Shadows Know My Name
Chapter One: The Girl in the Window
The first time the shadows spoke to me, I was eight years old.
It was during a power cut.
In our small town of Durgapur, electricity failures were common during storms. That night, thunder shook the windows, and rain hit the roof like handfuls of thrown pebbles. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor of our living room, holding a candle while Ma searched for matches to light another one.
The house smelled of wet earth and kerosene.
"Aria, don't wander around," Ma warned. "Stay where I can see you."
"I'm not a baby," I muttered.
But I stayed.
The walls flickered as the candle flame trembled. The shadows stretched and twisted across the ceiling like long fingers. I stared at them, bored, tracing shapes in my mind — dragons, trees, faces.
That's when I saw her.
At first, I thought it was just the curtain moving. But the windows were closed. The shadow was different from the others. It wasn't attached to anything. It stood by the far wall, tall and thin, almost human-shaped.
And it was facing me.
I blinked.
It didn't move like a normal shadow. It tilted its head.
My heart began to pound.
"Ma," I whispered. "There's someone—"
The shadow leaned closer, as if listening.
Ma came into the room with another candle. The second flame made the walls brighter.
The shadow was gone.
"See?" Ma said gently. "Nothing there. Your imagination runs too fast."
But as she turned away, I heard it.
A voice.
Soft. Dry. Like wind moving through dead leaves.
Aria.
I dropped the candle.
Chapter Two: The Return
Ten years passed before I heard my name again.
I was eighteen and counting the days until I could leave Durgapur for college in Kolkata. I didn't believe in ghosts anymore. I believed in science, psychology, and trauma. Childhood fear, I told myself. Nothing more.
Until the night of my birthday.
My friends had thrown a small party for me. Balloons, cheap cake, too much laughter. By 11 p.m., everyone had left except my best friend, Rhea.
"You're lucky," she said, flopping onto my bed. "New city, new life. I'm stuck here."
"You could apply too," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "Not everyone gets scholarships, genius."
After she left, I cleaned the room alone. The house felt too quiet. Too still.
I turned off the lights and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
That's when I noticed it.
The corner of my room looked darker than it should have been.
Not just dark.
Thick.
Like ink spilled into the air.
I sat up slowly.
The streetlight outside shone faintly through the curtains, enough to outline furniture. But the corner near my wardrobe absorbed the light completely.
And then it shifted.
My breath caught in my throat.
The darkness peeled away from the wall.
It stood upright.
Tall.
Familiar.
My body refused to move.
Aria, it whispered.
I felt cold all over.
"I'm not afraid of you," I said, though my voice trembled.
The shadow stretched one long arm toward me.
You left us.
My heart pounded so loud I could hear it in my ears.
"There is no 'us,'" I said sharply. "You're not real."
The shadow seemed to ripple, like water disturbed by a stone.
We know your name.
Then the lights flickered on.
Just for a second.
When they went out again, the corner was empty.
Chapter Three: The Missing Boy
Three days later, a boy from our neighborhood disappeared.
His name was Kabir. He was twelve, always riding his bicycle too fast, always shouting at stray dogs. His mother screamed in the street when she realized he hadn't come home.
Posters appeared on electric poles.
MISSING.
Last seen near the old railway warehouse.
The police searched the area but found nothing.
Nothing except his bicycle, lying on its side inside the warehouse.
I didn't know why, but something inside me tightened when I heard that.
The warehouse.
The place we weren't allowed to go as children.
The place where I had once seen something move in the darkness.
That night, I dreamed.
I was standing inside the warehouse. It smelled of rust and damp wood. The moonlight streamed through broken windows.
Kabir stood in the center of the room.
He looked calm.
Too calm.
"Why didn't you listen?" he asked.
"Listen to what?" I said.
He pointed behind me.
I turned slowly.
The shadows on the wall were writhing. Twisting. Climbing over each other like living creatures.
They were whispering.
And they were all saying the same word.
Aria.
I woke up screaming.
Chapter Four: The Warehouse
I didn't tell anyone about the dream.
Instead, I did something stupid.
I went to the warehouse.
