The December Booth
by Iluka Chayan
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
The Body in the Trees
It was the kind of December morning when the forest looked half asleep, half hungry. A thin mist clung to the trees around Devagiri Reserve, drifting the way smoke drifts after a dying fire. Forest Guard Harish Gowda walked the usual path, his stick tapping roots and stones, trying to fight the uneasy feeling that had woken him before sunrise.
He always said later that the forest felt different that day. As if it was waiting.
Around seven thirty, he noticed something strange near a cluster of egg lanterns left from the previous night’s holiday rituals. The festival crowd had gone home, the music long dead. Only broken shells and scraps of colourful paper still clung to the branches. Harish bent to lift one—just habit—when he saw a shoe sticking out from behind a patch of lantana bushes.
He froze.
People drop things in the forest all the time. But a shoe still attached to a foot… that was new.
He pushed the bushes aside with his stick, heart knocking like a diesel engine on bad fuel. The body lay sideways, head twisted, lips parted slightly as if trying to say something even in death. The man’s jacket was torn at the shoulder, pocket half open. A passbook peeked out, pages damp from dew.
Harish stepped back. His throat closed. “Ayyo…” He fumbled for his walkie. “Sir, please come fast. There is something… someone.” His voice cracked.
By afternoon, the small clearing had turned into a scene from a badly budgeted crime serial—police tape strung between two crooked trees, constables whispering, villagers hovering behind rope lines. The officers checked the man’s pockets again: a passbook from a bank in Shimoga; one crumpled paper with a phone number; no mobile phone.
“Looks like a businessman,” Sub-Inspector Mahadevan muttered. “Maybe robbed. Maybe a fight. Forest fellows do all sorts of things.” But his tone wasn’t confident.
One constable leaned in. “Sir, he is wearing an old-style jacket. No digital things. Even the phone number belongs to some STD phone booth.”
Mahadevan sighed. “Then our work is double.”
They questioned the few people still loitering from the festival. No one had seen a man like this. No one recognised him. No one even remembered seeing a car or bike go towards that trail.
The case went into a file and then into another file and eventually into a cabinet that no one opened unless they were being punished. December passed. Another year started. The body became just a story that constables told new recruits during chai break.
But people in the village kept talking about one thing: the booth.
Every December, for the “Night of the Unforgotten,” the town set up free-call STD booths so families could call their far-off children or lost relatives. Some said voices travelled more freely during this time. Some said the forest listened.
That year, two booths had malfunctioned. Lines crackled. Strange echoes bounced back. One woman said she heard her dead husband answer the phone. The constables laughed it off, but a few secretly crossed themselves.
Later, when the investigation team looked at the old call logs, they realised something odd: the number found in the dead man’s pocket was one of the numbers dialed repeatedly from Booth No. 3.
And Booth No. 3 sat exactly at the border where the festival lights stopped—and the forest began.
Back in 2001, though, nobody connected the dots.
The forest had accepted the body quietly. The December holiday ended. People moved on.
Only the booth remained.
And sometimes, late at night, when the grid was quiet, its dead receiver would lift itself—click—and drop again.
As if someone was trying to call back.
The File Wakes Up Again
December 2022 arrived like a tired old dog limping back to a doorstep. By then, almost nobody remembered the body found in Devagiri Reserve in 2001. Twenty-one years is enough to make a murder look like a rumour and a rumour look like a ghost.
But for Inspector Raghavendra Hegde, newly transferred from Hassan District, the file wasn’t a rumour. It was a pebble inside his shoe—small, irritating, impossible to ignore.
He first saw it when he was cleaning out a metal cabinet in the basement of the station. Dust puffed up like angry spirits when he opened the drawer. Inside: old files with brittle strings, half-eaten by silverfish, and one folder labelled simply “DECEMBER—2001 (FOREST).”
Raghavendra didn’t know why he opened it—maybe boredom, maybe intuition. Maybe December does something to people. Later, he’d wonder if curiosity could be a form of consent. If some doors only open when you reach for them first.
The first photo hit him: the body lying among shattered egg lanterns, face blurred from age and moisture. Something about the picture felt wrong. The dead man looked like he had been trying to crawl out of the frame.
Raghavendra flipped through the file.
Passbook from Shimoga.
One phone number.
Driver missing.
Case closed due to “lack of evidence.”
Typical early-2000s laziness.
