The engine died with a long, defeated sigh, a sound that felt less like mechanical failure and more like a creature giving up. Inside the Bolero, the four boys sat utterly frozen, their breaths puffing out in small, visible clouds in the cold air. It wasn't silence that surrounded them—it was something heavier, an unnatural stillness that pressed on their chests, stealing the sound of their own heartbeats. Rahul was the first to speak, his voice thin, sounding alien even to his own ears. "Driver… what happened?"
The driver didn't answer immediately. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. His eyes were fixed on the narrow trail cutting through the dense forest—the fourth path. It hadn't been visible on Google Maps, nor from a distance while they were driving. It was as if the path had materialized only when they reached this exact point. "Yeh raasta…" the driver muttered finally, the Hindi sounding rough and unfamiliar, "kabhi kabhi dikhta hai. Har baar nahi."
Deep frowned, his brow furrowing with purely rational disbelief. "How can a road appear sometimes?"
The driver ignored the question, his focus entirely on the trail. He turned the key again. The engine coughed once, a wet, rattling sound, shuddered, and then fell silent. A second attempt yielded nothing. A third—still nothing. Raghav, anxiety rising in a tight knot in his stomach, urged him to try again, but the driver shook his head, his hands visibly trembling now. "Gaadi theek hai. Petrol full hai. Battery nayi hai. Par…" He pointed a shaking finger at the narrow trail. "Us taraf mudte hi gaadi band ho jaati hai."
A cold, visceral chill rolled through the group. This wasn't car trouble; this was deliberate. Rahul's hand was already on the door handle. He pushed the door open and stepped out. The air outside was sharper, colder, and inexplicably heavy, like breathing through a thick cloth. Satyam, Deep, and Raghav followed, huddling together instinctively. The world looked frozen: the leaves were still, the wind absent, the forest unnaturally quiet. Even the mist looked suspended in place, as if the current moment had been cut out and paused.
"This place isn't normal," Raghav whispered, his voice catching. Deep moved closer to him, his shoulder brushing Raghav's. "We shouldn't stay here. We need to walk back."
Rahul, however, felt something else—an indescribable pressure, like eyes watching them from the very shadows they were trying to avoid. As he scanned the treeline, his breath hitched. At the far end of the fourth path, a silhouette stood motionless. "Guys… someone's there."
The others turned. The figure didn't move. It looked human, but its stillness was too perfect, its shape too blurred by shadow and distance. "Bhai… yeh kaun hai?" Satyam murmured, his voice cracking. The driver backed away from the car slightly, his voice a dry rasp. "Koi insaan nahi lag raha."
Rahul's heartbeat quickened, a frantic drum in his ears. He didn't know why, but a primal warning screamed at him not to look at it directly, to avert his gaze. Yet he couldn't stop staring. The driver turned the ignition again. This time the engine didn't cough; it choked, a muffled, guttural sound, like something had physically blocked the exhaust.
"Let's go back!" Satyam insisted, fear making him desperate.
But the driver's response was horrifying—reverse gear had locked. They were trapped.
Just then, the wind surged, a single, sharp gust, only to vanish again in an instant, leaving an eerie, suffocating vacuum. A whisper drifted through the stillness. A layered, distant murmur, like many voices speaking one word. "Rah…ul…" The voice was faint yet unmistakable, cutting through the silence. They stiffened.
The whisper came again, clearer, intimate. "Rahul… come…"
Satyam's voice was high-pitched, incredulous. "Come BACK? Rahul has never been here!"
The forest trembled gently, like a massive creature stirring in its sleep. Far away, a frantic flock of birds erupted into the sky, finally breaking the unnatural silence. And then the figure moved—not with steps, but by shifting places, suddenly appearing much closer, just fifteen meters away.
The faceless void where its features should have been made everyone stagger back a step in pure, blinding terror. It didn't walk or float—it simply existed in a different place than before, as though reality had skipped a frame. The path behind it shimmered faintly like heat waves, though the air was freezing.
"Get inside the car!" the driver roared, snapping out of his terror.
They scrambled into the Bolero, diving over each other. The doors slammed shut, the clunk sounding sickeningly final. The instant the driver turned the key, the engine came alive smoothly, effortlessly, as if mocking their fear.
"How is it running now?" Deep whispered, his chest heaving.
The driver didn't answer. He slammed the gear into reverse and accelerated hard, tires spitting gravel. The car jolted backward. As they retreated, the faceless figure glided forward, not walking but closing distance with a single, impossible shift.
"Don't look behind!" the driver yelled, his voice strained.
