"The wheels rolled past forgotten lands,
Beneath the sky so wide, so still—
They laughed, unaware the road ahead
Would bend not to their will."
The highway unspooled like thread—long, dry, and indifferent. Asphalt melted into dust after the city's last flyover; the world had become a flat, breathing thing of parched fields and rusting billboards. Inside the tempo traveler, the chatter tried to fill the vastness outside. It did a good job at first—like a band playing loudly to keep a sinking ship from feeling like it is sinking.
Kabir sat at the front, sunglasses on despite overcast skies, knees angled like a man ready to leap. He had that practiced ease: a pose, a grin, the kind of posture that could convince the room that whatever he suggested was a festival idea rather than a sketchy weekend plan. Tonight, the audience obliged.
Rohit and Yashpal were in one of their familiar shouting matches—Rohit in favor of old horror songs for "maximum creep vibes," Yashpal arguing for silence because his brain liked to keep statistics intact. Saanvi, always the practical one, lobbed a packet of chips between them like a referee tossing a tennis ball. "Both of you are annoying," she declared with a grin, but she cranked up the volume on a compromise playlist anyway. Priya framed her face against the window glass and scrolled through filters as if mood could be edited into existence, narrating softly to herself: "Golden hour aesthetic... no wait, mysterious traveler vibes." Meghna sat with a paperback, the calm center of the noise, though her eyes occasionally drifted from the pages to watch Kabir's reflection in the window.
Diya, who had that soft laugh that turned into a hush when a joke landed wrong, wore a faded denim jacket and a travel-worn grin. She kept stealing sideways looks at Kabir—part amusement, part the kind of affectionate exasperation that only old friends can give. She had known him since college, back when his confidence was still raw, untested. Now it was polished, weaponized, impossible to resist.
Abhay was folded into the back by the luggage, hands loosely clasped. He had said very little that morning, offering only small facts about groundwater levels and the region's rainfall patterns—things nobody wanted during playlist wars. When Rohit had asked him directly, "Bro, you coming or what?" Abhay had simply nodded and climbed into the van. He watched the outside world slide by with a gaze that sometimes seemed meant for somewhere else entirely. Once, when Saanvi glanced back at him, she had to look twice to confirm he was actually there.
They drove through a landscape that belonged to no calendar—half-forgotten billboards advertising products that had outlived their companies, the skeletons of roadside tea stalls, hedgerows stabbing into the sky. It should have felt cinematic. Instead, there was a small, growing itch in the air; an expectant pause like the breath before laughter or a scream.
Around noon, they stopped at a small dhaba for lunch. The place was nearly empty—just an old woman behind a counter and a man sleeping in the corner, his head tilted back against the wall. Priya complained about the Wi-Fi not working. Rohit ordered three plates of food. Yashpal ate quietly, his eyes on a folded newspaper from three days ago. Kabir held court, recounting a story about a previous office trip where someone had gotten food poisoning. Meghna laughed at all the right moments. Diya helped the old woman clear plates, earning a toothless smile and a blessing murmured in a language none of them understood.
Abhay sat at a separate table, finishing his meal long after the others had left their plates. The old woman kept refilling his water glass without being asked. When he finally got up to leave, she caught his wrist for just a moment—her grip surprisingly strong—and said something very quietly in his ear. He nodded, thanked her, and walked back to the van. No one asked what she'd said.
At a derelict toll gate—an arch of rust choked by vines—the tempo slowed to idle. A lean attendant leaned against a column, more sleep than posture. He waved them through with a lazy hand. As they idled, a soft, deliberate rap came at the van's side.
When Rohit wound the window down, the sun struck a face of sun-creased skin and a beard like dry straw. He wore saffron that had forgotten its color. Bare feet, the kind that carry someone across years instead of kilometers. His eyes were ancient, and they seemed to recognize something in the van before they found any face.
"Beta(child)… ek(one) bottle paani(water) mil jaaye to kripa ho jaayegi(if I will get it then you will be blessed)," the man said, voice thin as wind through reeds.
Kabir, the author of bravado, waved a hand. "Here's your moment of cinematic pity, people." He dug into the bag, produced a bottle, and tossed it through the window. Rohit made a show of handing it over like a trophy.
The man took the bottle with slow, deliberate motions. He smelled of temple dust and something older—something like incense mixed with rain that had fallen years ago. For a second he looked like a harmless relic, a person who earned his days by asking and, perhaps, listening.
Then he spoke, and his words were not the ones they expected.
"You are eight," he said, and the syllables fell like a pebble in water. His eyes had fixed on the interior of the van, scanning across each face methodically. When they passed over Abhay, they seemed to pause, to acknowledge something.
"But you are not eight."
Laughter—thin and brittle—peeled from the van. Priya clicked a picture. Rohit snorted and cracked a joke about spooky riddles. Kabir rolled his eyes and said something smooth about roadside theatrics. But Saanvi's laugh came a half-second delayed, and Yashpal's fingers tightened on his book. Even Meghna's smile wavered, just for an instant.
