Anya and Amar had recently moved to their new rental flat in Bengaluru. They had moved to an older lane, away from the chaos of city. On first moving to the flat, Anya had noticed a smudge on the otherwise pristine teak door.

A few days after setting up the house, she took a sponge and detergent and started to work on the mark.

“It’s an old sign, child,” Mrs. Rao, the elderly neighbour from across the hall, had warned her, her voice a dry rustle of silk.

“You leave it. It keeps the visitors away. It is a Kannada mark ನಾಳೆ ಬಾ (Naale Ba) and is a charm against the witch, a spirit who comes at night and is famously obedient, always reading the sign and returning the next day, forever trapped in a cycle of delay.”

Anya, who worked as a systems analyst and believed only in firewalls and logic, had smiled politely. “I’m sure it does, Aunty, but it’s just dirt.” She spent an hour scrubbing the ancient Kannada phrase from the wood grain. When she was done, the door was clean, pristine, and unprotected.

Mrs. Rao shrugged and muttering to herself went inside her flat and closed her door. Anya could make out the words “this generation” and “God save them”. She dismissed these concerns to old age and superstitions and soon enough forgot about the now rubbed mark on her door

A few days later, the monsoon came with violent intensity, drowning the streetlights and plunging the apartment into darkness. Anya was alone at home, reading by her emergency light when the knocking started. Amar was out of station for a week on a work trip so she knew it wasn’t him.

It was not the loud, demanding rap of a delivery driver or the hesitant tap of a neighbour. It was a soft, almost tentative tap-tap-tap, a sound that felt less like an intruder and more like someone seeking shelter. Anya froze, clutching her phone.

Then came the voice. It was low and melodious, like water running over stones, and it spoke her name. “Anya? Are you awake, dear?”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. The voice was of her mother’s. Panic tightened her throat. Her mother lived three hundred miles away and never traveled without warning.

The witch didn’t just knock; the legend stated she called out in the voice of a loved one to trick the people into opening the door. If the door was opened, she would kill the person in an instant. Anya pressed her back against the wall, listening to the gentle plea coming through the solid wood.

“I just came to see you, Anya. Open up.”

A terrible, compelling urge to run to the door and hug her mother overwhelmed her logic. But the voice wasn’t right; it had the tone, but lacked the familiar, slight impatience of her actual mother. It was too perfect, too smooth.

Anya was now more scared than she had ever been. She was now cursing herself for removing that mark from her door. She told herself that now was not the time to lose her mind.

She did a quick search on her phone and found the same markings. Then, she stumbled onto her work table and by the light of her mobile phone’s torch, she found a piece of paper and wrote ನಾಳೆ ಬಾ (Naale Baa) with a marker.

Putting it on the door was out of question so Anya slid the paper through the door hoping it would work. Suddenly the tapping stopped and Anya felt something swoosh past the door and out into the rain. She heaved a sigh of relief and promised herself that she would put the mark on her door first thing in the morning.

This post is a part of the Blogchatter Half Marathon.