It was late afternoon when I slipped past the broken gate. Dust swirled in the air, glowing in the sunlight.
The inside was colder than it should have been.
The walls were stained black in places — not paint, not mold. Just… darkness.
I stepped toward the center of the room.
"Hello?" I called.
My voice echoed too long.
A sudden chill ran down my spine.
The sunlight dimmed.
Clouds moved across the sky outside, blocking the light.
The shadows lengthened.
I felt it before I saw it.
They were gathering.
Stretching.
Reaching toward me from every direction.
"You're not real," I whispered again.
The air felt thick, hard to breathe.
And then I saw something on the floor.
A small silver chain.
Kabir's.
I had seen him wear it.
The shadows pulled back slightly, as if waiting.
Waiting for me to understand.
We know your name, they breathed.
And suddenly, a memory surfaced.
When I was eight.
Before the first time I saw the shadow.
I had been here.
With someone else.
A girl.
A girl with long hair and frightened eyes.
A girl who disappeared the next week.
And I had forgotten her.
Or maybe—
I had made myself forget.
Chapter Five: The Truth in the Dark
Her name was Meher.
The memory hit me like a wave.
Meher had been new in town. Quiet. Always alone. I had met her near the school gate.
One evening, she dared me to go inside the warehouse with her.
"We'll just look," she said. "Nothing will happen."
But something did happen.
Inside, we had drawn shapes on the dusty floor with sticks. Strange patterns we found scratched into the walls.
Meher said they looked like symbols.
I remember laughing.
Then the light changed.
The shadows moved.
Not like before.
Like now.
They had surrounded us.
I had run.
I had left her there.
The next day, she was gone.
Her family moved away, people said.
But I never saw her again.
The shadows weren't random.
They weren't haunting me for fun.
They were witnesses.
They knew what I had done.
And they wanted something.
The air inside the warehouse trembled.
"What do you want?" I shouted.
The shadows rose higher, forming shapes along the walls.
A face appeared.
Familiar.
Meher's face.
Her eyes hollow and dark.
You remember now, the shadows whispered.
Tears blurred my vision.
"I was a child," I cried. "I was scared."
So was she.
The floor beneath me felt unsteady.
"What do you want?" I repeated.
The shadows stilled.
Then one word formed in the air, darker than the rest.
Return.
My heart froze.
Return what?
Or return… where?
The shadows surged forward.
And this time—
They didn't just whisper my name.
They screamed it.
Chapter Six: The Bargain
The shadows didn't touch me.
They swallowed the room instead.
Darkness climbed the walls, covered the ceiling, drowned the door. The warehouse disappeared, replaced by something endless — a hollow space made of whispering black.
I couldn't see the floor beneath my feet anymore, yet I wasn't falling.
I was suspended.
"You want me to return," I said, my voice trembling but louder than before. "Return what?"
The darkness pulsed.
Meher's face emerged again, clearer this time. Not monstrous. Not angry.
Sad.
What was taken, the voices replied.
"I didn't take anything!" I shouted.
The shadows rippled violently.
Images flooded the air around me.
Meher drawing strange symbols on the ground.
Me laughing nervously.
The shadows rising.
A crack in the floor opening like a mouth.
Meher reaching for me.
And me—
Running.
The vision froze.
Her hand was still stretched toward me.
Then the image shifted.
Kabir standing in the warehouse, alone.
The same crack in the ground opening beneath him.
The same shadows pulling.
"They're not gone," I whispered.
The truth crawled into my mind slowly.
The warehouse wasn't haunted.
It was hungry.
And ten years ago, something had opened there.
Meher had fallen into it.
And I had escaped.
The shadows leaned closer.
Balance must be restored.
Cold understanding filled me.
"You want me instead."
The darkness did not deny it.
Chapter Seven: Rhea's Discovery
I don't remember how I got home.
I must have walked, but my mind was trapped inside the warehouse.
That night, Rhea called me.
"You went there, didn't you?" she demanded.
My heart skipped. "What?"
"The warehouse. Aria, Kabir's chain was found there. And someone saw you near the gate."
