Kunal Sinha
1
It was a humid, sticky evening in Kolkata when Maya Sengupta first noticed something was amiss. The streets outside her apartment were bathed in the warm golden light of the streetlamps, but the stillness of the night felt heavy, almost suffocating. The only sounds that punctuated the silence were the occasional honk of distant cars and the rustling of the trees swaying under the breeze. Maya had just finished her work for the day and was sipping on a hot cup of tea when her phone rang. The sudden noise startled her. It was late — too late for anyone to call, especially her. But when she glanced at the screen, it was an unknown number. She hesitated before answering. A knot tightened in her stomach. She had never been one to entertain mysterious calls, but something urged her to pick it up.
“Hello?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. There was a long pause, so long that Maya almost hung up, thinking it was a wrong number. Then, a voice emerged from the other end, cold and unsettling. It was a man’s voice, deep and raspy, but there was something eerily familiar about it. “I know you, Maya,” the voice said, sending a chill down her spine. “I know what you’ve done.” The words sent a jolt through her body, but she tried to shake it off, telling herself it was probably a prank. “Who is this?” she asked, her voice trembling despite her efforts to stay calm. The voice didn’t answer. Instead, it whispered something that only she could understand — a secret she had buried long ago, one she hadn’t shared with a single soul. The line went dead before Maya could respond, leaving her staring at the phone in disbelief, her heart pounding in her chest. The sense of unease that followed lingered, gnawing at her as she tried to convince herself it was just a figment of her imagination.
The next few days felt like a blur. Maya went about her usual routine, but the memory of that voice haunted her relentlessly. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Each night, she found herself waiting for the call, dreading it, yet secretly anticipating it. And then it came again, on the second night. This time, the voice was clearer, more menacing. It spoke in riddles, recounting more details of her life that seemed impossible for anyone to know. The calls grew more frequent, each one more unsettling than the last. Maya tried to ignore them, to dismiss them as nothing more than a cruel joke, but they seemed to be playing on her deepest fears, the ones she had long buried in the dark recesses of her mind. Her once peaceful life began to unravel slowly, and she couldn’t escape the creeping paranoia that had taken hold of her. The calls weren’t just a nuisance anymore; they were a threat, and Maya couldn’t help but wonder who was behind them — and why they were targeting her.
2
The third night brought rain. Thunder rolled across the Kolkata sky, and the rain lashed against the windows of Maya’s flat like restless fingers tapping a warning. She sat in the dim light of her living room, wrapped in a shawl despite the humidity, her eyes fixed on the phone resting silently on the coffee table. The hands of the clock ticked toward midnight, and her breath caught in her throat as the digits shifted — 12:00 AM. As if on cue, the phone lit up. Unknown Number. Her hand trembled as she picked it up, already knowing what awaited her. “Still pretending?” the voice rasped, darker this time, the tone cruel and mocking. “You thought you could forget. You thought no one would find out.” Maya stood frozen. She opened her mouth to reply, but her voice felt trapped behind the weight of terror. The voice continued, slowly, deliberately: “I see everything, Maya. Even what you did at the lakehouse. Does it still haunt you?” That one word — lakehouse — struck her like a bolt of lightning. No one knew. No one could know. Her hands trembled as she ended the call and dropped the phone onto the sofa as if it had burned her skin.
For hours, she sat curled in the corner of her couch, wide-eyed and breathless. The lakehouse was something she never spoke about. It was from a time she had spent trying to forget — an accident, a memory blurred by fear and silence, long buried beneath the normalcy of adult life. But the caller had dug it up with surgical precision, carving into her calm existence with invisible hands. Maya tried to rationalize — maybe it was someone from her college days playing a sick joke, maybe someone had hacked her personal records, or maybe… it was worse than she thought. She didn’t sleep that night. She didn’t even close her eyes. Instead, she watched the shadows move across the walls of her apartment, every creak of the wooden floorboards amplified in her imagination. At dawn, she opened her phone again, looking for any clue — a location, a trace, a pattern — but there was nothing. Just the same number: Unknown. She called the police helpline to report harassment, but the officer on the line sounded disinterested, telling her to block the number and suggesting she “get some rest.” Maya wanted to scream. No one understood — this wasn’t just harassment. This was someone trying to unravel her life thread by thread.
