Rishabh Sen Gupta
Episode 1: The Vanished Trekkers
The forest had been restless that week, or so the villagers of Rajabhatkhawa said, though none of them would put it into words when Kavya Dutta asked, notebook in hand, recorder tucked away in her bag. They shook their heads, muttered something about elephants straying too close, or fog that refused to lift, or roads washed out by sudden rains, but no one mentioned the three trekkers who had vanished two weeks ago on their way to Buxa Fort. The police had filed their usual report, search parties had trampled through the thickets for a day or two, and then the matter was closed as quickly as it had been opened. People disappear in forests, the officer at Alipurduar station told her with a shrug, as if the forest itself had signed the paperwork. But the story wouldn’t let her go, because one of the trekkers had been a fellow journalist, and his last message to her was a photograph of an abandoned forest outpost where the caption simply read: Lantern still burning. The picture had shown nothing but a shadow of a roof, a crumbling wall, and something blurred in the fog that could have been a light or simply the sun striking a piece of broken glass. She had stared at it too long, and then when the news came that he had vanished along with his two companions, her editor had tried to dissuade her from going, said it was nothing but a tragic accident, maybe wild animals, maybe a misstep in the cliffs, but Kavya had already packed her bag and booked her train ticket to the border of Bengal and Bhutan where the Buxa Reserve waited like a patient beast.
Her first morning in the village was heavy with the scent of damp leaves, cow dung, and the metallic tang of mist. The forest loomed close, a wall of sal and teak and bamboo, darker than it should have been in daylight. She asked the tea shop owner, a grizzled man with cataract-clouded eyes, if he had seen the trekkers. He stirred his tea slowly and said, “Tourists come and go. Forest takes who it wants.” When she pressed, he looked at her recorder, then spat into the mud and said nothing more. But a boy sitting in the corner, no more than fourteen, piped up that they had seen the trekkers pass with backpacks and cameras, laughing loudly, disturbing the monkeys on the roadside. They had asked the way to the old fort, but instead of following the usual trail, they had wandered towards the northern path that the locals avoided. When she asked why, the boy’s mother tugged his arm sharply, silencing him, muttering, “Don’t talk of the outpost.”
That word clung to her all through the day—the outpost. She had heard of it in fragments while researching the place, a British-era station built to monitor rebels and poachers, long abandoned, swallowed by creepers and moss. Some said it was cursed, others said it was haunted by the prisoners once executed there. But in every version, there was mention of a lantern that still burned at night, swinging in the fog as if someone unseen were carrying it along the trail. Her missing friend had sent her that very image. Coincidence or a warning? She couldn’t decide.
By afternoon she had arranged a meeting with a forest guard who was willing to talk off record. He was late, arriving only as the light began to fade, his khaki uniform damp with sweat and his eyes darting to the tree line as if he expected someone—or something—to step out at any moment. His name was Ranjan Pradhan, and when she introduced herself he gave a tired smile and said, “Journalists always come when the forest takes someone.” They sat on a wooden bench outside the range office where the power kept flickering, and she asked him straight: were the trekkers eaten by animals, or was there something else? He didn’t answer at once, just looked towards the hills where the fog was rolling down like white smoke. “Animals leave signs,” he said finally. “Blood, tracks, remains. We found nothing. Not even a scrap of cloth. As if the forest swallowed them whole.”
The silence stretched between them, broken only by cicadas beginning their endless song. She pressed him about the outpost. For a moment his face hardened, and she thought he would refuse, but then he sighed. “My father was also a guard. He disappeared in the forest thirty years ago, same place. People said he followed a lantern into the fog and never returned. Since then, I don’t go near that outpost. But…” He hesitated, fingers trembling against his rifle strap. “If you want to find your friend, you will have to go there. No one else will show you the way.”
That night Kavya lay awake in the lodge, listening to the forest breathe. She thought of her friend’s last message, the blurred photo, the caption, Lantern still burning. She told herself it was just an abandoned post, maybe someone had left an old kerosene lamp as a prank, maybe smugglers were using it, maybe the trekkers had stumbled into the wrong hands. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw a light swaying in the fog, always just out of reach, always drawing her closer. By dawn, she had made up her mind. She would follow the lantern, no matter where it led.
Episode 2: The Silent Outpost
The path to the old outpost was not marked on any tourist map, and that in itself told Kavya something. The official trail to Buxa Fort was clearly signposted, lined with painted milestones and occasional benches for trekkers to rest, but the path Ranjan showed her branched away quietly from the main road, swallowed by bamboo thickets and damp creepers, so narrow that it seemed the forest itself wanted to hide it. He walked ahead without speaking, his rifle slung over his shoulder, and she followed, careful not to slip on the moss-covered stones. The air was heavier here, as though it had been waiting, and though it was still morning the shadows seemed already deep, cicadas buzzing with a fevered insistence.
She tried to make conversation to break the spell but he kept his eyes forward, answering only in fragments. “British built it,” he said when she asked how old the outpost was. “Used to be a guard station. Prisoners kept in underground cells. Some never came out.” She asked what had happened after independence, and he shrugged. “Abandoned. Left to rot. But forest remembers.” She wanted to push further, to ask about the lantern, but something about his tightened jaw made her hold back.
After an hour the bamboo thinned and the path opened into a clearing where the remains of the outpost stood like a wounded relic. The structure was half-devoured by the forest—walls split by banyan roots, roof collapsed in places, moss carpeting the stones in green. The windows were hollow sockets staring blankly, and from somewhere deep inside came the steady drip of water echoing like a metronome. Kavya stopped at the edge of the clearing, pulse quickening, because the place felt less abandoned than it should, as though it had been watching her long before she arrived.
