The darkness did not leave after the fire went out.
It grew.
The pyre had gone cold, but the darkness at that spot became heavier, as if the fire had not only been giving light, but had been holding something else in check. The moment that binding broke, the night revealed its true weight.
My eyes were open, but I could see nothing.
There was only one sensation, someone was standing in front of me.
I could not see it, but I also could not say that it was not there. Some things are felt only when the eyes become useless. Like hunger. Like pain. Like fear.
The figure did not walk closer.
It simply became close.
As if the distance between two places had been erased.
My breathing grew faster. I wanted to step back, but my feet felt sunk into the ground. My mind was screaming, run, but my body felt like it no longer belonged to me. My heartbeat was wrong. Sometimes one beat between two breaths, sometimes two beats within a single breath.
"This is not real," I told myself.
Or maybe I only thought it.
I could not hear my own voice.
Where its face should have been, there was nothing. Or perhaps there was too much, so much that my eyes could not hold it. But the eyes, they were visible. Stable. Deep. As if they had seen too much, and forgotten nothing.
It spoke before it spoke.
"I told you," the voice said,
"the body remembers."
The voice did not reach my ears. It landed directly in the center of my chest. It felt as if someone had tapped a finger against the inside of my ribs.
"You completed the mark," the voice said.
My mind answered immediately.
"I only touched it and pulled my hand away. I did nothing."
"Touching is enough," the voice replied.
"Rituals do not happen through intention, they happen through contact."
I looked down.
The symbol on the ground looked different now. The lines no longer felt incomplete. I did not remember completing them, but remembering is not always necessary.
Some things happen even without memory.
Suddenly, something jolted inside my head.
As if someone had violently opened the door of a sealed room.
I saw myself as a child.
A dream, or maybe a memory, one I had never seen before. I was standing there, near this very cremation ground. Small. Weak. Someone was holding my hand. That hand bore the same mark.
"This is impossible," I screamed.
"I am here for the first time."
The voice did not laugh.
But its silence was worse than laughter.
"Coming for the first time and remembering for the first time are not the same," the voice said.
I began to struggle for breath. The air felt thin. I wanted to bend over and cough, but my body still refused to listen.
I turned sharply and ran.
My feet moved.
That surprised me.
I ran toward the village. I did not look back. I just ran. Bushes, stones, ash, everything passed beneath my feet. I thought if I could reach the light even once, if I could reach another living human being…
The moment I saw the first hut of the village, I felt relief.
And then,
the instant I took another step,
my head exploded with pain.
Darkness flooded my vision. The ground vanished beneath my feet. I collapsed. It felt as if someone had driven a spike straight into the center of my brain.
I screamed. This time, truly.
The village was only a few steps away.
Yet as distant as life is from death.
"There is a boundary," the voice said.
"And you are inside it."
I understood then.
I could not leave this place.
Dragging myself, I returned to the cremation ground. The figure was still there, as if it had never moved.
In one corner of the cremation ground, I noticed another spot. The earth looked different there. The soil was darker. There were old marks, as if something had been done there long ago. A sacrificial ground.
There was no blood.
But the air was damp. And there was a metallic smell, the same smell that exists near an open wound.
"Now the second hand is needed," the voice said.
My body began to tremble.
"I will not do it," I said.
I cursed. I took God's name. I used every thing I had been taught to use when fear arrives.
Nothing worked.
"Names do not work here," the voice said.
"Here, only memory has value."
Somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed.
I thought the night was ending. The sky grew slightly lighter. For a brief moment, hope rose.
But the Ganga was still black.
Completely still. Completely heavy.
Morning was only a lie.
The figure extended its hand for the first time.
On that hand was the same tantric mark.
This time complete. Clear. Alive.
"Memory has begun to return," the voice said.
And I understood then,
this was only the beginning.