Part 1: The Welcome Plate
The house was beige. The kind of beige that once meant hopeful whitewash but now wore the skin of resignation. Maya Joshi stood on the narrow cemented path that led to the cracked front door of House Number 12 in Samruddhi Bagh and wondered if resignation might actually be good for her.
Her suitcase leaned against her calf, dusty from the auto ride. In her other hand, she held a brass key that had come wrapped in brown paper, handed by the landlord’s niece who spoke too softly and kept glancing over her shoulder, as if being seen handing over this key might curse her. Maya had smiled. She had smiled a lot lately, mostly because it was easier than explaining. Especially here, in a new city where her name meant nothing and her story was, finally, hers to shape.
The society was quiet. A line of matching houses, each with barred windows and flowering hibiscus in ceramic pots, baking under the flat, dull Pune sun. An elderly man walked past with a wire basket of milk packets, gave her a quick nod, and kept walking. Across the street, a green Maruti coughed to life and reversed with exaggerated slowness. No one stared. No one greeted her.
She liked that.
The key turned with some resistance. The door creaked open — not a dramatic haunted-house creak, but the tired exhale of something long unused. Inside, the air was stale but not foul. It smelled of dust and turmeric, faint incense, the ghost of someone’s long-lost routine. Maya stepped in and stood still. The moment had weight — the beginning of something. She didn’t know what.
The living room was narrow, with a low ceiling and a wooden divan pushed against one wall. An old fan hung overhead, still enough to feel like part of the ceiling. To her left, a kitchen she hadn’t yet seen. To her right, a corridor with two closed doors and a tiny window letting in pale light. The air felt thick.
By the time she had unpacked the bare minimum — bedsheet, kettle, charger, and the wooden box of Ganapati idols that had followed her from Delhi to Mumbai to here — it was late afternoon. She brewed tea, weak and overboiled, and sipped it by the window. A cluster of boys played cricket in the lane. One of them, a boy in a purple T-shirt, looked up and saw her watching. He didn’t smile. Just turned back and shouted, “Chhe over ke baad ball meri!”
At six-thirty, her doorbell rang.
She hadn’t even noticed the bell switch on the rusted gate. She opened the door to find three women standing there in what could only be described as a semi-circle of mild judgment. All were over fifty, dressed in mismatched salwar-kameezes with bright dupattas. The one in the center, tall and broad-shouldered, held a covered steel plate.
“Namaste,” the woman said. “You’re Maya-ji, na? I’m Mrs. Mandal, from House Number 10. These are Mrs. Shalini Patkar and Mrs. D’Costa. We just came to welcome you.”
Maya stepped aside awkwardly. “Please, come in.”
They didn’t. Instead, Mrs. Mandal pushed the plate into her hands.
“Homemade theplas,” she said. “We just thought… new people don’t always cook on the first day.”
“Thank you,” Maya said. The steel felt strangely cold. The women still didn’t step in. There was an awkward pause.
“You’re alone?” asked Mrs. Patkar, squinting past Maya into the living room.
“Yes.”
“You got the house through Mr. Chitale, right?” asked Mrs. D’Costa. Her lipstick had bled into the lines around her mouth. “He usually doesn’t rent this one out anymore.”
Maya raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
They exchanged glances. It was Mrs. Mandal who spoke.
“Nothing major,” she said. “Just… people who live here don’t usually stay long. The last tenants left within two months. Said something about plumbing. Before that… well. You know how it is. Old houses.”
“Right,” Maya said slowly.
“You’ll settle in soon. Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Patkar. Then, as if a cue had been given, they all turned and left. No mention of coming over again. No promise of help. Just three shadows fading into twilight.
Maya shut the door and bolted it.
She didn’t believe in omens. Not anymore.
That night, sleep came late. The fan worked after she nudged it with a stick, the water filter hissed like it hadn’t been used in years, and the cupboard in the second bedroom refused to open entirely. But she was used to broken things. She curled under her thin sheet, phone on silent, the sounds of the lane fading like water evaporating from stone.
At exactly 3:14 a.m., the doorbell rang.
She sat up straight. Heart thudding, mouth dry.
It rang once. Just once.
Silence followed. The fan hummed. The shadows stayed still. No footsteps. No calls. Just the soft weight of silence.
She waited, ears straining, palms sweating.
Nothing.
After a full ten minutes, she got up and walked to the front door barefoot. Through the peephole — darkness.
She didn’t open it.
She went back to bed.
But the theplas were gone.
The steel plate lay empty by the window, wiped clean.
And she had never touched them.
Part 2: The Boy in the Frame
Maya stared at the empty steel plate for a long time.
It lay exactly where she had placed it the night before—on the window ledge in the living room, beneath the curtain that smelled faintly of mothballs and something sharper, like stale phenyl. But the lid was gone. The theplas too. Not one crumb remained. Her eyes scanned the floor. Nothing. No ants. No oily traces. Just silence and her own rising nausea.
