Kavya Narayan
Chapter 1
The drive from Mumbai to Devkund was supposed to take six hours. For Ayaan Mehta and his crew, it took nearly nine. What began as a scenic journey into the Sahyadris soon turned into a bumpy crawl through winding forest roads, choked by mist and littered with fallen leaves. The monsoon had arrived early this year, and every twist of the mountain path seemed to whisper warnings the travelers couldn’t quite hear.
Ayaan sat in the front seat of their rented Bolero, eyes fixed on the dirt road ahead. Behind him, Priya leafed through her research notes, occasionally glancing at the moss-covered trees outside. Sameer snored softly beside her, arms folded. Isha, their camerawoman, focused her phone on the blurred green landscape, occasionally muttering, “That’s going to be a great establishing shot.”
They were headed to Devkund village to shoot a documentary titled Vanished Voices: Forgotten Folklore of India. Ayaan, the 29-year-old director with a taste for the unexplained, had stumbled across a strange article online about Devkund—a place where voices were said to echo long after their owners had died. It was a village with no mobile signal, no electricity after sunset, and a reputation the internet only hinted at.
“We’re here,” Ayaan said finally, pulling the car to a stop beside an old stone archway. The village entrance was marked by a fading sign in Marathi: Devkund gaav aaple swāgat karto.
As they stepped out, the air felt heavier—thick with moisture and something else. Something older.
A group of villagers watched from afar. Men in white dhotis, women in navaris, children barefoot and silent. Their eyes didn’t welcome; they studied.
Ayaan approached an elderly man with a thin frame and a face carved by time.
“Namaskar kaka,” he began, offering a smile. “I’m Ayaan. We spoke over the landline? We’ve come to document the local legends.”
The old man didn’t respond immediately. Then, with a glance at the others, he muttered, “You’ve come too late.”
“Late? Why?”
“The forest has already started singing again.”
Priya stepped forward, intrigued. “You mean the lullabies? I read something about that. They say a woman sings near the pond at night.”
“She is not a woman,” the man snapped. “Not anymore.”
They were offered rooms in an old haveli near the edge of the forest—abandoned for years, but sturdy. The villagers refused to stay after sunset. They left by five.
“Bit dramatic, don’t you think?” Sameer said, dropping his bag on a dusty charpoy.
“It’s perfect,” Ayaan replied, peering out the broken window toward the forest. “Authentic atmosphere.”
That night, while Priya catalogued her notes and Isha reviewed footage, Ayaan stepped outside for a smoke. The forest loomed just meters away, dark and indifferent.
He heard it then.
A melody, light and lilting, drifting through the trees. It was a lullaby in Marathi—gentle, sorrowful.
Ayaan turned toward the sound. It was impossible to tell how far it came from.
Back inside, he asked, “Did you guys hear that?”
They hadn’t.
At 3:12 AM, the song returned—this time louder, closer. Isha woke screaming, claiming she’d seen a shadow standing beside her bed. Sameer found scratch marks on the inside of the windowpane.
The next morning, the villagers refused to speak to them. Only one child, a girl with kohl-ringed eyes, whispered as they passed:
“Don’t go near Pishach Talaav. That’s where she waits.”
Ayaan wrote the name down carefully.
The first entry in his field journal for Vanished Voices was brief: Night 1: The forest sings. The locals won’t speak. But something definitely wants us to listen.
Chapter 2:
The second day in Devkund began with low clouds blanketing the forest. Birds were oddly silent. Isha noticed it first.
“Where are the birds? No calls, no wings, nothing.”
Sameer shrugged. “Maybe even they’re scared of that lullaby.”
Ayaan laughed, but it was hollow. The events of the previous night had unsettled them more than they cared to admit. He’d barely slept, haunted by the feeling that someone was watching from the edge of the woods.
After breakfast, they visited the village square, hoping for more interviews. But word had spread. Doors were shut. Faces turned away. Except one.
Old Bhairav Joshi sat beneath the banyan tree, grinding betel leaves between stained teeth. He was the same man who’d warned them earlier.
“You still here?” he said. “Still want stories?”
Ayaan nodded. “Yes. Especially about the pond and the lullabies. We need to understand what’s going on.”
Joshi tapped his cane. “You want truth? Then listen. And don’t laugh.”