By the fifth night, the calls had become routine — midnight, sharp. And each time, the voice grew more personal, more cruel, peeling away the protective layers Maya had built around her life. It mentioned names, places, moments — her childhood fear of the attic after her cousin locked her in, the night she skipped her mother’s funeral out of guilt, the failed relationship with Aditya, which had ended not just in heartbreak but betrayal. The voice knew everything. It was like speaking to the embodiment of her guilt and shame. Maya began to avoid mirrors, avoid eye contact, avoid calls from friends and coworkers. She started skipping work. She lost her appetite. The confident, independent woman she once was had begun to vanish under the weight of unseen eyes and unheard footsteps behind her. Every time the phone rang, it wasn’t just fear that gripped her — it was recognition. The voice wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. There was something in it — a flicker of something she once knew — but the more she tried to place it, the more it slipped through her grasp, like a nightmare that fades by morning but leaves its claw marks behind.
3
The air in Kolkata was thick with unease, and Inspector Satyen Banerjee felt it the moment he stepped out of the yellow taxi in front of Lalbazar Police Headquarters. A man of composed demeanor and rural sensibility, Banerjee had transferred from a quiet posting in Bankura, where crime was mostly petty theft and the occasional land dispute. But Kolkata was a different beast — its chaos, its secrets, its history — everything here moved in shadows. He had barely settled into his modest quarters near Tollygunge when his first major case landed on his desk: a string of disappearances, all strange, all eerily similar. The missing had no obvious connection — a school teacher, a call center employee, a local radio jockey, and a college student — but every case had one curious detail buried in the reports: each victim had reportedly told someone about receiving disturbing, anonymous phone calls at night shortly before vanishing. Banerjee, meticulous by nature, began pulling the files together, creating a board of overlapping timelines, locations, and fragments of last-known communications. The pattern was there, though subtle — all had received calls around midnight, all from untraceable numbers, and all had spiraled into paranoia before disappearing.
Banerjee decided to re-interview family members of the missing persons. One particular interview stood out — a tearful mother who mentioned her daughter, the college student, had kept muttering about someone “who knew her secrets” before she disappeared. That phrase struck Banerjee. It echoed something he’d heard whispered in Bankura years ago, in a different context — an unresolved case of a woman who had died by suicide after complaining of “someone pulling her memories apart.” Back then, it had been dismissed as a mental health issue. But now, here in Kolkata, it rang with sinister clarity. As Banerjee dug deeper, he came across a recent complaint buried in a general harassment file — a woman named Maya Sengupta had called in to report persistent midnight calls from an unknown number. She hadn’t followed up, but Banerjee was intrigued. Unlike the others, Maya hadn’t yet disappeared. She could still be reached. He picked up his coat and headed to her listed address in South Kolkata, not knowing that the call she would receive that night might be the most dangerous yet.
When Banerjee met Maya, he was struck not by her fear but by the exhaustion in her eyes — the weariness of someone who had been gaslit by shadows and silenced by disbelief. She welcomed him in with hesitation, clutching a cup of tea like it was the only anchor to normalcy she had left. As she recounted the details of the calls — the timing, the voice, the things it said — Banerjee listened carefully, taking notes, but also observing her face for the tiny tremors of unspoken trauma. It was when she mentioned the name “Sameer” that he paused. She said it quietly, almost as if saying it too loud might summon something. “He was a friend… from years ago,” she said. “We lost touch. He… disappeared.” Banerjee asked, “Did the voice mention him?” She nodded slowly. “Only once. But it was enough.” The inspector’s mind began to race. This wasn’t a random predator — this was personal. Someone who knew Maya’s past, someone who wanted her broken, perhaps to reach something or someone else through her. As Banerjee stepped out into the dusky Kolkata evening, the sounds of the city buzzing in the distance, he realized Maya wasn’t just another victim. She was a thread. And if he pulled it carefully, it might just unravel a web much darker than he had ever faced before.