Silence stretched between us.
"Rhea," I said slowly. "Do you remember a girl named Meher?"
There was a pause.
"Meher…" she repeated faintly. "Wait. The girl who disappeared when we were kids?"
"So you remember."
"Barely. My mom said her family moved away."
"They didn't."
My voice cracked.
I told her everything.
The shadows. The crack. The whispers.
I expected her to laugh.
She didn't.
Instead, she said something that made my blood run cold.
"Aria… Kabir isn't the only one."
"What?"
"There were others. Small things. A stray dog. A shopkeeper's son who ran away years ago. People always said coincidence."
My breathing quickened.
"It's been feeding," I whispered.
There was a long silence.
Then Rhea said, "We're not letting you go alone."
Chapter Eight: The Ritual in Dust
We returned to the warehouse the next evening.
Rhea carried a flashlight and a bag of chalk.
"Why chalk?" I asked.
"You said Meher drew symbols," she replied. "Maybe they weren't random."
Inside, the air felt heavier than before.
The walls were darker.
Watching.
Rhea knelt and began copying the faint scratches carved into the concrete floor — symbols curved and sharp, circling a faint crack in the center.
As she completed the final shape, the air shifted.
The crack in the floor widened.
Not physically.
But visually — like a tear in reality itself.
A deep black slit formed in the center.
Whispers filled the room.
Aria.
I stepped forward before I could stop myself.
"Stop saying my name," I said fiercely. "I'm here."
The shadows gathered, forming a ring around us.
Rhea grabbed my wrist.
"Don't," she whispered.
From the crack, shapes began to rise.
Faint.
Transparent.
Faces.
Meher.
Kabir.
Others I didn't recognize.
They weren't screaming.
They were suspended — like reflections trapped in water.
"They're not dead," Rhea breathed.
"No," I said. "They're stuck."
The shadows spoke again.
One must remain. One must descend. The gate will close.
Rhea's grip tightened painfully.
"You don't have to do this," she said.
But I already knew.
I had opened the gate with fear ten years ago.
I had broken the balance by surviving.
"Take me," I said.
The shadows surged forward.
Chapter Nine: The Girl Who Stayed
The world flipped.
Cold swallowed me whole.
I wasn't falling — I was sinking through darkness that felt thick as tar.
Whispers echoed from every direction.
Aria. Aria. Aria.
Then—
Silence.
I stood in a vast space made of shifting shadow. The ground beneath me shimmered like glass.
Across from me stood Meher.
Not hollow-eyed.
Not broken.
Just… a girl.
"You came back," she said softly.
Tears spilled down my face. "I'm sorry."
She studied me for a long moment.
"You were scared," she said.
"I left you."
"Yes."
The truth hung between us.
"But you came back," she repeated.
Behind her, I saw the others — Kabir among them — slowly rising, drifting upward like smoke toward a distant light.
"They're going home," Meher said.
"What about you?" I asked.
She smiled faintly.
"I was never meant to stay."
The darkness around us trembled.
A rumble echoed through the void.
"The gate is closing," she whispered.
The shadows began pulling at my feet.
Not violently.
Gently.
Like roots wrapping around soil.
"You don't have to take my place," I said desperately.
She shook her head.
"You already chose."
Above us, a slit of light opened.
Through it, I saw the warehouse ceiling.
Rhea screaming my name.
Meher stepped closer.
"You're not alone anymore," she said.
And for the first time since I was eight, the shadows did not feel hungry.
They felt… calm.
The light widened.
Kabir vanished into it.
The others followed.
Meher's form began to fade.
"Wait!" I cried.
She smiled one last time.
"Now," she whispered, "the shadows don't know your name."
The darkness released me.
I was thrown upward—
And slammed onto the cold concrete floor of the warehouse.
The crack was gone.
The symbols were faded.
The walls looked normal.
Rhea was kneeling over me, crying.
"You idiot," she sobbed. "You absolute idiot."
I laughed weakly.
The air felt lighter.
Warmer.
Alive.
That night, for the first time in ten years, I slept without hearing my name in the dark.
