The Konkan coast is a place where beauty and dread are twins. By day, Ratnagiri’s waters shimmer blue, the palms dance, and fishing boats dot the horizon. But at night, the mangroves rise like a black cathedral. Their roots twist upward like grasping hands, the mud stinks of rot, and the tide whispers words no man wants to understand.
The villagers say the swamp is alive.
And they say it has a bride.
Devyani was her name. She was not the wealthiest girl in the village, nor the fairest, yet people said she carried something in her eyes that unsettled the soul. Stillness. Depth. A beauty that looked more like hunger than warmth.
She was betrothed to Arvind, a fisherman known for his daring. Where others turned back at darkening skies, he went forward, chasing shoals even when lightning split the horizon. “The sea respects courage,” he always said, grinning with teeth white as shells. To Devyani, he made one promise each morning as he cast off:
“Before the sun sets, I will return.”
The villagers laughed at his arrogance. But Devyani believed him. She always did.
The day it began, the sky turned sickly green. The air felt heavy, too thick to breathe. Palms bent low as though trying to crawl into the earth.
“Storm,” the elders muttered, dragging their nets ashore. “A cruel one.”
By evening, thunder cracked over the sea. Waves reared like beasts, hurling themselves against the rocks. Boats still at sea vanished into the black horizon.
But Devyani remained at the shore. Her lantern trembled in her hand, her sari whipped about by the wind, and she whispered to herself over and over:
“He will come. He promised me. He will come.”
The hours dragged. No boat appeared. The tide crept higher, foaming at her feet.
At last, she stepped into the mangroves.
The swamp sucked at her feet as she moved deeper. The roots rose around her like cages, twisted and gnarled, some shaped almost like faces twisted in silent screams. Her lantern cast long shadows, and in them, she thought she saw movement.
“Arvind!” she cried.
The echo that came back was strange—too many voices, too many mouths whispering his name from the dark. The air stank of salt and something coppery, like old blood.
Her lantern flickered. Something brushed her foot beneath the black water. She froze. Lightning ripped the sky—and in that instant she saw something in the trees: dozens of crabs clinging to the trunks, unmoving, watching her with pale eyes.
She screamed.
The villagers heard it from their huts, a cry so sharp it cut through thunder. It twisted halfway, breaking into something inhuman, before silence fell.
At dawn, they found her veil tangled in the roots, torn and soaked as if gnawed. Her lantern still burned, steady, untouched by the storm. But Devyani herself was gone.
After that night, fishermen swore the mangroves changed. The air grew heavy there, thick with a stench of wet decay. The mud showed strange markings, spirals and symbols carved deep as though by claws.
And then the sightings began.
On nights when the moon hid and the mist rolled thick, she rose from the creek. Her bridal silks clung to her body, dripping black water. Her bangles rattled softly, hollow, like bones striking bone. Her skin was pale, waxen, swollen as though drowned. And her eyes… her eyes glowed faintly with her lantern’s reflection.
That lantern swung in her hand, but its light was not light at all. It pulled men closer, like a moth dragged toward flame.
Her voice drifted through the mist, soft, pleading, endless:
“Arvind… come back to me…”
Those who heard it could not resist. One by one, they walked into the mangroves, their feet sinking into mud, their hands reaching toward her glow. Some were dragged screaming beneath the water. Others were simply never seen again.
Their boats later drifted ashore, hulls gouged with claw-marks, nets shredded like paper.
A boy of seventeen vanished first. He had dared his friends that he would call back to her voice. They found his boat two days later, its mast split in half, blood drying on the planks, but not a trace of him.
Then an old fisherman disappeared. He had lost his son years ago and said maybe Devyani was calling him to be with his boy. His boat washed ashore with both oars snapped, as though something had broken them in two.
And one night, a stranger came—some say a trader from the north. He laughed at the tale, saying ghosts were for children. He went into the mangroves at dusk with nothing but a torch. The villagers heard him scream before midnight. At dawn, they found the torch stuck upright in the mud, still burning, but no body. The mud around it was covered in spirals, as though something had written with wet fingers.
The villagers grew desperate. They began leaving coconuts, garlands, and blood sacrifices at the mangrove’s edge. The offerings were always gone by morning.
But the sightings never stopped.
They say the mangroves are not trees anymore—they are her body. The roots, her veins. The water, her blood. The mist, her breath. And when her lantern flickers in the swamp, you are not seeing fire.
You are seeing her mouth. Waiting.
Even now, the elders whisper it whenever storms roll in from the west:
“She is still searching. She will never stop. And one day, when the sea is hungry enough, she will find her groom. And when she does… the whole coast will drown in her wedding feast.”
