13 Steps to the Rooftop

Armaan Lahiri

The rain came early that year. Not the lazy monsoon drizzle that made the city dreamy—but a sharp, relentless downpour that beat against the windowpanes of hostel room 3C like an accusation. Rishi Banerjee sat cross-legged on his metal cot, headphones dangling around his neck, eyes scanning a half-scribbled cheat sheet for his thermodynamics viva. The fluorescent tube above flickered in protest, then stabilized, bathing the cracked walls in pale blue.
It was past midnight, and the corridor was quiet—eerily so. Even the usual hum of snoring from room 3B had gone still. That’s when he noticed it. A folded paper slipped neatly under his door.
He frowned. No footsteps. No knock. Just silence and that single, precise message in bold, handwritten letters:
“At exactly 2:13 AM, take 13 steps to the rooftop. Don’t look back.”
Rishi chuckled dryly. Typical hostel prank. Some bored senior trying to mess with his head before finals. He crumpled the note and tossed it into the corner dustbin. But a splinter of unease stayed lodged in his mind. Who would go through the trouble of writing a message like that? And why 13 steps? Why 2:13?
He tried to shake it off, turned up his music, and forced himself back into equations and entropy. But at 1:57 AM, the power tripped for a second. Everything went dark. Then it blinked back.
And his door creaked—just slightly.
He jumped up, heart thudding. There was no one outside. Just the dim corridor light flickering again, casting shadows that seemed to stretch longer than they should.
He locked the door, double-checked it. But sleep didn’t come. When the wall clock ticked to 2:13, Rishi was wide awake. Despite himself, he counted.
One. Two. Three…
Thirteen seconds.
Nothing.
The next morning, Rishi told his roommate Ayan, who had been away at home due to a family emergency. Ayan laughed over video call, called it “stress-induced hallucination,” and told him to get out more. Maybe eat a samosa.
But that night, another note arrived. This time, the handwriting was messier, angrier.
“You didn’t listen. Second chance. 2:13. 13 steps. Don’t look back.”
This time, Rishi kept the note. He stared at it as though willing it to dissolve. Maybe it was the anxiety of finals. Maybe it was the rain. But by 2:10, he found himself outside his room in track pants, barefoot, the corridor cold beneath his feet.
He glanced behind. Empty.
He whispered the numbers to himself, almost mocking the absurdity of it.
One. Two. Three…
By the tenth step, the air felt heavier. The final bend toward the rooftop staircase loomed. The eleventh step landed on the first stair. The twelfth on the next. At the thirteenth, something changed.
A low humming sound began—barely audible, like wind stuck in a pipe. He froze. Looked behind him.
Nothing.
Then he turned his head forward.
And the door to the rooftop—normally locked with a heavy rusted latch—was wide open.
Inside was darkness. Complete. A kind of darkness that felt like it wasn’t waiting, but watching.
Rishi’s breath quickened. His fingers trembled. Every rational part of him screamed to turn and run, to lock himself in and forget this ever happened. But there was something under his skin now. Like an itch he couldn’t reach.
He took one step toward the open rooftop door.
That’s when he heard it.
Footsteps. Not his own. Behind him.
Measured. Heavy. Wet.
He spun around.
The corridor was empty.
But the trail of muddy footprints wasn’t.
They started from the door of room 3B—unoccupied for the past three years—and ended just inches behind him.
His heart lurched into his throat. He stumbled back toward his room, hands trembling so violently he couldn’t fit the key into the lock.
When he finally got in, he slammed the door shut and backed away.
Then he looked at the dustbin.
The crumpled note from the first night was gone.
In its place was a fresh one. Folded neatly.
This time, it read:
“You’re already halfway through. Looking back won’t help now.”
Rishi didn’t sleep. Not a blink. He sat with his back against the headboard, a cricket bat gripped between his hands like some medieval weapon of last resort. His laptop sat open, YouTube playing an old comedy sketch on loop with the volume low—as if the sound of laughter could keep something else at bay.
By 5 AM, the building stirred. Water splashed in the common bathroom. Someone coughed down the hallway. The normalcy of dawn made the night feel like a fever dream.
He went straight to the warden’s office after freshening up. Mr. Sharma, the warden, was in his sixties with a perpetually angry face and the breath of a long-dead cigarette. Rishi recounted everything: the notes, the footsteps, the rooftop door.
Mr. Sharma leaned back in his squeaky chair, eyes narrowing. “You’re Banerjee, right? Mechanical engineering?”
Rishi nodded, surprised.
“Room 3C… Wasn’t there another boy in that room before you?” the warden muttered, mostly to himself. “Tall boy… Prakash or Prateek?”
Rishi’s skin prickled. “I don’t know. I got the room during first year.”
Mr. Sharma waved it off. “You boys are too stressed these days. All these horror stories and Instagram reels are rotting your brains. No one goes to the rooftop. It’s locked. Always has been. You must’ve dreamt it.”
“But the lock—” Rishi started.
