"The walls remember.
The stones retell.
And those who wander alone,
Will find that silence speaks louder than screams."
The morning after the ledger's warning carried a weight in the air. The haveli's halls felt narrower, every doorway like a throat trying to swallow them whole. No one spoke much during breakfast—just rustles of packets, sips of cold water, the occasional scrape of a chair.
When Kabir finally said, "We split up, cover more ground," nobody argued. Fear had made them obedient.
Pairs were chosen, not by trust but by uneasy balance:
Saanvi and Meghna took the northern lanes, where the roofs leaned too close together, making shadows even at noon.
Rohit and Yashpal headed for the temple ruins, its dome cracked open like a skull.
Kabir and Priya moved toward the market square, half-buried in dust and silence.
And Abhay, with Diya, walked the southern quarter, the ledger clutched tight in his hands.
Saanvi and Meghna
The narrow lanes stank of mildew. Clotheslines sagged between crumbling balconies, though no laundry hung there. Meghna brushed her arm against a wall—her sleeve came away streaked with pale dust.
"Feels like the whole place is molting," she muttered.
Saanvi didn't answer. She was staring at the ground. Tiny shoeprints dotted the dirt—too small for any of them. Children's feet.
Her throat tightened. "Do you hear that?"
Meghna froze. Faintly, under the creak of swaying shutters, came the sound of giggles. High-pitched. Playful. But the lane was empty.
The laughter skipped ahead of them, like it wanted them to follow. Against better sense, they did.
Halfway down the lane, the walls were smeared with handprints. Small. Greasy. Some high, some low, some impossibly stretched upward.
Meghna snapped a photo. The camera clicked—when she checked the screen, the prints weren't there.
"Don't," she whispered. "Let's go back."
But the laughter had turned into whispering, close enough to feel the breath on their necks.
Rohit and Yashpal
The temple stood broken, its spire leaning like a crooked finger pointing at nothing. Inside, the air smelled of burnt oil and rust.
Rohit kicked aside rubble. "Haunted temple cliché, check."
Yashpal crouched near the wall. "Not cliché. Look."
The stone murals—once carved with gods and stories—were scratched out. Over the gouges, fresh spirals had been etched. Dozens of them. The same spirals from the ledger.
Rohit's bravado cracked. "This… this wasn't here a century ago. It's new."
Yashpal traced one spiral with a fingertip. The stone was cold, but his skin tingled like static.
"Stop touching it, idiot," Rohit snapped.
Just then, a low hum vibrated through the floor. Both froze. It wasn't the wind. It was deeper, older—like the ground itself groaning awake.
They backed out, neither wanting to admit they were running.
Kabir and Priya
The square lay in ruins. Stalls slumped under collapsed roofs, vegetables long rotted to pulp. The silence here was heavier than elsewhere, as if the air wanted to keep its own secrets.
Priya rifled through a fallen stall. "Ledger here too," she whispered, pulling out a dusty register.
Kabir leaned close. The handwriting matched the cursed ledger in Abhay's hands. Not identical—more like… related.
Names were listed in columns, dates beside them. The last entry chilled Kabir:
"Travelers. Eight. Arrived."
He counted the names. Eight. Exactly their group.
Priya slammed the book shut. "No. No way."
Before Kabir could reply, the bell above the stall clanged on its own. Once. Twice. Three times.
They bolted.
Abhay and Diya
This part of Bhairavpur was strangely preserved. Doors shut tight, windows shuttered, as though the village was still alive and everyone was hiding.
Diya walked a step behind Abhay, watching him more than the street. He was too calm. Too measured. The ledger didn't scare him; he held it like it belonged to him.
"You don't flinch," she said finally. "Even when the book writes itself."
Abhay didn't look at her. "I've seen worse."
"What could be worse than this?"
He stopped, the corner of his mouth twitching—not quite a smile. "Once, when I was younger, my house burned down. Everyone inside died. For three months I pretended they were still alive. Ate at the table with them. Talked to them. Until the smell gave me away."
Diya's breath hitched. She didn't know if he was confessing or warning her.
Before she could respond, the door of a house creaked open on its own. Inside: nothing but overturned furniture and claw marks on the wall.
The ledger trembled in Abhay's hand. A new line had appeared:
"Two walked here. Only one leaves."
The Return to the Haveli
By dusk, the pairs staggered back, pale and shaken. Each carried their own horrors, but none could explain them.
Meghna showed the photo with missing handprints. Yashpal described the spirals etched into stone. Kabir laid the second ledger on the table. And Diya, wide-eyed, recited what she had read in Abhay's book.
No one spoke for a long while. The haveli seemed to breathe around them, waiting.
Then, softly, Priya said, "We weren't supposed to split up. We were supposed to be watched."
Silence. Heavy. Crushing.
And from somewhere outside the haveli, the sound of children's laughter echoed—closer this time.
"Some doors open inward.
Some outward.
But some… are never meant to open at all."