But sometimes—
When the lights flicker—
I still feel something watching.
Not hungry.
Not angry.
Just remembering.
And I remember too.Ooo… alright 🖤
Here is an alternate darker ending to Shadows Know My Name.
In this version… not everything is saved.
Chapter Ten: The Choice That Wasn't
When I said, "Take me,"
I thought I understood the cost.
I didn't.
The shadows didn't pull me down gently this time.
They grabbed.
Cold hands—thousands of them—wrapped around my arms, my legs, my throat. Rhea's scream tore through the warehouse as my body was dragged toward the widening crack in the floor.
"ARIA!" she shouted.
I reached for her.
For a second, our fingers touched.
Then the darkness snapped shut between us.
Chapter Eleven: The Place Beneath
I didn't fall.
I arrived.
The space below wasn't empty like before. It was crowded. Endless pillars of shadow rose into nothingness. The air vibrated with whispers — not loud, not chaotic — but layered.
Like a thousand people speaking softly at once.
And they were all saying my name.
Aria.
Aria.
Aria.
"I'm here!" I screamed. "Stop saying it!"
The whispers stopped instantly.
Silence hit harder than the noise.
From the darkness ahead, Meher stepped forward.
But something was wrong.
Her eyes were no longer sad.
They were hollow.
"You came back," she said — but her voice echoed with others.
"You're free now," I said quickly. "You can go."
She tilted her head.
"Free?"
The word sounded unfamiliar in her mouth.
Behind her, I saw shapes moving. Not people.
Not fully.
They were stretched. Twisted. Like reflections pulled too thin.
Kabir was there.
But he didn't look like a boy anymore.
He looked like a shadow trying to remember being human.
My stomach dropped.
"You said one must remain," I whispered. "You said the gate would close."
Meher's smile widened slowly.
"Yes," she said.
The shadows behind her began to rise.
"But we never said who."
Chapter Twelve: The Truth of the Gate
The ground beneath me rippled like water.
"You lied," I breathed.
"We preserved balance," the voices answered through her.
Suddenly memories that weren't mine flooded my mind.
Years. Decades.
Every time someone was taken, someone else tried to save them.
Every time someone offered themselves.
And every time—
The shadows kept both.
The gate didn't close because someone replaced another.
It closed because it was full.
I stumbled backward.
"You don't need me," I said. "You already have so many."
Meher's face flickered — for a split second, I saw the real her underneath. Frightened. Trapped.
Then the hollow version returned.
"We need memory," the shadows whispered.
"We need names."
Cold realization struck me.
That was why they whispered.
That was why they hunted.
Names anchor souls.
And they had learned mine when I was eight.
"You've been waiting," I said.
"For you," they replied.
Chapter Thirteen: Above the Warehouse
(Above)
Rhea pounded on the floor where I had disappeared.
The crack had sealed.
The symbols were gone.
Only silence remained.
She ran for help. The police came. They searched. They questioned.
But there was no hole.
No darkness.
No Aria.
Only dust.
Eventually, the town decided I had run away.
Or worse.
The warehouse was locked permanently.
People avoided it.
But sometimes, at night, the guards reported hearing something strange inside.
Whispers.
Soft.
Layered.
Repeating a single name.
Chapter Fourteen: Becoming
(Below)
Time didn't move the same way there.
Days might have passed.
Or years.
The shadows circled me now, not violently — but patiently.
"You will stay," they said.
"I won't," I whispered.
But already, my fingers were fading at the edges.
Like smoke dissolving into air.
Meher stepped close.
For one brief second, clarity returned to her eyes.
"I tried to fight too," she said softly.
Tears streamed down my face.
"I'm sorry," I told her again.
"I know," she replied.
And then she dissolved into darkness completely.
Her shape broke apart and blended with the pillars around us.
I screamed.
The shadows rushed forward.
They wrapped around me.
Not cold this time.
Not even cruel.
Just inevitable.
Aria, they whispered gently.
My heartbeat slowed.
My body grew lighter.
Thinner.
Until I could see through my own hands.
And then—
I understood.
The shadows were not creatures.
They were layers of trapped echoes.