Ranjan motioned for her to stay quiet and stepped ahead, testing the ground with the butt of his rifle before entering the ruined compound. She followed reluctantly, her shoes sinking into damp earth. Inside, the air was cooler, almost cold, and smelled of rust and wet stone. She noticed faded paint on the walls—an old colonial insignia barely visible beneath algae—and scratched marks that could have been graffiti or clawed attempts at escape. One corridor led downward into darkness, barred by a rusted iron gate still hanging loose on one hinge. She shivered.
“Cells are down there,” Ranjan said flatly. “They say you can still hear voices at night.” His tone suggested he believed it. She forced herself to record the details in her notebook, though her hand shook more than she liked. The silence around them was immense, pressing, broken only by the occasional creak as the walls shifted under the weight of encroaching roots.
Then she saw it: a lantern, old-fashioned and rusted, hanging from a crooked nail by the doorway. Its glass was cracked, wick burned down to nothing, yet she could have sworn it still carried the faint scent of kerosene. “Who put this here?” she asked quickly. Ranjan turned, saw what she meant, and his face hardened. “That wasn’t there yesterday,” he muttered, voice low, almost trembling. She felt her stomach tighten. If it hadn’t been there yesterday, then someone—or something—had hung it fresh.
They searched the rooms but found no trace of recent habitation. Dust coated the floors, disturbed only by the scuttle of lizards and the trails of ants. Yet the sense of presence was overwhelming, as if they had just missed someone stepping out, leaving the lantern as a sign. Kavya pulled out her phone and snapped pictures, sending one to her editor with a brief message: Found the outpost. Lantern real. She didn’t mention the detail about it appearing overnight; some things she wasn’t ready to share even with herself.
As they prepared to leave, she noticed something etched into the doorway beneath the lantern—faint letters, almost erased by time. She bent closer, tracing the grooves with her finger. It was a date. 1931. Beneath it, a word: Trial. Her breath caught. “What trial?” she whispered. Ranjan didn’t answer, just pulled her back sharply, eyes scanning the forest. She realized then that the cicadas had stopped. The air was too still, as if the forest was holding its breath.
Suddenly, from somewhere deep in the thickets, came the sound of a bell. A single, heavy toll, resonating through the trees. It rang once, then fell silent, leaving the air even heavier. Ranjan’s face went pale. “We should leave,” he said firmly, already pulling her toward the path. “Now.” She stumbled after him, her notebook pressed tight to her chest, heart hammering against her ribs. She wanted to protest, to demand an explanation, but the look in his eyes silenced her. He wasn’t afraid for himself; he was afraid for her.
They didn’t stop until they reached the village again, sweat soaking their clothes, lungs burning. Only then did Kavya find her voice. “What was that bell?” she asked, trying to keep her tone steady. Ranjan wiped his face and stared at the ground. “The tribunal,” he said at last, voice little more than a whisper. “The forest still holds its court. And once the bell tolls, someone must stand trial.” He looked up at her then, and she saw something raw in his expression. “It has begun again.”
That night Kavya couldn’t sleep. The outpost’s shadow lingered in her mind, the date etched into the stone, the lantern that shouldn’t have been there, the bell that seemed to summon something waiting in the fog. She tried to tell herself it was all coincidence, fragments of history colliding with superstition, but as the wind shifted outside her window and the dogs began to howl, she thought she saw, far off beyond the trees, a faint light swaying in the mist, moving slowly toward the village.
Episode 3: The Forest Guard’s Secret
The morning after the bell, Kavya found Ranjan already waiting outside the lodge, his uniform damp with dew, rifle slung casually across his shoulder as though it was part of his body. He didn’t speak at first, just nodded for her to follow, leading her away from the main village road into a narrower lane that ended at a small hut surrounded by tall grass. Inside, the air was heavy with the smell of old tobacco and something else—an earthiness that reminded her of locked rooms long unopened. He poured himself tea from a battered kettle and gestured for her to sit. “You should leave,” he said finally, staring into his cup. “What you saw yesterday was warning enough.”
Kavya leaned forward, refusing to back down. “I’m not leaving until I know what happened to those trekkers—and to my friend.” Her voice carried a tremor of desperation she hadn’t intended, but she held his gaze. “You know more than you’re telling me. What tribunal? What trial? Why does the forest keep swallowing people?”
Ranjan let out a slow breath, his eyes shifting to the window where the forest shimmered in the morning haze. “My father was posted here when I was ten,” he began, his voice quieter than she had ever heard it. “He knew the forest better than anyone. People trusted him. But one evening he didn’t return from patrol. They searched for days, found nothing. No blood, no body. Only his lantern, still burning, hanging from a branch near the outpost.” He rubbed his forehead as if the memory still hurt. “That night my mother said she heard footsteps circling the house, and a bell tolling in the distance. She knew then he would not come back.”
He looked at her directly, and she saw that the hard guard’s mask had cracked, leaving a boy’s fear lingering underneath. “Since then, people say our bloodline is tied to the tribunal. My father was not the first Pradhan to vanish in the forest. My grandfather’s brother disappeared the same way. Always the lantern. Always the bell.” His hand trembled slightly as he lifted the cup. “The tribunal is older than the British, older than any government. They say when the rulers came, they used the outpost for their own trials, hanging rebels in secret, burying them in shallow pits. But the forest remembers. The spirits remember. Every generation, someone is taken to stand judgment for crimes no one can name.”
Kavya listened, her pen unmoving, her recorder switched off. For once, the story was too fragile to trap in plastic words. “And the trekkers?” she asked softly. “What crime did they commit?”
Ranjan shook his head. “Maybe none. Maybe only that they wandered where they should not. The tribunal does not need reasons.” His eyes darkened. “But sometimes it chooses with purpose. Sometimes it calls bloodlines back.”
