EcoSpace Tech Park, Outer Ring Road
The fluorescent lights of the floor hummed with a low, agonizing frequency that always gave me a headache by sunset. Around me, the relentless tap-tap-tap of mechanical keyboards sounded like a swarm of digital locusts.
"Meera, did you push the latest build to production?"
my team lead called out, leaning over his cubicle with a plastic cup of machine coffee.
"Client wants a status update before the US login."
"Done, boss," I lied smoothly, staring at my dual monitors. My eyes were burning. I hadn't looked at the code in an hour.
Instead, my right hand was jammed deep inside the pocket of my formal trousers, my thumb tracing the rough, cold edge of an old, heavy iron key. For the last two hours, a persistent, rhythmic thrumming had been vibrating in my inner ear—like the heavy drop in atmospheric pressure right before a massive thunderstorm hits.
But it wasn't the weather. The sky outside the glass facade was clear for now.
I shut down my laptop with a sharp snap, tossed my notebooks into my leather tote bag, and slung it over my shoulder.
"I'm logging off for the day,"
I muttered to no one in particular, ignoring the judgmental looks from the tech-bros pulling an all-nighter. I needed a drink. I needed a lot of drinks. Loud music and burning alcohol were the only things messy enough to drown out the frequency in my ears.
The bass was a physical wall of sound. Neon pink and blue strobe lights cut through the thick layer of cigarette smoke and the heavy scent of spilled craft beer.
"Another neat gin," I yelled over the music, slamming my empty glass onto the polished wooden counter.
The bartender nodded, sliding a fresh drink toward me. I swallowed it in one sharp, burning gulp. My throat stung, and a warm, dizzy haze began to spread behind my eyes. Perfect. The alcohol was finally blurring the edges of my perception. The thrumming in my ears was retreating, replaced by the loud, mindless chatter of drunk corporate workers celebrating a Thursday night.
To anyone looking at me, I was just another 24-year-old corporate millennial blowing off steam. A girl with wild, curly hair tied into a messy bun, wearing an oversized flannel shirt, laughing carelessly at a pub bar.
They didn't see in my eyes. They didn't know that every time the pub’s heavy iron exit door swung open, my eyes automatically scanned the threshold, checking the shadows of the people walking through.
I lived two lives. In one, I wrote automation scripts and hung out at microbreweries. In the other, I carried the curse of a childhood in Kerala where I learned that some dark corners in this country don't contain ghosts—they contain things much worse.
By nine, the rain began to crash against the pub's glass windows, heavy and sudden. The atmospheric pressure dropped like a stone. The dizzy comfort of the alcohol vanished in an instant as a sharp, icy spike of adrenaline shot through my chest.
The thrumming in my ears came back, louder now, screaming at a pitch that made my teeth ache.It was close. Right in my neighborhood.I grabbed my tote bag, threw a few crumpled notes on the bar counter, and walked out into the downpour.
Reddy’s Chai, Near Outer Ring Road
The heavy bass from the Indiranagar pub was still buzzing faintly in my forehead, but the rain had completely sobered me up.
I sat at the far end of the wooden bench under the blue tarpaulin of Reddy’s Chai. It was the only spot within a two-kilometer radius that felt grounded. Around me, a group of techies were arguing loudly over filter coffee -"Yeno baddi magane, script execute agilla [What the hell man, the script didn't execute]"—while the scratched speaker behind the counter blared Atif Aslam’s "Tu Chahiye" over the sound of boiling milk.
I leaned my head back against the damp wooden pillar, feeling the heavy weight of the long, dark iron hair-stick securing my messy bun. It was a solid piece of forged metal, disguised as a casual aesthetic choice. I reached up, my fingers tracing its smooth, cold surface, just to anchor myself.
Every single day, I had to walk past that specific cul-de-sac on my way back to my apartment flat which sat directly overlooking the courtyard of the boys' PG. And every single day, walking past the rusted iron gate of House No. 17 gave me a localized, sickening drop in blood pressure. The air there always felt like the inside of a meat locker. I knew something was festering in that lane, but I had kept my head down. In Bangalore, you mind your own business if you want to survive.
Then, he stumbled into the halogen light.
He looked like he was about to collapse. Lean build, soaked checked shirt, a heavy college backpack slipping off his shoulder. He was shivering so hard his teeth were clicking audibly over the music. He collapsed onto the far end of my bench, burying his face in his hands.
“Oye, Shankar! Ek special single chai dena isko. Extra adrak,” I called out to the boy behind the counter, not taking my eyes off the stranger.
As the boy moved to grab his bag, his wet sleeve rode up an inch.
Tied around his left wrist was a thick, frayed red-and-black thread holding a tiny, oil-slick bronze bell. It had no clapper inside. And right beneath it, the skin was blistered into a fresh, bleeding, circular burn.
