I had not intended to stay long in Maplewood Cottage. It was one of those old, rambling houses on the upper slopes of Landour, the kind the British built a hundred years ago when they thought the hills would last forever. The rent was low—far too low, my landlady admitted with a small, tight smile—and the view of the Doon Valley was worth the peeling plaster and the damp smell that clung to everything after rain.
I arrived in late October, when the oaks were turning rusty and the mist came down every evening like a slow, grey curtain. The cottage had been empty for nearly two years, she said. The last tenant, an elderly gentleman who wrote poetry no one read, had simply stopped coming down for breakfast one morning. They found him in the small room at the top of the stairs, sitting in an armchair with his notebook open on his lap. Heart, the doctor said. But the notebook was blank after the last entry: "It still waits in the room."
I laughed when she told me. People love to embellish old houses with stories. I was twenty-eight, recently out of a noisy job in Delhi, and wanted only quiet. A place to write the novel I had been promising myself for years. The top room would do nicely, I thought—it had a window that looked straight into the deodars, and a small fireplace that still worked if you coaxed it.
The first few days passed uneventfully. I arranged my books on the shelves, made tea on a rusty stove, and listened to the wind worrying the eaves. At night the house creaked in the ordinary way old houses do, as though settling its bones. I slept soundly.
It was on the fifth evening that I noticed the sound.
I was at my table, trying to begin Chapter Three, when I heard it: a soft, regular tapping from above. Not loud, not urgent—just persistent. Tap… tap… tap. Like someone knocking gently on wood, testing if anyone was home.
I put down my pen and listened. The sound stopped as soon as I paid attention, as though embarrassed at being caught. I told myself it was a branch against the roof, or perhaps rats in the attic. The hills are full of such noises.
The next night it came again, closer now, almost directly overhead. Tap… tap… pause… tap. I went upstairs, candle in hand (the electricity flickered after nine), and opened the door to the small room.
Nothing. The armchair was where it had always been, facing the window. The notebook still lay on the side table, its pages yellow and empty. I picked it up, turned it over. No new words had appeared, of course. I smiled at my own foolishness and went back down.
But the tapping returned the following night, and this time it had a rhythm, almost like footsteps pacing slowly across the floorboards above me. I lay in bed, eyes open in the dark, counting the steps. Seven paces to the window, seven back. Then silence.
On the seventh night I could not pretend any longer.
I carried the lamp up the narrow oak staircase—the wood groaned under my weight as though reluctant to be trodden again—and pushed open the door.
The room was colder than the rest of the house, the kind of cold that settles in your lungs. The window was shut tight, yet the curtain moved slightly, as though someone had just stepped away from it. I crossed to the armchair and sat down, the same way the old poet must have sat.
For a long minute there was only the sound of my own breathing.
Then, very softly, from the far corner where the shadows were deepest, came the tapping again. Not on wood this time—on glass. Tap… tap… tap.
I turned my head slowly.
There was no one there. But the windowpane was misted over, as though someone had breathed on it from the outside. And on the glass, drawn faintly in the condensation, was the outline of a hand. Small, delicate, with long fingers. A woman's hand, perhaps. Or a child's.
I sat very still. The handprint faded as the mist cleared, but the cold remained.
I did not run. There seemed no point. Whatever waited in that room had waited a long time already—longer than two years, I suspected. It was patient.
When I finally stood up to leave, the floorboard beneath the armchair gave a small, almost human sigh.
Downstairs I locked the door to the staircase, though I knew it was useless. Locks do not keep out what is already inside a house.
I have not written much since that night. The novel can wait. But sometimes, when the wind is right and the mist presses against the windows, I hear the tapping begin again—soft, polite, as though asking permission to come down.
I have not answered yet.
But I think, one of these evenings, I will.