Lalit Kumar Tripathi
The summer sun scorched the land with a vengeance, its fiery rays baking the cracked soil until it seemed the earth itself was thirsty. The dam that once brimmed with monsoon-fed waters now lay half-empty, its shoreline retreating day by day to expose what had been hidden for decades beneath its depths. From the muddy floor emerged strange, skeletal shapes—walls leaning against time, stones half-swallowed by silt, and the tilted shadow of a bell tower that once belonged to a village no one had seen in a generation. Fishermen, their nets dragging in shallow waters, muttered darkly of curses, their weathered eyes avoiding the ruins as though sight alone might invite misfortune. Yet, for the children of the nearby settlement, the ruins were irresistible, their laughter echoing through broken archways as they dared each other to creep closer to the cracked bell tower where moss clung like forgotten prayers. Old women, watching from their courtyards, shook their heads and whispered of omens, of a village that had not drowned by accident but by destiny, as though the earth itself had swallowed its sins beneath the reservoir.
It was against this backdrop of unease and superstition that four friends arrived, their city-bred eyes drawn not to curses but to curiosity. Aarav, always the leader with restless energy, was the first to point towards the jagged shapes rising from the water’s edge, his voice sharp with excitement as though they had stumbled upon some secret adventure. Meera, with her notebook already in hand, spoke of the beauty in ruins, her words tinged with the romantic fascination of someone who saw history as a story waiting to be captured. Rohan laughed it off, brushing away the villagers’ warnings with the ease of one who trusted reason over myth, while Tara lingered quietly, her gaze fixed on the leaning bell tower, uneasy in a way she could not yet explain. The friends had come for a weekend escape, a reprieve from the suffocating noise of the city, but what they found in the dry, whispering air of the dam was something that seemed to belong not to the present but to a forgotten time, calling them closer with a voice only they seemed willing to hear.
As evening settled, painting the ruins in shades of copper and shadow, the villagers gathered along the shore, watching the four figures wandering near the exposed church. None spoke loudly, but their silence itself was weighted with disapproval. The cracked bell tower rose like a sentinel, its hollowed windows staring blankly back at the living, while the stones beneath it seemed to carry stories too heavy for words. A breeze rustled across the water’s surface, carrying with it the faint creak of wood, as though the village itself remembered and resented the footsteps treading its bones. Children ran home at their mothers’ calls, fishermen pulled their nets with trembling urgency, and the elders muttered prayers under their breath. To the villagers, the ruins were not a marvel but a wound—one that should have stayed sealed beneath the water. But to Aarav and his friends, the moment shimmered with the thrill of discovery, a mystery waiting to be unlocked. They could not know then that the drought had not only revealed stone and timber but also something far older, something patient, something that had been waiting beneath the water for the return of the living.
_
The night after their arrival, the village square became the stage for hushed voices and half-forgotten tales, as though the drought had loosened not only the water’s grip but also memories long buried. Aarav and his friends lingered by the tea stall, its kerosene lamp casting trembling halos of light, listening to the old men who sat cross-legged on wooden planks, their tobacco-stained fingers drawing slow patterns in the dust. They spoke of the drowned village as one might speak of a ghost—half in awe, half in fear. “It was no accident,” one muttered, his voice gravelly with age. “When the dam rose, the government said the waters would bring progress, but progress meant swallowing lives. The villagers were given no choice, their homes drowned overnight. Some refused to leave, clinging to their church as if prayers could stop the tide. And when the water rose, the bells rang—by whose hand, no one knows—for they say no one survived.” A younger man scoffed, saying it was just the wind through the iron, but even his voice faltered as he avoided looking toward the half-buried bell tower. Children pressed close to their mothers, who tugged them away, whispering of drowned souls that still walked the water’s edge, unseen but listening.
