It was 06:00, Mira's phone glowed in the dimly lit kitchen. The alert arrived with a ping as the refrigerator's hum and the distant horns of the city silenced.
EMERGENCY NOTICE : Do not open the door for me today. It isn't me.- Ma
Mira blinked at the message. The sender line was neither an number, nor an app. It was an overlay that sat atop every other thing on her phone, the way evacuation sirens did.
She was still in her scrubs, cold tile touching her bare feet as the kettle hissed. The ache of last Night shift was evident behind her eyes as she stared at the signature.
Ma.
Her thumb hovered over it. She hadn't removed the contact. She couldn't bring herself to, even after the cremation in March. The photo beside the name was still her mother laughing at Marine Drive, silver hair and mouth wide.
The screen didn't show a dismiss button. Just an "ACKNOWLEDGE" bar that pulsed faintly as she pressed it.
In response, the alert didn't disappear, rather It just shrank to the top corner of the screen and stayed there like a pinned warning.
At the same time, something moved outside her window: the smudge of early traffic, the low hum of the city as rain threatened upon the city; Mumbai wore the shy grey of the day.
Her other phone—a cheap Android she used for streaming music, lit up too.
EMERGENCY NOTICE :Do not open the door for me today. It isn't me.— Ma
Two phones. Two different carriers. But—same message.
Her kettle clicked off; the sudden quiet making her ears ring.
Mira opened her building's WhatsApp group.
Rakesh (603): anyone else get that alert? mine says from my WIFE
Neha (1202): SAME from my dad… he passed away last year this isn't funny
Watchman Ganesh: please everyone stay inside. management says it's a hoax. The police is aware.
A comment flew in under that from someone she didn't recognize.
Unknown: It's real.
She set the phone down.
The knock came at 06:08.
Not a just timid tap. But rather — Three steady knuckles: knock, knock, knock, like a rhythm learned from a lifetime of visiting. Mira's heart tightened.
Her door still wore the garland from Gudi Padwa: dried marigolds and mango leaves dissolving into fragrance.
Mira peeped, as it showed a fisheye corridor: doormat, light, someone's abandoned parcel.
But—no one.
Soon—Another knock came. Same rhythm. But No body attached.
Mira unlatched the chain quietly and rested her palm on the wood. "Who is it?" she called, her voice breaking into tremor.
A voice answered that precisely knew every syllable of her name. "Beta, open. It's Ma."
The moment she heard it—air left Mira's lungs like she'd been pushed into deep water.
A thousand little reasons to obey unfolded before her, muscle memory, dutiful daughter, the way her mother said beta like sugar dissolving. She pressed her forehead against the cool wood.
She forced her hands to stop—Trembling—you can fake a voice, she told herself. There are apps. There are deepfakes. There are men in rooms who collect old mothers and press them onto strangers' doors.
She looked at the alert again, still pinned on her screen, signed with that short, stubborn Ma. No last name. No number.
"Mira?" the voice tried again. Softer. An ache in it, like her mother calling down a hallway. "It's cold here."
The hallway camera feed on her phone—cheap, grainy, mounted above the door frame, showed empty air but the timestamp ticked along. She scrubbed back ten seconds. Nothing. Thirty. Nothing. The corridor, the parcel, the distortions from the lens. The knocks — they had no body.
Suddenly, Mira's brother's name flashed on her screen: Vir.
Mira picked up.
"Are you seeing this?" he said by way of greeting. He didn't sound like an authorative or a big brother. He sounded like a kid who'd been left alone in a thunderstorm.
"I got it," she said. "From Ma."
"Me too. And—" His voice broke as he lowered it. "Mira, someone's at my door. And, They're… they're humming Lag Jaa Gale."
Their mother used to hum it on long drives, cheek on palm at red lights, the city spilling past.
"Don't open," she said, automatic, but grateful to say it—to warn her brother.
Then—A dull thud through Vir's phone, the sound of metal on wood. Someone trying the bolt lock. "I won't." He swallowed. "It sounds like her. It knows the part where she always went sharp."
The knock at Mira's door came again, this time—softer, different, as if aware of the building regulations— forbade loud disturbances before eight. "Mira," her mother's voice said again through a piece of wood and five months of ash. "You're exhausted. Let me in."
Tears arrived without permission, hot tracks of glistening tears. Grief: It was a trick door of its own—you could be fine for days and then a scent, a syllable, tugged it open.
She wiped her face with the back of her wrist and willed her hands not to shake. "What do you want?" she asked the door.
There was a pause. Then—
"Tea," the voice said finally, and Mira's jaw clenched because that's what her mother always asked for when she came over: Bas chai, beta. Don't fuss. "Just tea. Open."
On the corridor camera, the parcel sprang a seam by the heat and dampness, and a book's corner nosed out. Nothing else moved.
