CHAPTER 2: The Whispering of the Mortar
The morning did not break with the sudden, violent clarity of the plains. Here, in the deep crevices of the northern hills where the ancestral estate lay buried, the dawn arrived like a slow, grey hemorrhage. Mist, thick and saturated with the scent of rotting pine and wet slate, pressed heavily against the arched windows of the haveli, turning the glass into milky, opaque eyes that refused to let the world in.
For the first time in nearly seven years, Zareena woke without the sharp, metallic taste of adrenaline in her mouth.
She lay perfectly still beneath a heavy, smelling-of-damp quilt, her eyes tracking the intricate, water-stained fissures that mapped the high plaster ceiling above. There was no sound of a heavy fist slamming against the kitchen counter. There was no rattling of keys in the front door lock, no muttered curse drifting through the hallway like poison gas, no sudden, terrifying intake of breath beside her that signaled the arrival of a storm. There was no Bilal.
Yet, as she sat up slowly, resting her weight on her palms, the silence did not feel like a sanctuary. It felt massive. It felt intentional. The haveli was vast—impossibly so—constructed from a dense, black stone that seemed to absorb the weak morning light rather than reflect it. The air within the master bedroom was cold, carrying the static stillness of a tomb that had been unsealed after centuries. When she cleared her throat, the small, raspy sound did not fade; it travelled, bouncing off the lime-washed walls, sliding through the high transoms, and echoing down the long, cavernous corridor outside until it sounded like someone else mimicking her from the dark.
From the adjacent dressing room, a soft, rhythmic thudding broke the stillness. Zareena’s muscles instantly locked, her heart executing a familiar, painful leap against her ribs before her mind could calm her. It was just Zara.
She found her daughter sitting on the bare floorboards next to one of their two canvas suitcases. The small girl was surrounded by her few belongings, her movements light and unburdened. For the first time in months, the pinched, hyper-vigilant look had left Zara’s face. The faint purple shadows beneath her eyes seemed to have faded in the mountain air, and she was huming a fragmented, nonsensical tune as she unrolled a pair of faded socks.
A profound, suffocating wave of emotion hit Zareena as she stood in the doorway, watching her child. Their entire existence—everything they had retained from their years on earth—lay scattered within the radius of those two battered pieces of luggage. A whole life, a seven-year marriage that had consumed her youth and broken her spirit, had been reduced to a handful of cotton kurtas, schoolbooks with creased spines, a single handbag containing her documentation, and a secret stash of seven lakh rupees. It was a pathetic, tragic inventory. A human life should have left a larger footprint. It should have weighed more. Yet here they were, their past packed into nylon containers, their uncertain future sitting inside a house that felt less like a building and more like an enormous, sleeping beast.
"Ammi! Dekhein, yeh kamra kitna bada hai!" Zara suddenly looked up, her face illuminating with a brilliant, wide smile that Zareena hadn't seen since the previous years. She jumped to her feet, her bare toes tapping against the dark deodar wood. "Yahan toh mere saare khilone aaram se aa jayeinge. Aur hum chupann-chupai bhi khel sakte hain!"
"Ji, beta. Bohot bada hai," Zareena replied, forcing her lips into a reassuring curve, though her eyes remained restless, scanning the deep shadows near the wardrobe. "Magar zyaada door nahi jana. Yeh purana ghar hai, kahin chot na lag jaye."
"Nahi lagti!" Zara laughed, a clear, bell-like sound that rang out into the room.
But as the laughter left the child's lips, Zareena felt a strange, physical discomfort in her ears. The sound did not dissipate naturally. The high plaster walls and the dark wooden panels seemed to catch the laughter, holding it, dampening it with an unnatural velocity, as if the house itself were a sponge soaking up the sound of a child’s voice, leaving the air dry and dead immediately after.
The contrast between them grew sharper as the morning wore on. While Zareena moved through the spaces with a hesitant, dragging step—her hands constantly smoothing down her sleeves to hide the yellowing bruises, her ears strained for the sound of a distant car engine—Zara blossomed. The child seemed entirely immune to the oppressive grandeur of the estate. She treated the long, drafty corridors like a playground, her laughter echoing from distant wings of the house as she explored, her small feet pattering against the floors like rain. To Zara, this was freedom. To Zareena, it was an unstable plateau, and she was waiting for the earth to give way beneath them.
By noon, the rain had reduced to a miserable, freezing drizzle. Zareena was in the small morning room on the ground floor, kneeling beside the second suitcase to organize Zara’s Urdu primers and notebooks. The smell of old paper and graphite filled the small radius around her, a mundane, grounding scent that helped anchor her fraying nerves.
Zareena froze. A book remained suspended in her right hand.
The sound had come from directly above her head. The second floor. It was a slow, heavy, incredibly deliberate footstep.
The floorboards above creaked beneath a significant weight. It sounded like someone walking with a dragging, measured gait, moving from the eastern side of the upper corridor toward the central staircase.
Zareena’s breath caught in her throat. Her mind, conditioned by years of domestic terror, instantly supplied a face to the footsteps. Bilal. He tracked the car. He found the valley. He is upstairs, waiting to come down. Her skin went entirely cold, a greasy sweat breaking out along her hairline.
