She Thought She Buried It All

She stood by the rusted gate on Weller Lane, longer than she needed to.

The cab had disappeared ten minutes ago, swallowed by the fog rolling down from the hills. There was no one in sight, no sound except the soft hiss of wind moving through pine trees. Still, she didn’t move.

She glanced down at the name written on the slip of paper in her hand. Nina Fernandes. Neat, unfamiliar letters. Someone she was still learning to become.

It wasn’t her name. But it would be, for now.

Rhea folded the paper and tucked it into the side pocket of her duffel. Whatever part of her belonged to that name, her real name, was meant to stay buried. That was the point of coming here.

The house stood a few steps ahead, quiet and worn down, its second floor half-wrapped in mist.

She opened the gate. It creaked. Not in a haunted way, just in the way old things do when no one’s touched them in a long time.

The woman who answered the door was older than she expected. Sharp-cheeked, silver-haired, with a milky film in both eyes.
“You must be Nina,” she said, voice rough but not unfriendly.

Rhea nodded. “Yes. Mrs. D’Souza?”

The old woman stepped aside. “Come in. Your room is ready. It’s the attic, up the stairs and to the right. No one else up there. You’ll have your quiet.”
“Thank you,” Rhea said, offering a polite smile.

The house smelled of mothballs and turmeric, and something faintly metallic beneath it all. It wasn’t unpleasant. Just unfamiliar.
A clock ticked somewhere, steady and slow, as if the house kept its own kind of time.

She climbed the narrow wooden staircase, each step groaning beneath her weight.
The attic room was smaller than she thought it would be.
Low ceiling. Wooden floorboards. A narrow bed with a blanket folded over it. A writing desk pushed under the window. And a tall, full-length mirror facing the bed.

Rhea, no Nina, paused at the sight of the mirror.

She didn’t like mirrors. They showed too much. But she said nothing. She had learned not to draw attention to her discomfort. Not anymore. She sat on the edge of the bed and listened. Nothing. Not even a bird. Just the wind outside and the slow, steady ticking.

She opened the desk drawer. Inside, she found a crumpled receipt from a photo studio, dated five years ago, and a small, rusted key.

She stared at the key for a long moment, then slipped it into her coat pocket. She didn’t know why.
The mirror caught her eye again. She turned it slightly, so it no longer faced the bed. It made her feel like she could breathe.

That night, she heard footsteps. Not from the hallway, but from inside the attic. Soft, like someone walking barefoot across the wooden floor. Not pacing. Just… existing.
She sat up, holding her breath. The sound stopped.

In the morning, she found a crayon drawing slipped under her door.
No name. No note.

She showed it to Mrs. D’Souza at breakfast, who simply raised one eyebrow and said, “There haven’t been children in this house in years.”
Nina uttered “Then who…”
“You came here for quiet, didn’t you?”, Mrs. D’Souza interrupted.

Nina folded the drawing and slipped it into her coat.
She went back upstairs. Locked the door behind her. The mirror had turned. Only slightly, just enough to face the bed again.

But she remembered clearly, she had turned it towards the wall.
She walked to the mirror and gently angled it back again, watching her reflection shift as she did. Behind her, just for a second, she thought she saw a figure standing at the window.

But when she turned, there was nothing there. Just fog and pine trees outside, waiting.
She placed her palm on the glass. It was warm.

Nina left the attic room just before the sky turned from gunmetal gray to pale morning. Mrs. D’Souza had prepared tea and toast downstairs, the kitchen filled with the aroma of cardamom. Nina sipped, tasting sweetness and something metallic at the edge of her tongue.

She settled into a wooden chair and watched her landlady’s fingers tap the tabletop.
“People say the hills have memories,” Mrs. D’Souza said. “You’ll hear them if you stay long enough.”
Nina nodded, looking out at the mist-shrouded courtyard.

Back in her room, Nina swept the drawing into a notebook, scribbling over the bottom with a black pen.

