章 65: Chapter 65
The sun had long sunk beneath the horizon, its last breath a faint glow on the horizon. In the small village of Jharana, a quiet desperation had settled over the land, a creeping sickness that no one could name or understand. It had started with the old man, Arjun, his eyes vacant as he stared at nothing, his body wracked with violent tremors.
He had died two days later, his head nearly caved in, blood and pus leaking from his ears and nose. The village had whispered, shaken their heads, and moved on. It was only one death, after all.
But then it happened again. And again. It spread, like the wind, unstoppable. Villagers spoke in hushed tones about the sickness, but no one dared to say it aloud: it was taking them. One by one. But what was it?
Neha, the schoolteacher, watched the village change around her. People she had known for years had started acting strange—distant, disconnected. They walked with their heads down, their eyes glazed, never making eye contact.
The children came to class with dark circles under their eyes, and some of them complained of strange headaches. But they all laughed it off, blamed the heat, the water, the strange things that came with the monsoon season.
It was only when Priya, a young girl from the village, began to scream that Neha knew something had to be wrong. Priya had been her student for years. The girl had always been shy but full of energy. Now, as Neha watched her writhing on the floor, screaming with a voice that didn't belong to her, she felt a cold sweat on her neck.
Priya's body jerked violently, her legs kicking, hands clawing at her scalp. Neha rushed to her side, but the girl's head jerked back, her mouth opening wide as if to scream again, but nothing came out.
Then, Priya's head split open.
The sight would forever be burned into Neha's mind. There was no blood. Instead, something thick and gray oozed out, followed by long, wriggling worms that burrowed into the dirt. Neha had no time to react before Priya's body went limp.
The villagers gathered in the schoolyard, their faces tight with fear, whispers turning into desperate murmurs. No one spoke of the worms. No one dared. But they all knew.
For weeks, the deaths continued. And Neha watched as the sickness spread through the town. The elders began to die first, their heads ripped open like fruit, the worms spilling out of their skulls, crawling under their skin. But it wasn't just the elderly. The children, the young, even the healthy adults—no one was safe.
Neha had tried to leave, to get to the city. But the roads were blocked, the vehicles broken, and when she tried to find a phone signal, there was nothing. No one could hear them. No one would come.
As the days dragged on, the villagers fell into a desperate, quiet madness. It wasn't just the death. It was the fear. The fear of what was happening to them, of the worms slowly devouring their minds, their lives, piece by piece. They could feel it, the squirming inside their skulls, the crawling sensation that grew stronger every day. They whispered of the worms, of how they had come from the earth, from the water, from the very air itself. They said that they had always been there, waiting.
Neha could feel it too, the crawling, the cold touch of something inside her head, twisting, turning. She didn't know when it had started. Maybe it had been there all along, just waiting for the right time.
Her breath grew shallow, panic creeping into her chest. She had never known fear like this. Not the terror of a dying village, not the screams of children, not the loss of family. This was something worse. Something that couldn't be fought. Something that couldn't be stopped.
The night before she died, Neha sat alone in her room. The town was eerily quiet, and the stench of rot filled the air. The power had gone out hours ago. No one dared to move, to speak.
Her head felt heavy, and her hands shook as she pressed them to her temples. She could feel the worms inside her, crawling, burrowing deeper. They were in her head now, inside her thoughts, moving with a purpose.
She didn't scream. She couldn't.
As Neha sat in the dark, the sound of her pulse thudding in her ears, she could hear the whispers, the faint voices that had been growing louder in her mind. They weren't her own. They were the voices of everyone who had died. Of everyone who would die.
The worms weren't just taking their bodies. They were taking their minds, their memories, their souls.
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