"Zara?" she called out, her voice tight, barely louder than a gasp. "Zara, beta, aap upar hain?"
There was no answer from upstairs. The footsteps stopped. The silence returned, heavy and mocking.
Dropping the book, Zareena stood up so fast her knees cracked. She hurried out of the morning room and into the grand central courtyard, her eyes darting toward the sweeping twin staircases that led to the upper galleries. "Zara!" she called again, louder this time, the notes of panic bleeding through her composure.
The voice came from behind her. From outside.
Zareena turned around, her chest heaving. Through the cracked glass of the veranda doors, she saw Zara. The little girl was sitting on a low stone wall in the overgrown garden, entirely drenched by the light drizzle, carefully lining up a row of smooth grey pebbles she had gathered from the mud. She was nowhere near the second floor. She hadn't been inside the house for at least twenty minutes.
Zareena stood in the center of the courtyard, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. If Zara was in the garden, then whose boots had made the dark deodar wood creak overhead?
Determined to dispel the creeping dread before it paralyzed her, Zareena approached the grand staircase. Her hand shook as she gripped the carved wooden balustrade, the surface cold and slightly sticky with age. She ascended slowly, each step she took sounding monstrously loud in the empty house. The second-floor corridor was long, flanked on both sides by identical, heavy paneled doors that led to forgotten guest rooms.
The air up here was perceptibly colder, thick with the smell of stagnant dust and dried rosewater. Zareena walked the entire length of the hallway, her boots leaving faint tracks in the fine layer of grey dust that coated the floor. She checked every single door.
Every handle was stiff, locked from the outside with heavy iron keys that were currently missing. The dust on the floorboards was entirely undisturbed, a smooth, velvety sheet of grey. There were no footprints other than her own. No open windows. No loose shutters that could have swung in the wind to mimic the weight of a man's step. Nothing.
She stood alone in the center of the corridor, the silence pressing against her eardrums until they rang. It’s the timber, she reasoned with herself, her fingers digging into the fabric of her shalwar kameez. Old houses expand in the rain. The wood absorbs the moisture, the beams shift, and it sounds like footsteps. It’s just physics. It’s not him.
But her mind didn't believe her body, and her body didn't believe her mind.
The ghost of Bilal did not require a physical form to haunt the haveli. He lived in the very architecture of her thoughts.
Throughout the afternoon, as Zareena tried to clean the thickest layers of grime from the kitchen and the main living area, she found herself trapped in a cycle of hyper-vigilance. Every sound was an accusation. A piece of mortar flaking off the exterior wall and hitting the gravel outside became the sound of a fist tapping on the window. The sudden, mournful howl of the wind through the kitchen chimney became the sound of his voice, low and dangerous, calling her name from the dark hallway.
She found herself checking the locks every twenty minutes. She would walk to the heavy front doors, throw her weight against the iron bolts to ensure they were deep within their stone sockets, and then check the window latches. Five minutes later, she would forget if she had checked the side veranda door, and she would have to walk across the cold house again, her eyes wide, her breath short.
She looked out at the massive iron gates at the edge of the property through the rain-streaked windows, half-expecting to see his white sedan idling in the mist, its headlights cutting through the dark like the eyes of a predator. Every shadow that fell across the courtyard looked like a man standing perfectly still, his jaw clenched, his hand rising to strike. Her trauma had become an internal projector, casting his image onto every dark corner of the ancient house.
By five o'clock, the pressure inside her head became unbearable. The uncertainty was worse than the violence. She needed to know. She needed a definitive answer to the question that was slowly eroding her sanity: Had she killed him? Was he dead on the floor of that small apartment in Islamabad, or was he hunting her?
With hands that shook so violently she could barely hold the plastic device, Zareena pulled out her mobile phone. The network signal in the valley was abysmal; only one or two bars flickered on the screen, appearing and disappearing like a weak pulse. She stepped close to the arched window of the living room, pressing her forehead against the cool glass, and dialed the landline number of their Islamabad apartment.
The sound of the ringback tone was sharp, artificial, and terribly modern inside the ancient stone walls.
Zareena closed her eyes, her teeth chattering despite the heavy shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Please don't answer. Please let the police answer. Let it be empty.
She could picture the small living room in Islamabad—the overturned vase, the stained carpet, the smell of cheap cigarettes.
The line went live. The hollow, static-laden hiss of a connected call filled her ear.
Zareena’s lungs seized. The voice was low, raspy, and thick with an instantly recognizable, volatile irritation. It was Bilal.
"Hello! Kaun hai?" his voice rasped through the speaker, louder now, the sound of a match being struck in the background audible. He wasn't dead. He wasn't even in a hospital. He was at home, alive, his voice carrying the exact same arrogant, dangerous timbre that had dictated her life for seven years.
Zareena stayed perfectly silent, pressing her palm over her mouth to stifle the sound of her ragged breathing.
