The Silent Scream of the Night

The nights were eerily peaceful in Shivalik, a secluded community tucked away at the foot of towering mountains. After dark, the forest's creatures appeared to hold their breath, with the breeze barely stirring at all.

The silence felt suffocating rather than peaceful, as if the community itself was frightened to make noise, and there was something eerie about it.

The locals had been whispering for years about an old curse that kept their evenings troubled. The story of the "silent scream" was passed down from generation to generation, but no one dared talk about it in public.

They said that in the dead of night, if you listened hard enough, you might hear a scream; it was so faint, more of a feeling than a sound, but once you heard it, you would never get rid of it. It was the cry of a soul helpless to find rest, caught between life and death.

A young woman named Ananya had heard the legends as a child but never believed them. She had lately returned to Shivalik to take care of her elderly mother. "Just old superstitions," she would tell herself, brushing off the locals' terrified looks.

However, the more she stayed in the village, the more she became aware of the unsettling silence that pervaded the area. Not only was there stillness, but it was the kind of silence that gave you the creeps.

Ananya could not sleep one night when the village was bathed in the glittering light of the full moon. Ananya found her mother drifting into a restless sleep, leaving her by herself to think.

The home remained eerily silent. Seated near the window, she gazed out into the obscurity, with the mountains appearing as silent sentinels in the distance.

She felt it all of a sudden—a chill that came from something invisible rather than the cold. She felt as though the silence and tightness in the air were growing. She heard it then.

A scream, thin and nearly unnoticeable, yet piercing the quiet like a blade. The scream was not the kind that filled the space. No, it reverberated through her bones and into her consciousness.

Ananya stopped, heart racing. The scream resounded, this time fainter, like the last hopeless cry of someone who realized they were lost.

"Did I really hear that?"

She said to herself. Her eyes wide with horror, she looked around the room, her breath held in her throat. The scream seemed to be coming from everywhere at the same time.

She attempted to brush it off. She said, "It's just my imagination," but the scream's heavy burden persisted. When she could take it no more, she picked up a light and went outdoors in the hopes that the change of scenery would help her relax.

Bathed in moonlight, the village was strangely quiet. There were no barking dogs or rustling leaves. Everything remained motionless. Too still.

With her footfall softly resonating on the cobblestones, she meandered through the little streets. The scream got louder the farther she traveled, but no one else appeared to notice. The dwellings of the villagers were calm and dark, their occupants blissfully oblivious to the fear that had engulfed her.

Her hands trembled as she gripped the lamp more tightly, thinking,

"Why can’t they hear it?"

The shriek was intensifying in her thoughts, a silent cry that seemed to draw her farther into the darkness.

She arrived at the village square and the old well with the help of her feet. Long abandoned, the well was rumored to be cursed, a doorway to the underworld where souls caught between two realms lurked.

The legends had always been discounted by Ananya, but now as she was in front of the well, the scream intensified.

She walked up to the well's edge and looked down into its infinite, dark depths, her hands shaking. Sharp and excruciating, the cry came up louder than before from below. The soil itself seemed to be wailing in agony and begging to be freed. But there were no words, just a quiet scream that split the night.

Ananya's heart pounded in her chest as her breath caught. The well was more than just a lost relic, as the people had long feared, and she realized this. It was a jail. A prison for a soul destined to cry in silence for all of eternity and never find peace.

Ananya stumbled back, her head spinning, as the scream reached its peak. It had reached her ears. It had been felt by her. She would be haunted by the silent cry of the night for eternity. It was real.

With her pulse pounding from what she had discovered, she fled to her home without looking down into the well again. The village was still, but the wail of the night lingered in her soul, a soothing reminder that some things are best left undisturbed.

And after that night, Ananya never spoke of the scream again. But every night when the moon rose over the mountains and the community fell into a disconcerting silence, she could still feel it. No one could hear the scream, but everyone was terrified.