They were not human. They were too long, the heel too deep, the shape of the toes indistinct, as if formed from thick, coalescing mud. They were impossibly, unnaturally wet, each print a dark, glistening stain on the dry dirt, weeping a foul, black water that smelled faintly of algae and decay.

The trail was clear, a horrifying path leading away from the warmth of Rohan’s bed, across his small garden, and out onto the street. The prints pointed in only one direction.

Towards the river.