The Thing at Bhangarh Knew My Name

I need to explain something before I tell you what happened.

My mother calls me "Sonu."

Nobody else does.

Not my friends. Not my colleagues. Not even my sister anymore.

It is a childhood name that exists almost entirely inside my parents' house.

So when someone whispered "Sonu" from an empty room inside Bhangarh Fort, I knew immediately that whatever was speaking had never met me before.

At least, it shouldn't have.

I visited Bhangarh with my friend Sameer during a Rajasthan road trip. We reached in the late afternoon, wandered through the ruins and spent most of our time making fun of the fort's haunted reputation.

By five, visitors were already moving towards the exit.

Sameer wanted one last photograph from the palace ruins.

I waited downstairs.

That was when I heard my mother.

"Sonu."

I froze.

It came from a doorway behind me.

The room beyond it had no roof. Just cracked walls and weeds growing between stones.

"Sonu, idhar aa."

Come here.

It was her voice.

Not similar.

Hers.

Even the slight irritation she has when calling me for the second time.

I stepped towards the doorway.

Then my phone rang.

Maa.

Her name was glowing on the screen.

I answered without looking away from that room.

"Hello?"

"Where are you?"

Her normal voice.

I couldn't speak.

Then, from inside the ruined room, the other version of my mother said:

"Don't tell her."

My entire body went cold.

"What happened?" my real mother asked.

The voice inside the room laughed.

Very softly.

I ran.

I found Sameer near the stairs and told him we were leaving.

He thought I was joking until he saw my face.

We started walking quickly towards the main path.

Then Sameer stopped.

"Where's the gate?"

It sounds ridiculous now.

The road through Bhangarh is not a maze.

But the entrance wasn't where it should have been.

Ahead of us stood another row of ruined shops.

We turned around.

More ruins.

Sameer opened Google Maps.

Our location dot showed us outside the fort.

Nearly two kilometres away.

Then it jumped.

Suddenly we were inside again.

Then somewhere else.

The compass spun continuously.

"Network issue," Sameer said.

He didn't believe that.

Neither did I.

The light was fading fast.

Then we heard footsteps behind us.

We turned.

Nobody.

We walked faster.

The footsteps matched us.

When we stopped, they stopped.

Sameer shouted, "Who's there?"

His voice travelled through the ruins.

A few seconds later, something answered.

"Who's there?"

Sameer's voice.

From somewhere ahead.

He looked at me.

Then the voice repeated itself from our left.

"Who's there?"

Again from behind us.

"Who's there?"

Now there were three Sameers calling from different parts of the fort.

We ran.

I don't remember deciding where to go. We simply followed whatever path looked widest.

Then I realized Sameer was no longer beside me.

I called his name.

No answer.

My phone showed 5:41 p.m.

I called him.

He picked up immediately.

"Where are you?"

His breathing was heavy.

"I don't know."

"Can you see the palace?"

"No."

Then he went silent.

"Sameer?"

He whispered:

"I can see you."

I looked around.

"Where?"

"You're standing near the tree."

There was no tree near me.

"Sameer, that's not me."

He stopped breathing.

Through the phone I heard my own voice.

Very close to him.

"Sameer."

Then the call disconnected.

I started screaming his name.

A minute later he came running around a corner so fast that he nearly knocked me down.

There was blood on his elbow.

I grabbed him.

He pushed me away.

"Say something only you would know."

"What?"

"Say something."

I told him where we had first met.

He stared at me.

Then nodded.

"What did you see?" I asked.

He wouldn't answer.

We eventually found the main road.

I cannot explain how.

One moment we were between ruined buildings.

The next we came around a wall and saw people near the exit.

Daylight.

Normal voices.

Vehicles.

I checked my phone.

5:29 p.m.

I stared at it.

Sameer noticed.

"What?"

"It was 5:41."

He checked his.

5:29.

Neither of us spoke until we reached the car.

We drove towards Jaipur.

About forty minutes later, Sameer finally told me what he had seen.

He had been separated from me for maybe thirty seconds.

Then he saw me standing beneath a tree.

My back was towards him.

He called my name.

I turned around.

Sameer started crying while telling me this.

I had known him for nine years. I had never seen him cry.

"What did it do?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"Then why are you—"

"It had your face."

He wiped his eyes.

"But it was wearing my clothes."

We never discussed Bhangarh again.

For almost a year, nothing else happened.

Then one night I was visiting my parents in Delhi.

At around 2 a.m., I woke because someone was knocking softly on my bedroom door.

Three knocks.

"Maa?"

No response.

Then my mother's voice came from the hallway.

"Sonu."

Every hair on my arms lifted.

I reached for my phone.

A message from my mother was waiting.

Sent one minute earlier.

She and my father were at the hospital.

My father had developed severe stomach pain. They had left while I was asleep because they didn't want to wake me.

I read the message twice.

Outside the bedroom, my mother called again.

"Sonu."

Then she knocked.

I didn't move.

The handle slowly turned downward.

I had locked the door.

For about ten seconds, something pushed against it.

Not violently.

Almost playfully.

Then it stopped.

Silence.

I remained sitting on the bed until sunrise.

When my parents returned, I opened the door.

There was nobody in the hallway.

But something had been scratched into the wood outside my bedroom.

Two words.

The marks were shallow, as though someone had written them patiently with a fingernail.

I photographed them before my father sanded the door.

Sameer is the only person I have ever shown that photograph to.

He looked at it once and immediately deleted it from our chat.

Because the words weren't in Hindi.

They weren't in English either.

They were just two names.

Mine.

And his.

What scares me isn't that something followed me home from Bhangarh.

I could almost understand that.

What scares me is what happened three months ago.

Sameer called me at 3:12 in the morning.

I answered.

For several seconds there was only static.

Then I heard my own voice.

"Sameer."

I sat up.

"Who's this?"

The thing on the phone laughed.

And then, using my mother's voice, it whispered:

"Don't tell him."

The call ended.

I immediately called Sameer back.

He answered half asleep.

He hadn't called me.

I sent him a screenshot of my call history.

There was no 3:12 call.

Nothing.

Sameer told me to forget it.

I tried.

But last Sunday, my mother asked me something over breakfast.

She wanted to know why Sameer had visited the house so late the previous night.

I told her he hadn't.

She frowned.

"Then who was standing outside?"

I stopped eating.

She said she had looked through the window at around two in the morning.

A man was standing across the street beneath the light.

She couldn't see his face clearly.

But she thought it was Sameer because he was wearing the same blue jacket she'd seen him wear before.

I called Sameer immediately.

He was in Mumbai.

Then my mother added one final detail.

"The strange thing," she said, "was that when he noticed me looking at him, he turned around."

I didn't ask.

I didn't want to know.

But she continued anyway.

"He had your face."