The Hunger Beneath Tumbbad

THE THREE KNOCKS,  The first time I heard the knocking, my grandmother was still alive. It was raining that night. Not ordinary rain. The kind that turns the sky black before sunset and makes the entire world sound as if it is drowning. Water poured from the broken roof of our ancestral house, ran down the walls, and collected in the courtyard like a dark mirror. I was twelve years old. My grandmother sat beside the dying fire, staring at the wooden floor beneath her feet. Then came the sound. Knock. I looked at her. Knock. The fire suddenly seemed smaller. Knock. Three slow knocks. They had come from beneath the floor. "Grandmother?" I whispered. She didn't answer. Her fingers tightened around the beads in her hand. Then she looked at me. "Whatever you hear tonight," she said, "do not go downstairs." "There is no downstairs." Her face went pale. "There used to be." I laughed nervously. "What do you mean?" She leaned closer. "Your great-grandfather sealed it." Another knock came from below. This time, it was louder. My grandmother grabbed my wrist so hard that her nails dug into my skin. "Listen carefully, Aarav. There is something beneath this house. Something our family was never supposed to find." "What is it?" She stared at the floor. "Something that was hungry before this village was born." That was the last conversation I ever had with her. She died three days later. Twenty years passed. I never returned to that house. Until my father disappeared. The police found his motorcycle near the old village road, but there was no sign of him. No body. No phone. Nothing. The only thing they found was an old brass key in his pocket. A key that belonged to our ancestral house. So I went back. The house looked smaller than I remembered. The walls were covered with moss. The wooden doors had swollen from years of rain. The courtyard was filled with weeds, and the old well in the corner was almost completely hidden beneath them. But the house still smelled the same. Wet earth. Smoke. And something sweet that I couldn't identify. I entered my grandmother's room just before midnight. Her old wooden trunk was still there. Inside it were clothes, photographs, a few letters, and a small notebook wrapped in red cloth. I opened it. Most of the pages were blank. Then I found a sentence written in my grandmother's handwriting. "If the rain begins before the moon rises, leave the house." I looked through the window. The rain had stopped. But the sky was completely black. There was no moon. I turned the page. Another sentence. "Never answer the three knocks." My stomach tightened. From somewhere beneath the house came a sound. Knock. I froze. A second knock followed. Knock. I could hear my own heartbeat. Then came the third. Knock. I remembered my grandmother's face. Do not go downstairs. I closed the notebook. Then I heard something else. A voice. Very faint. Coming from beneath the floor. "Aarav..." I stopped breathing. It sounded like my father. "Help me." I rushed toward the door. Then I remembered something. My father had been missing for six days. There was no way he could be inside the house. "Aarav..." The voice came again. This time, it was crying. I stood in the middle of the room, trembling. Then the wooden floor beneath my feet moved. A narrow c***k appeared between the boards. Cold air rushed through it. I stepped backward. The c***k widened. Beneath the floor was a staircase. A staircase that had not existed when I was a child. At the bottom stood an old stone door. And hanging from its rusted handle was a red thread. The same red thread my grandmother had used to wrap her notebook. I should have left. I should have walked out of the house and never looked back. Instead, I picked up the brass key. It fit the lock perfectly. As I turned it, something on the other side of the door began to breathe. Slowly. Heavily. Hungrily. Then a whisper came through the darkness. Not my father's voice this time. Something much older. Something that sounded almost human. "You finally came back." The door opened by itself. And behind it, something smiled.