Prakash Iyer
1
The heat of the festival hung heavy in the air, thick with sandalwood smoke, jasmine petals, and the rhythmic thud of chenda drums echoing off ancient temple walls. Women moved through the temple grounds in waves of red and gold, their sarees shimmering under strings of hanging oil lamps. In the courtyard of the Thirumandhamkunnu Temple, amidst the pulse of ritual and devotion, a body lay sprawled near the banyan tree where devotees tied threads for wishes. The crowd had not noticed her at first, assuming she was just another woman overcome by the rush of the crowd or the trance of the music. But the blood soaking the pleats of her red saree, trailing into the dust beneath her, made it impossible to ignore. Sreelakshmi, twenty-five, unmarried, her forehead marked with fresh kumkumam, had been found with her throat slit open—her hands folded as if in prayer.
Sub-Inspector Harish Kutty stood at the edge of the crime scene, sweat glistening on his brow, eyes sharp and hollow from long hours with no answers. It was the third body in eight months, all during festivals, all women in red, all near temples. There were whispers now—some said it was divine wrath, others blamed black magic. Harish didn’t believe in either. What he did believe in was frustration: three cases, no suspects, no patterns they could see. Except the red. Always the red. He lit a cigarette with shaky fingers, watching the body being zipped into a bag. His phone buzzed. ACP Devika Ramesh was on the line. “I’m sending someone from Kochi. Forensic psychologist. Top of her field. She’s dealt with patterns like these,” she said curtly. Harish sighed, not ready to be babysat by some city-bred analyst with fancy degrees. But orders were orders.
Dr. Anjana Nair stared out of the train window as the landscape of central Kerala blurred past—green, dense, wet from an early monsoon. She hadn’t returned to Malappuram in nearly twenty-four years. Her last memory was the festival. The red. The drums. Her mother’s face, pale and still, surrounded by murmuring women in ritual white. She had buried that image under layers of reason, science, and clinical distance, becoming one of the best psychological profilers in the South. But when ACP Devika had sent her the photos of the victims, something twisted in her chest. Not just the manner of death, but the setting—the temples, the threads tied around their wrists, the symbolism. It wasn’t just murder; it was performance. She closed her eyes as the train rattled through dusk, her own reflection flickering like a ghost in the glass.
At Malappuram station, the air was damp and smelled of wet stone and incense. Anjana stepped off the train in a crisp salwar, laptop bag slung across one shoulder. A constable led her to a dusty white jeep where SI Harish Kutty waited. Their introduction was brief, professional, clipped. He drove in silence, except for the occasional grunt. “Victim was found at the Thirumandhamkunnu temple. Same as the first one,” he muttered. “All three were wearing red.” Anjana nodded. “Red isn’t just a color here. It’s fertility, danger, sacredness, blood.” Harish glanced at her sideways, unimpressed. As they reached the morgue, Anjana’s hand instinctively touched her neck—an unconscious gesture, a phantom echo of the red scarf her mother once tied around her during the last temple festival. The doors to the post-mortem room creaked open. The case had begun. But for Anjana, this wasn’t just a case. It was a return to a ritual she had spent her whole life trying to forget.
2
The morgue was cold, too cold for a town like Malappuram where the heat usually settled into the walls like old gossip. Dr. Anjana Nair stood still under the flickering fluorescent light, her eyes fixed on the lifeless body of Sreelakshmi. The girl’s throat was sliced clean, with no signs of struggle, suggesting surprise, or trust. A faint trace of red thread was found tied delicately around her wrist—almost ceremonial in its placement. The forensic technician glanced at Anjana, unsure of how to read her stillness. She asked for gloves and leaned in closer, studying the knot in the thread. It was no random tie—this was a practiced ritual knot, the kind used in temple offerings or protective charms. Her breath caught in her throat. This killer wasn’t just murdering women—he was enacting a twisted sacrament. The red saree wasn’t a coincidence. It was a symbol, a trigger, maybe even a demand.
Outside, SI Harish leaned against the wall smoking, visibly restless. When Anjana stepped out, he muttered, “So, any big psychological breakthrough yet?” She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she walked to the jeep and pulled out her tablet, flipping through images of the previous victims. “Tell me about the first one—Devika Joseph. Was she also at a festival?” Harish nodded. “During the Ponnani Pooram. Same red saree. Same time of night. Same silence.” Anjana paused. “Did anyone report seeing a man near her? Any eyewitnesses?” Harish shook his head. “These festivals are a sea of faces. Everyone looks the same under lamp light. And no one wants to speak. Not when temples are involved.” His words weren’t accusatory, just tired. Anjana studied his face for a moment. He wasn’t incompetent. He was just up against a wall of ritual, fear, and silence.
