Kothivaram

Chapter One – The Forgotten Well

The monsoon clouds pressed low over the village of Kothivaram, turning the sky into a bruised smear of grey and purple. The air carried the heavy, metallic smell of rain-soaked soil, and from the banyan trees at the edge of the fields came the slow, uneven caw of crows that had refused to migrate.

Kothivaram wasn’t the kind of place where outsiders lingered. The road was cracked and broken, leading in like a warning, and the people spoke in lowered tones about things “best left untouched.” But for all its silence, the village had one thing that caught every visitor’s eye: the well.

It stood at the heart of the village square, older than memory, its stone mouth ringed with moss, its base eroded with time. Children were forbidden from playing near it, not out of fear that they would fall, but because of what the villagers whispered: The well takes what it wants.

Radha had grown up hearing the stories.

Now twenty-six, she had returned to Kothivaram after nearly a decade away, her city life collapsing into debts and betrayals. Her father’s sudden death gave her an excuse to come back, though in truth she carried more grief for herself than for him.

When she stepped out of the bus, the first thing her eyes found was the well. No garlands around it for protection, no prayer flags tied at its rim—just the gaping mouth, waiting.

“Don’t stare too long,” said a voice behind her.

Radha turned. It was Sundaram, the village priest. His hair had gone white, but his back remained as straight as when she was a child. His gaze was fixed not on her, but on the well.

“Still the same old stories, kaka?” Radha tried to smile, but her voice cracked.

Sundaram’s eyes finally met hers. “Stories? The day you left, it took Meenakshi’s son. He went to fetch water. They never found him. Not even the rope came back up.”

Radha forced herself to laugh. “Maybe he ran away. These villages suffocate people.”

But Sundaram didn’t laugh. His silence pressed against her harder than the humid air.

Her father’s house was just as she remembered—wooden beams sagging, the air filled with the smell of damp grain and incense gone stale. She touched the threshold, whispered a half-hearted prayer, and stepped inside.

On the wall hung the portrait of her mother, eyes stern and lips pressed thin. Her mother had died young, consumed by fever, but Radha remembered how she used to light a lamp at dusk every day, facing the well, whispering words no one else in the house was allowed to hear.

Radha unpacked her suitcase and found her old diary shoved into a drawer, brittle with mildew. She flipped through it absentmindedly until she stopped at a page scrawled with childish writing:

“Do not drink from the well. Do not look in at night. Do not answer if it calls your name.”

She frowned. She didn’t remember writing this.