For Aarav, Rohan, and even Meera, the story was less a warning than an invitation, the kind of legend that ignited the imagination rather than extinguished it. Meera scribbled hurried notes in her journal, her pen scratching with the zeal of someone certain she had stumbled upon a tale worth retelling. Aarav grinned at the old men’s words, his eyes bright with the arrogance of youth who believed history belonged to the living, not the dead. “Bells don’t toll without hands,” he said with a dismissive laugh, brushing off the idea of spirits with the confidence of logic. Rohan added his own mockery, pointing out how fear had a way of exaggerating facts until even the creak of wood became a ghost’s cry. Only Tara remained uneasy, her silence louder than the others’ laughter, her eyes fixed on the villagers’ faces rather than the ruins. She could not ignore the way their expressions hardened when they spoke of the church, nor the weight in their words that carried not just superstition but something lived and suffered. To her, the whispers seemed less like stories and more like warnings carved out of pain, but her friends were already making plans to explore the church as if it were an abandoned museum waiting to be catalogued.
The next afternoon, when the sun glared upon the cracked earth and the dam’s waters shimmered low, the four of them found themselves at the edge of the ruins again. The tilted cross of the church loomed above them, its rusted iron frame leaning precariously as if bowing to the years it had endured beneath the water. The rotting wooden doors sagged from their hinges, swollen by years of submersion, and the stone walls bore streaks of algae that clung like scars. The friends paused at the threshold, half awed, half exhilarated, as though they stood on the edge of time itself. Aarav was the first to step forward, his hand brushing the damp wood as if daring whatever lay inside to respond. Behind him, Rohan smirked and muttered about ghost stories dying under sunlight, while Meera lifted her camera to capture the way shadow and light played across the ruined arch. Tara alone hesitated, her gaze lingering on the cracks that ran like veins across the stone, as if the church itself had been wounded but never healed. Around them, the air seemed to hold its breath, heavy with the mingled scent of mud, moss, and something older, something that felt like memory. And though the villagers’ warnings still echoed in the back of their minds, curiosity had already taken root, sharper than fear, pushing them through the doorway into the heart of a story they did not yet understand.
_
The evening sky bled into shades of crimson and indigo as the four friends made their way back to the ruins, their footsteps crunching against brittle soil that once lay at the bottom of the reservoir. The villagers had watched them leave with mutters and sidelong glances, old women clutching their shawls tighter as though trying to shield themselves from the choices of reckless youth. By the time they reached the leaning silhouette of the church, dusk had already begun to drape its shadows across the land, and the tilted cross at the entrance looked darker, sharper, almost defiant against the fading light. The air inside was cool, damp, and heavy with the odor of long-trapped moss and wood that had rotted beneath water for years. Their flashlight beams cut through the gloom, revealing rows of warped pews that curved unnaturally, their surfaces buckled as though melted by some invisible hand. On the walls hung broken icons, the faces of saints smudged beyond recognition, their eyes hollow where paint had peeled. And yet, in the fractured light, water stains had crept into strange formations—patterns that seemed to curl and twist into something deliberate, almost language, though none of them could decipher it. Meera whispered that it was just the water playing tricks, but the hush in her voice betrayed awe and unease in equal measure.
Drawn forward, they traced the aisle until they reached what remained of the altar, its stone surface cracked yet strangely polished by time. Rohan, always eager to prove himself braver than the rest, reached out and pressed his palm against it, smirking at Tara’s sharp intake of breath. The moment his skin touched the cold stone, a shiver seemed to ripple through the church, subtle but undeniable, as though the air itself had become liquid for an instant. The flashlight beams flickered, and a faint sound like a gasp seemed to rush through the walls, too quiet to be wind, too strange to be dismissed as wood settling. Aarav laughed nervously, shaking his head and saying it must have been their imagination, but the way his eyes darted about betrayed something else: a recognition that they had touched a boundary better left undisturbed. The warped pews groaned softly in the silence, as though shifting in discomfort, and Meera scribbled frantically in her notebook, capturing every detail before the fragile memory could dissolve. Tara, however, stood frozen, her gaze fixed not on the altar but on the walls, where the stains seemed to deepen, their shapes stretching as though they were alive, curling into grotesque outlines that whispered of faces submerged beneath water.