"Zareena? Tum ho na?" Bilal’s voice suddenly sharpened, the confusion turning into an immediate, white-hot rage. "Kahan ho tum? Kahan le kar gayi ho meri beti ko? Police ko le kar baitha hoon main yahan! Tumhe kya laga, tum bhaag jaogi? Kahan chupi ho? Apne baap ke ghar? Us bhenchod gaon mein?"
The realization hit Zareena like a physical blow. He was angry, he was looking for them, but he was looking in the wrong direction. He was calling her father’s city in the southern plains. He had absolutely no idea about this northern valley. He had no memory of her grandmother’s ancestral estate; it had never been mentioned in his presence. He was completely blind to their location.
"Jawab do, Zareena! Main chodunga nahi tumhe—"
She terminated the call. Her thumb slammed down on the red button with such force that the plastic casing creaked. She instantly powered down the phone, took out the SIM card with trembling fingers, and dropped the small piece of plastic onto the stone floor, crushing it beneath the heel of her boot until it was nothing but silver and green shards.
She sat down on the edge of a dusty wooden chest, her chest heaving as she drew in long, ragged gulps of air. She should have felt relieved. Bilal didn't know where they were. He was hundreds of miles away, trapped in his own fury in Islamabad. They were safe from him.
But as she stared out into the vast, dark expanse of the haveli's central hall, a deeper, colder terror took root in her stomach.
The phone call had confirmed something monstrous. The heavy, deliberate footsteps she had heard on the second floor earlier that morning... they could not have been Bilal. The shadow she thought she saw standing at the window during the lightning flash... it was not him.
She hung her head, her hands twisting in her lap as the silence of the house settled over her again like a heavy shroud. If it wasn't Bilal... then what was walking through the unmoored hours of this house? What was watching them from the upper windows?
"Ammi, woh jo upar wale uncle hain na, unhone mujhse poocha ke mera naam kya hai."
Zareena stopped stirring the small pot of daal she was preparing over the portable gas stove. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the blue, dancing flame of the burner and a single wax candle that cast long, distorted shadows against the soot-blackened brick walls.
She turned around slowly, looking down at Zara. The child was sitting on a low wooden stool, her legs dangling, her small hands neatly braiding the uneven hair of her plastic doll. Her face was completely calm, devoid of any fear or mischief. She might as well have been talking about the weather.
Zareena felt her stomach drop. "Zara... aap kya keh rahi hain? Kaun sey uncle?"
"Wahi, jo upar rehte hain," Zara replied without looking up from her doll. "Jo safed kapde pehante hain. Woh hamesha upar wale corridor mein khade rehte hain. Unka kurta bohot saaf hai, bilkul naya lagta hai."
Zareena walked over to her daughter, kneeling down so they were at eye level. She placed her hands on Zara’s small shoulders, noticing how warm and real the child felt compared to the cold horror growing inside her own chest. "Zara, meri jaan, thik se batao. Kya koi upar hai? Kisi ne aapse baat ki?"
"Ji," Zara nodded, her clear brown eyes meeting her mother’s with absolute sincerity. "Ghar mein jab aap safai kar rahi thi, tab main upar gayi thi. Woh khade thay wahan. Unki aankhein bohot badi hain, aur woh bohot aahista bolte hain. Unhone mujhse poocha, 'Tum kis ki beti ho?'"
"Phir? Phir aapne kya kaha?" Zareena’s voice was rising, her fingers tightening on the child's shoulders.
"Main ne kaha main Zareena ki beti hoon," Zara said simply. "Phir woh udhaas ho gaye. Unhone kaha, 'Yeh ghar bohot purana hai, yahan waqt hamesha ek jaisa nahi rehta.' Ammi, uncle udaas kyun hain?"
Zareena’s mind raced, a cold sweat breaking out across her back. Is someone living here? A squatter? A vagrant who broke into the abandoned estate before we arrived? That would explain the footsteps. It would explain the movement at the window. It was a human intruder. A criminal, perhaps, or a homeless man hiding in the empty wings of the massive house.
"Zara, kya unhone aapse kuch aur kaha?"
"Nahi," Zara said, turning her attention back to her doll. "Phir woh chale gaye."
"Pata nahi. Woh jab chalte hain toh awaaz nahi hoti. Kal wale uncle toh alag they."
Zareena frozen. "Alag? Kya matlab alag they?"
"Kal jo uncle khade they window mein, unke kapde kaale they, aur woh bohut gusse mein they," Zara said casually, her tiny fingers tying a knot in the doll’s hair. "Magar aaj wale uncle safed kapdo mein hain. Woh rote hain kabhi kabhi. Safed wale uncle bohut achay hain, Ammi. Unhone mujhe bataya ke unka naam Rizwan hai."
The name hit the empty kitchen like a physical weight. Rizwan. Zareena had never mentioned that name to her daughter. She hadn't even thought of that name in years—it was a fragment of an old family history her grandmother used to whisper about when she was a little girl, a distant relative who had vanished into the mountains before the Partition. How could Zara know that name? How could a six-year-old child invent a name so deeply buried in the soil of this valley?
"Zara, mujhse mazaak mat karo," Zareena said, her voice shaking, a note of harshness creeping in born of pure terror. "Ghar mein koi nahi hai. Hum akele hain yahan. Tum jhoot bol rahi ho!"
