Untitled EpisChapter Three: The Forgotten Namesode
1288 Words
Arjun spent the morning combing through his camera shots, enlarging the grainy image from the previous night—the face was still there. Pale, almost translucent, with eyes wide open and too dark. He tried convincing himself it was a glitch, an overlay of leaves and rain caught in flash.
But the smile. It wasn’t pareidolia. It was real.
He needed answers.
He found Revathy in the garden, watering hibiscus plants. “Do you know the name of the children who disappeared?” he asked abruptly.
She didn’t look at him. “We forget them. That’s the way it’s done here.”
“How can you forget twelve children?”
“They were taken, not lost,” she said quietly. “We speak no names because names give shape to memory. Memory gives power. And she listens.”
“She?”
Revathy stood up, her eyes shining strangely in the sun. “You’ve already heard her, haven’t you?”
Arjun’s heart pounded. “In dreams. In the rain.”
Revathy nodded. “It means she has marked you. Be careful. If she knows your true name, she will never let you leave.”
Later that day, Arjun wandered into the village’s decrepit library. The caretaker, an old man with cataracts, handed him a dusty ledger when he asked about the missing children. “You won’t find them in stories. You’ll find them in what’s been erased.”
The ledger was filled with school records. Perfectly maintained—until 1983. Then, a sudden break. Pages torn, scribbled out, names blacked with ink.
One survived.
Lakshmi. Age 8. Status: Returned.
Returned?
He stared at the entry. Returned when? How?
The librarian whispered, “She came back two weeks later. Not right. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t eat. Died three days after.”
“Where is she buried?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “She isn’t.”
---
That evening, Arjun returned to the house. Revathy wasn’t home. He wandered upstairs—and found a locked door at the end of the hallway.
The only room with a mirror.
Through the keyhole, he saw flickering candlelight.
And a hand pressed to the mirror’s glass—from the other side.
The next morning dawned unusually bright, almost unnaturally so, the sun's rays pouring over Kallur like a golden flood meant to bleach away the darkness of the night. But to Arjun, it brought no warmth. His dreams had lingered—images of drowned children with empty eyes, of whispering mouths beneath the surface of the old well, of a woman with no face who watched him through a veil of vines.
Revathy said little over breakfast. She kept glancing out the window, fingers unconsciously tracing the rim of her teacup. When Arjun mentioned the figure in the woods again, she simply murmured, "Sometimes the forest remembers who listens."
Arjun knew he couldn't leave now. Whatever lay beneath Kallur's surface, it had drawn him in. But today, he would search for answers—not from the villagers, who remained locked behind doors—but from what little history Kallur might still hold.
Revathy, reluctant at first, eventually directed him to the old library, housed in a crumbling ancestral home once owned by the village headman. It hadn’t been opened in years, but the key still hung from a rusted nail inside the school.
The library smelled of mold and dust, of things long forgotten. Shelves sagged with age. Books had fused with cobwebs. But there were newspapers, diaries, and local records—some legible, others warped beyond recognition.
Hours passed as Arjun sifted through yellowed pages, but finally, he found it: a torn journal entry dated March 14th, 1983.
> “The children complain of dreams. Strange songs in the well. Leela said she heard her dead mother call her. We are scared. Something moves in the soil at night. The village prays, but the priest has fallen silent.”
Another entry, days later:
> “They’re gone. All twelve. Vanished. No sign. We heard them scream, but it was like the sound was pulled underground. The well… it smells of iron. We sealed it, but too late. I think she has returned. The Whisperer.”
There it was again. That name. The Whisperer.
A cold sweat broke on Arjun’s neck. He gathered the entries, carefully photographed them with his phone, and prepared to leave. But as he stepped into the hallway, he froze.
There was a mirror on the wall.
It hadn't been there before.
Tarnished, but intact. Oval. Ornate.
Arjun’s reflection stared back.
But it was wrong.
The eyes in the mirror didn’t match his expression. They were too wide, too hungry. Behind him in the reflection, something stood—tall, draped in black hair that hung like drowned vines, eyes where there should have been none.
He spun around.
Nothing.
When he looked again, the mirror was gone.
He ran out into the blinding sunlight, chest heaving.
---
That evening, Revathy found him sitting near the temple ruins outside the village, clutching his camera like a talisman.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “In the mirror.”
Revathy sat beside him. “There were once mirrors in every home in Kallur. Not for vanity. For protection. A mirror is a doorway, yes—but also a trap. Spirits can pass through if the mirror is open. But it can trap them too.”
“Why remove them, then?”
Revathy hesitated. “Because one day… they stopped reflecting what they should. People saw things watching them. Things that spoke without sound. Children who had died. Parents who were still alive. The mirrors lied. Or showed too much.”
Arjun was silent for a long moment.
“I need to go back to the well,” he said.
Revathy didn’t stop him.
---
Night fell quickly.
Arjun stood before the barred well again, his torchlight slicing through the mist. The padlock still hung from the iron bars, but now it looked newer, shinier—as if someone had replaced it.
He felt watched.
Then he saw it. Carved into the mossy stone, just beneath the rim of the well: a symbol. A spiral, almost floral, but it moved subtly, breathing in the light. He reached out.
His fingers touched the stone.
And the world tilted.
He wasn’t in Kallur anymore.
The sky above was black. Not starless, but full of… eyes. Floating. Watching. The trees were bent backward, their roots twitching like worms. In the distance, children stood in a ring, chanting. And in the center of the ring was the woman—The Whisperer.
Her face was a shifting void, a blur of every face he had ever forgotten, and she was smiling.
“You came,” she said, her voice not sound but sensation.
“I didn’t mean to,” Arjun whispered.
“But you remembered me. You looked. You listened. And now I am awake.”
She raised her hand, and his body screamed—not in pain, but in unraveling. Memories bled from his mind. His mother’s face. His own childhood. All stolen like pages torn from a book.
He fell to his knees.
“You will carry my mark,” she said. “And they will follow you now. Into mirrors. Into dreams. Into every forgotten shadow.”
Darkness closed in.
---
Arjun woke in his room.
His clothes were dry. His camera on the desk. Morning light streamed through the window.
Had it all been a dream?
He stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and looked up.
The mirror was back.
And behind his reflection, twelve children stood in silence.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
(To be continued...)
- Writer
