Sampriti Bhattacharya
1
The train slid into Varanasi Junction under a pale winter sun, its light already filtered through a haze of incense smoke, dust, and the faint smell of the Ganga carried on the morning air. Arpita Sen stepped onto the platform, her leather satchel hanging heavily at her side, filled with notebooks, sketching pencils, and rolls of acid-free paper for documenting antique textiles. She had been commissioned by a heritage trust in Kolkata to research and archive rare Banarasi silk traditions, a project that felt as much like a pilgrimage as a professional assignment. Outside the station, the city unfolded in layers: narrow lanes strung with marigolds, tea stalls coughing steam into the cold air, and cycle rickshaws clattering over ancient stone. Her driver navigated through the Chowk area, the hub of Varanasi’s weaving community, until the road became too tight for the car and she had to walk. That was when she saw it—a squat, century-old shop with a faded signboard in gold paint: Mishra Silk Ghar. Its wooden shutters were open, spilling warm yellow light onto the street, and from within came the faint fragrance of starched silk and sandalwood polish.
Inside, the air felt different—cooler, quieter, as if the chaos outside had been pressed out by the walls. Rows of glass cabinets lined the room, displaying folds of shimmering Banarasi silks in jewel tones, each catching the light like water. At the far end, a man in his mid-forties with a close-cropped beard and deep lines around his eyes rose from behind the counter. “Welcome,” he said simply, introducing himself as Ravi Mishra. His voice carried both the politeness of a shopkeeper and the caution of someone measuring a stranger’s intent. Arpita explained her work and her desire to document weaving patterns, asking if she could photograph a few older pieces. Ravi agreed but seemed distracted, his eyes often flicking toward a locked glass display case in the corner. When she finally walked over to it, she felt a prickling on her skin. Inside lay a crimson saree unlike any she had ever seen—its silk base deep as dried pomegranate, with gold zari work so fine it seemed almost liquid. The borders carried an intricate floral lattice, but the motifs seemed to shift subtly if she looked too long. “That one is not for sale,” Ravi said quickly, moving beside her. His tone was polite but edged with finality. “It is… a family piece. Best admired from here.” He offered no further explanation, and she, sensing the wall in his words, did not press.
Later that afternoon, she checked into a modest guesthouse not far from the weaving district. The room was simple: a bed with crisp white sheets, a writing desk under a barred window, and a brass jug of water placed on a side table. From her window, she could see rooftops strung with drying yarn—skeins of red, gold, and cream fluttering in the wind like muted prayer flags. She spent an hour sketching the crimson saree from memory, though she found herself shading the borders darker than they had seemed in the shop, as if the gold had been dimmed by shadow. Her pencil traced the latticework, and somewhere in her mind, she thought she could hear the click of a loom shuttle. She shook it off, telling herself it was just the memory of the workshop’s ambience. To distract herself, she unpacked her notes and began listing interviews she wanted to conduct in the coming days—local weavers, dyers, and possibly old traders who might know the forgotten stories behind rare designs.
That night, after dinner in the guesthouse’s small dining hall, she returned to her room and switched off the light, the city’s distant temple bells echoing faintly in the stillness. The ceiling fan ticked lazily above her, its shadow spinning across the walls. She was drifting toward sleep when she heard it—a faint, rhythmic sound from somewhere beyond her window. At first, she thought it was just the wooden creak of a rickshaw wheel, but the sound was too steady, too patterned. It was the sound of a loom in motion: the shuttle sliding, threads tightening, the warp and weft locking into place. Only, as she lay listening, the rhythm began to shift. Between each pull of the shuttle came a brief pause, followed by a long, strained exhale, as though the loom itself was breathing—and choking. The threads in her sketchbook seemed to darken in her mind’s eye, tightening into something no longer ornamental. She sat up, heart hammering, but when she went to the window, the lane below was empty, washed in cold moonlight. The sound had stopped, yet the air felt faintly warm against her neck, as if some invisible silk had brushed her skin.
