Whenever someone thinks they want to do something good for someone, one of the most stressful things they deal with is to get the job done well. There can’t be any flaws in the final end product, whether it be an actual object, a speech, or a party. It should all be perfect. What’s the point if things don’t work out the way you wanted them to? Wouldn’t it be a reflection of your feelings being inadequate? Wouldn’t it show that perhaps you don’t actually care enough?

But this is usually only true for the doer. Not the recipient.

For the recipient, it’s the thought behind the actions. The actions could end in a mess of a disaster, and the thought will still be as beautiful as a flower garden in springtime.

Because the recipient understands, if only subconsciously, that you cared. When you really didn’t need to, or have to. And that’s what matters the most.

Sachin had been driving for nearly the whole day. The sun was now peeking from over the horizon, and would disappear soon. His body was tired, but his mind was not. In fact, it was feeling very refreshed.

The reason for this was simple; Sachin loved to go on road trips. There was something about feeling the cool breeze rushing in from the windows and splash over his face that was nothing less than an addiction. The way the tyres rolled over the road on a cruising speed made him feel like he was gliding like a serene bird. The scenery that lazily drifted past him had an allure that held him in a spell, and he never wanted it to be broken.

As a result, he would often find himself driving on far away roads in old and forgotten parts of the country. The quiet and the stillness of these places not only provided the calmness he loved, but also added a layer of gothic charm. Every time he drove on a road that seemed almost abandoned, he felt like a kid wrapped in blankets, safe and cozy, watching a thunderstorm dance outside his house.

This feeling was only magnified when there were rumours and stories attached to the place; urban legends. Sometimes they were very simple and clearly meant for fun rather than fear, and other times they seemed to have a rich life behind them.

This place belonged in the latter category. Sachin had found as many of the stories about the place as he could online. The road he was driving on was lined on one side by a dense forest, and the stories said that it was filled with more than wild animals.

In the beginning he mostly found accounts of weird noises and strange shadows that people driving at night had come across. These noises and shadows didn’t sound or look like any of the animals that were supposed to be in the area. And many claimed that these had led to a number of accidents and disappearances.

There were other articles too, which offered different reasons for the accidents and the disappearances. Apparently, the most common reason for the accidents was the huge wildlife that lived in the forest. Too many times someone would drive off the road when an animal suddenly showed up.

The reason for the disappearances was more sinister. Like any dark, empty and abandoned place, the area was known to be frequented by groups of bandits. Although such activity had declined in recent years, it wasn’t a surprise to hear about an incident like this once in a while.

But as Sachin kept clicking on more articles and dived deeper into the hyperlinks, he also came across rumours that did not sound as reasonable and normal.

He came across one particular blog that talked about weird shapes spotted by some people; tracks and prints left in the ground that didn’t match the ones made by any animal that was alive in this world right now; scales found by forest officials that didn’t belong to the reptiles they were aware of.

To be more accurate, there weren’t aware of any reptile that could have left behind such huge scales.

Sachin read all of this for fun, obviously. He didn’t believe these things. He just liked to read about them, think about them, and then forget about them and get back to his normal, predictable, non-supernatural, everyday life.

And these kind of instances were usually never enough to make an impact on him. So what if the scales were huge, and so what if there were pictures of the long, zigzag looking tracks left in the ground, as if something big had crawled around? There were pictures of Yetis online too. That didn’t prove anything.

But there was one thing about this place that definitely spooked him. They were the pictures of some of the corpses found in and around the area. Were they the victims of wild animals or bandits? Or perhaps of some monstrous creature?

Sachin didn’t know what to think about that. What he did know was that the pictures looked as unnatural as they were gruesome.

There were four pictures, and in all of them, he couldn’t recognise that the thing he was looking at was a human being at one point. In one of them, there was only the upper body that could be seen, and the stomach looked like it had been torn from the inside; in another, there were only parts of the shoulder and ribs visible. In the remaining two, there wasn’t even this much left. They looked more like photos of random flesh torn apart and thrown aside, rather than images of corpses. Although in one of them, there was something that could be recognised; a human leg.

Sachin had, after that, closed the tab. He liked to read spooky stuff. He didn’t like watching gore. And the photos had been a little too… disturbing. He was expecting something like weird bite marks on the bodies or something, not this.

After a while, he started to think that he didn’t even believe the website in the first place. This could just be some photoshopped nonsense. He had stopped thinking about the pictures of the corpses then, but he couldn’t get the rumours about the place out of his mind. And after a few days, his curiosity got the better of him.

He decided to go for a drive there.

The road that stretched through the forest wasn’t too long. He could do it. He wasn’t a thrill seeker. He knew he didn’t want to drive late at night. So he opened the maps of the place, and found that if he was careful, he could reach a dhaba that was situated at the end of the road and near a small city in good time. Maybe even before nine or ten in the night.

And so here he was, driving at an easy pace and enjoying himself. As he expected, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The sun was still up, its light slowly dying but still illuminating everything in a twilight, dusky colour.

