Niraj Kashyap
1
The road to Kohima was narrower than Dev Malhotra expected, its serpentine curves stitched into hills that breathed mist with every mile. His cab driver, a lean man named Lipok, didn’t speak much beyond gestures and short English bursts. The air grew thinner as they climbed, and pine forests swayed like silent sentinels watching their passage. Dev kept his DSLR beside him, ready to catch any atmospheric shot that could set the tone for his article. A seasoned investigative journalist, he’d covered riots, cults, and graveyard confessions in Bundelkhand—but this was different. Stories of a phantom priest preaching a ghostly sermon every Christmas Eve in the ruins of Kohima Church had circulated in local folklore for decades. But something in the villagers’ silence, something about their eyes when asked about the church, suggested this was no mere myth. Dev wasn’t here to chase ghosts. He was here to unravel whatever truth—or trauma—still haunted this hill town.
By the time he reached the guesthouse arranged by the local tourism board, dusk was bleeding into the hills, casting long shadows over tin roofs and mossy stone walls. A frail elderly woman handed him the keys and simply said, “Don’t go near the church after sundown,” before turning away. Dev raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. The guesthouse was modest, wood-paneled, with a small balcony overlooking the mist-choked valley. That night, Dev flipped through his notes under a single desk lamp, highlighting names: Reverend Thomas Sema (deceased, 1944), Colonel David Callahan (chaplain, WWII), and the most chilling—no recordings exist of the sermon, yet villagers claim they hear it. The deeper he read, the more questions bubbled up. Why had no one documented this phenomenon properly? And why did older villagers refer to the church not as ‘haunted’ but as “unfinished”? Just as he was about to retire for the night, a faint sound wafted through his window. It wasn’t wind, not exactly. It was melodic—like the tail end of a hymn. He rushed out with his recorder, but the silence had returned, heavy and impenetrable.
The next morning, Dev set out for the town library and cultural center, a low stone building draped in prayer flags and ivy. There he met Asenla Jamir, a local schoolteacher who doubled as a part-time historian. She was tall, with sharp features and calm, observant eyes. When he mentioned the sermon, her expression stiffened. “It happens only once a year,” she said, not quite looking at him. “People used to attend in silence. Now they stay away. We don’t disturb the dead anymore.” Intrigued, Dev asked her about Reverend Sema. “He died during the final bombing in ’44. They say his last sermon was never delivered… and that’s why it echoes.” She hesitated, then added, “But you won’t find that in books.” Asenla agreed—reluctantly—to help him access sealed archives in the church library, but she warned him: “This isn’t Delhi. Some stories here don’t like being touched.” Dev smiled, thinking it theatrical, even poetic. But the way her voice trembled ever so slightly gave him pause.
That evening, the hills grew darker faster. Kohima was caught in a blue stillness, the kind only mountain towns knew—a stillness full of things unsaid. As Dev stood on the balcony sipping weak tea, he saw a hunched figure walking toward the church ruins alone, lantern in hand. The figure paused near the bell tower, looked back as if sensing eyes on him, then disappeared into the mist. Dev’s breath caught. He quickly grabbed his camera and zoomed in—nothing but fog. The guesthouse clock struck eleven. Then, again—soft, fleeting—came the faint echo of a voice. It was deep, rhythmic, and laced with sorrow. No words could be made out, but the cadence… it was unmistakable. Someone—or something—was preaching. And Dev Malhotra had just stepped into the first sentence of a sermon not meant for the living.
2
The ruins of Kohima Church stood like a wounded relic from a forgotten gospel. Dev approached it the next morning with the caution of someone entering sacred ground not meant for strangers. Ivy draped over the crumbling bell tower, and the stained-glass windows—what little remained—were shards of color buried in dust and moss. Yet, strangely, the cross above the altar remained untouched, its surface burnished by sun and time. Dev could feel something coiled beneath the silence—a kind of breathless reverence that held the space in suspense. Pastor Lemlila Sothu, the man responsible for maintaining the site, emerged from behind the rectory in slow, deliberate steps. Dressed in a tattered grey shawl and black trousers, he looked like a ghost keeper more than a pastor. He didn’t smile when Dev introduced himself, only muttered, “You’re not the first one to come here with a recorder and questions. But none of them stayed long.”