2
The morning fog still clung to the narrow lanes when Arpita made her way to the crumbling haveli at the edge of Madanpura. She had been told that Shahana Begum was one of the last living links to the older days of Banarasi weaving—an ex-courtesan who had once performed for nawabs and zamindars, and who now lived in semi-reclusion. The haveli’s heavy wooden door groaned as it opened, revealing a tall woman draped in a faded silk shawl, her kohl-lined eyes still sharp despite her age. Shahana led Arpita into a drawing room that smelled faintly of rosewater and dust, its walls lined with portraits of women in elaborate sarees, gazes forever caught between defiance and melancholy. Over steaming cups of saffron tea, Arpita mentioned the crimson saree at Mishra Silk Ghar. Shahana’s lips curved into a knowing smile, though her eyes hardened. “Ah, that one,” she said, as if speaking of a person rather than an object. She told Arpita it had once been commissioned for a zamindar’s tantric ritual, woven with threads dipped in pomegranate dye and real gold, its motifs chosen not for beauty but for binding. “It is hungry,” Shahana murmured, her voice low and almost tender, “hungry for a neck. The zari remembers the warmth of skin, the threads remember the last breath they squeezed out.” She would say no more about the zamindar, only adding that after the ritual, no one saw his wife again, and the saree passed through hands that always met an early, strangled death.
Later, on her way back, Arpita stopped at the Kashi Vishwanath temple, intending to take a few photographs for her archive. Inside, the air was thick with incense and the murmured cadence of mantras. An elderly priest in a saffron dhoti, Aadesh Kumar, seemed to be watching her from near the sanctum. When she approached to offer prasad, he surprised her by speaking first. “You have been looking at it,” he said simply, as though the saree’s shadow clung visibly to her. Arpita hesitated before admitting she had seen the crimson silk at Mishra Silk Ghar. Aadesh’s expression grew grim. “Some fabric is not woven for beauty,” he said, his voice almost lost under the ringing of the temple bells, “but for death. They are threads of calling—once they know your name, they will find you.” He refused to elaborate, only pressing a pinch of turmeric into her palm before turning back to his duties, leaving her with the unsettling sensation that she had been quietly measured and found already marked.
That evening, Arpita lingered in the weaving district, watching the artisans at work in open-front workshops. The rhythmic clack of the looms was almost soothing, but she could not stop replaying Shahana’s words in her mind: hungry for a neck. She thought of the strange breathing sound she’d heard the previous night and the way the saree’s patterns seemed to shift under her gaze. Her plan for the following day was to meet Ravi again and perhaps convince him to tell her the saree’s history in his own words. As she passed by Mishra Silk Ghar on her way to the guesthouse, she noticed the lights still burning inside, though the shutters were half-lowered. A slim young woman—Meera, the shop assistant—was bent over the counter, apparently arranging fabric. Arpita thought to step in and say hello but decided against disturbing her at closing time. Still, something about the way Meera’s head moved—slow, as if her neck was stiff—struck her oddly, though she dismissed it as a trick of the dim light.
It was close to midnight when a knock sounded at Arpita’s guesthouse door. A neighbour from the weaving lane stood outside, breathless, saying there had been an incident at the shop. Drawn by equal parts dread and curiosity, Arpita followed him back to Mishra Silk Ghar, where a small crowd had gathered. Through the open doorway, she saw Meera lying on the floor near the display case, her face pale, eyes half-open but unseeing. Ravi knelt beside her, shaking her shoulders, his expression taut with fear. A length of crimson silk—too fine to be mistaken for rope—was looped loosely around her neck, leaving faint, angry red marks beneath the skin. The glass case in the corner stood ajar. No one had seen anyone enter or leave, and there were no signs of forced entry. The police had not yet arrived, but already whispers rippled through the crowd: It was the saree. The saree walked again. As Arpita watched Ravi lock the case once more, she could swear the folds of crimson inside shifted slightly, as if settling into a satisfied rest.
3
The news of the strange occurrence at Mishra Silk Ghar travelled quickly through the old weaving lanes, mutating with every retelling. By morning, it had already reached the desk of Devansh “Dev” Tiwari, a thirty-one-year-old investigative journalist with a taste for the city’s darker, stranger corners. Dev wrote for a niche folklore magazine, Shadowlands, which prided itself on blending fact and legend, and an unexplained incident involving a centuries-old Banarasi saree fit his beat perfectly. Armed with his camera, a recorder, and his easy charm, he made his way to the shop, where the wooden shutters were still closed. Outside, a small group of onlookers whispered about what had happened to Meera, their words woven with superstition. Dev spotted a young woman standing apart from the crowd, sketchbook in hand, her gaze fixed on the locked door. She introduced herself as Arpita Sen, explaining she was researching Banarasi weaves. There was something in her voice—hesitant, but edged with a private urgency—that caught his attention. Over a hurried cup of chai at a stall across the lane, she told him about her visit to the shop, Shahana Begum’s cryptic warning, and the priest’s unsettling words. Dev listened intently, though his reporter’s instinct told him she was holding something back.
