Tanika Sen
Part 1: Arrival
The rickshaw slowed as it turned into the narrow lanes of Bowbazar, its wheels rattling over uneven stones slick with last night’s rain. Mira clutched her dupatta tighter, staring out at the crumbling facades of colonial houses that seemed to lean against one another like tired old men. Once, this part of Kolkata had been vibrant, filled with traders, courtesans, and music spilling out of courtyards; now it felt like a relic of another century, with rusted gates and moss-streaked walls whispering of time’s decay. Arjun, sitting beside her, tapped the rickshaw wall lightly, his voice bright with an optimism Mira did not share. “Here it is. House number seventeen. Our new home.”
The house rose before them, its iron gate crooked, its windows shuttered tight as if unwilling to welcome strangers. A half-broken staircase led up to a verandah where pigeons scattered at their arrival. Mira felt an unease coil in her stomach. There was nothing overtly wrong—no foul smell, no strange marks on the walls—but the house seemed to breathe, its shadows watching them. Arjun, though, was radiant. He had bought the old place for far less than it was worth, a relic of his family’s past. “My grandfather used to play in this courtyard,” he said, his eyes glowing as he pushed open the gate.
The air inside was cooler, heavy with the scent of damp wood and dust. As they stepped across the threshold, Mira thought she heard a faint rustle upstairs, as though someone had quickly moved out of sight. She froze, but Arjun laughed. “Rats, Mira. This place must be full of them. We’ll call pest control tomorrow.” His casual dismissal reassured her a little, but the sound still echoed in her ears.
They explored the house in the dim afternoon light. The ground floor was wide, with a sitting room where the floor tiles were cracked but beautiful, painted with fading floral designs. The kitchen was dark, with soot-blackened walls and an old clay oven abandoned in a corner. On the first floor, three bedrooms opened off a long corridor, each filled with dust-covered furniture draped in white sheets like slumbering ghosts. And above that, up a creaking wooden staircase, was the attic. The door was swollen with moisture, and when Arjun pushed against it, it gave way with a groan. Mira did not step inside. Something about the thick silence beyond that door felt different, heavier, almost listening.
“Storage space,” Arjun said, peering in. “Perfect for trunks, old books, maybe someday a studio for you.” He smiled, knowing Mira loved to paint. But Mira stayed back, gripping the banister, her heart hammering at the sight of a dim shaft of light falling on something in the far corner. For a moment, she thought she saw a shape—small, childlike—sitting there. Then Arjun shut the door, and the vision was gone.
The first night in the house was restless. The neighborhood was not silent; the distant clang of trams on Central Avenue drifted in, and stray dogs barked in the alleys. But within the walls of the house, the silence was thick, broken only by the occasional creak of wood as though the beams themselves shifted under invisible weight. Mira tossed in bed, staring at the ceiling, until she heard it: a faint patter of feet above, in the attic. She froze, clutching Arjun’s arm. He stirred but did not wake. The sound came again, soft, deliberate, like a child running barefoot across wooden planks. Mira lay rigid until the sounds ceased, her throat dry, the darkness pressing against her eyes.
In the morning, she told Arjun. He laughed gently, brushing her cheek. “Mira, you’re nervous. New house, new noises. You’ve always been sensitive. Don’t let your imagination run wild.” His smile was warm, but Mira saw in his eyes the flicker of unease he tried to hide. He had heard something too, she realized, but he would not admit it.
Later that day, while Arjun went out to fetch supplies, Mira wandered through the house again, forcing herself to grow accustomed to its corners. In the sitting room, she found a cracked photograph hanging on the wall, its glass yellowed with age. It showed a family in stiff colonial attire: a man in a dhoti, a woman in a lace blouse, and two children clutching handmade clay dolls. Their eyes seemed dark, too dark, and Mira turned the frame to face the wall.
Drawn by a mix of curiosity and dread, she climbed to the attic. The air grew heavier with each step, and when she pushed open the swollen door again, dust swirled like smoke in the light. The attic was cluttered with trunks, broken furniture, and old cloth sacks, all forgotten relics. She stood for a long moment, her heart pounding. Then she saw it: in the far corner, half-hidden by shadows, a large wooden trunk, its lid carved with patterns of flowers and vines. Unlike everything else, it was not coated in dust. It looked as though it had been touched, recently.
She approached slowly, her bare feet echoing softly on the wooden planks. Her hand trembled as she reached for the latch. For an instant, she thought she heard a giggle—light, childish, too close. Her breath caught. She spun around, but there was no one there, only shadows thickening in the corners. Gathering courage, she opened the trunk.
Inside, neatly arranged in rows, were dolls. Not the porcelain kind she had seen in magazines, but clay putul, each painted with care though time had flaked their colors. Some wore scraps of faded cloth stitched into tiny saris and frocks. And on the back of each doll, crudely scratched into the clay, was a name written in Bengali script. Mira’s eyes widened as she read them: Gopal, Sumita, Anirban, Lata. Dozens of names. She touched one, and the clay felt oddly warm, as if it had absorbed a heartbeat.
A sudden gust slammed the attic door shut, plunging her into darkness. Mira gasped, the dolls’ faces swimming pale in the gloom, their eyes seeming larger, almost watching her. She stumbled back, her pulse roaring in her ears. When she finally forced the door open and fled downstairs, the sunlight felt like deliverance. But as she sat trembling on the verandah, she realized something worse: when she left the trunk, one doll had been sitting slightly apart from the others, closer to the lid, as though it had moved on its own.
And on its back, the scratched name was one she recognized. A neighbor’s child she had seen playing in the lane just yesterday.
Part 2: The Trunk
The next morning dawned grey, the city wrapped in a thin drizzle that blurred the outlines of Bowbazar’s crooked lanes. Mira had hardly slept, the image of the attic trunk gnawing at her. She moved through the kitchen like a ghost, boiling tea, trying not to hear the memory of that faint giggle, the scrape of small feet on wooden planks. Arjun, cheerful as always, spoke of repainting the house, of buying furniture from College Street, of bringing his parents over once everything was settled. Mira nodded, but her thoughts were chained to the attic. She had to see the trunk again, had to confirm she hadn’t imagined it.
After Arjun left for the day, Mira found herself climbing the creaking stairs once more. The attic door seemed heavier this time, as though resisting her hand, but it opened with a sigh. The air inside was dense, thick with the smell of clay and damp fabric. The trunk sat exactly where she had left it, its floral carvings catching the dim light. She approached slowly, her heartbeat hammering, and opened the lid.
The dolls were there, rows of them, their painted faces worn but still carrying a strange vibrancy. Mira reached for the one she remembered—the doll that had been closer to the lid last night. She turned it over in her hands. The name scratched into its back read: Nimai.