It was then that Tara stiffened, her expression paling as her head tilted to one side, straining to listen. “Do you hear that?” she whispered, her voice trembling. The others paused, confused, hearing nothing but the quiet rasp of their own breathing. But Tara’s eyes widened in horror. To her, the silence was filled with a resonance both faint and impossible: the tolling of a bell, muffled as though it came from deep beneath the water, each note echoing with sorrow that did not belong to the present. She clutched her arms tightly around herself, whispering that it was real, that it was happening now, while Aarav insisted she was only imagining it, and Rohan’s laugh came out hollow, betraying nerves. The air seemed to thicken, pressing against their chests, as if the church itself had awakened at their intrusion. The beam of Meera’s flashlight caught the cross above the altar, and for a moment it appeared to shimmer, bending as though viewed through water. Fear brushed against curiosity in that instant, a cold reminder that some boundaries, once crossed, cannot be undone. Yet none of them stepped back, for the pull of the forbidden had already ensnared them, binding them tighter to the mystery of a church that had been waiting for them all along.
_
The cabin by the lakeside seemed almost comforting when they first returned from the ruins, its wooden walls glowing warmly under the flicker of a lantern and the hiss of boiling tea on the stove. Yet as the night deepened and the forest grew still, a hush settled that felt less like peace and more like watchfulness, as if the land itself held its breath. The four friends tried to laugh away the unease, Rohan recounting jokes that fell flatter than usual, Meera pretending to be absorbed in her notes while her pen scratched nervously against the paper, and Tara staring into the window’s reflection as though expecting to see something there besides herself. Aarav insisted they were letting the villagers’ superstitions get under their skin, his voice a little too loud, his smile a little too forced. It was then, as the hour grew late, that a faint sound drifted across the still air, low and resonant, a bell’s toll that seemed impossibly distant yet sharp enough to stir every hair on their skin. They froze, listening—once, twice, then silence again. The church lay far beyond the line of trees, swallowed by night and emptiness, and no bell had rung there in decades. Yet the sound was real, undeniable, and when Tara whispered that it was the same bell she had heard inside the church, her words twisted the silence tighter until none of them spoke again.
Sleep came uneasily after that, each of them retreating to their narrow beds, the cabin creaking faintly as if shifting under the weight of their restless thoughts. Aarav drifted into a dream that felt less like imagination and more like memory, for in it he stood waist-deep in black water, the ruins of the bell tower rising crookedly behind him. The surface shivered though no wind stirred, and then cold fingers—many of them, invisible but strong—wrapped around his ankles and wrists, tugging him downward with merciless insistence. He gasped, lungs burning as he thrashed, but the water rose higher, swallowing his chest, his mouth, his screams. Through the muffled gloom he saw shapes beneath him, faces pale and eyes wide, the drowned reaching for him in silence, their mouths moving as though chanting prayers he could not hear. Just as the last air in his lungs escaped in a rush of bubbles, the bell tolled again, louder, reverberating through his body like a summons he could not resist. Aarav’s eyes flew open, his body jerking violently against the sheets, his hands clawing at the air as if to tear himself free from unseen bonds.
He woke choking, every breath a desperate gulp, his chest heaving as though the water of his dream still filled his lungs. Sweat soaked through his clothes, dampening the sheets beneath him, and the room smelled faintly of wet earth, sharp and metallic, though the windows were firmly shut. He sat up, pressing a trembling hand against his forehead, trying to laugh at himself, but his throat was too raw, his heart too frantic. That was when he heard it: not the toll of a bell this time, but the steady sound of water dripping in the darkness. At first he thought it was his imagination, an echo of the dream, but as his ears strained he could make out the distinct rhythm—drop, pause, drop—as though something unseen leaked just beside his bed. He reached for the lantern, his fingers fumbling, the tiny flame casting long shadows across the cabin walls. There was no crack in the ceiling, no overturned glass on the table, yet the sound continued, each drop louder than the last, resonating through the silence until it felt like the whole cabin was listening. Across the room, Tara stirred, whispering Aarav’s name in a voice that trembled, as if she too had been wrenched from the same dream. And in that fragile moment, with the drip echoing and the night pressing in around them, it no longer felt like they were simply visitors near a ruined village—it felt as though something from beneath the water had followed them home.
