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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/peebloescobar on 2024-09-11 07:57:35+00:00.

DON’T LOOK BACK.

DON’T LOOK BACK.

As I crossed the same Peepal tree on my left for the 7th time, I tried hard to NOT turn right again at the crossroad ahead me.

“Fuck! There it is again”, my boyfriend, Advait, whispered in my left ear, pointing to a stone temple coming up to our right just before the turn. He was sitting behind me on the old grey moped we had rented for the weekend just that evening. We loved exploring rural parts of India whenever we could. I saw the same temple on my right again for the 7th time. Getting closer and closer. It had carvings on its walls. I couldn’t tell what they were though. In the darkness of the night, with the moon shining above, it just looked like an abandoned temple. The moonlight highlighting some uneven surfaces of the carvings.

As we reached the crossroad and I tried hard to keep going straight, the front wheel of the moped turned right. Again. My heart skipped a beat.

“Why are you doing that, Avni?”, my boyfriend panicked. “You took the right again!”

“I…I swear I didn’t”, I cried, my hands trembling on the handle. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I didn’t, Advait”.

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK BACK.

DON’T LOOK BACK.

My grandma’s words kept buzzing in my mind. I remembered her beautiful face with a gold nose-ring shining in the light of a flickering lantern hanging in the corner of the bedroom. “It’s called a Chakwa”, she’d told me with her eyes so wide that I could almost see the full round of her pupils. She used to apply a thick line of black Kohl under her eyes and a big red circular Bindi on her forehead. She was a loving, kind woman (perhaps the only woman who loved me as much as my mother); but the Kohl and the Bindi made her look scary when she told me horror bedtime stories. I loved how they added to the experience as I hid beneath the blanket giggling, too scared but equally curious to hear the stories.

“They say if you are ever stuck in a Chakwa, don’t look back. Just keep going. If you’re walking, keep walking. If you’re on a cycle, keep cycling. Don’t stop. Don’t get down. Or else…”

“Or what, Nani?”, I asked with only my eyes peeping from the blanket.

“Or you’ll never get out of there! Not until someone else intervenes to get you out”, Grandma said. Something troubled her as she said it. My young brain couldn’t comprehend it. But I still knew a sad, troubled face when I saw one. She looked up at me and forced a kind smile. “Just remember, keep going and…”

“And don’t look back”, I followed.

The memory of her etheral beauty and her words faded away as I turned right, putting the temple behind us yet again.

“Advait, listen to me. I think I know what’s happening. My Nani had told a story… It’s called a Chakwa…We are basically… stuck… like in time.”

I didn’t know if I was making any sense. I couldn’t really think straight to be honest. I was scared. I didn’t know if this was it- the Chakwa. It had to be. It was similar to all the stories I had heard about it so many times before from my Grandma.

“So, look, I am going to keep riding. It will stop eventually. I don’t know when. Just don’t look back, okay? No matter what,” I said, more composed than before.

We stayed quiet for the rest of the ride, as we kept crossing the same places and took the same turns. It had to be very late at night. There were no cars crossing us. No one walking by. The houses and huts we crossed didn’t have any lights on. Nobody stayed up late in the villages. I knew that. But it felt as if nobody was even in the houses- awake or asleep. The only lights were the ones on the road, unevenly spaced, leaving patches of darkness with only the moonlight to accompany us. The air was getting cooler. I could hear Advait sniffing his nose and breathing heavily behind me in the quiet. Was he crying? He had checked our phones a couple of times by then but we both didn’t have cellular network. Our moped made a sound that creaked and echoed. And that was the only sound we heard.

Time kept passing. Or it didn’t? But it felt like forever. Just as we were getting used to this abnormal ride, I saw a figure walking in front of us. It looked like a man, appearing blurry. Just when he crossed a street light, I noticed his white long shirt and a loose white pajama. He had grey hair. He walked slowly, slightly limping, with his hands dangling on either sides.

“Should we talk to him?”, Advait asked me, noticing what I had.

“Yeah”, we approached him, our moped just a few feet away from him. I kept riding slowly, so as to not stop.

