The Shadows of Time

It had been two weeks since Arjun left the city behind. He had come to the hills with one purpose: to escape the crushing weight of writer’s block, that invisible force that made his mind feel like a dry well. His bungalow was perched on a hill, far enough from the town to guarantee solitude but close enough for him to venture out whenever he needed a change of scenery. The days were quiet, filled with the sounds of rustling leaves and the occasional chirp of distant birds. His laptop, however, remained stubbornly silent.

On his first morning there, he decided to go for a walk in the woods. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth. As he wandered deeper into the forest, his thoughts drifted, unfocused, the emptiness of his mind only matched by the stillness around him. 

That’s when he saw her.

She was standing by a stream, the sunlight filtering through the branches and casting an ethereal glow around her. Naina. Her name came to him later when he saw her again at the quaint café in town. She smiled at him as though they had known each other for years, though he could tell she was a stranger to everyone here. She was beautiful, yes—her features were sharp yet soft, a blend of strength and serenity—but it was something else that drew him in. Her presence was magnetic, her calmness so profound it felt almost unreal.

Over the course of the next few days, Arjun found himself bumping into her repeatedly. She was always alone—never with friends, never engaged in anything that would distract from her own quiet contemplation. In the woods again, in the public library tucked between shelves of forgotten novels, and once more in the café, she seemed to appear like a phantom at the edges of his life, always just out of reach. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

One evening, after an unexpectedly long conversation about books and art in the library, she invited him to her home. Arjun hesitated but eventually agreed. He had no reason to be suspicious—why would he be? This was a small town, and Naina was nothing short of captivating.

Her house was at the edge of the town, nestled against a cliff that overlooked the valley. It was a beautiful, ancient place, more a mansion than a cottage. She greeted him with a glass of wine and led him to a sitting room that was eerily quiet, the only sound the crackling of a fire in the hearth. The walls were lined with paintings—some beautiful, others strange, disturbing even. There was one in particular that caught Arjun’s eye: a portrait of a woman, her eyes wide with terror, standing before a backdrop of twisted trees. It reminded him of the woods where he had first seen Naina.

As the evening wore on, Naina’s conversation became darker, more fragmented. She spoke of things in a way that seemed both distant and intimate, as though she were revealing pieces of herself but hiding just as much. She spoke of loss—of a life she once had, and of a tragedy she was still trying to understand. But there was something off. The way she avoided certain topics, the way her eyes seemed to flicker with unease whenever a certain name was mentioned.

“I’ve never been able to get rid of it,” she said quietly, almost as if to herself. “The guilt. It’s like a shadow that follows me.”

The atmosphere grew heavy, and Arjun, feeling a strange unease, asked, “What happened to you, Naina?”

For the first time that evening, she looked directly at him, her eyes unnervingly sharp. “What do you really want to know, Arjun?” she asked, her tone almost a challenge.

Before he could respond, there was a sharp knock at the door.

Naina’s face changed. The calm composure she had worn all evening cracked, and a brief, almost imperceptible look of panic flashed across her face. She stood up quickly, but not before Arjun noticed the look in her eyes—something dark and fearful. She walked to the door, and he heard a hushed conversation before Naina returned, her expression tightly controlled.

“I’m sorry, I think I need to go,” she said, her voice now too calm, too smooth. She looked like someone trying desperately to hide the cracks in their facade.

Arjun stood up, confused and unsettled. “I can walk you out,” he offered, though he had no real reason to.

But Naina shook her head, smiling faintly. “No, thank you. I’ll be alright.”

As he stepped outside, he felt the night air grow colder. The shadows of the trees in the distance seemed to stretch longer, as though reaching for him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed, that something had shifted in that conversation. He turned to leave, but something stopped him—something in the back of his mind.

He needed to know more about Naina.

The next day, he visited the local archives and found an old article—one he hadn’t noticed before. The headline read: Tragedy Strikes Hilltown: The Disappearance of the Lawrence Family. His eyes narrowed as he read on. The article detailed the mysterious disappearance of an entire family—parents and their daughter. The case had never been solved, though there had been rumors of a cult, of some dark ritual in the woods. But what caught his attention were the last words spoken by the police officer assigned to the case: “We never found the body. Just a woman’s watch—engraved with the name Naina.”

Arjun’s blood ran cold.

He had seen that watch. On Naina’s wrist.

Suddenly, he understood. Naina wasn’t who she seemed. The calm, serene woman who had captivated him was hiding something—a past so twisted that it threatened to consume her. But more than that, he realized she was not just running from her past. She was trapped in it. The events from years ago hadn’t just followed her—they had changed her. In a cruel twist, Naina had never left the hill town at all. She had never aged.

She was the daughter who had disappeared all those years ago.

And now, as he pieced together the horrifying truth, Arjun understood what it meant: Naina had been trapped in a cycle of time, endlessly replaying the same days, the same encounters, with everyone she met—including him. She was stuck—an unwilling passenger in her own tragedy, bound by forces she could never escape.

And the worst part? He, too, was now part of that cycle.

When he returned to the bungalow that night, he found a letter waiting for him, sealed with an old, familiar watch. The writing inside was hers, and in it, she confessed everything. But the final line sent chills through his body:

“Remember, Arjun—you’ve been here before. And you’ll come again. There is no escape.”

Copyright (c) Pratik Majumdar, 2024. Any article, story, write-up cannot be reproduced in its entirety or in part, without permission. URL links can be used instead