Chapter 9: The River's True Face

Chapter 9: The River's True Face

The silence was a physical presence. It pressed in on all sides, a thick, suffocating blanket that smothered the world. The flame of my mother’s diya did not flicker; it stood unnaturally erect, a single, defiant point of light against an absolute, consuming blackness. The air grew cold, a damp, subterranean chill that had nothing to do with the night and everything to do with the river. My stomach, which had been a furnace of roaring hunger, went quiet, replaced by a low, humming dread. It was the expectant hush of a predator that has finally cornered its prey.

From the center of the still, black water, a single bubble broke the surface. Then another. The sound was a soft, thick plop, like mud releasing a long-held breath. The river began to move, not with the gentle flow of a current, but with a deliberate, churning motion, as if something immense was stirring in its depths. The foul stench of decay, the smell that had haunted my bedroom, billowed up from the water, no longer a phantom scent but a nauseating, physical miasma.

Slowly, impossibly, it began to rise.

It was not a man walking out of the water. It was the water itself taking the shape of a man. A tall, gaunt silhouette coalesced from the black river, a dripping, shifting figure of mud, slime, and tangled, brown weeds. It had no definite form, its edges constantly dissolving and reforming, leaving trails of black, foul water that hissed as they touched the dry ground outside our salt circle. Where a head should be, two hollows began to glow with a faint, cold phosphorescent light, like anglerfish luring prey in the abyssal deep. This was its true form, a formless horror given shape by primal hunger.

I could not breathe. My mind, which had been reciting the mantras my mother had taught me, went blank. This was the thing that had walked towards us. This was the Jal-Pishach.

But then, the watery mass of its torso began to swirl, and the true horror was revealed. Floating within its semi-translucent body, like grotesque fish in a murky aquarium, were faces. Pale, bloated faces with waterlogged skin and empty eyes, their mouths open in silent screams. An old man with a white mustache, a young woman with a long, dark braid of hair now tangled with weeds, and a small boy who couldn't have been more than ten. Its past victims. An eternal, drowning chorus of its gluttony. And among them, a newer face, its features still horribly familiar, its eyes wide with a look of perpetual, shocked betrayal.

Rohan.

My legs gave out and I dropped to my knees, a strangled sound escaping my lips. My mother’s voice cut through my terror, sharp and commanding from behind me. “Do not look at it, Arjun! Look at the flame! Say the words!”

But I couldn't. I was paralyzed. The creature took a slow, sucking step forward, its form solidifying as it left the water. It stopped just short of the salt line, its glowing eyes fixed on me. It didn't roar. It didn't snarl.

It whispered. And the voice it used was the cruelest torture imaginable.

“Arjun…?”

The voice was thin, waterlogged, and unmistakably Rohan’s. It echoed slightly, as if coming from a great depth.

“Why didn’t you stop me, Arjun? The pakoras… they were so good. But it’s so cold down here now. So dark.”

“It is a lie!” my mother shouted, her voice trembling. “An illusion to break your will! Fight it!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching the silver amulet around my neck. Its icy coldness was a jolt, a sharp sting of reality against the creeping nightmare. I forced the first word of the mantra from my lips. “Om…”

The air around me was suddenly filled with the rich, intoxicating scent of hot oil and spices. The exact smell of the pakoras Rohan’s mother used to make. My stomach, silent moments before, contracted in a spasm of agonizing, desperate hunger.

“You could have warned me better,” the watery voice of Rohan continued, laced with a soft, pathetic sob. “You could have tried harder. Now look at me. Look at what I’ve become.”

I risked opening my eyes. The creature hadn't moved, but a new vision swirled within its watery form. I saw Vikram, his face a mask of cold pragmatism, standing over Rohan’s body by the riverbank. “It’s just a numbers game,” Vikram’s voice echoed in my head, a perfect memory of his betrayal. “One life to make sure the rest of us are safe.”

Then the image shifted. It was Sameer, huddled in his room, clutching his prayer beads. “He has a stain on him,” Sameer whispered, his eyes wide with terror. “The pandit said to stay away.”

The visions were a storm of my deepest fears and guilt. The creature was showing me that I was alone, abandoned, the cause of all this suffering. It was turning my friends' fear into its weapon.

“They’re drowning because of you, Arjun,” the chorus of voices whispered from the creature’s depths. And the vision inside its body changed again, to Vikram and Sameer, thrashing in the black water, their hands reaching for me, their mouths open in pleas for help before being pulled under into the swirling mass of faces.

“No!” I screamed, staggering back. The salt line felt a million miles away.

“It is not real!” my mother’s voice was a lifeline in the storm. “It feeds on your fear! Starve it! Remember Kiran! Remember my brother!”

Her words were the key. Kiran. This thing had done this before. It had used my uncle’s love for jalebis to lure him to his death. It was using my guilt and my hunger now. My grief and fear hardened into a core of pure, unadulterated rage.

“Om Shanti, Om Shanti…” I forced the words out, my voice raw but gaining strength. I focused on the cold weight of the amulet, letting it anchor me. The visions inside the creature flickered, disturbed by my resistance.

It sensed the shift. The psychological attacks of guilt were failing. So it changed its tactics, shifting from fear to desire.

The whispers stopped. The faces receded into the murky depths of its body. The creature became still, and the agonizing, clawing hunger in my stomach returned with the force of a physical blow. It was the worst it had ever been, a fire that threatened to consume me from the inside out.

And then, I saw it. Hovering in the air just inches from my face, inside the protective circle, was a plate. A simple steel plate, heaped high with perfectly golden, triangular samosas. Steam curled from their crispy shells, carrying a scent so divine, so overwhelmingly real, that my mouth flooded with saliva. The promise of relief, of satisfaction, of blissful silence, was right there. All my pain, all my fear, all my torment, could end with a single bite.

“Just one, Arjun,” a new voice whispered, this one a soothing, gentle melody that seemed to come from all around me. It was the river itself speaking, a promise of peace. “You have suffered enough. You have fought so hard. You deserve this. Just one bite. Just one step out of the circle. The pain will end. We will make it end.”

My resolve, forged in anger, began to crumble. My hand trembled as it started to lift, reaching for the phantom meal. My body screamed for it. The mantras died on my lips. My mother’s shouts became a distant buzz. All that existed was the gnawing emptiness inside me and the perfect, beautiful promise of the samosa.

One step. Just one step. That’s all it would take. My foot scraped against the dirt as I began to lean forward, my will dissolving into the overwhelming, maddening need to finally, finally eat.