Ayan Joshi
1
The train wound its way into Shimla as the first flakes of snow began to fall, softening the mountain town into a postcard of white rooftops, misty pines, and narrow lanes alive with winter tourists. Aarav, carrying his DSLR slung across his shoulder, was the first to leap off the platform with boyish enthusiasm, capturing quick shots of the swirling mist as though he were on assignment. Nisha, in her woolen cap and notebook tucked beneath her arm, followed with a practiced curiosity in her eyes, already framing how this trip might spin into a magazine piece about “Shimla’s hidden legends.” Kabir, true to form, carried nothing but a mischievous grin and his phone, tossing one-liners at passersby and recording snippets for his social media stories, his laughter carrying above the soft hum of the station. Ishita kept close to the group, sketchbook in her backpack, quietly scanning the sloping streets and colonial buildings as though every brick and beam whispered history to her. At the back, Rohan moved slower, his eyes darting toward the hills as if searching for something familiar yet unsettling, a tension resting on his shoulders that didn’t match the holiday cheer of the others. It was he who had grown up in Shimla, and for him the town wasn’t just a landscape—it was alive with the weight of stories, some best left unspoken.
Later that evening, as the group settled into a roadside dhaba glowing with yellow bulbs against the pale snowfall, the air turned fragrant with steaming rajma chawal and butter-slick parathas. The friends laughed easily, their voices mingling with the clink of steel glasses and the crackle of the tandoor, the warmth of the food loosening the fatigue of travel. It was here, as Kabir joked about ghosts chasing them up the hill, that an old man at the corner table raised his voice. His beard was thick and silver, his shawl wrapped tightly against the cold, and his eyes had the heaviness of one who had watched too many winters. “Signal Hill,” he said, his voice low but sharp enough to cut through their laughter. “You must not go there after nightfall. Not unless you wish to lose your mind.” The friends exchanged amused glances—Nisha raised her eyebrow skeptically, Aarav chuckled and muttered about “folklore gold,” and Kabir smirked, already framing how he would mock this warning for his next video. But Rohan’s expression shifted visibly; his spoon froze midair, and his gaze dropped into his plate as though the words had stirred an old unease. Ishita noticed, her brow creasing slightly, but said nothing. The old man continued, his voice rough as gravel, “The tower is sealed, yet every winter the bell rings at midnight. Those who hear it… they do not return the same.”
The moment lingered in the air like smoke, only broken when Kabir laughed loudly, dismissing the man’s words as village superstition. “We’re city people, uncle,” he grinned, “our ghosts come only in Wi-Fi signals.” The others chuckled half-heartedly, but the old man simply shook his head, muttering something about shadows and unfinished rituals before returning to his meal, leaving behind an echo of unease. As the group paid their bill and stepped back into the frosty night, the snowflakes thicker now, Rohan’s silence deepened. He walked a few paces behind the others, his breath visible in the cold air, his mind replaying his grandmother’s hushed stories of Signal Hill—the place where even the dogs refused to howl after dusk, the place where his cousin once claimed to hear a toll that no one else did. The laughter of his friends bounced ahead of him, light against the dark, but for Rohan the night already felt heavier, as though the mountains themselves had shifted slightly to listen. What had begun as a cheerful winter trek had just inherited its first shadow, whispered in warning, sealed in unease.
2
The next morning dawned pale and brittle, the air crisp enough to sting the lungs with every breath, the snow crunching beneath their boots as the friends began their climb toward Signal Hill. The town had slipped away behind them, swallowed by the mist, and before them stretched a narrow trail coiled through dense pine forests, their branches heavy with fresh snow. Aarav marched at the front, camera ready, his eyes alight with the thrill of capturing frost clinging to needles and the distant silhouettes of Himalayan peaks. Nisha walked beside him, her pen scribbling quickly in her small notebook every now and then, noting impressions—the cold bite of the wind, the crunching rhythm of footsteps, and the local words painted crudely on signboards warning of landslides and wildlife. Kabir, in contrast, turned the trek into a stage, holding his phone aloft as he narrated exaggerated tales of “the cursed tower of Shimla,” zooming into Rohan’s scowling face whenever the guide tried to warn him about safety. Ishita, a little behind, was quieter than the rest, her eyes lingering on the patterns the snow left over the rocks and tree trunks, sketchbook already filling with hurried lines whenever they paused to rest. Rohan kept to himself, his jaw tight, his senses alert not to the beauty but to the odd silences that occasionally fell between the gusts of wind, the silences that to him were too sharp, too deliberate, as though the mountain was listening.
