The Hollow of the Yellow Trees

The bus groaned as it climbed the last switchback, and Mira pressed her forehead to the cool glass, watching the valley drop away into a sea of mist. The driver, a wiry old man with a face like crumpled paper, had been silent for the last hour, his eyes fixed on the winding road that seemed to hang over the abyss. They were headed to the Vane Observatory, a converted watchtower perched on the spine of the Kalvari Ridge, a place her friend Ravi had insisted was ‘untouched by time.’ Mira wasn’t so sure. The jungle here was different—denser, darker, the trees not the usual teak and sal but something ancient, with trunks like twisted sinew and leaves that shimmered with an oily sheen.

They arrived just as the sun bled into the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and orange. The ‘observatory’ was a crumbling stone structure, its domed roof half-collapsed, ivy crawling over the walls like a living web. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and rust. Their guide, a local named Bhaskar, hurried them to their ‘rooms’—a series of stone chambers that had once housed astronomers, now furnished with cots and a few dusty lanterns. The windows were mere openings, unglazed, and the doors were nothing more than frames with tattered cloth. ‘The animals,’ he said, his voice low, ‘they keep to the forest. But the wind here, it never sleeps. Keep a light on at night, even if it’s just a candle. You’ll hear things. Don’t answer.’

Mira and her friends—Ravi, Priya, and Arun—laughed off his warnings, attributing them to local superstition. They had driven nine hours from Pune, and the altitude had made them dizzy with excitement. After a simple dinner of rice and lentils cooked over a wood fire, they collapsed onto their cots, too tired even to unpack. The last thing Mira remembered was the wind whistling through the stone gaps, a sound like a distant, plaintive flute.

She woke in the dead of night, her throat parched. The lantern had died, and the room was pitch black. She fumbled for her water bottle, and in the silence, she heard it—a soft, rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat, coming from beneath the floor. She held her breath. The thumping grew louder, more insistent, and then she felt a cold draft, as if a door had been opened. A voice, thin and reedy, called out from the darkness: ‘Mira… Mira…’ It was her grandmother’s voice, but her grandmother had been dead for ten years.

She scrambled to light a match, but her hands shook. When the flame flared, the room was empty, but the stone floor in the center was slightly raised, as if something had pushed up from below. She woke Ravi, who grumbled but promised to stay awake. They sat in silence, the wind now a low moan, and Mira couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. Outside, through the window opening, she saw two yellow eyes glowing in the underbrush, too high off the ground to be a wolf or a fox. They blinked once, slowly, and then vanished.

At dawn, Ravi dismissed it all as altitude sickness and an overactive imagination. But when they went to get water from the well, they found Bhaskar staring at the ground, his face ashen. ‘The trees have moved,’ he said, pointing to a cluster of yellow-barked trees that stood about fifty meters from the tower. ‘Last night they were closer to the path. Now they’re nearer the wall. They do that sometimes. But not this fast.’

They decided to explore the ridge, partly to escape the oppressive feeling of the tower. The trail wound through the forest, and Mira noticed that the yellow-barked trees were everywhere, their leaves rustling even when there was no wind. Priya, the most pragmatic of the group, laughed. ‘It’s just the breeze,’ she said. But Mira saw that the leaves were quivering in perfect unison, like a thousand tiny hands waving. They came to a clearing where an old stone altar stood, overgrown with moss. Carved onto it was a spiral, and in the center, a hollow that seemed to drink the light. Arun, who had a fascination with ancient things, knelt and placed his palm in the hollow. He didn’t say anything, but his face went pale, and he pulled away quickly.

They returned to the tower as dusk fell. The wind had picked up, and the stone walls seemed to hum. Bhaskar refused to stay the night, saying he had to attend to his ailing wife, but his eyes were averted, and he left before sunset. That night, they kept a fire burning in the central hearth. But as midnight approached, the fire began to die, despite ample wood. The wind was screaming now, and Mira could hear the yellow trees scraping against the walls. Then, the doors—the flimsy cloth barriers—began to billow, as if something was pushing them.

A voice came from the hollow in the altar, but they were inside the tower. ‘You have come to feed the hollow,’ it said, not a human voice, but a sound like the grinding of stones. ‘The trees were once people. They chose to answer the call. The call of the hollow. You will join them.’

Suddenly, the floor began to writhe, as if roots were growing beneath. Mira looked down and saw tendrils of dark, thorny vines snaking through the cracks, heading toward their feet. She screamed and grabbed Ravi’s arm, pulling him toward the doorframe, but the vines had already encircled Priya’s ankles. Priya shrieked, beating at them with her hands, but they tightened, and she was dragged, screaming, toward the center of the room. The floor opened up, a maw of black soil, and Priya was swallowed whole. Her screams echoed for a moment and then were cut off.

Arun was next. He stumbled backward, trying to flee, but the cloth door had become a solid wall of roots. The vines wrapped around his chest, and he was lifted off his feet, his eyes wide with disbelief. ‘It wants us to become part of the hollow,’ he managed, before he was pulled into the opening. Mira and Ravi stood frozen, the vines now encircling their legs. Mira felt a cold numbness spreading up her calves, and she knew that they were doomed.

In desperation, she pulled out her phone, dead from no signal. But she had a flicker of an idea. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small tin of matches from the kitchen, the last one. She struck a match and threw it onto the dry cloth of the doorway. The cloth caught fire, and the flames spread to the vine-covered walls. The vines recoiled, hissing like living things. The hollow beneath the floor let out an unearthly wail, and the pulling stopped.

Mira and Ravi ran out the burning doorway, through a gap in the roots, and into the night. The yellow trees stood as a silent audience, and as they ran, Mira saw that the trees were not rooted in the soil but were walking—slowly, deliberately—toward the tower to witness its destruction. They made it to the road and ran until their lungs burned, until they flagged down a passing truck. They never saw the tower again. They never spoke of Priya and Arun, or what they had witnessed.

Mira now lives in a small, ground-floor apartment in a noisy city. She keeps all her windows covered, even in the day. She sleeps with the lights on. And every night, at exactly 3 a.m., she hears it—a soft, rhythmic thumping under her floor. And a voice, thin and reedy, calling her name. She knows it’s the hollow. And she knows that the yellow trees are patient. They will wait. They always do.