Her throat tightened. Nimai was the name of the small boy she had seen playing gilli-danda in the lane the previous evening, his laughter echoing as he chased the stick. She had smiled at him, even waved. The doll was crudely painted but its wide eyes, the tilt of its clay head, even the faded scrap of yellow cloth tied around its waist—all uncannily resembled the child.
Mira placed the doll back in the trunk with trembling hands. She began checking the others. Each bore a name, some old-fashioned, some still common: Protima, Madhab, Rina, Debu. The names scratched in jagged strokes as if by someone in a hurry. She shivered, a creeping awareness dawning—these were not toys. They were memorials. Or warnings.
A sudden noise startled her—a knock, faint but deliberate, at the attic wall. Mira froze, clutching the edge of the trunk. Another knock came, followed by a dragging sound, as though small fingers were trailing along the wooden boards. Her breath came shallow. Gathering courage, she slammed the lid shut and fled downstairs.
That afternoon, she visited the lane’s sweet shop, a tiny room heavy with the smell of ghee and sugar. The shopkeeper, an elderly man with cataract-clouded eyes, greeted her politely. She asked about the history of her house, trying to sound casual. The old man grew quiet. His hands, which had been shaping a sandesh, stilled. “That house,” he said slowly, “has seen much sorrow. Best not to dig into its past, bouma.”
But Mira pressed, mentioning the name Nimai. The shopkeeper’s expression flickered, his jaw tightening. “Nimai is a good boy. He comes here for mishti almost every day.” He paused, then sighed. “But his grandfather used to live in your house. Died many years ago. Some say the house keeps memories. Some say it keeps more than that.” He would say no more.
Uneasy, Mira returned home. Evening descended quickly, the drizzle thickening into rain. Arjun came back with bags of groceries, humming, oblivious to her tension. They cooked together, the warmth of the kitchen offering some comfort, but Mira’s eyes kept drifting upward, to the ceiling above where the attic brooded.
That night, the noises returned. It began with a faint tapping, then the unmistakable scurry of footsteps. Mira lay awake, clutching the blanket, while Arjun snored softly beside her. Then came a sound that turned her veins to ice—a child’s voice, high-pitched and sing-song, humming an old Bengali rhyme. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tune was familiar, something she had heard children chant in playgrounds. The sound drifted down from the attic, sweet and chilling.
Summoning courage, she shook Arjun awake. He grumbled but followed her as she led him upstairs, a lantern trembling in her hand. The attic door loomed, its wood swollen with damp. Mira opened it with a shove. The lantern light flickered across the room. The trunk sat open. She was certain she had closed it.
Inside, the dolls were rearranged. Instead of rows, they sat in a circle, as though gathered for some secret game. In the center lay a single broken clay bangle. Mira gasped. She recognized it—it belonged to Nimai. She had seen it on his wrist yesterday when he ran past.
Arjun tried to laugh it off, though his face had gone pale. “Maybe rats moved them,” he said, though no rat could have opened a trunk or placed dolls so neatly. Mira shook her head. “These aren’t toys, Arjun. They’re… they’re children.” Her voice cracked.
Arjun pulled her away gently. “You’re tired, Mira. It’s this old house getting into your head. Tomorrow we’ll clean everything, lock the attic if needed. Don’t let your mind trick you.” But when he left, Mira lingered at the attic door, staring at the circle of dolls. For a moment, she thought she saw one of their heads turn, just slightly, toward her.
The next day, Mira went looking for Nimai. The lane buzzed with life—hawkers calling out, rickshaws clanging their bells, women bargaining for fish. But the boy was nowhere to be seen. She asked the sweet-shop owner, who avoided her gaze. “Nimai hasn’t come today,” he said curtly. “Maybe tomorrow.”
But tomorrow came, and Nimai did not. Nor the day after. By the third day, Mira climbed again to the attic. The dolls sat in their circle still, but now a new one had appeared. Its clay was fresh, its paint not yet flaking. It wore a tiny scrap of yellow cloth, and its eyes, painted wide and dark, seemed to gleam in the lantern light. On its back was scratched a name.
Nimai.
Mira dropped the lantern in shock, the glass shattering, the flame snuffing out. In the sudden dark, the dolls seemed to lean closer, their faces pale smudges, their eyes endless pits. Somewhere in that blackness, she heard the faint sound of giggles.
Part 3: Whispers
The lantern’s shattered glass had barely been swept away when the whispers began. At first Mira thought it was her imagination, the echo of her own breath ricocheting against the walls of the house. But on the second night after Nimai’s doll appeared, she sat awake in the bedroom and heard them distinctly—soft, hurried voices, overlapping, as though children were gossiping in the corner of a classroom. She pressed her palms against her ears, but the voices slipped through, faint and insistent. They came from above, from the attic, threading through the wooden beams like smoke.
Arjun slept soundly beside her, his breathing steady. She nudged him once, twice, whispering his name. He stirred, muttered something, but did not wake. The voices swelled briefly, and Mira thought she heard her own name woven into them—Mira-di, Mira-di—before they faded. Shivering, she lay rigid until dawn, when the first trams groaned awake on the distant tracks and the whispers ebbed like a tide.
The next morning she tried to tell Arjun. He frowned, his patience thinning. “Mira, you need to stop frightening yourself. The house creaks, that’s all. Old beams, old wood. You think too much.” His tone was gentle, but there was an edge of irritation. “Promise me you won’t keep going to that attic. You’re feeding this fear.”
Mira promised, but her eyes betrayed her. Even as she nodded, she glanced upward, toward the ceiling, where silence pressed like a weight. She knew she could not stay away.
That afternoon, while Arjun was gone, she returned. The attic smelled faintly of oil lamps and dust, but beneath it lingered something else, a sour-sweet odor like flowers left too long in stagnant water. The dolls still sat in their circle. Mira crouched near them, her breath uneven, and whispered, “What do you want from me?”
For a moment there was only silence. Then a draught passed through the attic, though no window was open. The dolls did not move, yet Mira felt surrounded, as if eyes far smaller and sharper than her own studied her with intense hunger. She closed the trunk and fled, her fingers trembling so badly she almost tripped down the staircase.
That night, she dreamt of them. Children, dozens of them, dressed in ragged frocks and torn shorts, standing in the lane beneath the gaslight. Their faces were pale, their lips cracked, but their eyes glowed dark and endless. They called to her in unison, a chorus that shook her bones: “Come and play, Mira-di. Come and play with us.” She woke screaming, her nightdress damp with sweat. Arjun held her, alarmed, but she could not explain.