The mood of the group grew lighter as they moved further, Kabir’s antics breaking the strain of the climb. He tossed snowballs at Aarav, made jokes about “frozen ghosts,” and even narrated a fake news clip into his camera: “Breaking update—five tourists spotted on a suicide trek, chasing imaginary bells.” Aarav laughed and played along, posing dramatically like an explorer, while Nisha rolled her eyes, though even she couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity. The trek was demanding, but the laughter made the air feel warmer. Rohan, though, did not share the amusement. He walked steadily, checking the fading footprints in the snow as though expecting someone—or something—to have walked the path before them. He muttered to Ishita about the importance of turning back before nightfall, but she only half-heard him, distracted by something at the side of the trail. Her eyes caught strange lines etched into an old stone partially buried in snow, lines too deliberate to be cracks and too symmetrical to be random scratches. She crouched, brushing the frost away with her gloved hands, revealing patterns of interlocking circles and jagged arrows, almost like a forgotten script. “Look at this,” she called out, her voice tinged with a mix of awe and confusion. The others gathered, Aarav snapping photos immediately, Nisha jotting notes, and Kabir mocking dramatically, “Great, our ghost left us directions.”
But Ishita didn’t laugh. She traced the carvings with her fingertip, feeling the shallow grooves, her expression tightening. “These don’t look like anything I’ve seen before,” she murmured, sketching quickly in her pad. Rohan’s face darkened as he recognized the stone—it was one of many that old villagers used to speak of, remnants from the British days, said to be boundary markers, though no one had ever explained why they bore strange carvings instead of plain engravings. The group debated briefly whether they were just decorative or perhaps old surveyor marks, but Ishita shook her head. “No,” she whispered, more to herself than to them, “this feels… intentional.” Aarav dismissed it with a laugh, urging them onward before the light began to fade. They resumed the trek, their breaths steaming in the thinning air, but the discovery hung between them, heavier than the backpacks on their shoulders. Kabir cracked another joke, filming the path ahead, yet the camera’s lens caught something unsettling—a second stone, further along the trail, marked with the same circular carvings, half-hidden by snow. He didn’t notice it at the time, but Ishita did, and as she glanced back one last time, she felt the shiver of a thought she didn’t dare speak: the hill wasn’t just guiding them upward. It was marking them.
3
By the time the forest began to thin, the light was already draining from the sky, leaving streaks of rose and violet clinging to the jagged horizon. The friends trudged onward, their boots sinking deeper into the snow as the path sloped steeply toward the crest of Signal Hill. The air had grown unnervingly still, the wind muffled as if held back by unseen hands, and the silence pressed against them like a heavy blanket. It was Kabir who first spotted the tower, a dark silhouette rising against the fading sky. “Well, well,” he grinned, sweeping his phone toward it, “the haunted heart of Shimla.” The structure stood taller than they expected, a stone spire of British design, its sharp lines strangely unweathered by the decades. The last rays of the sun clung to its surface, making the frost shimmer in odd patterns across its walls. For a moment, no one spoke—each of them simply stared, breathless not from the climb but from the strange power of its presence. To Ishita, it looked like something drawn from her sketchbook rather than reality, too precise, too clean, as if preserved outside of time itself. To Rohan, it was something else entirely: a memory made real, a nightmare now given form.