And then a sound came somewhere from his left. It came from somewhere near the edge of the road, which was covered in thick, dark green bushes.

It was a low rustling sound, and he wouldn’t have heard it if it wasn’t for the silence that wrapped itself all over the place.

Sachin slowed down, not sure if he had even heard anything or just imagined it. He tilted his head to listen closely, and at the same time glanced at the bushes on his left. They seemed to be still.

The sound came again. And this time Sachin not only heard it properly, but also managed to see where it was coming from.

He had heard the rustling just as he was looking at the bushes through the passenger window. There was no wind and everything was still, and he had clearly seen a something in the bushes suddenly move.

Sachin wasn’t scared, not yet. This was most likely an animal. And he was inside a car for crying out loud.

His glanced at the road. There were no vehicles. He looked back at the bushes, his eyes scanning the area. The car slowed even more.

And the rustling came again. Maybe the animal was closer to the road now, because the rustling was louder than before, and even more leaves had shaken than before. And maybe the animal was feeling a bit brave, because the rustling didn’t stop. It continued, as if the animal was walking closer.

Sachin stopped the car completely now, and stared at the bushes. He didn’t get his hopes up. It could just be a deer. But if it was a tiger? This had never happened to him before in any of his previous travels.

‘C’mon little one, I won’t hurt you. Show yourself,’ he whispered to himself.

But the rustling stopped. Sachin was surprised to find himself feeling a little sad. He stayed there, hoping that maybe something more would happen.

And then it did. The rustling sound and movement came again. And this time something more was happening.

Because of the movement of the leaves, Sachin could essentially see where the animal was. Until now, the movement of the leaves was quite close to the ground.

But now, the movement increased upwards. The leaves above started to shake and move as if the animal was rising up, maybe standing on its feet.

Sachin laughed slightly. ‘Wait were you actually stalking me until now?’ he whispered again, and imagined a tiger crouching down, close to the ground, the way he had seen them act during hunts on nature documentaries.

The rustling kept rising in the leaves, and from the size of the leaves that were moving, he thought it was definitely a large animal. He couldn’t imagine a normal deer managing to shake so many leaves. It was definitely bigger than that.

And then the rustling stopped, but Sachin didn’t have time to wonder if it would continue. There was a pause of a few seconds, and then the rustling sound continued. And even more leaves above started to move.

Sachin’s eyes widened. ‘What — ’ he mumbled as the rustling kept rising up the leaves. He was confused. He might not have seen a tiger in reality, but he knew they weren’t this tall, especially not when they were standing on all fours.

And the rustling traveled even further up the leaves.

His eyes followed the rustling as it climbed higher and higher up the bushes.

Curiosity slowly started to leave him. A tiger couldn’t be this tall, not even if it stood on its back legs.

The rustling sound kept rising up the leaves, and it had now reached a height that was well above the height of his own car. He looked at the moving leaves and his mouth opened a little bit. The entire section of leaves, from the top of the rustling sound to the bottom of the ground, was moving. The animal definitely wasn’t climbing anything.

It was standing up, or rising, or whatever. Sachin couldn’t make sense of this anymore. The rustling stopped then, and Sachin thought that if he was sitting in a truck, then maybe he would be at eye level with the topmost leaves that had been moving and shaking just now.

There was silence for a few moments, and then came a new sound. It was low and it sounded like the rattling of a thousand tiny teeth. He immediately thought of cicadas, or cockroaches, or bugs of any other kind making a loud clicking noise.

Without him realising, his foot pressed down on the accelerator, and the car moved a little bit ahead.

In that very moment, the rustling came again. He looked with wide eyes as the bushes moved at once, from top to bottom, like a giant pillar of shaking leaves, and the whole movement came closer to the road, as if the thing inside was coming towards him.

And the sound of insects whispering increased, and it felt like they had started to scream.

Sachin breathed heavily and stepped on the accelerator. At the same time the leaves moved, and they separated, and Sachin thought he saw something — something that glinted in the dying sunlight; something that looked like the shining body of a cockroach, or the scales of a giant snake.

His hands moved, and he pressed down on the horn. A loud shrill sound cut through the air and screamed into the dead night as the car’s horn echoed.

And the rustling and the chittering immediately stopped, and in the next moment went back into the leaves. Sachin could see the movement reducing and going back towards the forest, and then it disappeared.

There was nothing there anymore. The bushes were as silent and still as the forest.

Sachin did not sit there wondering what had just happened. Before he could think what to do next, his foot had already pressed harder on the accelerator, and that place was already far back in his rear-view mirror.

He drove for a few minutes, his mind full of thoughts, and yet weirdly empty at the same time. He felt like he was on an automatic mode.

His senses only seemed to return to him when the headlights of his car caught a shadow by the edge of the road. Something was walking there.

He narrowed his eyes to see clearly, and realised that it was a person.

***