Zara’s lip trembled instantly. Her eyes filled with big, shiny tears, and she pulled away from Zareena’s grip, clutching her stuffed rabbit tightly against her chest. "Main jhoot nahi bol rahi, Ammi! Allah ki qasam, safed wale uncle upar hain! Woh mujhe deikh rahe hain!"
Zareena pulled her daughter into her arms, pressing the child's head against her chest, murmuring apologies she didn't feel, her eyes fixed on the dark, yawning doorway that led out of the kitchen and into the black spine of the house. She didn't know what was worse: the possibility that a dangerous stranger was hiding in the upper rooms with her child, or the possibility that Zara was beginning to lose her grip on reality, fractured by the trauma they had left behind in Islamabad.
The next morning brought no relief, only a shifting of the horror into tangible forms.
While carrying a bucket of dirty water out toward the central courtyard, Zareena stopped dead in her tracks at the entrance of the long eastern corridor. The floor here was made of pale, porous marble tiles that had turned a dull grey with age.
There, clearly visible against the light stone, was a line of muddy footprints.
They were fresh. The dark, wet mountain clay was still glistening slightly, tracking from the heavy side-veranda door that Zareena could swear she had bolted the night before. The tracks were wide, long, clearly made by the bare feet of an adult man. Each print was perfectly formed—the distinct impression of five toes, the heavy curve of the heel, the wide ball of the foot.
Zareena’s breath became short, shallow stabs in her chest. She dropped the plastic bucket, the dirty water splashing across her boots as she followed the tracks with her eyes. The footsteps walked with a strange, wide stride down the center of the corridor, moving away from the exterior door.
She followed them slowly, her body trembling, her hand pressed against the cold stone wall for support. The prints moved past the first two locked guest rooms. They didn't turn toward the handles. They didn't waver. They kept moving in a straight, uncompromising line toward the dead end of the hallway.
Zareena stared down at the floor, her eyes wide with an impossible, sickening confusion. The final pair of muddy footprints sat perfectly level, side by side, directly in front of the solid, lime-washed stone wall that terminated the corridor.
There was no door here. There was no window. There was no hidden panel or architectural crease. It was a massive, structural support wall made of solid stone and mortar, over three feet thick, separating this wing from the outer courtyard. The footsteps did not turn around. They did not smear or trail off. They simply ended right at the base of the solid wall, as if whoever had been walking had simply taken a step straight into the stone and vanished into the masonry itself.
She knelt down, her fingers trembling as she reached out to touch the mud of the final print. It was real. It was wet. The scent of the dark, cold earth filled her nostrils. She pressed her palm against the stone wall directly above the tracks. The plaster was freezing, dry, and solid. There was no hollow sound when she tapped her knuckles against it.
"Yeh nahi ho sakta," she whispered into the empty corridor, her voice breaking. "Yeh bilkul nahi ho sakta."
Desperate to find something to ground herself, to find some thread that connected this terrifying house to a reality she could understand, Zareena spent the afternoon in the old library wing. It was a long, narrow room filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves made of dark walnut wood, most of them completely cleared out or filled with crumbling, termite-eaten accounting ledgers from the early twentieth century.
In the bottom drawer of an ancient, dust-choked desk, she found a heavy, leather-bound album. The leather was cracked and splitting along the spine, its surface covered in a thick layer of green mold that made her cough. She carried it over to the window, where the weak, grey light of the afternoon allowed her to see.
She opened the cover. Inside were old black-and-white and sepia-toned photographs, carefully mounted on thick black cardboard sheets. They were pictures of her ancestors—stern-faced men in traditional sherwanis, women with heavy silver jewelry and eyes that looked tired even through the silver-halide prints of the past.
She turned the pages slowly, the old paper crackling like dry leaves.
The first photograph that made her freeze was taken in the summer of 1915, according to a small, neat ink notation at the bottom. It showed a group of men standing in front of the very gates of the haveli. In the center stood a tall, slender man wearing a crisp, white linen kurta. His face was long, his eyes remarkably large and deep-set, carrying an expression of intense, quiet melancholy.
Zareena’s fingers tightened on the edge of the page. The white kurta. The large eyes. She turned the page forward, moving through time. The next photograph was from 1921. A family gathering in the central courtyard to celebrate an Eid. The clothing had changed; the people had aged. Her own grandfather was a young boy in this picture, standing beside his mother. And there, standing at the absolute periphery of the group, half-hidden by the shadow of an arched pillar, was the exact same man.
The identical face. The identical, large, sorrowful eyes. The same white linen kurta, completely unbothered by the passage of twenty-three years. He hadn't aged a single day. His hair was the same ink-black; the lines on his face were identical.
Her breath turning to ice, Zareena flipped the pages faster, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. 1924. A picture of the haveli after a heavy winter snowstorm. A solitary figure stood near the barren orchard. It was him. A low-resolution digital print taken by a distant cousin who had visited the valley to inspect the property. In the reflection of the glass window behind the cousin, a pale face was visible.