As they stepped closer, the details sharpened. The heavy oak door at the tower’s base was secured by rusted chains and an ancient padlock, its iron surface corroded yet still solid. Ivy and frost clung to the stones, but the structure itself showed little sign of crumbling, unlike the other colonial ruins scattered across Shimla’s hillsides. Aarav, his excitement rekindled, hurried forward with his camera, snapping shot after shot, muttering about how this was “visual gold.” He crouched low to capture the angle of the tower against the dusky sky, then turned his lens on the chains, fascinated by how time had gnawed at them but left the stonework untouched. “It’s like it doesn’t age,” Ishita whispered, almost to herself, her breath fogging the air as her pencil danced quickly across her sketchpad, trying to capture the eeriness of the moment. Nisha scribbled notes too, recording the scene in words, while Kabir narrated a mock news clip again, “Exclusive footage—ghosts paid the electricity bill to keep the tower fresh!” His laugh cracked against the silence, but no one else joined in. The longer they stood before it, the less humorous the sight became. The tower loomed, indifferent and patient, as though it had been waiting for them.
They lingered at its base until the last light bled out of the sky and the snow around them shifted from silver to black. Aarav insisted on setting up his tripod despite Rohan’s sharp warning that they needed to descend before the trail iced over completely. “Just a few long-exposure shots,” Aarav pleaded, his eyes gleaming with determination. Against their better judgment, the others agreed, forming a circle of reluctant stillness as Aarav adjusted his lens. The air grew colder, biting at their faces, the shadows stretching longer and longer until the forest around them was swallowed whole. Ishita, glancing up from her sketchbook, thought she saw a flicker of movement near the highest window of the tower, a shadow pulling back just as her eyes fixed upon it. Her pencil stilled. She looked around at the others, but none seemed to have noticed. Kabir, for once, had gone quiet, rubbing his gloved hands together and staring up uneasily. The tower did not crumble, did not creak, yet it seemed to breathe, exhaling something ancient and waiting. When Aarav finally captured his shot and announced it with satisfaction, Rohan muttered under his breath, almost too low to hear: “We shouldn’t be here after dark.” But the words dissolved into the gathering night, into the long silence that seemed to settle over Signal Hill like a warning unheeded.
3
The climb ended as dusk folded itself over the mountains, the sky painted in hues of bruised purple and fading gold, the air sharp with the promise of night. As the trees thinned, the friends saw it—rising stark and solitary against the snowy ridge—the old British signal tower. It was taller than any of them imagined, its cold stone face gleaming faintly as though it rejected the decay that had consumed other colonial ruins nearby. The structure loomed with an austere grace, untouched by time, as if history itself had forgotten to erode it. For a moment, they simply stood in silence, their breath crystallizing in the air, until Kabir broke it with his typical bravado, raising his phone and announcing to his imaginary audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, the haunted prize of Signal Hill.” His voice rang too loudly, brittle against the stillness, and Rohan shot him a sharp look, his lips pressed thin. Ishita didn’t laugh. She clutched her sketchbook to her chest, her gaze locked on the tower, noticing how the snow clung strangely to its edges, not like nature but like a pattern arranged, deliberate, too precise. Something about it made her heart quicken, as though the building itself were aware of their arrival.
When they drew closer, the details revealed themselves. The heavy oak door at the tower’s base bore scars of age, yet the chains binding it shut were thick and resolute, their rust deep but not fragile, as if corroded only on the surface. The padlock, though weather-beaten, looked too solid to be accidental, too deliberate a barrier. Aarav moved ahead eagerly, crouching low and angling his DSLR, his voice bubbling with excitement. “This is perfect,” he whispered, snapping shot after shot, adjusting his tripod to capture the structure from every possible perspective. “This isn’t just a building—it’s a story frozen in stone.” Nisha jotted quick notes, her pen scratching furiously, her expression a balance of curiosity and caution. Kabir hovered at Aarav’s shoulder, mocking his seriousness, making ghostly noises into the camera for his own footage. But even his jokes faltered as the silence thickened around them, the usual sounds of the forest muted, no wind in the branches, no rustle of animals. Ishita, kneeling to sketch the door, noticed faint carvings etched into the stones near its base—circles interlocked with arrow-like shapes, similar to what she had seen on the path. Her pencil hesitated as unease crept into her chest. Rohan stood apart, his eyes fixed on the upper windows, where darkness pooled like ink, too deep, too absolute. He remembered his grandmother’s words, the ones he had never repeated to his friends: The tower does not age because it does not live with us—it waits outside of time.
