Chapter 8: The Nightmare Deepens

But as soon as she agreed, everything changed. Her dreams became gloomy and terrifying. She often dreamed of a mourning hall with a photo garlanded with marigolds, a coffin buried in a pit, and a ghastly white tombstone. Whenever she tried to run, the man would follow her like a shadow.

Sneha’s voice broke as she described the marigolds—so bright in the morning sun, but in her dreams, they smelled rotten, petals falling away like dying memories. She said sometimes she could hear distant conch shells, like someone performing a puja for the dead, and always that faceless man, whispering from the shadows. Her hands shook as she remembered, and Priya tightened her grip, eyes filling with silent tears.

“Didn’t you promise to be with me? Why don’t you come find me? You can’t escape, I’m waiting for you...”

The words haunted her, echoing every time she closed her eyes. Even in broad daylight, Sneha would flinch if anyone spoke too loudly, or if the house’s old clock chimed at midnight. She stopped eating, even her favourite kheer left untouched on the table, and the neighbours started whispering outside the door. She stopped laughing, her whole world shrinking to the size of that recurring nightmare.

Sneha became more and more afraid to sleep. When she did, she fell into nightmares, waking up screaming, her nerves stretched to the breaking point.

Priya would rush to her bedside, sometimes finding Sneha standing at the window, eyes open but unseeing, murmuring the same words over and over. The neighbours would gossip—“Kisi ne kuch kar diya lagta hai, bachchi pe”—and the priest from the temple came twice to sprinkle Ganga jal around the house. Nothing helped. The sound of Sneha’s screams would linger in the corridors long after dawn.