The Murmuring of the Drowned Forest

In the summer of 2016, I was fifteen, fresh off my exams, and my uncle, a botanist, had invited me to join him on a research trip to the Kuttanad wetlands of Kerala, India. It was a place of backwaters and canals, with a sunken forest known as the ‘Kole Lands’ that only revealed its twisted trunks during the dry season. But we were there in the middle of the monsoon, and the entire region was a vast, churning sea of green and brown.

My uncle was studying the effects of seasonal flooding on the local flora, and he had a small motorboat that we used to navigate the flooded plains. Our guide was a local man named Kuttan, a wiry old fellow with eyes that seemed to have seen too much. He spoke little English, but he knew the waterways like the back of his hand, and he had a habit of muttering to himself in Malayalam, especially when we passed near the deeper sections of the forest.

One evening, as the sun bled into the horizon, Kuttan refused to go further. He pointed to a cluster of dead trees rising from the water, their branches like skeletal fingers. ‘Place of the drowned ones,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Never go there after dark. They sing to you.’ I laughed, thinking it was just a local superstition, but my uncle, ever scientific, was intrigued. He pulled out his notebook and scribbled something down, promising we would investigate the next day.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. My cot was in a small hut on stilts, and the only sound was the constant drip of water and the distant croaking of frogs. But then, I heard it: a faint, melodic hum, like a woman singing a lullaby, rising from the direction of the sunken forest. I sat up, my heart pounding. The singing grew louder, weaving through the darkness, and I felt an inexplicable pull to go to the water. I shook my head, reminding myself it was just my imagination, but the song didn’t stop until the first light of dawn.

The next day, we took the boat out to the grove. The water was dark and still, and the tree trunks seemed to shimmer with an oily sheen. My uncle was fascinated, examining the bark and taking samples, while I tried to ignore the feeling that we were being watched. Kuttan stayed at the boat, his back turned, mumbling prayers. As we worked, I noticed something odd: at the base of a large, gnarled tree, there was a small, intricately carved wooden doll, half-submerged in the mud. It was worn and aged, but the face was still clear, frozen in a scream of agony.

I reached out to touch it, and as my fingers brushed the wood, the temperature plummeted. The air became thick, and the water around us began to churn. I heard the singing again, this time from all directions, and my vision blurred. I saw faces in the trunks, eyes opening in the bark, and hands reaching out from the water. My uncle shouted my name, but his voice was distant. Something grabbed my ankle, cold and unyielding, and I was pulled under.

The water was icy, but I wasn’t drowning. It was like being in a dream, floating through a forest of submerged trunks, where the light filtered down in eerie shafts. I saw figures, translucent, drifting silently. They were the drowned ones, their mouths moving silently, and I realized they were trying to sing to me, to welcome me into their fold. I tried to scream, but only bubbles escaped, and then a face emerged from the murk: a young girl with hollow eyes, her hair like seaweed. She reached for me, and I felt a terrible calm settle over me.

Then, I was yanked up, sputtering, into the daylight. Kuttan was holding me, his face pale, yelling at me in his language. My uncle was there too, his hands shaking as he helped me into the boat. I was shivering, not just from the cold, but from the lingering sensation of those hands on my skin. We sped away, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed me, that I had left a piece of myself in that place.

That night, as I lay in the hut, I heard the singing again, but now it was clearer, and it was calling my name. I covered my ears, but the melody seeped into my bones. I looked out the window, and in the moonlight, I saw them: the drowned ones, standing at the shore of the flooded land, their bodies dripping, their eyes fixed on me. One of them, the girl, smiled, and I saw that her teeth were filled with mud and little fish bones.

I didn’t sleep for the rest of our trip. We left the following week, and I thought I had escaped. But even now, years later, whenever it rains, I hear that faint, mournful song. And sometimes, when I look into a puddle or a rain-filled gutter, I see a face staring back at me from beneath the surface, waiting, always waiting. I will never return to the Kole Lands, but I fear that the Kole Lands have never truly left me.