_
The days that followed turned the cabin into a chamber of restless sleep and uneasy silences, for it was not only Aarav who carried the weight of drowning dreams. On the second night, Meera’s cries shattered the quiet, her body thrashing against the bed as if fighting unseen tides. Aarav and Tara rushed to her side, gripping her shoulders as she gasped for air, her chest heaving, eyes wide with the terror of someone dragged from a place they should not have been. Between trembling breaths she whispered of being trapped beneath the church pews, the wood pressing down upon her while water poured through the cracks, filling her mouth, her lungs, until every scream became only bubbles. Her voice broke into sobs as she clutched her throat, insisting she could still taste the bitterness of the water, still feel its chill in her bones. Though Rohan tried to soothe her with reason, dismissing the vision as the fevered mind of someone overworked, he could not explain why her hair clung wet to her forehead, or why her pillow was damp as though she had truly surfaced from a flood that no one else could see.
The unease grew heavier when Tara herself woke the next morning pale and shivering, her hair damp and knotted as if she had been dragged by unseen currents. She swore she had heard the bell again, not faint and far this time, but near, resonant enough to reverberate inside her skull. Her dream had been quieter than Meera’s, but more intimate—she described walking through the pews of the church only to find the water rising around her, slow but unstoppable, as if the building itself exhaled tides from its stone walls. She remembered standing still, unable to move, while the water crept up her waist, her chest, her chin, until her hair floated about her face like strands of weed. When she awoke gasping, she found her sheets soaked through, her skin clammy with moisture that smelled faintly of stagnant mud. The others tried to laugh it off, Rohan most of all, but his eyes betrayed cracks in his bravado, for even he had begun to sleep uneasily, muttering in his dreams though he remembered nothing upon waking. Meera grew quieter, Aarav grew irritable, and Tara refused to leave her bed without looking to the lake as if it might at any moment reach through the trees and claim her.
By day the lake offered them no answers, only the sun’s shimmer on its surface and the mocking serenity of its rippling waves. The ruins that had haunted their nights looked fragile and harmless in the light, their crooked outlines softened by distance and haze. Children played by the shore, fishermen worked their nets, and the villagers went about their chores, though their glances toward the friends carried unease that no one dared voice aloud. The bell tower stood tilted and broken, a monument to something forgotten, its silence almost mocking in contrast to the tolling that haunted their sleep. Yet as the sun dipped each evening, the air grew heavier, the shadows stretched longer, and the friends felt an invisible boundary close in around them. They began watching the lake as though it were alive, listening to its shifting waters for signs of intrusion, their laughter dwindling to nervous whispers. Though each tried to reassure the others that it was all coincidence, some shared madness brought on by suggestion, their eyes betrayed the truth: the lake was watching back, and the dreams were not dreams at all but invitations. Something from the drowned village was reaching for them, pulling them deeper with each passing night.
_
The morning after another sleepless night, the friends wandered through the village in search of distraction, their eyes ringed with exhaustion and their laughter forced, brittle as dry reeds. It was there, near the banyan tree by the well, that they encountered the old man. His back was bent with age, his skin weathered like cracked bark, and his eyes carried the distant glint of one who had seen too much and spoken too little. Unlike the other villagers who avoided them, this man regarded them with a silence so heavy it felt like judgment. When Aarav offered a tentative greeting, the old man shook his head slowly, muttering words that carried the weight of accusation. “You went to the church,” he said in a rasp, not as a question but as a verdict. “You should not have crossed that threshold. It does not belong to the living.” The friends exchanged uneasy glances, Rohan half-smiling as though ready to dismiss the warning, but something in the old man’s voice held them still, tethered by a gravity they could not ignore.