She realized then what he feared—that the tribunal would not stop with his father, that it was waiting for him too. And perhaps, by stepping into his shadow, it had marked her as well.
The day wore on with restless unease. She tried to speak with villagers again but their lips closed at the mention of the lantern. One old woman, blind in both eyes, whispered to her as she passed: “When the bell tolls thrice, the forest will demand its due. Don’t wait for the third.” Kavya’s skin prickled.
That evening Ranjan came to her with a decision. “I will take you deeper tomorrow,” he said, voice taut. “To where the tribunal was held. But after that, you must leave. Promise me.” She wanted to argue but the raw fear in his tone stopped her. She nodded, though a part of her already knew she wouldn’t keep that promise.
Night fell heavy, stars smothered by fog. Kavya lay in her bed, notebook open beside her, every nerve alert. Around midnight she heard it—the faint crunch of footsteps circling the lodge, deliberate, measured, like someone pacing in judgement. Her breath caught. She forced herself to look out the window. At first there was only mist. Then, slowly, a glow appeared, faint and golden, swaying as if from a hand-held lantern. It hovered at the tree line, pausing as though waiting for her to follow. Her fingers clenched the notebook so tightly the edges cut into her skin.
The glow vanished suddenly, leaving only the dark. She told herself it was a trick of tired eyes, but her body knew better. The tribunal had noticed her.
At dawn, she stepped outside and found a fresh mark on the wooden post by the lodge gate. Scratched deep into the grain, with something sharp, were the numbers: 1931. The same as on the outpost wall. Her stomach turned cold. She hadn’t shown that detail to anyone.
When she told Ranjan, his jaw tightened, and for the first time he looked at her not as a stubborn outsider but as someone already entangled in the curse. “It’s begun for you too,” he murmured. “The tribunal doesn’t let go.”
As they prepared for their journey deeper into the forest, Kavya felt the weight of invisible eyes on her, and in her mind the bell still echoed, once, heavy and final. She knew then that she was no longer just a reporter chasing a missing persons story. She was part of the trial, whether she believed in it or not.
Episode 4: Footsteps in the Fog
The forest closed around them like a living wall, every tree leaning inward, every branch hung low as if listening. Kavya followed Ranjan through the narrow trail that snaked beyond the outpost, deeper than tourists ever dared to go, and though the morning sun had risen hours ago the fog clung stubbornly, curling around their ankles, drifting across the path in restless currents. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and unseen flowers that released a sweet but unsettling fragrance, the kind that made her think of funerals. Each step seemed to sink further into silence, until the usual calls of birds and monkeys were absent, leaving only the crunch of their shoes and the metallic creak of Ranjan’s rifle strap.
He moved with the care of someone who had grown up among these trees, pausing often to listen, tilting his head toward faint sounds she could not catch. Once, when a branch snapped somewhere to their left, she thought he would raise his rifle, but instead he froze completely, every muscle tense, and then shook his head, urging her forward without a word. She wanted to ask what it was, but the heaviness in his expression silenced her more than his finger to his lips.
By midday they reached a ridge where the fog lifted slightly, revealing the forest canopy spread out like an endless green ocean. From here Kavya could see the faint outlines of the Bhutan hills beyond, their peaks veiled in smoke-like clouds. For a moment the sight filled her with awe, but Ranjan’s voice pulled her back. “This is where people hear it first,” he said quietly. “The footsteps. Always behind you, never ahead. If you turn, there is nothing. But if you don’t, they grow louder.” His eyes flicked to her face. “Promise me, if you hear them, you will not stop walking.”
She wanted to laugh it off, call it superstition, but something in his tone, worn thin with memory, kept her silent. They began the descent into the thicker part of the forest, where light dimmed again and vines hung heavy as ropes. She counted her steps to distract herself, tried to think of her friend’s last message, of the story she owed him, of the fact that this was still journalism, still about facts and evidence. But soon the rhythm of her own feet blurred into something else. A second set of footsteps. Faint, deliberate, just behind her, matching her pace exactly.
Her throat tightened. She risked a glance over her shoulder but saw only fog drifting through trees, pale and weightless. She walked faster, heart pounding, and the sound followed, never rushing, never lagging, always there. When she opened her mouth to tell Ranjan, he turned before she spoke, his eyes dark with confirmation. “Don’t stop,” he muttered. “Don’t look back again.”
They pressed on, the footsteps shadowing them until her legs trembled from the strain of pretending not to hear. At last they stumbled into a hollow where a massive sal tree rose, its trunk split open like a wound. The ground around it was disturbed, patches of soil darker than the rest, as if dug and filled many times. Ranjan pointed with his chin. “Burial pits. Rebels, thieves, anyone the tribunal condemned. The British only made it worse. They held their trials here, away from prying eyes. My father told me once he had seen the rope marks on the branches.”
Kavya’s stomach twisted. She knelt, touching the soil, half-expecting to find bone beneath. Instead she felt something cold and metallic. She brushed it clean and revealed a rusted shackle, still half-buried. Her breath caught. This was no myth. Men had been bound here, judged and discarded like animals. She photographed it quickly, though her hands shook so badly the images blurred.
As the fog thickened again, the footsteps returned, closer, circling now instead of following. She could hear at least three, maybe four, heavy and deliberate, crunching leaves though no figures appeared. She clutched Ranjan’s arm, whispering, “Who is it?” His jaw tightened. “They are listening. They want to know if we belong.” He lifted his rifle slightly but didn’t aim, as though he knew bullets meant nothing here.
The sound grew louder, almost surrounding them, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The silence that followed was worse, as if the forest itself were waiting for their next move. Kavya could hear her own breath ragged in her chest.