They drove through the narrow lanes of Malappuram, past walls with hand-painted posters of temple deities and upcoming festivals. Anjana noticed women at doorsteps tying red threads to brass lamps, chanting under their breath. The color followed her like a ghost. The deeper they went into the town, the heavier the atmosphere felt. They stopped outside Sreelakshmi’s home—a small tiled house with faded blue windows. Inside, the mother sat motionless, her eyes dry from too much crying. On the wall, a photo of Sreelakshmi taken just a week ago—smiling, wearing the same red saree, ready for the temple festival. Anjana didn’t ask questions right away. Instead, she looked around the room and spotted a folded piece of red silk tied around the handle of a mirror. “She always wore red for the goddess,” the mother whispered. “Said it made her feel seen.” The weight of that sentence pressed on Anjana like a hand at the throat.
Back in her temporary quarters, a dim room above an old Ayurveda clinic, Anjana sat by the window as the sound of temple drums echoed faintly through the night air. She pulled out a file containing notes from a forgotten ritual—Raktamaala Vilakku—a ceremony that had once been practiced in only a few temples in Kerala, where unmarried girls were symbolically offered to the deity as ‘brides’, their wrists tied with red thread. It was banned after protests decades ago, but someone remembered. Someone had twisted it into something unrecognizable. She closed her eyes, images of her mother in red flashing across her mind. She remembered the chant, the fire, the scream. She lit a single candle on her table, placing the red thread she’d retrieved beside it. This wasn’t just about profiling a killer. This was about exorcising a ritual that had never truly died.
3
Morning in Malappuram arrived not with sunshine, but with a muffled drizzle and the sound of conch shells from the temple. Dr. Anjana Nair stood at the edge of the crime scene from the first murder—an overgrown stretch of ground behind the Ponnani temple, where Devika Joseph was found months ago. The grass still bore faint reddish stains, now faded into the soil like old gossip. With an umbrella in one hand and photos in the other, Anjana crouched near the banyan tree, eyes scanning the knot marks on the bark where devotees once tied threads for wishes. She touched one such faded knot—its frayed red tail damp with rain. These rituals were intimate, meant to bind the devotee’s soul to the goddess. In each of the three murders, the killer left behind a red thread, as if tying the victim into something sacred, or worse, sacrificial. This wasn’t a serial killer acting out of impulse—it was someone performing, reenacting, obeying something larger than himself.
She met SI Harish Kutty outside the local police archives. Inside, the files were stacked in disarray, smells of mildew and old paper mixing with camphor from a nearby prayer room. “We keep records, but people don’t ask for them,” Harish muttered, flipping through dusty folders. They retrieved the files of a fourth victim—an unofficial case buried under ‘natural death’. Anjana reviewed the report of a girl named Raji, who collapsed during the Pongala festival two years ago. But the postmortem had inconsistencies: bruises on her wrists, puncture wounds, signs of restraint. The case had been buried under layers of temple pressure and silence. “There’s a pattern,” Anjana said. “Unmarried women. Red sarees. Temples. Festivals. Always alone. Always at night. He’s not just killing them. He’s selecting them.” Harish, shaken but still skeptical, murmured, “You think it’s someone connected to the temple?” Anjana gave a small, bitter smile. “He doesn’t just attend the rituals. He believes in them.”
In the afternoon, Anjana visited Revathi Menon, her childhood friend turned investigative journalist. Revathi’s house sat on a hilltop facing the backwaters, a quiet retreat filled with books, incense, and newspaper clippings. She handed Anjana a folder marked Local Disappearances, 2000–2024. Inside were reports of several women who vanished during or after temple festivals—cases never fully investigated. Revathi leaned forward. “No one saw the link until now. But you were right to come back. This place remembers more than it tells.” Anjana scanned the papers, her eyes pausing on a particular name: Anuradha Nair—her mother. The mention was brief, almost buried—“deceased during festival rites, 2001.” Her hands shook slightly. “You still think she died naturally?” Revathi asked. Anjana didn’t answer. She couldn’t. That death had been sealed, both legally and emotionally. But now, with every thread, every name, it was unraveling.