Of unfinished fear.
Of abandoned names.
And now—
I was one of them.
Chapter Fifteen: Ten Years Later
Ten years passed in the town above.
Another child dared another child to enter the warehouse.
This time it was a girl named Sana.
She stepped inside alone.
The air felt heavy.
The light dimmed.
The shadows along the walls began to stretch.
She froze.
"Hello?" she called.
The darkness rippled.
And from the far wall, a tall shadow separated itself.
It tilted its head.
Watching her.
Learning her shape.
And then—
Very softly—
It whispered a name.
Not hers.
Mine.
Aria.
Because even as a shadow—
I remembered.
And the worst part?
I answered.
Final Ending: The Last Whisper
Sana never came out of the warehouse.
They searched for her.
Just like they searched for Kabir.
Just like they once searched for me.
But the warehouse always looked ordinary by daylight. Broken windows. Rusted beams. Dust.
Nothing more.
No crack in the floor.
No unnatural darkness.
Just silence.
Below
Time had stopped meaning anything.
I no longer felt my heartbeat.
I no longer felt cold.
I was not fully Aria anymore.
I was something thinner.
Something stretched between memory and shadow.
At first, I tried to fight it. I tried to hold onto my thoughts — my mother's voice, Rhea's laugh, the feeling of sunlight on my face.
But the shadows don't rip memories away.
They soften them.
They blur the edges.
They make you tired of holding on.
I watched as Sana arrived.
She fell like I once did — frightened, confused, reaching for something that wasn't there.
And I felt it.
The hunger shift.
The shadows moved toward her.
Not cruelly.
Not violently.
I understood then.
The darkness was never evil.
It was unfinished.
Every fear abandoned.
Every child left alone.
Every hand that was not held.
It collected them.
Layer by layer.
And I had added to it the day I ran.
Sana saw me.
She saw my outline in the dark.
"Are you going to hurt me?" she whispered.
The question pierced through what remained of me.
For the first time in years — or seconds — something sharp returned.
Choice.
The shadows leaned closer, waiting.
They always wait.
I stepped in front of her.
"I won't let them take your name," I said.
The shadows recoiled slightly.
Names matter.
Names anchor.
And if the shadows learned it —
She would never leave.
I turned toward the endless dark.
"You can keep me," I said. "But you don't get her."
The darkness trembled.
A thousand whispers rose.
Balance.
"Yes," I replied. "Balance."
I wrapped myself around Sana's fear, shielding it, swallowing it before the shadows could taste it.
The process burned.
Not physically.
Existentially.
I could feel my last pieces dissolving.
My childhood.
My guilt.
My face.
Sana's body began rising slowly toward the distant slit of light above.
She reached toward it, sobbing.
And then—
She was gone.
The gate sealed.
Above
Sana was found unconscious near the warehouse entrance.
Alive.
She remembered almost nothing.
Only one thing:
"A girl told me to run."
The town called it a miracle.
They demolished the warehouse two weeks later.
Brick by brick.
Beam by beam.
Nothing unusual was found beneath it.
Because there was nothing left to find.
Below
The space grew quieter.
Thinner.
Without new fear to feed it, the shadows began collapsing inward.
Echoes faded.
Names dissolved.
One by one, the pillars crumbled into soft gray mist.
I felt myself unraveling with them.
Not trapped.
Not hunted.
Just… ending.
The whispers slowed.
Until there was only one left.
Mine.
Not calling for help.
Not screaming.
Just remembering.
Aria.
And then—
Even that faded.
Epilogue
Years later, Rhea would sometimes pass the empty field where the warehouse once stood.
Grass grew there now.
Children played cricket.
Sunlight filled every corner.
But on certain evenings, when the light stretched long and thin, she would pause.
Just for a moment.
Because the shadows on the grass would lean slightly toward her.
Not threatening.
Not hungry.
Just long enough to feel familiar.
And in the quiet space between wind and memory, she would think she heard something.
Not a whisper.
Not a warning.
Just a name.
Soft.
Grateful.
Then the sun would set.
And the shadows would behave like ordinary things again.
The End.