CH 1- The Whispering Shadows

The taxi juddered down the winding, hilly road to Blackridge, its headlights hacking at swirling fog that seemed to thicken with every passing mile. Back Detective Anaya Kapoor was staring hard at the road but showed very little other than some trees shrouded by mist. She was futzing with the strap to her bag as anxiety started to bite into her. She wasn’t shy about investigating remote towns; there was just something about this gig that was different.

The driver cleared his throat, breaking the silence. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” Anaya replied, glancing at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His eyes darted nervously between her and the road. “Just visiting.”

He chuckled, a sound devoid of humor. “Not much of a place for visitors. Folks around here keep to themselves. Especially about. well, you’ll see.”

“See what?” she asked, leaning forward slightly.

The driver did not reply, tensing his grip on the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Just be careful,” he muttered. “Blackridge has its secrets.”.

The car turned onto the periphery of town, and one streetlamp spread down a dim, flickering light over cobblestone. Anaya stepped out, gravel crunching around her boots. Blackridge was just as eerily as she’d imagined: small, quiet, shrouded in almost oppressive stillness.

A sign creaked in the wind over the cab, peeled letters reading Welcome to Blackridge: Where History Lives On. She couldn’t help but laugh at the hypocrisy.

“Where’s Dr Mehra’s house?” she asked the driver, who was already unpacking her suitcase.

He looked sheepish before nodding down the street. “Second right, then straight on. You’ll see it.”. Anaya nodded thanks and turned, watching the taxi disappear into the fog. She breathed into the scarf and stepped out into the earthy air damp with a tang of iron or blood but not where just so.

Few of the women she passed treated her with wide-brimmed hats that pulled forward, and scarves wrapped tight around their faces. There was an old woman seated on a bench by the window. She muttered away until Anaya approached her.

“Excuse me,” said Anaya braking herself. “I am searching for Dr Mehra’s place.”

The old woman stared at her sharply. Pale eyes snapped into brightness in the dim light.
“Why?”

“I am here tracing his disappearance”, Anaya said in the most professional tone. “Do you know anything about him?”

The woman gave a cackle that far from being funny was far more disturbing. “You shouldn’t have come here, child. Some things are better left buried.”

“What do you mean?”

She said nothing, merely dug her hand into her pocket, brought out a tiny rusty locket and thrust it into Anaya’s palm. “Take this,” she said. “You will need it.”.

She was going to ask what she meant when the woman shuffled away mumbling to herself. Anaya looked down at the locket. It was cold against her skin, and the surface bore strange unreadable symbols. She put it into her pocket and continued walking, her mind racing with questions.

Yes, after all, Mehra’s house was of a sort of outpost- the only two-story Victorian amidst all these lowly dwellings. Shutters were closed and vines up the walls-it almost appeared abandoned. The old ironwork gate let out a protest under Anaya’s pushing motion of which her footsteps crunching down onto the gravel was painfully sharp in the silence that resounded through.

The front door was open. She stepped inside, her hand reaching out to touch the grip of the holstered pistol that rode beneath her jacket out of habit. Inside, it smelled of decay and mustiness. Dust motes swirled in the dim light that filtered through the curtains.

“Dr. Mehra?” she called out, though she knew she’d get no answer.

Of course, there was the doorway which led into a great room. Books were strewn all over the floor whose pages, with age and time’s wear and tear, had yellowed and worn down. Light lay on one side beside an upturned chair covered by a thin sheet of dust as if the life of the house had been suspended.

Anaya looked at the photograph pinned up on the mantle. Here he stands, in front of the ancient temple, a man of middle age, with benevolent eyes and a well-tended beard. In his hand, he holds a rather minute small, black, shiny figure. She pulled off the picture and looked at it carefully. It was a temple in the back. Ancient as if stone walls covered it with different carvings inside. Had he not worked there on a place that he made much ado about clearing? She shook so that she felt something cold had cut off her mental thermostat. The room had fallen cold; she shivered. That thick coat of hers chafed cold.

Whispers of the faintest whispers breathed so low into her ears; one listened close to it – to her very voice at work there

“Who’s here?” she asked, even and smooth over spasms rising in her intestines.

The whisper was louder this time, something like her name.

She went for her flashlight and swayed the beam around the room. A shadow darted across the far wall. Turning that way, however, she saw nothing. The grip on the flashlight tightened. ‘Get it together, Anaya’, she cautioned herself.

She entered. Her steps were odd, echoing in the quiet. The kitchen was a mess-too much, to be sure; sink stacked with greasy dishes piled above it, half of something awful on the table gone sour. Back from this wall was an open doorway leading down into the basement. There issued a feeble pulsating light coming out of it.

Anaya hesitated but every instinct screamed at her not to go downstairs. The sense of her duty wouldn’t let it be and so she entered the darkened staircase below, shining her flashlight through slices of blackness.

The basement was much colder than the rest of the house. It was in the center of the room that a table sat, and on top of this table lay an open journal. It was full of wild scribbling and automatic sketches of symbols, together with what appeared to be the black statue from the photo.

She turned, thrusting her flashlight around and feeling something drop behind her. But she caught only an empty space. Still, that sense of being followed never left.

She pulled up the journal and ran back upstairs, heart pounding within. Back in the living room, she began to flip through it, trying to calm herself. Entries spoke of the excavation, finding a relic, and some weird happenings that started afterward; dark figures, whisperings, and an evil feeling.

It was the last line that made her shiver. “The relic is more than an artifact. It’s a key. And now, they know I have it.”.

Anaya sat bolt upright as the front door groaned open, but no one stood at the entrance. Outside, fog had rolled in, taking up the entire street beyond the gate. She closed the journal and steeled herself. Whatever had happened to Dr. Mehra, she was going to find out- no matter how much she might fear confronting the darkness that seemed to enfold Blackridge

And she went out, and a faint whispering followed her down the stiff, sharp wind.