She rubbed her arms. The fan spun lazily overhead. The morning was thick with that peculiar Pune humidity—sticky, reluctant to burn off. Her head throbbed from poor sleep and something else she couldn’t name. Fear? Not yet. Confusion, mostly. But it was building its case.
She dressed quickly, pulling on a blue kurta and loose jeans, tying her hair up in a lazy bun. She avoided looking in the mirror, unwilling to examine what her eyes might be saying back.
At 8:10 a.m., she locked the house and left for school.
Shantiniketan Public School sat at the edge of Karve Nagar, a long white building with large windows and a newer wing painted in pastel blues. Maya had joined as an English teacher for Class 6 and 7 just a week ago. The principal, Mrs. Godbole, was a no-nonsense woman who wore starched cotton saris and never once smiled. Maya liked her.
The classroom was noisy when she entered. Sixth graders, brimming with fidgety bodies and wide eyes, half-open notebooks, half-told secrets.
“Settle down,” Maya said. Her voice carried.
They obeyed quickly. She began the day’s lesson—imagery in poetry—when she noticed a boy in the third row scribbling furiously. He wasn’t looking at her. His tongue poked from the corner of his mouth in concentration. He didn’t raise his head once.
“Rudra,” she said, pausing. “What are you working on that’s more important than Wordsworth?”
The boy startled. His hands dropped. “Nothing, Miss.”
“Bring it here.”
Rudra hesitated, then stood slowly and walked up with a single sheet of paper in hand. Maya took it.
It was a drawing.
Not messy like most children’s sketches—this one was careful, detailed. A two-story house. Her house. House Number 12. Down to the slatted windows and the tiny balcony with the cracked railing. A woman stood at the window. Maya. Her features weren’t clear, just a shape. Behind her, slightly in shadow, a small figure stood. A boy.
His eyes were enormous and dark. His mouth a simple black line.
Her heart thumped.
She looked at Rudra. “Who’s the boy?”
He fidgeted. “I don’t know.”
“Then why did you draw him?”
“I saw him, Miss. In your window yesterday. When I was coming home from tuition.”
She blinked. “You live nearby?”
“Yes, House Number 6. My tuitions are on the next lane. Around seven-thirty.”
Maya swallowed.
“There was no one else in my house.”
Rudra shrugged. “Maybe he was hiding. Or maybe he only comes when you’re not looking.”
She folded the paper and slipped it into her notebook. “Go sit.”
The rest of the class passed like a dream she wasn’t quite awake in.
That evening, she returned to House Number 12 and walked straight into the kitchen. She checked the gas knobs. All off. The windows were shut. Nothing burnt. No smell.
She took the drawing out again, unfolded it on the table, and stared at the child’s face. Blank. Watching. Like he was waiting to be named.
There were no photographs in the house. No portraits, no wall frames, no evidence of previous tenants. It wasn’t stripped — it was sterilized. Like someone had removed not just memories, but the possibility of them.
The storage cabinet in the corridor creaked when she opened it. She hadn’t bothered much with it yet — it was mostly full of old newspaper stacks, yellowed LIC documents, and an unused steel rolling pin. At the bottom, wedged between two flattened cardboard boxes, she found it.
A photograph frame.
Dust-covered, but intact. The glass cracked slightly in the corner. The photo was of a woman in a red sari, laughing, head thrown back. A little boy stood beside her, holding a green toy truck. His eyes were dark. His mouth, a line.
He looked like Rudra’s drawing.
Her breath caught. She flipped the frame.
In neat Marathi script, written in faded blue pen: Sharvani & Sameer – Ganesh Chaturthi, 1999.
Sameer.
The name hit her like a forgotten lyric—instantly familiar and yet out of reach.
She ran her finger over the glass, as if touch might spark memory.
That night, sleep came slow.
At 2:48 a.m., she awoke to a sound she couldn’t place. Not the bell. Not the fan. A whisper of movement. The rustle of cloth, maybe. Or the faint click of something being placed on tile.
She stayed still. Listening.
No breeze. No footsteps.
Then—soft laughter. Childlike. Faint as breath.
She sat up.
Nothing.
She walked to the window. The street outside was still. A stray dog wandered across the lane, sniffed the gate, and moved on. No lights in any house. Only the orange sodium glare.
When she turned back, her slipper caught something on the floor.
She bent down.
A small green truck. Plastic. Worn.
Exactly like the one in the photograph.
Part 3: The Smell of Smoke
Maya placed the toy truck on the centre table, carefully, like it might crumble. The plastic was old — scratched, slightly melted near one wheel. The colour had faded into a sickly green. But it was real. It had weight. It hadn’t been there the night before.
She didn’t scream. Screaming felt theatrical — a concession to something she wasn’t willing to name yet. She just stood there, her hand hovering above the object, her breath caught somewhere between a whisper and a prayer.
That morning, she checked every window latch. Every door bolt. Every creak and corner in the house. Nothing was broken. No signs of forced entry. Nothing stolen. Except, maybe, her certainty.
She opened all the windows. Let air in. Let it push back the strange. The house groaned with morning heat.