As dusk fell, they visited the Mookambika Temple, one of the oldest and most revered shrines in the district. Inside, Chief Priest Vishwanathan Achan performed the evening deeparadhana, the flickering flames casting long shadows across the sanctum. After the ritual, Anjana requested a meeting. The priest was polite but distant, his eyes sharp behind a gentle smile. When asked about Raktamaala Vilakku, his expression darkened. “That ritual is no longer practiced. It was… misunderstood,” he said. “But the goddess remembers.” As she stepped out, Anjana noticed a faint red thread tied to the gate—fresh, trembling in the breeze. A small gesture, maybe. Or a warning. The rain had stopped, but the smell of wet earth lingered. Something long buried beneath this land—guilt, belief, or rage—was beginning to surface, thread by bloodied thread.
4
The sun rose heavy over Malappuram, pressing thick shadows against temple walls, as though the land itself was reluctant to wake. Dr. Anjana Nair stood inside the forensic lab in Kozhikode, staring at a magnified image of the red thread tied around Sreelakshmi’s wrist. Under UV light, it revealed minute specks of turmeric and ash—substances commonly used in temple rituals. The dye used on the thread was traced back to an old natural dyeing method, abandoned decades ago. Forensic assistant Nabeela Rahim turned to Anjana. “This kind of dyeing is no longer commercial. But someone’s still making it by hand.” Anjana’s thoughts immediately turned to the local thread shops and handloom artisans she’d once walked past as a child. This wasn’t the work of an amateur; it was meticulous, practiced—obsessively so. She packed the evidence into her file and returned to Malappuram with a growing sense of something ancient being awakened, one knot at a time.
She and Harish visited the outskirts of the town, to a near-forgotten lane lined with shuttered tailoring shops and empty looms. At the very end, beyond a rusted gate, lived Basheer Ikka, an elderly thread-dyer once known across districts for his deep vermilion silk threads used in temple decorations. His hands were stained a permanent rust red, his voice raspy from age. “Nobody wants hand-dyed thread anymore,” he said with a soft laugh. When shown the sample, he squinted and ran it between his fingers. “Mine. This is my work. Or someone taught by me.” He spoke of a quiet, odd boy who used to visit the shop almost twenty years ago. “He didn’t talk. Always asked for red thread. Only red. Said he was learning to tie ‘knots the gods remember.’” The words chilled Anjana. “Do you remember his name?” Basheer shook his head. “He never told me. But he paid in coins blessed in temples. Always left a flower.” The image formed—a boy shaped by ritual, obsessed with thread, growing into a man consumed by ceremony.
Later that evening, Anjana sat with Revathi, flipping through old temple festival photographs. They found one image from 2001—her mother, Anuradha Nair, standing near a young girl dressed in red, guiding her toward a ceremonial altar. In the background, half-hidden in shadow, was a boy—no more than ten—watching them. Something about his posture, the blank intensity in his eyes, was unsettling. “It’s always the red,” Revathi said softly. “It calls something in men—fear, obsession, desire.” Anjana stared at her mother’s serene face, lost in time, lost to ritual. The connection between her mother’s fight against Raktamaala Vilakku and these murders was tightening. Someone had witnessed that rebellion. Someone had decided to recreate it—with death as devotion. Her hands clenched unconsciously, as if resisting the invisible knot tightening around her own wrist.
That night, Malappuram seemed unnaturally still. Anjana couldn’t sleep. She wandered near the Mookambika temple where a new festival was being prepared—rows of oil lamps, red fabric being hung like offerings. She saw a silhouette—someone standing silently behind the neem tree where women tied protective charms. As she moved closer, the figure slipped into the shadows, vanishing without a trace. But left behind, tied deliberately to a low branch, was a red thread—new, vivid, knotted in the same pattern as the one found on the victims. Her breath caught. This wasn’t just a killer marking territory. He was watching her. Following her. Inviting her into the performance. And she had stepped right onto his stage.
