Sreeparna Dutta
Part 1: The Clock that Shouldn’t Tick
The villa stood like a forgotten promise—wrapped in fog, choked by ivy, and hunched at the edge of the cliff like it wanted to leap off. Priya Kapoor stood before the iron gate of “Whispering Pines,” a name that now seemed laughably poetic. The trees didn’t whisper. They watched.
She adjusted her scarf as the wind cut sharper than she remembered. This wasn’t the Himachal of pretty postcards or Instagram reels. This was old Darchand—the abandoned hill station locals said was cursed by time itself.
The driver who brought her up had refused to stay the night. “No one stays past sundown,” he muttered before speeding down the narrow path, the tires coughing on gravel.
She pushed open the gate, its groan a rasp of metal and memory. Her boots sank into a carpet of rotting pine needles as she approached the front door. The keys, sent to her in a yellowed envelope along with her grandfather’s will, trembled in her hand—not from cold, but from the weight of questions.
Why had her grandfather left her this place? She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. Not since the day her mother stormed out, swearing never to speak of him again.
The door creaked open. The villa was dark, the air thick with the scent of mothballs, wood polish, and something else—something… stale. She clicked on the flashlight app on her phone and stepped inside. Her boots echoed through the hallway, past dusty portraits and wallpaper that peeled like ancient skin.
She passed the parlor, the dining room, and paused at the grand staircase. Cobwebs dangled from the chandelier like ghostly threads. But one room caught her eye—the drawing room to the left. Its door was slightly ajar, and faintly, she heard it.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
That was impossible.
The house was abandoned. There was no power. No reason for a clock to be running.
She pushed the door gently. Inside, the room was dim, lit only by a gap in the heavy curtains. Dust motes floated like spirits in the air. And there, against the far wall, stood a grandfather clock.
But not just any clock.
It was tall, dark mahogany, and pristine—as if time had skipped it entirely. Not a speck of dust. Its brass pendulum swung silently, unnervingly smooth. And it ticked with a rhythm that seemed too deliberate, too alive.
Priya stepped closer, brushing her fingers across its polished wood. Her eyes caught the plaque above the dial:
To My Dearest, So You Never Wait Alone.
Something about those words made her stomach tighten. She hadn’t seen this clock before, not even in photos. Her grandfather had built dozens of timepieces—but none like this.
She reached out to open the glass casing.
“Don’t touch that.”
The voice shot through her like ice.
She spun around.
An old woman stood by the door, wrapped in a shawl too thin for the cold, her eyes sharp and steady.
“I’m sorry,” Priya said, heart thudding. “Who are you?”
The woman stepped in slowly. “Name’s Mrs. Nayar. I used to clean this house. Looked after your grandfather in his last days. You must be Priya.”
“I… yes. He left me this place.”
Mrs. Nayar’s eyes didn’t leave the clock. “Of course he did. He always said it would come back to blood. The house wants that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You shouldn’t stay here after dark. The clock doesn’t like it.”
Priya raised an eyebrow. “The clock doesn’t like it?”
Mrs. Nayar ignored the question, instead moving closer to the fireplace. “Did you hear it last night?”
“I just arrived.”
“Good.” She turned. “Then it hasn’t started calling you yet.”
Priya frowned. “This is ridiculous. It’s just a clock.”
The old woman’s lips curled into a bitter smile. “That’s what your grandfather said. Until it began to chime at 3:33 every morning. Twelve times. Then thirteen. And then… she started walking again.”
Priya blinked. “She?”
“The Clockmaker’s Widow.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You will,” she said, heading for the door. “Just don’t look into the glass when it chimes. And whatever you do, don’t answer if she speaks.”
Before Priya could reply, Mrs. Nayar was gone.
The room fell quiet—except for the tick-tock.
That night, the villa grew colder. Priya unpacked a few essentials in the upstairs bedroom, pulled a woollen shawl tighter, and opened her laptop to make notes for the article she was writing: “Inheritance of Silence: One Woman’s Journey Into Her Haunted Past.” Catchy enough.
She was skeptical, of course. Ghost stories were common in old hill stations, and every dusty mansion had its secrets. But something about the clock unnerved her. She told herself it was just craftsmanship. Maybe a wind-up mechanism still functioned.
Still, she placed her phone on the bedside table and set an alarm for 3:30 AM.
She didn’t know why.
Maybe it was curiosity.
Maybe it was fear in disguise.
When the alarm buzzed, she opened her eyes to pitch black. The power was still off. Her phone’s light was dim, battery dying.
She tiptoed downstairs, breath fogging in the hallway. The drawing room door stood wide open.
And the clock ticked.
Tick.
Tock.
Then… silence.
The pendulum stopped.
Priya held her breath.
BONG.
The chime was deep, metallic, and too loud for one clock.
BONG.
