Arjun couldn't think straight and started running in the direction he came. While running he started so many questions in his mind: Was it an illusion? Or something else?. After running for almost 15 mins, Arjun finally reached the forest rest house. The Forest Rest House was a skeletal structure of damp timber and corrugated iron, perched precariously on the ridge of Dow Hill. Arjun sat by the window, the glass rattling in its frame as the wind howled through the gaps in the eaves. Outside, the world had dissolved into a monochromatic gray.

  He tried to focus on his digital recorder, his thumb hovering over the play button. He needed to rationalize what he had seen on the road. Atmospheric refraction, he thought. The brain’s tendency to find faces in the mist is known a pareidolia. But his hands, usually steady from years of field reporting, were cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  He pressed play.

  The recording started with the crunch of his own boots on gravel. Then, his voice: "5:12 PM. Visibility dropping to five meters. Sighting of a child like figure near the pine thicket..." Then, a sound that wasn't there when he recorded it. A high pitched, rhythmic clicking. Tack. Tack. Tack. Like a fingernail tapping on a hollow wooden desk.

  Arjun paused the audio, his breath hitching. The sound hadn't come from the recorder. It was coming from the hallway outside his room.

  He stood up, the old floorboards groaning under his weight. He grabbed his heavy Maglite(a aluminium flashlight/torch), the cold aluminum biting into his palm. He cracked the door open. The hallway was a tunnel of shadow, smelling of mothballs and wet cedar.

  "Is someone there?" he called out. His voice felt thin, swallowed by the heavy insulation of the fog pressing against the house.

  At the far end of the corridor, near the staircase that led down to the kitchen, a small shadow detached itself from the wall. It was a boy, no taller than four feet, dressed in the dark blazer and grey shorts of the Victoria Boys' School uniform. His knees were unnaturally white against the dark fabric.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Arjun’s heart hammered against his ribs. "Kid? Are you from the hostel(dorm)? You shouldn't be out here in this weather."

  The boy didn't turn. He began to walk away, his movement was oddly stiff, like a mechanical doll. He didn't head towards the stairs but he walked straight toward a window at the end of the hall, the window that was nailed shut for the winter.

  Arjun gave chase, his heavy boots thundering. "Wait!"

  As he closed the distance, he swung the beam of his Maglite upward. The light hit the boy’s shoulders. The blazer was frayed at the collar, the wool matted with pine needles and dried mud. But above the collar, there was nothing.

  No neck. No jaw. No hair.

  Where a head should have been, there was only a jagged, cauterized stump of vertebrae and dark, leathery tissue. Arjun realised it was the same child which he saw earlier at the forest. The sight was so physically impossible that Arjun’s brain momentarily refused to process it. He skidded to a halt, his breath coming in jagged gasps.

  The headless figure reached the window and didn't stop. It didn't shatter the glass. It simply passed through the pane like smoke through a screen, the dark fabric of its blazer shimmering for a second before vanishing into the white void outside.

  Arjun lunged for the window, fumbling with the rusted latches. He forced it open, the cold air hitting him like a physical blow. He shone his light down into the forest below.

  There was no ledge. No fire escape. Just a forty-foot drop into a tangle of stinging nettles and jagged rocks.

  And there, standing at the very edge of the light’s reach, was the boy. He wasn't looking up, he couldn't but the body was angled toward Arjun, the small, pale hands folded neatly behind his back in a mock gesture of a student awaiting a disapproval.

  Then, from the darkness where the mouth should have been, a sound drifted up. It wasn't a scream. It was a soft, wet gurgle, followed by a clear, whistled tune,the school’s anthem drifting through the trees like a dying breath.

  Arjun slammed the window shut and bolted it. He ran into his room, tripping over his own luggage, his mind screaming a single word: Leave.

  But as he looked at the door, he saw a wet, muddy handprint on the wood, right at the level of a child's reach. And the handprint was still dripping.