The shrine with no name
The Shrine with No Name
A Horror Short Story
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
The Shrine with No Name
There is a tale passed in hushed voices around fire pits in the Thar Desert. A tale that grandmothers refuse to repeat after dusk. A tale with no beginning… and no clear end.
Somewhere near the border of forgotten sands and unclaimed wind, there stands a shrine no map shows. Not because it is lost—but because it was erased.
They say it was once a resting place of a pious man. But over time, something else took residence.
A silence.
A hunger.
A shrine with no name.
The Journey of Hamid Raza
Hamid Raza was a schoolteacher from Umerkot. Widowed, father of a mute son, he lived a quiet life. But when his child fell gravely ill—seized nightly by violent fits and visions of burning sand and voices from under the bed—Hamid grew desperate.
Doctors failed him. Imams shook their heads. Then, an old woman with cataract-filled eyes whispered:
“Go to the shrine. It takes, but it gives.”
Hamid left at twilight. He followed goat tracks that dissolved into dust, walked until even his shadow seemed unsure, and found it.
A crumbling dome of sandstone, glowing faintly under a moonless sky. No minaret. No nameplate. Only a blind fakir sitting cross-legged outside, stroking a prayer bead that had no end.
Hamid approached. The fakir did not speak. He simply raised his empty eyes and tilted his head as though listening to a whisper only he could hear.
Hamid fell to his knees.
“My son,” he wept, “is dying. Please. Save him.”
The fakir extended a hand, touching Hamid’s forehead. A strange chant followed—like Quranic verse, but twisted. Warped. Half-remembered.
He tied a black thread around Hamid’s wrist.
“Your son will rise with dawn,” the fakir rasped.
“But something will be taken.”
The Price
Hamid returned home before sunrise. His boy sat upright, smiling for the first time in months. He spoke. Laughed. Ate like a lion.
Hamid wept in joy. But as he embraced his son, the boy asked,
“Abba… who are you?”
Hamid froze.
And from that moment, his son never again recognized him.
Each day, he grew brighter and stronger—while Hamid became a stranger in his own home.
By the end of the month, his son called a neighbor "Ammi." By the second month, he forgot Urdu altogether. By the third, he screamed when Hamid entered the room.
Hamid had asked for life.
And the shrine had taken belonging.
Whispers from the Sand
Many others followed.
A woman whose fiancé died in a road accident—after visiting the shrine, he returned to life... but refused to look her in the eye and never slept again.
A man who asked to become rich—who woke to gold in his cupboards, but whose face was no longer reflected in any mirror.
A childless couple who came back with twins—who never blinked, never aged, and whispered to each other in a language no one else knew.
Truth or Folklore?
Skeptics laugh. They say it’s desert madness. Heatstroke fables. But somewhere, deep in Sindh, GPS still fails in a patch of land where no bird flies, where no mosque calls the Azaan, and where barefoot footprints vanish mid-step.
They say on windless nights, you can hear someone reciting verses backwards, and see a faint dome glowing in the sand.
But be warned:
Every gift from the shrine comes at the cost of something irreplaceable.
And what it takes... you may never realize until it’s gone.
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
🕯️ For more unforgettable horror, folklore, fiction, and mystic narratives from the subcontinent and beyond, visit:
👉 farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Read. Reflect. Return.
Because the next story might already know your name.
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