But as he read deeper, a pattern emerged that made his skin prickle. The victim—identified eventually as Nagaraj, a freelance writer—had been researching local festivals. His notebook, partially recovered, contained interview fragments about the Night of the Unforgotten. One entry stood out:
“They won’t tell me who decides. Elder says ‘the forest knows.’ Asked about the STD booths—why seven of them, why that specific night. He smiled and said, ‘Seven is for calling. One is for answering.’ When I asked which one answers, he walked away.”
The next page was torn out.
Raghavendra closed the file, but that night, sleep wouldn’t come. He kept seeing that phrase: One is for answering. The image of the body returned—the egg lanterns, the twisted neck, the forest breathing in the background.
The next morning, he reopened the folder with hands that trembled slightly. He told himself it was just coffee jitters.
He noticed something the original officers had not bothered with: timestamps from STD booths across six districts. All logged during the Night of the Unforgotten. Most harmless—families calling relatives, children speaking to grandparents in Gulf countries, workers checking in from Mumbai. Standard December loneliness converted to phone bills.
But Booth No. 3’s records were… strange.
Between 10:41 PM and 11:59 PM that night, Booth No. 3 had dialed the same number seven times. Always exactly seven minutes apart. Always lasting exactly forty-three seconds.
The number found in the dead man’s pocket.
“Who was he calling repeatedly?” Raghavendra muttered. “And why from a booth near the forest?” Nobody had answered it back then. No one investigated further. Maybe they were scared of angering villagers during festival time. Maybe they knew better.
He began visiting the old STD booths listed in the 2001 file. Most were gone—turned into grocery shops, tailoring units, or shuttered entirely. Booth No. 7 was now a paan shop. Booth No. 4 sold mobile recharge cards, the ultimate irony.
But Booth No. 3 still existed.
It sat crooked on the edge of the town, half-swallowed by overgrown grass. The paint was peeling. The receiver hung loosely like a broken arm. No electricity connection. No service provider. The phone company had gone bankrupt in 2007.
Yet when Raghavendra pushed the door open, the faint smell of damp forest and old wax drifted out. The smell of December.
He lifted the receiver.
A soft hiss.
Then a faint scratch.
Then a click.
He froze.
A number tried to appear on the tiny digital screen—impossible, since there was no power—but the display flickered between symbols. For a split second he thought he saw 2001 flash there.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
He put the receiver down and stepped out, trying to shake off the feeling that something had just listened to him breathe. The door swung shut behind him with a sound like a throat closing.
Later, back at the station, he began cross-checking call logs manually. One number stood out—a grocery shop in Haradanahalli that sold eggs in bulk. The same shop had unusual December sales patterns: two egg crates bought every festival season, paid in cash, going back decades.
He drove there immediately, the highway unreeling like a tongue.
The shopkeeper, an old man with tired eyes and hands stained yellow from decades of turmeric, recognised the egg crates in the 2001 evidence photo instantly.
“These crates… someone used to buy them every year. Always same date. Evening of the Night of the Unforgotten. Two crates. No bargaining. No chit-chat. Just cash.” He squinted at the photo. “Last purchase… 2015, I think. Seven years back. After that, I did not see him.”
“Describe him.”
“Tall fellow. Scar on his eyebrow—here.” He touched his own face. “Drove a white Omni van. Didn’t like to make eye contact. Bought matchboxes also. Too many matchboxes. I used to think, what does he need so many for? Diwali, different time.”
Raghavendra wrote everything down. Something sharp and electric pricked at the base of his spine. “Did he ever say anything? Anything at all?”
The shopkeeper’s face changed. “Once. Only once. I asked him—just making talk—’Big family function, is it?’ He looked at me like I’d slapped his mother. Then he said: ‘It’s not a function. It’s a payment.’ I never asked again.”
A payment.
Raghavendra left the shop with his hands shaking.
If a man was buying egg crates every December for more than twenty years, then the ritual that killed the writer in 2001 had never stopped.
He pulled out the address linked to the shop’s delivery ledger. A small rented house just outside the forest boundary.
He got there at dusk.
The house looked like it was built by someone who expected to leave in a hurry. No nameplate. No signs of life. But the moment he stepped onto the front verandah, he noticed tiny hooks on the beam above—hooks placed evenly, the kind you use to hang lanterns. Seven of them.
His breath tightened.
Inside, the walls were lined with dozens of small nail marks, each at the exact height where an egg lantern would hang. On the floor, black smudges—maybe soot, maybe ash, maybe something else. The pattern was deliberate: a circle with seven points.
A rusted kettle.
A broken matchbox.
And in the corner, a torn paper bag with a faded stamp: “Night of the Unforgotten—December Special.”