“Dreamt. It.” Sharma’s voice had finality. “You want to switch rooms? Fine. File a request. Otherwise, go study.”
Back in his room, Rishi found Ayan’s side of the wardrobe open. Nothing missing—just slightly rearranged. He was sure he hadn’t opened it.
He examined the door. Still locked from the inside.
Was he sleepwalking?
No. He remembered it all. The open rooftop, the muddy footsteps, the note in the bin.
He walked over to the dustbin. The latest note was still there. Folded. Plain. Silent.
Rishi pulled out his phone and took a picture of the handwriting. Then he scanned it with a handwriting recognition tool—just to see if it matched any of his own digital notes or writing samples. It didn’t.
The app, however, returned something strange: “Handwriting consistent with male, estimated age 19–22, non-dominant hand.” Then a footnote: “Possible duplication.”
Duplication?
He tossed the phone aside, heart thudding again.
By late evening, Rishi tried to distract himself with classwork. But curiosity itched. He walked down to the old hostel archives beside the mess, dusty and ignored.
A frail, bespectacled man named Gopal sat at the desk, reading a Bengali detective novel. When Rishi asked for access to old student room allotment records, Gopal barely looked up.
“Why? You’re shifting rooms?”
“No… just research. For a short story.”
That got a nod. Writers were considered only slightly less mad than engineers.
Gopal shuffled through files and pulled out a bound register. “3C… yes. One second.”
He pointed to an entry from three years ago.
“Room 3C – Pratik Sen – Admitted: July 2021 – Status: DEPARTED”
“Departed?” Rishi asked.
Gopal squinted. “Means he left college.”
“No mention of transfer or drop-out?”
“No. But I remember something odd… they cleared out that room one morning without warning. Heard the boy went home. Never came back.”
Rishi’s throat went dry.
He took a photo of the entry.
That night, there was no note under the door.
But at 2:13 AM, the power tripped again for exactly thirteen seconds.
When the light returned, Rishi found a faint chalk mark on his door.
A single line. Vertical.
Like someone had started counting.
One.
The next day, Rishi skipped class. He walked across the campus to the civil engineering department. Found a friend, Megha, who owed him a favor.
“I need the original blueprints of the hostel. The old design before it was renovated,” he said.
She looked at him like he was insane. “Why?”
“I think… I think there’s something hidden between rooms. A wall or a space that shouldn’t exist.”
To her credit, she didn’t ask more. By lunch, she handed over a scanned copy of the 2017 design. Rishi laid it out in the library behind a stack of books.
His finger traced the layout. Room 3B. Room 3C. The rooftop stairwell.
And something else.
A narrow vertical shaft between 3B and 3C. Unlabeled. No door. No mention.
But it was there.
He took out his hostel keys, went back, and knocked on the door of 3B.
No answer.
He knocked harder.
Then louder.
The door creaked open.
No one inside.
Just dust. Peeling paint. A single bedframe with no mattress. And the unmistakable smell of damp decay.
On the far wall, faintly visible under the grime, were tally marks.
Twelve of them.
In chalk.
And one more—fresher—etched in blood red.
Thirteen.
Rishi backed out.
He didn’t know what was behind that shaft.
But he knew what would happen next.
Tonight, at 2:13, someone—or something—would try again.
That evening, Rishi sealed his door with strips of masking tape—across the latch, the corners, even along the lower edge near the floor. He snapped pictures from every angle. If someone or something entered, he’d know.
He placed his phone on a tripod, angled it at the door, and hit record. Then he slid under his bedsheet, heart pounding beneath layers of false calm. His roommate Ayan still hadn’t returned, and the silence inside 3C had a heartbeat of its own.
By 1:45 AM, Rishi was wide awake.
By 2:00, sweat slicked his palms.
At exactly 2:13 AM, the fan stopped spinning.
The tube light fizzled out.
And then—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Three knocks. Not on his door.
On his window.
His third-floor window.
The knock came again. Sharp. Measured.
Rishi rose slowly, grabbing his phone. Its screen was blank, recording. He tiptoed to the window, holding his breath.
Outside was the steel balcony ledge, rain-soaked and shining. No sign of anyone. Nothing to knock with. No place to stand.
He shone his phone torch.
Then froze.
There were handprints.
Two muddy palms pressed flat against the glass from the outside. Long fingers. Unnaturally long. The kind of imprint that doesn’t fade quickly.
Rishi stumbled back, gasping. And that’s when he saw it—his door. The tape was intact.
But another note had slipped beneath it, this time sealed in plastic against the damp.
He opened it with trembling fingers.
“Room 3B was the first. Room 3C is the last. The shaft is not empty. It listens. It remembers.”
The handwriting had changed. It was jagged, aggressive, as if written in haste—or madness.
He opened his camera gallery and reviewed the recording.
The footage showed a still door. No movement. No knock. No light changes.
Then, at 2:13:06, the video glitched.
Just for a split second.
A single frame.
He paused it.
And there, in that one frozen frame, was a boy’s silhouette.