My hand instantly went to my hair, my fingers locking around the base of the iron hair-stick. I slid it out a millimeter, ready to pull it and let my hair drop if he turned out to be an extension of whatever was in that lane. I must have looked incredibly suspicious to anyone watching ,a girl sitting alone in the dark, smoking, staring intensely at a shivering college kid while gripping a weapon hidden in her hair.
But my mind was racing. No clapper. Deep iron etched bronze.
My grandfather back in Palakkad had an old, leather bound journal filled with sketches of spiritual seals from across the country remnants of his own travels as a traditional practitioner. I remembered a specific page detailing the Shakti Peeth at Mahur, Maharashtra. The journal warned: The blacksmiths of Mahur forge a silent metal. It rings only when the threshold is hungry.
This terrified, pale-faced kid was carrying a lethal piece of ancient Mahurian temple magic on his wrist, and he looked like he didn't even know how to use it.
I flicked my cigarette butt into the rain, keeping my voice dry, casual, and completely steady.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," I said, leaning forward.
He flinched violently, pulling his left hand deep into his sleeve to hide the welt. "Just... the rain," he mumbled, his voice cracking, his accent thick with rural Maharashtra. "The traffic is bad."
I let out a short, sarcastic laugh, watching him closely. "The traffic in Bangalore can make you want to die, friend. But innu njan ithu vare [but today, until now], it usually doesn't make a person forget how to breathe. You're hyperventilating."
He grabbed the glass Shankar slid over, his hands shaking so much the hot liquid spilled over the rim. He swallowed it in silent, panicked gulps.
"You stay in that boys' PG down the lane, right?" I asked, adjusting my oversized flannel shirt. "What a scene, ya. I stay right next door to your building, fourth-floor, Come, let's head back before this rain completely wrecks us. Walking alone in this weather is a literal headache."
The rain had settled into a heavy, relentless drizzle, flooding the edges of the broken pavement. I walked with my hands jammed deep into my pockets, totally chill, while this guy walked like he was navigating a minefield. Every time an auto-rickshaw splashed past or water gushed loudly into a storm drain, he jumped a mile. He kept his right hand tightly clamped over his left wrist, guarding that strange, clapperless bell like it was a physical lifeline. He was a certified scaredy-cat.
As we turned the corner into the narrow cul-de-sac, the air temperature suddenly tanked. It didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, like the atmosphere was physically pressing down on my chest.
Then, cutting through the sound of the rain, came a sharp,
It was a tiny, metallic sound, but it vibrated straight through my teeth. The bronze bell on his wrist was vibrating, pulsing against his skin.
The guy froze dead in his tracks. He stared across the street, his eyes widening into pools of absolute, coping denial. He stood there, a weird, forced smile stretching across his face as he said something completely stupid.
"Ah... the weather is so nice tonight, no?" he mumbled, his voice sounding completely hollow. "Aunty was saying they might repaint the veranda next week. The yellow light looks so cozy..."
I stopped walking. I didn't look at him. I looked exactly where he was staring. Through the rusted, heavily chained iron gates of House No. 17, there was absolutely nothing.
No cottage tiles. No warm amber light. No veranda.
It was a completely empty, overgrown, abandoned mud plot. A single, skeletal dead tree stood in the center, its bare branches clawing at the dark sky, surrounded by wild weeds drowning in pitch-black rainwater. The foundation walls had been demolished decades ago, leaving nothing but rotting stone covered in moss. There was no house. There was no girl. There was just empty, dark rain falling into a void.
I didn't say a single word.
I didn't tell him he was talking to thin air. I didn't tell him the plot had been a ruin since before we were born. I just stood there in the rain, rain dripping down my nose, looking from the black, empty mud plot to his face as he stared into the illusion.
I just nodded slowly, silently cataloging exactly how deep this kid was in the trap.
I pulled my hands out of my pockets, tapped him casually on the shoulder to break his trance, and kept walking down the dark lane toward our buildings.
The kid practically sprinted the last ten meters into the fluorescent glare of his PG entrance, his damp sneakers squeaking frantically on the tiled stairs. He didn’t even look back to say goodbye. He just wanted a locked door between himself and the street.
I stood under the awning of my own building next door, watching him vanish inside.
"Pavam [Poor thing]," I muttered, shaking my head as the heavy iron elevator gate groaned open. "He’s going to have nightmares for a week."
I rode the creaking elevator up to the fourth floor, unlocked the front door of Flat 402, and tossed my soaked flannel shirt onto the entryway coat rack. The living room was a completely generic Bangalore techie setup. A grey Ikea beanbag, a cluttered work desk with a dual-monitor rig, three empty pizza boxes stacked near the kitchen sink, and a framed poster of Pulp Fiction on the wall. It smelled faintly of lavender room spray and dust.