She felt the floor vibrate.
BONG.
Somewhere, she heard footsteps. Not hers.
BONG.
The glass of the clock’s face shimmered—like water.
BONG.
A whisper, so close to her ear it made her flinch:
“Waited… so long…”
She stumbled back.
BONG.
And in the clock’s glass, for a split second, she saw it.
A woman.
Dressed in a bridal saree.
Her face veiled. But her eyes—blank and waiting.
BONG.
She reached out. From inside the glass.
BONG.
Priya screamed.
BONG.
The final chime echoed like a gunshot.
And then—nothing.
The clock ticked again, as if nothing had happened.
Priya backed out of the room, heart racing, breath shallow.
Upstairs, she didn’t sleep.
Outside, the wind howled.
And down in the drawing room, the pendulum kept swinging.
Part 2: The Woman in the Glass
Priya didn’t remember falling asleep, but when the first weak light of dawn cracked through the fog-draped window, she jolted awake, drenched in sweat. Her throat was dry, and her hands were still trembling.
She forced herself to believe it was a dream. Jet lag. Isolation. The villa’s eerie atmosphere. Of course her mind would conjure a woman in a bridal saree reaching out from a clock. Of course she imagined the whisper.
Yet, when she tiptoed downstairs, the drawing room looked exactly as she left it. The clock stood there, silent now. The pendulum swayed gently, like the rocking of a cradle. On impulse, she touched the glass.
It was warm.
There was no logical reason for that. The room was freezing.
She stepped back and looked at the plaque again—To My Dearest, So You Never Wait Alone.
That phrase burrowed deeper with each reading. It wasn’t just sentimental. It felt like a warning.
She spent the morning exploring the house, trying to distract herself. The attic revealed a trove of old letters, engineering blueprints, and hand-drawn schematics of clocks—many of which bore a distinct circular emblem of seven interlocked rings. She traced it with her fingers. It appeared again and again. Always seven rings. Never eight.
In one folder, she found a faded photograph: her grandfather, young and bright-eyed, standing beside a woman whose face was deliberately scratched out. The back of the photo simply read, “Whispering Pines, 1956.”
Who was the woman?
She spent the afternoon reading the old town records she found in a trunk. Darchand, it turned out, had once been a bustling summer retreat for British officers and Indian royals alike. But in the early ’60s, people began leaving. Landslides. Vanishing tourists. Ghost sightings. The local church even recorded something called “The Bride Apparition,” last noted in 1971.
Priya stared at the journal entry:
“Bride appeared at dawn in the window of the Seth villa. Two children went missing that night. Family relocated immediately. Entry sealed at request of Diocese.”
She slammed the book shut.
That night, she tried not to set the alarm. But her fingers betrayed her. 3:30 AM again.
She lay awake in the dark, watching the numbers on her phone glow:
3:29.
3:30.
Silence.
Then—
BONG.
She hadn’t even reached the stairs yet. The clock was early.
BONG.
She held the railing, breathing through her nose.
BONG.
Downstairs, she heard the unmistakable creak of the drawing room door.
BONG.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. A text.
From: UNKNOWN
“Answer her this time.”
Her blood froze.
BONG.
She typed furiously—Who is this?
No reply.
BONG.
She reached the drawing room and slowly pushed the door open.
The clock stood there, its face now dimly glowing. Inside the glass, the woman had returned. This time, her veil was lifted.
She had no mouth.
Only those blank, accusing eyes.
Priya stepped back, trembling.
The woman pressed one hand to the glass.
And then, clear as a bell, inside Priya’s own head, a voice whispered:
“You’ve been here before.”
Priya gasped. “No, I haven’t. I never came here as a child.”
But something in her memory stirred. A flash—a small brass locket, a cracked porcelain doll, her mother’s voice shouting at her to never speak of something. What was it?
The woman leaned forward in the glass.
And in that instant, the pendulum stopped.
The clock hands spun backward rapidly. Time unspooling.
And Priya was no longer in the drawing room.
She was standing in the hallway.
But it wasn’t dusty or dark.
It was 1961.
The lights were bright. Furniture intact. A gramophone played soft music in the background. She could hear laughter—young voices. Her grandfather, younger, stood in the hall with that same veiled woman. They were dancing. He looked… in love.
Then something shattered.
A scream.
The woman turned her head sharply—and stared straight at Priya.
Even through time.
Even in this vision.
She knew she was being watched.
And with a jolt, Priya was back.
In her body.
Alone.
The clock chimed once more.
Thirteen.
The glass cracked.
Hairline. Barely visible.
But it was the first break.
And she had a feeling—each night, it would crack a little more.
Part 3: The Thirteenth Chime
Priya didn’t move. Not at first. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she stared at the hairline crack across the clock’s glass—small, delicate, but undeniable. It hadn’t been there before. And the thirteenth chime still echoed in her ears like a nail being driven into wood.