4
Maya stood at her bedroom window, staring into the glowing labyrinth of the Kolkata night, her reflection barely visible in the pane. The calls hadn’t stopped. If anything, they had become more personal, more surgical in their cruelty. The voice had begun playing mind games — pretending to be her mother’s voice at times, or humming the tune Sameer used to sing during college rehearsals. She had almost dropped the phone the first time it happened. It was no longer just about secrets; it had become about her memory, her reality, her sense of time. And yet, when Inspector Banerjee returned to her flat two days later, she greeted him with something close to hope. He brought a few old police files, one of which contained the initial missing person’s report filed for Sameer Bose in 2011. Maya hadn’t seen Sameer since their final year in college — he had vanished just before their final semester. She remembered it all too well — the confusion, the search, the silence. Everyone assumed he had run away after being falsely accused of plagiarism, though Maya had never believed it. And now, the voice was invoking his name again, as if to rekindle guilt that had never really died.
Banerjee laid out the file contents on her dining table: a photo of Sameer, details from his college records, the vague police report with the statement from his father — a retired clerk who claimed Sameer had become withdrawn and anxious before vanishing. Maya stared at the photograph, her eyes lingering on Sameer’s half-smile. “He was brilliant, but fragile,” she said softly. “He never told anyone what he was going through. And when he disappeared… I thought I’d failed him somehow.” Banerjee listened carefully, then asked a question that shifted the air between them: “Is it possible that the person making these calls is trying to frame Sameer, or… could it be him?” Maya froze. “No,” she said. “Sameer would never do this. He wasn’t capable of cruelty. But… sometimes, when I hear the voice, there’s a… hesitation. Like it knows me. Like it’s trying to sound like someone else.” Banerjee tapped his pen against the file. “Or maybe it is someone else. Someone who wants you to think it’s Sameer. That’s even more dangerous.” The thought unsettled Maya more than she cared to admit. She realized now that this wasn’t about random harassment. It was a performance — orchestrated, calculated, and rooted in her past.
That night, after Banerjee left, Maya went to the bottom drawer of her wardrobe and pulled out an old cardboard box marked ST. XAVIER’S 2011. She hadn’t opened it in years. Inside were photos, certificates, old notes, ticket stubs from concerts and plays. Among them was a crumpled letter — one Sameer had written to her the week before he disappeared. The words were faded, but the tone was unmistakably broken. “Sometimes I think I’m a burden to this world. I don’t know if I’ll be around long enough to finish this play. But if I disappear, don’t let them rewrite the story without me.” Maya clutched the letter, her heart tightening. Was this a suicide note or a farewell under duress? She began scanning the letter for any clues she might have missed. And then it struck her — one of the sentences mentioned “The Hollow Tree,” a nickname they had given an abandoned bungalow near the lakehouse they’d visited once during college. It had been Sameer’s secret hideout, his retreat. Could it still exist? Could someone be using that place as a base now? Her hands trembled as she reached for her phone to call Banerjee. The puzzle pieces were moving, and for the first time, Maya felt she was chasing the shadows rather than being hunted by them. The past was no longer buried — it was calling her home.
5
The road to the lakehouse was narrower than Maya remembered, overgrown with creepers and flanked by trees whose branches clawed at the sky. Inspector Banerjee drove silently, his eyes fixed on the winding path while Maya sat beside him, holding the crumpled letter like a talisman. The bungalow — once a retreat during college picnics — had long been forgotten by the city. They reached just before sunset, and the golden light only made the dilapidated house appear more sinister, its moss-covered walls and shattered windows standing like a relic of buried truths. Inside, the air was damp and moldy. Fallen leaves crunched underfoot as they explored. In a side room, under a collapsed shelf, Banerjee found something that made his breath catch — a box of cassette tapes labeled with dates from 2011. Maya’s hands trembled as she picked one up and saw her name written in hurried scrawl: Maya – 14 March. That was the week Sameer disappeared. They didn’t have a player with them, so Banerjee bagged the tapes for forensic analysis, but the implication was clear — someone had been recording back then, storing memories in analog form, waiting for the right moment to weaponize them. As they left the house, a figure stood in the distance at the edge of the woods — just long enough to be noticed, then gone. Banerjee gave chase, but the man vanished into the trees like a whisper swallowed by the forest.