I immediately stripped out of my damp jeans and headed to the bathroom. I took a steaming hot bath, washing the sticky, humid street grime out of my thick, curly hair. Ten minutes later, I walked out into the living room drying my hair with a towel, now wearing oversized grey sweatpants and a loose black t-shirt.
I went to the kitchen, opened a packet of Maggi, and tossed it into boiling water. While the noodles cooked, I hooked my phone up to the living room Bluetooth speakers and turned on a heavy, deep-house DJ set. The bass boomed through the small apartment, a solid electronic rhythm filling the space.
Sitting on the sofa with my steaming bowl of noodles, I opened my laptop and queued up the latest episode of a K-drama I’d been binge-watching. For the next forty minutes, I just tuned everything out. I laughed at the screen, slurped my noodles, and bobbed my head to the electronic beat. To anyone looking through the window, I was just another 24-year-old software engineer unwinding after a rough shift on the Outer Ring Road.
By 11:30 PM, the episode finished. I took my empty bowl to the sink, turned down the music volume just a bit so the bass was a low, steady heartbeat through the walls, and walked down the short hallway past my bedroom.
At the very end of the hall was a heavy, dark teakwood door. It was the second bedroom of the 2BHK, but the handle didn't have a standard lock. It was sealed with three thick brass latches, each one etched with intricate, geometric Yantra diagrams.
I reached onto the top of the doorframe, grabbed the long iron hair-stick I had left there earlier, and inserted its sharp, pointed end into a hidden groove in the center latch. With a heavy, mechanical click, the seals released. I pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed it firmly behind me.
The corporate world, the K-drama, and the modern city of Bangalore ceased to exist.
The room was pitch-black, suffocatingly warm, and thick with the overwhelming, heavy scent of dried camphor, burnt neem leaves, and aged blood. There were no windows here; they had been completely boarded up from the inside and covered with thick, velvet black curtains that absorbed every drop of light. I didn't turn on a switch. I moved blindly through the dark, my bare feet navigating a floor covered in coarse, unpolished black sand. I struck a single match, touching the flame to a brass oil lamp shaped like a coiled serpent.
As the amber flame flickered to life, the true horror of the room bled out of the shadows.
This wasn't a bedroom. It was a private, consecrated sanctuary of Mantrikam—the dark, esoteric occult arts of the deep south.
Stacked from floor to ceiling along the walls were massive, decaying wooden bookshelves, bending under the weight of hundreds of brittle, ancient palm-leaf manuscripts wrapped in faded red silk. These weren't standard academic texts. These were forgotten grimoires, handwritten diaries of ancestral shamans from Palakkad, detailing the naming, binding, and execution of entities that predated human memory.
In the center of the room, drawn directly into the black sand, was a massive, intricate geometric circle—a Kalam—painted using dried rice powder, turmeric, and charcoal. At the five cardinal points of the diagram sat five polished human skulls, their jawbones wired shut with silver thread.
A low, rhythmic, localized humming vibrated through the floorboards, perfectly syncing with the faint DJ beat bleeding through the door. It didn't come from the street. It came from a large, heavy glass jar sitting on an altar at the back of the room. Inside the jar, submerged in a thick, translucent amber fluid, was a severed, preserved human hand, its fingers twitching imperceptibly every time the rain thundered outside.
I walked over to a stone basin, washing my hands in consecrated water. In the flickering, low light of the oil lamp, the shadows under my eyes looked deep, ancient, and terrifying.
I reached onto the top shelf and pulled down a heavy, leather-bound register. I flipped past pages of complex diagrams, stopping at a fresh, blank sheet.
I picked up a dip pen, soaked the nib in a dark, metallic-smelling ink, and began to write in a sharp, elegant script:
Subject: Lane 3 Cul-de-sac. House No. 17.
Classification: Active Feeding Ground (Ghul/Preta class). Spatial distortion fully stable.
Variable: A boy from the neighboring PG entered the perimeter tonight.
I paused, my mind flashing back to the vibrating, clapperless metal on the kid's wrist, and the raw, bleeding burn it had left behind.
I dipped the pen again, a cold, clinical smile creeping onto my face.
Observation: He carries a functional Mahurian Boundary Bell. He is completely untrained, terrified, and oblivious to its utility. He thinks the entity is a girl named Ananya. He will likely return to the threshold within forty-eight hours.
If the bell breaks ….. the house digests him.
I closed the book with a heavy, muffled thud, the dust swirling in the amber light. I blew out the lamp, plunging the room back into absolute, terrifying darkness.
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