By late afternoon, word came that Meera had been taken to a private clinic but her condition had worsened. Dev managed to talk his way into the hospital wing, where he found Inspector Vikram Rathore already on the scene. Vikram was a solid man in his late thirties with an expression carved from equal parts patience and suspicion. He questioned Ravi Mishra in clipped tones, trying to establish a timeline, while Dev lingered near the half-open door of the patient’s room. Inside, Meera lay unnaturally still, her back straight against the headboard, hands folded neatly in her lap like someone posing for a formal portrait. Around her neck, just visible above the edge of the hospital gown, was a faint band of angry red, as if drawn there by a single thread. Her breathing was shallow, eyes half-lidded but focused somewhere beyond the room. When the monitors flatlined moments later, the nurses rushed in, but it was too late—Meera was gone. Vikram stepped inside, scanning the scene with a frown that spoke less of confusion than of irritation. “I don’t like theatrics,” he muttered, glancing toward the neatness of the body’s pose, “and this looks staged… but by whom?”
That evening, Dev caught up with Vikram outside the shop, the inspector now armed with fresh information. A technician had pulled CCTV footage from the store’s cameras, covering the hours before the incident. Dev persuaded Vikram to let him take a look, promising not to publish anything without permission. The footage was grainy, the timestamp flickering faintly in the corner. At first, it showed nothing but the dim interior of the shop, the fabrics lying in their cases like slumbering animals. Meera entered around 10:17 p.m., tidying up, moving from cabinet to cabinet. She paused at the crimson saree’s display case, unlocking it with a key, perhaps to adjust its folds. Then, at exactly 10:23 p.m., the feed glitched—just a blink—and for three seconds, the case appeared empty. When the image returned to normal, the saree was back in place, but Meera was standing very still, her head tilted slightly as if listening to someone speak in her ear. She stepped backward slowly, and the rest of the footage was uneventful until the moment she collapsed. Dev rewound the clip several times, unsettled by the flicker of movement in the shadows near the floor, something that seemed to crawl toward her before the glitch.
Dev left the shop with the faint sense that he had brushed against something both impossible and deeply dangerous. Arpita, who had insisted on watching the footage as well, walked beside him in silence, her expression tense. In the crowd behind them, people whispered about the old Mishra curse, about silk that walked and threads that could breathe. Dev wanted to dismiss it all as a trick of the camera, an electrical fault, a well-planned hoax—but the image of Meera’s neatly folded hands and the vacant look in her eyes stayed with him like a splinter under the skin. As they reached the end of the lane, Arpita stopped and said quietly, “The saree wasn’t empty in those three seconds. It was… somewhere else.” Dev wanted to ask her what she meant, but she had already turned away, disappearing into the fog-thick streets.
4
The next morning, Arpita returned to Mishra Silk Ghar, finding Ravi alone in the shop, the shutters still half-closed as if to ward off the day. The air inside was heavier than she remembered, thick with the scent of sandalwood and something faintly metallic, like wet coins. Ravi looked older than he had just days ago, his eyes ringed with fatigue. At first, he deflected her questions about the saree, insisting it was “just an unlucky piece,” but as she spoke of her research and of Shahana Begum’s warning, something in his guarded posture softened. He disappeared into the back room and returned with a flat, dust-covered wooden box. From it, he drew a sepia-toned photograph mounted on thick card. The image showed a veiled woman in an elaborate crimson saree, seated in a high-backed chair with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her back impossibly straight. Even under the veil’s gauze, Arpita could sense the strange stillness of her expression. The borders of the saree shimmered faintly in the light, the zari work so detailed it almost seemed freshly woven. “This was taken in 1924,” Ravi said quietly. “She was the zamindar’s third wife. She died that night.” Arpita realised with a chill that the woman’s pose was identical to Meera’s in the hospital bed—seated, composed, strangled by something fine enough to hide from most eyes.
Meanwhile, Dev had been chasing his own lead, digging through brittle archives at a local press office that still stored bound editions from the early twentieth century. He found a yellowing news brief dated February 1924: Local Zamindar Found Dead in Mysterious Circumstances. The report was scant on detail but mentioned that the zamindar had been discovered in his private chambers, seated upright at his writing desk, eyes open, with faint red marks encircling his throat “as though made by delicate cord.” The piece ended with a single curious line: “The household declined to comment on the disappearance of the crimson bridal saree last worn by his wife.” Dev stared at the article, the connection slotting neatly—and uncomfortably—into place. The victim in the photograph Arpita had described and the zamindar in this report had died within hours of each other, both in the same eerie, staged posture. He wondered if Arpita would see it as confirmation or as another warning.
