text: Vivek is a surreal novelist who writes mostly horror and thriller genres. He is happily married to Varsha, a creative and beautiful woman and they then blessed with Sarah of 8 years. But after their marriage, she noticed Vivek is a kind of guy with multiple personality traits. But she doesn't care it much as he never behaves odd and never made her feel bad. But sometimes she finds Vivek talks to himself calling Vinay and she felt embarrassed and hesitantly asked him about this once. Vivek is a man driven by doubt, unable to give himself entirely to a person or to a faith - even as he knew that to refrain from such commitment was no way to live. Vivek, Vinay writes, spent "his whole life searching for a haven that, were he to find it, he would only exile himself from or spoil, and then begin the search again." Vinay negotiates these ideas - of detachment, of faith, of home and belonging, of love, of displacement - turning them over and over like river pebbles, puzzling over their place in his own life, thinking them through. This is, in a way, the point: when Varsha asked why he wanted to spend so much time with Vinay, Vivek told her "It's a way of working things out, as I couldn't otherwise." One day while Vivek is busy updating his website, he hesitantly scrolls through a website full of pictures of him sleeping and realizing that in each image a strange man gets closer to his bed. In the one uploaded last night, he was lifting the blanket. Not realizing that the auto-sync was enabled on his cloud account that synced the photos he clicked the last night to a social media website, Vivek is shocked and confused by this strange incident that happened, he went to see the blanket is positioned or not. Surprisingly he sees a letter near to the blanket and in that letter, there is an address of a village and written "come here for a good story for your next novel". Vivek is surprised and thinks it is a prank of someone. But when strange incidents start happening like his daughter talks to some invisible person saying her name is Chaitra and asks him about the letter and village, he decides to go to that village. But Varsha thinks it's foolish to go to the village depending on their daughter's behavior because she thinks Sarah like her father has adopted some psychological issues. And she thinks the letter is just a prank, but Vivek has decided to go to the village to know the reason behind the happenings. Vivek with the letter he found, starts his journey towards the mystery he would like to chase. But soon he starts, he misses his train and finds himself taking a ride to somewhere beyond normal understanding. He perceives the nature of the alternate universe in which he finds himself- a world where his friends and loved ones are all smiling, hate-filled psychopaths, sort of like the Mirror Universe taken to horrifying extremes. Vivek is completely out of his mind and he feels out of his bodily experiences of what he is seeing. He is continuously listening a voice - "I am nearer to you than you to yourself".... He sees his wife burning the dolls while Sarah cries. He does not understand her intension of weird behaviour. Varsha saying herself that Sarah was assuming it was her mom who moved the dolls into her bed each night. Vivek heard a voice murmuring- "Seeing is not acting. If you don't act, you don't see anything"... He sees and feels the decay and body horror and Kafkaesque surrealism. But again, the voice whispers - "seeing is not acting. If you don't act, you don't see anything". He sees her daughter under demonic possession. Sarah is afflicted by intense shaking and loss of control over her body. Confused by her symptoms, doctors diagnose her with schizophrenia but her behaviour grows worse. She begins attacking the family members and drinks her own urine. Her concerned family eventually convinces the priests and performs multiple exorcism sessions. Vivek, obsessed with the hauntings, decides to go back to his home. He takes his car and starts back to his home. Then he realizes how his car is there at that point of time when he tried to go to the village by the train. Finally, he drives away from there as fast as he can. When he feels safe enough to breathe, a voice from the backseat says, "Leaving so soon? “Vivek hears a noise unlike any other; it's a frightening combination of shattering glass, crunching metal and grinding rock. It lasts only a fraction of a second as the draining momentum hurled the now seemingly weightless vehicle back upright as gravity pulls it back to the pavement. It feels like a dream, or rather a nightmare. He struggles to grasp exactly what just happened. The windshield is completely shattered, but still held together in a mosaic design by the plastic between the panes. And somehow the whole vehicle seems whimsical and awkwardly bent. As he unbuckles his seat belt he notices a distinct red line has embedded across his exposed neck. Vivek is still in shock and has no idea what has just happened. He is wrecked but also misses an early grave just by an inch When emergency responders arrive, they find Vivek's driving seat crunched into a telephone pole. Vivek is slumped in his seat, unconscious. Vivek has traveled barely 200 yards before striking the pole... He isn't wearing a seat belt. It took emergency responders eight minutes to pull him out of the car. Some of the paramedics doubt Vivek would be alive by the time he reaches the city's General Hospital. At the hospital, Vivek has a CT scan to assess the damage and then rushed into surgery, where neurosurgeons remove the left side of his skull and part of the right to stop multiple brain hemorrhages. By the time he is transferred to the neuro intensive-care unit, he is a