.jpg)
The Arrival
In the dense, forgotten woods of Himachal Pradesh, there lay a village called Bansrali, hidden from maps and memories. It was one of those places that existed only in whispers—haunted whispers.
.png)
Dr. Rhea Malhotra, a 29-year-old anthropologist, had heard of Bansrali while going through her late grandfather's journals. He had once written, “There lives a girl with bones around her neck. The forest weeps when she cries.”
Rhea, drawn by the mystery, decided to visit Bansrali for research. When she arrived, the fog refused to lift and the villagers refused to speak.
Except one.
An old man, blind in one eye, sat outside a broken temple and whispered, “She still walks the woods, Doctor Sahiba. Her skeleton clings to her like a curse.”
The Girl in the Fog
The village was deathly quiet. Each night, Rhea heard bones rattle outside her hut, followed by the soft sobbing of a girl. She dismissed it at first as imagination—until the third night.
That night, she saw her.
A girl, not older than twenty, standing by the well. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark, and around her neck was a string of tiny, discolored bones—a necklace made of human phalanges.
Rhea froze. She whispered, “Who are you?”
The girl didn’t answer. She just vanished into the fog.
Rhea’s journal entry that night read: “The skeleton necklace isn’t decorative. It’s sentient.”
Skeletons in the Neck
As days passed, Rhea found out more from reluctant villagers. The girl was called Mira, once the daughter of the village healer. Twenty years ago, she went missing in the forest. When she returned three days later, she was silent—and the necklace was around her neck.
From that day, strange things began to happen. People fell sick, livestock died, and one by one, five children disappeared.
The villagers believed the bones belonged to the missing children. They blamed Mira. Her own mother, in grief and fear, tried to burn the necklace. That night, her house caught fire and she died screaming.
Since then, Mira had been wandering the forest, wearing the bones that could not be removed. The skeleton had become a part of her.
The Whisper
Rhea became obsessed. She wanted to know the truth—was it a curse or trauma? She stayed longer than she should have. One evening, she followed Mira into the forest.
“Mira,” she whispered. “Why do you wear the bones?”
Mira stopped. Her head tilted unnaturally. She turned around slowly, and for the first time, she spoke.
“They whisper to me.”
The bones rattled as if in agreement.
Rhea felt a chill crawl up her spine. “What do they say?”
Mira’s eyes rolled back. Her mouth opened but the voice that came out was not hers.
“Set us free.”
Suddenly, the necklace began to glow with a faint red hue. Mira collapsed, and the forest howled with a wind that smelled of rot.
Rhea ran.
The Bone Chamber
Back at her hut, Rhea decoded a part of her grandfather’s journal. It spoke of an ancient ritual practiced by forest shamans who would trap evil spirits inside bones to silence them forever. If disturbed, these bones could bring back the very spirits they were meant to contain.
Was Mira a victim… or a vessel?
Rhea dug deeper, literally. In the forest, near the old temple, she found a hidden underground chamber. There, five tiny graves. On each, a symbol matching the bones in Mira’s necklace.
She realized the truth: Mira hadn’t killed the children. She had tried to protect them. But in doing so, she had absorbed their pain, their anger… and their spirits.
She wasn’t the monster.
The bones were.
The Ritual
Rhea knew what had to be done. The bones needed a final resting place—holy ground, ritual fire, and a chant from the shaman’s scripture.
She prepared the ritual by the well, the very place Mira had first appeared to her.
That night, Mira came willingly. Her body barely alive, her soul almost consumed.
Rhea lit the fire and began the chant. The bones screamed.
Yes, screamed.
One by one, they fell from Mira’s neck, turning to ash. The last bone—the smallest—resisted. It was a baby’s knuckle. It flew toward Rhea and burned her palm, carving the word:
"Remember."
The Aftermath
Mira collapsed. The forest exhaled, like it had held its breath for twenty years.
She survived, though her memory was fragmented. The necklace was gone, but a faint bone-shaped scar circled her throat.
Rhea left Bansrali, but the experience haunted her. She published her findings under a fictional title—The Whispering Skeleton—but never returned to anthropology again.
She knew better.
.jpg)