The air in the old Lucknow haveli was thick with the scent of marigolds, cardamom, and something else, something ancient and cloying like dried-up rose petals mixed with dust. Ananya breathed it in, a nervous smile fixed on her face. This was her new home. Rohan, her husband of three days, squeezed her hand. His family’s wealth wasn’t just in their bank accounts; it was in the very bones of this sprawling, labyrinthine house, in the intricate marble latticework of the jharokhas, and in the heavy, oppressive silence of its long corridors. She was a Mumbai girl, used to the constant hum of traffic and the salty air of the sea. This stillness was a different beast altogether. Rohan’s grandmother, the matriarch everyone called Dadi-ma, sat on a low, cushioned seat, her spine ramrod straight despite her age. Her face was a web of fine wrinkles, but her eyes were sharp and disconcertingly clear. She beckoned Ananya forward with a single, elegant motion of her hand, her gold bangles clinking softly.
“Come, beti,” she said, her voice raspy like dry leaves skittering across stone. Ananya knelt before her, as was custom. Rohan had prepped her on the etiquette, the endless stream of touching feet and covering her head, all alien rituals to her corporate, city-bred sensibilities. Dadi-ma produced a small, velvet-wrapped package. “A gift for our new daughter. A family heirloom, passed down for seven generations.” She unwrapped it to reveal a single anklet, a payal. It was breathtaking. Crafted from heavy, dark silver, its design was intricate, with tiny, delicate bells that promised a sound like liquid moonlight. But it was old, the silver tarnished in the deep grooves of its patterns, giving it a somber, almost mournful beauty. “It is very beautiful, Dadi-ma,” Ananya said, her voice a little breathless. Dadi-ma smiled, a slow stretching of her thin lips. “It will protect you. Bind you to this family. To this house.” The words were meant to be comforting, Ananya knew, but a strange, unbidden chill traced a path down her spine. The way she said ‘bind’ felt less like a welcome and more like a sentence. Still, Ananya pushed the feeling away. It was just nerves. New bride jitters. Dadi-ma took her foot and fastened the anklet. It was heavier than it looked, and cold against her skin. It felt…possessive. When she stood up and took a step, the tiny bells remained silent. Dadi-ma chuckled. “The bells only sing for one who truly belongs here. In time, beti. In time.” Ananya forced another smile, feeling Rohan’s reassuring presence beside her. She dismissed her unease as foolish fantasy. It’s not like it was a cursed silver payal from some forgotten folk tale. It was just a piece of jewelry.
The first few weeks were a blur of introductions and adjustments. Rohan was a doting husband, and the house, while imposing, began to feel a little more like home during the day. It was the nights that were difficult. The haveli groaned and sighed around her, its old timbers settling, its vast emptiness amplifying every tiny sound. One night, as she lay awake listening to the distant city noises, she heard it. A faint, clear, metallic jingle. Chink. Pause. Chink. It sounded like a single anklet. She sat up, her heart suddenly pounding. Rohan was fast asleep beside her. She glanced at her own feet. The silver payal was right where it should be, silent and still. The sound came again, seeming to echo from the long, dark corridor outside their bedroom. Chink… chink… It was slow, deliberate, as if someone was walking with a slight limp. She shook Rohan awake. “Did you hear that?” she whispered. He grumbled, half-asleep. “Hear what? The house makes noises, Anu. Go to sleep.” He rolled over, and she was left alone with the silence, which now seemed heavier, waiting. The sound did not come again. The next morning, she asked one of the maids, a young girl named Parvati, if anyone else in the house wore a payal. Parvati’s eyes widened slightly. “No, Bhabhi-ji. Dadi-ma says only the new bride of the house can wear a silver payal. It is tradition.” Ananya felt that familiar chill again. She was being ridiculous. It was a rat, or the wind rattling something loose.
Days turned into a month. Ananya tried to settle in, to adopt the slow, measured rhythm of the haveli. But the feeling of being watched never quite left her. It was a pressure at the back of her neck, a sense of eyes on her from the shadowy corners and the dark, empty doorways. And the sound returned, always at night, always when she was alone. A single, lonely jingle, a counterpoint to the silence. It never woke Rohan. Sometimes it seemed to be just outside her door, other times far down the hall, in the wing of the house Dadi-ma had declared was “closed for repairs.” One evening, she found the courage to mention it to Rohan’s younger sister, Meera, a university student who was much more modern than the rest of the family. They were on the terrace, watching the sun set. “It’s probably just a story,” Meera said, picking at a loose thread on her dupatta, “but the servants say… they say a bride who lived here a long, long time ago… she died on her wedding night. They say she wanders the halls, looking for the other anklet to her pair.” Ananya’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean, the other anklet?” Meera looked uncomfortable. “They say she was buried with only one. The other was lost. A bad omen.” Ananya’s hand instinctively went to her own ankle, to the heavy, silent piece of silver.
