Bengaluru is a city that never fully sleeps. Except for the distant rumble of a truck on some road and the occasional barking of dogs, a deep silence had settled over the neighborhood.
In her room, Shravya was in a deep sleep. Dim streetlight filtered through the gaps in the window curtains, casting strange shadows on the floor. The digital clock on the bedside table glowed in red numerals: 3:23.
Suddenly, Shravya woke up. But this was no ordinary waking.
Her eyelids were still closed. Yet her mind had snapped into full wakefulness in an instant — so completely that she could clearly hear the whirring of the ceiling fan and the tick-tick of the wall clock. "Wake up, Shravya," she commanded herself.
But... her body had turned to stone!
She tried to wiggle her fingers — they wouldn't move. She tried to lift her legs — there was no strength. As if someone had tightly bound her entire body with rope, or draped her in a lead blanket — an overwhelming heaviness! Even breathing was difficult.
A cold wave of dread ran down her spine. In the dim darkness, in the corner of the room... it seemed as if someone was standing there.
A dark figure. Human? Shadow? Impossible to tell. But she felt certain it was staring directly at her. And then — whispers began in the air near her ear. Indistinct voices... an incomprehensible language... buzzing rapidly right beside her ears.
Shravya's heart was pounding so hard it seemed ready to leap from her chest. She tried to open her mouth to scream. But her voice was trapped in her throat. Her tongue wouldn't move.
"No... this isn't real... get up... get up!" she struggled within herself.
Gathering every ounce of mental and physical strength, she tried to move only the little finger of her right hand. First attempt — failed. Second attempt — failed. Third attempt... success! The moment her little finger twitched... the lead blanket vanished.
She turned to her right. Breathing deeply, drenched in sweat, Shravya sat up in bed. That invisible chain had broken. She immediately pressed the switch beside her. The room flooded with light.
She looked at the corner. No one was there. Only the clothes-drying stand and the coat hanging on it. The whispers had vanished too.
Bringing her heartbeat under control, the medical student within her was now awake.
"This is not a ghost. This is only 'Sleep Paralysis,'" she said aloud to herself. "My mind was awake, but my muscles were still in REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement sleep). That dark figure, those whispers... all hallucinations created by my own mind."
Drinking a glass of water, she pulled out her secret notebook from the bedside drawer. With trembling hands, she wrote:
Date: October 12
Time: 3:23 AM
Incident: Sleep Paralysis.
Description: Hypnagogic hallucinations. This is a completely medically explainable event. No reason to be afraid.
She closed the notebook. Reassuring herself that she had conquered fear with logic, she switched off the light and pulled her blanket back. But those whispered sounds still drifted through her mind.
The Next Day — In Class
The next morning, the darkness and terrifying experiences of the night had melted away in the harsh light of day. Shravya was sitting as always in her medical college classroom. Pen in hand, notebook open before her.
It was the Neurology class. Professor Shastri walked in with a grave expression and wrote the day's topic in large letters on the board: "Sleep Disorders."
Shravya sat up straight with interest. The professor continued:
"Students, it is fascinating how the brain responds when sleep stages are disrupted. One of the important conditions in this is — Sleep Paralysis."
At hearing that word, Shravya's skin prickled for a moment. What a coincidence! The very thing she had experienced just last night was now being taught by the professor.
The professor explained: "In this condition, the patient's mind is awake, but the body has not regained muscular control (Muscle Atonia). The patient feels an immense weight on the chest. Moreover, the brain's fear center — the 'Amygdala' — works in overdrive, causing the sensation that strangers or dark figures are present in the room."
Hearing these words, Shravya let out a long sigh of relief. A great sense of calm washed over her.
"Yes, this is what happened last night," she thought to herself. "That dark figure, those whispers... none of it was real. Just a confusion of my brain's neurotransmitters."
Several days later, that evening the college library maintained its customary silence. With exams approaching, the library was packed. Nothing was audible except the smell of old books and the hum of ceiling fans.
Shravya sat in a corner of a table, immersed in her large Anatomy book. Her concentration was so deep that the world around her had ceased to exist.
Suddenly... the atmosphere seemed to shift.
Very close to her ear, at the back of her neck — a touch of warm breath. Immediately, a deep male voice resonated in her ear. It was not indistinct. It was as if someone was standing right beside her, urgently, commandingly, saying something.
Shravya snapped her head up.
What she saw could have stopped her heart.
A little distance away, between two bookshelves, stood a man. He was certainly not a student of this college. He wore old-fashioned traditional clothing — a white dhoti and shawl. There was a deep gravity on his face.
But the most terrifying thing was... he did not look like a man of flesh and blood!
He was translucent. Like a reflection in water, or thin smoke. The row of books behind him was faintly visible through his body.
Though hundreds of people were in the library, that figure was staring unblinkingly, directly at Shravya.