He told them what the others dared not, his story unraveling in fragments broken by coughs and long pauses, yet sharp enough to carve dread into their bones. When the dam was built, he said, the villagers were promised new homes, but progress did not wait for the poor to gather their lives. The waters rose too quickly, and many were left behind, clinging to the only place they believed could save them—the church, their sanctuary, their last refuge. Dozens huddled inside as the flood pressed against the walls, praying, chanting, waiting for a miracle that never came. The water seeped through the doors, climbed the pews, swallowed their voices, until the bells themselves began to toll—not in warning, but in mourning, each strike reverberating through the rising flood as if rung by invisible hands. “They drowned praying to God,” the old man whispered, “but prayers could not save them. Their souls did not leave. The water bound them there, and the bells call out still, not for God, but for company. They call the living to join them beneath the water.” His voice broke then, his gaze falling to the dust at his feet, but the silence that followed carried the echo of his words louder than any shout. The friends stood frozen, the air between them thick with realization, each recalling their dreams with renewed clarity, their terror stitched now to history rather than imagination.
For the first time, Aarav did not argue, Meera did not reach for her notebook, and Rohan did not smirk. Tara only pressed her hands together, her face pale as she whispered that the old man was right—that every dream had felt less like a nightmare and more like a step closer to drowning. The others could no longer deny it: the suffocating weight, the damp sheets, the taste of stagnant water in their mouths upon waking. Each night the pull grew stronger, each toll of the unseen bell drawing them nearer, binding them like threads of a net tightening around their bodies. The old man’s words lingered in their minds as he turned and shuffled away, refusing to speak further, as though even sharing the tale had cost him something he could not afford to lose. The friends walked back to the cabin in silence, the lake stretching before them with its calm, sunlit surface mocking the truth that lay beneath. They knew now the curse was not just a story told to frighten children but a legacy of betrayal, of drowned voices calling through water and stone, demanding witnesses, demanding victims. And as the day wore on, each of them felt it deeper in their bones: dream-drowning was only the beginning, and the church had already claimed them as its own.
_
The nights pressed heavier upon them with each passing day, as though the air itself thickened with unseen water, suffocating them long before sleep arrived. The bell, once faint and distant, now tolled with startling clarity, each strike reverberating through the cabin walls as though the church had moved closer, dragging itself from the lake toward them. At first, they told themselves it was only in their heads, echoes born of fear, but denial shattered when Rohan collapsed. His body convulsed in the middle of the night, sheets soaked as though he had been hauled dripping from the reservoir, his lips trembling and lungs rattling with the unmistakable sound of water sloshing inside. Aarav and Tara tried to lift him, their hands sliding against his slick skin as he gasped like a man drowning on dry land. Meera screamed for him to breathe, pounding against his chest until, with a violent cough, Rohan spewed out water that smelled of algae and silt, his eyes rolling back in terror. He lay limp afterward, shivering, his face pale and his breath ragged, while the others huddled around him, their fear no longer bound to dreams. The curse had left the church, left the lake, and entered their very bodies.
Panic became their only language after that night, and by morning, they agreed they had to leave. The cabin, the lake, even the village—it all felt like a trap laid out for them, a cage disguised as retreat. They packed hurriedly, Rohan barely able to stand, his every movement punctuated by wheezing breaths. Aarav drove with desperate urgency, the road stretching before them like salvation, but minutes turned to hours and the same trees returned again and again, their branches crooked like mocking fingers. No matter how far they went, the landscape bent in on itself, looping them back toward the dam’s edge where the ruined bell tower jutted out of the water like a grim sentinel. Tara wept in silence, clutching her knees in the backseat, while Meera stared out the window, her pen dropped useless in her lap, the weight of her notes suddenly unbearable. Aarav grew more frantic, his hands trembling on the wheel, muttering that there had to be another road, another way, yet every turn led them back to the same view: the cracked earth, the glinting water, the silent ruins waiting. It was as though the land itself refused to release them, a maze designed by the drowned to keep the living from escaping their reach.
