Raj had heard the stories from his grandmother countless times, but he'd never believed them. Not until that October evening, when he found himself alone on the forest path, near the abandoned gut in Govindpur. The cremation ground had been deserted for fifty years, ever since the floods washed away half the village. Local people avoided it after sunset, taking the longer road that wound around the hills, but Raj was running late, his phone battery dead, and the shortcuts seemed harmless enough in the fading light.
The first sign was the smell, not the expected decay of the jungle, but sulfur and burning sandalwood, acrid and ceremonial. Just quickened his pace, his sandal slapping against the packed earth. Then came the sound. A distant de-heel drum, its rhythms low and funereal, echoing between the trees.
His blood turned to ice water. The drumming grew louder, joined by the haunting notes of a shenai playing backwards, the melody inverted and wrong. Through the darkening trees he saw lights. It was not the warm glow of lanterns, but the cold blue-white of spectral fires floating in a line along the path ahead.
The procession emerged from the mist like a nightmare taking form. The drummers, their faces hollow and grey, beating instruments that made no earthly sound. Behind them marched warriors in ancient armour, their eyes empty sockets carrying rusted tall wars and spears. Raj counted dozens, no hundreds of them, a ghostly army that stretched into the darkness.
In the centre, carried on a palinquine of human bones, satifigured, raped in a burning shroud, its face hidden, but radiating an authority that made Raj's knees buckle. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn't obey. The procession moved toward him with terrible inevitability. Lie down, his grandmother's voice screamed in his memory.
Life flat and speak your lineage, Raj threw himself to the ground, pressing his face into the dirt. His mind raced, grasping for the names his grandmother had made him memorise as a child. Rajesh, son of Vikram, son of Harish, son of… the names tumbled out in a desperate chant. The footsteps stopped inches from his head.
The air grew impossibly cold. He could hear breathing, wet and rattling directly above him. Something nudged his ribs with what felt like the point of a spear. Then a voice like grinding stone.
Who? Silence stretched for an eternity. Raj's heart hammered so hard he thought it might burst. Then from somewhere within the procession, another voice, older, familiar in a way he couldn't place.
It whispered a single word. Mine. The spear point withdrew. The footsteps resumed, moving past him.
The entire ghostly army flowing around his prone body like water around a stone. The sounds of the drums, flutes, marching feet faded until only the ordinary night sounds of the forest remained.