Whispers Beneath the Backwaters -The Upstairs Cry - Part 11

 The house trembled above them.

Dust fell from the underground ceiling while distant banging echoed through the walls.

Someone was trapped upstairs.

And trying desperately to get out.

Meenu suddenly grabbed Arjun’s hand tightly.

“She’s angry now.”

“Who?” Devika asked.

But Meenu looked terrified to answer.

Another loud slam shook the house.

Then came screaming.

A woman screaming in unbearable pain.

Arjun recognized the voice instantly.

His mother.

Madhavi.

The cry echoed through every wall of the underground chamber.

Kuttappan looked ready to collapse.

“It’s happening again…”

“What is happening?!” Devika shouted.

Before anyone answered, the lantern blew out.

Darkness swallowed them whole.

Immediately tiny hands touched Arjun from every side.

Cold fingers.

Pulling.

Clinging to his clothes.

Children whispering around him.

“Don’t leave us…”

“Amma is hungry…”

“She cries at night…”

Devika screamed somewhere nearby.

Meenu began sobbing loudly.

Then a bright blue light appeared at the passage entrance.

A woman stood there holding an oil lamp.

Ammini.

Her white saree glowed faintly in the darkness.

This time her face was fully visible.

Beautiful.

Almost painfully beautiful.

But her eyes carried something ancient and lonely.

“Come,” she whispered softly to Arjun.

The children’s whispers stopped immediately.

Even the darkness seemed afraid of her.

Devika pulled Arjun back.

“No!”

But Ammini never looked at Devika.

Only at Arjun.

“My son…”

Arjun’s chest tightened painfully.

He should have felt terror.

Instead…

He felt grief.

Like seeing someone he had loved long ago.

Behind Ammini, shadows moved inside the walls.

Children.

Dozens of them.

Watching silently.

Then another figure emerged deeper in the passage.

A woman with wet tangled hair.

Madhavi.

Arjun’s mother.

But unlike Ammini, she looked broken.

Rotting.

Eyes filled with hatred.

“You took him from me!” Madhavi screamed.

The underground chamber shook violently.

Ammini’s calm expression finally changed.

Sadness crossed her face.

“I saved him.”

“LIAR!”

Madhavi lunged forward unnaturally fast.

The oil lamp burst.

Darkness exploded around them.

Arjun heard Devika crying.

Kuttappan chanting loudly.

Children laughing wildly.

Then two women screaming at each other in the dark.

A freezing wind knocked Arjun against the wall.

And suddenly—

Silence.

The lantern reignited by itself.

Both spirits were gone.

Only muddy footprints remained.

Leading upward.

Toward the house.

Toward the locked room upstairs.

Meenu stared upward with trembling lips.

“She found grandfather.”

At that exact moment, an old man’s scream echoed through the entire house.

Not ghostly.

Real.

Alive.

Narayanan Menon was still alive.

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