Despite his wariness, Pastor Lemlila unlocked the iron gate and let Dev in. The church interior was skeletal, roof partially collapsed, wooden pews blackened by rot, and a massive crack split the marble floor like a scar. But the altar… the altar stood untouched. Its wood unblemished, the Bible still open, as if waiting for the next passage to be read. Dev stepped closer and noticed the page hadn’t yellowed like the rest—it looked… recent. The pastor spoke softly, “We don’t touch that book. It opened on its own during the first Christmas sermon… the one no man gave.” Dev, skeptical but intrigued, bent to inspect the page—it was from the Book of Lamentations, a verse about unanswered cries. Underneath the pulpit, something darker caught his eye—faint brown smudges that trailed like footsteps. When he looked up at the pastor, Lemlila only said, “Blood. Old. From before the war ended.”
Dev asked about Reverend Sema, and the pastor’s face shifted—pained, as if recalling an open wound. “He was a good man. Preached peace while the world burned around him. He refused to leave, even when the bombs fell. Said his sermon wasn’t done.” Lemlila paused, then whispered, “The people buried him… but not his words.” When Dev pressed further, Lemlila grew quiet. “You should leave by sunset. The mist carries memory, and the voice doesn’t like to be followed.” Dev noted everything, trying to remain grounded in the practical. Maybe this was mass hysteria, a town clinging to trauma through legend. Maybe the acoustics played tricks. But part of him—buried deep—remembered his grandmother’s stories of Partition spirits, of places soaked in grief that speak back if you listen long enough.
As he stepped out of the church ruins, Dev turned back one last time. The altar caught a slant of sunlight, illuminating the open Bible like a relic in a museum. Birds circled the bell tower, though no one had rung the bell in decades. Outside, Asenla was waiting, her expression unreadable. “You went in,” she said softly. Dev nodded, showing her his notes. “That altar—has anyone ever touched it?” She shook her head. “One man tried. An army photographer in ’96. He went missing. People said he left for Dimapur, but he never called. Never came back.” Dev frowned, lips tightening. “And the voice—do you hear it?” Asenla looked past him, toward the chapel. “Only if you believe it’s still preaching. Some of us stopped listening.” Dev looked back at the church, its silence now louder than before. Whatever had begun in 1944 hadn’t ended. Not really. Something lingered. Not just memory—something that waited, year after year, for a congregation that never returned.
3
The archives inside Kohima’s cultural library smelled of old paper, pine, and a hint of damp that seemed permanent. Dust clung to every spine and file, and the silence was absolute, broken only by the occasional squeak of a rusted drawer or the whisper of yellowing pages being turned. Asenla led Dev to a locked cabinet marked CHURCH RECORDS – 1939–1947. She fetched the key from an old steel box and unlocked it with a look of quiet unease. “These haven’t been touched in years,” she said, brushing off a thick layer of dust. Inside were ledgers, letters, hand-typed sermon drafts, and faded photographs bundled in rubber bands. Asenla gently unwrapped a batch, and one black-and-white photo slid onto the desk. Dev froze. He leaned in, his fingers trembling slightly. There—among the group of wartime volunteers, clergymen, and nurses—was a face he knew too well. Second from the left, smiling faintly, was his father.