The man never aged. Across sixty years of photographic history, while children grew into old men and died, while the stone of the haveli crumbled and gathered moss, the man in the white clothes remained entirely unchanged, fixed in a singular, terrifying state of youth and melancholy.
HOW WAS HE IN ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHS, IF HE VANISHED BEFORE HER GRANDFATHER'S FAMILY OCCUPIED THE MANOR?
Zareena slammed the album shut, the sound echoing through the empty library like a gunshot. She pushed it away from her as if it were a venomous snake. The old tea seller’s words echoed in her ears, louder and more menacing than before: “Some say the house itself became alive... and a few believed the haveli stopped obeying time altogether.”
That night, the horror invaded their sleeping sanctuary.
Zareena had moved their thin mattresses into the small morning room on the ground floor, refusing to sleep upstairs or in the deeper wings of the house. She had locked the door from the inside, propped a heavy wooden chair against the handle, and kept the portable gas lantern burning on a low setting, casting a dim, amber glow over the room.
At roughly 2:45 a.m., a sound woke her.
It wasn't a loud noise. It was a soft, rhythmic sound, like water bubbling in a small stream. Zareena opened her eyes, her body instantly tense, her hand reaching out automatically to check on Zara, who was sleeping beside her under the heavy quilt.
The little girl was lying on her back, her eyes wide open, staring directly at the empty, dark corner of the room near the ceiling. A soft, happy smile played on her lips, and she was giggling softly—a low, rhythmic chuckle that sounded entirely out of place in the freezing, dead room.
"Zara?" Zareena whispered, her voice tight with fear. "Beta, kya hua? Aap jaag rahi hain?"
Zara did not turn her head. She did not even blink. Her gaze remained locked on the empty air of the corner, where the amber light of the lantern faded into thick, black shadows.
Then, Zara’s lips moved. Her voice was a low, clear whisper, her Urdu perfect, but the tone... the tone belonged to someone who was participating in a structured, quiet conversation.
"Nahi," Zara whispered, laughing softly.
A pause followed. A long, agonizing silence during which the only sound was the wind scraping the branches against the exterior window. It lasted for nearly ten seconds, as if she were listening to someone speaking from the dark.
"Ammi ko achcha nahi lagega," Zara whispered again, her small voice tilting upward as if answering a question. "Woh hamesha roti hain jab main door jati hoon."
Another pause. The silence in the room became so thick Zareena could hear the heavy, slow ticking of her own wrist watch. The air grew perceptibly colder, her breath forming small, white plumes of mist in the amber light.
"Nahi, mujhe unhein chor kar nahi jana," Zara said, her voice turning soft, a note of gentle sadness entering her tone. "Woh akele darr jayengi. Bilal abbu gusse mein hamesha unhein maarta hai. Mujhe Ammi ke paas rehna hai."
Zareena felt a wave of cold nausea wash over her. She sat up slowly, her eyes darting to the corner of the room where her daughter was looking. There was nothing there. Only the bare, white-washed plaster walls, stained with water marks, meeting at a sharp angle. There was no shadow, no figure, no physical presence.
Yet Zara was responding to questions. Clear, distinct questions that Zareena could not hear. It was a domestic conversation with an invisible entity that was sitting in the corner of their locked bedroom, talking to her six-year-old daughter about their life, their trauma, and the man they had left behind in Islamabad.
"Zara! Bas karo!" Zareena suddenly reached out, grabbing her daughter by the shoulders and pulling her down onto the mattress, breaking her line of sight with the corner. "Kisse baat kar rahi ho tum? Kaun hai wahan? Kuch nahi hai wahan! So jao!"
The moment her line of sight was broken, Zara seemed to snap out of a deep trance. Her eyes blinked rapidly, the glassy, vacant look disappearing, replaced by the immediate, frightened confusion of a child woke abruptly from a nightmare. She looked at her mother’s pale, terrified face and immediately burst into tears, burying her face in Zareena’s neck.
"Ammi, woh uncle pooch rahe thay ke kya hum unke saath upar wale kamre mein rahenge," Zara sobbed, her small body shaking violently in her mother’s arms. "Unhone kaha ke wahan Bilal kabhi nahi aa sakta. Wahan waqt ruk jata hai."
Zareena held her daughter as tight as she could, her arms locking around the child's small frame like an iron vice. She did not look back at the corner of the room. She kept her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against Zara’s warm hair, praying to a God she wasn't sure was listening to let the night end, to let the sun rise, to give them a single moment of clean, unadulterated safety.
The necessity of survival forced her out of the house the following afternoon. Their small supply of food—a single bag of flour, some lentils, and a carton of milk—was already running low. Zareena needed to buy supplies from the small village settlement that lay three miles down the winding mountain road, near the base of the valley.
She drove the car down the gravel track, the vehicle bouncing heavily over the deep potholes filled with muddy rainwater. The village was a small, desolate cluster of flat-roofed mud and concrete houses clinging to the steep cliffs like barnacles. The air here was thick with the grey smoke of burning dung cakes and wet wood, and a handful of local men wearing thick wool woolen shawls stood outside the tea stalls, their faces weathered and dark from the harsh mountain sun.