But Deep turned instinctively, his terror overriding all logic. He shouldn't have. His scream tore through the car as he clutched his head, shaking violently, his face contorted in agony. "It—it's in my head—it's speaking inside!"
Rahul grabbed his arm, pulling him forward. "Deep, look away! Look at the dash!"
Deep gasped, eyes wild, staring unseeingly at Rahul. "It said… 'Only one of you belongs here.'"
Those words chilled them more deeply than the wind ever could. Finally, the Bolero reached the main road. As soon as the tires touched the familiar path, the forest sounds returned—the rustle of wind, the sigh of leaves, distant birdsong. Reality resumed its rhythm with a dizzying lurch. But the boys were silent, shaking, looking like casualties of a sudden, brutal war.
The driver stopped at a clearing overlooking the valley, stepped out, and breathed hard, dragging air into his lungs as though he had escaped drowning.
Raghav leaned forward, his voice barely audible, small and lost. "What was that thing?"
No one answered. Rahul stepped out, feeling the mass of the mountains staring back at him. He couldn't stop thinking about the monk's strange warning earlier in the day—"Zindagi ka raasta seedha hota hai… jab tak tum galat mod nahi lete." The wrong turn. Rahul swallowed, his throat dry. Why did the whisper know his name? Why did Deep hear that only he belonged there?
As Rahul looked toward the clouds, he froze. The clouds naturally shifted, but for a moment, they formed a recognizable shape—a face, hollow and faceless, staring back at him with the same void he had seen in the forest. As he blinked, the shape dissolved.
"It's over," Deep said softly, putting a warm, steadying hand on Rahul's shoulder.
Rahul nodded, though nothing inside him agreed. That night, in their Gangtok hotel, the warm lighting and the noise of tourists in nearby rooms should have comforted them, but a quiet, brittle tension clung to them.
"We can't tell anyone," Satyam whispered, picking at the bedspread. "They'll think we've lost it. They'll hospitalize us."
Deep sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his palms as if expecting marks of some kind. "But why Rahul? Why did it speak his name?"
Rahul said nothing. He stood by the window, staring out at the dark, unforgiving mountains. For the second time that day, he felt watched—not by people, but by a presence. By the path itself.
A knock on the door shattered the silence. Three slow, deliberate knocks. All four froze mid-breath.
"Who is it?" Rahul called, his voice surprisingly firm despite the ice in his veins.
No answer. Another knock. Then a voice—soft, familiar, too close, as if the person was pressed against the wood. "Rahul… open the door."
Deep turned instantly pale, the color draining from his lips. "That's the same voice."
Rahul backed away slowly, shaking his head in frantic denial. "No… it can't be."
The voice whispered again, louder, closer, laced with an unsettling sweetness. "Open the door."
The driver wasn't with them now. They were terrifyingly alone. Satyam grabbed the landline phone to call reception, his hands shaking so violently he nearly missed the receiver. The lights flickered. Raghav stumbled backward, pressing himself into a corner as shadows lengthened unnaturally in the corners of the room.
The voice came again, right at the door, like lips pressed against the wood. "You took the wrong path, Rahul… return to me."
The lights went out, plunging the room into perfect, suffocating darkness. The handle on the door began to turn slowly, painstakingly, as if someone—or something—was patiently testing its mechanism.
Deep shouted, a raw, primal sound, "Don't let it in!"
Rahul stumbled backward, crashing into a heavy chair, the noise muffled in the dark. The handle clicked again. The door shutters rattled violently. Satyam dropped the phone; the line went dead with a soft clack.
In the perfect darkness, the whisper slithered through the room like cold smoke. "Only you belong here."
Rahul felt it—right next to his ear. A cold breath. A presence that wasn't human. He screamed, a sound ripped from the deepest part of his lungs.
The door slammed open with a violent, splintering crack, flooding the room with the dim, neutral hallway light. A hotel staff member stood outside, startled, holding a flashlight. "Sir? Everything okay? We heard shouting."
The boys froze, like startled animals caught in a beam of light. The staff member looked normal—confused, human, and utterly, blessedly real. They exchanged silent, bewildered glances. Rahul opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, realizing the utter impossibility of explaining. The staff member checked around the room, offered a confused apology, and left after ensuring nothing was physically wrong.
As the door closed again, the boys exhaled collectively, relief washing over them in a sickening wave. But Rahul? He wasn't relieved. Because even after the staff left and the door was locked again, a faint whisper lingered at the very back of his mind—too soft for the others to hear, a ghost of a sound.
"Come back…"
Rahul's eyes widened in silent terror. It wasn't outside anymore.
It was inside him.