“Uncle, we are lost. Can you please help us?”, Advait said aloud. But the man didn’t stop. Or even turn. “Uncle?”, Advait called out again. No acknowledgment.

“Why won’t he look at us?”, Advait whispered.

Something felt wrong. Was he deaf? Was he drunk? Or high? Or a mad man? I decided to slowly ride past him. As we crossed him, he didn’t so much as even glance our way. Just kept walking. His eyes staring straight ahead.

“This is weird”, I said, and decided to not get further involved. I rode ahead slowly. But what if his intervention could get us out of here? If only he intervened. Just to give it another shot, since we were worn out and exhausted, I looked at my side mirror to spot him behind us. He wasn’t there.

My heart tightened in my chest. I had looked back and he wasn’t there. Did it count if I looked back through the mirror? Where had he gone? He was right there just a second ago!

I saw the stone temple ahead again. I was losing hope. Advait had gone silent. We had been here for what seemed like eternity. Something else was riding my moped. Something else was controling this. I felt helpless. Would it be morning soon? Would someone see us then?

Just then, as we approached the crossroad, a car with bright headlights approached from ahead. Indians never keep their headlights low, do they? Unable to see clearly because of the brightness as it approached us, I slowed down. The car stopped a few feet ahead of us. A man popped out his head and a hand from the driver seat window and yelled, “Dapoli! Which road goes to Dapoli?”

Something felt different suddenly. Like a weight had been lifted off of us. As if the air was somehow lighter, warmer.

“We don’t know. Maybe that one?,” I yelled back, pointing towards the road on the left.

“Okay, thanks!”, the man replied. “Where are you guys headed at 4 in the morning?”

“Ho…hotel Rajtara”, Advait replied, as if trying to remember if that was indeed our destination.

“Oh, I think I just crossed it. Well, thanks again. Be safe.” He drove off into the direction I had pointed.

Advait and I headed towards the road straight ahead. Both of us holding our breath to see if we turned right again after the temple. We didn’t. Ee reached out hotel. Went to our small room. And fell on the bed. I don’t even remember how we got to the room. I don’t remember when I fell asleep.

The next day, we woke up to the sound of a group of people laughing and talking beneath our room window. The sunlight came in through the sheer curtains, making our room hot. We were tired. I checked my phone. 13:08. We freshened up in silence. No words exchanged. And went downstairs towards the outdoor dining area where the group of people were.

As we crossed the parking lot to get to the dining area, something made Advait stop near our moped. He glanced down at the speedometer and then back at me with confusion and horror.

“Avni, when we got the moped yesterday at the rental place, do you remember the kilometer reading the guy marked down before handing it to us?”

“No, but he wrote it down on our receipt. Let me see.” I hurried into the pocket of my track pant which I hadn’t changed and took out the receipt. “48,287. Why, what’s the matter?”

“That’s impossible”, he said, barely audible.

“What happened, Advait?”, I went over to him and checked the kilometer reading on the speedometer.

48,303.

Just 16 kms for almost a night full of traveling?

Advait and I went to the owner of the hotel, Ram dada, to talk to him. We were confused. Scared. Surely, we thought, we were not the only ones to experience this?

“Long ago, in the same ancient stone temple, there lived an old man known as Pandit Vishram, a deeply spiritual man who had served the temple since his youth. He was a well-respected figure in the village, offering guidance and prayers to those who sought it. But beneath the surface of his serene exterior, there was a haunting secret, one that the villagers were unaware of…” Ram dada said, with a fluent ease of having reiterated the tale many times before.

"Pandit Vishram had once been in love. In his younger days, he had fallen deeply for a woman from a neighboring village. They had planned to marry, but due to a cruel twist of fate, she passed away suddenly, leaving him devastated. Heartbroken, Vishram turned to the temple for solace, believing that serving the gods would help him find peace. He never married, devoting his life to the temple and hiding his pain from the world.

"Years passed, but Vishram could never let go of the love he lost. He became obsessed with the idea of reuniting with her in the afterlife. According to old, forbidden texts, he discovered that if one performed a certain ritual on the temple grounds during an eclipse, the barrier between the living and the dead could be broken.

"Consumed by this desire, Vishram secretly prepared for the ritual. On the night of t…

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