The fear now had a name, a story. It was no longer just a sound; it was a presence. She started noticing other things. A scent of jasmine, cloyingly sweet, would suddenly fill a room with no flowers in sight. A cold draft would snake through a closed-off corridor. She began to hate the anklet. It felt like a manacle, a constant reminder of the unseen thing that shared her home. She tried to take it off one night, her fingers fumbling with the intricate clasp. It wouldn’t budge. It was as if the silver had fused together. Panic seized her, and she pulled at it, scraping her skin, but it remained firmly locked around her ankle. She gave up, breathless and terrified, and when she finally fell into a fitful sleep, she had a dream. She was walking through the haveli, but it was different—newer, the walls freshly painted. The sound of her own payal echoed loudly with every step, the bells finally singing. She was following the sound of another payal, a matching one, calling to her. The dream led her to the closed-off wing of the house. A heavy wooden door stood at the end of the corridor. As she reached for it, she woke up, her body drenched in a cold sweat. The first thing she noticed was the sound. Chink. It was inside the room. Her eyes darted around the darkness. Nothing. Then she looked down. The cursed silver payal on her ankle was gleaming faintly in the moonlight, and as she watched, one of the tiny bells trembled and let out a single, clear note. Chink.
Rohan had to leave for a business trip to Delhi for three days. The thought of being alone in the haveli, with only Dadi-ma and the servants, filled Ananya with a primal dread. “I can come with you,” she pleaded. But Rohan was firm. “Anu, it’s just for two nights. Dadi-ma is here. You’ll be fine. Stop being a child.” His dismissal hurt more than the fear. He didn’t believe her. To him, she was just a hysterical, superstitious girl who couldn’t adjust. The day he left, the atmosphere in the house shifted. The silence became heavier, more watchful. Dadi-ma’s quiet presence seemed to be everywhere. Ananya would turn a corner and find the old woman standing there, just watching her with those unnervingly clear eyes. That night, sleep was impossible. The jingling started just after midnight, louder than ever before, more confident. Chink… chink… chink… It paced back and forth, right outside her bedroom door. Ananya huddled under the blankets, her body trembling, praying for morning. She must have drifted off, because she was jolted awake by a creak. The door to her room was ajar. A sliver of the dark hallway was visible. The air that seeped in was frigid and smelled of jasmine and damp earth. She held her breath, listening. Silence. Then, from the darkness of her own room, came the sound. Chink. It was right beside her bed.
She didn’t scream. The sound was trapped in her throat. She lay completely still, her eyes squeezed shut, for what felt like hours. When the first hint of dawn lightened the sky, she dared to open them. The room was empty. Her door was closed. Had she imagined it all? Was she going mad? She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to know what was in the closed-off wing. Fueled by a desperate, reckless energy, she got out of bed and went straight there. The large wooden door was locked, as expected. But in her panicked state, she noticed something she hadn’t before: a small, key-shaped hole in the wall beside the frame, hidden by a loose piece of plaster. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She remembered seeing Dadi-ma with a collection of old, ornate keys. Risking everything, she crept to the old woman’s room. Dadi-ma was in the small temple in her chambers, her back to the door, chanting her morning prayers. Ananya’s hands shook as she found the heavy, iron ring of keys and slipped one of the smaller, more ornate ones off it. It fit. The lock turned with a rusty groan. The air that hit her from inside was stale and thick with the smell of decay. The wing was a time capsule, covered in white sheets like ghosts of furniture. She walked through the rooms, her footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust. At the very end of the hall was a small, windowless room. Inside was a single, large wooden chest. Using all her strength, she heaved the heavy lid open. It was filled with old silks and brocades, eaten away by moths. Beneath them, her fingers touched something hard and flat. A leather-bound book. A diary. And next to it, a small, framed portrait. Ananya lifted the portrait into the dim light from the hallway. It was a painting of a young woman, a bride, adorned in finery. Her face was beautiful, but her eyes held a deep, profound sadness. And she looked, with a terrifying, gut-wrenching familiarity, exactly like Ananya. Around her left ankle, she wore a single, ornate silver payal. Ananya’s payal.