swollen-faced sphinx, eyes closed, head wrapped in bandages, pin-cushioned with needles, and on a ventilator. At each critical juncture of Vivek's journey -- the first three days, they struggle to balance intervention with compassion, while trying to discern the fine and shifting line between hope and hopelessness. Vivek opens his eyes on the third/second day. He’d passed from a coma into a vegetative state, a condition of wakeful unconsciousness - eyes wide open but mind still shut down. During the fifth day in the hospital, Vivek began to show signs to his doctors that he is becoming aware of the outside world. Doctor Jai feels it's the medical miracle and only patients in movies leap out of unconsciousness and stay there. Brain-injury patients more typically fluctuate -- up and down, in and out, aware and then unaware. The minimally conscious state can last days, weeks, months, years, the rest of one’s life. But Vivek shows no signs of any brain abnormalities which confuse the consciousness of his doctors. The exact process remains mysterious, in part because every traumatic injury inflicts a unique pattern of damage on the cells and circuitry of the brain. One week after the accident, Vivek's doctors perform a second MRI. Remarkably, and unexpectedly, the brain scan suggests that some of Vivek's damaged wiring has begun to mend. “To our knowledge,” the doctors noted later, this type of reversal has not been previously described with serial neuroimaging or in a case with such a widespread extent of axonal injury. Vivek is discharged a day after the MRI report is ready. He is still in and out. Sometimes he seems to pay attention, other times he seems lost. Varsha does not want to reveal to her husband about Sarah's abnormal behaviour, as he is not yet completely recovered. Sarah is showing the signs of demonic possession. She speaks in tongues and strange guttural voices; she levitates and clings to the walls of her bedroom. Rajesh, Sekhar and Bhaskar are staying together in a flat near Vivek's house. Murder mystery of Rajesh and Sekhar made the whole city in shock as they are clearly mentioned and projected as abnormal deaths caused by nonhuman or demon. When Rajesh enters his flat, he hears a deep moaning and getting nervous turns his head to the direction where he hears it from. There he sees a girl sitting on the floor with her head bent in between her legs and her hands upwards on head. Out of tremendous fear and anxiety Rajesh goes near to the girl and calls her slowly. The girl who was sitting there turned her head around until it was completely facing backward... Rajesh loses his heart and in deep shock tries to shout out loud but is unable to bring his voice out. Rajesh has been bashed around the head, had his face slashed, his body mutilated and then, finally, his torso sliced in half. He is stretched out, with his feet together and one hand on his abdomen and the other lying next to him. His head is turned slightly to one side. His eyes are wide open and staring. The eventual search party discovered a tent ripped in Sekhar's belongings--including his shoes--left behind despite the deathly cold temperatures. Following a trail of shoeless footprints that led to the woods, they soon recovered the Sekhar's body with the underwear... He had strange fatal injuries that included major skull trauma, major chest fractures, and a missing tongue. Police were alarmed to find out that what they presumed to be a corpse-like Halloween decoration hanging from a fence turned out to be an actual dead person. A bloody rock was found near the body of Sekhar. But the forensic reports revealed the hand prints on the rock and the blood was Sekhar's only. After Sekhar's death, Bhaskar is upset and afraid. He is scared even of his own shadow. Bhaskar observes the same toy at both of his friends’ dead bodies. He reminds that toy which they had seen it with Sarah and she named the toy as Chaitra... Bhaskar decides to go to Vivek's house to confirm it's the same toy or not. There he sees Sarah playing with that toy very innocently. He asks Sarah that where she was in the morning and innocently she says she stayed at home watching Doraemon as its Sunday-holiday. Varsha comes there to know what's happening. Bhaskar greets her and says her the reason for his coming to their house. Varsha feels sorry for his friends’ unnatural death and she advises him to take care of himself. Bhaskar observes the strange behaviour of Sarah and Varsha tells him the total incidents of what’s happening to them. Bhaskar asks Varsha to come with him to meet a paranormal investigator to understand what's happening with them. He decides to chase the mystery of his friends’ deaths. They meet the paranormal investigator Mithun Acharya and tell him about the horrible mysterious deaths of Rajesh and Sekhar and about the toy he saw there and about Sarah and her behaviour and about the Vivek's accident. Mithun Acharya performs exorcism to know the exact cause of mysteries. He, after some time, calls them and says that he wishes to see Vivek and Sarah once. They take him home and there he sees Sarah playing with the doll and when she saw Mithun Acharya coming, she behaves little weird. He went inside to see Vivek. He is sleeping and Varsha wakes him up. Not knowing anything that's happening, Vivek asks Varsha that what's going on. Then she tells him the entire thing that happened till that time and Vivek tried to recollect something happened prior to the accident. Mithun Acharya asks Vivek about Chaitra. Even though confused, all are seeing him out of curiosity to listen what he is going to say. Vivek confused first but gradually tried to recollect and starts saying. Chaitra was his classmate and neighborhood