Chapter 6: The Skeptic's Bargain

Chapter 6: The Skeptic's Bargain

The mark in the mirror had become my jailer. I avoided my own reflection, catching only fleeting glimpses of the haunted stranger who wore my face. The whispers from the drain had fallen silent, but the quiet was somehow worse, pregnant with a listening, waiting malevolence. The smell of river rot was my constant companion, a foul perfume that clung to my clothes and hair, a stench no amount of soap could wash away. My mother’s rituals had intensified into a silent, desperate war against an enemy she could not see. She moved through our home like a ghost herself, her lips a constant, silent prayer, her eyes scanning every shadow, every corner, for a sign of the encroaching water.

But the silence from my friends was the most suffocating prison of all. Rohan was a ghost story whispered on the street. Sameer was a fortress of terror. And Vikram… Vikram was a void.

The isolation was a physical pressure, squeezing the air from my lungs. I was drowning on dry land. In a fit of desperation that overrode all caution, I grabbed my phone and called Sameer, needing to hear a voice, any voice, that knew the truth.

He answered on the first ring, his voice a panicked, ragged whisper. “Arjun? Why are you calling? I told you…”

“Sameer, please,” I begged, my voice cracking. “I’m not… I’m not well. The thing in the mirror… it whispered my name. I smell the river in my own room. We have to find an answer. A pandit, a holy man, someone!”

A choked sob came from the other end of the line. “The pandit… I told you what he said, Arjun. He came to our house yesterday. He did a cleansing puja. He said the thing has a claim on you. He called it a daag, a stain. He said… he said it can spread to those who are close.”

His words were like a physical blow. A stain. A contagion. I was a plague carrier.

“He told my parents that I am not to see you or speak to you,” Sameer whispered, his voice thick with a mixture of fear and shame. “He said the stain will look for new hosts if its chosen one is too well protected. I’m sorry, Arjun. I can’t. My family…” He hung up, leaving me in a silence that was colder and deeper than any before.

He had chosen his family’s fear over our friendship. I couldn't even blame him.

I tossed my phone onto the bed, a wave of utter hopelessness washing over me. I was truly, finally alone. The Jal-Pishach hadn't just marked me; it had methodically and expertly amputated me from my life, from my friends, leaving me isolated and weak, ready to be picked off.

Just as that thought solidified, turning my despair to ice, my phone buzzed. My heart leaped. Sameer, I thought. He changed his mind.

But the name on the screen made my blood run cold.

Vikram.

The message was short, devoid of any warmth. Meet me. Old cricket ground. Sunset. Don't tell anyone.

My mind raced. Vikram, the arch-skeptic, the one who had accused me of being a child, wanted to meet in secret. Why? Had something happened to him? Had the creature turned its attention his way? A tiny, treacherous flicker of hope ignited in my chest. Maybe he was finally ready to face the truth. Maybe he had a plan. He was always the one with the plan.

Ignoring the frantic voice in my head that screamed it was a trap, ignoring my mother’s iron-clad rule about leaving the house, I scribbled a quick note—Going for a walk. Back soon.—and slipped out the back door. The open air felt dangerous, the familiar streets of my town now alien territory. The thrumming hunger in my stomach, dormant for a day, stirred with a low, predatory excitement. It was happy I was outside.

The sun was a bleeding orange smear on the horizon when I reached the old cricket ground. It was a dusty, forgotten patch of earth where we had spent countless hours of our childhood, our shouts and laughter once echoing where now only an eerie silence reigned.

Vikram was already there, pacing near the crumbling remains of our makeshift wicket. He wasn't the confident, swaggering boy I knew. He looked haggard, his shoulders hunched, his face pale under the dying light. But he didn't look scared. He looked… resolved. As if he had been wrestling with an impossible problem and had finally, grimly, arrived at the only possible solution.

“You came,” he said, his voice flat. He didn't meet my eyes.

“What is this, Vikram? Why the secrecy?”

He finally stopped pacing and looked at me, his gaze clinical and detached, like a doctor examining a terminal patient. “I’ve been thinking,” he began, his voice devoid of emotion. “Trying to be logical about this. You were right. It’s real. Rohan is gone, and what we saw was real. I accept that.”

The validation I had craved for days felt hollow, a prelude to something awful.

“So I started listing the facts,” he continued, holding up a finger. “Fact one: At the river, it ignored Sameer, it ignored Rohan after he threw the bottle, it ignored me. It walked straight towards you. Its eyes… they were fixed on you.”

He held up a second finger. “Fact two: Rohan gave in. He ate. The creature… it took him. But the hauntings didn’t stop. In fact, yours got worse. The whispers, the thing in the mirror. It got what it wanted from Rohan, but it’s still here. For you.”

“What’s your point, Vikram?” I asked, a knot of dread tightening in my chest.

“My point,” he said, his voice dropping, “is that this isn't about us. It was never about the four of us. It has always, only, been about you.” He took a step closer, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something in his eyes—not fear for me, but fear for himself. “Sameer’s pandit confirmed it. The daag. It’s on you, Arjun. You are the one it wants. You are the reason it’s still here, lurking, waiting.”

The calm, rational way he laid it all out was more terrifying than any frantic screaming. He had analyzed the nightmare, stripped it of emotion, and turned it into a deadly equation. And I was the variable that needed to be eliminated.

“It’s a predator, Arjun,” he said, his voice softening into a horrifying, persuasive murmur. “Like a wolf that singles out one deer from the herd. It won’t stop hunting until it gets the one it chose. The rest of the herd is only in danger as long as the chosen one is still running among them.”

I stared at him, the meaning behind his words slowly dawning, a monstrous, unbelievable truth.

“What are you saying?” I whispered, though I already knew.

Vikram finally looked away, towards the darkening outline of the town, towards his own safe, protected home.

“I’m saying… what if it just gets what it wants?” he said, the words falling like poison into the twilight air. “It’s a creature from the river. It wants you. What if you just… went to it? To the Ghat of the Hungry. Willingly.”

The world dissolved into a silent, roaring vortex. This was not a plan to fight the monster. This was a plan to feed it. With me.

“You want me to sacrifice myself,” I said, the words numb on my tongue.

“It’s a numbers game,” he replied, his voice regaining its cold, pragmatic edge as he looked back at me. “One life. To end this. To make sure it’s satisfied and goes away. To make sure the rest of us… our families… are safe.”

The ultimate betrayal. He wasn’t my friend. He was a survivor, willing to cut off a limb to save the body. I was the limb.

I looked at the boy I had known my entire life, the boy I had shared secrets and dreams with on this very ground, and saw a complete stranger. The Jal-Pishach was a creature of primal hunger, a force of nature. But this, this cold, calculating bargaining with my life, was a horror born from simple, human fear. And in that moment, I didn't know which was worse.

“Get away from me,” I breathed, a deep, shuddering rage replacing the shock.

He had the decency to look ashamed, but he didn’t take it back. He just gave a small, defeated nod and began to walk away, leaving me alone on the cricket ground as the last vestiges of light died, plunging me into a darkness that was now complete, both inside and out.