The lady in white

Chapter 12: The Calling

I was still sitting with my diary open when the doorbell rang.

The sound jolted me—not loudly, but sharply, as if it had interrupted something fragile. I closed the diary and walked toward the door. It was our neighbor aunty—one of my mother’s closest friends. She barely waited for me to greet her properly. Her eyes were bright, restless, carrying the unmistakable urgency of hot gossip waiting to spill.

She smiled to herself as she stepped inside.

While she and my mother settled into conversation, I moved toward the kitchen to make tea. The house felt normal—too normal. But halfway through boiling the water, a strange sensation washed over me. A faint dizziness. As if the air around my head had thickened.

My vision was blurred.

The world tilted.

For a fraction of a second, I wasn’t falling—I was drifting.

Then—pain.

A sudden sharp pain snapped me back as something hit my head. I gasped and staggered back.

A ball.

Two children stood in front of me, frozen mid-laughter, their game abruptly halted. I looked around in disbelief.

I was on the terrace.

My heart began to pound violently. I hadn’t climbed the stairs. I hadn’t even left the kitchen. The last thing I remembered was reaching for the stove.

So how was I here?

Cold panic crept up my spine. I rushed back downstairs, almost running, my thoughts colliding into each other. I reached the kitchen again, hands trembling, and resumed making tea as if nothing had happened—afraid that acknowledging it would make it worse.

And then I remembered something else.

Before the dizziness. Before the silence.

There had been whispers.

So close to my ear that I had felt breath—but the words were unclear, unfamiliar. I hadn’t understood a single one. Yet somehow, they had entered me, slowly tightening their grip until my senses slipped away.

“Beta, is the tea ready?” my mother called from the room.

I carried two cups out and placed them in front of them. Their faces were tense now—voices lowered, expressions heavy. This wasn’t casual gossip.

I caught fragments.

A flat near the community park.

A girl who lived there with her parents.

Dead.

No clear reason.

Something about the conversation made my skin prickle.

“Aunty… is everything okay?” I asked softly.

She sighed and leaned closer. “That flat,” she said, lowering her voice, “has a history.”

Years ago, a family lived there. Normal, on the surface. But the woman of the house was… devoted. Not to God, as people first believed—but to something darker. Neighbors claimed they had seen her performing rituals at the chauraha at midnight. Some said people fell ill after witnessing it. A few even died.

Complaints were filed. Warnings were given. But there was never proof.

Eventually, the family vanished.

And now—this. As she spoke, a chill settled deep inside me. This didn’t feel like an ordinary superstition. Something about that flat felt wrong. Heavy. As if it was waiting.

Questions crowded my mind. Curiosity tangled with fear.

And somewhere beneath it all, something else stirred—

as if whatever had whispered to me earlier had been listening.