Riya was seventeen years old. She loved to click photos of animals and nature, but now she wanted to visit the place where no one dared to go. She didn’t want to go alone so she called up her few friends and asked them to come along. Without asking further questions two of them agreed, because they knew when Riya planned a trip it would be super cool and adventurous. After a few hours, her friends Rohan and Priya came to her place, they planned the trip packed their bags, and sat in her car.
After having lunch at Haldiram’s they moved ahead, it was 4 pm when they stopped near a shop to get a bottle of mineral water. To their surprise, the shopkeeper asked them to use the water in the tank. He further added, ” No tourist comes this way so you will not find anything in the shops here except groceries and vegetables. By the way, are you planning to visit the ‘Haveli’?”
They all nodded. The shopkeeper said, “Are you sure about going to that cursed Haveli.”
Upon hearing his words, Rohan and Priya got scared. Riya jibed, “There’s no such thing as cursed. It’s all a hoax to scare people away from this place so that the locals can live without interference.”
They all sat back in the car and Riya drove toward the destination, it was around 7:30 pm when they reached the Haveli. Without waiting for others Riya grabbed her Nikon D810 and entered the Haveli.
“Finally I can see what this camera is worth,” she chuckled. It was a gift from her maternal aunt when she came to know about her niece’s love for photography. She sent it all the way from California to Bhilwara. When Riya sent some of her best clicks to her aunt, she was impressed and asked her to try it for night photography.
“It’s specially designed to capture night mode. ‘It’s one of the best,’ the photographer who is a friend of mine said.”
Since then Riya could not resist the temptation to capture a magnificent palace in night mode. When she heard of ‘Chand Bibi Haveli’ and the stories associated with it, she was fascinated to capture the magnificence of the palace in her camera.
Soon Riya started clicking pictures whereas Rohan and Priya were still in the car.
“P-P-P-Priya, I want to go home.”
“Oh! Come on! Stop being a child!” Riya grabbed Rohan’s right arm and forced him along with her inside the Haveli.
“Wait a second, I am coming from the washroom,” Riya said.
“Ok, but are you sure this place has one,” chuckled Priya.
“Don’t worry, I am used to all this. I will manage,” Riya winked at her and disappeared into a dark room. It was strange that the Haveli was well-lit by the full moon but the room was strangely dark which made Riya a bit scared. “It must be the position of the room, ” she murmured to herself and went further inside. At a place, she saw a spot of light entering the room but when her eyes fell on the blood-covered dead bodies on the ground, she gave out a loud scream. She ran out of the room as fast as she could to tell her friends about what she saw. But when she reached, there was no one, she tried looking for them in the nearby rooms avoiding the dark ones. But there was no trace of them. She was stuck there alone with a camera which was of no use then. Now, all she thought of was going back home. The car was parked outside the main gate.
While she headed out of the Haveli, she heard footsteps, she was so terrified to wait if they could be her friends that she ran towards the car and sat inside. She took a deep breath and started her car. While she was driving away from the cursed Haveli, a truck hit her. It was 5:30 am when she opened her eyes in a hospital. She could not dare to look at herself all draped in bandages and maybe a leg or hand missing, but to her surprise there was not a scratch on her body.
“Who brought me here,” she enquired with a nurse.
“The truck driver who hit you was a good man. He brought you here thinking you might be severely injured. The hospital was not admitting you because it was a case of a road accident but the driver insisted that he would not leave until the police come and so the doctors examined you. The doctors were surprised to see that you did not get a scratch after being hit by a fully loaded truck. God saved you today.”
At night, Riya was thinking about her friends and what she would tell their families when she felt thirsty. She took a glass to fill the water. She looked out of the window and saw a lady wearing a white sari staring at her. Riya got scared, she turned around only to find the lady behind her. Riya ran out of the room in horror. It seemed to her that her entire life was cursed for planning a trip to that horrible palace.
She spent the night at the hospital sleeping beside the nurse she knew and the next day went back to her home clearing the medical bills. But the approaching night made her restless and also the fact that no one from her family or Rohan and Priya’s families tried to contact her.
“What about the police? They would certainly hold me responsible for their disappearance.” Her mind was racing from one thought to another when she saw the same lady in a white sari in front of her. Her hands trembled and she stood up to run but the lady got hold of her neck and squeezed it with a vicious smile on her face. All of a sudden Rohan and Priya flung open the door and the lady disappeared. Riya was shocked!
Priya said, “When you were going towards the washroom, a lady came in a white sari and caught us.” Just after saying these words, Rohan and Priya disappeared.
Riya then realized that they were not her friends but ghosts, as she looked at the ceiling she saw the lady staring at her. The dead bodies she saw in the Haveli were of her friends, and it was her turn now.