Dev’s father, Harjit Malhotra, had disappeared without a trace in 1991 during an assignment in Assam. His last postcard to the family mentioned heading deeper into the Northeast. Authorities said he might have been abducted by insurgents, or perhaps lost in the violence sweeping the border villages. His body was never found. But this photograph was dated 24 December 1944, almost five decades before Harjit was even born. The man in the photo was unmistakable—same prominent jawline, same intense gaze, even the mole under his right eye. Dev’s breath caught. Asenla watched him carefully, sensing a shift. “You recognize someone?” she asked. Dev hesitated. “No,” he lied. “Just… a resemblance.” But the storm had already begun in his chest. He asked to see the back of the photo. Scribbled in blue ink: Midnight Mass Preparations – Reverend Sema & volunteers. No mention of names. No military markings. Nothing to trace.
Later that evening, Dev sat alone in his guesthouse room, the photo lying flat under his bedside lamp. He zoomed in and out of the digital copy he’d scanned, looking for any sign of doctoring. But the shadows matched. The uniforms matched. Even the paper’s age matched. He called a friend back in Delhi—a media archivist—who promised to run a facial match but warned, “It’ll take a few days. And bro, if this is real… it’s not just a story.” Dev barely responded, lost in a spiral of theories. Was it a case of uncanny resemblance? A grandfather he never knew? But why was that face haunting a photo from a Christmas Eve sermon in a church that allegedly preached from beyond the grave? That night, he barely slept. The photo sat like an eye on his desk, watching, waiting.
At dawn, Dev returned to the church with a printed copy of the image. He stood where the photo had likely been taken—just outside the bell tower, where the stone path was now broken and overgrown. He imagined the group standing there, wartime choirs rehearsing hymns, the scent of gun oil and candle wax mixing in the cold December air of 1944. He imagined his father—or the man who looked like him—kneeling beside Reverend Sema, preparing a sermon that was never delivered. Pastor Lemlila appeared quietly behind him. “You shouldn’t bring the dead back,” he said, eyes fixed on the photo. “Some faces belong to yesterday.” Dev looked at him sharply. “Do you recognize this man?” Lemlila shook his head slowly. “I recognize the moment. That photo was taken the night the bells stopped ringing. After that night… everything changed.” Dev stared at the chapel once more. He had come for a story. But now the story had turned and looked back at him, and it knew his name.
4
It began with footsteps—soft, irregular, like a barefoot child pacing through wet earth. Dev heard them just past midnight, outside his guesthouse window, beneath a heavy shroud of rain. He rushed to the balcony, expecting to find a stray dog or perhaps a villager caught in the downpour. But there was no one. Only the flickering streetlight swinging slightly in the wind, and the faint imprint of a small footprint in the mud below. He took a photo on instinct. When he zoomed in, something made his spine go cold. The print was tiny, unmistakably that of a child’s—no larger than that of a ten-year-old—and it led toward the ruined church. The path, however, vanished after the third step, as if the rain had decided not to wash it away but preserve it. As if the footprint didn’t belong to now at all.
The next day, Asenla brought Dev to the village elders’ home, where old war documents and testimonies were preserved in brittle, typewritten fragments and oral recordings. An elderly woman, blind in one eye, asked him abruptly, “Have you seen the boy?” When Dev hesitated, she continued, “Tialemba. He always comes before the sermon. Lost his voice during the bombing. He doesn’t speak—but he points.” Asenla explained that Tialemba was said to be the youngest casualty of the Christmas Eve attack in 1944. He had no family. He’d been living near the church, cared for by Reverend Sema, and was last seen clutching a handmade wooden cross hours before the sky lit up in fire. Locals believed his spirit never left, trapped by something unfinished. “He shows people the truth,” said the elder, “but most are too scared to follow him.” Dev didn’t admit it aloud, but part of him had seen something last night—a flicker of movement just beyond the railing. A face peeking through the fog. A presence.