As Aarav adjusted his camera for a long-exposure shot, the shadows grew longer, stretching unnaturally, swallowing the last gold from the horizon. The snow around them glittered faintly under the emerging moonlight, but the tower itself seemed to draw the darkness closer, feeding on it. Ishita glanced upward just as the shutter clicked and for a fleeting second thought she saw movement at the highest window—a sliver of something withdrawing as though it had been watching them all along. Her breath caught, but she said nothing, pressing her sketchbook shut with trembling hands. Kabir, for once subdued, rubbed his arms as though the cold had deepened suddenly, his usual grin missing. Nisha tried to speak, to suggest they head back before night fully settled, but Aarav cut her off, muttering, “Just one more shot.” Rohan, jaw tight, whispered under his breath, words meant only for himself: “We’ve stayed too long.” But the hill was already wrapped in silence, the kind that doesn’t listen, the kind that swallows warnings whole, leaving the group standing at the base of a tower that looked less like a ruin and more like a sentinel, waiting for night to ring its first bell.
4
The forest had grown unnervingly quiet after the group set up camp just beyond the tower, their small fire flickering weakly against the vast curtain of night. Snow muffled the world, turning every sound into something distant and dampened, so much so that even their own voices seemed hushed. They huddled close, wrapped in blankets, with Kabir still trying to keep the mood light by narrating ghost stories into his phone, but his laughter rang hollow now, unconvincing even to himself. Aarav checked his camera settings one last time before slipping into his sleeping bag, muttering about catching dawn shots, while Nisha scrawled a few last observations in her notebook until the cold made her fingers too stiff. Ishita fell into silence after a while, staring toward the dark outline of the tower as if sketching it again in her mind. Rohan sat apart, his back to a pine trunk, watchful, his eyes never straying from the tower’s shadow. By midnight the fire had burned low, the group drifting into uneasy sleep, cocooned in the deceptive stillness of the mountain night.
It was Kabir who stirred first, jolting awake with a sharp intake of breath. His ears twitched at a sound that seemed to cut through the silence like a blade: a bell. It was faint at first, almost delicate, a single toll rolling out slowly, then another, deeper, resonant, echoing across the frozen expanse. He blinked hard, lifting his head from the bundled blanket, eyes darting toward the sealed tower silhouetted under the weak moonlight. The chains still hung firm on the door, unmoved, untouched, but the sound was unmistakable—low, metallic, alive. He let out a shaky laugh, convincing himself it must be a dream or a trick of the wind, but the toll came again, louder, and this time it seemed to vibrate inside his skull rather than the air. Kabir pressed his palms to his ears, but it didn’t stop; the sound was within him, not outside. Glancing around wildly, he saw the others still asleep, their breaths slow, undisturbed, as if the night had wrapped them in a deeper silence that excluded him. He whispered, almost pleading, “You guys hear that, right?” but no one stirred. The bell tolled again, and again, each strike reverberating in his bones, mocking his attempts to dismiss it. His laughter bubbled up nervously, strained, echoing too loudly in the still night, as though he were trying to convince both himself and the darkness that he wasn’t afraid.
But the sound didn’t fade; it lingered, each toll stretching into a hum that thrummed through his body. Kabir stumbled out of his blanket, crunching into the snow, eyes fixed on the tower. It stood there as it had before, silent, chained, frozen, yet alive in its stillness. The bell rang again, and this time he thought he heard something beneath the toll—a whisper, a faint call buried inside the vibration, too garbled to understand but directed only at him. His laughter faltered, his breath came faster, and sweat broke on his brow despite the freezing air. He staggered back toward the fire pit, staring wildly at his friends who lay untouched by the sound, their faces calm, unaware. The bell kept ringing inside his ears, striking against his thoughts, refusing to leave, until he clutched his head and let out a low groan that dissolved into an uneasy chuckle. “Okay… okay… this is fine,” he muttered to himself, rocking slightly, trying to drown the resonance with words. Yet no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, no matter how loud he forced his laughter, the tolls kept coming, steady as a heartbeat. And in the dark silence of the mountain, Kabir realized with icy clarity: the bell had chosen him, and it wasn’t going to stop.