It was then, when the car slowed by the dam for the third time, that Meera gasped and pointed with trembling fingers. In the shallow puddles by the roadside, she saw faces—pale, bloated, their eyes wide with hunger and grief. When she turned to the window, they were there too, pressed against the glass though no one stood outside, their hands splayed, fingers crooked like branches reaching to drag her through. She shrieked and pulled away, covering her eyes, but the vision burned behind her eyelids, dozens of drowned villagers staring silently, their mouths moving in wordless chants. Aarav tried to steady her, his voice cracking as he insisted there was nothing there, but when he caught sight of the window, his heart froze. For just an instant, he saw them too—hands pressing outward, palms slapping soundlessly against the pane, before melting back into reflections of trees and sky. Rohan groaned in the backseat, water bubbling faintly from his throat, while Tara whispered that the bells were louder now, that she could hear them not in the distance but inside her chest, every toll pulling her deeper. The dam loomed before them once more, its water still and silent, but they knew then with certainty: the drowned village had them in its grip, and no road could lead them away from the tolling that had already chosen them.
_
The night of their final descent began with a heaviness in the air, as though the entire village held its breath. The friends sat in silence in the creaking cabin, the dampness now unbearable, dripping from the beams, soaking through their clothes, clinging to their skin with a cold persistence that felt alive. Outside, the moon cast a pale glow upon the water, illuminating the jagged edges of the half-sunken church, its broken steeple pointing like an accusation at the heavens. Meera, unable to endure the suffocating silence, whispered that they had to return, that the dreams and the drowning bells would not cease unless they confronted the curse at its source. Tara trembled, her voice broken but resolute, agreeing that escape was impossible—every road bent back to the lake, every path to safety erased by the tolling. With Rohan weak and gasping from the water in his lungs, they half-carried him as they made their way to the ruins, each step echoing with the hollow certainty of fate. The village seemed deserted, yet shadows lingered in doorways, as if unseen eyes watched their procession to the church.
As they entered, the bells began to toll with an intensity that rattled the very stones of the half-submerged building. The sound was not metallic anymore—it was deep and resonant, like the groan of the lake itself, like a dirge for lives already claimed. The pews were warped and broken, covered in moss and slick with water, yet as the sound swelled, unseen waves surged down the aisles. The friends staggered back as icy water licked at their ankles, then their knees, though the air outside remained clear and dry. Meera screamed that it wasn’t real, that they had to resist, but the current was relentless, pulling them apart, dragging them toward the altar where the great bell loomed in the shadows, swinging though no rope touched it. Tara felt hands clutching her from below—thin, skeletal fingers that wrapped around her wrists and ankles, pulling her down. Rohan coughed violently, collapsing in the rising flood, his body convulsing as though his chest had already filled with the same cursed water. The church groaned, timbers creaking as if drowning in unison, and the bells reached a fever pitch, each toll like a heartbeat of death echoing in the cavernous space.
One by one, they succumbed. Meera, her screams swallowed in a rush of invisible waves, vanished beneath the surface of nothingness. Tara, eyes wide with terror, clawed at the air before being dragged under by unseen arms. Rohan’s gasps gave way to silence as he too disappeared into the watery depths that should not have existed. By the time the bells gave their final toll, the church stood eerily still again, the air dry, the pews unchanged, only the faint smell of lake-water lingering. At dawn, when the villagers dared approach the cabin, they found it empty but marked by tragedy—beds drenched as though bodies had drowned upon them, sheets heavy and sodden with water that had no source. Outside, the lake shimmered innocently in the morning light, calm and glassy, with the church’s spire peeking above the surface like a tombstone. The villagers whispered among themselves, crossing themselves against the curse, knowing that the drowned souls had claimed new voices for their endless tolling. From that day on, whenever the mist thickened and the air turned cold, the bells of the submerged church rang out again, and the villagers dared not listen too closely—for in every toll, they swore they could hear the cries of the newly lost.
End