Driven by restlessness, Dev returned to the church alone that afternoon. Rain had turned the soil into sludge. Birds circled high above, refusing to perch on the church’s broken spire. As he stood beneath the collapsed roof, he heard a soft shuffle. Turning sharply, he caught a glimpse—a small figure, barefoot, wearing a torn white shirt, disappearing behind the altar. Dev chased after it, heart pounding. Behind the altar, hidden beneath a loose stone slab, he discovered something he hadn’t noticed before: a crawlspace. Inside it were scattered remnants—a rusted slingshot, a torn hymnbook, and a burnt toy soldier with a British flag etched on the side. The air inside was thick, almost unwilling to move. Among the debris, Dev found a dog tag, corroded but still legible: D.R. Callahan. His heart skipped. The British chaplain whose name appeared in the war diaries. What was his tag doing under the altar, among a child’s belongings?
That night, Dev uploaded photographs of the dog tag and artifacts to his secure cloud and sent them to his Delhi contact for verification. But the moment he hit send, the lights flickered. His laptop screen momentarily went black. Then, from the speaker, came static—followed by a child’s breath. Slow, deliberate, as if standing right beside him. Dev slammed the lid shut, sweat clinging to his skin. On the floor, near the door, was a single wet footprint. It hadn’t been there moments ago. Asenla knocked moments later, her voice urgent. “You need to see something.” She handed him an old black-and-white drawing from her grandmother’s diary—sketched by candlelight after the war. It depicted the crawlspace under the church… and a boy. Standing next to him was a tall figure holding a Bible, half his face burned, the other half… smiling. “That’s not Sema,” she whispered. “That’s Callahan. He wasn’t just a priest. He was trying to keep something inside.” Dev looked at the footprint again. Tialemba had come to point. The question now was—to what?
5
The journal arrived wrapped in oilskin, its spine brittle and corners torn as if gnawed by time itself. Asenla retrieved it from the basement archives of the mission school, where war relics had been carelessly stacked in crates labeled “Non-essential.” Inside the cover, written in sharp, disciplined strokes, was the name: Chaplain-Colonel David R. Callahan, 2nd Battalion, British Indian Army. Dev flipped through the pages carefully. It wasn’t a formal military record, but a personal field diary—fragments of theology, battle notes, and obsessive reflections on faith, war, and “containment.” The early entries were mundane—mentions of troop movements, sermons under firelight, tea shortages—but by mid-December 1944, the tone darkened. “Something lingers in the church,” one entry read. “Reverend Sema insists we continue services. But the walls… they echo before we speak.” Another entry chilled Dev to the bone: ‘Heard a sermon I did not preach. Sema swears it wasn’t him. The boy—Tialemba—stood at the pulpit again last night. Eyes blank. Voice missing. He mimics the shape of prayer but speaks no word.’
Dev read on, struck by the descent from order into desperation. Callahan had come as a man of God, a chaplain offering solace to soldiers dying in trenches carved into the green hills of Nagaland. But his writings took on an eerie urgency. He began to question whether what they were experiencing was the fog of war—or something metaphysical. He described “a rupture” that had occurred during the Christmas Eve bombardment—how Sema insisted the sermon must go on to protect the town, to seal the “breach” between the realms. Callahan didn’t believe it—at first. Then came the night of the bombing. The journal’s ink smudged there, as if written in haste. ‘Sema began the final sermon but never finished. The altar cracked. The bell rang on its own. I heard voices in Latin. The boy disappeared. I buried the Bible behind the pulpit.’ Then, the last legible sentence: “They will come back every year until the sermon is complete.”
Dev closed the journal slowly. His fingers trembled, not from fear but from the sensation that history was repeating itself—and he was standing on the same fault line. The pieces were aligning: the ghostly sermon, the boy with no voice, the sermon left unfinished. What had they tried to contain? Was it spiritual, psychological, or something older than both? Asenla watched him from across the table. “Do you believe now?” she asked softly. Dev hesitated. “I believe they believed something happened. And I believe… it’s still happening.” He looked at the date—December 23rd. One night remained before the next sermon. He planned to be inside the church when it began. For the first time, Asenla didn’t try to stop him. “If you go,” she said, “don’t speak. Don’t respond. The ones who answer are the ones who never return.”
