In the far western region of Nepal, there was a small village. The people were poor, the facilities were poor. The commoners there had to do hard labor to stay alive.

Although it was hard, the adults tried their best to satisfy every need of their children.

Due to lack of education, there used to be five to fifteen members in a family. One of those families was of Kriti’s.

Kriti was the eldest daughter of the family. She had six other siblings to look after.

Unfortunately, both her parents were dead in flood last year. And since she was the eldest she had to look after her family of seven.

The earlier six including her were all girls. The youngest was the only boy in the family. But he was still a small child of five years old. There wasn’t much he could do.

It wasn’t that her other sisters wouldn’t do any work. It was just that she wouldn’t let them do much of the household work.

The reason for this was, she wanted her sisters to study hard. Although the facilities weren’t good, there were some small schools.

She wanted to make her sisters capable and send them to Kathmandu, so that they would be able to live a happy life.

Still they would try to help her as much as they could. But still they weren’t the eldest. The responsibility of being the eldest was something else and only she knew this.

Kriti wasn’t too strong to begin with. She had to bring the firewood and grass from the forest. She had to bring water from the tap, walking a full hour from home. She had to cook food and find food. She had to look after the cattle and her family members. And not to mention the worn out cottage of theirs.

She was tired, very tired.

But she had to keep moving forward for her family.

 

It was like any other day, Kriti had just returned from collecting grass.

The second daughter, Mukti, had already prepared the food.

Seeing this Kriti was very happy.

When it was finally time to eat, they all gathered in the kitchen and started to eat.

It was the same food as always, dhido and gundruk.

The youngest son, Gopal was being fed by the sixth child, Bhakti.

The only sound that came from their house was of chewing and drinking. It was quiet for a while and Kriti thought that it was nice like this.

But the silence was destroyed by a sudden wail of the youngest, “I don’t want to eat this. It’s always the same food. I’m tired of eating it.”

After all, Gopal was just a child. He didn’t know much about the struggle his sisters had to go through to gather even this much.

After enduring for a while and trying to calm him down, they were still unsuccessful. The wailing of the child only grew bigger.

Finally, Kriti was at the end of her patience. She grabbed her brother and gave him a slap while Bhakti tried to shield him.

“Sister Kriti, please stop, he is just a child.”

Kriti exploded, “Fine, do whatever you want. Don’t eat it. But there will be nothing to eat later.”

The third child of the family, Shakti intervened, “Stop it now all of you. We are going to be late for school.”

Hearing this, Kriti quickly finished her food, although she had no appetite. Her other siblings also followed suit. Even the youngest one after getting a slap, finished everything on his plate.

It was finally time for school. Since it was government school, the fee wasn’t high. It was affordable. And it was also ok if they didn’t pay. The management system was poor, so no one would know.

Their school was in the next village. They had to walk for an hour to reach. There was also a big river they had to cross.

In order to cross the river, they had to use a rope. They had to hang on the rope and cross it slowly.

All of her sisters were capable of crossing the river by themselves. Only the small brother wasn’t capable enough.

So, they took turns in carrying him across the river every day.

Today, it was the turn of the fourth sister, Arati.

She carefully tied her brother on her back and started to cross the river.

Whoever was carrying the boy had to go first so that the other five could keep an eye on them.

One by one everyone started to cross the river through rope.

Only after successfully crossing the river, did they feel oxygen returning to their lungs.

After all it was just a rope. In the past, there were quite a number of accidents while crossing the river, so they had to be careful.

The main hurdle of their journey was successfully crossed. Now, they could reach school without any trouble.

Finally, after another 30 minutes of walk, the school came into view.

 

After a whole day of studying and fooling around when teachers weren’t there, it was finally time to go home.

It was usually still bright when they crossed the river to the other side.

But this time, the fifth sister, Shruti had an accident. She fell down pretty hard on stone and sprained her leg.

They had to take turns carrying her as well as their youngest brother.

Due to this, the speed of their travel was slowed. It was already dark before they reached the forest.

While returning home, they had to cross the forest first then only they could reach the river.

They had to enter the forest otherwise they wouldn’t be able to return home.

But Kriti was in a dilemma whether they should enter or not.

At night forest was a dangerous place. There was danger from wild animals. On top of that, there was a legend about this forest.

According to the legend, at night the forest would get haunted.

Kriti couldn’t remember the reason for this forest to be haunted but still she was scared.

Before she could warn her siblings, they had already entered the forest and gone ahead of her.

It turns out that when she was thinking, she had unknowingly stopped walking. And since she always walked at the last, no one noticed that she was missing.

Kriti was all alone. She got so scared that she started to run towards the forest without second thought.

She didn’t care about herself at this moment. She just wanted to find her family and return home.

Kriti started to shout as she ran. But the only reply she got was silence and occasional sounds made by some animals.

She ran for a long time but she couldn’t reach the end of the forest. It felt like she was trapped in a maze.

They had crossed this forest for more than 100 times till now. Kriti was sure she knew the way. But she was feeling as if she was running around the same place again and again.

She suddenly stopped running. At this point she knew that she was being haunted.

As soon as she stopped and realized this, her blood ran cold.

Before she could figure out what to do, she suddenly heard a familiar voice.