That afternoon, Arpita invited Dev to the shop to see the photograph for himself. They stood together at the counter as Ravi carefully slid it toward them, his hands never quite letting go. Dev leaned over the image, taking in the rich texture of the silk, the rigid serenity of the seated figure. At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him—the photograph had the usual signs of age: small cracks, faded corners—but then he noticed something strange. From the bottom edge of the frame, barely visible unless the light hit it at an angle, hung two fine crimson threads. They were too vivid, too fresh to belong in a hundred-year-old image. Arpita asked if the threads had always been there. Ravi swore they had not, explaining that he had looked at this photograph countless times and the fabric had always been contained within the image’s boundaries. “It’s as if it’s… leaking out,” Dev murmured, his voice low, and in that moment all three of them found themselves instinctively stepping back from the table.
The longer they stared, the more the photograph seemed to shift in small, unsettling ways. The veil’s folds looked subtly different than before, and Dev could swear the woman’s head was now angled a fraction more toward them. The threads—so fine they might have been mistaken for loose fibers from the shop’s stock—appeared to have lengthened slightly, curling toward the counter. Arpita felt her stomach tighten; it was the same sensation she had felt the night she heard the loom’s strangled breathing, a heat at the nape of her neck as if something unseen was brushing against her skin. Ravi quickly slid the photograph back into its box, snapping the lid shut. None of them spoke for a moment. Outside, the afternoon light had dimmed unnaturally, as though a cloud had passed, but when Dev stepped to the doorway, the street was bathed in clear sunlight. He returned to Arpita with a grim set to his jaw. “This isn’t just history,” he said. “It’s moving.” She didn’t ask what he meant by it. In her mind, she could still see the threads, red as pomegranate, searching for something to wind around.
5
The sun was slipping low when Arpita and Dev found themselves again at the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the brass bells clanging overhead as incense curled into the darkening sky. They had come to seek out Aadesh Kumar, hoping the old priest might reveal more than the oblique warning he had given before. Aadesh sat cross-legged near the sanctum, eyes closed in meditation, but he opened them when he heard their footsteps. After a long, considering silence, he began to speak—not to them, but as if reciting to the air. The saree, he said, was woven in the late 19th century by a master craftsman named Harinarayan, a man famed for silk so fine it was said to be “lighter than breath.” His wife, Lakshmi, was his muse and the model for every bridal pattern he ever created. When a wealthy zamindar commissioned a saree for a tantric ceremony promising power and longevity, Harinarayan was ordered to weave it with threads dipped in pomegranate dye and flecked with real gold, its motifs coded with symbols of binding and offering. But the ritual required a living sacrifice. Lakshmi was taken, draped in the saree, and strangled before the zamindar’s altar. Harinarayan vanished soon after, but Aadesh claimed his grief and fury were worked into the threads themselves—an unfinished curse that gave the fabric a will of its own. “It is never still,” the priest murmured, “only waiting.”
Dev snorted softly at the word curse, though he tried to mask it. “Waiting for what? For someone to open a glass case?” he asked, half to Aadesh, half to himself. But the story stuck with him, threading into his mind in spite of his skepticism. That night, driven by equal parts doubt and morbid curiosity, he proposed a reckless plan: he would hide inside Mishra Silk Ghar after closing, to prove to himself—and to Arpita—that the saree’s reputation was nothing more than superstition. Ravi, reluctantly persuaded by Dev’s insistence and perhaps weary of keeping the secret alone, allowed it on the condition that Dev would not touch anything. As the final customer left, Dev slipped into the shadowed back room and crouched behind a stack of folded cottons. The shop settled into silence once the shutters came down, the air thick with the faint sweetness of stored silk. Time passed slowly, punctuated only by the occasional scuff of a rat in the rafters or the muffled chatter of people passing in the street outside. Dev kept his eyes on the display case, the crimson saree inside lying as still and precise as it had all day.