From the hollow trunk came a whisper. At first she thought it was the wind, but no, it was words, low and broken, in a language she didn’t understand. Ranjan stiffened, his knuckles white around the rifle. “We leave now,” he hissed, pulling her back. She resisted for a moment, desperate to record, to catch some trace of the sound, but the terror in his grip overpowered her curiosity. They turned, retracing their steps as the fog thickened into walls, and this time the footsteps did not follow—they led, ahead of them, guiding, pulling, forcing their path.
By the time they reached safer ground, the fog had lifted again, the forest alive once more with distant bird calls. Kavya collapsed onto a stone, her body trembling. “You heard it too,” she whispered, unable to frame it as a question. Ranjan didn’t answer. He simply stared back toward the ridge, jaw set, eyes shadowed.
That night in the village, as they ate in silence, Kavya finally forced the question. “If the tribunal still holds its trials… what are we being judged for?”
Ranjan looked at her across the dim room, the lantern flame flickering between them. “Sometimes,” he said softly, “the trial is not for what you did, but for who you are. And sometimes, it’s for who you stand beside.” His words settled like a verdict she didn’t want to hear.
When she tried to sleep, the sound returned in her mind—the steady rhythm of unseen footsteps in the fog, always behind her, always waiting for her to falter.
Episode 5: The Colonial Diary
The outpost felt different when they returned two days later, as though it had been waiting for them. The fog clung heavier to its crumbling walls, and the silence was broken only by the occasional drip of water from the ceiling. Kavya stepped cautiously across the threshold, her camera slung at her side, recorder switched on though she knew it would catch more than she intended. Ranjan walked ahead, his face tight with the resignation of someone retracing a path his family had walked too many times. The lantern still hung from the nail, wick blackened, glass cracked, yet its presence seemed fresher than the ruins deserved.
Inside, the corridor led them deeper until Kavya’s eyes caught a wooden chest shoved into a corner, half-rotted, eaten by termites, but still intact enough to bear the faded letters “B.P. 1931.” She knelt, heart hammering, fingers tugging at the corroded latch until it broke free with a brittle snap. Inside lay a bundle of papers, edges curled brown, ink faded but legible. She pulled them out carefully, and when she opened the first page her breath caught. It was a diary, written in neat, deliberate English script.
The first entry read like routine record-keeping: mention of supplies delivered, patrol schedules, minor offenses punished. But as she turned the pages, the tone darkened. “Rebel sympathizers apprehended… Tribunal convened… Sentenced to hang.” Again and again, the entries recorded men dragged into these walls, judged without witnesses, executed beneath the sal tree hollow. No names, only numbers, as though they were less than human. And then one line, underlined twice, leapt out: The lantern must remain lit until judgment is passed.
Her throat went dry. She read aloud for Ranjan, whose eyes narrowed with grim recognition. “My grandmother said the same,” he murmured. “The lantern was never allowed to go out. It was the sign that the tribunal was in session.” He touched the page gently, as if it confirmed what he had always feared.
Further entries grew more frantic, the handwriting jagged. One officer wrote of hearing whispers at night, voices of the condemned circling the outpost. “They demand justice from us,” one line said. “But what justice is there when we are only instruments?” The final entry ended abruptly mid-sentence: The bell tolled thrice today. I fear… The page was smeared, ink bleeding into illegibility, as though someone had tried to finish the thought but never had the chance.
Kavya’s fingers trembled as she held the brittle paper. She realized she was no longer reading history but the shadow of something that had never ended. The tribunal had not died with the British; it had continued, silently, invisibly, choosing its victims from those who strayed too near. The lantern’s glow, the footsteps, the bell—it was all the same cycle repeating across generations.
Ranjan took the diary, closed it with a decisive snap, and shoved it into his satchel. “This should never have been found,” he said grimly. “If the forest wanted it buried, it should have stayed buried.” But Kavya shook her head fiercely. “No. This is proof. My friend didn’t vanish because of an accident. The tribunal took him. And now I know why.” Her voice cracked with determination, but underneath ran a thread of fear she could not disguise.
They moved to leave but a sudden sound stopped them both. From the corridor below, the one barred by the rusted gate, came a low scraping noise, like metal dragged against stone. They froze. The sound grew louder, closer, accompanied by the faint echo of a voice. Not words, not language, but a murmur that rose and fell with the cadence of chanting. Kavya’s skin prickled. She turned to Ranjan, whose face had gone pale. “It’s them,” he whispered. “The condemned. They never left.”
The gate rattled suddenly, violently, as though unseen hands pulled at it from the darkness. Kavya stumbled back, heart hammering, while Ranjan raised his rifle though both knew it was useless. Then, just as quickly, the noise stopped. Silence pressed in, heavy, absolute.
When they stepped outside into the clearing, the air felt charged, as if the forest itself was waiting for their reaction. Kavya wanted to run, to leave the diary and the outpost behind, but she couldn’t. She looked back once, just once, and her blood chilled. The lantern was no longer on the nail. It was swaying gently in the middle of the doorway, lit now with a small, steady flame.
Ranjan grabbed her arm, dragging her away before she could speak. They didn’t stop until the trees swallowed the clearing, and even then he didn’t let go. “You’ve read it now,” he said hoarsely. “The tribunal knows you. Once it lights the lantern, the trial has already begun.”
That night, back in the village, Kavya couldn’t write, couldn’t eat. She sat by the window listening to the forest, clutching her notebook to her chest. When the first bell tolled in the distance, she knew she would not sleep again. The diary lay heavy in her bag, and every word inside it seemed to whisper a verdict she didn’t want to hear.