The old man did not smile. Instead his face unbent into something that could have been pity, or hunger, or memory. He looked directly at the back seat, at Abhay, and added quietly, almost like an aside:
"The road remembers. Those who mock the thirsty… drown in thirst unseen."
He turned and disappeared down the side lane, his bare feet carrying away the sound of his words like a half-remembered song. For a moment, the sound of his footsteps seemed to go on far longer than the lane should have allowed.
For a while, no one spoke. Not because the moment had been terrifying—there was a reflex of scoffing—but because the tone of the van had subtly shifted. The volume of jokes dropped a notch; laughter grew smaller, the way people lower their voices when a book reaches a painful sentence. Priya's phone felt heavy in her hands. Rohit's grin had faded. Even Kabir's posture seemed less assured, though he tried to hide it.
Diya was the first to breach the quiet. She rubbed her palms together theatrically and said, "Okay, prophecy man gets water. We win moral high ground. Can someone pass the playlist?" Her voice carried the careful brightness of someone trying to restart an engine that had stalled.
Yashpal muttered something about statistics and probability, his way of processing the inexplicable through numbers. Rohit made a face and launched into a mocking accent for the old man, his laughter a little too loud, a little too forced. The rhythm of the group returned, as if the social muscle had been flexed and was rewarded each time it performed.
Meghna opened her diary and wrote something quickly, her pen moving fast, though her eyes remained distant. She didn't share what she'd written.
Abhay said nothing at first. Later, in the back where the conversation had become a softer hum of gossip and jokes, he leaned forward and said, low enough that only Diya and Kabir heard, "He didn't curse us. He recognized us."
Kabir grinned without heat. "Recognized us for what? Our fashion sense? Our excellent road trip choices?" But there was a question in his eyes now, something that hadn't been there before.
Abhay shrugged. "Just… he saw something. Maybe he's old and lonely. Maybe it was nothing."
"Or maybe," Diya said softly, "he saw something we haven't yet."
Kabir turned to look at them both, his expression unreadable in the dimming light. But he didn't argue.
Sometimes things are 'nothing' until they are not.
Night came like a slow curtain. Trees arched over the road, their branches knitting together into a shadow tunnel. The GPS on Yashpal's phone winked out without fanfare—there was the abruptness of a light switch being flipped. "No signal," he announced, tapping at the screen with a false calm. He tried three times, as if repetition might restore what had been lost.
"Classic," Priya chirped, but her voice had lost some of its theatrical edge. "Plot point: no network equals character development."
"Cliché number two," Kabir added, leaned back, and tried to reclaim control with humor. But the air felt changed—tighter, as if the trees had leaned closer to eavesdrop. The darkness outside had become absolute, the kind of darkness that only exists far from cities. Their headlights carved a weak path through it, illuminating nothing but more darkness ahead.
Saanvi reached for her phone and found no bars. Neither did Priya. Rohit's fingers flew across his screen in panic before he gave up with a frustrated laugh. "We're officially off the grid," he announced, and the announcement felt like a line being crossed.
"How much longer?" Meghna asked, her voice smaller than usual.
"Twenty minutes, maybe," the driver said. It was the first time he'd spoken in hours. His voice was rough, weathered. "Maybe more. The road is… uncertain."
The road is uncertain. The words hung in the air like a warning no one quite understood.
The road smoothed as they left the last toll booth behind. A green board flickered past under the dimming light:
"Bhairavpur – 5 km."
"Finally!" Priya clapped her hands. "Civilization again. I thought we'd be stuck on this haunted road forever." She tried to sound relieved, but relief requires safety, and the van had long since passed safety behind.
Laughter rose, but it was lighter now, fragile. Even the driver cracked a smile in the rearview mirror, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. Rohit leaned forward to nudge Kabir, teasing about who would survive the village's food first. Kabir laughed back, his energy slowly returning, inflating like a balloon that had briefly deflated.
Meghna closed her diary, slipping it into her bag with deliberate care. "No more stories today," she said, but her eyes sparkled as if one was already brewing. Or perhaps as if one was already being written, had been written, would be written, all at once.
Abhay, however, stayed quiet. His gaze lingered on the fading treeline, where the shadows stretched unnaturally long, as if the darkness was trying to reach into the van. For the briefest moment, he thought he saw movement—something shifting between the trunks. A shape. Or the suggestion of a shape. Something that didn't quite fit the pattern of branches and night.
But when he blinked, it was gone. When he tried to look again, there was only forest. Only trees. Only the endless dark.
The van rolled on, steady and calm, the laughter inside mixing with the rhythm of the engine. Outside, the forest seemed to grow denser, the trees pressing closer to the road, their canopy tightening overhead until it was almost a tunnel. The headlights caught the edge of something—a pole, perhaps, or a marker—but the driver didn't slow.
To anyone watching from the road, it looked like nothing more than a group of friends on their way to a weekend getaway.
Just another journey.
And yet, somewhere deep within the forest, the silence seemed to listen. It seemed to lean in. It seemed to recognize the sound of the van, to know what it carried, to wait with the patience of something that has already won.
"A bottle denied, a bell unheard—
Mockery plants seeds that feed the worm.
Laugh tonight with bright, safe eyes,
But some hunger never dies."