"This can't be... I'm exhausted from studying..." she thought, rubbing her eyes hard. She opened them again. The figure was still there! It seemed to take one step toward her.
"Hey, Shravya!"
Suddenly someone placed a hand on her shoulder. Shravya startled, half-rising from her chair. She turned — it was her classmate Sneha.
"What's wrong?" Sneha asked, alarmed.
Shravya immediately looked back. But... between those shelves there was no one now. The translucent man had dissolved into thin air. Only empty space remained.
Sneha looked at her strangely. "What happened? Why are you staring at that empty space like you've seen a ghost? There's no one there."
Shravya felt her mouth go dry. "Oh... nothing. I was just thinking," she stammered in reply. But her hands were still trembling.
Stepping out of the library's air-conditioned atmosphere, Shravya sank onto the concrete steps outside. Though a cool evening breeze was blowing, sweat beaded on her forehead.
Her logical mind was now a nest of confusion. "What happened that night can be accepted as 'Sleep Paralysis' — it had a scientific cause. But now?" she questioned herself. "I wasn't sleeping. I was wide awake. There were people around me, there was light. Yet how did that figure appear only to me?"
As the truth dawned on her that no science book held an answer to this, her fear grew.
Just then, the phone in her bag began to vibrate. It broke her train of thought. She looked at the screen — 'Appa' was blinking on it.
Normally she would have answered on the first ring. But today she could not find the courage to press the green button. The phone rang and cut itself off.
The next moment, a voice message arrived. With trembling fingers she played it. From the phone's speaker came her father's steady, confident voice:
"Shravya, not picking up? Must be deep in studying. Good. But remember, daughter — 'A healthy mind lives only in a healthy body.' Eat properly, sleep on time. Then the mind stays healthy and no unnecessary thoughts will come..."
Hearing her father's words, tears filled Shravya's eyes.
She wanted to share all this with someone — especially her father. She wanted to cry out, "Appa, I'm frightened, I'm seeing strange figures."
But... she did not. She switched the phone off and put it in her bag.
Because she knew — her father was a man of thoroughly scientific temperament. In his eyes, ghosts, souls, and supernatural forces were all "signs of a weak mind" or "superstition."
"If I tell him the truth, he might think I've gone mad" — this fear gripped her. And so, to preserve both the science she had believed in for years and her father's trust in her, she chose silence.
Though hundreds of people surrounded her in that vast college campus, Shravya felt utterly, completely alone.
Steeling her mind, Shravya returned to her spot in the library. She had to study; exams were near. That was her stubbornness.
But the situation had worsened.
Those whispers... they simply wouldn't stop. What was once only a nighttime occurrence now relentlessly haunted her during the day. A buzzing sound, like a beehive's "Zzzz...", echoed inside and outside her ears simultaneously.
She covered her ears, but the noise didn't stop.
"Is this floating in the air? Or is it originating within the nerves of my own brain?" The confusion was pushing her to the brink of insanity.
Determined not to lose faith in her intellect, she pulled her thick 'Clinical Medicine' book toward her with trembling hands. She rapidly flipped the pages and found the chapter on "Differential Diagnosis of Auditory Hallucinations."
Her fingers traced down the list of illnesses:
1. Schizophrenia - Mental disorder.
2. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy - Seizures caused by nerve issues in the brain.
3. Brain Tumor.
4. Severe Stress/Psychosis.
Shravya began comparing her symptoms one by one with those terrifying diseases. With every line she read, her heartbeat quickened.
"Am I going crazy? Or is a tumor growing in my brain?"
The moment this thought struck, her hands shook so violently that her pen dropped onto the table with a 'clack'. People nearby turned to look. Shravya lowered her head, staring blankly at the text. Science was diagnosing the disease, but instead of offering a cure, it was only amplifying her fear.
The clock showed 2:14 at night. Outside, the entire world had sunk into deep sleep. But in Shravya's room, the table lamp still burned. Its yellow light fell on the piles of thick books spread across the desk.
The Neurology exam was the very next morning.
Shravya's eyes were burning. After eighteen consecutive hours of reading, her mind had gone numb. She pushed away the empty coffee mug and held the syllabus copy close to her eyes to read.
A few final chapters still remained. As she turned the pages, strange and unpronounceable disease names appeared:
'Marchiafava-Bignami disease'
'Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML)'...
"These are incredibly rare diseases that affect one in a million people. They haven't appeared in five years of past papers even once. Reading these now would waste time and they won't even register," she decided, closing the book aside.
"That's enough... I can't go on. Just 5 minutes... just five minutes with my eyes closed." And with that, she folded her arms on the table, rested her head, and closed her eyes.
Shravya hadn't fully fallen asleep. She was in a strange, Liminal state — neither fully awake nor fully asleep. Her body rested, but her consciousness still floated.