By the time she left for school, the toy truck still sat where she had left it. Watching her.
At school, Rudra didn’t meet her eyes. He kept his head low. During lunch, she asked the staff if any of them knew about House Number 12.
One of the younger teachers — Preeti, who taught Hindi and wore sparkly bindis and too much lavender talc — nodded vaguely.
“That’s the old Chitale house, na?”
Maya nodded. “You know who lived there before me?”
Preeti bit into her sandwich. “No, not really. But I remember a boy from our school. Sameer Chitale. Tiny, quiet, always carried some car in his hand. But he… he died, I think. Long ago.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Some accident? No one spoke much. It was years ago. Before I joined properly.”
“Was he their only child?”
Preeti shrugged. “I think so. The family was nice, but after the boy… they just moved out. The house was locked for a long time.”
Maya nodded slowly.
Later, while taking attendance, she saw Rudra glancing at her from the corner of his eye. She didn’t speak to him. Not yet.
That evening, the smell of burnt oil hit her the moment she stepped into the house.
It wasn’t strong. Not like a fire. But it was there — sharp, greasy, slightly metallic — clinging to the air like sweat in a closed room.
She dropped her bag and walked straight to the kitchen.
The stove was off.
The knob was turned slightly, but no gas leaked. No burner lit. Still, the metallic stink lingered. She opened the windows. The smell didn’t leave. It seemed to nest in the walls.
She checked the drawers. One of them, the third from the bottom, was slightly ajar. She hadn’t touched it before. Inside were burnt matchsticks. Eleven of them. Blackened, bent slightly, smelling like memory.
Her hands trembled as she closed the drawer.
In the bathroom, the mirror had fogged. Which made no sense. She hadn’t taken a shower. The geyser was off. The tap hadn’t run.
She reached up and wiped the glass with her palm.
For half a second, she thought she saw a small shadow beside her — shorter than her, blurred — but when she blinked, it was gone.
That night, she cooked khichdi, barely ate, and sat curled on the divan with a book she couldn’t read. The toy truck was now on the windowsill. She didn’t remember moving it.
At 9:20 p.m., her phone pinged.
It was a message from an unknown number. No name.
Don’t leave the gas on.
Her fingers went cold.
She typed back: Who is this?
No reply.
She stared at the screen for five minutes. Then opened the contact info. No photo. The number wasn’t saved. She tried calling.
Switched off.
She didn’t sleep. She lay on her side, staring at the faint glow from the window until her eyes burned.
At 3:37 a.m., she heard the door to the storeroom creak open.
She froze.
She hadn’t touched that door in days. It was always stuck. The hinges rusted. She hadn’t even managed to open it when she moved in.
She rose, barefoot, tiptoeing slowly, quietly, across the floor.
The door stood open now. Just slightly. Enough to reveal the corner of a cradle. Wooden. Painted yellow and green. Rocking slightly.
She reached for the switch. Flicked it.
No light.
She backed away.
And then — laughter.
A single burst of high-pitched giggles, cut short. From behind the door.
She turned. Shut her bedroom. Bolted it. Curled on her bed with her back to the door.
She didn’t cry.
But her pillow was damp by dawn.
Part 4: Apartment WhatsApp Group
It began with a ping.
Maya was standing in the balcony, bleary-eyed and holding her first cup of tea, when her phone vibrated with the familiar sound of a WhatsApp notification. The night’s heaviness still clung to her skin. The house smelled vaguely of burnt incense and something else—like rubber melting, or wires warming from inside walls.
She stepped inside, sipped her tea, and checked her phone.
Group Invite: Samruddhi Bagh Residents.
Added by: Mrs. Mandal.
Her first reaction was relief. Normalcy. She clicked in, scrolled past the flood of greetings and notices: garbage collection, water cut updates, children’s tuition contacts, Diwali committee reminders.
And then she paused.
A message had been deleted.
Sent at 2:01 a.m.
Deleted at 2:03.
No one responded to it. No emojis. No ‘Please don’t spam at night’ comments. Just silence.
She messaged privately.
Maya Joshi: Hello Mrs. Mandal, thank you for adding me. Just curious — who posted in the group at 2 a.m.?
No reply.
At 8:15 a.m., another ping.
Mrs. Mandal:
Oh must be some mistake. Old member maybe. Ignore it, beta.
But Maya didn’t ignore it.
She opened the media section of the group.
Scrolled down.
Found one auto-downloaded file still cached.
A photograph. Low resolution. Slightly blurry.
It was a woman’s face. Burnt on one side. The skin dark and peeling. The other side intact — delicate features, a small gold nose pin, and eyes full of exhaustion. Not fear. Not pain. Just… grief.
Maya stared at it for a long time.
Then saved it to her gallery before it vanished too.
At school, she stayed distracted. Rudra avoided her again. Preeti chatted about nothing in particular. The principal warned them about the upcoming inspection.
During the free period, Maya stepped out and called the number from the previous night’s gas warning. Still switched off.
Then she texted the number one more time.