5
The morning after Kabir’s restless night, Nisha set out with her recorder and notebook, determined to gather more than rumors this time. The mist still hung low over the village, curling like faded silk around the narrow lanes. She spoke to shopkeepers, old women drawing water, and even children playing with spinning tops near the banyan tree. The story was the same in each voice, though told with different tremors: the bell did not summon everyone. It chose. One fisherman said his father had heard it years ago on a night no one else did, and three weeks later, he drowned in calm waters. Another woman, her eyes shadowed with age, whispered that those who carried guilt on their souls—blood, betrayal, or sins too heavy to confess—were the ones who truly heard its toll. Nisha wrote furiously, the ink blotting under her pen, but inside she felt a strange unease. Her mind turned to Kabir. Why him? His laughter last night had been nervous, not joyful. Had the bell already marked him in ways she could not yet understand?
Meanwhile, Ishita had retreated into her sketchbook, her fingers working faster than her thoughts. She drew the tower from memory, each stroke precise, as though she were being guided by something outside herself. When she turned the page, she found symbols forming without conscious decision—spirals, eye-shapes, a circle split by jagged lines. Nisha leaned over and felt her throat tighten. These were not idle doodles. The villagers had mentioned carvings high on the tower walls, long weathered by time, and though none could describe them, Ishita’s hand seemed to know them intimately. “I don’t recognize these,” Ishita murmured, brushing back her hair nervously. “But it feels like I’ve seen them before, somewhere—like an echo I can’t place.” The phrase unsettled them both, for the villagers had said something similar: once the bell entered your life, everything became an echo, repeating until it consumed you. Kabir, watching silently, avoided their eyes, his jaw tight as though he carried some unspoken burden.
As the day bled into evening, the three of them gathered in their rented room, the sketches spread across the table, Nisha’s notes scattered like fallen leaves. A strange rhythm seemed to pulse between them—the bell, the tower, the drawings, the whispered tales of guilt. “It’s not just about death,” Nisha said, her voice low. “It’s about confession. The tower is like a mirror—forcing people to hear what they’ve buried.” Kabir flinched at her words, though he tried to mask it with a shrug. Ishita bit her lip, shading the symbols darker, as if she feared they might fade if she didn’t trap them on the page. The night outside was too quiet, as if even the crickets held their breath. Then, as Kabir leaned closer to the drawings, a faint sound stirred in the distance—a hollow, reverberating clang that only he reacted to. He gripped the table, his knuckles white, while Nisha and Ishita exchanged worried looks. The bell had called once more, and though they couldn’t hear it, the echo was already shaping their fate.
6
That evening, as the crimson sunset spread across the ridges, Nisha and Ishita made their way to the old watchman’s hut, tucked at the edge of the pine forest. Devinder Singh, with his sunken eyes and weathered skin, sat by the fire as if he had been waiting for them all along. He welcomed them with a silence heavier than words, and only after they sat did he begin to speak, his voice coarse like gravel. He told them that the bell of the forgotten tower was not meant for worship or warning; it was part of something left incomplete by the British. His brother, once a strong man who had joined the forestry department, had been the first in their family to be stationed near the ridge. One night, long ago, the bell had rung when no storm loomed and no celebration was due. His brother, curious and stubborn, had gone to investigate, ignoring the watchman’s warnings. When he returned, his eyes were glazed, and he would mutter endlessly about white men in long coats, drawing circles under the moonlight and chanting in strange accents. Devinder paused often, staring into the flames as if seeing those scenes himself, and with every word the air in the hut grew colder, as though his memories carried the weight of the forgotten night.