Standing inside the room.
Next to Rishi’s bed.
Staring directly into the camera.
His face wasn’t visible. Just the outline, hair matted, head slightly tilted—like a curious animal.
Rishi dropped the phone.
He didn’t scream. He couldn’t.
He stared around the room, heart hammering.
It was empty.
But he didn’t feel alone.
The next morning, the palm prints were gone.
Wiped clean.
So was the note.
So was the recording.
It had vanished from his gallery as if it had never existed.
Rishi rushed back to the library to review the blueprint again. That shaft between 3B and 3C—it was a service duct, originally meant for wiring and plumbing. Never completed. Never opened.
He printed the design, folded it, and made his way to the oldest resident in the hostel—Mishra Da, a postgraduate in physics, known for his conspiracy theories and obsession with ghost particles.
Mishra took one look at the paper and paled.
“They sealed that shaft in 2020. After… what happened.”
“What did happen?”
Mishra hesitated. “There was a boy in 3B. Pratik Sen. He stopped attending classes. Started talking to himself. Said there was someone living between the walls. Said he could hear breathing. At first, people laughed. Then he vanished.”
“Vanished how?”
“One morning, his bed was empty. Door locked from inside. Windows bolted. But he was gone. No trace. Just a scratch on the wall.”
“What kind of scratch?”
“Like a number. A count. We thought it was nonsense. But the warden shut down that room. You’re in 3C now?”
Rishi nodded.
Mishra’s voice dropped. “Then you’re next.”
Rishi’s skin went cold.
Mishra leaned closer. “That space between the walls… it’s not a void. It’s a memory. And you’re waking it up.”
Later that night, Rishi made his decision.
He couldn’t wait for 2:13 again. He couldn’t bear another knock or note or glitch in the dark.
He had to see what was inside the shaft.
He borrowed a crowbar from the maintenance cupboard and, heart hammering, entered Room 3B.
The tallies on the wall were still there. Some older. One fresher. A few partially smudged. He counted again.
Thirteen.
He took a deep breath and approached the wall marked on the blueprint—the one adjacent to his own room.
He knocked. It felt… hollow.
With one last exhale, he wedged the crowbar into a cracked edge near the floor and pulled.
The plaster crumbled.
Then the bricks.
Dust choked the air.
And beyond the debris—
darkness.
A vertical shaft. Narrow. About four feet wide.
And inside it—
A ladder.
An old iron ladder bolted into the wall, descending into shadows.
Rishi lowered his phone’s torchlight.
Something flickered.
Movement?
A reflection?
No.
A face.
Watching him from just below the ladder.
Eyes wide. Too wide.
And smiling.
Not with lips.
With the entire face.
Then the lights cut out again.
Exactly 2:13 AM.
Darkness. Not the kind your eyes adjust to, but the absolute, crushing kind that eats the air and hums with silence. Rishi stood frozen, the crowbar still in his hand, his phone torch flickering before going black like everything else.
A metallic creak echoed from within the shaft.
The ladder.
Something was moving.
Climbing.
Up.
He staggered back, stumbling into the empty bedframe behind him. The crowbar slipped from his fingers with a loud clang. In the deafness that followed, Rishi could hear it—each groan of the iron rung as pressure shifted. One by one. Something was rising, slowly and deliberately.
His instincts screamed to run, but his legs wouldn’t move. He reached blindly for his phone, fingers shaking, finally finding the power button. It turned on. Barely. 6% battery.
The torch flicked back to life. He aimed it at the shaft. It was empty.
The ladder stretched down into shadows.
Nothing there.
But the final rung at the top was vibrating ever so slightly.
He slammed the opening shut with a broken cupboard door, dragged the rusted bedframe over it, and bolted out of Room 3B.
He didn’t sleep. He didn’t return to his own room.
Instead, he paced the corridor until sunrise, listening for any sound behind the walls—whispers, tapping, breathing. There was nothing.
The next morning, Mr. Sharma confronted him.
“Why was Room 3B unlocked?”
Rishi stared at him. “Why was it sealed in the first place?”
The warden’s face twisted. “Because a boy lost his mind and carved open a wall to find a ghost. Because people like you come here, dig up things best left buried. You think you’re smarter than everyone else?”
“I think something is living inside this building,” Rishi snapped.
Mr. Sharma’s eyes darkened. “Then pray it doesn’t remember you.”
He walked away, leaving Rishi with more questions and the dull ache of fear creeping beneath his skin like a fever.
Rishi skipped classes again. He roamed the campus in a daze, tracing the outer structure of the hostel building. He reached the back, where moss had taken over the concrete, and saw something odd: a sealed cement panel, square-shaped, set awkwardly between two pillars—right where the shaft would end underground.
He clicked a picture. The cement was newer than the surrounding walls.
That night, he returned to his room.
The door was untouched.
No note.
No mark.
But on his desk, placed neatly atop his open thermodynamics notebook, was a single black thread, coiled like a dead worm.