She backed out of the drawing room, this time closing the door behind her, but the latch wouldn’t catch. As if the house itself refused to let that room remain shut. She returned to her bedroom, but the idea of sleep seemed laughable. Her phone still had the message: “Answer her this time.” No sender. No signal.
By morning, the fog outside had lifted slightly, but the sky remained leaden with grey. Priya made herself a cup of stale instant coffee from a packet left in the kitchen and opened her laptop. She typed “Clockmaker’s Widow Darchand” into the search bar and waited, tethering her hotspot, praying the spotty signal would cooperate.
A few results popped up—urban legends, some Reddit threads, a blog post from 2009 written by a backpacker who claimed the villa was haunted. But one link stood out: “Disappearance in Darchand: The Bride in the Mirror.” A scanned newspaper clipping.
“Young woman Meera Joshi, 24, last seen at her engagement party hosted at Whispering Pines. Fiancé Dev Malhotra claims she vanished from the drawing room during a storm. Only the grandfather clock remained ticking. Her body was never found.”
The date: April 12, 1961.
The same year she’d seen in the vision. The woman in the glass had been real. Meera Joshi. And the name “Dev Malhotra” made her pause.
Because Dev was her grandfather’s name.
Suddenly it all twisted together: the veiled woman, the photograph with the scratched-out face, the plaque on the clock—To My Dearest, So You Never Wait Alone.
Her grandfather had been engaged. To someone who vanished in this house. Someone who may never have left at all.
Priya’s throat went dry. Her mother had never spoken of her father’s past. What if Meera wasn’t just a fiancée? What if she had been more?
A knock on the front door jolted her upright.
She wasn’t expecting anyone.
She peered through the peephole and saw a girl in a school uniform, no older than thirteen, with a large canvas sketchbook clutched to her chest.
When Priya opened the door, the girl looked up with wide eyes. “You’re staying here?” she asked.
Priya nodded. “Who are you?”
“I’m Kavya. I come by sometimes to draw the house. No one’s lived here in years.”
“I noticed.”
Kavya shifted nervously. “Have you… heard her yet?”
Priya stared. “Who?”
“The lady in the clock.”
Priya’s voice dropped. “What do you know about her?”
Kavya opened her sketchbook and flipped to a charcoal drawing. It showed the same grandfather clock, but twisted—its pendulum a human heart, its glass a fogged mirror. Inside, the face of a woman screamed silently.
“I saw her once,” Kavya said quietly. “I was sketching outside. The clock chimed. I looked through the window. She was behind the glass. She opened her mouth and no sound came out. But I heard her in my head.”
“What did she say?”
Kavya hesitated. “She said… You look like her.”
Priya’s hands trembled. “Like who?”
But the girl just closed her book and stepped back. “I have to go. Don’t stay here on the twelfth night. That’s when she walks.”
And before Priya could stop her, the girl ran down the hill path and disappeared into the mist.
Back inside, Priya pulled out the photo again. Her grandfather. Meera, her face scratched out. She looked in the mirror and wondered—not for the first time—was she really the first woman in her family to return here?
That evening, she set up her camera in the drawing room, hidden just behind the curtain. If something appeared again, she wanted proof.
At 3:30 AM, she didn’t need the alarm.
She was already awake.
The air in the villa changed. Heavier. Pressurized.
Then—
BONG.
She crept to the hallway and watched.
BONG.
The drawing room door opened by itself.
BONG.
Inside, the glass glowed faintly.
BONG.
This time, she didn’t enter. She stood at the threshold and watched the clock.
The glass began to shimmer again.
And there she was.
The woman.
Meera.
Her veil was fully lifted now, and though her mouth remained a blur—sealed by time or death—her eyes were sharp. Too sharp. And filled with grief so old it cracked the soul.
Suddenly, the camera behind the curtain sparked and fell with a clatter.
The woman’s head turned.
Her eyes locked on Priya.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know me,” said a voice inside her skull.
Priya stumbled back. “I don’t!”
The woman raised one hand and pointed directly at Priya’s chest.
“You wore my ring.”
Priya’s hands flew to her neckline. Beneath her sweater, she always wore a simple chain with an old, antique ring—her mother had given it to her without explanation when she turned fifteen.
She yanked it out and stared.
It was ornate. Brass. Inscribed on the inside.
M.J. — April 12
Her blood froze.
It was Meera’s engagement ring.
And she had been wearing it all along.
Part 4: The Ring and the Rift
The ring felt heavier now. Heavier than gold, heavier than memory. Priya stared at the initials—M.J., the date etched in curving script—April 12. The same day Meera Joshi had vanished into the clock. The same ring her mother had handed over with trembling fingers and no explanation.