5
The air in the temple library was stale, thick with the scent of incense and rotting palm-leaf manuscripts. Dr. Anjana Nair sat cross-legged on the cool stone floor, pouring over brittle pages with trembling fingers. Revathi had pulled strings to get them inside this restricted archive, hidden in a chamber behind the Mookambika temple sanctum. It was here that they uncovered references to Raktamaala Vilakku—the forbidden ritual where young, unmarried girls were symbolically offered to the goddess as brides. The details were vague, intentionally shrouded. But one phrase kept reappearing: “The knot that binds the blood to divinity.” It wasn’t metaphor. The ritual involved physically tying a red thread around the girl’s wrist during the full moon ceremony, signifying her transition from girlhood into sanctified womanhood. But there were whispers, too—of girls who disappeared afterward, of one who screamed and bled under the banyan tree before the ritual was outlawed. Anjana’s hands trembled. The more she read, the more clearly she saw her mother’s death not as tragedy, but consequence.
In the twilight hours, she walked alone to her childhood home—a crumbling yellow bungalow now overtaken by weeds and silence. The lock on the gate had rusted, but the gate itself creaked open with a memory-laced groan. Inside, the furniture remained covered in white sheets like forgotten ghosts. In a drawer of her mother’s old cupboard, she found a diary wrapped in red silk. Her fingers hesitated before untying the knot. The entries were dated weeks before her mother’s death—pages filled with anxious handwriting. “They won’t stop the ritual. The trust is determined. I told them it’s inhumane, and they called me impure.” In the last page, her mother had scrawled a name—”Vishwanathan.” Anjana’s stomach turned. The current chief priest. She had always felt he had known more than he said. And now, here it was—in ink and fear.
Later, at the district hospital, Anjana met with Aniya, the teenage girl who had narrowly escaped an attack just a week before Sreelakshmi’s murder. Aniya sat mute in her bed, eyes darting toward corners as if someone still watched her. Trauma therapy was a slow path, but Anjana began gently—offering crayons, letting her draw what she couldn’t say. After an hour, Aniya drew a temple, a girl in red, and beside her, a faceless man holding thread like a noose. There was a banyan tree. A knot. Fire. The drawing matched details never released to the public. Aniya had seen him—had been chosen, but somehow escaped. “Did he say anything?” Anjana whispered. Aniya finally blinked, lips trembling. “He said… I wasn’t ready for the goddess.” The phrase sent a chill down Anjana’s spine. It wasn’t just murder. It was rejection. The killer wasn’t just reliving a ritual—he was enforcing its twisted rules.
That night, Anjana sat alone in her room, her mother’s diary spread before her and Aniya’s drawing pinned to the wall. The killer’s world was not chaos—it was a code, a sacred, violent ritual passed down through silence and shadow. He was not killing randomly. He was selecting. Testing. Punishing. And the center of that ritual—the place where it had once been stopped—was her mother. Anjana closed her eyes and heard the chenda drums again, louder than ever. She wasn’t just tracing a killer’s mind anymore. She was circling the altar where it had all begun. And she had the terrible feeling that the final offering… might be her.
6
The drive to Ponnani was cloaked in the mist of monsoon drizzle, but for Dr. Anjana Nair, it felt like a tunnel into her own buried psyche. The coastline shimmered grey beyond the windshield, the sea whispering secrets she didn’t want to remember. The local sub-inspector, Abdul Hakeem, had called in an odd lead—a retired priest from the Kadampuzha Devi Temple who had spoken of “ritual transgressions” during festivals in the early 2000s. The timing matched the pattern of Anjana’s repressed memory, and for the first time, she admitted to herself that the case wasn’t just professionally urgent—it was personal. The landscape changed subtly as they approached the seaside village: coconut trees swayed like mourners, and tiled-roof houses leaned tiredly into the earth. A memory flashed unbidden—her mother’s red saree catching the wind, the echo of a conch shell, and her own tiny fingers clutching something sticky and warm.
The priest, Krishnan Namboodiri, was waiting on the porch of a moss-covered ancestral home. Age hadn’t dimmed his sharp eyes, though his voice trembled with the wear of decades. Over a slow-burning brass lamp, he spoke of a time when red sarees weren’t just celebratory—when they marked the chosen women for symbolic sacrifice during rituals that skirted the border of legality and horror. “It was never murder,” he said, eyes narrowing. “But some rituals had… participants who went too far. You remember the Thaali Kettu Mahotsavam of 1999?” Anjana did, vaguely—a swirl of red and gold, a scream, and then a void. Namboodiri’s words were soaked in guilt, but they also unlocked a terrible association. That year’s festival ended in the mysterious drowning of a young woman. Her mother’s death was ruled natural, but now she wondered—was it connected?