That night, the call came five minutes early. Maya had barely locked her door when her phone rang. She didn’t answer at first, letting it ring, her chest rising and falling with nervous anticipation. On the sixth ring, she pressed accept and placed it on speaker. “You found the lakehouse,” the voice said calmly. “Good. You’re getting warmer.” She felt a shiver run down her spine. “Who are you?” she asked. The voice chuckled. “I’m the consequence you ran from. The echo of things left unsaid.” “Why me? Why now?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Because lies don’t die,” the caller replied, “they rot, and I’m what’s left.” The line went dead. Maya clutched the phone, her thoughts spiraling. Banerjee had told her that psychological torment often worked by isolating the victim — attacking their identity, warping their memories. And now, that exact process was underway. She was losing her grip on what was real and what was constructed by the voice. At work, rumors had begun to spread. People whispered about her breakdown, her paranoia, her sudden absences. Her friends had stopped calling. Her landlord had served her a notice citing “disturbances reported by neighbors.” Maya was being dismantled piece by piece, and whoever was behind it knew exactly where to strike.
Inspector Banerjee, meanwhile, was making his own discoveries. The cassette tapes revealed fragments of old recordings — some were rehearsals from their college plays, others more troubling: whispered conversations in a female voice, muffled arguments, a panicked cry. One tape ended with a male voice saying, “We have to make them pay, every one of them.” Banerjee traced the voice to an old student named Arijit Pal — a brilliant, volatile writer who had dropped out shortly after Sameer’s disappearance. Arijit had once been obsessed with the idea of memory manipulation and had written a short play called Echoes in the Dark, in which a character is slowly driven mad by phone calls that replay her worst moments. It had been rejected by the drama club for being too disturbing. Banerjee’s gut told him Arijit was more than just a dropout — he was the architect behind Maya’s descent, perhaps even responsible for the other disappearances. But motive was still unclear. Did Arijit blame Maya for something? Or was he merely using her to recreate his deranged narrative in real life? As Banerjee put the files together, one thing became obvious: Maya was not just a victim. She was the centerpiece in a play that someone had been scripting for over a decade — a performance meant to culminate in her complete collapse. The web had been spun long ago. Now it was tightening, and time was running out.
6
Maya sat motionless on the edge of her bed, the phone still clutched in her hand. The call had ended five minutes ago, but the voice still echoed in her ears—soft, calm, deliberate. “You remember what happened on the roof, don’t you, Maya?” Her skin prickled with fear. She had never told anyone what had happened that monsoon night during her college days, not even Arko. The caller’s knowledge of that event was impossible unless they were there—or unless they were her. The thought chilled her. Her room, dimly lit and heavy with the weight of sleeplessness, felt smaller than ever. Maya wrapped her arms around herself and tried to steady her breathing. Sleep was a far-off dream now, and even blinking felt like a risk. Somewhere outside, a street dog barked as a tram clanged in the distance, but the familiar Kolkata sounds brought no comfort. She turned her gaze to her window, half-expecting a figure to be watching her from the shadows. Nothing. Just the stillness of the early morning and the creeping dread of a mind unraveling.
Inspector Satyen Banerjee sat across from Maya in his office at Tollygunge Police Station, a weary but steady expression on his face. He listened intently as Maya recounted the midnight calls and the messages within them, omitting nothing this time—not even the rooftop incident from her past. Satyen took notes silently, occasionally glancing up to study Maya’s face, registering every flicker of emotion. “This is more than just a prank,” he finally said. “Whoever this is knows you intimately—psychologically and emotionally. That’s dangerous.” He handed her a list of numbers. “I had your phone records pulled. Some of the midnight calls came from burner phones—untraceable—but two originated from a location near Gariahat. I’ve got a team checking CCTV footage.” Maya’s fingers trembled as she accepted the paper. The name “Unknown” stared back at her, as if mocking her desperation. “I don’t know who would hate me this much,” she murmured. “Someone who doesn’t want you to know who they are,” Satyen replied quietly, “until it’s too late.”