Then, sometime after midnight, he heard it—the faintest metallic click of the display lock turning. His pulse spiked, but he stayed still, leaning just far enough to see the glass door swing open without a sound. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the saree shifted, almost imperceptibly, like fabric settling under its own weight. But the movement didn’t stop. Fold by fold, it slid forward, the layers rippling across the velvet base, as if something invisible were drawing it out. Dev’s throat tightened as the bottom hem slipped over the case’s edge and touched the floor. The silk moved like water, pooling and stretching, its patterns catching the dim light in unnatural ways. He could hear it now—not the shuffle of cloth against wood, but a soft hiss, like breath between clenched teeth. The saree inched toward the far wall, trailing across the floor in a deliberate, serpentine glide.
Dev tried to move, but his body felt heavy, pinned by a mixture of fear and disbelief. The silk reached the corner of the room, then paused, almost as if sensing his presence. The end of it lifted slightly, swaying, before curling inward like a beckoning finger. That was when a wave of blackness rolled over him, and the last thing he saw before collapsing was the faint glimmer of gold threads quivering in the air. When he woke, the shop was quiet again, and pale light filtered through the shutters. His head throbbed, his mouth was dry, and his palms were damp with sweat. Then he noticed it—something fine and metallic wound between his fingers. He pulled it free: a single gold thread, warm to the touch, so fine it seemed impossible to hold. Ravi found him moments later, eyes widening when he saw what Dev clutched. Without a word, he took the thread and locked it in the same case as the saree, his face drawn tight. “You shouldn’t have stayed,” Ravi said quietly, before walking away. Dev stared at the now-still fabric, but in his mind, he could still see it moving—alive, patient, and far from finished.
6
The weaving house lay on the farthest edge of the old city, where the alleys narrowed into almost nothing and the rooftops leaned so close they seemed to touch. Arpita had followed Ravi’s hesitant directions, carrying only her sketchbook and a small brass torch. The building was two stories of crumbling brick, its wooden shutters hanging loose, the scent of dust and mildew heavy in the still air. Inside, the shadows pooled thickly in the corners, broken only by the pale shafts of sunlight that leaked through broken tiles above. She moved slowly, careful where she stepped—there were shards of glass on the floor, brittle remnants of what might once have been display cases. At the back of the main room stood a loom, warped and splintered but unmistakable in its craftsmanship. A single length of crimson silk was still wound around the shuttle, impossibly bright against the decay, its threads catching the light with a wet gleam. Arpita touched it lightly and drew her hand back immediately; it was warm, almost feverishly so, and carried a scent that made her stomach tighten—sweet, sharp pomegranate layered over something darker, like woodsmoke or burnt flowers.
She sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, opening her sketchbook. The silk’s pattern was intricate beyond the usual floral and paisley motifs; the gold zari was arranged in repeating curves that seemed to knot and coil in unnatural ways. As she drew, she began to notice shapes she hadn’t recognised before—tiny, precise glyphs nestled between the more obvious designs. She switched to a finer pencil, tracing the curves again, and it was only when she connected certain motifs in sequence that the hidden structure revealed itself: the weave formed Sanskrit mantras, but not for blessing or prosperity. These were binding chants, the kind used in rare tantric practices to hold a spirit in place or tether it to an object. The discovery made the air in the room feel heavier. She thought of Aadesh Kumar’s words about Harinarayan’s grief and of Lakshmi’s final moments, draped in the crimson silk. The loom, broken though it was, seemed to hum faintly under her palm, as if some part of it was still at work, still finishing the weave it had started a century ago.
While Arpita sketched in the abandoned house, Dev’s nights had begun to take on a strange rhythm. At first, he thought his dreams had simply grown more vivid—visions of the saree unwinding across a moonlit floor, of silk folding itself around unseen shapes. But by the third night, he woke to find himself standing at the edge of the Ganga, the cold water lapping at his ankles. His camera strap hung loosely from his shoulder, though he had no memory of bringing it with him. Ravi, who had found him there, said he had been muttering a single word over and over: “Wear it.” The next night it happened again, only this time Dev woke on the ghats, sitting cross-legged in the same rigid posture he had seen in the victims, his fingers unconsciously stroking the cord of his hoodie like a strand of silk. When Arpita called to check on him, he brushed it off, but she could hear the faint rasp in his breathing, like someone speaking under their breath.