Who are you? Do you live here? Are you in this house?
This time, the reply came instantly.
I was.
The smell of smoke returned before she entered the gate.
Stronger now. Not the pleasant kind. Not woodsmoke or agarbatti. It was closer to melted insulation. Acidic. Deep in the nostrils. She rushed in, tossed her bag on the floor, and turned to the kitchen.
Nothing burning.
The gas stove off.
No matchsticks this time. Just the smell.
But when she stepped into the bathroom to wash her face, she saw the mirror.
Words traced into the fog — faint, smeared with a finger.
DON’T COOK AT NIGHT
She stared. Blinked. The fog was real. Her fingers trembled as she reached out and wiped the words away.
By evening, her phone buzzed again.
Another unknown number. Different this time.
A voice message.
She hesitated. Then played it.
Static. Muffled background noise. Then a whisper — low, urgent, and unmistakably a child’s voice.
“Mumma said not to go near the fire. But he made me.”
Click. End of message.
Her hand trembled. She sank onto the divan.
What was this?
A game?
A cruel neighbour?
Or something else buried in the walls of the house?
Later that night, the doorbell rang again.
3:12 a.m.
She didn’t move.
No sound followed. Just the stillness.
She lay on her back, sheets pulled to her chin, counting her breaths.
Then her phone pinged.
Unknown Number:
Check your fridge.
She didn’t want to.
But she got up anyway.
Walked barefoot through the dim house. Kitchen tiles cold under her feet. The fridge hummed softly, its yellow light flickering as she opened it.
Inside, placed neatly next to the milk pouch and leftover khichdi — a burnt matchstick.
Just one.
She stepped back, closed the door, and leaned against the wall.
Her body felt heavy.
Her eyes burned.
Then, almost reflexively, she opened the WhatsApp group again.
Another message.
Sent just five minutes ago.
From a contact now labelled “Deleted Account.”
The message was a single line:
Don’t go into the kitchen after sunset.
Part 5: The Broken Switchboard
The light in the kitchen flickered the next morning — once, then again, like a dying thought trying to hold form. Maya stood staring at the switchboard, cup of tea in hand, until the flicker stilled into darkness. The bulb had fused, probably. She told herself that twice.
When she tried the hall switch, it sparked.
A dry sound. Tiny, cruel.
She jerked her hand back, tea sloshing onto her wrist.
By 10 a.m., she had called the electrician. The same man who had come once before — Rafiq, middle-aged, with permanently greased palms and an expression like everything irritated him. He arrived post-lunch, dragging his toolkit and avoiding her eyes.
“You’ve been here before,” she said.
He nodded without looking. “When you moved in.”
“You fixed the fan, remember?”
He grunted.
She didn’t mention the matchsticks. Or the fridge. Or the drawing. She just led him to the corridor and pointed to the switchboard.
He unscrewed the plate slowly. As he worked, she watched his body stiffen slightly. Like he recognised something.
“You okay?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Just pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from inside the hollow behind the switchboard.
She leaned closer.
It was old. Water-stained. Folded neatly.
He didn’t open it. Just held it out to her.
When she took it, she noticed — his hands were shaking.
Back in the living room, she unfolded the paper carefully, afraid it might disintegrate in her fingers.
It was a note, written in Marathi. The handwriting was elegant. Feminine. Sharp loops and pressed-down letters. She could make out some words, but not all.
She opened Google Translate. Typed what she could read.
He said fire makes memory clean. He said no one will come if they think it’s an accident. He said the child doesn’t matter if the house survives.
Her stomach turned.
A small scribble at the bottom: S.C.
Sharvani Chitale.
She remembered the name from the photo.
The woman in the red sari.
The mother.
When she stepped back into the corridor, Rafiq was packing up. But before he closed the box, he reached into his shirt pocket and handed her a photograph.
Old, slightly torn. The colours had yellowed. It was the front of her house — House Number 12 — but from years ago. Fresher paint. Curtains drawn back. Potted plants on the balcony.
And a man.
Standing on the first-floor balcony, hand on the railing.
His face was blurred. Not from motion. It looked rubbed out, deliberately.
Maya stared at it. “Who is this?”
Rafiq wiped his hands. “I don’t know. I found this photo behind the fuse box two months ago. When I came last.”
“You didn’t give it to the landlord?”
“No,” he said. “Didn’t feel like it belonged to him.”
Maya studied the man’s posture — casual, but not relaxed. The hand on the railing had tension in the knuckles. Like he was pressing down too hard.
“Where was the fuse box photo hidden?”
Rafiq zipped his toolkit. “Somebody didn’t want it found.”
That night, Maya opened the cupboard in the second bedroom.
The one that never opened entirely.
This time it did.
Inside was a row of blankets, folded military-tight. She reached behind them. Her fingers touched something — hard, cold.
A cassette.
Black. No label except for a faded strip of masking tape with the word MUKTI written in block letters.
She had no tape player.
But the school library had one.
The next morning, she slipped it into her tote bag and went early. Her hands trembled as she fed it into the library’s old player. The wheels rolled, gears clicked.