Rishi stared at it for minutes before touching it.
It was soaked.
Not with rain.
With blood.
The power stayed on that night. But Rishi didn’t wait for 2:13. He brewed strong tea, armed himself with the crowbar again, and returned to Room 3B before midnight.
This time, he didn’t hesitate.
He dragged the bed aside, lifted the board, and stared into the shaft.
Still.
Empty.
He slipped in, one leg at a time, hands gripping the cold rungs of the ladder.
Each step down echoed.
Seven rungs.
Ten.
Thirteen.
At the fourteenth, his foot landed on solid ground.
He was standing inside the vertical shaft—barely wide enough for him to breathe freely. The walls were rough brick. The air was damp and smelled of something old, like a cupboard that hadn’t been opened in decades.
He aimed his phone around.
And saw them.
On the wall opposite the ladder were names—etched into the brick with something sharp.
“PRATIK SEN – 2021”
“RAVI MEHTA – 2019”
“ARUN BHATIA – 2017”
“TARUN CHAKRABORTY – 2015”
All former residents of Room 3B or 3C. All presumed to have dropped out, gone missing, or “departed.”
All dead?
Before he could finish the thought, his light caught something else—a mirror. Old, cracked, hanging on the opposite wall.
And in that mirror—
Rishi saw himself.
But not quite.
The reflection stared back with his face. But the eyes were different—sunken, hollow, and furious. The lips moved, but his mouth didn’t.
The reflection whispered: “You’ve already taken the 13 steps. Now take the last.”
He spun around.
The wall behind him was gone.
There was a tunnel.
And at its end—
a faint red glow.
Something waited in that light.
Something that had been calling him all along.
The tunnel was silent. Not the peaceful kind, but the dreadful silence of something biding its time. The red glow at the end flickered like a dying ember, just enough to suggest depth, danger, and some terrible promise.
Rishi’s feet moved of their own accord. Each step echoed off the narrow brick walls like the tick of a clock counting down. His breath rasped, loud in the enclosed space. The air was metallic—like rusted iron and dried blood. The crowbar felt heavy in his hand.
The mirror’s words still echoed:
“You’ve already taken the 13 steps. Now take the last.”
Was this the 14th? The final step down into something no one had returned from?
At the tunnel’s end, the bricks gave way to an arched cavity, and beyond it—a circular chamber, carved deep beneath the building. The red glow came from an old electric bulb hanging by a frayed wire, swaying ever so slightly.
On the walls were more tally marks. Hundreds of them. Some drawn with chalk. Others carved with fingernails. And one word repeated beneath them:
“LISTEN.”
In the center of the room sat an old chair, bolted to the floor. A tape recorder rested on it—vintage, reel-to-reel, dusty but intact.
Rishi stared at it.
Next to the recorder was a sealed envelope. His name written on it in the same jagged handwriting.
His hands shook as he opened it.
Inside:
“Play the tape. Or stay here forever.”
He turned the recorder on.
It crackled. The reel spun.
Then a voice.
Low. Familiar.
His own.
“If you’re hearing this… I’ve already crossed over.”
Rishi stumbled back.
The voice continued, perfectly mimicking his tone, cadence, even his breathing. But the words were foreign, as if spoken by someone else inhabiting his voice.
“It doesn’t want you to die. It wants you to remember. It feeds on memory—on guilt, denial, obsession. Every resident who vanished… they left behind parts of themselves here. Pieces of thought, of fear, of confusion. The shaft collects them. It stores them. It grows stronger each year.”
Rishi’s skin prickled.
“But I’m not like the others. I saw it too soon. I wrote the notes myself. I left them under the door hoping I’d listen. But I never did. Not until it was too late. Not until the 13th step.”
The tape hissed.
“You can still return. But only if you answer this: What was the thing you buried so deep that even you forgot it?”
The recorder stopped.
The red light blinked out.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
And from behind Rishi came the first sound in minutes—
a breath.
Slow. Measured. Inhaled just inches from his ear.
He spun around. The tunnel was gone.
There was only wall.
Sealed.
He slammed the crowbar against it. Once. Twice. The brick wouldn’t budge.
Something brushed his shoulder.
He turned again.
In the darkness, a shape emerged.
Not quite a person.
Not quite a shadow.
It shimmered in and out of vision, as if undecided about whether to exist.
Then it spoke.
In his mother’s voice.
“You never told anyone what happened that night at the station.”
Rishi collapsed to his knees.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no—don’t.”
But the chamber began to shift. The walls pulsed, the air throbbed, and the voice returned—this time, as Ayan.
“You pretended you didn’t see him fall. You lied.”
And then, in the voice of Pratik Sen—though Rishi had never heard him speak:
“You’re not the first liar. Just the next one.”
The tallies on the wall began to glow red, one by one, until they formed a complete circle around him.
Then silence.
Until a new voice spoke.
His own.
“Answer the question. Or stay.”
He screamed.
