The Last Ferry to Kherbari

The winter sun was a pale coin behind a veil of fog as I stood on the rickety wooden jetty of the Brahmaputra, waiting for the ferry that would take me to my grandmother’s village. My name is Arjun, and I was twelve that year. My parents, both busy doctors, had sent me to spend the winter break with my grandmothers, the way they did every year. But this year, the trip had taken on a strange urgency.

My uncle, Ramesh, had dropped me at my father’s mother’s house in a village called Silghat, promising to return in a day to take me to my mother’s mother’s house in Kherbari, far across the river. But when he arrived, his face was ashen, and he spoke in hushed tones to my grandmother. I caught the words ‘ferry’ and ‘accident’ and ‘missing’ before he turned to me with a forced smile.

‘Change of plans, Arjun. We’re taking the evening ferry to Kherbari. Your other grandmother is eager to see you.’

I was thrilled, thinking of the fishing and the cousins. But as we boarded the small wooden ferry, the only other passenger, an old woman wrapped in a black shawl, stared at me with eyes that seemed to have no color. The ferryman, a wiry man named Ratan, greeted my uncle with a familiarity that suggested they had known each other for years.

We pushed off into the brown, churning water. The fog thickened, swallowing the shore behind us. My uncle sat stiff, not looking at me, his knuckles white on the wooden rail. The old woman began to hum a tune I didn’t recognize—a slow, mournful melody that wove into the sound of the water. I asked my uncle what the song was, but he only shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line.

Halfway across, the ferry slowed. The engine sputtered, then died. Ratan cursed and went below, but when he came back, his face was pale. ‘The propeller’s fouled,’ he said. ‘We’re stuck.’

We drifted. The fog grew so dense that the water and sky merged into a grey nothing. The old woman stopped humming and spoke for the first time, her voice like cracking ice. ‘He’s here. He always comes.’

My uncle stiffened. ‘Who?’ I asked. But no one answered. Then I heard it—a sound like wet cloth slapping against wood, coming from under the boat. The ferry began to rock, gently at first, then with a violence that threw me to the deck. Through the fog, a shape loomed—a dark, slick mass that rose from the river, taller than the trees, dripping with weeds. It had long, thin limbs that reached out, brushing the sides of the boat.

‘Don’t move,’ my uncle hissed. ‘Don’t speak. And for God’s sake, don’t look at it.’

But I was a child, and I looked. Its face was a hollow, a void in the fog, and from its mouth came a sound—not a scream, but a low, guttural word that I couldn’t understand, yet knew was my name. The old woman began to chant, her words in a tongue I’d never heard, and the thing recoiled as if burned. The boat lurched, and suddenly the engine coughed back to life. Ratan gunned it, and we shot forward, leaving the thing behind in the fog.

When we finally docked at Kherbari, the sun was setting, and the village lights glowed like fireflies. My grandmother rushed to meet us, hugging me tight. My uncle pulled her aside, and they exchanged whispers. That night, I couldn’t sleep. From my bed, I heard my grandmother’s room, her voice low, mixing with the sound of the river. I tiptoed to her door and saw her kneeling before a small shrine, burning incense, and whispering to a photograph of a man I’d never seen—a man with the same hollow look as the thing in the river.

The next day, I learned the truth. The man in the photo was my grandfather, who had drowned in that river decades ago. But the villagers said he hadn’t truly drowned—he had been taken, by the spirit of the river, a vengeful creature that claimed a life every generation to feed its hunger. My grandmother had always believed that the ferry was the only way to keep the spirit at bay, by carrying a piece of the bloodline across the water as a kind of offering. My uncle had brought me that day, knowing I was the last male heir.

I wanted to leave, but my grandmother locked me in the house, saying, ‘You are safe here, as long as you stay on land. The river takes only those who cross it.’

A week later, I tried to escape. I slipped away at dawn and took a fishing boat across to the other side. I told myself I was brave, that the old woman’s chanting had protected us before. But as I reached the middle of the river, the fog rose again, and I saw the dark shape rising from the water, its hollow face turning toward me. I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. I just watched as a long, wet limb reached out and wrapped around the boat, pulling me under.

I woke up on the shore, coughing water, my grandmother’s face above me. ‘The river gave you back,’ she said, her eyes cold. ‘But it will want you again. Next time, it won’t let go.’

That night, I heard the old woman’s tune drifting from the river, and I knew it was a lullaby. Not for a child, but for the thing that waited beneath the water, patient and hungry, knowing that one day, I would have to cross the river again.