Then sound.
Not music. Not speech.
A soft whimper.
Then a child’s voice, hoarse with crying. “Mummy, I won’t tell. Please. I won’t tell.”
A woman’s voice followed. Sharp. Frantic. “Don’t talk. Don’t say anything to anyone. Not the school, not the neighbours.”
Then silence.
And at the end — a man’s voice. Deep. Measured.
“Burn it all. No one will ask twice.”
She ejected the cassette, her chest hollow, throat dry.
Burn it all.
That evening, as Maya walked home, a child watched her from behind the grill of House Number 6.
It was Rudra.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t smile. Just raised one finger to his lips — the universal symbol for shhh — and then disappeared into the shadow.
When Maya reached her gate, she noticed the matchbox placed on the threshold.
Inside it, a burnt matchstick. Just one.
She opened her phone.
No messages.
No calls.
No missed alerts.
Just a single new image in her gallery.
A photo of her sleeping — from the night before.
She had no explanation.
And no memory of taking it.
Part 6: The Girl Who Didn’t Speak
The silence had begun to settle into Maya’s body like a second skin. Not the silence of peace — that meditative hush of solitude — but the kind that crept. The kind that thickened in corners and hummed under floorboards. A watching silence.
That evening, Maya walked slowly around Samruddhi Bagh, not towards the market, but aimlessly — a slow loop past the other houses, hoping to find something not waiting in her own. It was then she saw her.
A girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, sitting alone on the low cement ledge outside House Number 8. She was drawing on the pavement with a broken red crayon, her skirt speckled with chalk dust, hair in two uneven braids. She didn’t look up as Maya passed.
Curious, Maya slowed, then turned back.
“Hi,” she said softly.
The girl paused her drawing but didn’t respond.
Maya smiled, crouched down. “What’s your name?”
Still no reply. But the girl offered a crumpled notebook instead.
Maya opened it gently.
On the page: a charcoal sketch. Rough, but strangely expressive. It showed a small room — a cupboard in the centre, slightly ajar. Inside the cupboard: a boy. Knees drawn up, eyes too wide for his face.
Maya’s throat dried. “Did you draw this?”
The girl nodded once.
“Who is he?”
The child took the red crayon again and wrote, in block letters, on the bottom of the page:
SAMEER
Maya stared at the name.
“Do you know him?”
The girl scribbled another word:
LOCKED
And then, after a pause:
MUMMY DID IT
Maya swallowed.
“Can you tell me your name?”
The girl shook her head.
From inside House Number 8, a voice called sharply. “Jui! Inside!”
The girl stood, snatched her notebook, and ran.
That night, the cupboard door in the second bedroom stood open.
Maya hadn’t touched it.
The blankets inside had been disturbed. A single corner of one blanket hung out, as if someone had tried to pull it and stopped.
The cassette tape, MUKTI, was gone.
She hadn’t told anyone she had it.
At 2:43 a.m., the sound returned.
Not footsteps.
Not whispers.
Scratching.
Soft. Insistent. From inside the kitchen walls.
Like fingernails on concrete. Deliberate. Rhythmic.
She crept out of bed, every step cautious. The living room light flickered once, then steadied. In the kitchen, everything looked normal.
But the smell was back. Stronger. A mix of burnt plastic and antiseptic. It made her eyes water.
She turned to the wall where the switchboard had been fixed.
The scratching stopped.
And then, very slowly, the wall began to bleed.
Not blood — not exactly. But a thin brownish-red streak, seeping from the crack where the tile met the plaster.
She backed away. Picked up her phone. Snapped a picture.
The flash lit up the room for a second.
And in that second, she saw the boy.
Standing at the far end, near the kitchen sink.
Silent.
Still.
Watching.
When the light faded, he was gone.
But the green toy truck sat beside the sink again.
The next morning, she showed the photograph to Rudra at school. The wall. The streak.
“Don’t show this to anyone,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“They won’t believe you.”
“Do you know who he is, Rudra?”
The boy hesitated. Then, softly, “My grandfather told me there was a boy who lived there long ago. Sameer. He died.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “He was locked somewhere. I think he burned.”
Maya closed her eyes.
“And his mother?”
“I don’t know. My grandfather says she went mad.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Rudra looked at her — solemn, older than his age. “Because he likes you. That’s why he hasn’t hurt you yet.”
That afternoon, Maya visited House Number 8.
Jui opened the door.
She didn’t smile, but she let Maya in. The house smelled of coconut oil and old wood. Jui’s mother was asleep, she explained with a small gesture. The house was quiet.
Maya knelt down again.
“Can you draw him? Again?”
Jui nodded. She picked up a pencil. Her strokes were fast, jagged.
When she was done, she handed the paper over.
This time, it showed Maya sleeping in her bed.
The boy — Sameer — stood near the window.
And his face was melting.