She remembered asking, once, where it came from. Her mother had looked away and muttered, “It doesn’t matter. It’s old family jewelry. Don’t lose it.”
But it did matter. Because now, the woman behind the clockglass had recognized it. And more terrifyingly—had recognized her.
Priya stood frozen at the drawing room threshold as the final chime rang out, softer this time, like a breath fading into a whisper.
“You wore my ring.”
The glass fogged over. The shimmer dimmed. The woman’s outline blurred.
Then, with a sharp click, the pendulum stopped.
She slammed the door shut, backed away, and ran up the stairs two at a time. Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped the ring pulling the chain off her neck. She stuffed it in a drawer, slammed it shut, and turned the lock.
Sleep, as always, never came.
By morning, she looked like she hadn’t closed her eyes in days. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the wash basin—pale, hollow-eyed, lips dry and cracked. And in that reflection, just for a blink, she thought she saw someone behind her. A figure draped in white, standing at the door.
She whirled around.
No one.
Just a coat rack.
She spent the rest of the day combing through the attic again. She found old receipts, journals, yellowing letters. Her grandfather’s handwriting scrawled in sharp strokes. At first, they were just work logs. Notes on gears, weights, the subtle balance of pendulum swings.
But then she found one entry dated April 13, 1961:
“The clock is whole, but wrong. She was meant to come back. Not stay. Not scream. I should never have made the Eighth Chamber. The Widow sees me even when I close my eyes.”
Priya flipped the page.
“I tried to dismantle it. The brass cracked. The pendulum bled. No one will believe this. I think I made a grave instead of a gift. If anyone reads this—don’t let it chime thirteen. Not again.”
Her breath caught.
He had tried to stop it. But failed.
She found the blueprint attached with a rusted pin. The clock had seven internal rings. But the drawing showed an eighth, deeper than the rest—labeled: Heart Loop.
She felt a chill pass down her spine.
Just then, a voice called from the gate.
“Miss? Miss Kapoor?”
She hurried downstairs and out into the garden. A tall man stood just beyond the rusted bars. Late thirties, glasses, corduroy jacket, holding a leather satchel.
“I’m Vikram Dutt,” he said. “Historian. Folklore research division, Delhi University. I saw your article teaser about this place online last night and drove up early. Hope that’s alright.”
Priya blinked. “You drove all the way here because of a blog draft?”
He shrugged sheepishly. “Well, also because my grandmother used to speak of this place. Of a woman in a mirror who cried every wedding night. Said she cursed her fiancé and anyone who stayed in the villa after her.”
Priya opened the gate slowly. “You’d better come in.”
They sat at the kitchen table. Priya showed him the letters. The blueprint. The cracked glass of the clock.
He examined everything carefully, brows furrowing. “This isn’t just spiritual haunting. This is what old Himalayan villages called a Time Trap—a cursed cycle, usually created during rituals interrupted by grief or betrayal. Most often connected to objects of emotional weight. Mirrors. Bells. Clocks.”
“And if it breaks?”
“The soul gets trapped mid-loop. It repeats endlessly unless the source is removed—or reversed.”
“Reversed how?”
He hesitated. “Sometimes by destroying the object. But more often by resolving the trauma. Giving the ghost what it wants.”
Priya laughed bitterly. “What Meera wants is her fiancé. My grandfather. Who’s dead.”
“Then she may settle for his bloodline.”
She froze.
Vikram looked at her. “You’re the only one left, aren’t you?”
A silence spread between them.
Then he said something that made her skin crawl.
“The thirteenth chime marks the end of her waiting. After that… she steps through.”
Priya whispered, “Tonight is the fourth night.”
Vikram stood slowly. “We need to see that clock. Inside it. Tonight.”
She looked at the blueprint again. The eighth ring. The Heart Loop.
Somewhere in the walls of that clock, a love story had festered into a curse.
And the woman who had waited in silence for sixty years… was done waiting.
Part 5: Into the Eighth Ring
The grandfather clock loomed in the drawing room, quiet now, but full of a presence that pressed against the very air. Vikram circled it slowly, flashlight flickering along the polished wood, the tiny crack in the glass, the brass hinges that still gleamed like new.
“It’s too pristine,” he murmured. “This clock hasn’t aged like the rest of the house.”
“It hasn’t,” Priya replied. “Even the dust avoids it.”
They waited until night fell. Vikram spread out his tools on a sheet—tiny screwdrivers, tweezers, a fiber-optic camera, gloves. The atmosphere in the villa thickened as the hours passed. Priya felt it in her chest, like pressure building in a room with no air.
At 2:30 AM, Vikram put on the gloves and carefully pried open the glass casing. The crack had deepened, crawling toward the center like a spider’s leg. Inside, the pendulum ticked softly, unnaturally smooth, each swing silent yet heavy, like it was slicing through memory.