With trembling hands, she opened the diary. The script was faded, the pages brittle. It was dated over a century ago. The bride’s name was Amrita. Her story poured from the pages, a tale of a forced marriage into a wealthy family whose fortunes were failing. They believed a sacrifice was needed to appease the entity that protected their wealth, a spirit bound to the haveli. ‘My fate was sealed,’ Amrita had written, ‘the moment they clasped the cursed silver payal to my foot. They called it an heirloom, a blessing. It is a key. It prepares the vessel.’ Ananya read on, her horror mounting. The payal didn’t just bind the wearer to the family; it slowly broke down her spirit, her will, making her a more suitable host for the entity. The jingling she heard wasn’t Amrita’s ghost. It was the entity, the guardian of the house, drawn to the payal, testing her, tasting her fear. The sacrifice was to be completed on the first new moon after the wedding. Amrita had tried to run. They had dragged her back. Her last entry was frantic, terrifying. ‘Dadi-sa is coming. I hear her chanting. She wears the other one. The twin. She says it completes the circle. I will not be a vessel. I will not—’ The ink trailed off into a dark, ugly smudge.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway behind her. Ananya froze, the diary slipping from her fingers. “You should not have come in here, beti,” said Dadi-ma’s voice, startlingly close. Ananya spun around. The old woman stood in the doorway, her silhouette dark against the light. And from her feet came a sound. Chink. Dadi-ma lifted the edge of her sari. Around her withered ankle was the other payal, a perfect, gleaming twin to Ananya’s. “She was weak,” Dadi-ma said, her voice devoid of its earlier warmth. It was cold, flat, ancient. “She fought it. It made things… messy. But the family survived. Our prosperity was restored. The entity was sated. For a time.” She took a step into the room, the sound of her payal echoing the frantic beat of Ananya’s heart. “It has been many years. The entity grows hungry again. It requires a new host. A strong one.” Ananya backed away, her mind reeling. Rohan. His love, his dismissal of her fears. Was he in on it? Was this his inheritance? The family’s dark, terrible secret? “This isn’t just about prosperity,” Dadi-ma continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “it’s about feeding the entity bound to that cursed silver payal. It gives us wealth, influence… but it must be fed.” Ananya’s back hit the wall. The old woman was surprisingly fast, her eyes gleaming with a fanatic light. Ananya screamed and lunged past her, out into the corridor. She ran, her own payal now suddenly, terrifyingly alive, its bells singing a frantic, panicked tune. The sound of Dadi-ma’s payal was right behind her, a steady, relentless chink… chink… chink… The house itself seemed to turn against her. Doors she had just run through slammed shut behind her. The hallway seemed to stretch, the main door impossibly far away. The air grew thick and cold, pressing in on her, and she could hear whispers slithering through the silence, coiling around the sound of the two anklets. She reached the grand staircase and scrambled down, tripping and falling on the last few steps. She landed hard on the marble floor, pain shooting up her leg. Dadi-ma stood at the top of the stairs, a patient, terrifying silhouette. Ananya scrambled to her feet and threw her entire body against the heavy main door. The bolt was stuck. She pulled and pushed, sobbing, her nails splintering against the wood. With a final, desperate wrench, the bolt slid free. She burst out into the pre-dawn gloom, into a world that was blessedly free of the scent of marigolds and decay. She ran, not daring to look back, the sound of her own payal a frantic rhythm of terror. She didn’t stop until she reached the main road. Under the harsh glare of a streetlight, she fell to her knees and clawed at the anklet. She pulled until her skin broke, until she felt a sickening tear. With a final, agonizing rip, it came off. She threw the heavy piece of silver into a storm drain, watching it disappear into the darkness. She had escaped the house, but the memory of the cursed silver payal was a brand on her soul.
Months have passed. Ananya now lives in a small, anonymous apartment in a different city. She never spoke to Rohan or his family again. She changed her number, her name, everything. She works a simple job, and her life is quiet. She tells herself she is safe. She tells herself it is over. But sometimes, in the dead of night, when the city is quiet, she feels a strange, lingering coldness on her left ankle. And if she listens very, very carefully, in the deepest pockets of the silence, she can still hear it. A single, impossibly distant jingle, calling for its mate.