The following evening, a neighbor came by with fish wrapped in banana leaves, a customary gesture of welcome. The woman, heavyset with sharp eyes, lingered at the threshold but would not step inside. Mira tried to coax her. “Please, come in. Have some tea.” The woman shook her head quickly. “No, no, bouma, I cannot. This house… better I stay at the door.” Her gaze flicked upward, almost fearfully. “You should keep your doors shut at night. Don’t answer if you hear children calling. Do you understand?” Without waiting for Mira’s reply, she left, her slippered feet slapping against the wet lane.
The warning lodged in Mira’s mind like a thorn. That night, when the whispers returned, she locked the bedroom door, though she knew locks meant little against what haunted them. She pulled the quilt up to her chin, heart pounding. The voices came again, more insistent, threading through the keyhole, the cracks in the floorboards, everywhere. And then—amid the chorus—one voice rose clear and sharp.
“Mira’s son.”
Her blood ran cold. She was not pregnant. Not yet. But she and Arjun had spoken of it often, their plans for the future, their laughter as they imagined small feet running through this very house. How did the voices know? Why did they speak of a child not yet born?
The next day, desperate, Mira went again to the sweet-shop owner. He looked at her as though he had expected her visit. “You opened it, didn’t you?” he asked quietly. She stiffened. “Opened what?” He did not answer directly. Instead, he reached beneath the counter and drew out an old brass locket, tarnished with age. He pressed it into her hand. “Keep this on you. It will not stop them, but it may slow them. Don’t let them call your name too often. If they learn it well enough, they’ll never let you go.”
Mira clutched the locket tightly, feeling the grooves bite into her skin. She wanted to ask more, to demand answers, but the old man had already turned away, busying himself with trays of mishti, as though the conversation had never happened.
That evening, Mira wore the locket beneath her blouse. The whispers came again, circling her like gnats, but they seemed fainter, angrier. Once, she heard a hissed “Not fair, not fair” before they fell into a sulking silence. She almost wept with relief, but it did not last. Near midnight, a loud thud shook the ceiling above, so strong that dust rained down on their bed. Arjun sat up at last, alarmed, and this time he did not laugh. Together, they climbed the stairs, the lantern light bobbing wildly.
The attic door stood ajar, though Mira had shut it earlier. Inside, the trunk was open once more. The dolls were not in their circle. They had arranged themselves in rows, neat and perfect, as though preparing for inspection. And at the very front lay a new doll.
Its clay was still damp. Its painted eyes were wide, black, and cruelly knowing. Around its neck hung a thread Mira recognized—her own red silk thread from a blouse she had discarded the day before. On its back, scratched deeper than any mark she had seen before, were two words.
Mira’s Son.
She stumbled back with a cry, clutching her stomach as though something had already taken root there. Arjun grabbed her arm, his face pale with horror. For the first time, he could not deny what she had been saying.
The dolls had begun to plan for a child that did not yet exist. And they would not stop until they had it.
Part 4: The Sweet-shop Owner
Rain poured over Bowbazar that morning, hammering against shutters and flooding the crooked lanes with brown water. Mira sat at the kitchen table, her hands clasped around the brass locket the sweet-shop owner had given her, while Arjun paced the floor restlessly. He had seen the new doll with his own eyes the night before, had read the cruel letters etched into its back. Gone was his easy laughter, his rational dismissals. Now he looked at Mira with worry shadowing his face, though he tried to hide it. “Maybe it’s a trick,” he muttered. “Some child sneaking into the attic, playing games. We should lock it better. Or… or get rid of the trunk altogether.”
But Mira shook her head. “No child could carve clay overnight. No one could place that doll without us hearing. They’re not tricks, Arjun. They’re warnings.” She hesitated, then whispered, “They know about our child before it even exists.” The words tasted like ashes on her tongue. Arjun flinched, but he did not contradict her.
By noon the rain had eased, and Mira insisted they go to the sweet shop together. The narrow lanes glistened with puddles, and the tram bells echoed faintly in the distance. The shop, warm and fragrant with ghee, seemed like a fragile refuge from the storm. The old shopkeeper looked up as they entered, his cataract-clouded eyes unreadable. He did not seem surprised. “So you’ve seen it properly now,” he said softly.
Arjun bristled. “What do you know about this? Tell us the truth.”
The old man sighed and motioned them to sit on the low wooden bench. For a long while he said nothing, his fingers busy rolling tiny balls of chhana for sandesh. Finally he began, his voice low, meant only for their ears.
“A hundred years ago, before my time, that house belonged to a wealthy babu. He kept a mistress there, an Englishwoman who had come to Calcutta with a trader. She was beautiful, they say, but restless. She could not bear children. She grew bitter, jealous of the neighborhood women with their sons and daughters. Some whisper she turned to dark rites, things brought here from across the seas, mixed with the old Bengali spells she learned from the servants. One by one, children of the lane began to vanish. A girl drowned in a shallow pond though she could swim. A boy was found lifeless on tram tracks though no tram had passed. Another simply disappeared from her mother’s courtyard, never seen again.”
Mira’s throat tightened. She remembered the dolls’ names, each one etched in jagged Bengali script. The old man nodded as if reading her thoughts. “Each time a child died, a new doll appeared in the attic. No one saw who made them. Some say it was the woman herself, others say the dolls shaped themselves from the clay of the lane. But they were always there, marked with the names of the dead.”
Arjun leaned forward, his jaw tense. “And no one stopped her? No one drove her away?”
“She did not live long,” the shopkeeper replied. “When the last child vanished, the mothers of the lane stormed the house. They found her in the attic, rocking a doll as if it were her own baby. She laughed at them, called it her family. They dragged her out and beat her until her body was broken. Some say she cursed the house with her last breath—that it would never be empty, that children would always come to her, whether of flesh or clay.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “From then on, every few years, another child was taken. The dolls remain. No family lasts long there.”
Mira clutched Arjun’s arm, her heart pounding. The old man’s eyes softened as he looked at her. “They have chosen you, bouma. They know you will carry a child. That is why they call for him already.”
Arjun slammed his palm on the counter. “No. We won’t accept this. We’ll leave the house. Tonight, if we have to.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “You cannot. Once the dolls have spoken your name, the house holds you. If you leave, they will follow. The only way is to bargain—or to break the curse.”
Mira leaned forward desperately. “How? Tell us.”
The shopkeeper hesitated, then reached beneath the counter again. This time he pulled out a bundle wrapped in red cloth. He unfolded it carefully, revealing a small blackened figure made of iron, worn with age. “This was given to me by my grandmother. It is said to ward off the worst of their hunger. Place it in the attic. It may hold them at bay for some time. But to truly break the curse…” His voice trailed off.
Arjun pressed. “To truly break it, what must we do?”