Part 7: The Hidden Letters
Rain came to Samruddhi Bagh like a quiet trespasser. No thunder. No wind. Just a sudden, steady murmur on tin and tile. By mid-morning, the gutters gurgled with rainwater, and a soft darkness fell across the colony. Maya stood barefoot in her kitchen, watching the world behind streaked glass, when the leak began.
It started in the corridor — a faint, persistent drip from the patch where the ceiling met the far wall. She fetched a steel bowl, placed it beneath the damp spot, and turned to call the landlord. But something about the water gave her pause.
It wasn’t clear.
It was rust-coloured.
Like it had passed through memory before it reached her floor.
By afternoon, the leak grew into a soft stain, bloomed outwards in a bruised crescent. The wall had always been uneven there. But now, under the spreading wetness, something shifted.
She knocked once. The hollow behind the plaster echoed back.
Without warning, a small section of the wall crumbled inward.
Her fingers, trembling, reached into the cavity.
A stack of papers, wrapped in plastic and time.
There were nine of them.
Old, yellowed, and folded into tight rectangles. Some stained, some torn. All written in Marathi, each in the same elegant hand. Sharvani C. The name appeared on every page. And every letter began the same way:
“Dear Baba,”
Maya took her time.
She translated them slowly, line by line.
They started simply — updates on the house, the child, the heat. Then the tone shifted.
Sharvani wrote about her husband’s anger. His absences. His threats.
Then:
“He says Sameer speaks too much. That he lies about voices. But I’ve heard them too, Baba. At night. In the kitchen. He whispers to something that doesn’t answer.”
Another letter read:
“Sameer found the old cupboard door open again. He says someone calls him from inside the wall. He isn’t lying. I’ve heard it too. Like burning paper. A scratch-scratch-scratch.”
And then the final one. Torn at the edges. The ink smudged, running like it had bled:
“Baba, he locked him in. I screamed. I screamed till my throat split. But he said — fire cleans memory. That if we say it was the stove, no one will ask. I tried to break it. I did. But the wood — it was too hot. Baba, I think he’s still there. I think he never left.”
The letter ended mid-sentence.
No signature.
No farewell.
Maya didn’t sleep that night.
The sound returned — this time louder. Not scratching. Banging. Rhythmic, panicked. As if tiny fists pounded from inside a cupboard door.
She rose. Walked toward the second bedroom. The old cupboard stood shut. Still.
But something wet leaked from beneath it.
She knelt down.
The same rust-coloured water.
Only this time, it smelled faintly of kerosene.
In the morning, she called the landlord.
Mr. Chitale arrived in a crisp white kurta, hair dyed jet black, with a practiced smile and a voice polished by decades of denial.
“This wall is rotting,” Maya said bluntly. “And there’s something behind it.”
He frowned, shook his head. “It’s an old house. Monsoon damage. These things happen. I’ll send someone.”
“You used to live here,” she said.
His eyes darted.
“My wife did,” he said finally. “Long ago.”
“What happened to Sameer?”
The smile froze. A flicker of something — shame, fear, maybe both — passed over his face.
“That was… a long time ago. A tragedy. We don’t like to talk about it.”
“He died here, didn’t he?”
He didn’t reply.
“I think his mother tried to tell someone. I found her letters.”
That made him flinch. “You shouldn’t go digging.”
“Someone has to.”
For a moment, Maya thought he might say more. But instead, he stepped back, adjusted his watch, and muttered, “I’ll send a mason tomorrow.”
Then he was gone.
That night, her phone buzzed.
A new message from an unknown number.
Have you read all the letters?
She replied: Who are you?
The response came instantly.
The house.
Then:
We remember what people forget.
And then:
Look inside the cradle.
She hadn’t touched the cradle.
It sat in the storeroom, pale yellow with flaking green flowers, its sides rocking ever so slightly on their own.
Maya approached it slowly. A part of her still hoping this was an elaborate prank. A game.
But when she looked inside, her breath caught.
Folded neatly at the base was a child’s white shirt. Burnt around the collar. The left sleeve melted into crisp edges.
On top of it — a drawing.
Charcoal. Rough.
Sameer again.
This time, not hiding.
This time, standing in fire, smiling.
Part 8: The Locked Room
It took Maya ten full minutes to lift the drawing out of the cradle.
It wasn’t the heat — the paper was cool to the touch, dry. It wasn’t the image — she had seen too many now to be surprised. It was the smile. Sameer’s smile. Unnatural. Too wide for a child who’d burned alive. Too knowing.
She folded it carefully and slipped it into her diary. Beneath it, the charred white shirt sat limp, unmoving. As if it had been waiting all these years for someone to see it. A testimony no one had dared write down.
That night, the house breathed around her.
She could feel it.
The floors beneath her steps softened. The walls hummed faintly. Every corner of the house seemed to pulse with memory.
The cradle kept rocking, though no wind passed through the room.
And the locked door — the one in the storeroom she had assumed was jammed shut by time and rust — stood slightly open.
The door led to a room she hadn’t known existed. A narrow, windowless chamber no more than six feet across, with cracked black tiles and a bulb socket that dangled from the ceiling like an abandoned noose.