She had nowhere else to go. Still, she found herself checking the mirror every few minutes, making sure her reflection remained steady and alive. There was a part of her that expected to see dark circles under her eyes, a slit wrist, or even someone else’s face staring back.

She tried to write. The desk lamp cast a pool of yellow light on blank pages. Words refused to come. Instead, she heard that ticking, faint at first. Then louder. As if the clock downstairs had grown wings and perched on her shoulder.

She got up and crossed the room. The mirror faced the bed now, the glass cold under her fingertips. The reflection was dim. Outside, the wind rattled the windowpane. She saw nothing unusual, just her own eyes widening at the sight of a smudge that wasn’t there a moment before. A smudge that looked like… blood.

Her throat tightened. She pressed her palm against the glass. It felt warmer just where her fingers rested. The bloodlike mark vanished as if it never existed. She exhaled, a shaky breath she tried to steady.

Later, she returned to the kitchen for dinner. Mrs. D’Souza was boiling potatoes over a small gas stove, humming a song in Konkani. The old woman didn’t look at her, didn’t ask where Nina had been all day.

Nina sat at the table, her spoon hovering over a plate of rice and dal. She forced herself to eat. Each grain of rice felt heavy on her tongue, as if carrying years of secrets and regret.

“I saw someone waiting by the gate earlier,” Mrs. D’Souza said, glancing toward the window. “A boy. He left when I called out.”

Nina felt the noodles of her stomach twist. “A boy?”

“Probably a messenger. They hear things fast in these hills.” The old woman’s tone was casual, but her words landed like stones. Nina nodded and resumed eating, chewing each bite as if it might shatter.

When she finished, she cleaned her plate and carried it to the sink. The tiles were cold under her palms. She felt the impression of two small hands pressing against her back, as if a child had been right behind her. She whirled around, but the kitchen was empty, only the old woman’s humming drifting through thin walls.

Back in the attic, dusk settled like a soft bruise. The only light came from her lamp, casting shadows that trembled across the floor. She sat at the desk, opening the notebook where she’d scratched out the drawing’s name. Underneath the child’s lines, she traced letters that weren’t hers: R H E A.

She closed the book, heart pounding. She’d seen her own name scrawled in crayon before, but it had been in her sister’s handwriting. And that memory felt as raw as a wound that wouldn’t close.

A soft knock sounded at the door. Nina’s breath caught. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
“Miss Fernandes?” Mrs. D’Souza’s voice floated through the wood. “Can I come in?”

Nina hesitated, then opened the door a crack. The blind woman stood there, shawl around her shoulders, her face unreadable. “I want to show you something,” she said.

Reluctantly, Nina followed her down the corridor and into the living room. The old woman led her to a side table where a small, battered music box stood. It was shaped like a birdcage, painted blue, with gold flecks fading on the surface.

Mrs. D’Souza wound the key, and a lullaby poured out, soft and melancholy. She opened the lid. Inside was a photograph folded neatly, edges frayed. She handed it to Nina without a word.

Nina unfolded it. It showed a little girl, maybe four years old, in a white frock with mud on her knees. She was smiling at the camera, wide-eyed, innocent. Behind her was a door that looked exactly like Nina’s attic door.

The girl’s face turned toward Nina. There was something familiar about her smile. A tilt of the head. The way the light fell on her hair.

Nina’s throat dried. She would know those eyes anywhere.
“Who is she?” Nina whispered.

Mrs. D’Souza’s lips moved, but no sound came. The old woman’s hand brushed Nina’s arm. “She’s the one who never left,” she said.
Nina wanted to tear the photo apart. But she stiffened, unable to move. She saw her own reflection in the music box’s polished surface. Her lips parted, but no words came.

Mrs. D’Souza turned and walked away, leaving Nina staring at the photograph. The lullaby kept playing until Nina wound down the key and the notes stuttered and died.