Zareena parked the car near a small, dilapidated general store. As she stepped out onto the muddy path, holding Zara tightly by the hand, she felt the immediate weight of dozens of eyes locking onto her. The movement in the village didn't stop, but it slowed down perceptibly. The low hum of local Pashto and Punjabi conversation died down as they approached.
The shopkeeper was a middle-aged man with a graying beard and sharp, dark eyes. He looked at Zareena’s city clothes, then down at Zara, his expression shifting from curiosity to a guarded, stiff politeness.
"Ji, baji? Kya chahiye?" he asked, his voice flat.
Zareena listed their needs—atta, daal, cheeni, ghee, chai patti, chicken, mutton, chawal aur matchis ki panch dibiyaan. The man gathered the items slowly, placing them on the wooden counter between them.
Trying to sound casual, Zareena cleared her throat, leaning in slightly. "Bhai... main Shah saab ki haveli mein rukh rahi hoon. Meri dadi ki zamanat hai woh. Kya aapko pata hai ke wahan koi aur bhi rehta hai? Ya koi aas-paas aate jaate hain?"
The moment the words Shah saab ki haveli left her mouth, the shopkeeper’s hands went stiff around the bag of sugar he was holding. The paper bag crinkled sharply in the sudden silence of the store. Two elderly men who were sitting on a wooden bench near the entrance stopped talking entirely, their heads turning slowly toward her.
The shopkeeper set the sugar down with an unnatural, deliberate slowness. He did not look at her eyes; he kept his gaze fixed on her hands.
"Aapke dada ji ka naam Abdul Khan tha aur dadi ka naam Shama Khan tha kya?"
The question startled Zareena a bit. HOW DID A STRANGER KNOW ABOUT HER DECEASED GRANDPARENTS. Before she could continue, she shopkeeper said, "Humein nahi pata, baji. Hum log us taraf nahi jaate. Woh purani jagah hai. Khali padi hai barson sey."
"Magar mujhe lagta hai wahan koi hai," Zareena pressed, her voice urgent, ignoring the cold looks from the men outside. "Meri beti ne kisi ko dekha hai. Safed kapdo mein ek aadmi... Rizwan Shah naam batata hai apna. Kya aap unhein jaante hain?"
The name Rizwan Shah acted like a physical curtain dropping over the room. The shopkeeper’s face turned completely expressionless, a wall of pure, unyielding denial. He began shoving the items into a plastic bag with rapid, aggressive movements.
"Hum nahi jaante kisi Rizwan ko," he said, his voice dropping an octave, turning harsh and dismissive. "Aapka saaman ho gaya, baji. Hazaar rupaay ho gaye."
"Maine kaha humein nahi pata!" the shopkeeper suddenly snapped, his eyes flashing with a sharp, defensive anger that looked a lot like fear. "Aap saaman lein aur jayein yahan sey. Hum seedhe saadhe log hain, humein un mamlaat mein nahi padna."
Zareena swallowed her anger, placing the money on the counter. As she grabbed the plastic bags and turned to leave, an elderly village woman wearing a heavy black chador stepped into the shop, blocking her path for a brief second.
The old woman looked down at Zara, then up at Zareena’s bruised temple, which was partially visible beneath her safety pin-fastened dupatta. Her old, milky eyes filled with a sudden, profound sorrow. She reached out, her rough, calloused fingers brushing against Zareena’s wrist for a fraction of a second.
"Beti," the old woman whispered, her voice a dry, raspy rustle of leaves. "Kuch darwaze hamesha band hi achche lagte hain. Unhein kholne ki koshish mat karo. Us ghar ki mitti ko tumhari zaroorat nahi hai... us ghar ko sirf tumhara waqt chahiye. Chali jao yahan se, isse pehle ke woh tumhe yaad rakh le."
Before Zareena could ask her to elaborate, the old woman pulled her chador over her face and hurried past her into the depth of the market. The shopkeeper turned his back to them, counting his inventory with frantic energy. The message was absolute: the village had closed its doors to them. They were entirely on their own.
That night, the house asserted its presence with a horrifying clarity.
It was exactly 3:17 a.m. when Zareena woke. She didn't snap awake from a nightmare; she was drawn out of sleep by a sound that was so beautiful, so intimate, that it felt entirely wrong within the dead stone walls of the haveli.
It was a soft, high-pitched, melodic sound—a lullaby. The tune was slow and loving, the kind of ancient melody mothers in the subcontinent had sung to their children for generations to soothe them into slumber. It carried a strange, resonant warmth that seemed to vibrate through the very masonry of the house.
Zareena sat up, her skin breaking out into immediate gooseflesh. She looked down beside her. Zara was sleeping deeply, her breathing rhythmic and heavy, her stuffed rabbit tucked beneath her arm. The humming wasn't coming from her.
The sound was traveling through the dark, arched doorway of the morning room, drifting down from the long central corridor. It sounded close, yet impossibly far away, as if the person singing were standing just around the next corner, waiting for her.
Driven by a desperate, irrational need to find the source, to confront the entity that was destroying her life, Zareena picked up the portable gas lantern. She turned the valve until the amber flame bloomed, casting long, jumping shadows across the room. She quietly stepped over Zara’s sleeping form, carefully slid the wooden chair away from the door, and stepped out into the black spine of the haveli.