The old man’s eyes clouded further, and he shook his head. “That, I do not know. Some say a sacrifice is needed. Some say the woman’s bones must be burned and scattered in the Hooghly. But no one has dared try. The dolls are too many. Their eyes see everything.”
Mira felt her skin prickle, remembering the way those painted eyes seemed to follow her in the dim light. She whispered, “What if they already know? What if they’ve already chosen our child?”
The old man’s hand trembled as he refolded the red cloth. “Then you must pray, bouma. Pray that they are patient. Or pray that you are strong enough to resist them. Few have been.”
On the walk back, silence stretched between Mira and Arjun. The sky had darkened again, the lane slick with mud. Every sound—the drip of water, the cry of a hawker, the rumble of a tram—felt amplified, as if the city itself was listening. Mira clutched the iron figure the shopkeeper had given her. It was heavy, cold against her palm, but she could not shake the feeling that it was far too small a weapon against what awaited them in the attic.
That night, Arjun placed the iron figure in front of the trunk. Then he nailed the attic door shut, his hammer blows echoing through the empty house. “That will keep them out,” he said firmly, his face set. Mira wanted to believe him, but long after they lay down to sleep, she listened to the silence above. For hours it held, the attic quiet.
Then, just before dawn, came the sound of scratching. Long, slow, deliberate. The nails of the attic door straining as though small hands, dozens of them, clawed against the wood. And beneath it all, the faintest whisper—sing-song, mocking, familiar.
“Mira’s Son… Mira’s Son… Mira’s Son.”
Part 5: The Tram Accident
The scratches on the attic door did not stop. Each night they came, sometimes soft, sometimes furious, as though tiny hands were testing the strength of Arjun’s nails. Mira slept little, her body taut with dread, her mind circling the same words the dolls had carved into her life: Mira’s Son. The iron figure stood at the trunk like a lonely sentinel, but its presence did little to soothe her. In daylight she clutched the brass locket and whispered prayers she hadn’t uttered since childhood, but the walls of the house seemed deaf to mercy.
One evening, desperate for air, she stepped out into the lane alone. Bowbazar hummed with life: hawkers shouting over fish, the clang of a hand-pulled rickshaw, women bargaining in shrill tones. For a moment Mira felt almost normal, almost freed from the suffocating silence of the house. She walked toward Central Avenue, where the tram lines ran like silver veins through the street. The bells of a tram sounded faintly in the distance.
And then she saw him. A boy, no more than eight, standing in the middle of the tracks. His back was to her, his shirt ragged, his hair falling in tufts. She froze. The tram rounded the bend, its driver ringing the bell furiously, but the boy did not move. Mira screamed, running forward, her dupatta flying behind her. But when she reached him, there was no boy—only empty tracks glistening with rain.
The tram screeched past, its wind buffeting her, nearly knocking her off her feet. Heart hammering, she staggered to the side. And then she saw it. By the tram pole lay a doll, small and clay, its painted eyes staring up at her. Its back bore a name: Harun.
She gasped, remembering the stories the shopkeeper had told. One of the first children to die, nearly a century ago, had been struck by a tram. She held the doll in trembling hands. Its clay was damp, as if freshly molded. The tram’s bell still echoed in her ears, but beneath it she swore she heard faint laughter, the giggle of a boy just beyond sight.
Mira dropped the doll and fled back home, but her terror clung to her like wet clothes. When she told Arjun, he shook his head, though his face was pale. “They’re showing you things. Making you see. It’s not real.” But his words lacked conviction. He had seen enough now to know the dolls were no longer just relics of the past—they were actors, replaying the deaths of the children they embodied.
That night, Mira dreamt she was back on the tram tracks. Dozens of children stood around her, silent, their eyes wide and accusing. One by one they stepped forward and placed dolls into her hands. The clay grew heavier and heavier until her arms ached, but she could not let go. At the center of the crowd stood a faceless child, cradling a doll that bore no name. It stretched its arms toward her, and when she woke, her stomach burned as though something had been pressed into it.
The next day, the lane buzzed with whispers. A boy named Harun, who lived two streets away, had been found dead under the wheels of a tram that morning. Mira’s legs nearly gave way when she heard. She had seen it before it happened. The dolls were not only memories—they were prophecies.
Arjun tried to steady her, but she pulled away. “Don’t you see? They’re not finished. They won’t stop until they’ve taken another. Until they’ve taken ours.” Her voice cracked. Arjun gripped her shoulders. “We’ll leave, Mira. I don’t care what the shopkeeper says. Tonight we’ll pack our bags, take the train to my uncle in Howrah. They can’t follow us everywhere.”
But even as he spoke, the house groaned, its beams shuddering as though in laughter. Mira shook her head violently. “You don’t understand. They already follow us. They showed me Harun before he died. They showed me the tram. They’ll show me the rest too.”
That night, unable to bear the attic’s weight, Mira crept upstairs while Arjun slept. The nails on the door were loose now, their heads bent outward as though pushed by force. She pried them free with trembling fingers and opened the door. The attic yawned before her, dark and stale. The trunk lay open, its rows of dolls gleaming faintly in the moonlight.
She stepped closer. The doll she had seen by the tram pole now sat among the others, its back scratched with Harun’s name. Around it the dolls seemed restless, their painted eyes catching slivers of light, their mouths stretched in faint smiles. And in the center of the trunk, almost hidden, lay a new doll. Smaller than the rest, its clay soft, its features unfinished.
Mira’s breath hitched. The doll was still forming. Its face was a blur, its clothes not yet shaped. But on its back, faint but unmistakable, were scratches spelling two words: Mira’s Son.
Her hand flew to her stomach, cold dread sinking into her bones. The dolls were not only waiting—they were building him already, molding him in clay before he even drew breath. She stumbled back, the attic spinning around her. The whispers began then, louder than ever, cascading in high-pitched giggles and taunts.
“Come, Mira-di. Come and play. Bring him. Bring him to us.”
The trunk’s lid slammed shut on its own, the iron figure toppling uselessly to the floor. Mira fled down the stairs, her body shaking, and collapsed beside Arjun. He woke to her sobs and held her close, but she knew comfort was an illusion. The dolls had shown her the tram, shown her death, shown her prophecy. And now they were shaping the future with their tiny clay hands.
Somewhere above, the attic floor creaked with the sound of children running, dozens of them, laughing as though in celebration.
Part 6: The Naming
The days that followed blurred into one another, each hour thick with dread. Mira no longer left the house alone, her eyes darting to the shadows even when the sun was high. The neighbors had grown colder too—where once they nodded politely, now they crossed the lane quickly when they saw her, as if afraid of catching her curse. Even the sweet-shop owner avoided her gaze, though she sometimes caught him watching her from across the counter, his lips moving in prayers she could not hear.
