My name is Dimple Mehta. This is not a story. It is a confession. The testimony I am being forced to write in exchange for the souls of my family.

There is a being who calls herself Katha. She made a pact with me. Every night, she takes my soul from my body and plunges it into my daughter’s. In those hours, I am no longer Dimple, the grieving mother; I become Maya, the damned soul. I feel the spikes in my feet. I burn in the fires of my own making. I feel the shame of sins I had forgotten I’d committed, and sins I prayed no one would ever discover.

When I am returned to my body, trembling and broken, I must write. This journal is that testimony. It is the truest account I can give of what awaits a soul that forgets its promise to God. Do not read this as fantasy. Read this knowing that for a few hours last night, and the night before, and every night since the pact was made, this happened to me.