“There,” he pointed. “Behind the pendulum. Do you see the plate? It’s been soldered over.”
Priya crouched beside him. A small brass plate, etched faintly with the number 8, was hidden behind the central mechanism. Just as the blueprint described. Vikram took out a tiny chisel and began to work.
“Your grandfather must have sealed the eighth ring after she vanished,” he whispered. “Probably his way of trapping her in the loop. Seven rings to power the time memory… the eighth to contain the soul.”
The villa groaned. Not the wind, not the wood. A low moan that came from beneath the floor.
The pendulum stopped.
And then—
BONG.
They both looked up.
BONG.
It was 3:00 AM. The chimes had begun early again.
BONG.
Vikram’s hands moved faster, prying at the brass plate.
BONG.
The lights flickered—though there was no electricity.
BONG.
In the glass, the shimmer began again.
BONG.
And Meera appeared.
Not behind the glass.
But in the reflection of the window across the room.
Priya turned her head slowly. Meera stood in the mirrored pane, eyes hollow, her bridal veil floating like it was underwater. And this time, her mouth wasn’t sealed.
It was open.
Too wide.
Like it had been sewn shut and torn back open again.
BONG.
“Don’t look at her,” Vikram snapped. “Just listen.”
BONG.
But the voice came again, inside Priya’s skull.
“You stole him. You wore the ring.”
“I didn’t know!” Priya gasped. “I didn’t even know your name!”
“You waited with him. I waited alone.”
Vikram struck the plate with a hard jab. The brass popped loose, and a compartment slid open behind the pendulum.
Inside lay a faded letter, folded tight. Vikram grabbed it with tweezers.
Suddenly, the room screamed.
That’s the only way Priya could describe it.
Every wall seemed to exhale pain—centuries of grief and rage crashing through the air. The windows rattled, the clock ticked violently, and Meera’s face contorted into something primal.
“Give it back.”
The words weren’t whispered. They were thunder in Priya’s skull.
The lights blew out. Pitch black.
Vikram grabbed her hand. “Run!”
They stumbled into the hallway, Priya clutching the letter. Behind them, the clock gave one final BONG, and the glass shattered.
Not cracked. Not fractured.
Shattered.
They locked themselves in the study upstairs. Vikram struck a match and lit the oil lamp.
“Read it,” he said, voice ragged. “Whatever it is, she wants it.”
Priya unfolded the brittle paper. Her grandfather’s handwriting.
My dearest Meera,
You were never meant to be caught in the machine. I built it to remember, not to trap.
You said, ‘Promise me you’ll never let me wait alone.’
I failed you. The chime was supposed to bring you back.
But the machine remembered your pain too well.
I couldn’t bear to destroy the ring.
I couldn’t bear to forget you.
I’m sorry.
D.
Tears welled in Priya’s eyes. “He tried to bring her back. The clock—it wasn’t just a timekeeper. It was a memory anchor. A grief machine.”
“And he made the ultimate mistake,” Vikram said. “He tried to freeze time. But grief isn’t meant to be preserved. It’s meant to pass.”
A sound drifted through the hall.
Soft. Familiar.
Footsteps.
Coming up the stairs.
Deliberate.
Slow.
They held their breath.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The doorknob began to twist.
Then the whisper came, from the other side.
“You have his words. Give them to me.”
Priya clenched the letter. “She doesn’t want vengeance. She wants closure.”
Vikram nodded slowly. “Then we give her what he never could.”
Priya opened the door.
Meera stood on the threshold, veiled again, her hands outstretched.
Priya stepped forward, heart pounding, and placed the letter into her palm.
Meera read it silently. Her hands didn’t tremble. Her shoulders didn’t move. But something shifted in the air—as if a storm had suddenly calmed in the far distance.
She looked up.
And smiled.
The veil dissolved like mist.
And so did she.
Just like that—she was gone.
No scream. No thunder.
Just the scent of sandalwood, and the sound of the clock resuming its slow, steady tick.
Part 6: Her Silence Remains
The silence that followed Meera’s disappearance was profound—not empty, not quiet, but filled with a strange fullness, as though the house had finally exhaled after holding its breath for six decades. The air felt lighter. The pressure that had hung on every stair, every creaking board, lifted like fog burned off by morning sun.
Priya sat on the floor of the study, still trembling, her hands clasped tight around her knees. Vikram paced near the window, unable to sit still, every now and then glancing down toward the drawing room below. The clock continued to tick, now even and soft, its pendulum moving in a rhythm that no longer sounded like a heartbeat but like time—gentle, unburdened time.
“I think it’s over,” Vikram said at last, voice low and cautious.
“I think she forgave him,” Priya whispered. “Or maybe… she forgave herself.”