Episode 6: The Lantern Appears
The bell tolled again the next night, low and hollow, rolling across the forest like thunder contained in a single note. Kavya sat upright on her bed, notebook pressed to her chest, waiting for the echo to fade, but instead it grew louder, as though the sound were moving closer, dragging shadows behind it. She glanced out the window, and there it was—a faint golden glow swaying between the trees, far yet deliberate, never flickering though the fog curled thick around it. The lantern. She told herself not to rise, not to step outside, but her body betrayed her, pulling her to the door as if a string had been tied around her chest.
The village dogs howled, long and broken, then went silent all at once. The glow drifted toward the path leading north, the same forbidden direction where the trekkers had vanished. She could almost see the shape of a hand holding it, though whenever she blinked, the hand dissolved, leaving only light. Her heart thudded against her ribs, urging her to chase, to follow, to discover what lay beyond. But a stronger grip yanked her back—Ranjan, his eyes fierce, his palm like iron on her shoulder. “Don’t look too long,” he hissed. “It knows when you look.” He shut the door firmly and dropped the latch. The glow seeped faintly through the cracks for a moment more, then vanished, leaving the dark heavier than before.
The next day the forest seemed unchanged, villagers going about their routines with quiet efficiency, but Kavya noticed how their eyes slid away from her, how whispers followed in her wake. She realized the lantern’s appearance had not been hers alone; they all knew when it came. Ranjan said nothing, only tightened his patrols, always keeping her within sight. His silence was worse than words, a confirmation that the tribunal had chosen to reveal itself.
By evening, she demanded answers. “What does it want?” she asked sharply as they sat outside the range office, the cicadas shrieking like static in the trees. “Why show itself to me?” Ranjan’s gaze stayed on the horizon, his jaw tight. “The lantern comes when judgment nears. It leads those marked to the place where verdicts are passed. Sometimes people follow and never return. Sometimes it comes to houses, as it did last night, to remind them time is short. Either way, once you see it, you cannot escape.” His words sank into her like stones.
That night, she tried to resist sleep, filling her notebook with frantic lines about the diary, the burial pits, the footsteps. But past midnight her eyelids drooped, and in that half-waking state she heard it again—the creak of footsteps circling the lodge, the faint scrape of metal against wood. She forced her eyes open and saw, inside the room this time, a glow pooling against the far wall. She gasped, scrambling back. The lantern swayed gently, impossibly there, suspended in mid-air. Its flame burned steady, no smoke, no heat, yet it filled the room with a strange pressure, as though the very air bowed around it.
She called for Ranjan, voice breaking. He burst in seconds later, rifle raised, and froze when he saw the light. His face drained of color. “It shouldn’t be inside,” he whispered. “It never comes inside.” He raised the rifle as if instinct, then lowered it, helpless. The lantern bobbed once, as though in acknowledgement, then drifted slowly toward the door. It paused, waiting. An invitation.
“No,” Ranjan muttered, slamming the door shut, though the wood glowed faintly where the lantern pressed against it from the other side. Kavya clutched his arm, her breath ragged. “What happens if I follow?” she demanded. Ranjan’s eyes burned into hers. “Then you won’t come back. The forest keeps what it claims.”
The glow lingered for several minutes, patient, before finally retreating. The moment it was gone, the air seemed lighter, sound returned, and the dogs barked again outside. Ranjan collapsed into the nearest chair, running a hand over his face. “It has chosen you,” he said hoarsely. “The trial is not far.”
Kavya wanted to scream, to deny it, but deep inside she knew he was right. The lantern had appeared not once, but twice, and this time it had entered her space, marking her directly. She thought of her missing friend, of the photograph he had sent, of the blurred glow he had captured in his last message. He had followed it, she realized now. He had walked into the fog, thinking it was just a light, and the tribunal had taken him.
When dawn broke, Kavya looked at herself in the cracked mirror above the washbasin. Dark circles under her eyes, lips dry, skin pale. But worse was the feeling that the reflection wasn’t entirely hers, that another presence peered from behind her eyes. She touched the glass, half-expecting it to ripple. Nothing did. But she couldn’t shake the sense that the lantern had already left its mark inside her.
That evening, as the fog rolled in thick again, Ranjan came to her with grim resolve. “Tomorrow, I will take you to the place of judgment,” he said. “You cannot hide anymore. The only way is to face it.” His voice cracked on the last word, but he forced it steady. “If you do not go, the lantern will keep coming until you follow. Better to walk with your eyes open than be dragged blind.”
Kavya’s heart pounded. Every instinct screamed to refuse, to run, to flee the forest entirely. But she remembered the diary, the burial pits, the footsteps in the fog. She remembered her friend’s last message. She could not leave the story unfinished. She nodded slowly, sealing her own fate.
That night, the lantern did not appear. The absence was almost worse, like the pause before a sentence ends in a verdict. She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, knowing dawn would take her to the tribunal itself, where the forest whispered and the dead waited for their justice.
Episode 7: The Tribunal of the Dead
They began before sunrise, when the fog was still thick and the village quiet as a held breath. Ranjan carried his rifle, though he knew it was nothing more than ritual now, and Kavya clutched her notebook like a talisman, the diary wrapped inside for proof that she had not imagined any of this. The path he chose was older than the outpost trail, overgrown and half-erased by roots, a road the forest itself seemed to have tried to swallow. With each step, the silence deepened. Not even insects sang here. It was as if they had already entered the tribunal’s court.
Hours passed without measure, the forest closing tighter, until they reached a ravine where twisted sal trees leaned over like jurors craning to see the accused. At the bottom lay a clearing ringed by stones, each carved with faint grooves of names long since worn away. Kavya felt her chest tighten—she knew instinctively this was the place. The ground itself seemed charged, vibrating with a memory too heavy to vanish.
