“I thought you knew these hills, Muthu.”
Appa always quips.
Kodaikanal’s nights had a clarity,
where even the cold wind
felt like a familiar hand brushing past.
But that was before.
Before the thing that walks our street
every other night.
Before the sharp sound of anklets
cut through the mist,
and something cut through me.

We understood nothing at first.
Only that the sound came
when it shouldn’t—
when even the birds had stopped.
Chhan-chhan… chhan-chhan…
Faint.
Then gone.
Then close enough
that I could feel it inside my chest.
We pressed to the windows,
faces cold to the glass.
And saw them.
The legs.
Strong.
Athletic.
Muscles moving beneath smooth skin
like coiled ropes.
Too perfect.
Too human.
Until you saw the shadow it cast.
And then nothing was.

The shadow stretched across the street—
massive, wrong.
It shivered on the stones
like it was breathing.
We should have run.
But we watched.
Radha’s hand dug into my wrist.
Kumar’s breath rattled in his throat.
None of us moved.

The fourth night,
Radha whispered, “Let’s follow it.”
No one answered.
But we left the house anyway.
One step,
then another,
like we’d been waiting for permission
we didn’t understand.
The dirt path was cold beneath our feet.
The moon hung pale
and useless in the sky.

We followed the sound first.
The anklets.
Dotting the silence
with each slow step
like a steady clock
counting down.
The legs were ahead of us,
always ahead,
smooth and strong,
pulling a body we could not see.
The rest of it—
indistinct.
The air around it seemed wrong,
blurring and bending
like water under heat.

We stopped breathing
when it stopped walking.
Just ahead.
Still.
The shadow swelled,
rising taller than any tree on the street.
It shouldn’t be possible.
But there it was.
A ghost with a body that wasn’t there,
and a shadow that was too much.

After that,
we waited for it each night.
Eyes wide,
nails cutting into our palms.
It came.
It always came.
Through the haze,
the anklets rang soft and clear,
carrying something with them—
something that knew
we were watching.

I told myself
we were seeing it wrong.
That it was mist and moonlight
playing games.
But last night
at the gate,
it turned.

Those legs—
impossibly strong—
took one step toward us.
The anklets were silent now.
And the shadow,
the giant shadow,
folded over us
like wings
closing in.

And I knew.
It wasn’t passing by.
It had been waiting.
For us.