On the ride back, Anjana stared into the rain-smeared glass and saw herself at ten, hiding behind temple walls as fire torches lit the sky. The memory was no longer abstract. Her mother, Gouri Nair, had been part of the same festival, had worn the same red saree, and had vanished in the same pattern now mirrored by the current killings. The killer wasn’t just imitating rituals; they were weaponizing them. This wasn’t about random victims. It was about recreating something, perhaps even correcting what had once failed. The detail chilled her: every woman killed had attended the temple alone. Just like Gouri. Anjana’s profile began to shift—the killer wasn’t just obsessed with rituals; they were seeking purification, retribution, or both.
Back in the Malappuram police station, she called for every archived record from the 1999 and 2000 temple festivals. Officer Hakeem brought them, tattered and yellowed, some barely legible. As she combed through old photos and newspaper clippings, a face began to emerge—a young temple volunteer, unnamed in the articles but always in the background. Thin. Intense. Watching. She circled the image and looked at Hakeem. “Find out who he is,” she said. “And see if he’s ever been involved in organizing recent festivals.” Something deep inside her cracked as the past leaked into the present. She wasn’t just chasing a killer now—she was circling the ashes of a ghost that had haunted her for twenty-four years.
7
The streets of Malappuram were swollen with noise and heat as Dr. Anjana Nair made her way through the throngs gathered for the annual Devi Vilakku festival. The temple grounds were glowing with oil lamps, the scent of sandalwood and jasmine hanging thick in the air. Women, many draped in red sarees, moved like a slow tide through the temple courtyard, their bangles clinking in rhythm with the percussion ensemble playing near the sanctum. For Anjana, the setting evoked more dread than reverence. Every red saree was a potential target, every smile a possible final photograph. She wasn’t there for prayer, but to follow a lead—one whispered to her by Sreedevi, the survivor who believed the killer wore a face painted like the goddess herself. With ACP Dev in tow, she tried to navigate both the crowd and her resurging memories, a disorienting mix of bells, drums, and red swirling fabrics. Somewhere in that ritualistic chaos, a predator might be hiding in plain sight, mimicking the sacred for their own bloody ends.
They took position near the east pavilion where performers enacted traditional Theyyam-style rituals, invoking various goddesses through exaggerated makeup and dance. Anjana’s eyes locked on one performer whose face bore the unmistakable white and red makeup pattern Sreedevi had described. The figure moved with unnatural grace, the metal anklets ringing in calculated rhythm, every gesture imbued with both divinity and danger. She leaned closer to Dev. “That’s not a temple performer,” she whispered. Dev nodded slightly. “I know. That anklet pattern is out of sync with the drum beat. He’s faking it.” They watched as the figure began to bless women by placing ash on their foreheads, always targeting those wearing red. A few officers closed in, blending into the crowd in plain clothes, while Anjana moved around toward the back of the makeshift stage. But just as they prepared to apprehend the man, he vanished behind a draped curtain into the throngs, slipping away with practiced ease. All they found were discarded temple ornaments and a torn piece of a red blouse, smeared with white paint.
Back at the station, the fragment of the blouse yielded a partial fingerprint that didn’t match anyone in the criminal database. Yet, Anjana was certain this man was escalating, now playing with the ritual itself—using the festival as camouflage, blurring the line between reverence and violence. The mask of the goddess wasn’t just a ruse, it was a message. “He’s hiding behind something sacred to make his acts unrecognizable as crimes,” she said, almost to herself. “To him, he’s not killing. He’s offering.” Dev looked up sharply. “Offering to what?” She met his eyes. “To the memory of a woman who wore red. To an event that broke him. We need to go deeper—not just who he is now, but who he was when the world stopped making sense to him.” Her voice cracked slightly, revealing the emotional weight she carried. Dev didn’t pry. Instead, he slid a file toward her. “There’s something. A retired drama teacher from a nearby village came forward. Said he remembers a boy who used to play female goddess roles. Left suddenly after something happened onstage. Said the boy was… too good at dying.”
That night, Anjana sat alone in her rented room, turning over the new information in her mind. She had pulled out a faded photograph from her wallet—her mother in a red saree, holding Anjana as a child during a festival. That same oil-lamp glow, that same crowd of painted faces, now twisted by memory and fear. The killer’s use of cultural tropes wasn’t accidental. He was constructing a mythos where femininity, especially when adorned in red, symbolized both desire and punishment. He was reliving something that had shattered his psyche during a public ritual. And that meant he wasn’t done. If anything, the next act was coming soon—and it would be his most theatrical performance yet.