They gathered around him as the village went about pretending not to listen.
“Long ago, before the British, this land belonged to the Naagini Devi. A serpent goddess—protector of springs, caves, secrets. She had a temple where the pond is now. It wasn’t always cursed. It was sacred. Her songs brought rain and healed sickness.”
“What happened?” Priya asked.
Joshi’s eyes narrowed. “The greed of men. A Brahmin priest from Pune came, claiming to offer better rituals. He desecrated the temple, declared the Devi impure, and tried to build over it.”
“Did he succeed?” Isha asked.
Joshi spat. “No. One night during the full moon, the Devi appeared. Her rage split the earth. The temple sank into the pond, and the priest vanished. Some say she still sings to lure the impure to her—so she can take back what’s hers.”
They returned to the haveli in silence. Isha replayed the lullaby she’d recorded faintly on her phone.
“It’s not from any folk song I know,” Priya murmured.
“It’s not even consistent,” Sameer added. “It shifts keys. Almost like it’s… responding to us.”
That evening, they hiked to Pishach Talaav.
It was deeper than they expected, surrounded by twisted banyan trees. Fog clung to the surface like a second skin.
Near the edge, they found ruins—part of a stone arch, half-submerged pillars. And a rusted sign in broken English and Marathi:
“PROPERTY OF EAST INDIA COMPANY – 1842 – ENTRY PROHIBITED.”
Ayaan’s interest peaked. “The British were here? Why?”
They explored further and discovered a collapsed satchel in a tree hollow. Inside: a leather-bound journal.
The cover was brittle but legible: Father Richard Wren, 1841.
Ayaan flipped through pages filled with observations: native rituals, maps, odd sketches. Then, toward the end: “We heard the song again last night. Miss Abigail is taken with it. Says she sees a lady in her dreams. I fear the pond is no mere superstition.”
The final entry: “She walked into the water smiling. I tried to stop her. I failed. Now the men hear the song too. We cannot leave. The jungle has changed. Something ancient is awake.”
A chill passed through the group. As the sun dipped behind the trees, the lullaby began. This time, it came from beneath the water. Low. Clear. Beckoning.
Chapter 3
The third morning in Devkund brought a sudden drop in temperature. The fog had thickened overnight and blanketed the village like a shroud. Priya hadn’t come down for breakfast.
“She said she was tired,” Ayaan told the group, stirring sugar into his tea. “Didn’t sleep much.”
Sameer chuckled. “None of us did. That song—it’s in my head.”
Isha frowned. “I heard someone walking outside the haveli last night. Barefoot. Didn’t sound like a villager.”
When Priya finally emerged, her eyes were bloodshot and her voice oddly distant. “I went to the pond,” she whispered.
“Alone? Why?” Ayaan stood.
“She called me. The Devi. She said I belong to her.”
Her tone was calm, but there was a strange cadence to her words—archaic, almost ritualistic. Ayaan pulled her aside. “You’re not serious. You went into the jungle alone?”
“I wasn’t alone,” she replied. “She walks with me now.”
Over the day, Priya became more erratic. She hummed to herself, often the same tune they heard from the pond. Isha caught her standing motionless in the courtyard, eyes fixed on nothing. Her voice shifted mid-sentence between her usual tone and an older Marathi dialect none of them fully understood.
Sameer installed cameras around the haveli, hoping to catch footage of anything unusual. What they recorded was worse than they imagined.
At 2:46 AM, the camera in Priya’s room showed her rise from her bed, eyes wide open. She walked to the window, muttering words that sounded like a chant. Then she smiled and whispered:
“We are inside now.”
And the camera went black.
The next morning, they found red thread tied around every window and doorframe—an old ritual for protection against spirits. None of them had placed it.
Sameer wanted to leave. “Screw the documentary. This isn’t normal.”
But the road out of the village was blocked. Heavy landslides—trees and mud covering the only drivable path.
The villagers refused to help. They closed their homes early. Bhairav Joshi was nowhere to be found.
Isha suggested hiking out, but Ayaan insisted they stay. “We need answers. We’re not leaving her like this.”
That night, Sameer vanished.
His bed was empty. His gear untouched. The camera near the front porch showed him walking out toward the pond, barefoot, smiling.
They searched till dawn. Found only one thing: Sameer’s shirt, snagged on a tree branch near the water.