That night, Maya sat in the living room, lights dimmed, curtains open. She wanted to confront the fear instead of hiding from it. At 12:00 sharp, the phone rang again. She answered with a firm voice, “Who are you?” There was a pause, then a distorted chuckle. “You lied to the police, Maya. You didn’t tell him everything. You didn’t tell him what you did after he fell.” Her breath caught. The voice continued, “Do you think you’re innocent? You watched him bleed, and you ran.” Maya’s eyes welled up. The memories came rushing back—college, the fight on the roof, the way Subho had slipped during the argument, the way she had panicked and fled, too terrified to face what happened. “You don’t know what it was like,” she whispered. “But I do,” the voice replied. “And I’m going to make you remember every second of it.” The line disconnected. Maya curled up in a ball on the couch, crying silently, not just out of fear but from the burden of her own guilt. Upstairs in a nearby building, behind another curtain, someone watched her through binoculars. They put down the device, smiled, and scribbled a note: She remembers now. Next step begins.
7
Rain lashed against the city like a rage long suppressed, flooding lanes and soaking the yellow lights of streetlamps in melancholy. Maya hadn’t left her apartment in two days. Curtains drawn, lights dim, mirrors covered — she was living in a world stripped of reflections. Every tick of the clock grew louder, closer to midnight, and every sound — the creak of wood, the thump of a neighbour’s footsteps, the hum of the ceiling fan — became a whisper of threat. The phone had stopped ringing for the past two nights, and oddly, that absence terrified her more than the calls themselves. Silence, she realised, was not peace — it was strategy. She felt like prey whose predator had gone still, watching, waiting. She hadn’t heard from Inspector Banerjee since he left for Arijit Pal’s last known address in Dum Dum. Before he left, he had warned her: “Don’t trust anything that speaks to you in the dark.” But what do you do when the darkness learns your voice, speaks in your thoughts, wears your memories like a mask? That evening, while rummaging through a dusty trunk of old diaries, Maya found a black notebook with Sameer’s handwriting. It wasn’t addressed to anyone — more like thoughts he’d never said aloud. And in the final page, a sentence chilled her more than any call had: “Arijit knows what they did. He said the play never ended. He said we’re all still inside it.”
Banerjee’s search in Dum Dum led him to a derelict one-room flat filled with scribbled pages taped across the walls — diagrams, scripts, photos with red thread connecting them. In the center of it all was a drawing of a stage with the words “Final Performance” scrawled beneath. There were printouts of old police reports, psychological assessments, and disturbing black-and-white photos of people who had gone missing in the last few years — including the radio jockey and the college student. At the heart of the chaos was a wall covered in Maya’s photographs — her childhood, her college days, a recent image of her staring blankly out her apartment window. Banerjee felt his stomach twist. This wasn’t just obsession. This was architecture. Someone had mapped her life like a script. A calendar on the wall had only one date circled in red: October 19. That was four days away. Banerjee gathered the files and called Maya, but her phone rang unanswered. He sped back toward her apartment through water-logged lanes, dread pressing against his chest like a vice. Whoever Arijit was now, he wasn’t working alone. And Maya was no longer just a character in his drama — she was his climax.
Meanwhile, back in her apartment, Maya was reading through more of Sameer’s notes when her landline rang for the first time in years. The dusty receiver screamed as she picked it up. There was no greeting. Just a faint sound — a match being struck, then lit. And then a voice, whispering like wind through an abandoned theatre: “Do you remember what you did on the night of the audition, Maya?” Her blood froze. The audition — the night Sameer had broken down. The night Arijit’s script had been rejected. She remembered now — how she had told the drama teacher it was too disturbing, how she had suggested Sameer’s version instead. Arijit’s play had been thrown out. His voice had trembled that night when he said, “You people killed my truth. One day I’ll write yours.” Maya realised with horror that this — everything — had been Arijit’s way of reclaiming authorship. She was trapped inside a script written by vengeance. The phone crackled. “On the 19th,” the voice said, “the curtains fall. I want you on that stage one last time. Or others will take your place.” The line cut. Maya dropped the phone. Her knees gave way. Somewhere in the city, a show was about to begin — and she had been cast in a role she could neither escape nor understand.