Suddenly, a vibration began deep within her mind.
Piercing the silence, those same whispers returned. But this time there was no fear in them, no confusion. Instead — there was care.
Before her closed eyes, the darkness parted and a brilliant light appeared.
The textbook she had just set aside, deciding not to read — its pages opened like a vision on the screen of her mind. The lines on those pages glowed with a dazzling radiance.
Among thousands of words, only three topics seemed highlighted as if with a marker:
1. Marchiafava-Bignami Disease
2. Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy – PML
3. Abducens Nerve – False Localizing Sign
The invisible voice now commanded clearly in her ear:
"Trust us... read these..."
"Hah...!"
Shravya jolted awake, breath catching in her throat. Her heart was pounding like a train speeding at a hundred kilometers per hour. Beads of sweat covered her forehead and neck.
She looked at the clock. 2:47. She had closed her eyes only half an hour ago. But it felt as if ages had passed.
Her scientific mind immediately sprang to attention. "This is just a dream," she told herself firmly. "My brain is generating bad dreams from exam stress. Those three diseases aren't even important for the exam."
But the moment her hands touched the book to close it... a strange electric current ran through her. Her inner voice (gut feeling) softly said: "No! Read it! Open that book!"
An intense battle raged within her. On one side, years of logic and science. On the other, a supernatural belief she was experiencing for the very first time.
"Fine, just once... what if what I saw was true? Better to read now than regret later."
With trembling hands she opened those pages again. Until 4:30 in the morning, setting everything else aside, she read those three topics — Marchiafava-Bignami, PML, Abducens Nerve — completely, without missing a single word.
Her logic had lost, her fear had won. Or perhaps... faith was being born.
Morning, 7:00 AM.
The early morning Bangalore sun shone over the college campus. But to Shravya, even that light was blinding. Her eyes were bloodshot. A mere three hours of sleep and a night-long internal war had drained her completely, both physically and mentally.
Her legs felt heavy as she walked from the hostel to the exam hall.
On the way, her classmates walked in groups, engrossed in last-minute discussions.
"Hey, did you read about 'Stroke'? That's definitely coming," one said.
"No way man, this time a long question on 'Epilepsy' is guaranteed," argued another.
Shravya remained silent. She had no words.
Her friend Sneha came up beside her and asked, "Hey Shravya, looking dull? Did you pull an all-nighter? Covered everything?"
Shravya simply nodded. "Hmm..." was her only reply. She didn't have the courage to tell anyone about the bizarre topics she had studied last night. If she told them, they would laugh—that fear was on one side. The embarrassment if it all turned out to be false was on the other.
As she climbed the stairs to the exam hall, only one thought swirled in her mind:
"What if... just what if... the topics those voices mentioned actually appear in the question paper? What happens then?"
She looked up at the sky.
Stepping through the exam room door, she took her seat at her designated desk. Her heartbeat accelerated once again.
---
There was pin-drop silence in the exam hall, broken only by the loud ticking of the clock.
"Tring..."
Shravya flinched at the sound of the bell. The invigilators walked down the aisles, placing the question papers face down on everyone's desks. A stack of white papers lay before her.
Shravya's hands were ice cold. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"It's just an exam... stay cool," she told herself. But her own words offered her no reassurance.
"You may look at the paper now," the invigilator signaled.
A collective "rustle..." of turning paper echoed through the hall. Shravya, too, turned her question paper over with trembling fingers.
Her eyes scanned the first question. It was a general one. She felt slightly relieved.
But, as her gaze drifted lower...
Her breath suddenly hitched. It felt as though the whole world had paused for a second!
Her eyes remained glued, wide open in shock, staring at the words on the paper. No words came out of her mouth:
Question No. 2: Abducens nerve palsy - Explain the 'False localizing sign'.
Question No. 3: What are the clinical features of Marchiafava-Bignami disease?
Question No. 6: Write a short note on PML.
"Oh my God...!"
An exclamation slipped from Shravya's mouth unexpectedly. The people next to her turned to look, but she was completely oblivious.
The vision she saw that night, those whispers, that early morning study session... it was all literally true! Those three topics were right in front of her eyes, in the form of the question paper.
This couldn't possibly be a coincidence. Mathematically, it was impossible!
Her hair stood on end. All her years of scientific logic, her skepticism—everything was now thrown into question..!??!
Shravya slowly lifted her head, fixing her gaze on the empty space of the exam hall's ceiling...
From the depths of her core, that familiar voice resonated once more. But this time it wasn't in her ear; it felt like it came from the depths of her very soul.
"Will you believe now...?"
With a strange smile, she picked up her pen with a trembling hand.
She prepared to write the answers. But she knew—this was not just an exam, it was merely the beginning of a new and mysterious journey.
To be continued...
