The morning did not bring the clarity Mani had promised. Instead, it brought a low-hanging fog that turned the silver oaks into ghostly sentinels. Arjun woke up on the library floor, his limbs stiff and his mouth tasting of copper and dust.
He didn't move for a long time. He listened. The house was quiet, save for the rhythmic drip... drip... drip of a leaky gutter somewhere on the east wing. The terror of the night before had settled into a dull, throbbing ache in his chest. Footprints in the dust. Fading footprints.
"Physics," Arjun muttered, pushing himself up. "Air currents. Static electricity. There is a reason for everything."
But as he stood up, his foot kicked something. It wasn't his satchel. It was a small, leather-bound diary, its cover stained with water and age. It was lying exactly where the light had vanished the night before.
He picked it up. His heart hammered against his ribs. He knew this diary. He had bought it for Diya at a small shop in Connaught Place two years ago. She had laughed, saying she preferred to dance her stories rather than write them.
He opened the first page.
March 14th. The rain in Delhi is nothing like the rain he describes in Kodaikanal. He talks about the mountains as if they are temples. I wonder if I will ever see them with him.
The handwriting was hers. The slanting 't's, the oversized 'g's—it was unmistakable. But as Arjun flipped through the pages, his blood turned to ice. He reached the end of the entries.
December 20th. I am here. The house is cold, but the walls speak his name. I am waiting for the architect to finish his masterpiece.
Arjun dropped the book. December 20th. Today was December 24th.
He had arrived only yesterday. If this diary was real, Diya had been in this house four days ago. But Diya had died—no, he shook his head violently. The memory of the accident was a jagged glass shard in his mind, one he refused to touch. If she was dead, how was the ink fresh? He touched the page. The blue ink smudged slightly under his thumb.
"Mani!" Arjun roared, charging out of the library.
He didn't find the caretaker in the garden. He found him at the edge of the property, near a small stone shrine dedicated to a local deity. Mani was lighting an incense stick, his back to Arjun.
"You said no one was here!" Arjun shouted, waving the diary. "Explain this! This is her writing. This was written four days ago!"
Mani didn't turn around immediately. He finished his prayer, blew out the match, and then slowly faced Arjun. His cataract-milky eyes seemed to look through Arjun rather than at him.
"The mountain remembers, Babu," Mani said calmly. "Sometimes, the paper remembers too."
"Don't give me that philosophical rubbish!" Arjun stepped closer, his shadow looming over the old man. "Who is in that house? Is someone playing a prank? Did my mother hire you to scare me away?"
At the mention of Padmini, Mani's expression shifted. A flicker of something—was it fear or pity?—passed over his weathered face.
"Your mother is a powerful woman, Arjun Babu. But even she cannot command the mists. I told you, I have the only key. If someone is inside, they did not enter through the door."
Arjun felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "What are you saying?"
"There are old tunnels," Mani whispered, leaning in. "Before this was a bungalow, it was a British lookout. There are ways to move through Megh-Nivas that even the blueprints don't show. If you want the truth, stop looking at the walls. Start looking at the floorboards."
Arjun spent the next six hours like a man possessed. He wasn't an architect now; he was a hunter. He went back to the library—the room where the light had vanished.
He began to move the heavy teak bookshelves. It was grueling, back-breaking work. His fine silk shirt was ruined, soaked with sweat and grime, but he didn't stop. He pushed and pulled until the wall behind the main shelf was exposed.
It was a simple lime-washed wall. Nothing special.
He took his restoration hammer and began to tap. Thud. Thud. Thud.
He moved systematically, listening for the change in pitch. And then, near the baseboard: Hollow.
Clack.
Arjun's breath hitched. He knelt, using a chisel to carefully pry away a section of the decorative wood. Behind it wasn't a tunnel. It was a small, recessed cavity, lined with velvet that had long since been eaten by moths.
Inside sat a modern, plastic object that looked completely out of place in this Victorian ruin.
It was a baby monitor.
The power light was off, but it was positioned to pick up every sound in the library.
Arjun picked it up, his mind reeling. A baby monitor? This wasn't a haunting. This was surveillance.
