Shadows of the Past

Rajat hadn’t set foot in the small coastal town of Blackburn in over twenty years. She had sworn to herself she’d never return, not after what had happened that summer when she was fourteen. But the letter had arrived two weeks ago, bearing the news she had dreaded for years—her estranged mother had passed away.

Rajat stood at the edge of the town now, looking down the winding road that led to the old house on the cliffside. The wind whipped her hair, and the scent of the sea filled her lungs. The memories came flooding back—long summer days playing with her sister, Gargi, in the fields, the sound of seagulls crying overhead, and the looming presence of the house that always seemed to cast a shadow over her childhood.

But not all the memories were happy. In fact, the darkest ones were the reason she had stayed away for so long.

Twenty years ago, Gargi had vanished without a trace.

No one in Blackburn had ever found out what happened to her. One moment, she and rajat had been playing hide-and-seek in the sprawling fields behind the house, and the next, Gargi was gone. The search parties had combed through the town and the surrounding woods for days, but there had been no sign of her. The police had conducted endless interviews, but no leads had ever surfaced.

The disappearance had torn Rajat’s family apart. Her mother had grown cold and distant, her father withdrawn into silence. Eventually, her parents divorced, and Rajat was sent to live with an aunt in the city. She never returned, choosing to bury the past as best she could.

But now, with her mother gone and the family estate left to her, Rajat found herself back in the place she had spent so long avoiding. She knew she couldn’t leave Blackburn without confronting the ghosts of her past—especially the ghost of her sister.

The house on the cliffside was just as Rajat remembered—tall, foreboding, and isolated. The paint was peeling, and the windows were coated in dust. It looked abandoned, as though the years had stripped it of any warmth or life.

RAJAT stepped inside, the front door creaking loudly on its hinges. The air inside was stale, and the house felt heavy with memories. 

She wandered through the familiar rooms, each one triggering flashes of the past—her father’s study where he used to read to them, the kitchen where her mother used to bake bread, and the parlor where they had celebrated birthdays before everything fell apart.

But it was the back room—the room Gargi had shared with her—that drew Rajat’s attention most. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The bed was still made, the old dollhouse in the corner covered in dust, and the closet door slightly ajar.

Rajat’s heart skipped a beat. The closet.

It was where Gargi had been hiding the day she disappeared.

The memory was crystal clear now. They had been playing hide-and-seek, and Gargi had chosen the closet as her hiding spot. Rajat had been “it,” searching the house for her sister, but when she opened the closet door, Gargi wasn’t there. She had never been found.

Something in Rajat had always known that her sister had hidden in that closet, that something had happened in that very room, but she had never understood what.

She stepped closer to the closet, her hands trembling as she reached for the handle. The door creaked open, revealing the empty space inside. But as Rajat’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she noticed something she had never seen before—scratch marks on the inside of the closet door.

Her breath caught in her throat. The marks were faint but unmistakable, as though someone had clawed at the door, trying to get out.

A wave of nausea hit her. Had Gargi been trapped in here? Had she been unable to get out?

Rajat’s mind raced with the possibilities. She knelt down, running her fingers over the marks, her heart pounding. How had no one noticed these before?

Suddenly, the floorboards beneath her groaned. Startled, she stepped back, but the creaking continued, louder this time, as though something beneath the floor was shifting.

Rajat’s pulse quickened. The house was old, but this didn’t feel like the normal settling of wood and nails. It felt deliberate, like the house itself was trying to tell her something.

Driven by a sudden urge, she began to pry at the floorboards with her hands. The wood was loose, as though it had been tampered with before. After a few minutes of struggling, she managed to pull one of the boards free.

What she uncovered made her blood run cold.

There, hidden beneath the floor, was a small, decayed box. Her hands shook as she lifted it out of the hole, the weight of the moment pressing down on her. The box was old, its hinges rusted and its wood rotting. But it was the contents inside that truly horrified her.

Inside the box was a collection of small, delicate bones.

Rajat’s breath caught in her throat. She stared at the bones, her mind refusing to accept what she was seeing. These were the remains of a child—a child who had been hidden here, under the floorboards of the room she had shared with her sister.

The realization hit her like a punch to the gut.

Gargi.

Rajat collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down her face. All these years, her sister had been right here, buried beneath the house they had grown up in. She had been so close, and yet no one had known.

The scratch marks, the bones, the terrible truth—it all pointed to one conclusion: Gargi had been trapped in that closet, and somehow, she had died there. Whether it had been an accident or something more sinister, Rajat didn’t know. But the guilt washed over her in waves. She had been the one to suggest hide-and-seek that day. She had been the one to open the closet and find nothing.

She had been the one to leave her sister behind.

In the days that followed, the police arrived, and the house became the center of a long-forgotten mystery. The remains were identified as Gargi’s, and the town of Blackburn was left reeling from the revelation.

But for Rajat, there was no solace. She had spent years running from the past, only to find that the shadows had never left her. Her sister’s disappearance had haunted her, and now the truth of what had happened would haunt her forever.

She had come back to confront the past, but the past had swallowed her whole. The house on the cliffside, once a place of memories, was now a tomb—a tomb that had held the darkest secret of her life.

And Rajat knew that no matter how far she ran, the shadows of the past would always follow her.