The girls had packed up and gathered in the hotel lobby the next morning, ready to leave Shimla behind. The sky was clear for the first time since their arrival, the sun casting long shadows over the hills. Everything looked normal, but Akshara couldn't stop thinking about the note she found.
She kept it hidden in her hoodie pocket, reading the elegant cursive again and again:
"Not all ghosts are sad. Some… are angry."
She hadn't told anyone.
Maybe it was a prank. Maybe Anushka or Srushti had left it to mess with her. But the handwriting… it didn't match anyone's.
She kept quiet, unsure whether to worry them or not.
---
Inside the bus, the girls were unusually quiet. Even Anushka and Srushti, who usually cracked jokes about everything, sat still, their expressions serious.
As the bus curved along the hills, Prajwal leaned her head against the window, deep in thought. Swara sat beside her, flipping through the pages of her notebook, rereading everything they'd discovered.
"I still feel like… it's not over," Swara whispered.
"You felt that too?" Prajwal asked without turning.
"Yeah."
Akshada, sitting across from them, overheard. "You think there's more?"
"I don't know," Prajwal said. "But something about the way the spirit disappeared… it was too sudden. Like we saw the surface, not the real end."
Suddenly, a loud bang echoed through the bus. The girls screamed as the driver hit the brakes.
"Tire burst!" he yelled.
They all got off, standing on a narrow roadside surrounded by pine trees and mist.
The bus couldn't move for a while, so the girls wandered nearby. Khushi and Rutuja found a small path that led to an old, overgrown greenhouse just off the road.
"Look at this," Rutuja said, brushing vines away from a cracked sign:
'Property of The Winters Estate'
"Winters?" Khushi blinked. "Like… Eleanor Winters?"
Rutuja nodded slowly.
They called the others, and soon all the girls stood at the entrance of the abandoned greenhouse. Despite the bright daylight, it felt… wrong.
"We shouldn't go in," Swarali said, hugging herself.
But Akshara had already stepped forward, pushing the creaky door open.
Inside, everything was dead. Brown, rotting plants, broken pots, shattered glass panels. In the middle was a statue—a woman holding a baby.
It looked just like Eleanor.
Swara stepped closer, brushing away dirt from the statue's base.
A single word was carved in stone: "Ophelia."
"Who's Ophelia?" Apurva asked.
Swara's eyes widened. "Wait… Eleanor didn't have a baby, right?"
"No," Akshada said. "She died alone."
"But what if… she didn't?" Swara whispered.
They looked at the statue again, and this time, they all felt it—coldness creeping into their bones.
Suddenly, Akshara gasped and stumbled backward, dropping something from her hoodie pocket.
The note.
Prajwal picked it up, reading aloud:
"Not all ghosts are sad. Some… are angry."
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
Akshara looked terrified. "Under my pillow. After Eleanor vanished."
"Then it wasn't her," Swara said. "Someone else was there that night."
Srushti, unusually serious, added, "What if the real curse didn't start with Eleanor… but with her child?"
A loud crash made them all jump—the statue's arm had cracked and fallen, revealing a hollow cavity.
Inside it…
Was a small, blackened baby doll.
And carved next to it, in tiny scratch marks:
"She took him from me. I'll take what she loved."
They all froze.
Swarali whispered, "The haunting isn't over."
Prajwal said the words none of them wanted to hear.
"It's only just begun."
---