Inside the house, the air grew heavier with each passing night. The attic, though nailed and barred, was alive. Scratches on the door grew deeper, more insistent, until flakes of wood curled onto the landing. Whispers traveled down through the beams, flooding the bedrooms with sing-song voices. At times Mira would hear her own name repeated endlessly; at others, a chorus of children calling to her, their laughter sharp as broken glass.
Arjun tried to fight it. He nailed the door again, sealed it with ropes, even lit incense in every corner of the house. “They feed on fear,” he insisted. “If we ignore them, if we show them we are not afraid, they will lose interest.” But his words rang hollow. He was thinner now, his eyes ringed with sleepless nights, his hands trembling as he hammered nails that bent against the attic door as though mocking him.
On the fourth night, the voices changed. Mira lay awake, clutching the brass locket against her chest, when a new sound threaded through the whispers: a chant. Slow, deliberate, like a nursery rhyme sung in unison. She strained to hear. “Sonar chele, sonar chele, Mira’s chele, Mira’s chele…” The words wound through the walls, each syllable stabbing into her heart. Golden boy, golden boy, Mira’s boy.
Her breath came shallow. She shook Arjun awake, but he only frowned, half-asleep. “It’s in your head,” he muttered. Yet when the chant swelled louder, his eyes widened. He heard it too. For the first time, his certainty cracked.
The next morning Mira was pale, her body trembling as though from fever. She could not shake the rhythm of the chant. Each time she closed her eyes she saw the unfinished doll in the trunk, its clay face shifting, forming features not yet decided. She began to feel a strange pressure in her own body, as if something had already taken root inside her. When Arjun tried to reassure her, she burst into tears. “Don’t you see? They’ve already named him. He belongs to them now.”
Arjun gripped her shoulders. “No, Mira. He belongs to us. We’ll fight this.” But even as he spoke, his voice faltered. The dolls had claimed something that did not yet exist. How could they fight an enemy that shaped futures as easily as clay?
That afternoon, Mira went again to the sweet-shop, clutching the locket tight. The old man looked at her with sorrow. “They’ve begun the naming, haven’t they?” She nodded, unable to speak. He sighed. “Once they chant the name, it is almost impossible to stop. The child becomes theirs before birth. Unless…” His voice trailed off.
“Unless what?” she demanded.
He hesitated, then whispered, “Unless you give them another in exchange. A child not yet theirs. A sacrifice. That is the only bargain anyone has ever spoken of.” His eyes darkened. “But such bargains always come with a price you cannot imagine.”
Mira staggered back, horrified. The thought of giving any child—hers or another’s—into the hands of those clay-voiced things made her stomach churn. She shook her head violently. “No. There must be another way.” But the old man only looked away, as if ashamed.
That evening, a storm rolled over the city, thunder cracking above the rooftops. The electricity flickered and died, leaving the house in darkness. Arjun lit candles, their flames casting grotesque shadows along the walls. The air grew thick, the whispers louder, rising into shrieks of laughter. The attic door rattled as though dozens of fists beat against it. And then, cutting through the cacophony, came a single voice.
High-pitched, gleeful, unmistakable: “Mira’s Son.”
The candles guttered, their flames bending toward the stairs. Mira clutched Arjun’s arm, her nails digging into his skin. Slowly, inexorably, she felt herself being pulled upward, as though invisible hands tugged at her stomach, her chest, her very breath. She tried to fight it, to plant her feet against the floor, but her body betrayed her, swaying toward the stairs.
Arjun dragged her back, his face contorted in terror. “No! You can’t have her!” he shouted into the darkness. But the house only laughed, the sound echoing like dozens of children at play.
When at last the storm passed and silence returned, Mira collapsed against him, sobbing. She knew what had happened. The dolls had spoken the name aloud, claimed it with their chant, sealed it with their voices. Her unborn child was no longer hers. He was theirs.
In the days that followed, Mira felt her body change in strange ways. Her sleep was restless, filled with dreams of small clay hands molding her belly. Sometimes she woke with the taste of soil in her mouth, her fingers streaked with dirt though she had not touched the earth. At night she felt kicks beneath her skin, though she knew it was too soon, far too soon.
One evening, as Arjun tried to coax her to eat, she whispered the truth she had been afraid to admit. “Arjun… I think I’m pregnant.” His fork clattered against the plate, his face stricken. He stared at her as though she were both miracle and curse. She placed his hand on her stomach, and for a moment they both felt it—the faintest flutter, like the stirring of wings.
But beneath it, Mira heard something else. A giggle, soft and cruel, rising from the floorboards. The dolls were laughing, triumphant. Their naming was complete.
Part 7: Possession
The days after Mira whispered her fear to Arjun passed in a haze, each one heavier than the last. She could not ignore it anymore—the faint flutters in her belly, the restless churn in her blood, the sense that something was growing inside her faster than nature allowed. Arjun tried to comfort her, but his hands shook when he touched her stomach, as if he feared the thing that stirred there was no longer his child but theirs—theirs, the dolls, the attic’s brood. Mira avoided mirrors now. When she caught her reflection, she swore she saw her own eyes darken, ringed with shadows that weren’t hers, as if another gaze looked through her.
At night, her dreams became unbearable. She no longer dreamt of the lane or of children playing. Instead she was in the attic, seated among the dolls in their endless circle. They rocked in silence, their heads jerking at odd angles, their clay mouths opening and closing without sound. She tried to move, but her limbs were stiff, heavy. When she looked down, she realized with horror that her hands were clay, her fingers painted red, her body cracked with fine lines. She was one of them, another figure in their nursery. And always, always, the unfinished doll sat in her lap, its face molding itself in wet clay, its eyes widening, its features shifting until they looked like Arjun’s, like hers.
She would wake screaming, her nightdress soaked in sweat, her throat raw. Arjun held her, whispering reassurances, but she could feel the fear in his heartbeat against her back. Sometimes he asked questions he never dared finish. “What if it’s not… what if we… Mira, what if it’s not really—” She would silence him with tears, unable to bear the words.
One morning she awoke with soil under her fingernails. She stared at her hands, horrified, then looked at the sheets. Small smudges of red clay streaked the fabric, damp and unmistakable. When she stumbled to the bathroom, she found more clay packed into her toenails, as if she had walked barefoot through the attic while she slept. She confronted Arjun, trembling. “I’m going up there in my sleep. They’re pulling me.” His face went ashen. He wanted to deny it, but the evidence lay in her hands. That night, he tied a string of bells to the bedroom door and sat awake, determined to watch her.