8
The rain came down in relentless sheets as Dr. Anjana Nair stood before the ancient banyan tree on the northern edge of Thirumangalam village. The spot was marked on the old map she’d found in her father’s forgotten trunk, a map that traced ritual pathways once walked by temple dancers during secret night ceremonies, long abolished by reformers. Holding a red shawl soaked in blood—the one recovered from the seventh victim—Anjana let her fingers graze the damp bark of the tree. In the past week, every thread of logic had been shredded by what she now knew: the killer was not random, not a mindless psychopath, but someone orchestrating an ancient retribution. This tree, she believed, was not just symbolic but central. In temple lore, it was called Raktha Vriksha—the Blood Tree—where sinners were once offered as sacrifices to appease Devi. Her mother had whispered such things once, but they had sounded like bedtime ghost stories. Now, Anjana feared they were blueprints.
Inside her car, the case file was now heavier with pain than with paper. She had compiled every detail: victims all between 25 and 35, unmarried, educated, and always last seen participating in the Pooram festival wearing red sarees. Each had some link, however obscure, to the Devi Aaraattu procession in different villages of Malappuram. The eighth festival was due in two nights in Pazhayangadi, and Anjana was certain the killer would strike again—unless she intercepted them first. What terrified her more than the killer, however, was a growing doubt within herself. Her suppressed childhood trauma was surfacing too vividly, too precisely: the red saree her mother had worn, the flame-lit face of an unknown man watching the crowd from behind temple pillars, the rhythmic chant that made her young bones tremble. Now those chants echoed through her mind as if someone was feeding her the killer’s thoughts. Was this empathy? Or contamination?
With reluctant hands, she opened a voice note on her recorder. “Case Update, Day 26. Hypothesis confirmed. Killer’s profile matches not just religious psychosis but ritualistic precision tied to caste taboos and temple hierarchies. Victims symbolically erased. Each represents a violation—female agency, education, defiance. This is not a spree; it’s a sacrifice. My source at the forensic archive has matched temple trust records with police station logs. Three men removed from priesthood roles in the early 90s after allegations of misconduct. All unpunished. Two are dead. One remains—Ayyappan Elayathu. I believe he’s the key. He was once the lead priest in Pazhayangadi.” Her voice faltered. “He was also present at my mother’s final festival. I was six.” The confession rattled around in the small space, and she deleted the note almost instantly. Admitting it made it too real. She couldn’t let her bias sabotage what remained of her clarity.
At the guesthouse that night, she couldn’t sleep. Outside, thunder rattled the tiled roofs as the monsoon howled through the hills. Anjana stood by the wooden window, clutching her notepad. She had circled a date: August 9. The next ritual. But something else caught her eye now—an envelope slid under her door. Plain, unmarked. Inside, a single thread of red cotton and a palm leaf note in Malayalam: “The final Devi must offer herself. You already wear the red.” Her breath hitched. It wasn’t just a warning. It was an invitation. The killer knew she was close. And perhaps, he had always known her.
9
The temple grounds had never felt more sinister. The rhythmic chants of the devotees, the wafting scent of jasmine, and the echo of drums reverberating across the hillock no longer felt like sanctified offerings. To Dr. Anjana Nair, every red saree in the crowd was a potential invitation to violence. With the festival now at its climax, she walked silently beside ACP Aravind, both their eyes scanning the throngs. Every movement, every fleeting glance from strangers now carried an edge of menace. The killer was somewhere among them. And Anjana, for the first time, felt she wasn’t just chasing a shadow—she was being watched too. The feeling of being stalked—something that had haunted her dreams since childhood—now pressed down on her chest like a tightening rope.
Earlier that morning, a torn page from an ancient Devi Mahatmyam had been found near the latest crime scene, tucked beneath the victim’s blood-soaked pallu. The symbolism was unmistakable now—this wasn’t just a killer with a fetish for red, but someone meticulously weaving ritual, vengeance, and psychosis into one calculated string of sacrifices. Back in her guest quarters, Anjana had laid out every photograph, note, and psychological profile on the floor, trying to find the convergence point. It was during this ritual of her own—a search for patterns amid chaos—that she realized each murder aligned with specific tithi (lunar phases) and particular Devi festivals unique to Malappuram’s folk traditions. This wasn’t random. It was liturgy. A twisted purification ritual—one Anjana feared might still have its final act pending.
