His Inconvenient Bride | ✔️

| xlix: the cabin in the woods |

How?

"It was an adrenaline rush I guess," I answered, "Just hang in there a little longer," I pacified him. I had run a lot that day so there was no way I remembered how I reached that place. It was not like I had planned to go there beforehand.

It was daytime and I had no recollection of the last time they had been here since everything was dark. I had no idea where the cabin could be, but I knew that it was deep in the woods.

"Look for some polished area," I said over the wocky tocky. "As I could recall, there was something beneath the floorboards, something underground. So look for that,"

The search went on, nobody really paid attention to the time. I kept on marking the woods as we went on searching since we had to return back as well.

The heat grew as the sun was at its peak, bringing humidity as well. We were laden in sweat, yet our spirits did not die down. My feet had gone numb due to all the walking and my head hurt due to the stitches but I had to do it for the sake of Ruhi.

I stopped walking when I felt my phone vibrate in my jeans. I took out her phone and noticed that it was Vihaan calling.

"Hello?" I greeted him.

"We found it," he answered, "and so did the other teams in the other cities." I could hear him pant as he too had been moving for way too long in the jungle.

And that was also when my wocky tocky started to make noise. "We found it— team C." The answer came. Oh, thank lord. I looked heavenwards and offered a small prayer in relief.

"We found it too," I told him. "I will call you later."

Taking the wocky tocky closer to my mouth, I said, "All the teams head back to the meeting point. We are all going there together. Team C, head back to the meeting place and please accurately mark the directions."

After putting out the instructions, we started walking back to our meeting spot. It took us an hour to return back to our meeting spot, the common spot in the forest where the teams had divided and moved to separate ways.

My team was the second one to reach. We waited for team B— they arrived after fifteen minutes.

With no further discussion, all the teams followed team C's trail. The way to that cabin was sloppy, with wet ground. The route to the cabin was mildly steep, making each one of us careful in our steps.

"Shay, tell me again, how did you even reach that place?" Pranav, who held onto my hand as we carefully walked down the slope, asked me for the umpteenth time.

"Things would've been so easier if I just remembered, wouldn't it?" I mocked him, internally cursing my fate. The path again led us deeper into the woods. A few of the officers held onto mashals to evade the wild animals. Leopards were wildly popular in these woods and none of us had planned on becoming their meal for the day. In no sooner than forty-five minutes, we had reached our destination.

When I looked at that cabin, an inaudible gasp left my lips. The place was nothing like my dreams yet it looked like it was. If only it wasn't burnt down, it would have easily coincided with my dreams. Even without my instructions, everyone had started searching the place.

But I just stood there, looking at the house of horrors.

I could not remember how many times I had seen this very cabin in my dreams and how much that had scared me to death. I felt the cabin was staring back at me, challenging me to come back in and go through all the trauma all over again.

The cabin-house stared at me and gave me a sinister smile as if the place knew that I had seen something, something I struggled to remember.

I felt like I was suddenly in a trance and my subconscious mind slowly led me inside the house of horrors. The floor creaked as I slowly walked in, the shiver running down my spine. Everything was burnt down, everything looked shabby due to the fire that had occurred eight years ago. There were cobwebs that hung at the corner of the walls, nothing was really in there.