As the story deepened, Devinder’s voice cracked, no longer steady but trembling with suppressed dread. He described how his brother had become a hollow shell, wandering the village, scratching symbols on walls, and whispering phrases that nobody could understand. The villagers had kept their distance, some claiming the man had been possessed, others believing he carried the curse of the bell. Eventually, he had disappeared into the forest and never returned, but Devinder swore he could still hear his brother’s muttering on some nights, carried with the wind from the direction of the tower. He leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the firelight, and told them that the bell didn’t just call—it judged. It sought out guilt, weakness, or secrets buried too deep, and once its sound seeped into the ears of the vulnerable, there was no escape. Ishita clutched her notebook tightly, her knuckles pale, while Nisha’s recorder trembled slightly in her hand, the journalist in her torn between documenting and simply surviving the dread of the tale. The old man then grew silent for a long time, the only sound the crackling of wood, until finally he said in a hushed voice that the bell was rung deliberately by someone, even now, keeping the ritual alive across decades.
When the story ended, Devinder Singh stood up abruptly, his frail frame casting a long, crooked shadow on the wall. He told them with grave finality that they must leave before the next nightfall, for he had seen the signs—the wind shifting wrong, the tower’s outline sharper against the dusk, and the unease crawling in the hearts of those who lingered too close. He insisted that his warning was not born out of superstition but survival, and if they ignored it, they would share his brother’s fate. With that, he turned away, refusing to speak further, his silence a wall they could not climb. As they stepped out of the hut, the night had already descended, pressing down like a suffocating weight, and the tower loomed against the horizon, darker and more menacing than ever. Nisha and Ishita walked back in silence, but their minds were crowded with images of madness, unfinished British rituals, and a bell that chose its victims with uncanny precision. The watchman’s tale was not just a story—it was a warning carved from lived terror, and though both women tried to convince themselves otherwise, they knew they were already too entangled to walk away.
7
The night was colder than the one before, the mist heavier and thicker, curling around the ruins like a living veil. Aarav and Ishita sat near the small lantern that flickered weakly, its light fighting against the darkness pressing in from all sides. For hours, silence reigned, interrupted only by the distant hoot of an owl and the restless wind. Just as Ishita began to think perhaps the night would pass uneventfully, the sound came—deep, metallic, echoing through the valley with a force that rattled the stones beneath their feet. The bell. Aarav shot up, his eyes wide, as the sound seemed to pulse in his bones. This time, it wasn’t only him. Ishita froze too, her breath catching in her throat as the toll reverberated again. She turned to Aarav, and the look they exchanged confirmed the terrifying truth: they both heard it. No longer was it just Aarav’s burden, no longer a hallucination or figment of a fevered imagination. The bell was real, and it was calling.
Aarav’s gaze darted toward the looming silhouette of the old clock tower, its blackened spire piercing the fog. His heartbeat thundered as he squinted, and suddenly, the shadows inside seemed to stir. They weren’t still, weren’t lifeless as they should have been in an abandoned, locked structure. Dark forms twisted across the walls of the tower, indistinct but purposeful, like unseen figures pacing or waiting for something to be unleashed. His throat went dry, and he felt an inexplicable urge to step closer, to test the lock, to see what lay behind the rotting wooden doors. But before his foot could move, Ishita’s voice—shaky, hushed—reached him. “Aarav… did you hear that?” she whispered, her hand tightening on his arm. Her eyes were not on the tower but on the air around her. A faint hiss lingered near her ear, winding through her hair like a breath. The voice was too low to understand, but she felt its intent, and the sound froze her veins. It wasn’t a distant whisper carried by the wind. It was her name, spoken directly into her mind, curling with a cold intimacy that made her skin crawl.
The two of them stood in the oppressive silence that followed, each shaken in different ways but bound together by the same dreadful realization—the bell’s toll was not just a sound. It was an invitation, or perhaps a summons, reaching into the living world from something that should have remained buried. Aarav clenched his fists, torn between his instinct to flee and his gnawing curiosity that whispered this mystery was theirs to unravel. Ishita, trembling but resolute, felt the same. Whatever force haunted the tower had crossed the line between myth and reality, and ignoring it would no longer be possible. The whispers in her ear had branded her, the shifting shadows had marked him, and the bell’s second toll had bound them both to whatever unfinished ritual still echoed in these forgotten hills. The night seemed to press in heavier, the fog curling tighter, as if the land itself awaited their next move. And somewhere within the darkness of the tower, something unseen stirred, patient, watchful, and waiting for them to take one step closer.