She walked back upstairs, clutching the photo. Each step felt heavier, as if the weight of the past were pressing against her ankles, holding her down.

That night, she dreamed of water. The bathtub filled slowly, each drop echoing. She knelt and reached in, almost touching the surface. A hand slid up from beneath the water, dragging her down. She woke with a gasp, tangled in her blankets, the mirror’s glass reflecting her wide eyes.

She pressed her palm to her heart, listening to its frantic beating. In the dim light, she saw the mirror’s frame quiver as if responding to her fear. The face in the glass wasn’t hers exactly, but it was wrong, hollowed cheeks, a mouth that curved too wide.

Nina shut her eyes and covered her face, counting backward from ten. When she looked again, there was nothing but her own reflection.
Still, as she curled under her blanket, she felt as if someone lay beside her. A small, heavy weight, like a child drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, Nina didn’t come down for breakfast. Not even the smell of buttered toast and brewed coffee coaxed her from bed. She sat at the edge of the mattress, fingers dug into the blanket, staring at the mirror.

Something had changed. Not in the reflection, it still showed her, hair tangled, eyes dark and searching, but in the feeling it gave her. The glass no longer felt like a surface. It felt like a window.
She had dreamed again. Water. Choking. A voice whispering her name, not Nina, but the name she’d left behind. Rhea. Clear and crisp, spoken through bathwater and darkness.

She thought about the photograph. The little girl’s muddy knees. The too-familiar smile. The way Mrs. D’Souza had said she’s the one who never left.

Something was wrong with this house. Something was wrong with her.

She returned to the desk and flipped through her notebook. The drawing was gone. So was the newspaper clipping.
But in their place, a new page had been added.

Not her handwriting. The ink was blue, the loops too wide, the lines jittery. At the top of the page, a single sentence: “Tell them what you did.”

She slammed the book shut and stood up too fast, her chair tipping over behind her.

Later that day, she tried to busy herself by exploring the house. The ground floor had two unused rooms, one filled with furniture under white sheets, the other locked tight. She didn’t ask for a key. She didn’t want one.

Instead, she walked through the living room, tracing her fingers along the faded wallpaper. She passed the music box and didn’t open it. The photograph was still missing.
Mrs. D’Souza was asleep in a chair, head tilted to one side, her chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. A cat sat in her lap, unmoving, like a statue.

Nina tiptoed past.
In the hallway, a narrow trapdoor caught her eye.

She hadn’t noticed it before. It was embedded in the floor beneath the stairwell, disguised beneath a fraying rug. She knelt and pulled the fabric aside, revealing a metal ring set into the wood. She hesitated only a second before gripping the ring and lifting.

The wood groaned. Dust flew up, stinging her eyes. A set of narrow stairs led down into darkness.
Of course there was a basement. Of course.

She found a flashlight on the kitchen counter and returned, descending one step at a time.

The air grew colder, wetter. The smell was of damp earth and old metal. She reached the bottom and swept the flashlight across the space.

Stone walls. A cement floor. Wooden crates stacked along one wall. A dusty mirror leaned against another.

She moved forward and caught her reflection in the broken glass. The same hollowed cheeks. The same too-wide smile she’d seen in her dream.

Her pulse stuttered. She turned to the crates and pried one open. Inside were toys. Old, moldy, decaying. A porcelain doll with a cracked face. A stuffed rabbit missing an eye. A red ribbon.

She reached in and picked up the ribbon. As her fingers closed around it, something flashed behind her in the mirror.

A face. A child’s face. She spun. Empty.

Her hand tightened around the ribbon, and suddenly she heard a sound. A rustle. A whisper.
Then a voice. Not her own.

“She was always crying, Rhea. You said you’d make her stop.”

Nina staggered back, hitting the wall. No one there.
She dropped the ribbon and fled the basement, slamming the trapdoor shut behind her.

At three in the morning, she heard it again, the whisper. Closer now.

“You left me there. Alone. Under the water.”

