Eight Seconds Between Footsteps

Night had folded itself over the sleepy hill town of Marayoor, muffling its cardamom-scented air. In a hollow near the old forest check-post sat an abandoned government bungalow, once used by botanists who mapped the shola groves. Over thirty years the roof tiles had slipped into crooked smiles and the verandah planks had sprouted white mushrooms that glowed faintly after rain. Local tea pickers swore that the place breathed on misty evenings, but nobody bothered to prove or disprove that claim because the front door was chained shut with a rust-eaten padlock.

Nobody, that is, until Amala reached the gate one September afternoon. She was a postgraduate researcher from Ernakulam, tasked with cataloguing archival field notes rumored to be languishing inside the bungalow. Those notes belonged to Dr Varghese, a vanished botanist whose last expedition never made it back to town. The department had sent three interns in the past decade to retrieve his materials, yet the gate had always defeated them. Amala brought bolt cutters in her backpack and stubborn optimism in her stride.

She snapped the chain by dusk and stepped in. Rainclouds pressed low; daylight fell away without ceremony. Her torch sliced across flaking walls covered in faint charcoal arrows, all pointing toward a room at the far end of the corridor. She followed, dust eddying around her ankles like tired moths, until she stood before a narrow door nailed shut with a single strip of teak. A handwritten note still clung to that strip, fungal bloom eating the ink but leaving five letters intact. They spelled "KEEP."

Amala's gloved fingers worried the plank free. The door drifted open, and for a silent heartbeat nothing stirred. Then a chill crawled out, the temperature dropping hard enough that her torch beam seemed to slow in the air. Inside waited a cramped study lined floor to ceiling with specimen cabinets. Every glass pane had been painted black from the inside. The only unpainted surface was a square hole at the back of the room, a window without shutters that faced the forest. Through it came no breeze, no birdsong, only the thick hush of something listening.

She set up her camera and pressed record. The lens captured a desk in the middle of the room. On it sat a reel-to-reel tape recorder, its reels draped in cobweb. A fresh-looking battery pack rested beside it, the plastic un-yellowed, as if swapped in yesterday. She tugged the power switch. The reels began to turn without making a motor sound, as though moved by invisible fingertips. A voice emerged, warm and conversational, recognizably human but distorted by an odd dampness, as if the speaker stood waist-deep in water while talking.

"Observation seventy eight. The forest breathes differently tonight. Trees pulse once every eight seconds. My own lungs now keep time with them. It feels wrong to resist."

Silence for exactly eight seconds.

"Observation seventy nine. I must remember not to look at the window while the pulse occurs. The moment I do, the trees stop and wait for me to decide whether to join them outside."

The tape ran on. Amala's breath tasted metallic. She stepped to the window and found the forest utterly still. Not a single leaf twitched. Yet her body sensed a gentle push, like a faint exhale brushing her cheeks every eight seconds. She checked her watch; the second hand hesitated under a force she could not feel yet somehow registered in her bones.

The voice returned.

"Observation eighty. Something entered the study during the last pause. I cannot see it, but its presence carries the smell of wet soil opened by a spade. It stands just behind my shoulder, patient. The recorder offers it permanence that my notebook cannot. I fear that my handwriting has started to glide, unanchored, between margin lines. The letters refuse to settle."

Amala felt heat blooming on her right shoulder, the weight of unseen eyes. She turned. Empty air. Cabinets loomed like sarcophagi. Her camera emitted a low click as its autofocus hunted for contrast that wasn't there.

The tape crackled.

"Observation eighty one. The thing behind me is taller now. It leans forward whenever I inhale. I believe it learns the shape of my breath."

A rattle of labored breathing filled the room. Amala checked the recorder; the reels spun but the tape supply reel looked impossibly full, as if the magnetic ribbon replenished itself while playing.

She edged toward the door. It had swung half shut though no draft moved. Her torchlight quivered across the threshold where the corridor yawned, black as the inside of a cataract. She pushed, but the door resisted, springy, like muscle not wood. On impulse she slapped the plank back into place, nailing "KEEP" across the frame again with her multitool. The house seemed to exhale relief; the unseen push on her shoulder melted away.

Then the voice rose, no longer field-note calm.

"Observation eighty two. The door has been sealed, yet footsteps recede along the corridor. I am recording this so I can follow them later. If you find the tape, remember to rewind to this point and listen for my departure. Follow the sound of me leaving. Do not look back. If you look back, the footsteps turn and follow you instead."

The tape stopped dead, reels freezing mid-spin. A brittle thump echoed from the corridor, like shoes hitting rotten planks. Amala stared at the sealed door. On its other side something walked away, each footfall soft yet precise. Five steps, pause. Five steps, pause. The pace matched her pulse.

Her torch dimmed. Battery fresh an hour ago, now faltering. She flicked it off to save power and discovered that faint light seeped from between cabinet doors. She opened one; inside lay hundreds of pressed leaves mounted on cards, each leaf trembling as though stirred by a current passing only through them. They flared brighter whenever the distant footsteps paused. She shut the cabinet and leaned against it, heart pounding.

The footsteps reached the bungalows' entrance hall. Chains rattled. The broken padlock scraped over concrete, dragging as if by a chain of wet hair. Then quiet.

Amala waited long minutes before prying the door plank loose. Corridor deserted, the exit faintly visible under moonlight. She took three steps then halted. Behind her, inside the study, the reels spun again, playing in reverse. A new voice whispered, the timber identical to hers, but every syllable spoken backward. She recognized the cadence of her own fear.

She ran.

Out of the bungalow, through elephant grass that hissed like radio static, onto the asphalt road where her bike leaned. Her helmet lay smashed, visor staring upward. The strap had been knotted and the knot pulsed once every eight seconds.

She kicked the starter. Engine sputtered, caught. As she sped downhill, the forest on both sides bent inward, boughs swaying in synchronized rhythm. Eight seconds apart they bowed, stood still, bowed again.

She did not slow until town lights flooded her mirrors. Even then she refused to glance back. At the hostel she tossed the camera into her suitcase, locked it.

A month later she transferred the footage to her laptop. Video played normally yet every forty third frame was blank, invaded by an opaque green identical to rainforest canopy. When she advanced those frames one by one, the soundtrack carried footsteps quickening. Five steps, pause. Five steps, pause. Each pause shorter than the last.

She shut the lid.

From the courtyard jackfruit leaves rustled though the night was windless. Their rhythm was new now. Six steps, pause. Six steps, pause.

One evening someday soon they might reach her doorstep.