“I WAS SCARED! I THOUGHT HE’D SURVIVE! I WAS ONLY SEVENTEEN—”
The room went still.
And then—
A crack appeared in the wall.
A fissure. Widening.
He grabbed the crowbar and smashed at it, the bricks giving way like paper now.
Light poured in.
A way out.
He crawled through.
And emerged—gasping, bleeding, trembling—
onto the rooftop.
Back on the hostel roof.
The wind howled. The rain began again.
The rooftop door slammed shut behind him.
Locked.
But he was out.
He was free.
Or so he thought.
Until he looked down at his chest.
Where the chalk mark had returned.
Two lines.
Tomorrow would be the third.
The rain had washed the city clean, but Rishi felt filthier than ever. He stood there on the rooftop, clothes soaked through, breathing hard. The night air slapped his face, and for the first time in days, he could see the city skyline. Familiar. Tangible. Real.
But the mark on his chest—two vertical lines drawn in chalk—burned like a curse.
He checked his reflection in the rooftop’s glass water tank. The lines weren’t on his skin. They weren’t physical.
But he saw them. That was enough.
He ran down the stairs, barefoot, dripping. The corridors were empty, the floor tiles slick with monsoon damp. It was well past 3 AM when he burst into his room. The light still worked. His laptop screen had gone to sleep. His textbook lay just where he left it. Everything looked… unchanged.
But on his desk sat a new item:
A third note.
Folded. Neat. Dry despite the rain.
Rishi picked it up with shaking hands.
“Denial. Guilt. What comes next?”
He didn’t sleep that night. He sat on his bed, crowbar still beside him, listening to the creak of the old hostel pipes, the distant thunder, the occasional bark of a street dog miles below. His eyes didn’t leave the door.
By morning, the mark on his chest had vanished.
But his phone—now mysteriously at 100% battery—buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
[Unknown]: Step 4 comes tonight. Ready? 🙂
He flung the phone away.
This was madness.
He needed help.
Desperate, he called Megha again.
“I need someone to stay with me tonight. Please.”
Megha hesitated. “Is this about the shaft?”
“Yes. But it’s worse now. I think it’s in me. Or I’m in it. I don’t know anymore.”
There was a pause.
“I’m coming,” she said.
By evening, Megha arrived with a backpack and a flashlight. Rishi let her in like a prisoner inviting company into his cell.
“You look like hell,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.
He didn’t smile.
She set up her sleeping bag on Ayan’s bed, made tea, and then asked for everything—start to finish.
Rishi told her. Every note. Every step. Every voice.
Megha listened, wide-eyed. “But if you already reached the rooftop, isn’t it over?”
He showed her the note. The chalk lines. The message from the unknown number.
“No,” he said. “I think I just passed level one. Whatever’s happening… it’s following a pattern. It feeds on secrets. And it’s counting down.”
She went quiet, then took out a small voice recorder. “Let’s record everything. Keep evidence. If something happens tonight, we’ll have it documented.”
They placed it on the table and hit record.
Then waited.
1:30 AM.
The lights dimmed once.
Megha stirred in her sleeping bag, alert.
1:50.
A door creaked outside. Distant footsteps shuffled across the corridor.
1:59.
The fan slowed. The bulb hummed.
2:13.
Everything stopped.
They sat in silence.
Then—
BANG.
The cupboard flew open. A spiral notebook tumbled out.
Megha gasped.
Rishi grabbed it.
It wasn’t his.
It was Pratik Sen’s journal.
The first page read:
“They said I imagined it. But I didn’t. I counted the steps. I played the tape. And now it plays me.”
He flipped pages, heart pounding.
Page after page described hallucinations, voices, the same shaft.
Then a final entry:
“I saw myself watching me sleep. I’m not the only Pratik anymore.”
And scrawled at the bottom in large black ink:
“FOURTH STEP: SPLIT.”
Suddenly, the room turned cold.
Megha began to tremble. “Rishi…”
He looked at her.
And then—
Megha’s eyes widened in terror.
“Behind you.”
He turned.
And stared at…
himself.
A second Rishi.
Standing near the window.
Same clothes. Same face.
But with a wide, wrong smile.
“Hello, Rishi,” it said. “We’re making good progress.”
The two Rishis stared at each other. Megha shrank into the corner of the room, eyes locked on the figure near the window—the Other Rishi—who stood unnaturally still, head tilted slightly, as if studying his original form.
The real Rishi stepped forward. “Who are you?”
The figure smiled wider. “I’m what you left behind in the shaft.”
Its voice was familiar but distorted, as if every word was echoing off a wall deep underground. Rishi tightened his grip on the crowbar.
Megha reached for the voice recorder on the desk, but it blinked red—not recording.
“I faced the guilt,” Rishi said. “I survived the tape. I made it to the rooftop. You have no power now.”
The Other Rishi laughed. “You think this is about survival? No, Rishi. It’s about completion. You woke the memory machine. You fed it a truth. Now it wants the rest. There are 13 steps, and you’re only on Step 4.”
