Chapter 4: The Silent Scream

Chapter 4: The Silent Scream

The vile, brackish taste still coated Rohan’s tongue, a phantom memory that made him gag. He had spent an hour scrubbing his sink, trying to erase the oily black residue, but he could still smell it: rot and stagnant water. The distorted song had eventually faded from his laptop, leaving behind a silence that was somehow worse.

His frantic calls and messages to the group chat went unanswered. Aman was gone. Pranav was a ghost. Kunal and Zoya were silent. The digital lifeline that connected them had been severed, leaving each of them adrift in their own private sea of terror. Rohan was drowning in it, the isolation pressing in on him from all sides.

He called Sneha’s number for the fifth time. This time, someone answered.

"Hello?" It wasn't Sneha. It was her mother, her voice stretched thin with panic.

"Mrs. Sharma? It's Rohan, Sneha's friend. Is she okay? I can't reach her."

"Rohan," she breathed, a sound halfway between a sob and a sigh of relief. "Thank God. Can you come over? Please? We don't know what to do. Something's wrong with her."

Twenty minutes later, Rohan was standing in the immaculate, sunlit hallway of Sneha's suburban home. The cheerful family photos lining the walls felt like a cruel joke. Mr. and Mrs. Sharma, a kind, gentle couple he’d met a dozen times, looked haggard and lost.

"She came home late last night," Mr. Sharma explained, his hands twisting together. "She looked... shaken. We thought she’d had a fight with one of you. This morning, she... she's not speaking. She won't even look at us."

"The doctor said it could be a psychological break," Mrs. Sharma added, her eyes red-rimmed. "He mentioned shock-induced mutism. But what could have shocked her so badly?"

Rohan knew. He knew exactly what had shocked her. The word mutism struck him like a physical blow. The entity hadn't just scared her; it had inflicted a specific, targeted wound.

He followed them up the stairs to her bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap, he could see her.

Sneha was sitting perfectly upright on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was dressed in the same clothes from the night before. Her posture was rigid, unnatural. But it was her face that made Rohan’s blood run cold.

Her eyes were wide open, fixed on a point on the opposite wall, a spot where there was nothing but floral wallpaper. They weren’t blank or unfocused. They were sharp, intelligent, and filled with a terror so absolute it was breathtaking. Her pupils were dilated to black pools, reflecting a horror only she could see. A single, silent tear traced a path down her cheek, but her expression remained locked. She was screaming, but the sound was trapped behind her teeth. A silent, eternal scream.

"Sneha?" Rohan said softly, stepping into the room.

She didn't blink. She didn't move. She gave no sign she had heard him. It was as if she were a statue carved from fear.

Her parents watched from the doorway, their hope visibly deflating. "We've tried everything," her mother whispered.

Rohan felt a surge of desperate resolve push through his own fear. This wasn't random. There was a pattern, a malevolent logic at play. Aman's fortress of solitude had been breached, its new master leaving a warm mug on the counter. His own brief haunting had involved the brackish water and the song, a direct echo of the apartment. There had to be a trace of it here, too. Evidence.

"Can I... can I just have a moment alone with her?" Rohan asked, turning to her parents. "Maybe she'll respond if it's just me."

They nodded, their faces etched with grief, and slowly pulled the door closed, leaving him alone with the silent girl and whatever she was seeing.

The room was cold. Not just the normal chill of an air-conditioned house, but a damp, penetrating cold that reminded him instantly of the bathroom in Apartment 5B. The air was thick with the same faint, foul scent of decay and pond water he’d choked on that morning. The entity had been here. It had left its stink behind.

He walked around the room, his eyes scanning every surface. Everything was neat, almost unnaturally so. Her books were perfectly aligned on her shelf. Her makeup was arranged in tidy rows on her vanity. It felt staged. Wrong.

He circled back to the bed. Sneha remained motionless, her terrifying gaze fixed on the wall. He looked from her face to the spot she was staring at, trying to see what she saw, but there was nothing. He moved closer, his gaze falling to her pillow.

Something was off. The crisp, white pillowcase had a small, dark stain near the center. It was damp, a greasy, circular mark about the size of his palm. The blackish color was sickeningly familiar. It was the same oily residue from his sink.

His heart hammered against his ribs. His hand trembled as he reached out, not toward Sneha, but toward the pillow beside her. He hesitated for a second, then slid his hand underneath it.

He felt something.

It was small, soft, and slick. And it was horribly, faintly warm.

With a surge of revulsion, Rohan snatched the pillow away. It fell to the floor with a soft poof. Lying in the center of the pristine white bedsheet was a small, grotesque object.

It was a sac. A glistening, semi-translucent pod, no bigger than a large caterpillar. It was a mottled, greyish-black color, and through its thin, membranous skin, he could see dark, thread-like filaments suspended inside. The whole thing seemed to pulse with a slow, sickening, internal rhythm, a faint, obscene life of its own. It was wet, slick with the same foul, oily fluid that had stained the pillowcase. A larval thing. An egg. A token.

Rohan stumbled back, a choked gasp escaping his lips. He finally understood.

The entity hadn't just frightened Sneha into silence. It had performed a grotesque transaction. It had visited her in the night, in the safety of her own bed. It had leaned over her as she slept and stolen her voice, plucking her ability to scream right out of her throat.

And this... this hideous, pulsating sac... was what it had left in its place. A payment. A souvenir. Proof of its visit.

He looked from the larval horror on the bed to Sneha’s face. Her silent scream suddenly made perfect sense. She wasn't seeing something across the room. She was feeling it. She could feel the void where her voice used to be, and she could feel the phantom presence of the obscene gift it had left under her pillow.

The horror was no longer just a shadow or a sound. It was corporeal. It was invasive. It was taking pieces of them, one by one, replacing them with its own filth.

Rohan backed away toward the door, his mind reeling. The warm mug. The black water. And now this. The attacks were intimate, tailored to each of them.

And there were still three friends unaccounted for. A cold, terrifying question began to form in his mind.

Who was next? And what piece of them would it take?