That summer of 2012 felt endless. I was sixteen and our board exams were over, so we had two months with nothing to do. Every morning we played football on the local ground and every evening we wandered around the neighborhood, killing time. One day a friend invited me and another guy to go with him to his village. “We can bring bats and balls, go hiking, and get away from the city,” he said. It sounded perfect.
We left in the evening after the awkward task of convincing our parents. As we rode away, the lights and noise of the city faded. We stopped at a highway shop to buy supplies — the last sign of life before the road narrowed and the world grew quieter. The village lay about five kilometers down a dusty lane. At first we passed a few houses, then fewer, then none. The silence settled in like a physical thing. The only sound left was our bike’s engine and the crunch of gravel under the tires.
When we reached his house I felt as if I had stepped into someone’s forgotten memory. The place was falling apart: cracked walls, a sagging roof, broken furniture. We set to work cleaning and gathered dry wood for a fire. After we made dinner, we decided to play cricket just to feel normal. Later, tired and full, we walked out to the small temple by the gate to smoke and talk.
It was around midnight. The moon was thin and distant. We were laughing about nothing when a sound tore through the night — a human scream, sharp and terrified. For a moment time froze. We looked at one another and I could see the exact same fear in their faces. Our bodies went numb. Nobody moved.
Then the scream came again, closer this time, and words were mixed with the cry: “કોઈ મને બચાવો” — “Somebody save me.” The voice was raw, like an animal’s before it’s hurt. It was clear: someone was in trouble. We jumped up and ran toward the lane where the sound had come from, hearts pounding so hard it felt like the ground shook. This was 2012; none of us had smartphones to call for help, no torches, only the pale moon and our racing breaths.
We searched the area until dawn. We looked for footprints, blood, clothing — anything. There was nothing. No scraps, no sign of a struggle, no shadow of a person. The lane was as empty as if the scream had never happened. We couldn’t sleep that night. Every noise made us bolt to our feet. At first we thought it might be some prank or someone playing with sound, but the voice had been desperate and real. It stayed with me like a stone in my chest.
Years passed. In 2020, during the COVID lockdown, a small notice in the local paper caught my eye: remains found near that village — a man who had been missing since 2012. The report said he had been killed in a land dispute, buried where the soil had been recently disturbed. We don’t know for sure that the scream we heard that night came from this same man, but the memory of those words, the raw plea, came rushing back. For a long time after, whenever I think of that summer, I hear the scream and I remember how powerless we felt under the quiet moon.
Magharvada a small village in Gujarat