They didn’t sleep. Dawn broke pale and quiet. A soft drizzle misted the garden as birds returned to the trees that had long remained silent. Vikram made tea using water boiled over the fireplace, and for the first time, the villa felt like a home rather than a mausoleum.
“Now what?” she asked, sipping from a chipped ceramic cup that once belonged to her grandfather.
“Now we tell the story,” Vikram said. “The real story. Not just a blog post. An article, maybe a documentary. The truth about Whispering Pines, about Dev and Meera, about how memory can imprison just as much as it can preserve.”
Priya stared into her tea. “I wonder if my mother knew. About Meera. About the ring.”
“She must’ve,” Vikram said. “But grief silences people. Some truths get passed down as heirlooms without ever being explained.”
They packed Meera’s letter and the blueprints into Vikram’s satchel. He’d return to Delhi the next morning and begin filing academic notes. Priya would stay a few more days to close the estate, decide what to do with the house.
But as evening returned, she found herself drawn again to the drawing room.
The shattered glass had been swept into a small pile beside the clock. The brass frame still stood, unbroken, the pendulum ticking steadily. She walked up to it and pressed her palm against the wooden casing.
“Thank you,” she whispered—not sure who she meant. Meera. Her grandfather. Or time itself.
That night, there were no chimes.
And yet, she couldn’t sleep.
Something still felt unfinished.
She lit a candle and wandered through the upstairs rooms. In a small cabinet in the hallway, she found a box she hadn’t noticed before. Inside it lay a bundle of letters, most addressed to Devendra Malhotra. Some were unopened. Others bore a neat, cursive handwriting—Meera’s.
One envelope, sealed with a red wax stamp, bore no name.
She opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
A child. A girl of about five, standing in the villa’s garden. A veil over her face. And behind her, out of focus, the unmistakable shape of the grandfather clock—outside the house.
A note was scribbled on the back.
“If she ever returns, tell her I waited. Not just at the clock. At the garden. At the moment we lost everything. Tell her she had a name. We just never said it aloud.”
Priya’s fingers tightened on the photograph.
She had seen that garden statue before. She had assumed it was decorative. But now, she realized—it was a grave marker. For a girl unnamed. For a child lost in silence.
A child Meera may have carried.
And lost.
That explained everything.
The rage. The sorrow. The haunting.
The ring had been for more than a marriage—it had been for a family that never came to be.
She went to the garden in the drizzle, brushing moss off the small stone statue. A bird was perched there now, its wings wet, unmoving, as though in vigil.
“I know your name now,” she whispered. “Even if it was never said.”
She took the photograph and buried it at the statue’s base.
No ritual. No spell.
Just memory laid to rest.
Back in the house, the clock had stopped ticking.
Permanently.
And that, Priya realized, was a good thing.
Time had been holding its breath long enough.
Part 7: Letters That Never Left
The next morning brought sunlight for the first time. Not misty, filtered rays but full, golden light that fell on the floorboards of Whispering Pines as though the house was no longer hiding.
Priya opened every window. The air that rushed in wasn’t cold or metallic—it was fresh. Clean. She stood barefoot in the corridor, letting the wind ripple through her hair, and for a moment she almost forgot the terror of the past few nights.
Vikram left shortly after breakfast, promising to keep in touch. He handed her a folder with scanned copies of everything they had uncovered—the clock’s eighth ring schematics, Meera’s letter, and even the audio from the camera that had fallen during the thirteenth chime. It captured a sound that sent shivers through both of them even in daylight: not just a scream, but a lullaby sung backward.
“Whatever that song was,” Vikram had said before leaving, “it was meant for a child.”
Now alone again, Priya decided to explore the west wing of the villa. It had been locked when she arrived, and she hadn’t dared break in during the chaos. The key was buried in a drawer behind the kitchen. Rusted, old, but unmistakably shaped like a clock hand.
The west wing was different from the rest of the house. Not dusty, but abandoned with intent. Everything was covered in white sheets. Priya moved slowly, lifting the cloths one by one—an easel, a writing desk, a rocking chair. A faint perfume lingered in the air—sandalwood, rosewater, and dried marigold.
Then she saw the writing desk was locked. She hesitated. Then fetched a hairpin from her pocket and jimmied it open.
Inside was a bundle of letters, tied with red thread.
Each was addressed to “My Little One.”
The earliest dated just three days after Meera’s engagement.
My Little One,
I feel your heartbeat. I feel it even when I sit still. Even when your father forgets to listen. They say I shouldn’t write yet, that it’s too early. But I want you to know I loved you before I met you.
Another letter, a month later:
You kicked for the first time. I was reading Rumi aloud. Maybe you liked the poetry. I’m saving each of your father’s watch parts, so you can one day build your own.
And then, the final letter.
Tear-stained.
I am sorry.
I could not hold you.