On the back wall, barely visible in the failing light, someone had scratched words into the plaster:
Seven to call. One to answer. The forest keeps the pattern.
Raghavendra realised he was not investigating an old murder.
He was standing inside the ritual that had been continuing silently every December for decades.
And someone had already prepared this house for the next offering.
Outside, from the direction of Booth No. 3, a faint metallic ring echoed across the trees.
As if calling him by name.
He walked to the doorway, his torch beam cutting the growing dark. The forest edge was maybe fifty meters away. He could see the shapes of people beginning to gather near the sixth tree—the massive banyan that marked the boundary. They were carrying lanterns.
It was December 7th.
The Night of the Unforgotten was tomorrow.
His phone buzzed. A text from the station constable: “Sir, where are you? Elder wants to meet you. Says it’s about the festival preparations. Important.”
Raghavendra stared at the message.
Elder wants to meet you.
The forest seemed to lean closer.
He got into his jeep, hands tight on the wheel, and drove back toward town. But in his rearview mirror, just for a moment, he saw the house’s doorway.
Something was standing in it.
Tall. Scar on the eyebrow.
Watching him leave.
When he looked again, he saw nothing.
Just the empty house, and the hooks swaying in wind that hadn’t been there a second before.
The Night of the Unforgotten
The next two days moved like someone had greased time itself. December had that effect in small towns—everything looked festive from far, but if you walked closer, the smiles began to look a little too fixed.
Inspector Raghavendra spent hours digging through prison records connected to the three men originally charged with the 2001 murder. Two were still in Central Jail, Mysuru. The third—Girishappa—had been caught after years on the run.
He was the only one who had ever worked in the forest.
When Raghavendra entered the prison interview room, Girishappa sat huddled, knees drawn up, a ragged shawl around him despite the heat. The man’s eyes jittered as though following something crawling along the walls. He was younger than Raghavendra expected—maybe fifty—but looked seventy.
“Do you remember the December case?” Raghavendra asked, setting his recorder on the table.
Girishappa flinched like he’d been slapped. “Don’t say that month, saar. Please. Don’t say that month inside these walls.”
“I need to know what happened in 2001. The writer. The forest. The calls. Everything.”
The prisoner shook his head violently, the shawl slipping. “We didn’t kill him by our own wish, saar. If it were up to us, we’d have run away long ago. But December… December is different. The forest listens differently. The town behaves differently. People’s shadows behave differently.”
Raghavendra leaned forward. “Stop talking like this. Who forced you?”
Girishappa whispered, “Everyone. No one. The whole town. The holiday is a promise. A deal. One name must be taken away so the rest of us can keep ours.”
“What deal? With whom?”
The man began to cry softly. “With whatever walks between the fifth and sixth tree. With whatever answers when the booth rings at midnight.” He wiped his nose with the shawl. “You think I’m mad. But I’ve heard it. The booth calling. That voice… it doesn’t come from any living throat.”
Raghavendra kept his voice steady. “How does it choose? The name, I mean. How does the ritual decide who goes?”
Girishappa looked up, and for a moment his eyes cleared. “That’s the trick, saar. It doesn’t choose. The town chooses. Every December, the elder draws lots. But the lots… they’re not random. The forest knows who’s been asking questions. Who’s been digging. Who’s seen too much.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Did you open the old file?”
Raghavendra felt his stomach drop. “What?”
“The December file. The one they keep in the basement. Did you open it?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Because that’s how it starts, saar. Someone opens the file. Someone starts asking. Someone walks past the sixth tree. The pattern completes itself.” Girishappa’s voice dropped to a rasp. “The writer in 2001—he found the file too. Old case from 1977. Same thing. Body in the forest. STD booth ringing. He thought he could solve it. He thought he could break the pattern.” The prisoner’s hands trembled. “We were just the hands, saar. The forest was the will.”
Raghavendra stood, the chair scraping loudly in the small room. “You’re telling me that investigating this case is what triggers it? That’s insane.”
“No, saar. That’s December.” Girishappa pulled the shawl tight. “Check your name. In the system. See if you still exist.”
Raghavendra left the prison shaken. The guard at the exit gave him an odd look. “Sir, your ID badge… it’s not scanning properly.”
“Just a glitch,” Raghavendra said, but his voice came out wrong.
That evening, he returned to the station and went straight to his computer. He typed his own name into the state database.
No results found.
He tried again, checking the spelling.
No results found.
Regional portal. Employment records. Even his email system.
