It has been a week since the silence began. It’s not an empty silence. It’s heavy. It’s a physical weight that sits on my chest, making my breathing shallow. It’s the sound of a life that has been hollowed out. A week ago, this house had echoes. Maya’s guitar, the tinny beat from her headphones leaking out from under her door, the sound of her laughing with a friend on the phone. Now, there is only the thick, humming quiet she left behind.
I came home from work. It was a Tuesday. I remember the trivial details with perfect clarity. I was irritated about a meeting that had run late. I was mentally composing a passive-aggressive email to a junior colleague. I kicked off my heels—they were pinching my toes—and tossed my bag onto the sofa. The first thread of wrongness was the quiet. It was too complete for 5:30 PM.
“Maya?” I called out, my voice sharpened by the day’s irritations. “I’m home.”
The silence that answered was deep and wrong. A mother knows. It’s a primal instinct. The hair on my arms stood up.
“Maya?” I said again, my voice softer now, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach. I walked down the hall. Her bedroom door was closed, which was unusual. I pushed it open.
And my world ended for the second time.
The mind is a merciful liar. In that first second, I didn’t see my daughter. I saw a problem. A shape on the floor that shouldn’t be there. A spill. Something broken. A task to be fixed. My brain fought, with everything it had, to keep the truth from me. Then the lie broke. The truth flooded in. And a sound I have never heard before tore from my throat.
In the middle of that first, shattering moment, I saw them. I swear on the souls of my children, I saw them. The air shimmered, like heat rising from pavement, and two figures solidified from the shadows. They were tall and dark, their forms indistinct, their faces cruel masks of indifference. They were not looking at me. They were looking down at a faint, glowing outline of my Maya, a shimmering echo of her, that was floating just above her body.
They were wrapping her in ropes made of pure darkness, and she was struggling, her translucent face a mask of a terror so profound I have no words for it.
I tried to run, to scream, to fight them. But I was a statue, frozen by a horror my mind couldn’t process. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. And they took her with them.
The doctors, the police, they all said the same thing. Trauma-induced hallucination. A story a broken mind tells itself. I let them believe it. It was easier than trying to explain the truth.
Today, the silence in the house became a physical pressure. It felt like it was trying to crush me. I did what we all do when the world becomes too real. I ran away. Just to the woods behind our housing society. And I took my phone with me. My little window into other, better lives. I sat under a huge banyan tree and I scrolled. Envy, hot and ugly, coiled in my gut as I saw a friend’s “perfect” vacation photos. Resentment flared as a colleague announced a promotion. I stared at a picture I posted two years ago.
The four of us on a beach. Rohan, me, Maya, Avi. “My perfect family,” the caption read. A lie. I remembered the fight we’d had just before taking it. I remembered snapping at the kids to just smile for the damn picture. Later that night, in a private chat, I complained about Rohan to my friend, Priya. A small, casual act of betrayal. A few taps of my thumbs to undermine the man I had vowed to honor.
I kept scrolling, deeper into my own curated history. A work event. I was standing next to my colleague, Sameer. His arm was around my waist. A little too familiar. I remembered the flirty texts that had followed. The nude photos I had sent him late one night, my heart pounding with a cheap, illicit thrill while my husband slept in the next room. I remembered the business trip, the hotel bar, the feel of his hands on me, the guilt and the excitement all tangled together. I had ended it. I had told myself it was a mistake, a moment of weakness. But looking at the photo now, I knew it wasn’t just a mistake. It was a choice. It was a sin.
The phone felt greasy in my hand. Tears began to fall. Hot, shameful tears. I was crying for my daughter.
But I was also crying for myself. For the convenient lies I had told myself for years.
“The truth is a heavy burden, isn’t it, Dimple?”
The voice was like a small bell. I looked up. A young woman in a simple white saree stood before me. She was beautiful, but it was her eyes that captured me. They were full of a deep, ancient compassion. They saw everything.
“My name is Katha,” she said, sitting on the grass. “What you saw was real. The Yamduts have taken your daughter’s soul.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“She was in pain,” I managed to choke out.
“And you were in pain when you betrayed your husband?” Katha asked, her voice gentle, but the question was a razor. “The Law of Karma does not judge our reasons. Only our actions.” She paused. “I can bring her back. And Rohan. And Avi.”
The world stopped. Hope, sharp and agonizing, pierced through my grief. “How?”
“This world has forgotten the truth,” she said. “It hides its sins behind smiling photos and believes that a secret is not a sin. It has forgotten that every act, every thought, every casual betrayal is recorded. You will help me remind them.”
She leaned closer. “You will be my witness. I will take your soul and merge it with Maya’s. You will feel her punishment. And when you return, you will write it all down. You will write a book that exposes the truth. When it is finished, your family will be returned to you.”
This was a nightmare. A terrifying, impossible choice. But to have them back…
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” Katha said, a strange light in her eyes. “The journey begins tonight. And Dimple… you should know. The sins of the daughter are many. But the sins of the mother… they are the soil in which the daughter’s sins grew.”
Leave a Reply