By the fourth night, Dev had stopped locking his door, moving through the streets in a half-conscious haze, drawn inevitably toward the river. Witnesses later told Arpita that they saw him walking barefoot, his head slightly tilted, lips moving as if speaking to someone beside him. Each time, the word wear fell from his mouth in a low, compulsive chant, his eyes fixed ahead as though he were following something invisible. When he woke one morning with wet sand in his pockets and a fresh, fine red mark around his neck, he didn’t call anyone. He simply sat in his small rented room, staring at the closed shutters, the rhythm of the word still pulsing in his head. Across the city, in the abandoned weaving house, Arpita closed her sketchbook, unsettled by the growing certainty that the saree’s hunger wasn’t limited to those who wore it—it could summon them, thread by thread, until they came willingly.
7
The rain had begun just after dusk, warm and heavy, soaking the narrow lanes of Varanasi until they gleamed under the dim streetlamps. Inside Mishra Silk Ghar, Ravi sat across from Arpita and Dev, his hands clasped so tightly the knuckles were pale. He had been silent for a long time, but when he finally spoke, his voice carried the weight of something he had rehearsed and dreaded in equal measure. Years ago, he said, his father had tried to end the saree’s curse. It was after a string of unexplained deaths in the neighbourhood, each marked by the same strangling threads. His father had locked the saree in a clay-lined iron chest and carried it to the cremation ghat at night. The pyre burned high and hot, but when they opened the chest at dawn, the silk was untouched—not even a singe mark. That same evening, his father was found on their veranda, seated upright, hands folded, a faint red cord tight against his throat. “The fire wouldn’t take it,” Ravi murmured, staring into the shadows between the shelves. “It doesn’t burn. It waits.”
Later that evening, Arpita visited Shahana Begum in her modest riverside home, hoping for some practical means to contain the thing. The old woman listened without surprise, her kohl-lined eyes never leaving Arpita’s face. Then she reached into a carved teak box and drew out a small silver key, tarnished and slightly bent. “This,” Shahana said, pressing it into Arpita’s palm, “opens the original chest where the saree was first kept after Lakshmi’s death. The chest was meant to be buried, deep in the earth where no hands could reach it.” She glanced toward the rain-speckled window, lowering her voice. “It came here to rest, not to be shown. The moment it was displayed in glass, it remembered it was meant to be worn.” Her words lingered in Arpita’s mind as she walked back through the dripping streets, the key heavy and cold in her pocket, as if reluctant to be carried.
Meanwhile, Inspector Vikram Rathore had been combing through decades of police records, searching for any link between the scattered deaths tied to the saree. Late into the night, under the pale light of his office desk lamp, the pattern emerged. Every incident—whether from the zamindar’s time, the death of Ravi’s father, Meera’s collapse, or others hidden in obscure case files—had occurred within a short radius of Panchganga Ghat. Vikram knew the site’s history well: it was one of the most revered confluences of the Ganga’s five sacred streams, but also whispered about as a place where certain tantric sects had conducted rituals, believing the intersection of waters magnified spiritual binding. The discovery chilled him—not only because of the history, but because the ghat lay barely a hundred meters from where Dev had been found during his sleepwalking episodes. He thought of Dev’s muttering—wear it—and felt a tightening in his gut. This wasn’t random; it was the saree circling its prey.
By the time Vikram met Arpita the next morning, the air between them carried the unspoken urgency of two people who knew the circle was closing. She showed him the silver key, explaining Shahana’s warning, and he told her of the ghat’s connection. Dev arrived late, pale and restless, insisting he didn’t remember his night walks, though his damp cuffs and the faint grit under his fingernails told another story. Outside, the city moved in its usual, chaotic rhythm—vendors calling, rickshaws clanging, bells from temples drifting through the air—but within the shop’s dim interior, the three of them stood in a stillness that felt unnatural, as though the silk on the shelves was listening. The crimson saree in its case looked unchanged, yet Arpita thought she saw a slight slackness in its folds, as though it had shifted, waiting for the right moment to unravel again. And in her pocket, the silver key seemed to pulse faintly, like a heart beating against her palm.
8
That night, Arpita’s sleep was thick and heavy, as though she had been pulled under deep water. She found herself standing in a room she didn’t recognise—its walls hung with muted silks, the air scented faintly of incense and pomegranate. In front of her stood a long gilt mirror. She was wearing the crimson saree, its fabric warm and impossibly soft against her skin. The weave shimmered faintly, gold threads glinting in patterns that seemed to shift when she tried to focus on them. Her reflection, however, was wrong. While she stood still, stiff as marble, the woman in the glass smiled, a slow, deliberate curl of the lips that was not her own. The reflection’s hands rose, adjusting the pleats as though preparing her for some unseen ceremony, and then gently trailed upward, closing over her throat. Arpita tried to move, to scream, but her body remained frozen. The last thing she heard before waking was the sound of a loom at work—rhythmic, patient, and far too close.