The corridor was freezing, the air so cold it felt like knives in her throat. The humming grew louder as she moved, guiding her through the darkness like a physical thread.
Hmmmm... hmmmm... so ja meri jaan...
The voice sounded soft, distinctly feminine now, carrying a heavy, tragic sweetness. Zareena followed it past the library, past the grand central courtyard, moving deep into the western wing of the house—a section she hadn't explored because the air there felt heavy and dead.
Room after room she passed, her lantern light flickering across ornate, rotting tapestries and broken mirrors. The humming always seemed to be just a few feet ahead of her, shifting from one corner to the next the moment she entered a space. It was playing with her, drawing her deeper into the labyrinth of stone.
Eventually, the melody led her to the absolute end of the western gallery.
The humming stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was deafening, pressing against her ears like deep water.
Zareena stood in front of a massive, heavy door made of solid black walnut wood. Unlike the other guest rooms, this door was heavily reinforced with iron bands, and a large, tarnished brass padlock hung from the central latch. It was a room she had tried to open the first day, but the key had been missing, and the wood had felt frozen shut.
She stood perfectly still, her breath coming in ragged, white plumes, the lantern shaking so violently in her hand that the glass casing rattled.
Three distinct, heavy knocks vibrated through the solid wood of the door.
They were delivered from the inside.
Someone was standing directly on the other side of the black walnut panel, their palm hitting the wood with a slow, rhythmic force. Zareena could see the dust around the iron frame flaking off with each impact, falling through the air like grey snow.
"Kaun... kaun hai wahan?" she cried out, her voice breaking into a high-pitched shriek, her legs losing their strength.
There was no vocal response. Only the sound of something heavy dragging itself against the inside of the door, a slow, scraping sound that sounded like a body sliding down the wood until it hit the floorboards below. And then, the silence returned, absolute and absolute.
Zareena turned and ran. She did not look back. She ran through the pitch-black corridors, the lantern light swinging wildly, her bare feet hitting the cold stone until she collapsed back into the morning room, slamming the door shut and shoving the heavy chair against it with a desperate, feral strength.
The horror of the night broke something fundamental inside her, but it also crystallized her purpose.
She crawled back onto the mattress, pulling Zara’s small, warm body into her lap. She did not close her eyes for the rest of the night. She sat there in the dim amber light of the lantern, holding her daughter so tightly she could feel every beat of the child's small heart, every rhythmic intake of breath.
The slow burn of the house’s supernatural malice was fading; it was becoming a direct, immediate threat to the only thing she had left in this world. As she watched the pale light of dawn slowly return to the window, a cold, crystalline resolve settled over her.
She had spent seven years running from a monster of flesh and bone in Islamabad. She had broken her own spirit to keep Zara safe from a man's fury. She hadn't survived that living hell just to let an ancient, unmoored house devour her child.
She looked down at Zara’s calm, sleeping face, her fingers gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from the little girl's forehead.
"Main tumhe kuch nahi hone doongi," Zareena whispered into the cold air of the morning, her voice no longer shaking. "Chahe yeh ghar kuch bhi ho... chahe yahan kuch bhi hua ho... main tumhein bachaongi, Zara. Allah ki qasam, main tumhein yahan se nikaal loongi."
It was a mother’s vow, made in the shadow of an ancient evil, a line drawn in the dust of a house that didn't care about human promises.
The morning arrived with a deceptive, cruel beauty.
The storm had completely passed, leaving the sky a brilliant, pale blue that Zareena hadn't seen since they entered the valley. Sunlight—bright, warm, and golden—poured through the arched windows of the grand central courtyard, cutting through the shadows and illuminating the intricate geometric tiles below. Birds were singing in the old orchard outside, their voices clear and unburdened. For the first time, the massive haveli didn't look like a monstrous tomb; it looked almost beautiful, a historic estate resting in the quiet peace of the mountains.
Zareena sat on a low bench in the sunlit courtyard, a small plate of parathas and a cup of warm tea sitting between them. Zara was eating happily, her fingers covered in oil, her conversation light as she talked about her stuffed rabbit’s imaginary adventures. The terror of the previous night seemed to have washed away from the child's mind like rain down a drain.
Zareena took a slow sip of her tea, the warmth grounding her. Maybe we can leave today, she thought, her mind calculating the logistics. We have the money. We can drive to another town, further north, where the houses are modern and the silence doesn't have footsteps.
"Ammi?" Zara suddenly spoke, her mouth half-full of paratha, her eyes fixed on her mother's face with a casual, innocent curiosity.
"Hmm? Kya hua, beta?" Zareena replied, her heart rate steady for the first time in forty-eight hours.
"Aap us uncle ko jaanti hain kya?" Zara asked, tearing off another small piece of bread.
Zareena’s hand froze around her teacup. The warmth of the sun suddenly felt non-existent. "Kaun se uncle, Zara?"
"Wahi, jo kal raat ko aapke bed ke paas khade they," Zara said casually, her voice completely normal, as if she were talking about a neighbor passing by in the street.