Ranjan stopped at the edge, his breath shallow. “This is where they brought them,” he said softly. “The condemned. Rebels, thieves, anyone the British wanted gone. They were tried here, under no sky, only trees. No defense. No appeal.” His voice broke. “This is where my father disappeared.”
Kavya stepped down into the clearing. The air grew colder instantly, her skin prickling. She set her recorder on a stone, pressing the button with shaking hands. At first there was only silence, but then—faint, layered whispers. She spun around, but no one was there. The whispers grew louder, a thousand voices speaking over each other, weaving into a chant she couldn’t decipher. She covered her ears, but the sound pressed from within, vibrating her skull. Ranjan fell to his knees, head bowed, as if in prayer.
Then the bell tolled. Once. Twice. Thrice. The clearing shuddered with the force of it, the stones trembling. And in the fog, figures began to form. Not solid, not flesh, but outlines of men and women, some in chains, some with ropes around their necks, others with rifles at their shoulders. Their faces blurred, but their eyes glowed faintly, fixed on her. Kavya’s breath caught. She tried to tell herself it was hallucination, a trick of fear, but when the nearest figure stepped forward, the earth beneath her feet seemed to pulse in recognition.
One figure detached from the rest—a man in a tattered colonial uniform, his face half-decayed, voice low but clear. “The tribunal convenes.” His words cut the air like steel. He raised a hand toward Ranjan. “The bloodline returns.”
Ranjan’s face crumpled. “Take me, if you must,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “Spare her. She is not of us.”
But the tribunal ignored him. The whispers rose into a roar, and Kavya felt her body stiffen, pulled by invisible strings. A glow appeared at the center of the clearing—the lantern, burning steady, brighter than ever. It swayed once, twice, and then hovered before her, demanding she step into its light.
She shook her head, tears burning her eyes. “I didn’t do anything,” she whispered, more to herself than them. “I just came looking for answers.” The colonial figure turned toward her, eyes empty. “Answers are crimes when sought in the silence of the forest.” The words crashed over her, and she felt her knees weaken.
The lantern flared, and suddenly the clearing changed. She saw images superimposed on the trees—men dragged in chains, women wailing, hangings beneath the sal branches, pits filled with shallow graves. The tribunal had replayed its history, and now it was replaying her place in it. She saw her friend among them, his eyes wide with disbelief, pulled toward the lantern just as she was now. She screamed his name, but the vision dissolved.
Ranjan staggered to his feet, stepping between her and the lantern. His voice rang louder than the whispers. “If it is blood you seek, take mine. End the curse with me. She carries no guilt.” The tribunal roared back, a thousand voices layered in fury and grief. The lantern swung violently, its flame elongating, casting shadows that writhed like nooses.
Kavya felt the ground tilt beneath her. Her notebook slipped from her grasp, pages scattering across the stones. The diary fell open, its final smeared entry catching the lantern’s glow. For a second, the whispers faltered. The tribunal’s roar softened, as though they recognized their own words reflected back at them.
She seized the moment, shouting into the silence. “You wanted justice, not silence. You wanted memory, not burial. I am here to write it. Let me be your witness.” Her voice cracked but carried through the clearing. “If you take me now, your story dies here again. If you let me go, the world will know what you endured.”
The figures trembled. The colonial officer’s head turned slowly, gaze unreadable. The lantern’s flame flickered, then steadied. For a long moment, the clearing held its breath. Then the officer spoke, voice like rusted iron. “Witness.”
The lantern dimmed slightly, drifting back from her. The figures receded into the fog, their whispers lowering to a murmur, fading like wind. Only the glow remained, steady but distant, as if waiting for another night.
Kavya collapsed onto the stones, shaking with relief and terror. Ranjan knelt beside her, his hand gripping hers with desperate force. His voice was raw. “They have spared you—for now. But the tribunal does not forgive easily. You have taken their burden.” He closed the diary gently, his eyes heavy. “And that means the trial is far from over.”
Above them, the fog swirled, and somewhere deeper in the forest, the bell rang once more—not in judgment, but as a reminder.
Episode 8: Ranjan’s Bloodline
They did not speak on the way back. The forest seemed different now, thinner and yet more watchful, as if every branch bore unseen eyes. Kavya walked in silence behind Ranjan, the weight of the diary dragging at her bag, the tribunal’s word echoing in her skull—Witness. It should have felt like survival, but it felt instead like a verdict deferred. When they reached the village, the sun was sinking, staining the mist orange, and the villagers who saw them froze in their tracks. No one asked what they had seen. They simply stepped aside, heads bowed, as if conceding that the marked had returned.
That night Ranjan came to her lodge without his rifle, which startled her more than the tribunal had. He sat on the floor, elbows on his knees, and stared at the cracked cement wall. “You shouldn’t stay here,” he said quietly. “They’ve let you go for now, but they will come again. They always do.” His eyes were sunken, voice hollow, and Kavya knew he had not stopped trembling since the clearing. She sat across from him, heart hammering. “They weren’t after me,” she said softly. “Not really. They wanted you.”
His lips twisted in something that might have been a smile but carried no warmth. “Of course they did. My blood calls them. Every Pradhan man has been claimed by the forest one way or another. My father vanished here. My grandfather’s brother was found hanging from a sal tree with no rope to be seen. My great-grandfather went mad, walking in circles muttering about bells. I thought I could outrun it by serving the forest, protecting it, but that only brought me closer.”
He leaned forward, his voice lowering. “Do you know what my mother told me the night before she died? She said the tribunal was never just punishing crimes. It was trying to erase our name. That once the last Pradhan walks into the clearing and does not return, the forest will rest. It will finally sleep.” He swallowed, his throat working. “I think they wanted me to take my father’s place that night. But you stood between us. You broke their ritual.”
