Daniyal and Khalid were the first ones to react and they quickly retreated, holding their hands up, as they yelled in a flustered manner. Aleena huddled over Hina, making sure she was protected while Faizan quickly moved to do the same. He stopped when he realized the gun was trained on him.

The middle-aged man holding the shotgun had a very brown, tan skin and he wore a vest covered in sweat stains along with a light blue shalwar, loose pyjama-like trousers. He did not utter a single word as he kept the shotgun pointed at him. Daniyal and Khalid had stopped retreating but still had their hands up, their legs shaking in fear.

After a brief silence, Daniyal hesitantly spoke, “Please, we mean no harm. We just needed some help.”

The man furrowed his eyebrows, as if annoyed to hear them talk in Urdu. Faizan realised the man was eating paan (tobacco in leaves), which was why he had still not uttered a single word. The man put the shotgun to his side and then raised a finger at them, indicating to them to wait a minute as he hurried back to the house. Faizan figured the guy didn’t speak Urdu but probably understood it.

Daniyal and Khalid relaxed their shoulders and let out a deep sigh of relief. The former turned back to the rest of them and laughed. “What a day this has been,” he declared.

Aleena lifted Hina up and smoothed down her clothes, seemingly embarrassed by her reaction. Hina, however, was smiling from relief but her smile narrowed when she looked at Faizan.

Was she still really mad?

The front door of the house opened behind the gate and he heard a lady talking from inside the house in a heavy dialect of Punjabi - a language he didn’t have the best grasp of. The door in the gate opened again and this time the man had let go of his shotgun and was joined by another one - a burly looking young man wearing an immaculate white shalwar kameez with a face that did not suit his stature at all. He had a very kind looking, clean shaven face, with glasses and what looked like airpods in his ears. He clearly did not belong to the village.

The young man approached Daniyal and Khalid, who were hesitant, until they were greeted by the man in a very clear Urdu accent, who assured them that everything was fine and that the landlord of the house, the middle-aged man who stood at the door, was just being careful. He introduced himself as Shikhar and asked them what the problem was. Daniyal explained to them how they had gotten lost and how their car’s throttle had a problem. Shikhar listened to him intently and when Daniyal was done telling him, he turned around to the landlord who merely just grunted. He looked clearly annoyed for having been interrupted by their appearance as he spat the paan to the side and spoke in loud Punjabi.

“He says that he doesn’t have any room for you people,” replied Shikhar, who clearly looked awkward for passing the bad news to them. “The only room he’s renting out is occupied… by me.”

“C’mon, please,” insisted Daniyal gesturing to the house. “Look at the size of that house, there must be some room for us. Tell him we’ll pay, I’ve got money.”

Faizan watched as the landlord raised his eyebrows after being told that. That had got his attention. He moved a few steps forward and examined all of them, figuring out the money he would ask from them. Faizan knew he’d ask a bullshit amount given how desperate they looked. He also felt uncomfortable by how his gaze lingered a bit longer at the girls.

“Ten thousand,” the man finally muttered.

“Ten thousand rupees?!” blurted out Daniyal, his eyes widening. “For one day?”

The owner nodded. He had a slight smirk on his face.

“Five thousand,” countered Daniyal.

The owner shook his head and repeated, “Ten thousand.”

“Six Thousand.”

The landlord shook his head and turned away to the door. He gestured for Shikhar to follow him who seemed hesitant to leave these people in need of help. The landlord was just about to go through the gate when Daniyal finally gave in. “Fine! Ten Thousand.”

The landlord turned around with a smile and took out another pan from a crumpled newspaper he had in his hand. He placed it in his mouth and began chewing on it, as he slowly opened the gate.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Is there a mechanic here in the village by any chance?” asked Daniyal walking up to Shikhar.

“Yes, there is, near the masjid over there,” he pointed to a masjid minar, a small pointed pillar that he could barely make out at the other end of the village. “I’ll take you there first thing in the morning. Don’t worry, you guys will be on your way back home soon enough.”

Faizan got into the car (as Daniyal was preoccupied with the transaction) and slowly drove it up the incline, cursing as the car narrowly scratched against one of the edges as he turned the car. Daniyal hadn’t seemed to notice so he just kept quiet. He knew how angry he could get when someone scratched his car. The others slowly walked up in front towards the house, in the doorway of which they could all see the lady, who Faizan guessed was the landlord’s wife, dressed in a traditional shalwar kameez. Behind her, he had spotted a young girl about their age peering at them before her mom sent her back.

As they entered the house, Shikhar told them how he had rented out the room in a bid to explore the land around the village, which was known as Seywal. His passion was to travel all around the world to research unknown locations, and what better place to start than his own country. He explained to them how the village had gotten its name from the porcupine, known as a sey, which roamed around in the wilderness around the village. Faizan wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying, he was beginning to realise how hungry and sleepy he was now that the adrenaline from being lost was starting to subside.