Across the city, Dev moved through the streets in his bare feet, eyes half-lidded, his breathing shallow and even. His path was straight and unwavering, like someone following invisible threads. He reached Mishra Silk Ghar without hesitation, the rain-slick shutters glinting faintly in the moonlight. Though the shop was locked, his hands moved with an eerie precision, fishing out a small spare key from beneath a loose brick where Ravi kept it. Inside, the darkness seemed to swell around him. He walked directly to the display case, his gaze fixed on the crimson folds inside. The glass door opened with a soft click. His fingers brushed the silk, lingering as if testing its texture, before he lifted it carefully and draped it over his shoulder in a motion that was almost reverent. Then, as though under instruction, he carried it across the room and placed it over a mannequin in the corner—a headless, armless wooden frame used to display shawls. The moment the fabric settled, the shop seemed to exhale, a faint rustle whispering through the shelves. Dev turned and walked out without a sound, locking the shutters behind him.
When Ravi opened the shop the next morning, he found the case empty. Panic flared instantly, but then he saw it: the saree was no longer folded neatly under glass, but arranged with precision over the mannequin. At first, relief washed through him—at least it wasn’t gone. But then he noticed the mannequin’s neck. The polished wood had been splintered in deep grooves, as though something had twisted tight around it with sudden, brutal force. The damage looked impossibly like the marks left on the saree’s victims. Ravi stepped closer, his hand hovering above the crimson silk but not daring to touch it. The gold threads caught the light in faint pulses, like a slow heartbeat. He backed away, locking the door and drawing the shutters, unwilling to let the street outside see what lay inside.
Arpita arrived minutes later, pale from her dream and still feeling the phantom weight of the saree on her shoulders. When Ravi told her what he had found, she went to the mannequin, careful to keep her distance. Her sketchbook itched in her bag—she wanted to record the scene, but something in her warned against it. The splintered wood looked too much like bone. Dev appeared not long after, his hair damp with sweat and his eyes glazed, claiming he had slept unusually well for the first time in days. Neither Ravi nor Arpita told him what they suspected, though the knowledge sat between them like a shadow. Outside, the morning bustle of the city carried on, oblivious. Inside, the saree rested over the mannequin, its folds perfectly in place, as though it had dressed the form itself. Arpita thought of Shahana’s warning—that the saree had come to rest, not to be shown—and wondered if perhaps it had only been practicing.
9
The storm broke just before midnight, heavy rain hammering Varanasi’s rooftops and flooding the narrow lanes with silvered water. In Shahana Begum’s dimly lit front room, the air was thick with sandalwood smoke and the low murmur of the Ganga outside. She sat cross-legged on a faded rug, her lined face grave as she told Arpita and Dev the truth she had withheld for years. The curse, she said, could only be undone by one act: the saree must be worn willingly by someone who knew its entire history—the blood in its dye, the mantras in its weave, the lives it had claimed. That person had to walk into the Ganga at sunrise, allowing the river to take both them and the spirit bound within the fabric. The ritual was final. No body would be found. “It is not a rescue,” Shahana whispered, eyes fixed on the flame of the brass oil lamp. “It is an exchange. One life for the end of all others.” Arpita’s mind churned, images of Meera, Ravi’s father, the broken mannequin, and her own dream flashing in fragments. By the time Shahana’s words faded into the crackle of rain, she had already decided.
When they returned to the guesthouse, Dev saw it in her face before she said a word. “No,” he told her flatly, standing in the doorway to block her path. “There’s another way—there has to be. We could burn the loom, bury the silk, cut it into pieces—” But Arpita shook her head, her voice low and certain. “We’ve seen what fire does. We’ve seen what locks do. It will keep killing until someone stops it.” She stepped past him, but he caught her wrist, his grip desperate. “Then let me do it,” he said, but she pulled free. “You don’t even believe in it fully,” she replied. “That’s why it wouldn’t work. It has to be someone who accepts all of it—someone who understands what they’re walking toward.” Dev stood frozen, watching her retreat down the hall, his pulse hammering. Somewhere deep in his chest, he felt the same pull that had taken him to the Ghat in his sleep, a quiet thread tugging him toward something he couldn’t name.
