Myth and Miasma

Lost, his eyes try to pierce through the fog. The unearthly, all-enveloping mist that had settled around him and brought with it a bone-chilling cold. The kind of cold that penetrates the holes of your skin and seeps into your core. The air is thick, pale, and opaque, and his breath comes out in smoke, weaving with the vapour around, making him question if it is inside him. 

The calming susurration of the wind in leaves is gone, and the sun is hidden behind clouds that undulate endlessly in the sky. With only greys and whites around him, he feels untethered. It felt like being in the cosmic void of infinite space or caught in unending waves, flailing to grasp for safety but finding nothing. He looks at his watch; it has stopped working. He taps it with the knuckle of his index finger, just as he had seen his older cousin do it. His mind wanders, and so does he. How long has he been lost? Memories of his purpose and presence here flicker like the fog around him.

"Musa!" he calls out, focusing on the sliver of clarity. Musa is a researcher like him, a linguist. His name is Daniel Bergman, and he works at the Theology department of the British Research Establishment. The place where his fingers had found excitement in the weathered pages of an ancient tome, dust had danced in the feeble light and he had discovered his morbid fascination with cultural legends and spectral folklore. Perhaps it was a fascination borne from the ashes of his parents' untimely demise when he was just eighteen, or perhaps it was repentance. 

Back at the Establishment, Daniel’s insatiable curiosity had been piqued by a story Musa had recounted on his return from a soul-searching trip in the north of Pakistan, where he had found his hitchhiking way to a small village in the hauntingly beautiful Neelam Valley of Kashmir. A piece of land that was no stranger to war, terrorism, and death. 

Naturally, Musa had learned the local language, adding another to the seven he already spoke. The villagers, endeared by his gesture, had adopted him and shown him around, freely sharing their customs, food and, most importantly, their stories. One contained the element of the extraordinary, the presence of the paranormal and the answer to the question that had plagued Daniel’s mind for years. The question every theologian, scientist, billionaire, and proletariat has in common: is there life after death? 

In this region, there is. A certain kind of life. The Valley of Neelam believes in spirits, and as they say, belief will help create the fact. In hushed whispers, the villagers had relayed the happenings to Musa, how a woman who had run away with her lover had been found and killed brutally by her family. An “honour” killing, they called it, “What irony”, Daniel had thought to himself. They said she was from a poor family and in those, honour is all that you have. The locals had touched their ears with their fingers, one after the other, a gesture to ask for God’s forgiveness, and told Musa that her father and brother had beaten her to the point that the bones in her legs were broken, and her feet had twisted backward. Still alive, they had thrown her off the edge of the mountain into the weightless air.

“She came back,” the villagers had hushed cautiously because in the coming weeks, her brother disappeared on his way back from the fields, and then the father never returned after dark. Daniel had blamed the scorned lover, but four more men had disappeared in the wake of the tragedy, Musa had confirmed, each rumoured to have a questionable past. “It’s like they fell off the face of the earth,” Musa had said, a tinge of regret in his tone. “A vigilante witch with a vengeance,” Daniel had mused. “A Pichhal Peri in Hindko, a Churail in Urdu, and a Balashiksha in Pushto,” Musa had explained, counting the languages that trace the bloody trails of a supernatural being born of bitterness, hate and grave injustice. A being damned to roam the earth in search of bad blood, seeking evil in other men and gouging it out of them.

The story had echoed the grim lore Daniel had been looking for. It would position him perfectly for the Head of the Research Department. He knew Musa had been vying for the same position, so Daniel had offered to “help” him with his research in the village, knowing all too well that as long as he was in the equation, the beards in charge would never give the title to a man from Musa’s origins.

"Musa!" he cries, his voice wavering. The sound seems to emanate from a distance or only within his head. He fumbles with his ear, aware of the pressure difference caused by the altitude. Smoke-like fog surrounds him, clouding his senses. He realises that it has to be clouds at this height – yes, that’s it! He was walking in clouds! He starts laughing, but his laugh comes strangely muffled, as he catches himself. Was he becoming delirious? 

In an effort to steady his nerves, he takes out the battered pack of cigarettes. It had been two days since they had arrived at the village asking questions. Musa had been welcomed back with open arms, but the villagers had kept their reservations with a foreigner like him. He had let Musa do most of the talking, who had translated later that there's been a sighting since he had been gone. 