Megha’s voice cracked. “Why show yourself now?”
The figure turned to her slowly. “Because from this step forward, he’s no longer alone.”
Before either of them could move, the lights in the room flared—white, then red—and blew out with a loud pop.
Darkness.
Complete.
In the blackness, Megha screamed.
Then silence.
Rishi fumbled for his phone. Torch on.
The Other Rishi was gone.
Megha sat on the floor, shaking. “He—he just disappeared. Like fog.”
Rishi pulled her up. “We have to leave. Right now.”
They grabbed their things, bolted from the room, and ran down to the ground floor. But as they reached the hostel gates, something stopped them both in their tracks.
The outside world had vanished.
In place of the familiar campus were walls—stone, towering, covered in the same tally marks.
“Is this a dream?” Megha whispered.
“No,” Rishi replied, staring around. “This is the shaft again. But it’s grown.”
He touched the wall. It pulsed, warm like skin. And the tallies began to light up—five now.
Five steps counted.
Step 5: TRAP.
Megha pointed. A corridor opened before them, long and narrow, flickering red at the far end. “It’s guiding us.”
“Or caging us.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
They walked.
As they moved, the corridor transformed. The walls displayed moments from Rishi’s past—like memories projected in grainy film.
There he was, as a child, ignoring a friend’s tears after pushing him on the stairs. Then as a teenager, looking the other way when someone was bullied. Then—again and again—choosing silence over confrontation.
“You’ve always walked away,” the voice returned, not from a figure this time, but from the very walls.
Megha grabbed his hand. “Don’t listen.”
“I have to,” Rishi said.
Ahead, the corridor split into two paths.
One was narrow, damp, leading downward.
The other had warm light, and a faint echo of a crowd—laughter, comfort, escape.
Megha looked at Rishi. “Which one?”
He hesitated.
Then remembered something from Pratik’s journal:
“The path that comforts will cost you memory.”
He turned toward the dark path. “We go down.”
Megha didn’t argue.
The descent was sharp. The air thickened with every step. The walls began whispering—not words, but fractured sounds. Screams. Echoes of voices half-heard, half-remembered. Names. Dates. Regret.
Then—
They reached another chamber.
In it was a chair.
Not wooden. This time, metal. Wired. Restraints on the arms.
A screen flickered in front of it.
Rishi approached it slowly.
The screen lit up with two images—one of him, present day.
And another of Megha, bound to the chair, unconscious.
Rishi turned around. Megha stood behind him, unharmed.
Then who was in the chair?
He looked back.
The chair was empty again.
The screen now read:
“Step 6: CHOICE.”
“Only one walks out. Decide.”
Rishi’s voice cracked. “No. No more.”
But the door behind them sealed shut.
Another timer appeared on the screen.
00:59… 00:58…
Megha stared at him. “It’s a test. Like the rooftop. It’s not real.”
“But what if it is?” he whispered.
The walls pulsed again. The voice returned. “All guilt is selfish. All memory is a mirror.”
Megha stepped toward the chair. “If it’s me or you… I’ll sit. Maybe this ends it.”
“No!” Rishi blocked her. “You didn’t cause this. I did.”
Megha stared into his eyes. “Then end it.”
He turned back to the screen.
00:09… 00:08…
Then raised the crowbar.
And smashed the screen.
Sparks flew. The light went out.
Then—
Silence.
And after a beat—
a door opened.
They ran through it.
Back into—
Rishi’s room.
The lights were on. The fan spinning. Megha’s sleeping bag untouched.
The world was back.
But on the wall now, in black ink:
“Step 7 comes for both.”
They didn’t speak at first.
Megha leaned against the wall, her chest rising and falling in shallow panic. Rishi sat on the floor, knees pulled to his chest, hands shaking. His eyes darted around the room like it might split open again, revealing another corridor, another lie. But everything remained still.
The clock on the wall read 3:17 AM.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
Inside, the message remained.
“Step 7 comes for both.”
Megha was the first to break the silence. “I thought that was it. The chamber. The chair. The screen. I thought that was the end.”
Rishi shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t. We’re still inside it. We never left.”
He stood, walked over to the mirror above the wash basin, and stared.
No chalk mark.
But his reflection blinked just a second too late.
Megha came up beside him and gasped. Her reflection… smiled.
She wasn’t.
“I think we’re split now,” Rishi said quietly. “Whatever it is, it’s not just haunting. It’s duplicating. Rewriting.”
He turned around and pointed at the chalkboard on his cupboard door. “We need a record. A map of this madness.”
They began writing everything they’d seen. The notes. The voices. The shaft. The mirrored self. The trap. The choice. The tallies.
As Rishi wrote the number 7, the chalk in his hand snapped.
A gust of wind blew through the locked window.
The door slammed shut on its own.
And from under the bed, a familiar object rolled out.
A black reel tape.
No label. No casing.
Just the reel.
Megha knelt and picked it up. “Another recording?”
Rishi took it from her gently. “We never saw a second recorder.”