R. HEGDE: User not recognised.
His hands shook as he pulled out his phone. His contact list looked normal, but when he called his own brother—just to hear a familiar voice—the number went to a message: “The person you are trying to reach does not exist in our records.”
He stood in the empty station, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, and felt the world tilt slightly on its axis. He checked his wallet. His ID card was there. His badge was there. But when he held them up to the light, his photograph seemed slightly faded, as if photocopied too many times.
A constable—Ravi, whom he’d worked with for three weeks—walked past.
“Ravi,” Raghavendra called.
The constable paused, turned. “Yes, sir?”
“You know my name, right?”
A pause. Too long. “Of course, sir. Inspector…” Another pause. “Sir.”
“Say it.”
Ravi’s face went blank. “I… I’m sorry, sir. I’m having a moment. Too much work.” He walked away quickly.
Raghavendra sank into his chair.
The ritual wasn’t just choosing him. It was already erasing him.
He opened his desk drawer, looking for his notebook. Inside, on top of his files, someone had placed a fresh slip of paper. A festival slip used for writing names during the Night of the Unforgotten ceremony.
In rushed handwriting:
R. HEGDE — TO BE RETURNED
His breath halted.
He grabbed the December 2001 file, flipping through pages with desperate speed. There, tucked in the back—another slip. Yellowed with age.
NAGARAJ — TO BE RETURNED
The writer. The same process. The same slip.
A sound from outside: the distant ringing of a phone. Not a mobile. An old landline. The kind that echoed.
He went to the window. In the distance, past the town’s edge, he could see Booth No. 3. Even from here, even in daylight, something about it looked darker than the space around it.
The ringing continued. Seven times. Then stopped.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: “The booth is calling. Come tonight. Alone. There may still be time.”
Raghavendra stared at the message. It could be a trap. It could be madness. But staying here—waiting for his name to dissolve completely—that was worse.
He grabbed his torch, his service revolver, and the 2001 file.
As he left the station, he passed the elder—the same man Girishappa had mentioned, now standing near the entrance with several villagers. They were hanging marigold garlands.
The elder saw him and smiled. “Inspector saaru. Ready for tonight’s festival? We’re honoured to have you join us. It’s a special year.”
“Why special?” Raghavendra asked, though he already knew.
“Because the pattern is complete. Seven years since the last proper offering. The forest has been patient.” The elder’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t be late.”
Raghavendra walked past them, feeling their gazes on his back like hot breath.
He had maybe six hours before the Night of the Unforgotten reached its peak.
Six hours to understand the ritual.
And maybe—just maybe—six hours to break it.
The Name That Must Go
The Night of the Unforgotten rose to its full height like a living creature. From a distance, the town looked beautiful—lanterns glowing in rows, music drifting like warm breath, children laughing, the air smelling faintly of boiling jaggery and pine smoke.
But underneath, something else moved. Something old. Something hungry.
Inspector Raghavendra Hegde stood at the edge of it all, torch in hand, heart thudding like a trapped bird. Every instinct told him to run. Every duty told him to stay. But above everything, one truth pressed down on his skull:
The ritual needed a name. His name. Tonight.
He walked towards Booth No. 3, but not to surrender. In his pocket was a box of matches and a can of kerosene from the station. If the booth was the ritual’s throat, he’d burn it shut.
The sky was a deep bruise-blue. The booth’s glass shook in the wind, though the air around him was unnaturally still. As he approached, the ringing started again—seven times, each ring exactly seven seconds apart.
He reached the booth and kicked the door open hard enough to crack the frame.
Inside, the receiver dangled gently, swaying like a hanged man.
On the small dead screen, letters flickered: R. HEGDE — RETURN
He unscrewed the kerosene can. The smell cut through the wax and forest rot. He poured it over the phone, the walls, the floor. The booth reeked of it.
“You want a name?” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll give you ash.”
He struck a match.
Before he could drop it, the receiver lifted itself and slammed against the wall—once, twice, three times—with the force of a sledgehammer. The screen blazed bright:
SEVEN NAMES SEVEN YEARS PATTERN CANNOT BREAK
The match went out in his hand, though there was no wind.
He struck another.
This time, a voice came from the receiver—not through the speaker, but from inside the plastic itself, resonating like a voice in a cave:
“Inspector Hegde. Burning the booth will not save you. The booth is not the ritual. It is only the door.”
He dropped the match into the kerosene anyway.
Nothing happened.
The match landed in the pooled liquid and simply… went out. As if swallowed.
He tried again. Same result.