At midnight, the bells chimed. Mira rose from bed, her eyes open but unseeing, her face slack as though she were a puppet on strings. Arjun tried to stop her, but her strength was unnatural; she pushed him aside as if he were a child. She walked steadily toward the staircase, her bare feet slapping against the floorboards. The whispers swelled, jubilant. “Mira’s Son, Mira’s Son…” Arjun shouted her name, shook her, even slapped her cheek, but she did not stir. Only when he dragged her back into the bedroom and pressed the brass locket against her chest did she collapse, sobbing awake as though torn from drowning waters.
The next day, Arjun forbade her from being alone, but he was unraveling too. His once-bright eyes dulled, his voice cracked with fatigue. He pored over old books from College Street, desperate for anything about curses, clay rites, colonial hauntings. Mira watched him from the corner of her eye, knowing he searched for an escape that did not exist. The dolls had marked her; they would not let her go.
That evening, Mira heard a new voice. She was in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, when a child’s laugh bubbled directly beside her ear. She spun, knife clattering, but no one was there. Then a whisper: “Ma.” The knife slipped from her trembling hand. She clutched her stomach, her breath shallow. The child was already speaking to her, calling her mother. She staggered upstairs against her will, drawn by the call. The attic door rattled, the nails bending outward, the ropes straining. Her hands lifted to undo them, though she fought with all her strength. Arjun caught her just in time, dragging her back. She bit his arm, feral, her teeth sinking into his flesh until he bled. Only when he shouted her name in her ear did she falter, collapse into his arms, trembling with shame and terror.
That night, she refused to sleep, afraid of what her body might do if she surrendered. But exhaustion claimed her anyway. She dreamt again of the attic, but this time she was not seated. She was kneeling before the trunk, her hands shaping clay with unnatural skill. The unfinished doll lay before her, and she molded its cheeks, smoothed its brow, pressed tiny clothes against its damp skin. The other dolls surrounded her, whispering instructions, guiding her fingers. “Faster, Ma. Shape him, Ma.” She screamed, but her mouth did not open. Her hands moved against her will, crafting her son for them.
When she woke, clay streaked her palms.
Arjun wept when he saw it. He held her face in his hands and said, broken, “They’re taking you. Piece by piece. If we don’t stop them, you’ll be gone before the child is even born.”
But Mira already knew. Her body no longer felt like her own. Her reflection seemed to flicker, her smile twitching at odd angles. Sometimes she caught herself humming the children’s rhyme without realizing it. The dolls were not only shaping her son; they were shaping her too, molding her into the mother they had chosen.
And in the silence between the whispers, she felt a terrible certainty growing inside her. When the time came, she would not resist them. She would carry the child to the attic herself. She would place him among the dolls, cradle him in clay arms, because that was what they had made her for.
Part 8: The Midwife’s Secret
The days in Bowbazar seemed to lose their shape. Sunlight no longer brought relief, and nights stretched like endless corridors of whispers. Mira barely ate, her body weakening even as her belly seemed to swell with unnatural speed. Arjun kept her close, shadowing her every step, but fear gnawed at him too. They both knew the house was winning.
One afternoon, when the trams clanged lazily through the rain-slick streets, a knock came at the door. Arjun opened it warily, only to find an old woman leaning on a cane, her back bent, her hair white as ash. She introduced herself in a raspy voice: Parul-didi, a midwife who had lived in the lane longer than anyone. Her eyes, sharp despite her years, swept past Arjun to fix on Mira with unnerving intensity. “You shouldn’t be here,” she murmured. “Not now. Not with a womb that has begun to quicken.”
Arjun tried to send her away, but Mira, trembling, begged her to come in. They led her to the sitting room where the air was stale with incense and unease. The old woman lowered herself slowly onto the wooden bench, her bangles clinking faintly. “I heard the chanting,” she said. “Heard it all the way from my courtyard. They have named him already. That means the house is awake again.”
Mira clutched her locket, her voice thin. “Tell us. Please. We need to know everything.”
Parul-didi closed her eyes, gathering her breath, and then began. “When I was a girl, my mother was a maid in that house. I grew up hearing the stories. The Englishwoman—her name was Eliza—was barren, and in her bitterness she sought the help of a fakir who dealt in blood and shadows. She wanted a child, any child, to call her own. The fakir showed her how to call spirits, how to mold clay into vessels for the souls of the dead. But he warned her—once begun, the rite would not stop. Each doll made would hunger for another. Each child taken would bind the house tighter to its curse.”
Arjun’s fists clenched. “So she killed them?”
Parul-didi shook her head slowly. “Not always with her own hands. Some children simply vanished, pulled into shadows none could see. Others died in accidents no one could explain. But every time, a doll appeared in the attic, waiting, smiling. She believed the dolls were her children, her family. She rocked them, sang to them, fed them offerings of milk. And when the mothers of the lane rose against her, they found her cradling a doll like an infant. They beat her until her skull cracked, and in her dying breath she swore that the dolls would never leave. She bound her spirit to them, and they to the house.”
Mira shivered. “And since then?”
“Since then, every generation, the dolls have woken. Sometimes after ten years, sometimes after twenty. A new family moves in, hopeful, innocent, and the dolls stir when they sense a womb. They always sense a womb.” The old woman’s eyes softened as she looked at Mira. “They want your son. They will not stop until they have him.”
Mira’s voice cracked. “How do I stop them?”
Parul-didi’s silence stretched until the clock on the wall ticked loudly between them. Finally she said, “There is only one way the stories speak of. The bones of the Englishwoman must be burned. Not the grave by the old church, for that is empty. Her true remains lie beneath your attic, sealed under the trunk. The women who killed her buried her there so no priest would sanctify her soul. Until her bones are ash scattered into the Hooghly, the curse will remain.”
Arjun stood abruptly. “Then we’ll dig them up. Tonight.”
But the old woman shook her head, her bangles jangling. “It is not so simple. The dolls will not let you touch her. They guard her as their mother. They will tear at you, drive you mad, make you one of them. You cannot break her hold with strength alone.”
Mira leaned forward desperately. “Then what can we do?”
Parul-didi’s gaze fell to Mira’s stomach. “You are carrying both curse and key. The dolls want the child, but the mother’s soul—the Englishwoman—wants something more. She wants to be reborn through you. If you give birth in that house, her spirit will take root in your son. That is the final piece of her bargain. That is what has kept her waiting.”
Mira’s breath came fast, her hand clutching her belly as though to shield it. “Then I must leave. I must leave before he’s born.”
“You cannot,” Parul-didi whispered. “The house has already marked you. Step outside its walls, and they will follow. You will hear children’s feet on every road, see dolls in every window. They will not release you until the rite is finished.”
Arjun’s voice broke with anger. “So we do nothing? Just hand over our child?”
The old woman’s eyes flashed. “No. You must make a choice. Either you break her bones and scatter them, or you bargain—give them another child to take in place of yours. But beware: such bargains demand blood. And once made, the dolls never forget.”