Megha pointed to the cupboard. “There’s an old cassette deck behind the books. Ayan used it for his retro music collection.”
Rishi dug it out, dusted it off, inserted the reel.
The tape hissed.
Then a voice spoke.
This time, it was Megha’s.
“If you’re hearing this, I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “I’ve never recorded anything like that—”
The voice continued:
“He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve seen the other side. I stepped through when he blinked. I left something behind. Or maybe it left me behind. Now I’m both.”
The tape hissed. Then looped.
Rishi turned toward her slowly. “Is that you?”
Megha backed away. “I swear to you, I’ve never—”
Then the lights flickered again.
And in the reflection of the window, Rishi saw two Mephas.
Standing side by side.
Only one was casting a shadow.
The other tilted her head.
Smiled.
And vanished.
Rishi spun around.
Only one Megha remained.
She was breathing hard, tears in her eyes. “You believe me, right?”
Rishi couldn’t answer. His mouth was dry. He nodded, but it felt false.
“Step 7,” she whispered. “It’s doubt. It turns us against each other.”
On the wall behind them, a new phrase appeared, written in red ink that hadn’t been there a second ago:
“Two can leave only if neither trusts the mirror.”
Megha walked over to the mirror again. This time, it was blank—no reflections.
Then it flickered. Both their reflections returned.
But there was something off.
The mirrored Rishi had no scar above his eyebrow from the fall he took as a child.
The mirrored Megha was mouthing words silently.
They watched, horrified, as the reflections moved independently, turned toward each other, and embraced.
Outside the mirror.
Rishi and Megha stood still.
Inside the mirror.
They kissed.
And then the mirrored Megha plunged a knife into mirrored Rishi’s back.
Blood splashed across the glass from the inside.
The real Rishi stumbled back.
“Megha, we need to break the mirror.”
She hesitated. “What if that traps us?”
“What if not breaking it traps us?”
Together, they smashed it.
Glass rained down in glittering shards.
But where the mirror once stood, now—
A door.
Wooden, ancient, with 13 tally marks carved into it.
One for each step.
The seventh one now glowing red.
They turned to each other.
Megha whispered, “We go together. Or not at all.”
Rishi reached for the handle.
As his fingers touched the wood, the chalkboard behind them erased itself.
New letters appeared.
One sentence.
“Step 8: Memory Loss Initiated.”
Rishi blinked.
Megha’s name escaped him.
She turned to him, confused. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He stared at her. “Do I… know you?”
“Do I… know you?”
Megha stared at Rishi as if he’d just punched her.
Her lips parted, trembling. “What… what do you mean? Rishi, it’s me.”
He took a step back from the door, from her. “Megha… that name… it sounds familiar, but I don’t—” His voice cracked. “I can’t remember where we met.”
She reached forward, grabbing his hand. “We’ve been friends since first year. I was there when you failed your first mechanics paper. I was there when you got chickenpox during exam week. We survived that wretched hostel food together.”
His eyes darted to her hand holding his. There was no flicker of recognition. Nothing.
“I believe you,” he said quietly. “But I don’t remember any of it.”
Megha turned toward the door—the one with the 13 tallies, now eight of them glowing faint red.
“Step 8: Memory Loss Initiated.”
It had already begun.
She glanced back at him. “This place—it’s eating us. First it made you face your guilt. Then it divided you. Now it’s erasing you. Bit by bit.”
Rishi shook his head. “What happens when the thirteenth tally lights up?”
Megha’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “Then we disappear. Fully. Not just from this building. But from… everything. Every memory. Like we were never born.”
Rishi sat down on the floor, as if his knees had given out. “I can feel pieces of myself missing already. Like I knew something important five minutes ago, and now it’s gone.” He looked up at her with panic. “What if I lose the part of me that wants to remember?”
Megha knelt beside him. “Then I’ll remember for you.”
He stared at her.
Something in her face stirred the faintest feeling—comfort, warmth, maybe even affection—but it floated just out of reach, like a dream he couldn’t pull back from.
Then—a sound.
A knock.
From the other side of the door.
Once.
Twice.
Thirteen times.
Then silence.
Megha stood and walked toward it. “We have to go in.”
Rishi didn’t move.
She turned to him. “We don’t have time. If we stay, your memories will keep slipping.”
“How do you know this isn’t the final trap?” he asked.
“Because it hasn’t broken us yet. And that’s what it wants.”
She reached for the door handle.
It burned her fingers. She winced but didn’t pull away. The wood pulsed under her touch, warm like skin, as if alive.
When she turned the handle, the door didn’t swing open.
Instead, it folded—like pages in a book, one wooden panel after another sliding in like origami.
What lay beyond was not a room, not a hallway.
It was a replica of their hostel floor. Same corridor. Same flickering lights. Same nameplates on doors.
But off. Quietly wrong.
The walls were slightly warped. The names on the doors were mirrored. The floor creaked as though made of something wet and hollow beneath.
They stepped in.
And the door behind them slammed shut.
