The rain did not fall upon Blackridge; it attacked it. It was a rhythmic, violent drumming against the rusted roof of the interstate bus, a sound like a thousand skeletal fingers tapping for entrance. Aarav pressed his forehead against the cold glass, his breath fogging the pane into a milky blur. Outside, the world was dissolving. The jagged silhouettes of the Himalayan foothills were being swallowed by a mist so thick it looked like grey smoke rising from a funeral pyre. 🌧️
He hadn't been back in twenty years. Not since the screaming stopped. Not since the night the earth seemed to open up and swallow the laughter of his childhood. Blackridge was a village that the maps had grown tired of carrying; it was a bruise on the mountainside, dark and tender. As the bus crested the final ridge, Aarav saw the village square—a desolate patch of cracked stone and dead weeds. The streetlamps flickered with a dying yellow pulse, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to crawl toward the bus as it slowed to a crawl.
The driver, a man whose skin looked like cured leather and whose eyes were clouded with cataracts, didn't look back as he pulled the lever to open the door. The hiss of the pneumatic brakes sounded like a warning.
"You're the only one getting off here," the driver rasped, his voice scraping against the silence of the cabin. He didn't turn around. His knuckles were white where they gripped the steering wheel. "Nobody comes to Blackridge this late. Nobody comes here at all if they have a soul left to lose." 🚌
Aarav gripped the strap of his duffel bag. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs—a bird trapped in a cage of bone. "I have business at the Mehra estate," he said, though his voice sounded thin, even to his own ears.
The driver finally turned, his milky eyes widening. "The Mehra House? Boy, that house doesn't have business. It has an appetite. You shouldn't be here after sunset. The shadows there... they don't belong to the people who cast them. If you go up that path, don't look back. No matter who calls your name. Especially if it sounds like someone you loved." 👁️
Aarav stepped out into the mud. The bus roared back to life instantly, as if the vehicle itself were terrified to remain a second longer. The taillights vanished into the fog like two receding demon eyes, leaving Aarav in absolute, suffocating darkness.
The air tasted of wet slate and something metallic—something like old blood. He began the walk. The path to the Mehra House was a jagged spine of broken stones, choked by thorns that clawed at his jeans like tiny, desperate hands. Every step was an effort. The wind howled through the pines, a high-pitched shrieking that mimicked a human cry. 🌲
And then, he saw it.
The Mehra House didn't just sit on the hill; it loomed over it like a gargoyle. It was a Victorian monstrosity of dark wood and stained stone, its gables reaching upward like jagged teeth. For twenty years, it had stood empty. Or so the lawyers said. But as Aarav stood at the rusted iron gate, he felt a cold shiver crawl down his spine that had nothing to do with the rain.
The windows were like sightless eyes, reflecting nothing but the void of the storm. Yet, as a flash of lightning ripped across the sky, Aarav could have sworn he saw a curtain flutter in the top-most room. The room that had been his mother's.
He reached out to touch the gate. The iron was unnaturally cold, a deep, biting chill that seeped through his skin and settled in his marrow. The gate groaned open without him pushing it, a long, mournful sound that echoed across the valley. It was an invitation. 🏚️
"I'm back," he whispered, the words lost to the wind.
As he walked toward the front door, the heavy oak entrance, carved with weeping faces, began to creak. It didn't swing wide; it opened just a crack, a dark sliver of shadow beckoning him inside. Behind him, the wind died down to a deathly hush. The rain stopped mid-air. The entire world held its breath.
Somewhere deep within the bowels of the house, a floorboard groaned. It wasn't the sound of settling wood. It was the sound of something heavy shifting its weight. Something that had been waiting for twenty years to hear the sound of a Mehra heartbeat again. 👣
Aarav stepped over the threshold, and the door slammed shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.