It sounded as if her brother was calling her.

As she was about to turn around, she stopped remembering something.

When her mother was still alive, she used to tell her, ‘If someone calls you from behind don’t turn back immediately. You should wait up to the third call. Only turn if the voice calls you for the third time.”

The small Kriti had asked, “Why, mother?”

Her mother had replied, “Because if the person isn’t there or if you can’t see them then the voice calling you might be of an evil spirit. And if you turn back and see no one then first you will fall sick and then die.”

At that time Kriti had forgotten this immediately as she was too busy playing with her doll.

Now she remembered it as clear as day.

She stood there like a statue for a long time waiting for another call. But it never came.

At this point she knew that she shouldn’t turn back no matter what. Although the forest seemed to be like a maze, Kriti just kept moving forward.

The darkness only started to get thicker and she started to hear voices of her sisters calling her.

Sometimes it seemed to be coming from far, while sometimes it felt as if it was right by her ears.

She had almost turned back a couple of times.

But she was strong. After all she was the eldest who had to bear physical as well as mental pressure to make living for her family.

She never once turned back.

After what seemed to be forever, it became quiet. The spirits in the forest must have been tired too.

The maze was still endless and Kriti was tired.

She thought to take rest. Since the voices stopped she relaxed a bit.

The maze also seemed to be ending and getting less confusing.

Kriti remembered there was a cave in the forest nearby. So she tried her best to find it.

If it was day, she would have found it in no time. But in the dark where the forest had converted into a maze, it took her some time to find it.

Upon the sight of the cave, she felt so relieved that without a second thought she entered the place.

It was dark, very dark but she could hear a sound.

A low breathing sound, as if someone was sleeping.

She didn’t dare to make any reckless movement. Slowly, she laid down where it seemed to be farthest from the sound.

As soon as she lay down, a heavy exhaustion crept onto her.

Before she fell asleep, she felt as if someone was lying beside her and looking at her with a big smile showing its teeth.

But she knew better than to mind it. So she decided to ignore it and just fell asleep.

That night, there was a huge storm. Trees were falling everywhere.

If Kriti hadn’t found the cave, she would have been killed by the storm if not by the ghosts.

After a long night, finally came a morning.

Kriti slowly opened her eyes to see a bright light coming from the entrance of the cave.

Her surroundings were visible now.

The source of low breathing sound last night was from the six other figures lying beside her.

It was her five sisters and her small brother.

She was filled with euphoria.

Kriti hastily woke everyone up.

The other people opened their eyes when they felt someone calling and shaking them.

Seeing that it was their eldest sister, everyone was happy.

Finally they were together again.

On their way home, everyone shared what happened with them the previous night.

It turned out that, after they went ahead without Kriti they found out that they were missing one person.

The second daughter, Mukti was the first to realize what was going on.

She also remembered some of the things their mother had told about evil spirits. So, immediately she warned everyone.

She took the small child with her and carried him so that his face would be hidden. Soon the boy fell asleep.

She warned her sister to not turn back no matter what or they would die.

Obeying Mukti, everyone just kept moving forward.

After midnight, the spirits were quiet and they found the cave. Then they all decided to take shelter there.

Just like Kriti, they had felt someone peering over them and smiling.

Before they had entered the cave, Mukti had warned them to ignore everything. To ignore it if something touched them or came near them.

So everyone tried their best to ignore the thing.

 

The sun was already above their head when they reached home.

Shruti had somehow forgotten the leg pain. But as soon as she came back the leg started to hurt again.

Mukti was still carrying her small brother.

Gopal wasn’t  awake yet.

He was the type to wake up early, but this time the child had been sleeping for the whole night and half of the day.

Concerned, Mukti laid Gopal on the bed and tried to wake him up.

But the child’s eyes were closed.

She felt his forehead, they were cold.

Mukti felt her blood run cold. She hastily called for her sisters, “Sister Kriti, Shakti, Bhakti, Arati, Shruti!!! Come here quickly.”

Hearing a panic filled voice they all came running and asked in unison, “What happened?”

Mukti replied, “Gopal isn’t waking up. He is cold.”

This answer was enough to make everyone freeze in their spot.

After some while, Kriti finally gathered enough courage and felt the breathing of the boy.

That day, a young child of five years old had died.

The family of seven now only had six members.

Gopal was still alive when they entered the cave and was still asleep.

After everyone was asleep, Gopal woke up as he wanted to go to the toilet.

It was dark and he was scared. He tried to wake up his sister Mukti who was nearby.

Mukti woke up and took him to the toilet. After returning back, she fell asleep right away.

As for Gopal he had slept a lot so he wasn’t able to sleep at all.

After a long time, when he was about to fall asleep, he felt someone move beside him.

He was scared but thinking it was one of his sisters, he called out.

“Who is it?”

But no answer came. Only the feeling of someone moving became more intense.

He still called out, “Is it sister Kriti?”

There was a low sound, “Hm.”

He was a child after all. He didn’t have any sense to think that the voice of his sister was a bit different than usual.

Thinking that it was safe, he reached out towards the voice and hugged the person who he thought was his sister.

A while later he fell asleep hugging ‘the thing’ lying beside him, never to wake up again.

 

#Suvadana Shrestha