I thought love was enough to stop time. But time is cruel, and love becomes something heavy when it has nowhere to go.
I will wait for you. Not in grief. In memory.
Priya closed her eyes.
Meera hadn’t haunted the villa because she was vengeful.
She haunted it because she was forgotten.
The child, the promise, the clock that marked moments instead of letting them pass—all of it had been her attempt to hold onto something that should have been let go.
That evening, Priya did what no one else had done.
She wrote a letter.
To Meera.
You are not forgotten.
Your words will live on.
Your name—spoken or not—will be remembered.
I carry you, not your grief.
I carry your courage.
She sealed it, tied it with the same red thread, and placed it where the glass once was—in the clock’s hollow casing. Then she stepped back and whispered:
“You can rest now.”
And that night, she dreamed.
Of a woman in white, smiling, her hands full of marigold petals.
Of a clock that ticked backward—just once—and then stopped for good.
And of a child’s laugh, distant and clear, like a bell carried on wind.
When she awoke, the ring was back around her neck.
But it no longer felt heavy.
It felt… whole.
Part 8: The Clock That Remembered
Two days passed without incident.
No chimes.
No footsteps.
No whispers inside her skull.
The house, once a vessel of aching silence, now held an ordinary stillness—the kind that comes from long-settled dust, early morning birdcalls, and leaves brushing against glass. Priya walked its halls with a sense of release, as though she were walking through a story that had finished telling itself.
But the clock remained.
Not ticking.
Not breathing.
Just… present.
She considered dismantling it, having it removed, even burning it. But each time she stood before it, something held her back. Not fear. Not guilt. Something gentler.
Memory.
On the third morning, she drove into Darchand town for the first time since arriving. The narrow market lane was flanked by old colonial buildings and dusty cafés, some long shuttered. A few locals looked up as she passed, whispering behind cupped palms. News had spread. The girl from Delhi who stayed in the haunted house. The granddaughter of the mad clockmaker.
She stopped at the bookstore run by a wiry, spectacled man who introduced himself as Mr. Rajan. When she mentioned her grandfather’s name, he hesitated, then slowly pulled a cloth-covered bundle from behind the counter.
“I kept these,” he said, “in case someone came.”
Inside were three journals—sketchbooks, really. All filled with delicate ink drawings. Gears, pendulums, faces of clocks—some beautiful, others disturbing. And nestled among them, portraits.
Of Meera.
Page after page. Her eyes always drawn carefully. Her mouth always just slightly blurred.
“He drew her even after she vanished,” Rajan said softly. “Came in here every week to buy ink. Never spoke. Just bought ink and left. Until one day, he didn’t come anymore.”
Priya flipped to a page where Meera stood in front of the Whispering Pines clock, her hands resting on her stomach. At the bottom, in faint pencil:
“Time does not take her from me. I give her to time.”
Priya bought the journals and walked through the market with them pressed to her chest. A child ran past her, laughing, the sound echoing oddly in the narrow alley. For a moment, the laugh rang too familiar. Too sharp.
She turned.
But there was no one behind her.
Back at the villa that evening, she set up her camera in the study and began scanning every page of the journals. Each drawing felt like part of a conversation—between love and loss, between remembrance and obsession. She paused only when she came to the final entry in the third book.
No drawing.
Just words.
If someone finds this, let them know—
I did not build a haunted house.
I built a temple.
A place to hold the echo of her voice.
A place where she could come back, even if only for a minute.
That was enough.
Time is not cruel. It is simply honest.
And honesty is sometimes unbearable.
Priya closed the book and lit a single diya in front of the clock. No chants. No offerings. Just light.
That night, she slept without dreams.
But in the morning, she found something curious.
The clock’s glass—replaced with a temporary board—had fallen off during the night. Nothing broken. Just lying gently on the floor.
And inside, tucked in the hollow, was a single marigold petal.
Fresh.
Golden.
Untouched by time.
She held it delicately and felt, not fear, but warmth ripple through her.
The house had given something back.
Later that afternoon, a letter arrived. No stamp. No address.
Just one word on the envelope: “Stay.”
Inside, a short message:
The house remembers.
Let it remember joy too.
There was no signature.
But Priya smiled.
She knew exactly who it was from.
Part 9: The Memory Room
Priya spent the next two days restoring the west wing of the villa. She stripped away the dust-stiffened sheets from furniture, re-oiled hinges, swept the floors, and scrubbed the mildew from the tall French windows. As she worked, something strange happened: the house began to feel less like a museum of grief and more like… a place that could hold life again.
The marigold petal she’d found inside the clock hadn’t wilted. She’d placed it in a small glass dish on the mantel, and each time she passed it, it seemed to glow with a faint warmth, as though it pulsed in rhythm with the ticking the clock had once made.