No handle. No way back.
Rishi turned in place, disoriented. “This is where I live?”
Megha bit her lip. “Used to.”
They walked down the corridor.
At Room 3C, the door was already open.
Inside: another Rishi.
Sitting alone.
Reading the first note.
He looked younger. Less tired.
He hadn’t seen the shaft yet.
Hadn’t taken the first step.
Megha grabbed Rishi’s arm. “That’s not real. That’s your memory being reconstructed from the inside.”
Rishi looked at the scene, then at her. “If this place is showing me who I was… maybe I can talk to him. Warn him.”
She shook her head. “It’s a loop. It always loops. That’s how it feeds.”
Rishi stepped closer anyway.
The younger version looked up.
And smiled.
But it wasn’t a normal smile. It was stretched, glassy-eyed, twitching at the corners.
He stood, reached behind the desk, and pulled out the same crowbar.
Two Rishis now. One real. One not.
The false one whispered, “Step Nine: Kill the double.”
Rishi stumbled back. “What the hell is this?”
Megha shouted, “It’s forcing you to destroy the part of you that remembers. If you kill him, you’ll lose everything. But if he kills you… it’s over.”
The false Rishi moved closer.
The crowbar gleamed.
Megha lunged, grabbing a fallen chair and swinging it at the duplicate’s head.
It passed through him like smoke.
The figure turned to her, eyes black now, empty.
And then vanished.
The room reset.
Back to empty.
Rishi collapsed onto the floor. “I can’t do this. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
She pulled him close. “You’re the one who refused to forget. That’s who you are.”
The walls around them shifted again.
A voice echoed overhead—mechanical, inhuman.
“Step 10: Collapse imminent. Proceed to final memory.”
And the corridor ahead stretched into a tunnel again.
At the far end: a mirror.
Not cracked.
Not red-lit.
Just… true.
But it was growing smaller.
As if time were running out.
Megha grabbed Rishi’s hand.
“Run.”
They ran.
Feet pounding on the warped floor, breath shallow and sharp. The tunnel elongated with every step, as though the very memory of escape recoiled from them. The mirror at the end—the final memory—shrunk in size, pulsing like a dying heartbeat.
Behind them, the walls began to crumble.
Tally marks peeled away like scorched skin. Names flared red and vanished. And from deep within the shaft—far below where they once stood—a sound emerged.
A low groan. Not mechanical. Not human. Something older. Hungrier.
The Memory Engine was collapsing.
Megha tightened her grip on Rishi’s hand. “Don’t stop. No matter what you see.”
The tunnel twisted, and then—it changed.
They were suddenly in a railway station.
Abandoned. Monsoon rain pounding on tin sheets above.
Rishi halted. “I know this place.”
Megha looked around. “Is this your memory?”
He nodded. “I was seventeen. My best friend—Rajit—we were on our way home from a school fest. We were messing around near the tracks. He slipped. I didn’t call for help. I froze.”
Rishi fell to his knees.
“I told everyone he went the other way. That I never saw him. I told his mother I was sick and didn’t go.”
The platform flickered.
Time looped.
They saw it again.
Rajit slipping.
Calling Rishi’s name.
And Rishi—not moving.
Not even trying.
“Step Eleven,” a voice whispered in the storm. “Confession.”
Rishi stood. Walked toward the memory. The younger version of himself stared back at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the boy. “You were scared. But you lied. You carried that lie so long it began to shape you.”
The boy nodded. And vanished.
Megha watched as the rain stopped.
The station disappeared.
They stood once again in the tunnel.
Only the mirror remained.
It pulsed with pale blue light. Inside it was not a reflection.
It was a room.
Their hostel room.
Untouched.
Empty.
Peaceful.
Megha stepped forward. “That’s it. Step Twelve. Redemption.”
“But what about the thirteenth step?” Rishi asked.
The tunnel began to shake.
Bricks exploded outward. Screams echoed again.
Then—
The Other Rishi returned.
Drenched. Pale. Smiling.
“This was never about guilt,” he said. “It was about remembering how easy it is to forget. The engine doesn’t punish. It preserves.”
He raised a hand.
The chalk marks blazed.
All thirteen.
“Step Thirteen: Rebirth.”
The mirror cracked.
And from it—they stepped through.
Together.
Not back into the hostel.
Not into the rooftop.
But into a quiet courtyard, early morning, birds chirping, sunlight warm and golden.
They were outside.
Truly.
Alive.
Memory returned in fragments—names, childhood days, old laughter, all swimming back into Rishi’s mind.
Megha turned to him. “Do you remember me now?”
He smiled, tears in his eyes. “Yeah. Every bit of you.”
And on his chest, where once chalk lines had appeared—now there was only a faint circle. Like a door that had finally closed.
Behind them, the hostel loomed.
Silent.
As if it had never opened at all.
But the rooftop door?
It would always be there.
Waiting.
For the next 2:13 AM.
For the next step.
For someone else.
Who had something to forget.

THE END