Thud thud thud..... is somebody at the door? When I opened the door, a tall man stood in front of me, wearing a long black coat reaching to his knees and a hat. As soon as I reacted to him, he said, "Good evening, Deepak, here's something for you," and handed a parcel to me. I asked, "What is this?" He gave me a smile, turned, and then disappeared into that lonely, dark night.
When I opened the parcel, my past flooded back, and the lost, bad memories revived.
The smell of wet dirt and old incense came from the package. It instantly took me back to a time I had tried hard to forget. My hands shook as I ripped the brown paper, finding not the small gifts I expected, but an old-looking diary, its leather cover broken and faded. And under it, a bloody, worn blue T-shirt. A cold, bad feeling filled me. This wasn't just a reminder; it was a warning.
My mind raced back to that very hot summer of 2005 in Agra. I was just eighteen, full of hopes, and living with my grandmother in our old family home in Rawatpara. It was a time of innocence, broken by one terrible night. The diary, I suddenly realized, was Nisha's diary.
Nisha, my childhood friend, lively and full of energy, had simply disappeared. Her vanishing had bothered our small town, and the police couldn't find anything. They said she had run away, but I knew better. I had seen her that night, argued with her, and then... nothing. A scary blank in my memory, mixed with a strong feeling of guilt.
I held the T-shirt tightly, its cloth stiff with dry blood, and felt sick. This was the same T-shirt Nisha wore that last evening. The details of that night, hidden for a long time, started to come out. We had been near the old, unused well, behind the falling-apart house at the edge of town – a place everyone called "Bhoot Bangla." People whispered about its dark past, about an old woman, Malti Devi, who lived there, drawing strange marks on the crumbling walls, talking to herself. They called her crazy.
The first entry in Nisha's diary, dated June 14, 2005, said: "He's watching me. I feel it. The eyes in the dark. He knows." My blood turned cold. He. Who was she talking about? Later entries became more scared, telling about odd things happening, footsteps outside her window, a feeling of being followed. Then, the last entry, dated July 10, 2005, the day she vanished: "The well… he wants me to go to the well. But Malti Devi… she told me not to. Don't go near the well, child. Don't go near the well."
A shiver went down my back. Malti Devi. I remembered seeing her often, her thin fingers making marks on the dirty walls of Bhoot Bangla. People would throw rocks at her, making fun of her strange talks, but I had always felt a strange pity for her. Could she have known something?
The next day, July 11, 2025, I felt pulled back to Rawatpara, to the tight streets and the heavy memories. The smell of jasmine and old things filled the air, unchanged after twenty years. As I got close to Bhoot Bangla, the familiar scratching sound came from inside. Malti Devi was still there, still scratching.
I pushed open the noisy gate. The old woman looked up, her eyes unclear with age and a strange strong feeling. Her lips moved, making words I couldn't quite understand, but she was looking hard at the bloody T-shirt I still held, as if she knew its secrets. "The well… the well… it remembers," she said in a rough voice, like dry leaves rubbing together. "The blood… it talks."
I felt a sudden need to know. "What happened, Malti Devi? What happened to Nisha?"
She pointed a crooked finger towards the old well, her eyes getting wide. "He took her. The one with the hat. The one who comes in the dark."
My heart beat fast. "The man who gave me the package?"
She nodded slowly, looking at me sharply. "He comes for what is owed." Then, she started to scratch again, this time on the dusty floor, a symbol I didn't know.
That night, sleeping was impossible. The diary's words, Malti Devi's warnings, and the haunting picture of the man in the black coat made me feel trapped and scared. I kept thinking about the last moments with Nisha. We were near the well. An argument. A push. Had I… no, I couldn't have. Or could I? The blank in my memory was terrifying.
Because of a strong feeling, I went back to the well at midnight, there the silence silence me. The moonlight made strange shadows, making the old structure look like a bony hand reaching out. As I looked into its very dark depths, a whisper came up from below, "You remember now, don't you, Deepak?"
A shape came out of the shadows behind me. It was the man in the black coat and hat. His face was hidden by his hat, but I could feel him looking at me, cold and knowing. "The past always catches up, doesn't it?" he said, his voice a low rumbling sound.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice shaking. "What do you want?"
He chuckled, a dry, sad sound. "I am just a messenger, Deepak. Someone who collects what's due." He pointed to the well. "She fell, didn't she? After your small 'talk.' A sad accident, or was it?"
My mind spun. The memories, once broken, now came together clearly and terribly. The argument. The push. My panicked try to hide the body. The bloody T-shirt. I had buried her there, in the well, in a moment of pure fear. The man in the black coat, he knew. He had always known.
"But… how?" I mumbled, my voice barely a whisper.
He came closer, and as the moonlight hit his face, I gasped. Under the hat, his eyes were the same striking hazel as mine. And then, he took off his hat, showing a lot of familiar grey hair and a mark above his right eyebrow, a mark I had gotten as a child, playing in the fields behind our house.
"Surprise, Deepak," he said, a small smile on his face. "You always forgot things easily, didn't you? Some things, though, you just can't get away from. Like your own face."
My face? I looked at him, my mind trying hard to understand the impossible. He was older, yes, but they looked so much alike. He was me. Or rather, a future version of me.
"I am you, Deepak," he said, as if he knew what I was thinking. "Twenty years from now. I've come back to finish something. To make sure the past stays hidden… or rather, that the guilt never leaves you." He stopped, looking at the well. "I lived with the weight of that night for two decades. The fear, the constant worry of being found out. It made me crazy, made me fixated. I sent you the package, the diary, the T-shirt… not to scare you, but like a mirror. To make you face what I had to. And the 'crazy' old lady, Malti Devi? She was always just an old woman who saw too much, who saw the start of my downfall."
He turned back to me, his eyes full of a scary mix of sadness and acceptance. "You see, the only way to truly bury the past is to accept it. But some secrets are meant to bother you, to change you. And this one… this one will define you, just as it defined me." He pointed to the well. "Now, the question is, what will you do with this memory? Live with the haunting, or repeat the cycle?"
And with that, he turned, and just like he had disappeared that lonely, dark night, he faded into the shadows, leaving me alone with the well, the bloody T-shirt, and the terrifying thought that my own future self had been the one to bring back my past, making sure that the bad dream I had buried would keep bothering me, forever.
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