Chapter 7: The Thakur's Ledger

Chapter 7: The Thakur's Ledger

The bus kicked up a cloud of ochre dust as it rattled away, leaving Arjun standing alone on the edge of Chhayagarh. The journey from Kolkata had been a frantic, blurry reversal of the escape he thought he’d made. Now, breathing the familiar air of home, he felt a chilling difference. The late afternoon sun was weak, casting a pale, sickly light. The sky was a bruised, unsettling shade of purple-grey, a colour he remembered with visceral horror from the fleshy interior of the train. The very atmosphere of his village felt thin, stretched taut over something vast and unwell.

His home was silent when he entered. The comforting smell of woodsmoke and his mother’s cooking was gone, replaced by a stagnant, medicinal odour. He found her in the main room, not cooking, but sitting on a stool, her hands listlessly sorting lentils. She looked ten years older than she had four months ago, her face etched with deep lines of sleeplessness and fear.

She looked up, and a wave of relief so powerful it was almost painful washed over her face. "Arjun! You came." She rushed to him, her embrace thin and frail.

"Where is he?" Arjun asked, his voice tight.

She gestured with her head towards the small, dark bedroom. "He's... resting." The word was a flimsy cover for a much uglier truth.

Arjun stepped into the dim room. Bimal was sitting on the edge of his cot, facing the wall. He was fully dressed but seemed shrunken, his once-wiry frame slack and defeated. His right hand lay limp in his lap. The left arm, the pale, foreign limb, was held out stiffly, its fingers splayed on the cool mud wall. The scorpion tattoo stood out like a black cancer on the pale skin.

"Baba?" Arjun said softly.

Bimal didn't turn. "The schedule is late," he muttered, his voice a dry rasp. "The fare is growing impatient. So hungry..." His words were not directed at Arjun, but at the wall, at the air, at the phantom limb that served as his connection to the Line.

Arjun backed out of the room, a cold dread coiling in his stomach. The man he knew as his father was gone, a hollowed-out vessel occupied by a ghost. "The silo?" he asked his mother, his voice barely a whisper.

"The village elders... they helped us," she said, her voice trembling. "They locked what was left. But they look at us with fear now, Arjun. At him. No one has had a peaceful night's sleep since the old Thakur died. The cows give birth to stillborn calves with too many legs. The crows sit on the rooftops and don't caw. It's like the world is holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to happen."

She wrung her hands, her knuckles white. "The new Thakur, Birendra's nephew, he does nothing. He is a city boy, Sameer. He came for the funeral and now he is trapped here, just like us. He hides in that big house, too afraid to even walk through the village."

Arjun’s new resolve hardened into steel. This was bigger than his father. The entire village was teetering on the edge of the abyss, the protective covenant shattered. "Ma," he said, his tone commanding in a way that surprised them both. "The old stories. The ones Baba used to tell about the first Thakur and the train. He said the Thakur kept records of everything. A book where he kept his accounts."

His mother’s eyes widened with a flicker of fearful memory. "The ledger. Yes. Old Birendra kept it, just as his father did. It was said he wrote in it every night. A pact must have its terms, its fine print. He was keeping accounts with a devil."

"Where is it?"

"In the big house. In his study. No one has entered that room since his death. Sameer ordered it locked. He is terrified of his own shadow, let alone his uncle's secrets."

That was all Arjun needed. He left his mother, his backpack still slung over his shoulder, and walked with grim purpose towards the Thakur's sprawling, two-story house. The once-manicured gardens were overgrown with weeds, the whitewashed walls stained with mildew. It looked like a house in mourning for its own authority.

He didn't knock. He strode through the open doorway into the dusty main hall. A young man, barely older than Arjun himself, was pacing nervously by a large, draped window. He was dressed in expensive but rumpled city clothes, a stark contrast to his surroundings. This was Sameer, the new Thakur, a ruler terrified of his own kingdom.

"Who are you?" Sameer asked, his voice high and nervous.

"I am Arjun, son of Bimal," Arjun said, his voice flat and cold. "My father was on the Chhayagarh Line. I was with him."

All colour drained from Sameer's face. He looked at Arjun as if he were a spectre. "That's not possible. The Line... the agreement..."

"The agreement is broken," Arjun cut him off, stepping closer. The boy from the city who had once dismissed his father's superstitions was gone. In his place was a haunted young man who had seen the gears of the universe and knew they were made of flesh and bone. "Your uncle is dead, and the Line is hungry. It breached the contract. It took my father's arm. And now it is poisoning this entire village through the 'compensation' it provided. It is poisoning my father."

Sameer stumbled back, shaking his head. "I don't know anything about this. I'm a software engineer from Delhi. This is all... folklore. Superstition."

"Was the arm they sewed onto my father folklore?" Arjun countered, his voice rising with a dangerous edge. "Was the feeding I witnessed superstition? Your family made a deal with that thing, and now the payments are overdue. You are the Thakur. The responsibility is yours."

The weight of the title seemed to crush Sameer. "What do you want from me?" he whispered, his eyes darting around as if the shadows themselves were listening.

"The ledger," Arjun demanded. "Your uncle's ledger. The one that holds the details of the original pact. The rules of the contract. I need to know what they are. I need to find a loophole, a weakness, a way to fight back."

"No! I can't," Sameer stammered, wringing his hands. "That room... my uncle... he warned me never to unseal his private things. He said some knowledge is a heavier burden than any curse. To read it is to become part of the pact!"

"My father is already part of it!" Arjun roared, his composure finally snapping. "This village is part of it! We are living the consequences while you hide behind a locked door, pretending the monster outside doesn't exist. Give me the key."

He stood before Sameer, not as a villager petitioning his landlord, but as an equal, a fellow survivor of a horror Sameer had only heard stories about. The desperation and cold certainty in Arjun's eyes were more terrifying than any local superstition.

Sameer broke. With a trembling hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, large, ornate iron key, dark with age and disuse. He didn't hand it to Arjun; he placed it on a dusty table between them, as if afraid to touch Arjun's hand.

"It's the only key," Sameer said, his voice a defeated whisper. "The study is at the end of the west wing. It has been sealed since the day he died. Whatever you find in there... may the gods have mercy on you. On all of us."

Arjun snatched the key. It was cold and heavy in his palm, a solid piece of the past. He turned without another word and walked towards the west wing, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous, silent house. He found the door, a heavy teak monstrosity with a thick film of dust and a faint, almost imperceptible smell of ozone and old paper seeping from beneath it.

He stood before it, the iron key in his hand. He had gone to Kolkata seeking a future built on reason and science. Now, he was back in Chhayagarh, about to unlock a door to a past steeped in blood and magic. Beyond this door lay the words that had bound his world to a monster. He could only pray they also contained the words to set it free.