It was midnight when Pradip suddenly woke up.
The clock showed five minutes past twelve.
Getting out of bed, he muttered to himself. It had only been a week since he had returned to his ancestral village. A week earlier, after that terrible accident, he had completely lost direction in life. He could not understand what he was supposed to do anymore in the city. In the end, he quit his job and came back to the village for good.
With the money he had earned over the last two years and the farmland his family already owned, he began farming again. Yet one thing had become unbearable—every single night, his sleep broke at exactly the same time.
In the village, people slept far earlier than in the city. By what city people would merely call evening, the villagers were already preparing for bed. Before nine o'clock, the entire village would sink into darkness.
Well, not complete darkness.
Outside every house, small kerosene lamps still burned through the night. Pradip had adopted the same habit. Every evening he lit a lamp, finished dinner by eight, and spent some time reading. By "reading," it could be anything—novels, history books, whatever he could find. Perhaps he had never managed to shake off that old habit of his. Fortunately, books were easy to get here; the village even had a small library.
After reading, he would go to sleep.
But no matter how tired he was, every night his sleep broke at exactly twelve-oh-five.
Every single night.
And once awake, there was nothing he could do except toss and turn restlessly in bed.
Suddenly, Pradip felt as though he had seen a shadow pass outside. In the dim glow of the kerosene lamp beyond the window, it had looked as if someone—or something—had walked past.
He froze.
Should he go outside?
Sleep was already gone from his eyes. Finally, gathering his courage, he climbed out of bed. From inside the room, he grabbed the bamboo stick he kept nearby and held it tightly in trembling hands.
You never knew. It could be thieves or bandits lurking around. The villagers probably assumed that since he had returned from the city, he still possessed valuable belongings that could fetch a good price.
But when he stepped outside, he saw no one.
He pressed the switch and turned on the outer electric light. Electricity existed in the village, of course. Yet this village had one strange trait—it refused to let go of the past.
Even now, the villagers preserved their old customs. Before going to sleep, they switched off the electric lights and left kerosene lamps burning outside their homes instead.
Yes, it wasted oil.
But sometimes, in the middle of the night or at dawn, waking up to the sight of those flickering lamps made the memories of older days feel strangely alive again.
Village people truly had peculiar hearts.
Pradip liked the tradition too, and so, like everyone else, he left a lamp burning outside his house every night.
Standing at the doorway and finding no one outside, he was about to go back in.
That was when he heard the sound.
The sound of anklets echoed softly through the night.
Pradip looked toward the road and saw the silhouette of a woman walking through the darkness. Anklets jingled with every step she took.
Holding up the lantern, he tried to see her more clearly, but the weak light barely reached that far.
Confused, Pradip thought about calling out to her.
But the moment he opened his mouth, a single word escaped him—a word that shocked even himself.
"Ma!"
He froze.
Why had he called that woman "Mother"?
For a few seconds, he stood there in disbelief. Yet in that darkness, it truly felt as though his mother was walking away from him.
What should he do now?
Should he follow her?
His thoughts tangled together in confusion.
Then suddenly, a woman's voice rang inside his ears.
A voice both deeply familiar and impossibly distant.
"That is not your mother."
"She never was your mother. She never will be. She does not belong to you."
"Go back inside the house."
"If she turns around and calls you… what happens next will not be good."
"Go inside."
"Go inside now."
The voice was unmistakable.
It was his mother's voice.
Ever since childhood, Pradip's life had always been a little strange. Strange… or perhaps not strange at all. Maybe his life had simply never been normal.
And perhaps that was not a good thing.
Lost in thought, he suddenly realized something strange.
Without noticing, he had been walking through the darkness all this time.
Just wandering ahead with the stick in his hand.
He was barefoot. Mud clung to his feet. He had no idea how far away from home he had come.
And then—
What stood before Pradip was not his mother.
Not even close.
The figure was horrifyingly thin, almost skeletal. Heavy ornaments and an old sari hung from its body unnaturally, as though forced onto dry bones. Its face remained hidden beneath the edge of the veil.
Yet even in the darkness, Pradip could hear it.
That wet, crackling sound from inside its body.
Then suddenly, he realized the darkness around him had faded.
Tonight was a full moon.
The black clouds had drifted apart, and silver moonlight spilled across the village, illuminating everything around him.
And in that pale light, Pradip finally saw the thing properly.
What he saw froze the blood inside his veins.
It was not merely a starving woman.
It was not his mother.
It was something far worse.
Something twisted beyond description.
Something that did not seem human at all.
Its skin clung tightly to the bones beneath, shriveled and reddish, as if melted plastic had been burned over a skeleton to create a thin layer of flesh. The body looked dry and rotten at the same time.
Its eyes—
The eye sockets were stretched wide open.
And even from beneath the veil, Pradip could see movement inside them.
Something crawling.
Something alive.
Pradip could not think. Could not move. Could not even breathe properly.
Then suddenly—
He woke up.
It was four in the morning.