Inside: a cupboard.
Old, metal, institutional.
And beside it — a small cardboard box sealed with layers of brown tape. The word MUKTI scrawled again across the lid.
She approached slowly.
Opened the cupboard first.
Empty.
But the inside was lined with soot. Burn marks. And — her throat tightened — fingernail scratches on the inner side of the door.
A pattern of desperate clawing, smeared into blackened steel.
She touched it gently. Cold. Unforgiving.
Then the box.
The tape peeled like skin. The cardboard crackled in protest.
Inside:
- A rusted gas lighter
- A lock of hair, tied in red thread
- A small Ganapati idol, charred at the base
- A burnt diary, its pages fused together
- And at the very bottom — a cassette. Labeled again: MUKTI. Different handwriting this time. Angular. Male.
She stared at it. Her mouth dry.
The next day, she returned to the school library and played the tape.
The hiss of static, then a voice.
Male. Familiar.
“Test 3. Subject remains agitated. Refuses to sleep. Reports hearing voices inside walls. Mother claims the cupboard opens by itself. Attempts to sedate have failed.”
Pause.
“Initiating last phase tonight. If results are confirmed, House 12 will be sealed permanently.”
Long silence.
Then a child’s scream.
Cut abruptly.
End of tape.
Maya sat frozen.
She hadn’t told anyone about the cupboard. Or the screams. Or the letters.
Yet here it was — documented. Clinical. Sanitized.
This wasn’t just a family’s madness.
This was an experiment.
She opened the diary to the last drawing — the one from the cradle.
Sameer in flames.
Behind him: a cupboard door. Slightly open.
A hand reaching out.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
When she returned home that evening, the house felt different.
The smell was gone. The soot, wiped from the cupboard. The cradle — empty.
Only the burnt shirt remained, folded again.
And on the wall of the storeroom, in charcoal strokes:
YOU OPENED IT.
She didn’t sleep that night.
At 2:31 a.m., the lights flickered.
At 2:44, the toy truck rolled across the hall on its own.
At 3:12, the doorbell rang once — loud, long.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she lit a candle. Sat on the floor. And waited.
The house around her creaked, sighed, trembled.
Then her phone buzzed.
Unknown Number:
Tomorrow, you meet him.
Part 9: The Man in the Balcony
At dawn, the house was still.
No whispers.
No dragging sounds.
No burnt smells curled beneath the kitchen door.
It almost convinced her.
Almost.
Until she opened the balcony curtain and saw the man.
He stood across the lane, directly in front of her house, next to the society’s locked pump room. An old grey shawl draped around his shoulders despite the early heat. He didn’t move. Didn’t wave. Just watched.
Maya didn’t blink.
She had seen him before. Not in person. In the photograph the electrician gave her — the one behind the fuse box, where the man stood on her balcony, his face deliberately blurred.
But now, in daylight, his face was clear.
Calm.
Unspectacular.
Forgettable, even.
Except for the eyes.
Too black. Too still.
By the time she got down to the gate, he was gone.
No footsteps. No echoes. The lane lay empty except for a newspaper rolled and soaked in gutter water.
She looked up at her balcony.
No one stood there.
She returned to the cradle.
The shirt was missing.
That afternoon, she walked to the corner tea stall where the older residents gathered every evening. The paanwalla knew everything. He always did.
“Bhaiyya,” she said gently. “Do you remember the Chitale family?”
The man, in his sixties, wore rimless glasses and a Nehru cap with red betel stains at the corner of his lips.
“Which Chitale?”
“From House Number 12.”
He glanced up sharply.
“You’re staying there?”
She nodded.
He clicked his tongue. “Too many stories in that house. Not all of them true. But some… some you don’t want to poke.”
“I’ve already poked,” she said.
The man sighed. “Sameer was a quiet child. Sharvani, his mother — sweet, proper, always said ‘namaskar’ even to the help. But her husband… there was something wrong with him.”
“Did he hurt them?”
The paanwalla rubbed his jaw. “They said it was an accident. A stove explosion. But no fire brigade was ever called. Just police. And the next day, Sharvani was gone. Taken to a hospital. Or maybe not. Some say she jumped in the river. Others say she never left the house at all.”
“And the man?”
“Disappeared.”
“No one saw him?”
The man looked up, his eyes sharp now. “They say he still comes back. Stands on the balcony like he owns the place. But you never see him enter. Never see him leave.”
Maya’s throat tightened. “What did he do for work?”
“Some lab thing. Testing. Chemicals. No one knew. He was secretive. The wife never spoke.”
“Did he have a name?”
He nodded once. “Raghav Chitale.”
That evening, Maya pulled out the letters again. Every mention of him — her, the child, the voices — but never his name.
Only once, in a torn margin:
R. says fire remembers nothing.
She folded the paper and stood. Walked to the balcony.
Across the lane, a dog whined near the pump room.
No man.
But in the dying sunlight, she saw something new.
A handprint.
On the glass of her bedroom window — outside.