The boys and girls were led to separate bathrooms where they could finally clean up and change into fresh clothes that they had from their trip to Karachi. The bathroom they had been given had clearly not been used in a while and thus, was covered in cobwebs and dirt which made him very uncomfortable. There was also a squat toilet only and he had a hard time emptying his empty bladder. He made sure to clean up the spilt pee properly.

The landlord’s wife, or Mrs. Malik, was very kind, as opposed to her husband, and made sure that all their needs were tended to. He could somewhat understand her since her speech was clearer and she also added whatever Urdu words she knew so that they could understand her better. Faizan felt she was especially nice with him because she kept urging him to eat as she served them spinach with fresh rotis, that she had gotten to start working immediately with her daughter. When he had been passing by the kitchen to the dingy dining room, he had caught the young girl, Inaya, staring at him before looking away. She seemed annoyed. Faizan wondered why.

They ate in the poorly-lit, dusty dining room that seemed haunted to Faizan. Outside, they could hear crickets trying their best to battle the deathly silence but somehow making it all the more prominent. They continued eating, either talking in quiet voices to someone next to them, or just giving each other glances before awkwardly eating, as if signalling to each other: How the hell did we get ourselves in this mess?

He looked around in the room and noticed a wall with pictures he assumed were deceased relatives of the owners of the house. They looked very creepy in the poor lighting; he could swear the faces looked almost distorted and decided to look away. On a mantelpiece he noticed three small miniature statues glinting in the light and curiously, they all seemed to be of porcupines; a bronze, silver and gold one. When they had finished eating, Faizan made his way up to the statues making sure that none of the owners were in the room. They were spotless, compared to the rest of the room, and with the way they had been presented on the mantelpiece made him figure they were important. He took a closer look at them, in awe of how sharp and accurate the spikes on the statues looked. He gently touched the tip of his index finger onto the spikes of the gold one and winced when his skin pierced through like it was butter. He felt a surge of energy flow through him. It lasted for only a second but he knew he had felt something. Maybe it had just been pain...

“What are you doing?” asked Daniyal. Khalid and him were looking at him curiously. “Don’t mess around with their stuff.”

“It’s okay,” said Faizan, putting his finger against the side of his leg to stop the bleeding. “I was just looking.”

He was returning to the table when Mrs. Malik came back to clear up the plates. She was very friendly with all of them but Faizan noticed that she was especially hospitable with him. He made sure to tell her that the spinach had tasted divine.

They were informed that the spare rooms in the house did not have any power, and so they could sleep on the balcony. This pissed off Daniyal but he decided to keep shut because at least they had been given hospitality. He was secretly glad that they were sleeping on the balcony, after seeing how dusty the rooms had been.

There was a nice breeze in the balcony as they set up to sleep on the traditional wooden cots, or charpais, that were frequent in villages. Faizan found his charpai surprisingly comfy, and was glad there were mosquito nets attached to it, although he suspected it had something to do with how exhausted he was.

The girls' charpais were set up on the other end of the balcony and Faizan watched them talking sitting next to each other with their legs crossed. He wondered if they were talking about him. The guys began discussing their plans for the next day, with Daniyal telling them he was confident they’d be on the road by the afternoon, and that he got directions from Shikhar, who had told him that the highway was about three hours away. With that, they all settled into their charpais.

Faizan looked up at the night sky through the mosquito net and was in awe of it. It looked so vibrant and clear in the dark village that barely had any light pollution. The stars gleamed like small gems and he noticed how some of the stars had different colours. He wondered who, or what, lived among those stars and could not help imagine Lovecraft’s creatures swimming along with it. Creatures of immense power and convoluted forms that lived among the stars were an exciting and frightening prospect and he imagined various forms of them. Just as he was about to doze off, the breeze suddenly died and he heard the clink of something falling next to him. He felt a little awake but still too tired to bother opening his eyes and figured it was just some of those big stick insects that would jump around everywhere. He had seen lots of them in Islamabad.

In his dreams, he saw the stars all around him as he floated in the center of the universe. He felt at peace until a humongous beast came into his vision, with razor sharp giant quills on its back, so big that he could not see its whole form. He thought the beast had swallowed the stars until he looked onto its back and saw whole planets and stars pierced through its quills. The wailing of billions of souls, in pain and ecstasy, could be heard from all of them and Faizan tried his best to drown out the sound with his hands on his ears, but there was no use. He could hear them deep in his mind, as if they had become a part of him.

He thought he heard his friends’ voices among the screams too. He could hear Daniel announcing he was going to the mechanic among the early morning bird chirping. He could hear Aleena and Hina trying to wake him up, telling him something was terribly wrong. He could hear Khalid yelling at the top of his lungs. He could hear death and destruction. But it was hard for him to focus on them, among the billions of other voices. They were all so loud.

They felt so real.

They are real. He heard a voice say.

What?

Soon you will be a part of them too.

The voices increased in magnitude and he screamed along with them, dropping to his knees and squeezing his hands against his ears. He squeezed so hard that he felt his cranium would pop, and yet the voices did not stop.

He saw one of the porcupine spikes heading right for him...