She stood, barefoot, and walked to the mirror. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.

Nina backed away. Her hands shook. She clutched her stomach, remembering the bathtub, the white tiles, her sister’s small body slipping under as she stood over it, not moving. Not stopping her.

She had told herself it was an accident. She had told the police that. Told her therapist that. Eventually, she’d believed it too.

But her sister, Amara, had known. Even at five, she’d looked up at her before going under. Not in fear. In betrayal. Rhea had changed her name.
But the past never forgets. And now, it was standing just behind her reflection, waiting.

The next morning, Nina left the house. No coat, no bag. Just the ringing echo of her sister’s voice clinging to the inside of her skull like humidity. She walked until the town swallowed her.

At first, the streets were familiar. The small café on the corner, the post office with its rusted sign, the playground with a swing that moved too easily in the wind. She kept walking.

But something was off. The people. They turned to look at her, but not in greeting. Their eyes lingered too long. Their mouths didn’t smile.

A man stood outside the bakery, staring as she passed. He didn’t blink.
A little boy dropped his ball and let it roll toward her feet, never bending to pick it up.
Even the air felt heavier, like the town itself was shifting around her.

She ducked into the café, heart pounding. A bell jingled above her, and a woman behind the counter glanced up.

“Coffee?” the woman asked. Nina nodded. “Yes. Strong.”
The woman didn’t speak again. Just turned, poured a black cup, and slid it across the counter.
As Nina reached for it, the woman spoke, calm, low.
“You shouldn’t have come back.”

Nina’s hand froze midair. “What?”
The woman looked up, eyes wide and distant. “She remembers.”
Nina left the coffee untouched. She stumbled out of the café, wind sharp against her face. She tried to orient herself, to find a way home. But each turn she took led her deeper into streets she didn’t recognize.

Then, at the end of the lane, a figure stood. Small. Still. A child. In a white dress. Barefoot.

Nina froze. The girl’s head was bowed, hair falling in tangles across her face.

Then, slowly, the girl looked up.
Amara.

Her eyes were waterlogged. Her lips pale. Her skin too translucent, like the color had been soaked from her.

“You said you’d play with me,” she whispered.
Nina backed away, trembling. “You’re not real.”
“You pushed me.”
“No….” Her back hit a wall. She hadn’t even noticed the alley had narrowed.
Nina squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop.”
When she opened them again, the girl was gone.

It was dark by the time she found her way back. The door to the house was open. Inside, Mrs. D’Souza stood in the hallway, silent. Nina stepped in, hands trembling. “Why did you rent this house to me?”

Mrs. D’Souza didn’t answer. Instead, she held something out in her hand. Nina took it.
A locket.
She knew it before she even opened it.
Inside was a photo of her and Amara. The same one her mother had kept in her bedside drawer.
“I never told you my real name,” Nina whispered.
Mrs. D’Souza nodded slowly. “You didn’t need to.”

The old woman turned and walked away, her footsteps making no sound.

That night, the dreams returned, but clearer.
She was in the bathroom again. Water overflowing. Amara laughing, asking to stay longer in the tub. Rhea, still Rhea then, had rolled her eyes. Annoyed. She had wanted to go play her game.

“Two more minutes,” she’d said. But then, her mother had called. And she had left. And locked the door. And turned up the volume of her headphones.

She hadn’t meant to leave for long. But when she came back, the water had gone still. The tub silent. A small hand drifting up against the porcelain wall. She had screamed.

But not before the guilt crawled in and made a home in her chest. Not before her father’s voice cracked from the hospital hallway. Not before her mother stopped looking her in the eye.

The therapists said accident. The newspapers said tragedy.
But her mind had whispered something darker. Louder.
You wanted her to disappear.

Nina woke up on the floor, fingers clutched around the locket. She grabbed the flashlight and climbed the stairs, each step echoing like a countdown.

