Part 2 of “The Witch in a House”

After the cursed mother was thrown out — clothes torn, honor stripped — she walked into the wilderness beyond the cremation ground. Alone, but whispering.

Some say she carried ashes in her fist, others say she walked backward, chanting names no one dared speak.

But she wasn’t finished.

Three weeks later, the daughter-in-law, alone in the haunted silence of the house, began to feel… watched. She heard breathing behind walls. Water dripped from dry taps. At night, the oil lamp flickered not with wind, but with presence.

She thought it was grief. Or guilt.

Then her belly began to swell.

Not slowly — but rapidly. Within ten nights, her stomach grew as though six months pregnant.

When the village women came to check, they found no fever, no pulse irregularities — but all of them returned home vomiting. One fainted.

The daughter-in-law whispered that the child wasn’t her husband’s.

> “He came to me. Not in dream, but between breaths. His hands were cold. He said, ‘Mother brought me back.’”

The women stopped visiting her after that

Her husband, the elder son — once brave, once angry — died first.

He was found in the courtyard, hanging upside down, neck twisted. His eyes were gone. Only salt remained in the sockets.

Then the grandson — the one who once drank the cursed water — began screaming every night, saying a voice was crawling inside him.

He was found with a bitten tongue, blood foaming at his mouth.

The granddaughter  vanished entirely. His slippers were found in the neem tree.

The village didn’t speak. They only watched the house — a silent ruin growing darker with each moon.

The widow never wept.

She whispered lullabies to her stomach.

On the night of the lunar eclipse, cries rang from the house.

Not screams of pain — but the moaning of many mouths. People said they saw shadows dancing in the windows, as if the walls had become transparent.

By morning, she had delivered.

The child was a girl. She bore none of the sweet deformities of new life. Instead, her skin was cold as stone, hair black as crow feathers, her pupils deep crimson like fire burning through coal. Her cry sounded like two voices overlapping — one infantile, the other ancient.

The woman named her Tamasi.

From that moment, no one entered that house again. Not even to steal. Not even to burn it.

Unnatural Deaths

The curse hadn’t ended. It had only grown teeth.

Neighbors began dying in cruel and bizarre ways. One woman was found drowned in her own rice pot — no water spilled, no struggle, face frozen in horror. A farmer’s body was found in his field with his tongue missing and his cows licking his blood from the ground. Children woke up with claw marks on their backs and no memory of dreaming.

And in the cursed house, Tamasi grew. Rapidly. By age two, she looked seven. Her mother no longer left the house. Tamasi would be seen walking alone at dusk, barefoot, trailing her fingers along the mud walls, whispering to dogs who would whimper and run. Birds never nested near her. Cats fought to the death when she passed.

Every mirror in the house had been covered.

A priest once attempted an exorcism. He lasted twelve hours before he burst out of the house, clothes torn, eyes bleeding. He spoke only one sentence before his throat locked permanently:

> “She is not a girl. She is a womb for something else.”

No one tried again.

Tamasi’s Eyes

At age five, Tamasi stopped speaking. Her mother fed her without looking directly at her face. One evening, she noticed her daughter sitting on the ceiling, her back arched unnaturally, staring down with those blood-red eyes.

She fainted.

When she awoke, her hair had turned white. Her skin had wrinkled like a woman thrice her age. Tamasi had not aged a day since that moment.

Some claimed they saw her walking through the cemetery, her feet leaving no imprint. Others believed she could disappear behind corners that weren’t there.

One man, brave with drink, mocked her openly in the square. Three nights later, his body was found tied with his own intestines to the village well, his face bent backward as if forced to look behind him.

Only the name "Tamasi" was carved into his chest.

The Final Night

Years passed. The village population declined slowly, unnaturally. Gangoli became known as a place cursed by a girl-witch. Even the trees avoided growing near her home.

On the final night, lightning struck the sky without thunder. Winds blew inward, toward the house, not away. All remaining villagers heard a long, deep humming — the same lullaby the daughter-in-law used to hum in the dark.

They gathered outside the house but none dared approach.

Suddenly, a scream — high-pitched, unending — ripped through the night. Then silence. Absolute silence.

The next morning, the house was empty. No sign of the mother. No sign of Tamasi. Only the walls remained — etched in blood, in a language no one could read.

At the center, a single sentence was smeared with ash:

> "Darkness isn’t born. It is inherited."

But That Wasn't the End

A year later, in a village 50 kilometers away, a girl appeared. Pale, barefoot, with red eyes and no belongings. She smiled at a farmer’s wife and asked:

> “May I sleep in your barn?”

She gave the name Tamasi.

And the lullaby began again.