8
The storm outside had grown into a furious blizzard, snow swirling against the frozen windows as if the world itself was trying to drown them in white silence, yet inside the abandoned lodge there was no silence—only Kabir’s sudden outbursts. His laughter echoed down the halls like a cracked mirror reflecting madness, sharp and jagged, followed almost instantly by sobs that seemed to tear through him. Aarav and Ishita exchanged terrified glances, neither daring to move closer as Kabir clutched his head and muttered, “It’s calling… it won’t stop calling me.” His eyes were feverish, glassy as though the bell’s toll had replaced reason with obsession, and in that moment he no longer looked like the calm, rational friend they had known but a man hollowed out by something unseen. The flickering lantern light caught the sweat on his brow, the tremor in his lips, and the desperate clutching of his fingers around nothing but air, as though he could grasp the voice that haunted him.
Before anyone could stop him, Kabir darted toward the door, his boots skidding against the icy floorboards as if guided by some invisible hand pulling him into the storm. “Kabir, wait!” Ishita cried, but her voice was swallowed by the roar of the wind when he flung the lodge door wide open. The cold knifed into their skin instantly, but Kabir didn’t seem to notice—he ran straight into the blizzard, his silhouette quickly half-consumed by swirling snow. Aarav rushed after him, but the gale pushed him back, the wind howling like a warning, and in the distance through the white haze they saw Kabir’s figure staggering toward the dark outline of the clock tower. He shouted, words lost to the storm, but the manic intensity in his voice carried to them like shards of sound: the bell, the bell, it wants me. They could see his fists striking at the frozen wooden door of the tower, his shoulders slamming against it again and again, a man possessed, trying to break into the very place they had all sworn to avoid.
Panic flooded through the group as Aarav pulled Ishita back inside, both of them shivering not just from the cold but from the sheer dread that Kabir was no longer himself. Raghav paced near the window, cursing under his breath, while Ishita wrapped her arms around herself, trembling as if the whispers she had heard earlier were now mocking her for not stopping him. The sound of Kabir’s fists pounding against the tower door carried faintly through the storm, each thud like a drumbeat in their chests. Aarav whispered, “If he gets inside… if that thing lets him in…” but he couldn’t finish the thought, because deep down they all felt the same fear—that the bell was not just an echo but a lure, and Kabir had taken the bait. Ishita pressed her hands over her ears, her eyes shut tight as though she could block out both the storm and the maddening rhythm of Kabir’s screams. In the suffocating gloom of the lodge, one truth settled over them like the heavy snow outside: they were losing him, piece by piece, to something far older and far hungrier than madness.
9
The storm outside roared like a living beast, snow whipping in thick sheets against Ishita’s face as she stumbled toward the looming tower. To her horror, the massive oak door—sealed shut for decades with chains and rusted iron bolts—now stood slightly ajar, creaking under the pressure of the wind. A cold dread rooted her feet in place, but Kabir’s laughter echoing somewhere in the storm drove her forward. She pushed against the heavy door, its hinges groaning as if awakening from centuries of silence, and stepped inside. The air was colder here than outside, carrying a stillness so profound it felt as though the tower had been waiting. Her lantern flickered, struggling against the darkness, and its faint glow fell on rows of shelves, broken furniture, and rotting papers scattered across the damp stone floor. The walls seemed to whisper with her every breath, and at the far end of the chamber, a spiral staircase curled upward into the void above.
Heart pounding, Ishita moved toward the shelves where ancient books and leather-bound registers lay crumbling into dust. She picked one up, its pages stiff with age, and tried to decipher the fading English script. These were colonial records, stamped with the insignia of the East India Company, marked with dates stretching back to the late 1800s. As she flipped through, words leapt out at her like sharp knives: “Marking of souls” … “ritual of resonance” … “sacrifice to ensure passage.” Her blood ran cold. It was no ordinary church bell; it was a ritualistic device used by the colonizers in secret ceremonies, where the ringing did not just summon people—it marked them, tied their souls to the sound like branding cattle. Once marked, they were chosen for sacrifice—disappearing into the records without explanation. Ishita’s hands trembled as she realized the truth: the bell wasn’t cursed by superstition, it was forged to enslave spirits, to keep them tethered between life and death. And even now, after all these years, someone—or something—was still ringing it to continue the cycle.