8
Maya sat curled on the corner of her sofa, her eyes fixed on the old rotary phone she had recently unearthed from her father’s study — the same one that had started ringing again at midnight, as though it had been waiting to reclaim its voice. Outside, the city of Kolkata dripped with late-night drizzle, the soft pitter-patter of rain echoing like whispers through the open window. Her nerves, frayed from sleepless nights and memories clawing their way back into her mind, kept her taut as a wire. She had started documenting each call, noting the words, the patterns, the silences. The voice on the other end didn’t just speak — it performed. It knew when to pause, when to mock, when to whisper things that made her skin crawl. Tonight, the caller hadn’t laughed or threatened; instead, he had recited her childhood lullaby, the one only her mother used to sing when Maya woke up screaming from night terrors. That was when the shadow truly returned — the memory of the boy from her neighborhood, the one she had accused of something terrible. The one who had disappeared after the accusation. The one no one ever found.
Inspector Satyen Banerjee was standing at the morgue, gazing at a body recently discovered near the tram tracks in Bowbazar — a woman in her early thirties, face contorted, eyes open in a final moment of terror. No sign of physical assault, no marks, no struggle. Just pure fear frozen into her last expression. It was the third such body this month. The only link between them: all three had made police complaints about receiving midnight calls. Satyen felt the cold crawl under his skin as he reviewed Maya’s file once more, the pieces aligning faster than he had anticipated. She was next — he was certain now. But what disturbed him more was the eerie consistency in the timeline, the psychological profile of the victims, and the obsessive nature of the caller’s psychological pattern. Someone was not just stalking women — he was rehearsing destruction like a play. Each act ending in collapse. The fear wasn’t collateral; it was the goal. And Maya, with her fragmented past and solitary existence, was the perfect stage for the final act.
Back at her apartment, Maya paced like a trapped animal. Her walls felt closer now, the photographs on them warping into expressions of accusation. She had tried to confront her mother about the past, but her mother’s dementia had already stolen the answers. The only person who knew the truth was the boy — if he had survived. And Maya feared now that he hadn’t. Or worse, that he had. Her phone buzzed again — not the rotary, but her mobile. A video this time. It showed the alley behind her building, real-time, the camera slowly tilting up to reveal a figure in a raincoat, motionless, head tilted slightly. The timestamp showed it was recorded just seconds ago. She screamed and slammed the window shut, backing away. Her breathing grew erratic as she realized the caller didn’t just know her past — he was inside her present, inside her city, her alley, her night. Somewhere between her memories and reality, the lines had vanished. And the nightmare had walked right in.
9
Maya didn’t sleep that night. She sat cross-legged on the cold floor, staring at her phone, the rotary one unplugged and placed in a box as if that could silence its memory. The image of the rain-soaked figure from the video looped in her mind — still, faceless, watching. By morning, her nerves were brittle and her thoughts fraying. She contacted Inspector Satyen Banerjee again, this time not with fear but with resolve. When he arrived, she handed over the phone, the call logs, the recordings — everything. “He’s not just watching. He’s reenacting,” she said, her voice hollow. “He wants me to remember.” Satyen nodded grimly, already forming a hypothesis. The man wasn’t choosing random victims. Each woman had a past trauma that was mirrored in the call. The killer was excavating psychological wounds and turning them into fatal performances. Maya’s case, though, was more intricate — more personal. She wasn’t just a target. She might have been the reason it all began.
Satyen left Maya’s flat with a box of notes and a gnawing discomfort that this wasn’t just a case — it was history repeating itself. He took the video to his tech expert, who ran enhancement software. The figure’s face remained concealed, but a reflection in a puddle hinted at something chilling: a child’s mask, the kind worn at school plays. It reminded Satyen of an unsolved case from twenty-two years ago — a boy named Diptanshu had vanished after being accused of harming Maya in a neighborhood drama rehearsal. No body was found, but whispers spread that his father, a failed theater actor, had taken him and left the city. Satyen dug through old files and newspaper clippings, piecing together a trail of anger, humiliation, and silence. If that boy had grown up, shaped in secrecy by an actor father obsessed with revenge, then this wasn’t just a string of murders. It was a script — one written over two decades, fueled by bitterness, and now nearing its climax with Maya at the center.
