The Arrival

Hearing the door being knocked, Ryan wonders who could be that late at night. The beads of sweat on his forehead begin dropping down his face like bullets. Gathering all the courage he has, he walks up to the door and with slight hesitation, opens the door. As he opens the door, he is shocked to see his ex-girlfriend, Sarah at the door, For a moment, he stands there, but a bit confused, not knowing how to react. He had invited her, but he did not think that she would actually attend this wedding.

Ryan then courteously asks her to come in after he realizes that he has kept her standing outside for more than a couple of minutes. In the next few moments, there is a kind of awkwardness that spreads across the room, as both of them stand blankly in front of each other. Breaking the Silence, Ryan asks Sarah to go up to the first floor where she can freshen up and get some sleep just like the others.

Agreeing, Sarah wishes him good night and heads towards the stairs. She starts walking up the stairs and starts feeling extremely fatigued, blaming it onto long journey to get to the house. She keeps her head down and keeps walking upstairs. After a few minutes, she starts feeling a sharp pain in her diaphragm. When she stops, she looks up to see how much longer she has to go. But then, a grim expression takes over. There were only two flights of stairs from ground floor to the first floor where her room was. She realizes that she has been climbing the same stairs for the past five minutes. At which point, she starts trembling in fear.

All of a sudden, while she stands there in the loop of the infinite staircase, her legs give out and she violently drops to the ground. At this moment, she feels an ice-cold breeze push past her hair, almost as if it were whispering to her. On concentrating further, she realizes that there was a voice she can hear, a voice murmuring something to her as she painfully sits up on her knees.

“18 years, my wait is almost over,” the voice whispers as the breeze hits her face once more.

Sarah's eyes close as she begins to take deep breaths. The breeze stops and there is a solid and ominous silence that surrounds her. Hearing something drop on the staircase, Herbert ashes his cigarette and runs down the first few steps when he sees Sarah on the floor slouched over her knees.

He immediately holds her and starts patting her on her cheeks. She shows little sobriety, so he lifts her up and carries her up the next flight of stairs and lays her down, and runs to bring a bottle of water from his room. As he sprinkles a few drops of water on her face, Sarah wakes up with a jerk. When Herbert sees her open her eyes, he asks her what happened. Sarah looks at him blankly for a few seconds, and then tells him that she thinks she just fainted due to exhaustion. He escorts her to her room and then goes downstairs to Ryan's room and tells him what just happened.

He then asks Ryan why he had invited her even though she is his ex-girlfriend. He tells him that he did not expect her to turn out for the wedding because he had invited her just out of courtesy. He tells him about how he had a tough time breaking up with her, especially since he was already seeing Christine secretly. Things between him and Sarah had always been very hard. Even the simplest things were become tasks when left up to the both of them. With Christine, Ryan says things were much more relaxed and easier. Everything seemed to just makes sense when it came to her and that's how he knew she was the one.

Sarah comes back down in her night clothes ready to hit the bed soon. She feels a little drained, but is still unsure whether she should tell anyone what happened to her on the staircase a little while ago. Looking at her face, lightly pale, Ryan calls up to her and asked them to get Sarah some water. As she gets it, she gulps down on the water as if she were severely dehydrated.

Looking at the time, Ryan asked her how she managed to reach the house, especially since there was no running public transport. Explaining herself, Sarah tells them that her bus to the town got delayed, due to which she reached the stand at around 11:30 at night. She then had to ride to the centre of the town from an old man who said he was heading that way. After which she simply walked down to their house. Finding it a little strange, Ryan asks her,

“So you're saying that you had to ride to the town centre with an old man on the road? Some random old man? Did you ask him who he was?”

“I forgot to ask him who he was. It was late at night. So I didn't really want him to take back his offer. I just got on when he said he could drop me halfway. But I did notice one thing. He had something written on the side of his fuel tank, Jeff, is what it was, I guess. I couldn’t be sure,” Sara replies.

Hearing that name, everyone in the room goes silent. They start looking at each other, and then at Sarah, who continues gulping down the water from the jug placed in front of her. She then asks Ryan what was so special about the man named Jeffrey.

Herbert tells her the story which he had told the others earlier. He tells her about how his body was found burnt among his crops in the middle of the field the year after the incident with the woman. Sarah passing it all off as folktales, begins to laugh, telling the others that she does not believe any of this story. All, while having a sense of fear creep up their spine.

The clock strikes three o'clock and Ryan suddenly realizes that his friend, Oscar, must be about to reach immediately. He puts on his coat and asked if anyone is willing to accompany him to the airport. Hearing him mention the bus stand, which was around five and a half miles away. A wave of fear kills the room’s energy as everyone goes silent again. Herbert, on the other hand, begins to worry and asks Ryan not to leave the house so late at night, especially on All Souls Eve. Herbert warns Ryan about All Souls eve being the night of the crimson bride. He tells him to tell his friend to stay back at the lounge at the airport for a few hours until daybreak, after which he himself will go and bring him.

Ryan is adamant about not leaving his friend at the airport alone, and so he tells Herbert that he will go even if it means he has to go alone. Understanding the risk involved and the importance of the task at hand, Herbert agrees to go along with him and pick up Oscar from the bus stand. Hearing this, Ryan gets excited, picks up his mobile phone and rings Oscar. The call disconnects automatically due to being out of the network area. Finding this strange, Ryan tells Herbert how bad it would look on their behalf if they left him alone in a place he was coming to for the first time.

Sarah goes back up to her room while Ryan and Herbert Get into the car, ready to drive off to the bus stand, to the thick blanket of fog everywhere.

“Yes, come to me,” a woman is heard whispering through the darkness outside.

“Did you hear that, son?” Herbert asks with his voice quivering.

“Come on, uncle. You're just hearing things now,” Ryn says as he starts the car.