Too small to be hers. Too large to be Sameer’s.
It hadn’t rained since morning.
The print was fresh.
That night, the electricity cut out at 2:11 a.m.
All across Samruddhi Bagh.
Except in House Number 12.
Her lights stayed on.
But flickering. Rhythmic. Like a slow, pulsing heartbeat.
In the hallway mirror, her reflection blinked a second too late.
In the kitchen sink, ash circled the drain without water.
And when she entered the storeroom again, she saw him.
Raghav Chitale.
Leaning against the cupboard, arms folded, shawl still around his shoulders.
He didn’t smile.
He didn’t speak.
He simply nodded toward her.
And then opened the cupboard door.
Inside, Sameer.
Burnt.
Alive.
Smiling again.
Maya stumbled back, slammed the storeroom door, bolted it twice.
Her heart thrashed against her ribs.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown Number:
Final night.
Part 10: House No. 12
The next morning, Maya made tea.
She moved slowly, deliberately, as if the day might spare her if she didn’t rush it. The walls watched, humming faintly beneath the surface. Her skin itched with the weight of things unseen.
Outside, Samruddhi Bagh buzzed like any other Wednesday. Children raced to school, housewives haggled with the sabziwala, the society WhatsApp group pinged with news of Ganesh Utsav prep.
Inside House Number 12, no light felt real.
She took her cup to the window.
The man in the shawl was back.
Standing exactly where he had the day before. Only this time, his head was tilted — ever so slightly — as if listening.
Maya didn’t wave. Didn’t move. She just sipped her tea.
He turned and walked away without a sound.
By noon, she’d packed a small bag. Just clothes, her diary, the burnt letters, and Jui’s sketches. Not the cassette. Not the truck. Not the shirt.
She wasn’t going to carry the house with her.
But when she tried to open the front door, it wouldn’t budge.
The lock turned freely. The latch slid. But the door remained shut.
She tried the back window. Jammed.
The balcony grill — fused to the wall.
A quiet message, spelled in hardware.
You don’t leave House Number 12.
Not until it says so.
At dusk, the doorbell rang.
Once.
Then twice.
Then a long, endless press.
She didn’t answer.
She sat on the floor, candle in front of her, the letters fanned out like prayer.
The power flickered.
The lights dimmed.
And then she heard it.
Sameer’s voice.
Not through the phone.
Not behind a wall.
In the room.
Soft. Hopeful.
“Maya Didi?”
She looked up.
He stood at the edge of the hallway. Not burnt. Not blurred. Just a boy. Seven, maybe eight. Holding his green truck like a lifeline.
“You saw me, right?” he whispered. “You read what Mummy wrote?”
Maya nodded.
“She said someone would come.”
“I came.”
His lips trembled. “He locked me in. But I didn’t burn all the way. I stayed.”
“I know.”
Sameer took a step forward. “He’s still here.”
“I saw him.”
“He wants you next.”
“I’m not afraid.”
Sameer’s eyes filled. “Mummy wasn’t either. That’s why she disappeared.”
Maya reached out. “Can I help you leave?”
He shook his head. “You can help me remember.”
The house sighed.
A slow groan, like beams settling into earth.
Then came the scream.
Not Sameer’s.
The man.
Raghav Chitale.
Not from the hallway, but from everywhere.
Walls, windows, wood.
“DON’T FREE HIM,” the voice roared. “HE IS MINE.”
Sameer stepped back, trembling.
The walls began to blister.
The mirror cracked.
The cupboard door in the storeroom slammed open on its own.
Fire — not flame, but heat — thickened the air.
“Maya,” Sameer whispered, “you have to burn the letters. They keep him alive.”
She stared at the pages in front of her.
Sharvani’s voice. Her only truth.
“I can’t.”
“If you don’t,” the boy said, “he comes again. Through someone else. A new house. A new cupboard.”
The lights exploded.
The ceiling fan burst into sparks.
Maya threw open the balcony door — it opened now — and ran to the stove.
Lit a match.
Held it above the letters.
Hesitated.
And then—
She dropped it.
The paper caught.
It burned quickly, hungrily.
The house shrieked.
A sound of metal against bone.
A thousand doors slamming.
Then silence.
By morning, the door opened easily.
She stepped out with her bag.
The house behind her looked the same.
Only the soot on the walls told a different story.
Mrs. Mandal passed her near the gate, carrying milk.
“Leaving so soon?” she asked, half-smiling.
Maya nodded. “I’ve stayed long enough.”
“Did you… find anything?”
Maya looked back once.
“I think something found me.”
Three weeks later, House Number 12 was listed again.
Fresh paint.
New lights.
Ad reads: “Recently renovated, peaceful society, ideal for small families.”
A young couple visited. Smiled politely. Asked about ventilation.
No one mentioned Sameer.
Or the cupboard.
Or the girl who drew in silence.
The man in the shawl was never seen again.
But late one night, as the couple unpacked, the doorbell rang.
Once.
No one stood outside.
Only a small green truck.
Waiting.
The End.