Back in her apartment, Maya opened the dusty diary her father had kept. She wasn’t sure why she reached for it — maybe instinct, maybe desperation. Hidden between pages was a faded letter, yellowed with time. It was addressed to him from a man named Mohan Dey — once a neighbor, now forgotten. The letter spoke of regret, of a child whose life was ruined by rumors, and of “finishing the performance one day.” Her heart sank. Mohan Dey — Diptanshu’s father. Her father had hidden this. The guilt coursed through her like cold poison. She hadn’t just been a victim. She had been a participant in someone’s erasure. The phone rang again — her mobile this time — and she answered, breath frozen. The voice said only one thing: “Curtain call.” Then silence. Maya dropped the phone. She now understood — the Midnight Caller wasn’t trying to kill her. He was trying to bring her to a stage she had forgotten. And the final act was about to begin.
10
The city seemed to shiver under a blanket of fog as Maya walked toward the derelict auditorium mentioned in the old letter — Bijoy Mancha, once a vibrant neighborhood theatre, now decaying in silence at the edge of Kalighat. The roads felt unfamiliar, even though they’d been part of her childhood. As she entered the crumbling hall, dust swirled in shafts of pale light like trapped memories. The stage was still intact, covered in torn curtains and cracked wooden boards. A single spotlight blinked on, casting her shadow like a marionette. “Welcome, Maya,” said the voice from the darkness. She turned slowly. A man stood in the front row, his face painted white like a mime, a child’s mask hanging loosely from his fingers. “You left me behind,” he whispered. “You forgot the boy behind the curtain.” Maya’s voice trembled. “Diptanshu?” He nodded, eyes full of something deeper than hate — grief. “My father made me rehearse that day, even when they mocked me. And you screamed. And they believed you.” Maya’s chest ached with a guilt that had long been buried under denial. “I was afraid. I didn’t know the weight of my words.” His laugh was brittle. “But I did. I bore them for twenty years.”
He stepped onto the stage, his every movement choreographed, deliberate. Around them, old posters fluttered like ghosts. He began narrating, like a play — Act I: The False Accusation. Act II: The Vanishing. Act III: The Return. Maya stood in the spotlight, trapped. “This was never about murder,” she said. “It was performance.” He nodded. “The other women… they had also accused boys, ruined lives. I staged their last scenes. They never understood. But you, Maya — you were always meant for the finale.” She stepped forward, not in fear but acceptance. “Then let’s end it. Not as victims and villains. But as two people buried under stories we didn’t write alone.” Diptanshu’s hands trembled. For a moment, the mask dropped to the floor, cracking in two. “Why didn’t anyone come looking for me?” he whispered. “Why didn’t you?” Her eyes welled up. “Because I was taught to forget. But I remember now.” He closed his eyes, as if her words reached something human beneath the costume of vengeance. Then, the auditorium door creaked.
Inspector Satyen stepped in, gun drawn, flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. “Step away, both of you!” But Maya raised her hand. “No. This story ends here.” Diptanshu turned, calm. “It already has.” He walked to the edge of the stage and placed a small cassette player on the floor. It played the sound of a child laughing, then a scream — his scream, from years ago. “This is the only memory I have left,” he said. And then he turned and walked behind the curtains. By the time Satyen reached the stage, the man was gone. No back door. No trapdoor. Just dust. Later, CCTV showed no one entering or leaving the hall except Maya and the inspector. They never found Diptanshu. Some say he was never truly real — just a phantom stitched from guilt and performance. But Maya knew better. She published a memoir titled The Midnight Caller, not as a survivor, but as someone who once played a part in a tragedy she didn’t understand. And every night, before she sleeps, she hears a soft whisper from the wind outside her window. Not a threat. Not a ghost. Just a line from an old forgotten script: “The show must go on.”
End