That night, unable to sleep, Dev walked through the silent village. Fog rolled down from the hills like a living thing, wrapping the lanes in silver-gray folds. At the church gate, he paused. Something about the air had changed. It was warmer near the altar, despite the cold wind. The cross above the bell tower gleamed faintly under the moon, as if polished by unseen hands. He stepped closer, peered inside the ruins through the broken window. The altar stood unchanged, but the Bible had been moved. It now lay open on a different passage. Dev strained to read the verse in the dim light—it was from Revelation. “And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book… and eat it up.” As the wind stirred, he heard it again—that voice. Slow, deep, not his own, not Sema’s. It said his name. Not shouted. Not whispered. Just said it—as if greeting someone who had finally come home.
6
Snow had begun falling by the time Dev Malhotra reached the old rectory beside the church. The structure, though barely holding together, stood like a stubborn relic of time—its wooden cross broken, its shutters unhinged. As he stepped inside, his flashlight caught crumbling pages strewn across the floor—some in English, some in an old dialect he didn’t recognize. Amid the musty scent of mildew and forgotten prayer, he spotted a faded photograph pinned beneath a cracked mirror. It showed the late Father Aurelian D’Souza, his robes immaculate, smiling stiffly beside two young Naga boys dressed as altar servers. Dev gently pocketed the photo before heading deeper in. A door at the back creaked open to reveal a narrow stairway descending into the earth, into what might have been a storage basement—or a crypt.
As he descended, the temperature dropped, and with it, the air grew heavier, tinged with incense and something vaguely metallic. The basement was small, lined with racks of rotting hymnals and mold-covered prayer scrolls. But what struck Dev most was a mural on the wall—painted in dark ochre and crimson. It depicted a scene unfamiliar to Christian iconography: a priest standing in the center of a battlefield, holding a chalice high as spectral figures of soldiers knelt before him. Surrounding the image were words in Latin, weathered and smeared. Dev traced his fingers along them and made out: “Et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.” — “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” A chill ran through him, not from cold, but recognition. The same line was inscribed on a plaque he had seen in a cemetery outside Imphal—on the grave of a fallen World War II chaplain.
That night, as the snow blanketed the hills, Dev returned to the church, drawn by something more than curiosity. Midnight was near. The villagers had spoken of the exact hour when the voice would rise again. He sat alone in the front pew, recorder ready, heart racing. Nothing stirred for minutes. Then, without warning, the ancient bell in the belfry chimed once. It shouldn’t have—it was rusted solid. The sound was followed by the unmistakable voice of a man, aged yet solemn, echoing through the empty nave. It wasn’t a whisper, but a full sermon in liturgical English, layered with Naga inflections. “Brothers and sisters in this vale of shadows,” the voice began, “you are not forgotten. Those who bled for peace shall rise in remembrance…” Dev sat frozen, as if paralyzed by reverence. The pews creaked though no one was seated. The candles lit themselves one by one, and for a brief moment, the church felt alive—holy and haunted in equal measure.
When the voice ceased, silence returned with a terrifying finality. Dev stood up, his legs trembling. He stepped to the pulpit, half-expecting to find a figure standing there, but it was empty. He approached the altar and found something lying atop it—a journal bound in leather, untouched by time. Inside were entries written in both Latin and broken English, signed repeatedly: “Fr. Aurelian D’Souza, Kohima, December 1944.” One entry dated Christmas Eve that year read: “The war is over, but the war within me begins. I see them—the boys, the soldiers, the ones I could not save. If they return to hear me, I must preach. Even in death.” Dev closed the journal, a knot tightening in his chest. What had started as a story was now a vow. He had to uncover why the priest’s soul had not moved on—and who still needed to hear that sermon after all these years.