Her surgical mask still hung on a hook by the door as she took it down. It did nothing against her grief or the uncanny presence outside, but tying the loops steadied her hands, even if for a moment.
"Prove it," Mira said. "Tell me something only she would know."
The voice suddenly brightened, as if eager to pass an exam. "Your first patient. Twelve years old. Mango allergy. You were sure it was asthma. She turned blue and you—"
"Shut it. Everyone in the family knows that story," Mira snapped. A dozen aunties had passed it around after dinner. "Something else."
The voice silenced. The sound of water sliding in pipes three floors up clearly audible, as her phone buzzed.
EMERGENCY NOTICE UPDATE :They will know two or three true things. They will not know the last thing.— Ma
Cold walked up her spine. The alert had updated. The signature of Ma remained. The notification in the corner lifted, as the new words appeared.
"Mira?" her mother's voice said again, trying a new tenderness. "Your father used to hide the sweets behind the dhal. Top cabinet. Left. You dragged the stool and found them and told me you discovered treasure. I scolded you because you'd eaten four laddoos but I was laughing inside."
Mira saw it—the memory of the yellow stool, her small palm dusted with gram flour, her mother's feigned frown—as the image cut with a hurting clarity. Two true things.
"The last thing," Mira whispered to herself and to the coiled text in the corner. "What is the last thing you don't know?"
Her phone vibrated again, this time—not with a message but with a call. Appa. The screen caught the light and made the name bright like a blessing. She quickly answered. "Appa?"
"Stay away from the door, kanna," her father said, breathless. "Someone is knocking here, too. It sounds like you. It is not you."
"Are you okay?"
"I barricaded it with the shoe rack." He tried to chuckle that didn't quite become laughter. "Small furniture, but still works. The television shows the same message. The police station lines are all busy."
At the same time—on Mira's door came a whisper, now coaxing. "Beta, I'm getting wet," her mother's voice said, like there was a monsoon in the hallway, like rain soaked her ash. "Please." Mira stopped herself as she didn't reply.
Her group chats by now, became a seizure of panic: videos of empty corridors layered with sound; a clip from a flat in Thane where the door opened on its own and the camera went to white; a voice note of someone sobbing, Papa, please come back inside.
Vir: don't open to anyone. even if it sounds like me.
Mira: you too.
Vir: if this is a hack it's the cruelest thing
Mira: There is no "if."
The corridor camera glitched for one second, a tear in the picture. In that white flicker she saw, or thought she saw—a shadow lean where no body stood, an indentation in air like a shoulder pressing against the wood.
Her phone pulsed with a third update.
FINAL NOTICE :At 06:15 they will try the handle. Do not speak to them by name. If you open, I die.— Ma
"What?" Mira breathed—half in confusion and panic. The words felt like ice as the clock ticked, 06:14.
She pressed the phone to her ear again, but her father had gone, or the line had cut, or something had disrupted their communication as the simple cellular signals decided not to cross anymore. "Appa?" she said to empty air, but no reply.
And as the clock ticked at 6:15.
The handle turned.
The metal moved with small, seeking pressure. Left, then—right. Curious, polite, learning the way of the lock.
"Mira," the voice coaxed, and this time it wasn't perfectly her mother. There was a strange roundness to the vowels, like someone chewing on a word to memorize its way. "Mira, open. Bas chai." (Tln: Mira, open. Only need chai.)
Her throat went dry. Her body crouched of its own, as he muscles loosened. The chain rattled softly, the sound of a coin tapped against a glass.
"Beta," the voice said, and in that syllable it landed wrong, too heavy on the be, like the way people who didn't grow up in your kitchen try out your endearments. "Be—ta."
Mira didn't say Ma. She didn't say anything.
The handle stopped turning. The pause was terrible because it felt calculated. Mira thought of her lungs stopping, her memory flashed—of monitors going from green chatter to a quiet grey, of the line in a chart where you write Time of Death and know that you will remember that minute forever.
The knock came again—one last time.Thought this time—not beside her anymore.
It came from behind her.
Three gentle raps against the inside wall of her apartment, from the direction of the bedroom. Knock, knock, knock, like hands that knew where the switches are.
Mira's head snapped around. The phone slid on her palm and she caught it with a smack echoing inside her hall. Kitchen, table, bedroom door stood ajar, a narrow slit spilling nothing but darkness from inside. The place where she had laid out clean clothes and collapsed two hours earlier between shifts.
Her email dinged. An unread. Subject line: Mira, chai? The sender field showed a name that unstitched her: Suman Raheja. Her mother's old Gmail. The one no one had touched since March.
The alert in the corner pulsed and changed one last time.
Whatever knocks now is not at the door.
The bedroom light flipped on by itself.
A footstep—soft, slippered, crossed the threshold.