She rose then, leaning on her cane, her figure frail yet commanding. “I have said what I came to say. The rest is yours to decide.” At the door she turned once more to Mira. “Be careful with your dreams. That is where she will come for you first. If she sits in your lap, if she rocks your son in your dreams, it will already be too late.”
When she was gone, the house seemed to exhale, its shadows lengthening. Arjun sank into a chair, his face pale with fury and despair. “We’ll do it,” he said hoarsely. “We’ll dig her up. I don’t care what the dolls do.”
But Mira sat trembling, the words echoing in her skull. Not the grave. The attic. The bones lay beneath the very trunk where the dolls waited, guarding their mother’s secret. She closed her eyes, and in the darkness she saw it clearly: a skeleton curled beneath the floorboards, wrapped in rotting cloth, cradling a doll in its bony arms. And around it, dozens of tiny clay hands, clutching, protecting, waiting.
That night, as she drifted into uneasy sleep, Mira dreamt she was in the attic again. But this time it wasn’t the dolls who sat in a circle. It was children, living children, their faces pale and bruised, their lips cracked. At the center sat a woman in a lace blouse, her skull half-caved, her smile wide and broken. She rocked a clay doll in her arms and lifted her gaze to Mira.
“Give me the boy,” Eliza whispered in a voice that sounded like knives scraping stone. “Or you will rock him for me, forever.”
Part 9: The Bargain
By the time the decision pressed down on them, Bowbazar felt like a throat closing. Arjun’s fury had curdled into something rawer—an animal desperation. He paced through the rooms at all hours, clutching the iron talisman and muttering plans to dig, to burn, to run. Mira watched him from the edge of a chair, her hands folded over her swelling belly, as if the weight inside could anchor her to a saner world. Parul-didi’s words looped in her head: bones under the trunk, the woman reborn, bargains that demanded blood. The lane outside moved on—carts, trams, the perfunctory life of hungry people—but inside their house the air was tuned to a single sound: the low, impatient hum of the dolls, waiting.
They tried to be rational for a day, as if reason could stitch a hole opened by centuries of grief and hatred. They measured the floorboards with a borrowed tape, tapped at seams, pried up a loose plank only to find nothing but dusty insulation and the hollow echo of mice. Arjun swore he would rent proper tools that night, bring a workman in the morning, tear out the trunk, rip the boards up and expose whatever lay beneath. But every plan dissolved at twilight, when the attic’s voice rose like a tide and the house’s corners filled with small shadow-children. Even the hired help—two young men Arjun had coaxed into coming—left after hours of rattled nerves and whispered excuses, their courage crumbling when a chorus of childish calls seemed to follow them to the gate. No one stayed. No one could stay.
So they considered the other option the midwife had dared to name: a bargain. Mira hated the word. It made her feel filthy, as if bargaining with hunger and grief were a thing purchasable for coin. But desperation loosens the mouth; it forces people to taste words they once swore they’d never speak. They sat that night at the kitchen table with the brass lamp guttering between them and the dolls’ chant bleeding under the floor: Mira’s Son… Mira’s Son… Arjun’s jaw was set like stone. “If the bargain can buy us time,” he said hoarsely, “if it can keep them from taking our child, then—” He could not finish. He would not say what he would give in exchange, though both of them understood the old woman’s implication.
Mira thought of the stray children who played in the lane, of the mothers who had sat on the steps with aching arms and hollowed eyes. She pictured the dolls’ faces in the attic, how they’d lean like vultures, how they’d smile when a baby fussed in the night. A hand closed over hers on the table; Arjun’s fingers were cold. “We’ll find someone,” he whispered. “We’ll ask someone—someone who has no family, someone who cannot fight us.” The words tasted like poison. To choose another life, to barter another child’s safety against their own—such thought stripped them both raw.
Mira refused to let the bargain be a faceless abstraction. She wanted a plan, a boundary. “If we must bargain,” she said quietly, “it will not be a theft. We will not steal a child. If someone chooses to give, it must be with eyes open.” Arjun looked at her with a haunted expression: noble words had become a cruelty in their mouths. The dolls did not care for consent or dignity; they required a life, and lives were counted in bodies and breaths, not promises.
Still, they tried to find a loophole. They offered to give the dolls a foundling—someone already dead whose bones might be bound into clay, a sacrifice without a living mother. They sought out old records, whispered with the footmen at the nearby church, visited the municipal office where a clerk shrugged about graves and unclaimed plots. Everything led in circles. The Englishwoman’s grave was long gone, Parul-didi had said; the bones were beneath their own attic floor, impossible to reach without rousing the nursery. The dolls had made their terms and those terms were as old as the house itself.
On the third night of searching, the sweet-shop owner came to them, his cataract-clouded eyes burning with a fever of his own. He set a small tray on their table and placed, with trembling hands, a single wrapped parcel before them. “I have someone,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not a child. A woman. She is old, poor, alone. She begs for food by the Kosha market. She has no next of kin. If she will accept, perhaps she will trade what she has left—her years, perhaps her last warmth—for the safety of your unborn.” His voice broke on the last words.
Mira felt bile rise. The image formed instantly: an old woman, hunched and mute, led to their house and taken into the attic while the dolls cheered. She closed her eyes, seeing instead the bargain in harsher light: a life for a life, currency of bodies. She thought of Parul-didi’s warning—bargains demand more than one imagines. If the dolls could be sated with one life now, would they sleep forever? Or would they hunger again, in ten years, in twenty, for another exchange? The cost might buy only a pause. The curse might persist, a slow, gnawing hunger that never died.
Arjun pressed his palms to his face. “We can’t ask this of someone,” he whispered. “We won’t.” But the sweet-shop owner persisted. He spoke of the beggar’s children, of the woman’s cracked hands, of how she had once been a midwife herself until commerce and illness scattered her bones. He wrapped his pleading in stories of karma and fate, as though such language could cushion the blow.
Finally, Mira made a choice that left the taste of rust on her tongue. She would not send another living, breathing person up into that attic as payment. She would not ask a stranger to die so her child might live. But she also could not let her son be stolen. So she conceived a third way—a deception, grim and dangerous. If the dolls required an offering, perhaps they could be fooled. If the woman’s bones were under the trunk, and if the dolls bound themselves to those bones, could a decoy of bones, made with rites and iron, be placed to satisfy their hunger? Could they create a simulacrum—ashes and charred wood, a bundle of bones from a butchered goat and a plaster facsimile—then scatter that into the Hooghly as if they were hers? It was a plan stitched together from superstition, rumor, and thin hope.