Kavya’s skin crawled. “Then why didn’t they kill you for it?”
“Because now you carry part of it,” he whispered. “They marked you as their witness. You’ve taken the curse with you, divided it. Maybe that’s why they let me leave. But they won’t stop. They can wait years, decades. The lantern will find me again.” His eyes met hers, dark and calm now, almost resigned. “Or maybe they will come for me through you.”
Silence stretched between them, filled with the far-off cry of a nightjar. Kavya wanted to tell him he was wrong, that the tribunal was only memory, not malice, that it had ended when the British left. But she couldn’t. She had seen the figures, heard their verdict, felt their cold eyes inside her bones. And deep down, she feared he was right—that she had not escaped anything, only delayed it.
Ranjan stood at last, shoulders squared as if preparing for a sentence. “I’ll take you to the station tomorrow. After that, you must leave this place. Don’t write about me. Don’t mention my name. If the world knows, they will come again.” He hesitated at the door. “I have one duty left before they take me. To make sure you leave alive.”
When he was gone, the silence in the room was unbearable. Kavya opened her notebook and tried to write, but her hand shook too badly. The words blurred, lines dissolving into black threads like roots. She thought of her friend, of how he must have stood here just as she did, certain he was on the edge of truth, unaware he was already inside the tribunal’s net. She wondered if he had seen the same light hovering at the edge of his vision, if he had felt the same pull.
Sleep came in short violent bursts. In one dream she walked the clearing alone, the stones warm under her feet, the tribunal whispering in her ear in voices that were not hers. In another, she saw Ranjan bound beneath the sal tree, the lantern swinging above him like a pendulum counting down, his eyes empty yet staring straight at her. She woke choking on her own breath, the sound of a bell fading in her ears.
At dawn she packed her bag in silence. Outside, the fog lay low like smoke after a battle. Ranjan waited by the forest gate, rifle slung once more, his face drawn but resolute. They walked together to the edge of the village where the dirt road met the world of stations and trains and noise.
But just before they reached it, the forest stirred. The mist thickened behind them, coiling upward like a hand. A glow flared once deep between the trees, small and steady. The lantern. It did not move closer, only hovered, waiting. Ranjan froze. His lips parted as if to speak but no sound came.
Kavya’s heart pounded. “Keep walking,” she whispered.
He nodded once, sharply, and forced his feet forward. They did not look back again.
At the station, the train sat waiting, its engine hissing like an impatient animal. Ranjan stood on the platform as she boarded, saying nothing, his eyes fixed on her as if memorizing her shape. As the train began to move, she pressed her palm to the window. He lifted his hand in return but did not wave, did not smile. He only stood, fading into the fog as the train pulled away.
Only when the forest disappeared from view did she let her breath go. But even as the rails clattered beneath her, she could feel the lantern’s glow pulsing somewhere behind her eyes, steady as a heartbeat that was not hers.
Episode 9: The Outpost’s Last Trial*
Kavya thought distance would weaken it, but it followed her like breath. Even in the cities the forest clung to her—its smell in damp subway tunnels, its silence between car horns, its shadows flickering in the corner of her vision. At night she dreamed of the lantern, not in the woods now but floating down crowded streets, weaving through commuters who never saw it, its glow slicing through the noise to find her. She stopped answering calls from her editor, stopped replying to emails. The diary lay locked in her suitcase, though sometimes she woke to find it open on the table, pages fluttering as if turned by invisible hands.
Two weeks passed like that, disjointed, until the letter arrived. No stamp, no return address, only her name written in spidery script. Inside lay a single page torn from her own notebook—one she hadn’t taken with her from Buxa—and on it, scrawled in rust-colored ink, three words: Come to end. Beneath them was a drawing of the outpost door and the lantern blazing above it.
Her body knew what it meant before her mind did. The tribunal wasn’t finished. It had let her leave only to summon her back for the final act. And she knew with a cold clarity that Ranjan had not escaped either. If he was still alive, he would be there, waiting. If not, the forest would be keeping him.
By dusk she was on the train again, the diary clutched to her chest, her return ticket left blank because she wasn’t sure there would be one. The farther east the train went, the thicker the fog became, until the windows showed nothing but white. In her reflection she barely recognized her own eyes—they looked older, hollow, like someone who had spent years listening to whispers.
She reached the village near midnight. It was empty. Doors barred, windows dark, no dogs barking. The forest loomed close, too close, the mist curling like smoke from something still burning. And there, at the edge of the path, stood the lantern. Burning bright, steady, waiting.
She stepped toward it, and it drifted back, leading her, pulling her feet along the old trail she knew too well. The forest accepted her silently, no birds, no cicadas, only the rhythm of her steps and the soft creak of the lantern swaying ahead. Hours might have passed or minutes—it didn’t matter. Time folded itself away here.
The outpost rose from the fog like a memory resurfacing. Its walls leaned inward, black with moss, yet its shape was sharper now, almost whole, as though the years had peeled away. The lantern floated to the doorway and stopped. The door stood open.
Kavya crossed the threshold. Inside, the darkness felt dense, viscous, resisting her movement. The diary grew heavy in her hands. Then the bell tolled, loud and close, shaking the walls. She flinched—and figures began to form, sliding out of the shadows: the tribunal. Dozens of them, circling the room, eyes glowing faint like dying embers. And at their center, shackled to the old rusted gate, knelt Ranjan.
Her breath ripped from her chest. His head hung low, hair matted, skin ashen, as though time had been draining him drop by drop. But when he raised his eyes to her, she saw the same dark calm she remembered, and something else—relief. “You came,” he whispered.
The colonial officer emerged from the ranks, his face sharper now, less spectral, as if fed by the years. “The tribunal convenes,” he intoned, voice echoing like iron striking stone. “The bloodline stands for its final judgment. The witness will record.”
