The days grew shorter after that first real encounter with the handprint. November arrived with frost on the window sills and a bite in the air that made the fire necessary even in the afternoons. I tried to return to my writing, but the words felt thin, like smoke drifting away before they could settle on the page. Instead, I found myself wandering the cottage, touching the walls as though they might speak if pressed hard enough.
In the small sitting room downstairs, behind a curtain of dust and cobwebs, there was a narrow cupboard I had not bothered to open before. One grey morning, with rain drumming steadily on the tin roof, I pulled the door ajar. Inside lay a cardboard box, edges softened by time, labelled in faded ink: "Personal Effects – 1947."
I carried it to the table and lifted the lid. There were letters tied with string, a tarnished silver locket, a pair of child's gloves too small for any adult hand, and at the bottom, a photograph in a simple wooden frame.
The photograph showed a young woman standing on the cottage steps. She wore a plain cotton sari, her hair braided and pinned neatly, and she smiled with the kind of smile that knows it will not last. In her arms was a little girl, perhaps four or five, clinging to her mother's neck. The child had wide eyes and a solemn expression, as though already aware of some sorrow waiting just out of frame. Behind them, the oaks looked much the same as they did now—tall, watchful.
On the back of the photograph, in careful, slanted handwriting: "Lila and Meera, Maplewood, Summer 1946."
Lila. The name felt like a key turning in a lock that had rusted shut. I stared at the face for a long time. The woman's eyes were gentle, but there was a shadow in them, a quiet unhappiness that the smile could not quite hide. I wondered what had become of them. The cottage had stood empty for decades before the poet moved in; who had lived here in between?
I placed the photograph on the mantelpiece, facing the room. It seemed wrong to leave them shut away. That evening, as the mist rose again, I sat by the fire with the locket in my hand. Inside was a tiny curl of black hair, tied with thread. I closed it carefully and returned it to the box.
The tapping did not come that night. For the first time since I had arrived, the house was silent—too silent, as though holding its breath. I slept uneasily, dreaming of small feet running up and down the staircase, never quite reaching the top.
The next morning I went into Mussoorie proper, walking the steep Mall Road to the little library near the church. The librarian, an elderly Parsi gentleman named Mr. Commissariat, remembered the cottage well.
"Maplewood? Oh yes," he said, adjusting his spectacles. "Belonged to a Major Harrow once, then passed to his daughter after Partition. She lived there quietly with her child for a few years. Then… well, the child fell ill. Fever, they said. The mother never quite recovered from it. She left one winter and never came back. The house stood empty after that, except for the odd tenant who never stayed long."
He paused, looking at me over the rim of his glasses. "You're not the first to hear things there. Footsteps. Voices. But nothing harmful, mind you. Just… sad."
I thanked him and walked back up the hill, the photograph's faces lingering in my mind. When I reached the cottage, the front door was ajar. I was certain I had locked it. Inside, everything was as I had left it—except the photograph on the mantelpiece had been turned slightly, so that Lila and Meera now faced the staircase instead of the room.
I righted it again, my fingers trembling just a little. Then I noticed something else: a faint smudge on the glass, right over the child's face. Like a small, damp fingerprint.
That night the tapping returned, but softer, almost hesitant. It came from the landing halfway up the stairs, not from the room above. Tap… tap… then a long pause, as though listening for an answer.
I stood at the bottom of the staircase, lamp in hand, and spoke aloud for the first time.
"Who are you?"
The house seemed to lean in, waiting.
Nothing answered. But the cold air moved past me, brushing my cheek like a sigh. I climbed three steps, then stopped. The tapping resumed—now from the top again, impatient.
I turned back. Not yet, I thought. Not tonight.
The next few days passed in a strange rhythm. I would work in the mornings, forcing words onto the page. In the afternoons I walked the deodar paths, collecting pine cones and dry leaves as though they might explain something. At night I listened.
Sometimes the footsteps came—seven to the window, seven back. Sometimes there was only the tapping on glass. Once, very late, I thought I heard a child humming—a tune I did not recognize, soft and broken, like a music box winding down.
I began leaving small things at the foot of the stairs: a biscuit on a saucer, a sprig of wildflowers from the garden. In the morning they were untouched, but the saucer was sometimes warm, as though someone had held it.
One evening, as the light failed, I found the locket open on the kitchen table. The curl of hair was gone.
I searched the floor, under the chairs, behind the cupboard. Nothing. Then I looked up at the staircase. A single strand of black hair lay on the third step, gleaming faintly in the lamplight.
I picked it up. It was soft, real. I carried it upstairs and placed it on the notebook in the small room. The pages were still blank, but when I turned to leave, the armchair creaked, as though someone had just risen from it.
I did not look back.
That night the house was quiet again. But in the silence, I felt watched—not with malice, but with a kind of tired hope. As though something had been waiting a very long time for someone to notice the hair, the photograph, the small warm saucer.
I lay awake until dawn, wondering what would happen if I answered properly.
Perhaps tomorrow, I thought.
Perhaps.