She did not reinstall the pendulum. The timekeeping mechanism remained inert, the hollow of the clock now empty except for the memories it once contained. Priya had decided—some moments are not meant to be measured.
That afternoon, while sorting through a cupboard in what had once been Meera’s music room, she found something astonishing: a small wax cylinder recorder. Inside it, a reel labeled “Lullaby, Meera – Feb 1961.”
Her hands trembled as she carried it to the study. Vikram had left her an old converter for archival use, and she carefully threaded the reel into the player.
She pressed play.
Crackling static. Then silence. Then—
A soft humming.
A woman’s voice, low and haunting, sang a lullaby in Hindi. No words, just melody, like the kind meant for someone not yet born.
Priya felt her throat tighten. This was the voice she’d heard distorted through screams, twisted by pain, backward in her nightmares. But now, it was soft. Clear. Human.
She recorded the audio onto her phone, replaying it twice, each time letting it wrap around her like a memory not hers, yet strangely embedded.
She stepped out into the garden as the sky pinkened with early dusk. The statue in the yard—once presumed decorative, now a shrine—caught the dying light on its smooth stone face. Priya knelt and placed a small flower garland around it. She played the lullaby again, softly from her phone.
As the song drifted through the air, she thought she saw something.
In the upstairs window.
Not a shadow.
A figure.
Just for a second.
Meera.
Not veiled. Not hollow-eyed.
Just… watching.
And smiling.
Priya didn’t run.
She didn’t cry.
She only nodded.
“I see you,” she whispered.
That night, she sat at the old writing desk and began a new journal—one not for ghost stories or folklore, but for memory. She wrote about Meera. About the child that never got to be. About a grandfather who broke time to remember love. About how haunted houses aren’t always haunted by the dead—but by stories unfinished.
She titled the first page: “The Memory Room.”
Then she walked to the drawing room and stood before the clock.
It didn’t tick.
It didn’t chime.
But when she placed her hand against its wooden side, she could feel it—like a heartbeat below silence.
Not trapped.
Not cursed.
Just… remembered.
And that was enough.
Part 10: The House That Waited
A month passed.
Priya stayed.
Not because she had nowhere else to go, but because Whispering Pines no longer asked her to leave.
The villa, once burdened by silence, had started to find its rhythm again. She fixed leaking pipes, polished the floors, turned the old dining room into a study filled with soft yellow lamps and stacks of journals. She cooked simple meals and played music in the west wing, sometimes even the old vinyls she found in a dusty trunk. Meera’s lullaby still played each evening—never loud, never dramatic. Just there, like a thread tying the past to the present.
The townspeople began visiting. Slowly, hesitantly.
One brought a loaf of bread.
Another brought an old newspaper clipping of her grandfather’s first clock shop in Delhi.
An elderly woman—who introduced herself as Mala Joshi—came with a scarf Meera had once woven by hand. “She was my cousin,” she said softly. “We never recovered. You’ve done what none of us could.”
Priya listened more than she spoke. The story was no longer hers to claim alone. It belonged to everyone the clock had touched.
Eventually, Vikram returned. He walked through the villa like a curator in a newly opened museum of truth. They drank tea by the fireplace and reviewed drafts of the article he was writing.
“You’re turning this into something bigger than a haunting,” he told her.
She nodded. “Because it was never really a haunting. It was a woman waiting to be heard.”
Vikram gestured toward the silent clock. “And now?”
“It’s done,” Priya said. “She’s not in the clock anymore. She’s in the lullaby, the garden, the ink on his pages.”
He smiled, thoughtful. “So, what will you do with this place?”
Priya looked around.
“I’m opening it,” she said. “As a retreat for women. Artists, musicians, mothers, daughters—anyone carrying unfinished stories.”
Vikram’s eyebrows lifted. “A residency?”
“A memory house,” she corrected gently. “Time won’t be measured here. It’ll be remembered.”
In the weeks that followed, she prepared the rooms. She named each one after Meera’s unwritten letters—Hope, Stillness, Wait, Ring, Lullaby, Echo.
The clock remained in the drawing room, untouched. A sign next to it simply read:
“Do not wind. Let her rest.”
And she did.
On the fiftieth day of Priya’s stay, something quiet and extraordinary happened.
At precisely 3:33 AM, she woke up.
Not from a nightmare.
From music.
Faint piano notes.
She followed the sound down the hall, past the library, to the music room.
There, the baby grand piano—long untouched—played three soft chords.
Then stopped.
A marigold petal lay on the bench.
She smiled.
She didn’t look for anyone behind her.
She didn’t check the mirrors.
She just sat at the piano, picked up the petal, and placed it between the pages of her journal.
A gift.
Not a warning.
Not a haunting.
A gift.
Outside, the mist parted as the sun rose.
The house breathed again.
And finally, time moved forward.
Not as a curse.
But as a blessing.
End