An elderly man and his six-year-old niece had been walking down the mountain just before sunset when they heard small metallic bells in the air, like the ones on the anklets of the girl who was murdered. Ghungroo, the villagers called them. Not many women in the village had worn them because they symbolised boldness; they had shaken their heads. The elderly man had disregarded the sporadic sound at first, but it kept coming, filling the air with its eerie alarm. The little girl, feeling the fear of the old man, had started crying. Just then, he had looked up and there, on the edge of the mountain, stood a woman in stained clothes, with her long, black hair billowing in the wind. Thinking it was someone being reckless, he had called out just to see her chalky, white face. Her eyes were big and black, and they were looking right at him. The old man had been mistaken about one thing, though; she wasn’t facing the edge, she was facing him, only her feet were not. Screaming verses from the Quran, he picked up his niece and ran back to the village. 

Daniel clenches his jaw, his gaze piercing the horizon. The villagers' cryptic directions had led them to this lonely mountain, a place even abandoned by the gods. He remembers leaving his camera in the car mid-trek and reluctantly retraced his steps. Amid the smoky haze, the fog of his own thoughts clears. Now, where was the car?

Daniel notices he’s been holding the pack of cigarettes in his hand the whole time. He flips it open to his last one, facing up. Another one of his cousin’s habits, he admits to himself. On getting a new carton, his cousin would flip over a cigarette and call it his “lucky” one. Daniel was thinking about him a lot today. He lights it and breathes in the sweet smell of tar and death, adding more fumes to his already murky surroundings. With his hearing compromised, he looks around, making a feeble attempt to find his bearings. 

The mountain felt familiar to Daniel in a way that made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of his past life. After his parents had died, his aunt had sold his childhood home to settle his parents’ debts and had taken Daniel instead to a cold, mountainous village in Austria to live with her and his cousin.

His aunt was an anxious, stingy widow. If Daniel had been married to her, he would have killed himself too. His cousin, on the other hand, was two years older and looked very much like him. Except for the fact that Daniel was lanky and slouching, whereas his cousin, even though a couple of inches shorter, stood as if he belonged everywhere. So confident, so well-adjusted. His presence reeked of worthiness. Over the years, Daniel had obsessively harboured a festering bitterness toward his cousin, whose name was still a constant presence. It wasn't solely about the material wealth - assets and inheritance stolen from him. It was about the power and control his cousin wielded over him, a dominance that stretched throughout his life. Daniel had grown tired of being overshadowed, dismissed, and dominated. In his cousin's success, he saw not achievement to admire but a constant reminder of his own inadequacies. 

The idea of taking his cousin's life had begun to consume Daniel like a relentless fire. It was a desperate act borne from years of humiliation and a twisted belief that it would be the ultimate assertion of his worth.

One night, when his cousin had invited him for a sunrise trek up the mountain to a waterfall he had discovered, Daniel had not said no. They had left the house in the quiet hours and trekked up the mountain in the bright moonlight, till they had reached the top of a waterfall that dropped three hundred metres down onto shiny, black rocks. His cousin had dipped his head in the spraying spume of the water like a dumb dog, but Daniel had noticed how strongly his arm had encircled the jutting rock on the side, saving him from falling in. His cousin did not know how to swim. Daniel doubted that with the speed of the current and the imminent sheer drop, even knowing how to swim could save you.

As faint sun rays streaked the sky, his cousin had leaned against the rock and told him something that would change both their lives forever. With suppressed excitement, his cousin had confessed to getting into the university of his choice in London to study Theology on a full scholarship. He had gushed about how happy he was, how proud his family would be and how he could not wait to start a new life where nobody knew him. Each accolade laced with a jab in Daniel’s face, contrasting with everything he did not have. 

Daniel had taken the news in with a straight face, but something in him had twitched, as if the vexatious monstrosity that hungered and slept within his yearning soul had finally awakened. 

Casually, Daniel had muttered congratulations and then inquired, "Have you told anyone else?" "Nobody," his cousin had answered with a shrug. "Just like nobody knew we were up here,” he had thought.

Daniel had smiled and asked for the time, and his cousin had exposed his wrist, looking at his worn-out silver Rolex, tapping it with the knuckle of his index finger to make sure it was working. “Old thing,” his cousin had mused, “It was my father’s,” he continued. “Before he passed away, he had had it engraved with my initials and gave it to me.” Daniel had heard the story before. He despised small-minded people; their stories were confined, and their identity perpetually echoed more of the same.

Daniel had politely asked if he could see the watch. His cousin had paused and then, in politeness, unclasped it. Daniel had covered the distance between them with even, measured steps, joining his cousin at the edge. He had taken the watch in his hand and turned it around, tracing his thumb across the sleek, looping initials of his cousin’s name, “D.B” - for Daniel Bergman.

Feeling the steel still warm from his cousin’s flesh, he had casually put the watch in his pocket. His cousin’s face had contorted into something mixed with surprise and anger as he had asked what Daniel was doing. “Just keeping it safe,” Daniel had replied calmly before continuing, “Don’t want it to get wet,” as he had shoved him off the edge of the mountain. Daniel had watched the bewildered horror on his cousin’s face as he fell, eyes bulging, scream enveloped by the sound of the waterfall, disappearing into the cold nest of the giant, jagged rocks. It was, after all, the survival of the smartest.

