For a long time, nobody spoke.
The room of photographs seemed colder now.
The oil lamps hanging overhead hissed softly, their flames bending sideways although no wind moved through the corridor.
Iraanshi could not stop staring at the photograph.
Her photograph.
The yellow sweater.
The storm-dark sky.
The blue lantern burning beside the gate.
And herself standing there decades before tonight.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
No one answered.
Vayun stood rigid near the wall of photographs, eyes fixed on the image of his brother. His breathing had become shallow, uneven.
Maithili gently took the photograph from Iraanshi’s trembling hands.
Her face tightened immediately.
“It changed.”
“What do you mean changed?”
“This wasn’t here before.”
“You’ve seen this photo before?”
Maithili nodded slowly.
“Years ago.”
Iraanshi felt something twist painfully inside her chest.
“Then how am I in it?”
The silence that followed felt deliberate.
Like the house itself refusing to answer.
Far away somewhere upstairs, a train whistle echoed faintly through the darkness.
Low.
Mournful.
Impossible.
The sound faded quickly.
Vayun suddenly turned away from the wall.
“We shouldn’t stay in this room.”
“Why?” Iraanshi asked.
“Because the photographs watch back.”
She almost laughed at how insane the sentence sounded.
Then she noticed it.
The people in several photographs were no longer facing the camera.
They were facing outward.
Toward the room.
Toward them.
Iraanshi stepped backward immediately.
“No.”
“Don’t stare too long,” Maithili said quietly. “The house notices.”
“That sentence is becoming very annoying.”
“And yet still true.”
They left the photograph room quickly.
The hallway outside seemed different now.
Longer.
The oil lamps dimmer.
Some of the doors that had been closed earlier now stood slightly open.
Warm yellow light spilled through the cracks beneath them.
Somewhere nearby, someone coughed softly.
An old man’s cough.
Wet and weak.
Then silence.
Iraanshi walked closer to Vayun as they moved.
“You said your brother disappeared here.”
He nodded once.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“And he just vanished?”
The distant grandfather clock ticked faintly through the floorboards.
Finally Vayun spoke.
“His name was Neelav.”
The relief on his face after saying the name was subtle but visible.
As if he had nearly lost it forever.
“He was nineteen. Worked at the railway workshop near the crossing.” Vayun’s eyes remained fixed ahead as he spoke. “People around town said Lantern House wasn’t real. Just an old story used to scare children away from the abandoned tracks.”
“But your brother believed it?”
“He became obsessed with it.”
The hallway lights flickered once.
Vayun continued walking.
“He started collecting newspaper clippings. Missing persons reports. Train records. Survivor statements.” A faint bitter smile crossed his face. “I used to think he was crazy.”
“What changed?”
“One night during monsoon season…” Vayun paused briefly. “He left home carrying a lantern.”
Maithili looked down immediately.
“He told me if he found the house, he’d prove everyone wrong.” Vayun swallowed hard. “He never came back.”
The soft crunch of railway tickets beneath their feet suddenly sounded unbearably loud.
Iraanshi spoke carefully.
“And you’ve been searching for this place ever since?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
That finally made him stop walking.
For the first time, Vayun looked genuinely tired.
“Because forgetting him felt worse.”
The words lingered heavily in the corridor.
Ahead of them, another room stood open.
This one looked different.
Inside were old wooden benches arranged like a waiting room.
Dust floated through dim yellow light.
A giant railway map covered one wall.
Velanpur Junction and surrounding stations connected through faded red lines.
But many station names had been scratched away.
As if erased from existence.
Maithili entered first.
“I remember this room.”
Iraanshi looked at her sharply.
“You really have been here before.”
Maithili ran her fingers lightly across one of the benches.
“When I was little.”
“How little?”
“Eight or nine.”
“What happened?”
For several moments Maithili said nothing.
Then quietly:
“My father worked at Velanpur Crossing station.”
The room seemed to darken slightly around her voice.
“He maintained signal systems during night shifts.” She stared absently at the old railway map. “One monsoon night there was an accident near the eastern tracks.”
Iraanshi listened carefully.
“A passenger train derailed during the storm,” Maithili continued. “Most of the colony woke to screaming.”
Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the walls.
For one instant the waiting room windows showed railway tracks outside instead of darkness.
Tracks stretching endlessly through rain.
Then the vision vanished.
“Dozens died,” Maithili whispered.
“The official report blamed flooding. Damaged rails.” Her expression hardened. “But survivors told different stories.”
“The lantern,” Vayun said quietly.
Maithili nodded.
“They said they saw a blue lantern floating near the tracks before the crash.”
Iraanshi’s pulse quickened.
“The same lantern outside this house?”
“Yes.”
“But this house didn’t even exist back then, did it?”
Maithili slowly looked toward her.
“That’s the problem.”
Silence.
“The lantern came first.”
A cold shiver crawled down Iraanshi’s spine.
“The house…” Maithili glanced uneasily at the walls around them. “…it grows around the lantern every cycle. Different shape. Different rooms. Sometimes even different locations.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes.”
Again that word.
Impossible.
And yet every room upstairs seemed determined to redefine it.
Vayun walked toward the railway map hanging on the wall.
Near the center was a faded photograph pinned beneath rusted nails.
A crowd gathered beside railway tracks during heavy rain.
Workers.
Families.
Police.
And there—
near the edge of the image—
a small blue light glowing through the storm.
Iraanshi stepped closer.
The longer she stared at the photograph, the stranger it became.
The people in the image looked blurred.
Not from movement.
From absence.
Like their faces had been partially forgotten.
“After the accident,” Maithili continued softly, “people started disappearing during storms.”
“The colony emptied slowly. Families left. Shops closed.” She looked toward the dark ceiling. “Eventually Velanpur Crossing became a ghost town pretending to still be alive.”
A child laughed faintly somewhere nearby.
Mihir.
The sound drifted through the walls like distant radio static.
Iraanshi suddenly noticed something else.
The waiting room clock above the door was moving backward.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Each second reversed itself.
“Don’t look at the clocks too long,” Vayun said quietly.
She immediately looked away.
“Why?”
“They remember different times.”
That sentence sat horribly inside her mind.
A soft wind moved through the waiting room suddenly.
The railway map fluttered violently.
Several old papers tore loose from the wall and scattered across the floor.
One landed near Iraanshi’s feet.
A missing persons notice.
DATED: AUGUST 1987
NAME: MAITHILI RANE
STATUS: NOT FOUND
Iraanshi slowly looked up.
Maithili had gone pale.
“What is this?”
Maithili stared at the paper without blinking.
Then she whispered:
“I never told anyone what happened after I escaped.”
The lamps overhead flickered rapidly now.
The room dimmed.
“You escaped Lantern House?” Iraanshi asked.
Maithili nodded weakly.
“My father brought me here during the accident. He thought the house was shelter.” Her voice trembled slightly for the first time. “But the storm lasted too long.”
“What happened to him?”
Maithili’s eyes filled slowly with tears she clearly hated showing.
“The house remembered him before I could.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Awful.
Iraanshi finally understood.
The missing people.
The scratched-out photographs.
The forgotten names.
Lantern House did not simply take bodies.
It erased people from memory itself.
As though they had never existed.
A deep knocking sound interrupted the silence.
Three slow knocks.
Everyone froze.
The sound came again.
Closer this time.
Not from a door.
From inside the wall behind them.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The wallpaper bulged outward slightly.
Like something on the other side was trying to enter.