The next morning, Ravi was gone. His shop was locked from the outside, and his bed unslept in. Arpita’s stomach turned cold as she and Dev searched the rain-soaked streets, calling his name in alleys and markets. Inspector Vikram joined them, his jaw tight, his radio crackling with static. Just before dawn, a call came through: a body had been found at Panchganga Ghat. The three of them ran, the scent of the river growing stronger with each step, until the broad stone steps came into view. Ravi sat at the water’s edge, motionless in the half-light, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Around his neck was a fine red cord—too fine to be rope, too precise to be random. His eyes were closed, and his posture eerily serene, but his skin carried the stillness of death. The crimson saree was nowhere to be seen, yet the faint pattern of gold threads was imprinted across his shoulders, as though it had rested there moments before slipping away into the mist.
As the first rays of sun bled across the river, Arpita felt the decision harden in her bones. Ravi’s death wasn’t random—it was the saree’s way of warning her that hesitation only fed its hunger. Vikram muttered something about cordoning off the scene, but his voice was far away. Dev stood beside her, silent now, his earlier protests drowned under the weight of what lay before them. In the distance, the Ganga shimmered with the pale light of morning, the currents moving slow and deliberate. Arpita reached into her bag, feeling the cold press of the silver key, and knew she would open the chest one last time. The saree would be worn again—but this time, it would walk into the river with someone who had chosen to carry it there. And in the silence between heartbeats, she accepted that someone was her.
10
Dawn crept over Varanasi in muted gold, the mist along the Ganga curling like ghostly fingers over the water. Arpita stepped from the shadows of the weaving district, the crimson saree wrapped tightly around her body, its weight far heavier than silk should be. The gold threads caught the early light, pulsing faintly with every beat of her heart. Each pleat seemed to settle of its own accord, as if the fabric was adjusting itself for the ritual ahead. Dev and Inspector Vikram walked several paces behind her, their silence broken only by the slap of their shoes on the damp stone. The streets were nearly empty, save for the occasional boatman preparing for the day or a stray dog curling into the warmth of a doorway. With every step toward the ghat, the air grew thicker, warmer, and more oppressive—like the city itself was holding its breath.
When the wide steps of Panchganga Ghat came into view, Arpita felt the first constriction around her throat. At first it was subtle, a gentle pressure, as though the saree was reminding her of its presence. But with each step downward, the silk began to tighten in slow, deliberate pulses. Her breathing grew shallow. Dev called out, his voice sharp with panic, but she didn’t turn. Vikram quickened his pace, his hand twitching toward the pistol at his hip as if a weapon could help against cloth. The mantras in the weave seemed to hum now, vibrating against Arpita’s skin, threading their way into her pulse. The river glimmered ahead, a strip of molten gold under the rising sun. She knew that once the water reached her ankles, she was meant to keep walking, to let the current take her under.
The saree’s grip became a vice, silk threads digging into her skin with the precision of a strangler’s hands. Her vision blurred, the stone steps tilting under her feet. Dev’s shout reached her again, closer this time, but she forced herself onward. The Ganga’s edge was only a few paces away, the first cool lick of water about to touch her toes. In a sudden, defiant surge, she wrenched at the pleats, twisting her body hard against the saree’s invisible pull. The silk writhed, resisting, its threads tightening like a net around her chest. With the last of her strength, she tore the end of the pallu from her shoulder and flung the entire garment into the river. For a moment, it floated on the surface, spread wide like a crimson bloom, its gold threads catching the sun in dazzling patterns. Then, with a slow, serpentine motion, the fabric began to sink, its folds twisting in the water like living snakes disappearing into the depths.
Silence followed. The pressure on her throat vanished, replaced by a raw ache where the threads had bitten deep. Vikram reached her first, gripping her shoulders, his eyes scanning her for wounds. Dev stood at the water’s edge, staring into the ripples where the saree had vanished, his expression unreadable. The river’s surface smoothed, betraying no sign of what had just been taken into it. In the days that followed, the city returned to its rhythms, and the locked glass case at Mishra Silk Ghar remained empty. But somewhere, far from Panchganga Ghat, in a quiet Banarasi shop whose owners asked few questions about provenance, a sealed chest arrived one afternoon. The delivery slip bore no sender’s name. The shopkeeper pried it open to reveal a crimson saree folded with impossible precision, its gold threads glimmering faintly in the dim light. He smiled, thinking it would make a fine display piece, and called for an assistant to fetch the glass case. Outside, the bells of the evening aarti began to ring, their sound mingling with the faintest rustle of silk in the air.
End