Daniel had rushed back, careful not to slip on the slope and leave any marks on him that might tell of the unforgivable crime he had just committed. He had felt the weight of bitterness and resentment being replaced by the sinking gravity of murder on his moral conscience. He had wiped tears from his face and told himself it was too late to turn back. Silently, he had sneaked back into his room, taken his clothes off and carefully cleaned his shoes, removing all evidence. In a house heavy with sleep, he had gone to his cousin’s bedroom and gathered identity documents, certificates, and his cousin’s admission letter. He had patiently bided his time for a month while the police had looked and, eventually, classified his cousin as “missing.”

In a sudden sting, Daniel notices the cigarette has burned through, the hot cherry searing his skin as he drops it to the ground, cursing. The same skin that now warms the stolen watch on his wrist, engraved with sleek, looping initials, that he has taken as his own.

Daniel is interrupted by a sound. “Bells?” He mumbles, his eyes jerking left to right. He follows the chime with his arms extended, trying to feel his way, grabbing at smoky air that passes through his fingertips, much like his sanity. Fingertips looking for something, anything to hold on to, till they do - coarse and cold - it's the bark of a tree, with the sound about six feet away. His face pales as he recalls the villagers' tale of the witch.

Primal instinct has taken over and Daniel cannot move. Even if he could, he does not know which way to run. He waits, his near-deaf ears hurting to hear that wet, shivering bell. And then he does, right behind him.

Daniel runs in the opposite direction. The bells follow, sporadic and random. Daniel is panting, changing direction like a scared, jittery rabbit in a hound chase. But no matter where he runs, he cannot seem to escape this acidic haze. The more Daniel inhales this heavy, inhospitable air, the more he loses his grip on reality. This miserable miasma emanating from the unholy earth devours his existence. There is something else around him. He can feel it; he is not alone.

The stillness of the atmosphere is sliced through by the sound of an onomatopoeic chime. She’s here. As he gradually raises his gaze, repeatedly reassuring himself that there will be nothing there, he is wrong.

Sitting there on a branch of a rotting tree is the churail. Her face, drained of all life, reveals a labyrinth of cobalt veins meandering across her pallid skin and through dead black eyes that never blink. Her neck, grotesquely askew, forces her contrasting crimson lips to droop to one side, giving her a malevolent leer. Her long, inky hair hangs to her side, cascading past her red-splattered clothes till her bruised, twisted, reversed feet adorned with tiny, bloody bells.

There is nothing more unsettling than feeling the tightening of your throat and the quickening of your heart as it grows louder, reverberating in your insides till you can hear nothing else and taste only metallic.

The shivering, sour taste of fear. 

Daniel’s mouth is filled with it, and his body is paralysed. He can’t take his eyes off her. Her sanguine lips slowly curl up in an inhumanly wide smile, and as her mouth opens, a gush of dark, clotted blood spills out, staining her neck and her front as she sits there, still smiling.

Daniel’s fear is oozing out of him as he notices a wetness on his face. He is weeping in terror. His feet instinctively back away while his face is frozen, looking into hers when he hears the distinct crunch of footsteps drawing closer. 

He spins around, panic gnawing at his chest. The swirling mist dissipates, revealing Musa standing in ghostly silence. Overwhelmed with relief, Daniel trips over his words, unintelligible in his statements, pointing, and wailing where the witch still sat unmoving, but Musa cannot see her. Somehow, deep in his sinful soul, Daniel knows it to be true: only men with darkness in their pasts and blood on their hands can see the vengeful churail.

Musa is overwrought. He grabs Daniel's shoulders, mumbling apologies, explaining how he has no choice, how it was all an excuse to bring Daniel to this remote place under the pretence of an urban legend. Daniel is too distraught to respond, but he peels his eyes off her to look at Musa, and he sees the power-hungry look he has seen before in himself. The one that is determined in all its folly to take what it thinks it deserves. The realisation of Musa’s motives dawns and Daniel squirms in his deathly grip, pointing, sputtering, telling him to wait. Musa releases Daniel with a push. The ground vanishes, and he plummets into the abyss.

Daniel’s desolate scream finally pierces through the air that is now sharp, crisp, and clear and echoes in the wide, flowing valleys of Kashmir. As he irrevocably carves the landscape with his misfortune, he looks up one last time to see Musa in the fog, staring at something. His mouth is stretched wide in anguish, mirroring the contortion of Daniel’s own face, to such an extent that he can’t distinguish the sound of Musa’s scream from his own.