7
The cold breath of early dawn traced patterns on the church’s ancient stained-glass windows as Dev stood beneath the crucifix once again. He had not slept—his dreams were haunted by the voice from the sermon, still echoing like a looped whisper inside his skull. Beneath the altar, the hatch he had found now stared back like an eye unwilling to close. With trembling hands and a flashlight clutched like a relic, Dev descended into the dark passage. The air grew heavier with each step, the walls narrowing as if resisting his presence. Strange symbols etched in dried chalk lined the path, some familiar from wartime Catholic rites, others too crude to identify. At the passage’s end, he entered a hidden crypt beneath the church. Wooden beams creaked overhead. In the centre, surrounded by dust and mold, was a stone sarcophagus with a rusted brass plaque. It bore the name: Father Ignatius Perreira—the long-dead priest whose voice still rang out on Christmas Eve.
Dev’s fingers traced the edge of the stone lid. In the candlelight, he noticed the hinges bore fresh rust—someone had opened it recently. A surge of adrenaline drove him to push. The lid groaned, revealing an empty grave. No bones. No decayed garments. Just a pile of letters bound with a rosary, each yellowed but preserved. He picked one. The ink was faded, but legible—a confession from Father Ignatius to “those who will listen when truth is no longer dangerous.” It spoke of the final days of World War II, when the Japanese had overrun Kohima and the church became a refuge for both soldiers and civilians. But what chilled Dev was the mention of The Pact of Silence, a covenant made between the priest, a local tribal elder, and a Japanese general during a Christmas ceasefire in 1944. The agreement: the church would remain untouched by blood or politics as long as it stood. But it had been broken. The priest’s final letter spoke of betrayal. Of a massacre carried out inside the church under false pretenses. “Their blood is on these stones,” he wrote. “And so long as I am unheard, I will preach.”
As Dev absorbed the gravity of the letters, he felt the stone room shift. Not physically, but atmospherically—like a storm cloud had passed through his chest. Footsteps echoed above. He froze. Slowly extinguishing his candle, he emerged back into the nave, heart racing. The front doors of the church stood wide open, though he had locked them shut. A trail of wet footprints—bare, childlike—led from the door to the pulpit. There stood a girl, no more than ten, in an old-fashioned frock, staring at him without blinking. Her mouth did not move, but he heard her: “You opened the silence. Now hear the sermon to the end.” She turned, and before Dev could speak, she vanished like a projection snuffed out. But on the pulpit, where she had stood, lay an old reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Dev carried the recorder to his temporary room in the village, locking the door and drawing the curtains tight. He cleaned the dust from the reels and threaded the tape through. As he hit play, a new sermon began—this one older, more distorted, but unmistakably delivered in the same deep, resounding voice. It was not just a sermon. It was a testimony. Names were spoken. Japanese commanders. Indian freedom fighters. British officers. Local villagers who had taken refuge in the church that fateful December. It was not merely faith being recited—it was history being confessed, wound into scripture, and spoken not for salvation, but for remembrance. Dev realized that if he published this, it would not just expose a haunting—it would unravel a suppressed chapter of the Kohima war. And perhaps, more than ghosts, it was that truth which had kept this church cursed for so long.
8
Snow began to fall in uneven flurries as Dev trudged back toward the church, guided only by his flashlight and the memory of what had happened the night before. His breath clouded the air in front of him, but he barely noticed the cold. Something within him had changed; the vision of Father Abraham speaking in tongues inside the church, the children crying unseen, and the smell of burning letters still haunted his thoughts. The villagers avoided him now, speaking in hushed tones and crossing themselves when he passed. Even Sister Imala had turned distant, refusing to meet his eyes when he came to ask about the original construction of the church and the secret records she had mentioned. He was convinced the church was not just a leftover relic of war—it was the war, encoded in wood, stone, and sound. That night, Dev climbed the ridge to the church once more, not to investigate, but to surrender himself to whatever truths were waiting.
