Chapter 8: The Ritual by the Bank

Chapter 8: The Ritual by the Bank

The weight of the silver amulet in my palm was the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into shadow and fear. My mother’s confession had not banished the darkness, but it had given it a shape, a history. I was no longer a boy haunted by a random malevolence; I was the heir to a generational feud, and this tarnished piece of silver was my inheritance. The despair that Vikram’s betrayal had carved into me began to harden into a cold, brittle resolve. Hiding was a death sentence. Waiting for my friends to sell me out was a fool’s game. The only path left was the one that led straight back to the river.

“Hiding in this house is a slow death,” I told my mother that night, my voice stronger than it had been in days. The amulet felt cool against my feverish skin. “It will break through your wards eventually, or I will break from the hunger. Vikram… he wanted me to go to the river, to give myself to it.”

My mother’s face, already a mask of grief, tightened with a new, fierce anger. “His fear makes him a coward. But he is right about one thing. This ends at the river. But you will not go as a sacrifice, Arjun. You will go as a hunter.”

For the first time since this nightmare began, a spark of her old, formidable strength returned. The perpetual victim was gone, replaced by a strategist forced to unearth a battle plan she had prayed she would never need. For the next forty-eight hours, our small home was transformed into a war room. My mother, it turned out, hadn't just been living in fear; she had been studying her enemy. In the decades since her brother’s death, she had spoken to old pandits, read forgotten local histories, and pieced together the lore of the Jal-Pishach from whispers and warnings.

“It is a creature of base desire,” she explained, her hands busy grinding herbs into a coarse, fragrant powder. The sharp scent of mustard and neem filled the air. “It cannot be killed, not by us. It is as old as the river itself. But it can be bound. It can be silenced.”

Her plan was both terrifying and steeped in ancient tradition. A binding ritual. It had to be performed at the water’s edge, on the night of the new moon—the Amavasya.

“The new moon is in two days,” she said, her voice grim. “It is the darkest night. The veil between the world of spirits and the world of men is at its thinnest. The Jal-Pishach will be at its most powerful… but also its most tangible. It is the only time it can be truly touched by our world.”

It was a race against a celestial clock, and every passing hour was a victory for the creature coiled inside me. The hunger, sensing the impending confrontation, escalated its assault. It was no longer a dull, gnawing ache; it was a physical torment, a sharp, stabbing pain that radiated from my stomach. The phantom scent of samosas was now laced with something else, the greasy, spicy smell of Rohan’s final meal of pakoras, a cruel and constant reminder of the price of surrender. Sleep offered no escape, only nightmares of being pulled into black, churning water, my lungs filling with mud. I would wake up gasping, the reek of the river clinging to me like a shroud.

Once, while drinking a glass of water, I stared into its clear depths and for a terrifying second, I didn't see the bottom of the glass. I saw the murky, shifting surface of the river at night, a single pale face—Rohan’s—bobbing just beneath the surface before sinking into the abyss. I dropped the glass, and it shattered on the floor, the sound like a gunshot in our silent, tense home.

My mother worked tirelessly, her movements precise and purposeful. She prepared a small brass pot of panchgavya, a sacred concoction of five products from a cow, its pungent, earthy smell a stark contrast to the creature’s stench of decay. She mixed the ground herbs with salt and iron dust, pouring the dark mixture into a small cloth bag. She taught me verses, ancient mantras of protection and binding, forcing me to repeat them until my tongue was numb, until the Sanskrit words felt branded onto my mind.

“The creature will fight you with your own weakness,” she warned, her eyes boring into mine. “It will use your hunger. It will show you things. Illusions. It will use the faces of your friends. You must hold onto the amulet. You must focus on the words. The silver will be a shield for your body, but the mantra is the shield for your soul.”

The day of the new moon arrived, heavy and oppressive. The sky was a bruised, starless grey, and the air felt thick, charged with an unseen energy. I hadn't eaten in nearly a week. My body was a fragile husk, but my mind, sharpened by hunger and fear, felt strangely clear. The gnawing pain in my gut was a constant, screaming siren, a psychic pull towards the river that was almost irresistible. I could feel the Jal-Pishach. It was awake. It was waiting. It was hungry.

As dusk bled into true night, my mother placed the tarnished silver amulet around my neck. The metal was shockingly cold against my chest.

“It is time,” she said, her voice steady, betraying none of the terror I knew she felt. She held a small bag containing the ritual components. Her other hand held a single, flickering diya.

Leaving the supposed safety of our home felt like stepping off a cliff. The moment we crossed the threshold, the oppressive presence I had felt for days intensified tenfold. The air grew heavy and humid, carrying the scent of wet earth and algae. The short walk to the river was the longest of my life. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every rustle of leaves was the sound of something dragging itself from the water. The psychic pull from my stomach was a physical rope, tugging me forward, urging me to run, to throw myself at the source of my torment and beg for relief. I clutched the amulet, its cold reality a small anchor in a sea of madness.

We arrived at the Ghat of the Hungry. It was the same spot where I had sat with my friends, a lifetime ago. The stone I had sat on was a dark, menacing shape by the water. In the moonless dark, the river wasn't a river at all. It was a hole in the world, a swatch of pure, silent blackness that seemed to drink the faint light from my mother’s diya.

“Do not look at the water,” she commanded, her voice a sharp whisper. “Look at the flame. Give me your hand.”

She began her work. Chanting in a low, rapid murmur, she used the iron and salt mixture to draw a circle in the dirt around me, leaving a small opening pointed away from the river. She placed small piles of mustard seeds at the four cardinal points. She lit incense that filled the air with a thick, cloying smoke. I stood in the center of the circle, my entire being screaming with a hunger so profound it felt like my soul was being torn from my body.

“It knows we are here,” I rasped, my eyes fixed on the flickering flame of the diya.

“It has been waiting,” she replied, finishing her preparations. She stood before me, her face pale and grim in the small pool of light. “Remember the words, Arjun. Remember your anger. Remember Kiran. Now… close the circle.”

She poured the last of the salt line, sealing me inside. The ritual had begun.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of my own ragged breath and my mother’s low chanting. The hunger in my stomach roared, demanding release. Then, a sudden, unnatural calm fell over the ghat. The chirping of the crickets ceased. The gentle lapping of the water against the stone steps stopped.

The river, a living, breathing thing, had just gone utterly, unnaturally still. And from the center of that silent, black water, I felt a gaze, ancient and malevolent, fix upon me. It was here.