They consulted Parul-didi in whispers, and she blinked slowly as if tasting the idea. “It is dangerous,” she said. “Deception angers spirits. If they learn the bones are false, they will punish the liar. But sometimes the dead are fools for ceremony. They heed shape and sound. It may cost you dreams and strength. It may cost more.”
They prepared as though for war. Arjun stole out at night to buy charcoal and herbs from the old bazaar; Mira gathered bone—small, cheap bones from the butcher, rinsed and dried in secret. The sweet-shop owner supplied incense and a scrap of the red cloth he claimed came from the house’s old rituals. Parul-didi taught them a half-remembered litany, a string of verses to speak over the ashes. They would enact the burning, scatter the char, and cast the remnants into the Hooghly at dawn, when the river ran thin and the light would be a witness. If the dolls were swayed by the gesture, then perhaps the woman’s hunger would be sated enough to leave them be. If not—if the dolls saw through the sham—then their deception would be a provocation, and provoked spirits could be crueler than patient ones.
On the last night before they planned the rite, the dolls sang a new song, one full of triumph. Mira woke with clay in her mouth and a single line lodged in her mind: Bring him. Bring him. Bring him to sleep. She looked at Arjun and saw the same wild exhaustion in his eyes. They had no other path that felt survivable. They had chosen treachery over sacrifice, and the house, listening, laughed in whispers that rose like steam into the attic’s dark.
Part 10: The Final Doll
The night before the ritual, the house seemed to know. The whispers were shrill, almost jubilant, darting through the beams like swarms of insects. The attic door rattled so violently the ropes snapped, nails bending outward like teeth. Arjun and Mira huddled in the bedroom, the false bundle of bones lying between them, wrapped in red cloth, bound with incense and ash. They had prepared it carefully, shaping each goat bone with a file, staining it with soot until it looked ancient. But both of them knew appearances meant little if the dolls decided to test the lie.
At dawn, they carried the bundle through the narrow lane. Rain slicked the cobbles, trams clanged past, and yet no one met their eyes. The neighbors watched from behind shutters, faces pale, as if already mourning them. Parul-didi waited at the mouth of the lane, her cane tapping the stones, her eyes hard. “Do not falter,” she warned. “Speak the verses. Scatter the ash. Do not look back, whatever you hear.”
They crossed the Howrah Bridge as the city stirred awake, the Hooghly below thick and brown, carrying its endless burden of offerings and ashes. On the riverbank they set the bundle on a pyre of wood and coal. Arjun struck a match with shaking hands, and Mira whispered the verses Parul-didi had taught them, words older than memory. The flames licked upward, smoke choking them, and Mira imagined she heard a scream inside the crackle, high-pitched, furious, like a child denied a toy. She forced herself not to stop. When the bones charred black, they scattered the remains into the water, watching the river carry them away.
For a moment, silence. A stillness so deep Mira thought it had worked—that the dolls had been fooled, that Eliza’s bones had been symbolically undone. She even dared to breathe freely as they turned back toward Bowbazar. But as they entered their lane, the house waited, its windows yawning open like eyes. The whispers had not stopped. They had changed. Now they were laughter.
Inside, the air was hot, clotted. The attic door hung wide open, ropes dangling uselessly. The trunk stood in the center of the floor, its lid thrown back. Dolls spilled out, hundreds of them, crowding the boards, their painted eyes gleaming in the half-light. They were arranged not in rows, not in circles, but in a procession—leading to the center, where a new doll sat, larger than the rest. Its clay glistened damp, as if freshly molded. Its features were unmistakable: Mira’s eyes, Arjun’s jaw, a tiny scrap of Mira’s dupatta tied as clothing.
On its back, etched deep enough to scar the clay, was a single name. The Son.
Mira screamed, clutching her stomach. Pain ripped through her, sudden and brutal, though it was far too early for labor. She fell to her knees, and the dolls surged forward, toppling from the trunk, clicking across the floorboards in waves. Arjun tried to drag her back, swinging the iron talisman like a weapon, smashing one doll, then another, shards scattering. But for every doll that broke, two more lurched forward, their eyes glowing with something alive, their mouths splitting into hairline cracks like grins.
Mira felt herself being pulled toward the trunk. Invisible hands clutched at her arms, her legs, tugging her forward while the pain in her belly deepened, a rhythm of contractions she could not control. She realized with horror that they were not waiting for her to give birth—they were forcing it, shaping the child from inside her just as they shaped clay.
In the chaos, Parul-didi appeared in the doorway, her frail body trembling with the effort of climbing the stairs. She raised her cane and shouted words Mira did not understand, a litany harsh and sharp. The dolls froze, if only for a heartbeat, their heads jerking toward the old woman. She pointed to the trunk, her voice cracking: “Burn it! Burn it now!”
Arjun didn’t hesitate. He threw the lantern he carried, its oil spilling over the wood. Flames leapt up, catching the trunk, swallowing the dolls in furious light. The attic filled with acrid smoke, the dolls’ painted eyes melting, their mouths opening in soundless screams. Mira writhed on the floor, torn between pain and relief, as if something inside her was being tugged in two directions at once.
The largest doll—the one with her son’s features—did not burn immediately. It stood at the center of the flames, its clay skin blistering but refusing to crack, its painted eyes locked on Mira. It raised its tiny arms as if reaching for her. And in its mouth, a voice spoke, clear and cutting: “Ma.”
Mira’s heart split. Instinct roared louder than fear. She crawled forward despite Arjun’s cry, reaching toward the doll, her body aching with the pull of blood and bond. But before her fingers touched it, the flames surged higher, engulfing the figure. It twisted, shrieked in a voice that was both child and woman, both unborn and long-dead. Then it shattered, collapsing into ash.
The attic shook as if the house itself had been struck. Dolls cracked and crumbled, their fragments raining across the floor. The whispers turned into screams, then into silence. At last, only the fire remained, hissing and popping as it consumed the trunk.
When the smoke cleared, Mira lay in Arjun’s arms, her body slack with exhaustion. The pain in her belly had eased. She touched herself gently, afraid. The flutter was gone. The child—the curse—whatever it had been—was gone. She wept, not knowing whether for relief or grief.
Parul-didi knelt beside them, her voice ragged. “It is finished. But the house will never be clean. You must leave now. Tonight.”
They staggered out together, coughing, covered in soot. The neighbors watched silently from their windows as the couple stumbled down the lane, Mira clutching her empty belly, Arjun holding her as if she might vanish. Behind them, number seventeen stood blackened, its attic window glowing faintly with dying fire.
Later, Mira would never be sure if she truly heard it, or if it was only the echo of her broken heart. But as the tram bells tolled in the distance, she thought she heard one last giggle carried on the wind. A child’s laugh, high and mocking, whispering through Bowbazar’s crooked lanes.