Inside, the old pews loomed like shadows in the candlelight. Dev lit the few remaining altar candles, placing his recorder on the pulpit once again. Midnight was nearing, and an uneasy stillness settled around him. He sat in the front row, whispering a silent challenge to the spirits, if they existed. Then, from behind the pulpit, he heard the beginning of it—not a voice, but the soft hum of a hymn. Faint at first, like wind weaving through pine, it slowly grew louder until it resembled a full choir, singing in a dialect he didn’t understand. Dev’s chest tightened. There were no people in the church except him. Yet the sound was undeniable. A low harmony built in layers, like mourning and celebration happening at once. The sermon had begun—not in words, but in lamentation, a song of ghosts remembering something he could not see.
Dev tried to remain still, but his fingers trembled against the edge of the pew. He reached for his recorder, but the red light had already gone out. As he turned to check it, the candle flames flickered violently. A wind howled—not from outside, but within the chapel walls. In the mirror behind the altar, he saw them. Shadows—seven or eight figures, robed in black, swaying in rhythm to the music. Their faces were blank, and in the center stood the silhouette of Father Abraham, his arms raised in blessing or warning. Dev staggered backward, hitting the corner of the altar. The pain jolted him into clarity. He shouted, “What do you want from me?” The singing stopped. The shadows froze. One of them turned its head toward him, and in a gravelled voice, not of this world, it said, “Listen.” That was all. Just that one word, but it was enough. Dev collapsed to his knees, overwhelmed, tears streaking his frozen face.
When he awoke, it was morning. The candles had burned to wax puddles, the recorder had no audio saved, and there was no sign of any figures. But the hymn still rang in his ears, each note etched into his memory. He walked out into the snow-drenched graveyard, where he saw the gravestones now looked different. Some had fresh flowers. Some bore names he hadn’t noticed before—soldiers, missionaries, even journalists. One stone in particular stopped him: “Arun Malhotra – War Correspondent – 1944.” His father’s name. And it hadn’t been there before. Dev fell to his knees before it, heart pounding. The ghosts weren’t just figures of folklore. They were his inheritance. The past had been waiting, and now it had spoken. He had listened.
9
The wind howled louder that night, rattling the broken stained-glass windows of Kohima Church as if the storm itself were crying out with the voices of the dead. Dev stood frozen at the altar, the candlelight flickering in rhythm with his pounding heart. Just moments ago, the church had been empty—abandoned pews, dust-laden floors, the silent crucifix watching over a room long forgotten. But now, seated in the front pews, were figures. Not entirely solid, not entirely light—ghostly outlines in priestly robes, heads slightly bowed, hands folded in reverent silence. The sermon that had begun from nowhere was still playing, a voice echoing from the rafters. But Dev realized with mounting horror: the voice was his own. It was his voice reciting scripture he had never memorized, his tone heavy with sorrow, pleading for forgiveness. Father Chasie’s journal trembled in his hand, pages fluttering as if reacting to the presence in the church.
Dev’s mind reeled. The night had become a hall of mirrors—echoes of his thoughts were whispered back to him by unseen mouths. Suddenly, from the shadows behind the choir stall, emerged a familiar figure: Father Chasie. But his eyes were no longer gentle. They burned with blue fire, and his cassock seemed soaked in crimson mud, as if dragged from the battlegrounds of 1944. “You opened the door,” the priest intoned, stepping closer. “You brought the war back.” Dev stumbled backward as the walls of the church bled history—the Japanese invasion, the burning of the village, the cross that was never rebuilt. A flash revealed British soldiers praying beneath the same arch, a dying Naga boy reaching for a priest who never returned. Dev realized that the sermon wasn’t a haunting—it was a lament. A ritual of remembrance. A cry from the souls who had witnessed too much and been buried in silence.
