Journey Of Hell | CH:37 (The Ghost in the Room)

I spent the day in a state of grim preparedness. I wrote in this journal. I ate a simple meal. I meditated, trying to build some kind of wall around my soul for the coming night’s torment. The routine had become a strange comfort, a way of feeling some small measure of control in a life that had none. As evening fell, I changed into simple clothes and sat on my bed, waiting for Katha.

The knock on the door was so unexpected it felt like a gunshot.

My heart leaped into my throat. No one came here anymore. My relatives called, but they didn’t visit. The silence was rarely broken. I crept to the door, my heart pounding, and looked through the peephole.

It was Sameer.

A cold dread washed over me, followed by a hot, shameful flush. He looked different than I remembered. Thinner. Tired. He stood there, shifting his weight, his car keys jingling in his hand.

I shouldn’t have opened the door.

Every fiber of my being, every lesson learned in the fiery pits of hell, screamed at me to keep it shut. But I was also Dimple. Lonely, grieving Dimple. And he was a piece of my old life. A dark, broken piece, but a familiar one.

I opened the door.

“Dimple,” he said, his voice soft. “I was worried. You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“I’ve been… busy,” I said, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth.

He pushed his way gently inside, his presence filling the sterile quiet of my home with a scent of expensive cologne and the world outside. He looked around. “It’s so quiet in here.”

He turned to me, his eyes full of a practiced sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Dimple. About Maya. I only just heard.”

He pulled me into a hug. His body was warm, solid. Real. In a world that had become a nightmare of phantom pains and spiritual torment, his physical presence was an anchor.

I leaned into him, just for a second, and my resolve began to crumble.

“I know things were complicated with us,” he whispered, his lips close to my ear. “But I still care about you. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

He began to stroke my hair. His touch was not comforting. It was a key turning in an old, rusted lock. A part of me, a part I thought had been burned away in the Narakas, stirred. The part that craved distraction. The part that was tired of being a grieving mother and just wanted to be a woman, even for a moment.

“You don’t have to be alone tonight,” he murmured.

I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I just didn’t pull away. And that was enough.

He led me to my bedroom. The room where Katha would soon appear. As he began to undress, a frantic monologue screamed in my head. What are you doing? This is a sin. You know what happens. You’ve seen it. Felt it.

But another voice, a tired, broken, selfish voice, whispered back. Just for a little while. Just to feel something other than pain. Just to forget.

He undressed me. His hands were just as I remembered them. Confident. Selfish. I felt a wave of self-loathing so profound it was sickening. This was the body that had belonged to Rohan. This was the body that had carried my children. And I was letting this man, this symbol of my betrayal, touch it again.

But I couldn’t resist. The craving for a moment of oblivion was stronger than my will. I closed my eyes and let him have his way, my body a pliant, dead thing, my soul screaming in a silent corner of my mind. It was a desperate, empty act. There was no pleasure in it. Only a deep, hollow shame.

As we lay there, in the quiet aftermath, it happened.

The room grew cold.

I opened my eyes. Katha was standing at the foot of the bed.

She was not the beautiful girl from the woods.

She was not the terrifying entity of rage. She was something in between. Her face was a mask of pure, sorrowful disappointment. She looked at me, her ancient eyes seeing everything. My naked body. My naked sin. My naked soul.

Sameer didn’t see her. He was oblivious. He rolled over, kissed my shoulder with a casual intimacy that made me want to vomit, and said, “I should go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He got up, dressed, and walked out of the room. He walked right through her.

He was gone. And I was left there, naked and exposed on the bed, my shame a physical presence in the room, with the being who served as my judge and jury.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I just lay there, a lost soul, every ounce of courage I had gathered, every bit of grim resolve, stripped away. I had just proven that I had learned nothing.

Finally, I broke. The sobs came from a place so deep inside me I didn’t know it existed. They were not sounds of grief, but of self-hatred.

I curled into a ball, my body shaking, my soul laid bare and found wanting.

Katha did not speak for a long time. The silence was my true punishment. When she finally did, her voice was not angry. It was quiet. And it was filled with an immense, cosmic sadness.

“Do you see now, Dimple?” she whispered, the sound cutting through my sobs. “Do you see how deep the roots of sin go? Do you see how easy it is to fall, even when you know the consequences?”

She drifted closer. I felt a strange, cool touch on my shoulder. It was not a judgment. It was not a condemnation.

“This does not change the pact,” she said softly. “It only adds to the ledger. This is why you are writing this book. Not because you are better than those who will read it. But because you are exactly the same.”

Her words were not a comfort. They were a terrible, heartbreaking truth. But in that moment, in her quiet, sorrowful consolation, I felt a flicker of something I hadn’t felt before. Not hope. Not courage.

But the grim, absolute understanding of the work that still needed to be done.

“It is time,” she said. And the room began to dissolve into blackness.

Index of: Journey Of Hell: The Unforgotten Promise

Piyu4k

Journey Of Hell | CH:37 (The Ghost in the Room)

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