And footprints leading into the pond.
No footprints coming back.
Priya watched the footage and whispered, “He heard her too.”
Her eyes gleamed.
Something inside her had changed—and it wasn’t human.
Chapter 4
The morning after Sameer vanished was the quietest yet.
Devkund was cloaked in a silence so profound it felt alive. No birds. No breeze. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath. The only sound came from Priya, softly humming the lullaby—no longer whispering it, but singing, full-throated, as though it were hers.
Ayaan and Isha watched her from across the room, terrified.
“I think she’s fully possessed,” Isha whispered. “That’s not Priya anymore.”
Ayaan nodded, his jaw clenched. “We’re getting her out. We’re getting all of us out—if it kills me.”
Isha looked at him, her voice trembling. “It might.”
They spent the next few hours scouring Father Wren’s journal, trying to decipher his notes. Somewhere in the ramblings of the dead missionary lay clues to ending this nightmare. Finally, Isha pointed at a passage scrawled in Latin and Marathi:
“When the serpent goddess awakens, she binds the soul of the impure. But her chains are not eternal. Only a rite conducted on sanctified ground—at the hour her voice is weakest—can sever the bond.”
Sanctified ground.
Ayaan stood. “The old temple. The one beneath the pond.”
“But it’s submerged,” Isha said. “How do we reach it?”
He turned the page and saw a hand-drawn map. A path through the forest, leading to a cave marked Nag Dwaar.
A side entrance.
That evening, with torches and minimal gear, they carried a sedated Priya through the forest, following the map. The deeper they went, the more the world warped—trees twisted into grotesque shapes, and time felt slower, thicker.
An hour later, they found it: a rocky outcrop shaped like a serpent’s mouth, half-covered in vines.
Nag Dwaar.
Inside, the air was cold and wet. Ayaan led, Isha behind him, dragging Priya who murmured the lullaby in her sleep. The tunnel spiraled downward, ending at a vast underground chamber: the sunken sanctum of the Devi.
The temple walls were covered in old carvings—snakes, moons, and a woman with six eyes and a crown of bones. In the center: a stone altar and a dried-up pond.
As they stepped closer, Priya awoke screaming.
“She knows we’re here!”
A gust of wind blew through the cavern. The torches flickered. From the dried pond, water began to rise unnaturally fast—bubbling, glowing faintly green.
Then came the voice.
It echoed in every direction. Gentle. Alluring. Ancient.
“You stole what was mine. I take her in return.”
Priya’s body levitated, eyes rolling back.
Ayaan screamed, “Isha! The rite!”
Isha, voice shaking, began reading from the missionary’s translated notes—an invocation, a plea for release.
But the Devi’s voice thundered again, deeper now.
“She came to me willingly. You cannot take her.”
The water exploded upward, forming a spectral figure—a serpent-woman with six glowing eyes. She slithered toward them, coiling mid-air.
Ayaan did the unthinkable—he stepped onto the altar.
“If you want a soul,” he shouted, “take mine!”
The Devi paused. Then laughed. A sound like stone cracking.
Namaste “Bold. But not yours to offer.”
The specter lunged toward Isha. At the last second, Priya screamed—not in fear, but in defiance.
“No! You cannot have them!”
Her voice cut through the air like lightning. The lullaby reversed, the notes distorting into shrieks.
Priya’s body glowed. The Devi recoiled.
A second voice—older, feminine, powerful—rose from within Priya, chanting in ancient Sanskrit. The voice of the true Naagini Devi—the protector, not the cursed shadow. The two forces collided in a flash of blinding white. When the light faded, Priya lay unconscious. The spectral Devi was gone. The pond was dry. ANamaste nd the temple began to crumble.
They ran, carrying Priya through the collapsing tunnel, reaching the forest just as the entrance caved in. Behind them, the mountain sighed—as though exhaling centuries of pain.
Two days later, they emerged onto the main road, flagged down a truck, and left Devkund behind. Priya recovered slowly, her memory hazy. She remembered only the singing, and a woman in white who told her, “It’s not your time.”
Sameer was never found. Their footage—corrupted. Only fragments remained: static-filled glimpses of the pond, Priya’s chanting, and the outline of a six-eyed figure in the mist. They never completed Vanished Voices. But they kept the journal.
End