The attic was colder than before. The air thick.
She stepped forward, light sweeping across old boxes.

Then, movement. A trunk, its lid slightly ajar.
She knelt, heart in her throat, and opened it.
Inside was the missing photograph, water-stained and torn. Next to it, her notebook. Opened to a page she hadn’t written.

“You left her. Now she waits for you.”

Beneath that, something else. A mirror. Not a big one. Just a handheld one, cracked and old.
She picked it up. Her reflection smiled. But she hadn’t.

She sat on the attic floor for what felt like hours, the cracked mirror pressed to her chest like a relic she didn’t know how to destroy. Her pulse throbbed in her ears.

The room around her twisted, shadows stretching too long, too wide. A draft swept across her neck. She turned.
Amara stood at the attic door. Her small, soaked frame unmoving.

“Don’t you miss me?”

Nina blinked. This time, the hallucination didn’t vanish.
Amara’s feet were wet, leaving prints on the old wooden floor. Her eyes were darker than before, no longer glassy, but deep, hollow.
“Didn’t you say sisters are supposed to protect each other?”

“I was a child,” Nina whispered, “I didn’t know what I was doing…”

“Liar,” Amara yelled.

A wind burst through the attic, slamming the mirror from Nina’s grip. It skidded across the floor and stopped in front of the girl.
Amara crouched beside it, looking down, not at her own reflection, but at Nina’s.

“You left me because I made things hard,” Amara said, softly, “You wanted to be free of me.”

“No….” Nina’s voice cracked.

“I clung to you. I needed you. But you… you needed silence,” Amar said.

Nina stared at her sister. She remembered the tantrums. The loud sobs. The jealousy. The way Amara had broken her doll and laughed about it. She remembered wishing, just once, for a day when her parents wouldn’t say take your sister with you.

But she had never wished her dead. Not like this. Had she?
She stood. “Why now? Why are you coming back now?”

Amara’s lips curled. “You moved into a dead girl’s house, Rhea. You really thought a new name would save you?”
The attic lights flickered. Amara vanished.
Nina was alone again, but the mirror had turned, facing her. And now, the reflection… it wasn’t hers. It was her mother. Crying. Alone in the kitchen. Years ago.
A memory she hadn’t even known she remembered.

She didn’t sleep that night. She sat curled on the floor beside her bed, wrapped in a blanket, the mirror shoved under the mattress. At sunrise, the birds didn’t chirp. The sky stayed grey.

Later that day, she visited the local library. She needed to know more about the house.
The librarian was young, probably in his twenties. He smiled, hesitant, when she asked about the house on Weller Lane. His smile disappeared when she gave the number.

“Most people don’t stay long in that house,” he said.

“Why?”Nina asked, panicked, in a doubtful manner.

He tapped the keys, pulled up a scanned newspaper article from 1997.

“Local Girl Drowns in Family Tub”

Nina’s breath caught.
She clicked through one more file, and there, black and white, grainy, was a photo of the attic. And in the far corner, faint but unmistakable, a reflection.
A girl. Watching. Not the one who drowned. But someone else. Someone older. Someone who looked like…
Nina stumbled back from the computer. The librarian looked up. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and left without answering.

When she returned, Mrs. D’Souza was nowhere to be found.

That night, she packed again. She couldn’t do this. The house was more than haunted. It was infected.
She loaded the suitcase into the car and turned back to lock the door. In the window of the upstairs hallway, a figure watched her.

Not Amara. Herself. Smiling. She blinked, and the window was empty.

She drove for hours, the sun bleeding into dusk behind her.
She pulled over near a petrol pump as night fell, needing to breathe. That’s when she checked the back seat.

The mirror was there.
She hadn’t packed it. It had followed.

Nina stared at the mirror lying in the back seat like it had always belonged there. She hadn’t packed it. She was sure of that.