“You cannot burn what the forest protects,” the voice said. “But you can still choose. Walk to the sixth tree willingly, and your death will be quick. Fight, and we will take someone you love instead. Your brother, perhaps. The one whose number no longer works.”
Raghavendra’s blood iced. “You’re bluffing.”
“Are we?” The screen flickered, showing an image—impossible, since it was just a seven-segment display—but he could see it clearly: his brother’s house. His brother’s children sleeping.
A shadow standing in their doorway.
“Stop,” Raghavendra whispered.
“Then walk.”
He stumbled backward out of the booth, rage and terror fighting in his chest. He couldn’t burn it. He couldn’t stop it. But maybe—
The writer’s notebook. Nagaraj had written something about the pattern. Seven is for calling. One is for answering. What if the ritual needed all seven booths? What if destroying one wouldn’t work, but destroying all of them—
He ran toward the town center, past families setting up their egg lanterns, past the drummers warming up. He found Booth No. 7—now a paan shop. The owner was closing up.
“Sir, I need to see inside,” Raghavendra said, flashing his badge.
The man squinted at it. “Your badge has no photo, sir.”
Raghavendra looked down. The photo space was blank. Just empty laminate.
“Please,” he said, and the desperation in his voice must have registered because the man unlocked the door.
Inside, behind the cigarette cartons and gutka packets, was the old booth’s frame. The phone was gone, but seven small marks were carved into the wall where the dial pad had been. Each mark was a name, scratched deep:
1973 — K. MURTHY 1980 — A. DESAI 1987 — R. KUMAR 1994 — S. BHAT 2001 — NAGARAJ 2008 — M. RAO 2015 — J. PHILIP
Seven names. Seven years apart.
And below them, fresh scratches were beginning to form: 2022—
He grabbed a screwdriver from the counter and began gouging at the marks, trying to destroy them, but with each scrape, the wood seemed to heal itself, the names reappearing like scars.
“It doesn’t work like that,” a voice said behind him.
He spun. The elder stood in the doorway, flanked by two men. One was Ravi, his constable. The other was the grocery store owner.
“You think you’re the first to try?” the elder said gently. “The writer tried too. He found the pattern. He tried to burn Booth Three. He tried to warn the police in Bangalore. He even tried to leave town.” The elder stepped closer. “But the forest always calls back what belongs to it. Once you open the file, once you start asking questions, you’re part of the pattern. You complete it.”
“This is mass murder,” Raghavendra said, backing against the wall. “Decades of murder.”
“No, Inspector. It’s survival. Before the deal was made—before the first offering in 1973—this town saw disasters every year. Fires. Floods. Disease. Children stillborn. Crops rotting in fields.” The elder’s voice was calm, almost kind. “Then someone discovered the old ritual. The forest’s hunger. Feed it one name every seven years, and it protects the rest. Seven hundred people live peacefully. Seven children are born healthy. Seven harvests succeed.” He spread his hands. “One name for seven years of grace. The mathematics are simple.”
“You’re insane. All of you.”
“We’re pragmatic.” The elder nodded to Ravi. “Restrain him. Gently. He’s already gone through enough.”
Ravi moved forward, and Raghavendra saw the apology in his eyes before he saw the handcuffs.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ravi whispered. “I have a daughter. She’s five. If I don’t help… they’ll draw her name instead.”
Raghavendra felt the fight drain out of him. Not because he was giving up, but because he finally understood the true horror: the whole town was a prisoner. Every person complicit, every person afraid. The ritual fed on fear as much as it fed on blood.
They walked him through the festival crowd. People parted like a slow tide. Some looked away. Some whispered prayers. One old woman touched his shoulder as he passed—a gesture of sympathy, or gratitude, or guilt. Maybe all three.
The music grew louder. The main lantern—a huge egg-shaped structure—hung high above the crowd, glowing pale blue.
At the circle’s centre, the elder held a wooden bowl filled with slips of paper. But Raghavendra noticed something: the bowl was mostly empty. Only one slip remained.
His slip.
The draw had been decided weeks ago. Maybe months. Maybe the moment he opened that file.
The crowd formed a wide ring around him. Their faces glowed unnaturally in the lantern-light. Too calm. Too expectant. He recognised several of them—the station clerk, the chai shop owner, the doctor who’d checked his blood pressure last week. All complicit. All afraid.
The elder spoke softly, “Inspector saaru, your name has been accepted. The forest has called. Don’t make this difficult. Every December, one name goes, and the rest of us live.”