As dusk fell, Anjana returned alone to her childhood home—a now crumbling two-storey house on the edge of the forest. Memories she had suppressed for decades returned in jarring fragments. The echo of anklets on temple stone, the vision of her mother—draped in red, face smeared with turmeric—walking barefoot to the shrine just days before she was found lifeless in a nearby pond. Everyone had called it a tragic accident. But Anjana knew now what her younger self had sensed even then—her mother had been marked. As she moved through the decaying rooms, she found an old wooden chest sealed shut with an iron lock. Breaking it open revealed a bundle of letters, yellowed photographs, and a cloth pouch filled with sindoor. One photograph made her freeze—a younger Anjana beside her mother and a man with a shaved head and sharp, unsettling eyes. The reverse had a name: “Sreedharan Gurukkal — Kshetram Thantri.”
Heart racing, she scanned the name through old police archives and local temple registries. What surfaced made her breath catch—Sreedharan Gurukkal, former high priest of the temple, had been expelled quietly years ago after allegations of ‘inappropriate rituals’ during late-night Devi worship. He had vanished from public life but not from the faith of a secretive sect that believed in the power of ‘Raktha Bali’—sacrificial offerings through blood, often targeting women symbolic of Devi herself. As the pieces aligned chillingly into place, Anjana realized this was no longer a simple hunt for a killer—it was a battle against a zealot who believed himself chosen to restore purity through blood. And he had one more offering to make.
10
The dawn over Malappuram was unusually silent, as if the town itself was holding its breath. The temple courtyard, once stained by the echo of death, stood empty save for a single diya flickering in the breeze. Dr. Anjana Nair stood near the sanctum, her eyes fixed on the red thread tied to the old banyan tree—the same thread used by the killer to mark his victims. The final confrontation had occurred just hours before, deep inside the festival grounds, where the killer—revealed to be Suresh, the temple caretaker’s son—had tried to enact his final ritual. Anjana had cornered him not with force, but with understanding, speaking the language of trauma, calling out his fractured reasoning like a mirror held to his damaged soul. In those last moments, he’d broken down, sobbing beneath the looming idol of the goddess, confessing to the murders as though the deity herself demanded penance.
The arrest had sent tremors through the town. People who once trusted Suresh implicitly were now struggling to accept that the quiet, devout man who rang the temple bell every morning had orchestrated a series of symbolic killings to avenge a past no one remembered but him. He’d watched his mother be dragged away in a red saree during a festival when he was nine—accused of infidelity and beaten to death in a frenzy of blind rage. No one was punished. No one remembered. Except him. And each murder had been a twisted recreation of that moment, a scream against collective amnesia, against ritualistic violence masked as tradition. Anjana saw in him not redemption, but the reflection of a culture that forgets its sins and buries its guilt in silence and superstition.
For Anjana, the case had become more than just a professional assignment. The final piece of her own trauma fell into place when she returned to her ancestral home—abandoned, vine-covered, and heavy with memory. A neighbor had handed her an old photograph—her mother in a red saree, on the day she died. But it wasn’t the saree that caught her attention. It was the face in the background: young Suresh, staring, expressionless, a child among chaos. Her mother’s death had been ruled an accident—a fall during the overcrowded procession—but now Anjana knew better. She had been the first red thread, the first offering. And Suresh had merely waited for the world to forget before beginning again. Closure didn’t come as catharsis; it came as weight—of knowing, of remembering, of choosing never to turn away from the uncomfortable truths again.
As she boarded the train back to Kochi, Anjana carried no files, no evidence bags—just her mother’s photograph tucked into a worn leather journal. The sound of temple bells faded behind her, replaced by the hum of the rails beneath. Outside, the red of the gulmohar trees swayed in the wind—not ominous, not symbolic, just red, just alive. She closed her eyes briefly, not in escape, but in peace. The cycle had ended. And in the silence that followed, a quiet promise stirred: that memory would be honored, not feared. That rituals would be questioned, not obeyed blindly. That the red thread would no longer bind women to death, but be woven into stories—truthful, painful, defiant—that could set them free.
End