As she pieced the fragments together, a new sound rose above the storm outside—a slow, deliberate toll that vibrated through the tower walls. The bell was ringing again. Ishita froze, the book slipping from her hands as the deep resonance shuddered through her bones. It wasn’t the wild, erratic ringing they had heard before, but purposeful, measured, like the tolling of a keeper fulfilling a duty. She turned toward the staircase, her lantern quivering in her grip, and for the briefest moment she thought she saw a figure moving in the shadows above—tall, cloaked, carrying the weight of centuries. The air thickened, heavy with unseen eyes, as if the tower itself had awakened to her presence. She wanted to call for Kabir, for the others, but her voice caught in her throat. This was no longer just about history or myth—she was standing in the domain of the Bell Keeper, the guardian of the ritual, the one who had been chosen, or perhaps condemned, to continue ringing the cursed sound across generations. And as the ninth toll thundered through the tower, Ishita realized with a shiver of terror that the storm outside wasn’t just weather—it was the world responding to the call of the bell.
10
The night air atop the cursed hill felt sharper than any blade as the friends confronted the source of their torment. The bell tower loomed like a blackened tooth against the starless sky, its rusted dome trembling with unseen energy. Aarav, Ishita, and Kabir stood frozen, staring into the cracked doorway as the tolling reverberated through their bones. And then it appeared—a shadowy figure, its form shifting like smoke but bound in chains that glowed faintly with the light of the moon. Its hollow eyes burned with the agony of centuries, and with every swing of the invisible bell rope, the sound grew heavier, as though it had been waiting all along for them to come. The figure stretched its hands, fingers curling like claws, and whispered promises of release, its voice not heard but felt directly in their hearts. Aarav clutched Ishita’s arm, sensing that this was not just a haunting but an ancient curse demanding sacrifice, and before he could stop him, Kabir stepped forward, his face pale but strangely serene.
Kabir’s voice was soft, almost dreamlike, as he told them that the figure was calling to him, that it had chosen him. Aarav shouted for him to stop, but Kabir’s eyes no longer carried the fear they once did; instead, they reflected a grim acceptance. The shadowy figure wrapped its chains around Kabir as though embracing him, and in an instant, the tolling of the bell roared with such force that the stone walls of the tower shuddered. Ishita screamed as Kabir’s body was swallowed into the darkness, his voice echoing one final time before being lost to the void. Aarav pulled her back, their limbs heavy with the weight of the sound, and together they staggered toward the path down the hill. Behind them, the figure stood tall, its outline sharpening as if strengthened by Kabir’s soul. The bell struck once more, its vibrations chasing them down the slope, each note cracking through the night like thunder. Their breaths came ragged, hearts breaking, but survival was the only instinct left as they fled the cursed ground, leaving behind a piece of themselves with their friend who would never return.
By the time they reached Shimla, dawn had begun to pale the sky, but the silence they craved never came. In the still streets of the hill station, the townsfolk awoke to an unnatural sound that threaded through every alley and crevice: the bell. It rang louder than ever before, a deep, endless toll that seemed to rattle the very bones of the earth. Some clutched their ears, others fell to their knees, muttering prayers, while children cried out in fear. Aarav and Ishita, standing among them, realized with dread that the curse had not been confined to the hill; it had followed them, feeding off Kabir’s sacrifice, growing stronger. The sound was closer, longer, as though the bell were no longer bound to its tower but had begun to move, carrying death with every vibration. The locals whispered that the toll was a harbinger, a warning that something older and darker had awakened. As the final notes stretched into the horizon, Aarav and Ishita exchanged hollow glances, knowing the nightmare was far from over—the toll of the cursed bell would never end.
***