friend when he was doing his graduation. He was fond of writing since childhood and highly influenced to write horror stories... Once he wrote a story and after reading that Chaitra starts behaving strangely. Chaitra had an attraction developed on Vivek in her adolescent age and reads every story of his. After reading a story of him, she was inspired to play Ouija board and played. Later she started behaving strange. Vivek thought she was playing a prank. But situations made worse when Chaitra was completely preoccupied with the demonic possession and love towards Vivek. Chaitra had involved her all senses in the Ouija board and the anxiety of believing that she had been contacting spirits or demons, triggered the trance state and psychotic disorder where she started hallucinating and lost touch with reality. Knowing everything happening , Chaitra's parents decided to put her in the asylum. But it's not over. Mithun Acharya reveals that Chaitra had committed suicide and it's she who is talking regularly to Sarah. While everyone is in deep shock, Mithun comes to know that it was not Chaitra besides the multiple deaths. He sees an old painting of a woman there and asks Varsha about it. A strange fact that comes to know is Varsha who is more interested in collecting old paintings and fascinated over sculptures gets the painting as a gift by Vivek on her birthday once. Mithun senses that there is demonic presence in that painting and it is the reason for the mysterious happenings, but not Chaitra. He doesn't want to reveal it before he knows exactly what's happening. He leaves the place tying Sarah a divine knot. But he feels the eyes of the woman in the painting are haunting him. Bhaskar also leaves the place hesitantly with fear. Vivek is completely preoccupied his mind with demonic fear and is disturbed for his family's paranormal behaviour. The very night when he sleeps on his bed, Vivek feels heavy on his chest and opens his eyes. He is terribly afraid of seeing a woman's head on his chest with a teary eyes and lips and horrible terrific smile from the broken lips. Out of shock he shouts heavily but voice doesn't come out. He throws the head away and tries to get up but the headless body is sitting next to him and grabs his neck. He anyhow manages to get out from there running and enters the lift. Vivek apparently gains access to the rooftop of the house and climbs on its water tank. The rooftop is alarmed, the tank is 8-foot-high, and he manages to close the heavy lid after himself. Workers reach there to cut it open with tools to remove him. Vivek is panicked and immediately rushed to meet Mithun Acharya. Mithun, after exorcism got a clarity that the gruesome and potentially deadly concoctions in the painting induce the altered states of consciousness and out-of-body experiences. It haunts by provoking “to cast sickness into whom you will,” “to cause discord and debate,” and “to kill whom you will.” And he understands it is Varsha who is haunted and possessed. He reveals it to Bhaskar and Vivek when Vivek along with Bhaskar comes to him. They are shocked to know it because Varsha never shows any sign of demonic possession. Mithun clarifies them saying "Satan's greatest trick is convincing people it does not exist". Some see this other world and others don't. It's evil's way of creating yet another imbalance in the lives. Vivek calls Varsha's parents on Mithun's suggestion and after letting them know the weird incidents that happened, Mithun asks them about Varsha. Varsha was a toddler just like any other. She ran, played, and laughed all day, and was a treasure to her parents. Then, the unexpected happened. One morning, Varsha was running down the stairs at her home, she slipped and fell. So severe was the fall that the three-year-old was pronounced dead on the scene. But then something very unexpected happened: Varsha woke up. For another four years, they had their beautiful daughter back. In her eighth year, however, everything changed. On a regular outing to the ancient museum, Varsha's parents first became aware that the girl was behaving strangely. As soon as they reached the section of the ancient sculptures in the museum, Varsha was transfixed. She couldn’t get enough of the artifacts and sat near an ancient painting of a gruesome woman for a long time, refusing to go home with her parents. After this incident, things took a turn for the worse. Varsha became almost depressed. That picture of the “woman with haunted eyes which provoked altered consciousness with its deadly concoctions” caught her attention much. After she found the picture of the strange woman, Varsha developed her interest towards ancient paintings and sculptures and started painting in her free time. She finally fell in love with Vivek and married him. After her marriage, Varsha completely freaked her husband Vivek out by calling him Vinay sometimes. Bhaskar and Vivek are shocked after listening Varsha's flashback. They all understand the deadly concoctions in the painting seduced Varsha to involve in paranormal activities. Vivek, suddenly is alone when he comes out of his thoughts and finds no one in the room except himself and the painting. He loses his heart and stares at the painting for a while. A voice whispers suddenly that - "I am nearer to yourself than you to yourself". He turns back and Varsha is standing there. She walks towards the kitchen with a knife in her hand saying that" seeing is not acting. When you don't act, you don't see anything" When Vivek's consciousness felt that something is wrong with Bhaskar, not long after the blood has dried into the carpet, Varsha started her new painting. Then Vivek falls into a world of maniacal laughs and endless torment.