“What about next time?” Raghavendra shouted. “What about seven years from now? Who will you feed it then? How many more?”
The elder’s face showed genuine sadness. “As many as it takes. As long as the forest asks.”
The crowd parted, revealing the sixth tree behind them. Its roots twisted in the shape of a path. The shadows beneath it churned faintly, as if something was breathing there.
Raghavendra took a step backward. His hand found his service revolver.
He drew it. The crowd gasped. Some children began crying.
“I’ll shoot,” he said. “I’ll shoot anyone who comes closer.”
The elder didn’t move. “You won’t. Because if you harm any of us, the ritual claims three names instead of one. The forest doesn’t tolerate violence. It tolerates only sacrifice.”
Raghavendra’s hand shook. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” The elder gestured to the sixth tree. “Ask Nagaraj. Ask the seven who came before. They’re all still there, Inspector. Still conscious. Still aware. The forest doesn’t kill—it keeps. If you fight, if you harm us, you’ll spend eternity listening to their screams.”
A whisper seemed to rise from the tree’s roots. Multiple voices, layered, desperate:
“Don’t fight. Don’t fight. Don’t fight.”
Raghavendra’s gun dropped an inch.
Ravi stepped forward—his own constable, a man he’d shared chai with just yesterday—and whispered, “Sir… please. My daughter. If you run, they’ll choose another name next time. Maybe mine. Maybe hers. It’s better if you go. You’re already erased. No one will miss you. No one will remember. It’ll be like you never existed.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Raghavendra rasped.
“I’m listening to survival, sir. That’s what everyone here is listening to.”
The gun felt heavy. So heavy.
Behind him, Booth No. 3’s phone began to ring. Seven times. Patient. Inevitable.
The elder lifted the bowl and tilted it. The last slip fluttered like a dying moth, his name written in ink that looked too dark, too thick.
The music stopped.
The lanterns dimmed.
The forest breathed.
A voice—deep, layered, ancient—came from the sixth tree: “Return the name.”
The crowd bowed as one.
Raghavendra stood at the centre of the circle, surrounded by seven hundred people who needed him to die so they could live. He thought of his brother. His brother’s children. He thought of Nagaraj, the writer who’d stood in this exact spot twenty-four years ago, making the same calculations.
He thought of the gun in his hand.
He could shoot the elder. The tree. Himself. He could fight until they dragged him.
But the voices from the roots whispered again: “It only makes it worse. It only makes it last.”
His shoulders sagged.
Not peace. Not acceptance.
Just the cold clarity of someone who knows the road has ended and every other path leads somewhere worse.
He dropped the gun. It thudded in the dirt.
“Will it hurt?” he asked quietly.
The elder’s face softened. “Not for long. The forest is kinder than we are.”
Raghavendra took a breath. Two. Three.
Then he walked forward.
His feet crossed the boundary line—marked by seven stones arranged in a careful pattern.
Past the first root.
Past the second.
Past the space where light thinned and the air grew cold.
The shadows beneath the sixth tree shifted, parting like a mouth.
As he stepped into them, he felt the world change. The sounds of the festival cut off instantly. The temperature dropped. He could see the crowd still, could see Ravi crying, could see the elder bowing his head—but they seemed distant now, like figures viewed through thick glass.
The tree’s roots moved beneath his feet, curling around his ankles. Not tight. Almost gentle.
A voice spoke, not from the tree but from inside his own head:
“Welcome, eighth. The pattern continues. The circle holds. Seven more years of grace.”
He tried to scream, but his voice wouldn’t come.
The roots pulled him down, slowly, inch by inch, into the earth beneath the tree. He could feel the others there—Nagaraj, and the six before him—pressed together in the dark, still aware, still watching through the tree’s eyes as the festival continued.
Seven bodies. Seven names. Seven years between each feeding.
And now, he was part of the pattern.
Above, the crowd began to sing again. The lanterns brightened. Children laughed. The festival went on as if nothing had happened.
At Booth No. 3, the receiver fell from its hook with a gentle click. Its dead screen flickered one last time:
NAME ACCEPTED NEXT OFFERING: 2029
Then went dark.
By morning, the elder collected the bowl. Inside, a new slip had appeared, blank and waiting.
Already preparing for the next December.
Already listening for the next person who would open the file.
The forest was patient. The forest was hungry.
And in seven years, the phone would ring again.
| SPECIAL EXHIBIT 1: Return to “Christmas Angel“ | Continue with Holiday Hurlyburly and read the next attraction, “In the Bleak Christmas Market“ |