Hairpin Nine ch 3

The nightstand vibration stopped, leaving a cold ring on my palm. I sat up in the stale mosquito-coil room, chest tight. It wasn’t a dream I could shake off with morning tea.
By afternoon at the office, the screen glare felt flat. Harshika rolled her chair back. “So. Wayanad loop or direct resort?”
We pulled up maps. Edakkal caves, mist trails. We argued good-naturedly over the plan.
“Did you charge your camera?” Harshika tapped her pen. “We need raw shots, not phone grain.”
“Yeah, charging it today. Ready tomorrow,” I said, though my skin felt thin, like I was reading a script upside down.
Next day, evening shift ending. Packing the bag. Zipping, checking the lens cap, checking the spare battery, confirming three times. Hands moving like a mechanic’s.
Mysore station platform smell—diesel, warm iron, wet ballast.
Phone buzzes. I swipe it open.
“Arun... man, sorry,” Harshika’s voice cuts through, flat and tired. “Manager pulled me in for a P1 hotfix. Can't make it. You go ahead.”
My mouth forms Huh? What, Harshika— before my brain catches up. The exact script. I swallow the dry taste, hitch the bag higher, and board.
The bus rolls out into the dark Ghat approach. Outside, trees line up in the grey fog—the exact cadence of pine and bamboo I had seen behind closed eyelids.
Across the aisle, a small girl in a pink frock leans over the armrest, offering a half-broken Marigold biscuit, eyes wide: “I want to take so many photos, play in the garden, and run through the tea bushes!”
Mimicking her in a light, half-mocking echo, I say, “Oh, oh, nice. Oh, nice.”
She smiles, showing a missing front tooth. “You got camera uncle? You will click me?”
My fingers tighten on my bag strap. My camera is sitting packed in the bag, fully charged. I haven't told her that.
Then—red tail-lights from a mangled motorcycle smear the wet road. A soft hiss of brakes, a gentle bump as our front bumper touches the metal frame. Down to the millimeter, matching the dark behind my eyelids.
My blood runs cold. I stand up, step out into the mist.
Murugan yanks at the yellow caution tape strung across the motorcycle accident spot, face dark: “Hey! Did you log the number?! Where are you even going with that bag in the dark, who do you think you are?!”
My voice shakes: “Sorry, sir—accidentally did it, sorry, sir! Already logged my number with the constable, sir—”
He glares, yellow tape fluttering like a trapped wing in the white headlamps.
I don't turn back toward the bus. I walk past the edge, down toward the lower tiers where hairpin nine curves under the vertical rock cut.
Out of the grey wall of mist, a figure turns.
Shoulders dropping, coat catching the damp wind, lips parted in a wide, skin-stretching grin that doesn't reach the dark sockets above it, the voice comes out warm, heavy with home dialect—my mother’s voice, cutting through the high-altitude fog:

“Va, kanna, va.”

My lips part before the weight hits my chest, breath ghosting white in the dark. ...Amma.

07:15 AM.

Rain-slick asphalt looping down from the hairpin-seven switchback. Thick ghat mist plastered the pine needles, heavy and gray. Murugan’s boot snagged a root; his fingers brushed a charcoal-gray strap caked in red silt. He squinted at it, frowning. “Wait... haven’t I seen this bag back somewhere?” Beside him, the constable stepped forward, flicking open a lighter for a cigarette. A dense, wet wall of rot hit the damp air. The flame dipped toward the vertical drop, the constable choked, slamming his hand against the rock face, crying out “Amme!” into the drop. Murugan rushed to the edge. His eyes locked onto the drop. Just ten feet below, wedged hard against the outer stone ledge where the tier sheared off, Arun lay broken in the silt. The DSLR was strapped tight to his chest, lens cap missing. Where his eyes should have been, the hollow bone was clean, smooth, weeping nothing—locked on a wide, empty stare upward. The tiny green LED on the body blinked once. Twice. Murugan reached down, boots locked to the rim, and tapped the view-toggle. The screen flickered blue against the daylight silt. No video list, no playhead—just a single static thumbnail captured at 03:42 AM: the lens pressed flush against wet silt, framing a pair of cyanic, bloodless bare feet standing flush against the mud right above the frame edge. Murugan let go of the strap. The screen stayed lit in the damp gloom, glowing blue against the grey silt, waiting for the battery to die.