The lantern blazed white-hot, illuminating every crack in the walls. Kavya stumbled back, shaking her head. “No. He hasn’t done anything. He’s only survived.”
The whispers surged like a tide, furious, drowning her words. The officer’s eyes fixed on her. “Survival is the defiance. Blood must close its circle.”
Ranjan lifted his chin. “If it ends with me, so be it. But let her go. Break the line here.”
The tribunal roared, the stones vibrating. The lantern swung violently, casting shadows like gallows. Kavya clutched the diary, flipping desperately through the brittle pages, and saw a blank sheet at the end where words were etching themselves in dark ink as she watched: The final trial requires the witness to choose.
Her mouth went dry. They weren’t just here to kill him. They wanted her to decide. If she condemned him, the tribunal would take him and release her. If she spared him, they would claim them both.
Ranjan’s eyes held hers, steady, unafraid. “Write it,” he said softly. “Let it end.”
The tribunal waited. The lantern’s flame narrowed to a single, piercing thread of light aimed at her. Kavya’s hand hovered over the page. She thought of the men who had died here nameless, of the women who had wailed for justice, of her friend’s blurred photograph, of every whisper that had crawled through her sleep. And she thought of Ranjan, who had carried this curse like a weight he never chose.
Her pen moved. One line, sharp and final: The bloodline is absolved.
The lantern flared blinding white. The tribunal screamed—a sound of rage and release mingled—and the walls split with a sound like cracking bone. Wind howled through the room though there were no windows. The figures dissolved into black smoke, shredded and scattered. The bell tolled once, shuddering the stones, and then silence slammed down like a door.
The lantern went out.
Kavya blinked in the sudden dark, ears ringing. The outpost was crumbling again, half-collapsed, moss-choked, the way it had been. Ranjan lay on the ground, free of the shackles, breathing shallow but alive. She stumbled to him, pulling him upright. His pulse fluttered weak under her fingers, but it was there.
They staggered out together as the first gray light seeped through the trees. The forest was quiet, but not watchful anymore. Just still.
As they crossed the clearing, Kavya looked back one last time. The outpost stood empty, hollow, no lantern, no whispers. Only ruins.
Episode 10: The Lantern Goes Out
The sun rose slowly over Buxa, pale and distant, as if unsure it was welcome. Kavya and Ranjan walked the path back toward the village in silence, their bodies aching, their shadows long on the mist-slick ground. The forest no longer pressed close. It only watched with the weary stillness of something finished. Each step felt unreal, as though they were moving through the aftermath of a story rather than the world itself. Kavya kept glancing back, expecting the lantern’s glow to flare between the trees again, but the forest remained gray, cold, and empty.
When the first houses appeared, the village was awake but hushed, children standing in doorways, adults staring without words. Their eyes tracked the two of them as if seeing ghosts returned from a pyre. Someone whispered Ranjan’s name like a question, and someone else began to cry softly. Ranjan did not look at them. He walked straight to the range office, set his rifle down on the bench with slow precision, and walked away. He did not return.
Kavya sat alone on the lodge steps until the sun climbed high, listening to the familiar noises return—goats bleating, pots clanging, a bicycle bell far away. The world was reassembling itself, yet she felt outside it, like a shadow stuck to the wrong place. The diary lay in her lap. She opened it, half-expecting the pages to still shift on their own, but they were still, brittle, blank beyond the last line she had written: The bloodline is absolved. The ink had dried deep into the fibers, darker than anything else in the book, as if scorched there.
By noon, Ranjan’s hut was empty. The villagers said he had left at dawn, taken only a small bag and gone west along the river road. No one tried to stop him. No one called after him. It was as if the forest had finally released its claim and he no longer belonged to it—or to them. Kavya wanted to follow, to say something, but she understood he needed to disappear now. To remain would be to invite the tribunal back.
She stayed one more night, though she did not sleep. The forest was silent outside her window, not watchful now, just still, like the breath had gone out of it. She thought of her friend, the three trekkers, of all the names never carved on stones, and she promised them quietly that they were not erased. She would carry them. She would write.
At dawn she boarded the train. The village receded into mist, and behind it the forest uncoiled like smoke, fading until it was only a smudge on the horizon. The rhythm of the rails seemed to scrub her mind clean, but sometimes she saw flickers at the corner of her vision—only sunlight on glass, only fireflies caught in the slipstream, but enough to make her heart tighten until they vanished.
In the city, life rushed at her with its usual noise. Cars blared, neon buzzed, voices overlapped. But the silence inside her stayed. She spent days in her flat writing, the diary open on her desk, translating its brittle entries into words the world could bear. The tribunal’s whispers returned sometimes at the edge of sleep, but they were fainter now, less demanding, like echoes dying out. She wrote through them, not to silence them but to let them rest.
Weeks later, she mailed her manuscript. She titled it The Lantern’s Court: A Chronicle of Buxa. She left Ranjan’s name out, though she kept his voice in every page, quiet between the lines. She did not expect anyone to believe it. That was not the point. The forest had wanted a witness. She had done her part.
On the evening the book was accepted for publication, she stepped out onto her balcony as rain swept across the city. Far away on the horizon, where the river met the smoke-glow of traffic, she thought she saw a faint golden shimmer, small and steady, hanging in the air like a memory. For a heartbeat her chest froze. Then the shimmer winked out, swallowed by rain.
Kavya stood for a long time, letting the rain soak her, listening for the bell. It did not come. No footsteps followed. No whispers curled between the drops. The air smelled only of wet concrete and new beginnings.
Somewhere, in the silent ruins of the outpost deep inside the forest, the lantern lay cold and dark.
And the forest slept.
END