A sound rose behind him—an organ playing by itself, out of tune and weeping. Dev turned to see villagers, dressed in old war uniforms and torn choir robes, filing into the pews. He recognized their faces from old photographs—men and women who had died decades ago. They weren’t here to haunt; they had come to finish the final mass that had never been concluded during the war. The pages of the journal turned to a blank sheet at the back. Written in fresh ink was a line: “Speak their names, and they will rest.” Dev stepped up to the pulpit, his voice quivering, unsure. But as he began to read aloud the names of the fallen—Japanese, British, Naga—one by one, the ghostly congregation began to vanish like mist catching sunlight. Tears streamed down his face as he continued, the names reverberating like the tolling of bells over the battlefield that had once been their home.
And then—silence. The storm outside stopped, the last candle guttered, and the air grew warm. Dev found himself alone again, the church bathed in the soft pre-dawn blue of morning. In the distance, a rooster crowed and the bells of Kohima rang out for the first time in years. He walked outside, the journal still clutched in his hands, and turned to see the church—no longer a ruin, but whole, gleaming with dew as if reborn. Behind him, footsteps approached. It was Nokren, holding an old photograph. “You should see this,” he said softly. It was an image of Dev’s father, standing next to Father Chasie and a young choir boy—Nokren’s grandfather. They were rebuilding the church’s wooden cross. The story was not just his assignment anymore. It was his inheritance.
10
The snow had thickened over Kohima through the night, muffling every footstep as Dev Malhotra made his way one last time to the crumbling church on the hill. Armed not with a camera or notebook, but with a single candle and his father’s battered field diary, he passed the rusted iron gate that no longer creaked. Inside, the church was exactly as he’d left it, yet not the same. The pews were aligned with unnatural precision, the air held a crisp sanctity, and the altar glowed faintly under the dull moonlight filtering through the stained glass. Dev’s breath clouded before him, and he could feel the presence again—closer now, not threatening, but ancient and waiting. He sat in the front pew, placed the diary beside him, and lit the candle. It was December 24th. Midnight approached.
As the flame flickered, so did the boundaries between memory and reality. A soft hum rose from behind the altar—no voice, just a resonance like wind through a conch shell. Then the sermon began. Dev couldn’t tell if it was in Naga, English, or something older—yet he understood every word. It spoke of mercy, of men lost in violence, of broken faith stitched back by memory. The voice, unmistakably the same as the recordings from the villagers’ accounts, now carried an urgency. It wasn’t just preaching; it was pleading. Dev watched, transfixed, as the shadows of long-forgotten soldiers stood silently along the church walls. Their outlines flickered in and out of time—Japanese, British, Indian—all united in this spectral sanctuary. And standing at the pulpit, transparent and regal, was Father Elias.
Dev stood slowly, tears mixing with the cold on his face. He reached into his coat and retrieved the letter he’d discovered, the one his father had written but never sent—apologizing to the people of Kohima for abandoning the villagers during a deadly ambush in 1944. His father’s guilt had been buried under decades of silence. Now, under the ghostly gaze of Father Elias, Dev read the letter aloud. As he finished, the candle burned brighter, and the sermon ceased. The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was whole, complete. The spectral soldiers nodded once, solemn and satisfied. Father Elias extended a translucent hand toward Dev, and though their skin never touched, a warmth surged through Dev’s chest, a forgiveness not just for his father, but for all who had been left unheard.
By dawn, the church had returned to its derelict state. The snow outside was fresh and untrodden, save for Dev’s footprints leading back down the hill. In his pocket was the now-blank diary—its ink vanished, its burden lifted. The mystery of the Kohima church had not been solved in the way editors would approve of, but Dev no longer cared. Some truths, he realized, were not meant for headlines. Back in Delhi, he would write the story, yes—but not as an exposé. It would be an elegy, a tribute, and a confession all in one. And every Christmas Eve, he would remember that sermon—not as a haunting, but as a hymn from the forgotten, echoing through the ridges of Nagaland, where war and faith once collided beneath a stained glass sky.
End