Suddenly, the monitor crackled to life. Static hissed through the small speaker, a white-noise roar that filled the quiet library. Arjun almost dropped it.
Then, through the static, a voice.
"Arjun... you were always too smart for your own good."
It wasn't Diya's voice. It was deeper, colder, and filtered through a long-distance connection.
"Mother?" Arjun whispered, his grip tightening on the plastic.
"Come home, Arjun," Padmini's voice came through, clear now, stripped of the static. "The air in the mountains is thin. It makes you imagine things. You are playing house with a shadow. It's pathetic. Your father's business needs you. Delhi needs you."
"How are you doing this?" Arjun screamed at the monitor. "Where are the cameras? How did you get her diary?"
"I didn't need a diary to know you were losing your mind," she replied. "I am your mother. I know the shape of your grief. I know you wake up at 3 AM calling her name. I know you think you see her in the rain. I'm not haunting you, beta. Your conscience is."
"The footprints," Arjun panted. "The light... Mani said..."
"Mani is on my payroll, Arjun. He has been for thirty years. He does what he is told. He ensures you stay safe... and he ensures you stay just scared enough to realize you can't survive out there without me."
Arjun felt a wave of nausea. His entire reality—the "sanctuary" he had built—was just another cage designed by his mother. He looked at the monitor, ready to smash it against the wall.
But then, another sound came through the speaker.
It was behind Padmini's voice. A faint, rhythmic sound.
Chann-chann. Chann-chann.
The sound of ghungroos.
Arjun froze. Padmini was in Delhi. She was in a sterile, marble-floored mansion. There were no dancers there. There was no one who wore anklets in that house.
"Mother," Arjun said, his voice trembling. "Who is in the room with you?"
There was a silence on the other end. A long, heavy silence.
"What are you talking about?" Padmini asked, her tone sharpening. "I am in my study. Alone."
Chann-chann.
The sound was louder now, closer to the microphone on the other end. And then, a whisper—not to Arjun, but to Padmini.
"He found the book, Padmini. You didn't hide it well enough."
The line went dead.
Arjun stood in the center of the hollowed-out library, the silent monitor in his hand. The betrayal of his mother was one thing—he had expected her to interfere. But that voice... that whisper...
It wasn't a recording. It wasn't a ghost. It was someone who was playing both sides. Someone who was in Delhi with his mother, but also here in his head.
He looked down at the diary again. He turned to the very last page, one he hadn't seen before because it had been stuck to the back cover.
There was no date. Just a single sentence written in a shaky, hurried hand:
Arjun, don't trust the architect. He's building a tomb, not a home.
Arjun frowned. "I'm the architect," he whispered.
Then he realized. The house had two architects. Himself... and the man who had built it a hundred years ago.
He turned his gaze to the ceiling. Above the library was the master bedroom. The room where he had seen the green silk.
He didn't use the stairs this time. He went to his crate and pulled out a heavy-duty crowbar. If the house was a cage, he would tear the cage apart until he found the bird.
He began to rip up the floorboards in the library, right beneath the spot where the footsteps had faded.
Under the third board, he didn't find a tunnel. He found a hollow space filled with hundreds of envelopes. All of them were addressed to him. All of them were in Diya's handwriting.
And all of them were post-dated for the next five years.
The first envelope, the one on top, was dated for tomorrow: December 25th.
He tore it open.
Arjun, it read. If you are reading this, it means you've started destroying the house. Stop. You need to look at the wedding photo again. Look at the background, not the faces. The secret isn't in what we said. It's in where we stood.
Arjun pulled the silver-framed photo from his satchel. He had looked at it a thousand times. It was their "secret wedding"—a small temple in the forest.
He looked past their smiling faces. In the background, partially obscured by a tree, stood a figure. A man in a suit, his face blurred by the camera's focus.
Arjun took a magnifying glass from his kit. He focused on the man's hand.
The man was wearing a very specific ring. A signet ring with the crest of his mother's family.
Padmini hadn't just found out about the wedding. She had been there.
But if she was there, and Diya died that night... then his mother didn't just witness his grief.
She caused it.