Chapter Seven: The Red Door
479 Words
It was nearly dark by the time Advait found the road back to Guldarh.
His jeans were soaked from knee to ankle, his shirt clung to his skin, and the notebook was tucked under his arm like something sacred. He didn’t take the main road; he followed animal tracks, stream beds, and finally came up behind the local post office.
The town looked different now. Not peaceful—quiet in a calculated way. As if the silence itself had ears.
He kept his head down and returned to the hotel through the rear path. No one saw him enter.
At the front desk, the woman looked up without surprise. “Room 205?”
“No,” he said. “I’m staying tonight.”
She nodded and handed him a key without a word. Room 102. Ground floor.
Inside, he double-locked the door, bolted the window, and sat on the edge of the bed with Ira’s notebook open again.
He flipped through the middle pages, searching for anything about the photo. And then he found it—on page 38.
A sketch. Not artistic—functional. Floor plan of a building. An arrow pointing to the door. The caption:
“Shimla. Mall Road. The bookstore with no sign.”
He whispered the words aloud, tasting their meaning.
Shimla.
The next town over. Larger. Busier. A place where someone could hide in plain sight.
He snapped a photo of the notebook page and backed it up on his encrypted drive. Then he reread the note Ira had left him on the first page.
> “If they find this book, it ends.”
He suddenly understood why.
The book didn’t just contain what Ira knew.
It contained where she’d hidden the rest.
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That night, he couldn’t sleep. The woods felt closer somehow. His dreams were jagged. Flashes of red. Ira whispering his name through static. A man with no face watching him from a mirror.
He woke up at 3:11 a.m., drenched in sweat.
A scratching noise came from outside the window.
He froze. Sat upright. Waited.
It came again—three short scratches. Fingernail against glass.
He reached for the torch and moved slowly to the window.
Nothing.
Then he noticed the edge of a paper—wedged beneath the frame.
He opened the latch and pulled it in.
A page, torn roughly from a book. On it, in hurried handwriting:
“Don’t trust anyone in Guldarh. They work for it now.”
No signature. Just one red fingerprint in the bottom corner.
He turned the note over.
A map. Crude. Showing a route from Guldarh to Shimla.
A circle marked with red ink: “The Owl Door.”
His blood ran cold.
It wasn’t just a door.
It was a name. A place. A code.
He wasn’t chasing a person anymore.
He was chasing something bigger than Ira.
- Writer