Zareena’s vision blurred at the edges. The sound of the birds outside seemed to recede into a distant, underwater murmur. She slowly set the cup down before her hands could spill the hot liquid.
"Zara... kal raat ko humare kamre ka darwaza band tha," Zareena said, her voice dropping into a flat, terrifyingly calm register. "Kamre mein koi nahi aa sakta tha. Aap kya keh rahi hain?"
"Nahi, Ammi, woh darwaze se nahi aaye thay," Zara said, frowning slightly as if confused by her mother’s density. "Woh toh pehle se hi wahan khade thay. Jab aap so rahi thi, tab woh aapke sirhane khade hokar aapko deikh rahe thay. Bohot der tak deikh rahe thay."
Zareena felt her sanity fracturing, a cold, jagged crack ripping through her mind. She frozen, her eyes locking onto her daughter's face. "Kaun... kaun khada tha, Zara? Unhone... unhone kuch kiya?"
"Nahi, kuch nahi kiya," Zara said, shaking her head as she picked up her doll. "Woh toh bas aapke baal dekh rahe thay. Aur unki aankhon mein bohot saare aansu they. Unhone mujhse kaha ke aap bohut thak gayi hain, aur aapko zyaada waqt aur mohabbat dene wala chahiye."
Zara casually stuffed the remaining piece of paratha into her mouth and stood up from the bench, running out toward the sunlit garden to play with her pebbles, entirely unbothered by the fact that she had just shattered her mother’s entire world into a thousand broken pieces.
Zareena remained sitting on the wooden bench, her body completely rigid, the golden sunlight warming her skin while her internal organs turned to ice. He was inside the room. Standing beside my head. While I slept.
The night returned with the inevitability of a executioner.
Zareena did not sleep. She could not sleep. She sat on the floor of the morning room, her back pressed against the locked door, the portable gas lantern turned to its absolute highest setting, filling the small space with a harsh, white, buzzing light that hurt her eyes.
At 11:45 p.m., she stood up, driven by a restless, manic energy. She walked over to the old oval mirror that hung above the cracked porcelain sink in the corner of the room—a remnant of the room’s original function as a dressing space.
The air in the room had grown remarkably humid over the last hour, the heat from the large gas lantern causing thick condensation to form over the cool glass of the window and the mirror. The reflective surface was completely occluded, covered in a smooth, milky layer of fine water droplets that blurred her reflection into a formless, white shape.
Zareena took a deep breath, raising her right hand to wipe the condensation away so she could look at her own eyes, to find some proof that she was still alive, still sane.
She froze. Her hand remained suspended three inches from the glass.
The condensation on the mirror was already disturbed.
Someone had written a message in the thin layer of water droplets. The letters were large, jagged, traced by a wide finger that had cleared away the moisture to reveal the dark, reflective glass beneath.
The words were written in Urdu script, bold and distinct:
Zareena’s lungs refused to draw air. Her mind reeled as she read the words over and over again. Don't come home. Don't come home. It was a warning. Or a command. It was the name of the nightmare they had fled, or the reality they had walked into.
And then, the true horror of the house asserted itself.
As Zareena stood paralyzed in front of the mirror, her eyes wide, a thin line of fresh water droplets began to move near the edge of the final letter.
Slowly, with a smooth, invisible pressure, a final dot began to form beneath the script. The condensation cleared away in a perfect, small circle, as if an invisible, freezing finger were standing right there beside her in the bright, harsh light of the room, slowly completing the sentence while she watched.
The air in the room died. The final letter was complete.
And from the dark, cavernous hallway directly outside the locked door, the soft, loving sound of the humming began again.
Author's Note : The Haveli has started to give red flags ya'all 😶
SEND HOPES AND PRAYERS FOR ZARA AND
ZAREENA, AS THE REAL DEAL IS YET TO BEGIN.
Pls tell me about how did ya'll felt about this chapter?
GAALI DO, SHABASHI DO, BUT PLS BATAO KAISA LAGA ??
Tagging : @marlena-marlena @twinblueflamee @precioussophia @iamadelusionalwriter @athena-roy @maroonphase @adityami @bobcuts-blog @yembarzal @365daywritingchallenge @gehra-hua @marvelfamily3000 @gulaabjamun08 @granddynamonovajbvgjjj @pixiiiiiiiiidust @majoriqbalkibiwi @seasonofthenerd @donatogary22 @starrysugargrace @prettyprettypleaseplease @ooopssssu @mainyahaankyunhoon @not-aviii @yearnerray @cherryyelixir @debsreads21 @ninnimouse @cloudyparadoxqueen @misteriadare @gehra-hua @hersatanicmajestysshit @kisswithknife @tere-naal-nachna @sinnoire @tojisloft @tessa-bl @prahelika-fics @neelom @idonthavechatpateusernamed @crimsontraditiongolem @multimedia @crispydreamrelic @saniisinsane @mrgrungusthefrog @akshayekhannamerehai @lookathelilac @luvvkk @obsessedwidskincare @yearnerray @sanpiece @tere-naal-nachna @pleasetagmejaaneman @hamzair-is-my-otp