She got behind the wheel, refusing to look back. She drove until the roads narrowed, until cell towers disappeared and the trees grew thicker, darker. Like something wanted her swallowed whole.
She needed answers. And she knew now, only the house had them. The storm had passed when she returned to Weller Lane. What remained was silence, broken glass, and the smell of wet wood and soot. The place looked abandoned again. Like no one had touched it in years.

She stepped inside. The floor creaked with memory.
She didn’t need to turn on the lights. Her feet knew the path now. Up the staircase, past the old music box, down the corridor lined with peeling wallpaper.
The attic door was open. Waiting. She climbed slowly. Mirror in hand.
And at the top of the stairs, she saw her again. Amara.
No older than the day she died. No wounds. No rot. Just a child frozen in time.

“Why are you still here?” Nina whispered.
The girl tilted her head. “I never was.”
The attic door slammed shut behind her.

The mirror glowed faintly, like it remembered everything she’d tried to forget. And then… it showed her. But not how she was now.
It showed the truth. Rhea, ten years ago. Kneeling beside the tub. Amara flailing, crying, choking. Reaching for her sister’s hand. Rhea didn’t reach back. She just held her down. And smiled. Not a grin. Not rage. Just… peace. As if the noise would finally stop. As if life could finally begin.
Amara’s hand slipped beneath the surface. The silence was everything Rhea had ever wanted.

She gasped, stepping back from the mirror. “No,” she muttered. “No, no…I didn’t…”

She placed the mirror on the desk and avoided looking at it. Her hands shook as she pulled out the old journal she’d found in the attic, hers, apparently. The writing was familiar… but not.

The last page was written in a sharper hand.
Rhea, it said. Not Nina.

“You never forget. You only hide. I come when you’re weak. I silence your fears.
You get to run. I stay behind. Until it’s time to switch again.”

Nina staggered backward, clutching her chest. A whisper echoed in the room.

“You made me, remember?”
She turned to the mirror. It didn’t show her. It showed Rhea.

In the reflection, the attic was whole again. Rhea stood inside it, calm, confident. Her lips curled into a smile, not wicked, not cruel. Almost… proud.

“You’re the part that cries,” she said softly. “I’m the part that survives.”

Nina shook her head. “You killed Amara.”

Rhea didn’t deny it. “You let her scream. I let her drown.”

Nina collapsed to her knees. “I didn’t know…”
Rhea knelt, pressing a palm to the other side of the glass. “But now you do. And I’m awake again.”

Flashes tore through her mind.
The boyfriend in Mumbai, his mouth gaping open, a knife in her hand.
The landlady in Weller Lane, falling, blood spreading like ink on a page.
The stranger in the woods, dragged behind the trees, silenced before he could recognize her.

“I always show up when you’re afraid,” a voice whispered behind her.
Nina spun. No one was there. She collapsed to her knees.

The journal lay on the attic floor, open to a final entry she didn’t remember writing.
“Every time I remember, it’s too late. Rhea is not a ghost. She is me. She just waits, until I’m weak. And then, I wake up somewhere else. Someone else.”

She read the final line aloud: “I’m tired of forgetting.”

The attic creaked behind her. The mirror glowed again.
Rhea stood there. Fully now. Not a flicker. Not a reflection. A presence.

“You ran from me,” she said. “City to city. Name to name. And still, you bring me with you.”

“No,” Nina whispered, tears streaking her cheeks. “You’re the past. I buried you.”

Rhea smiled. “You thought you did. But I’m the one who buries.”

Nina touched the mirror’s surface. It was ice cold.

“I don’t want this anymore,” she said. “I don’t want you.”

Rhea stepped forward. “But we are not separate things. You are not innocent. I am not evil. I am what you made when the pain was too much. I am your survival. Your silence. Your scream.”

The mirror splintered. A spiderweb of cracks bloomed across the glass.

Rhea faded. And Nina, stood alone. But now, she remembered it all.
She picked up a matchbox and put the whole attic in fire. She didn’t want Rhea to come back. She wanted to kill her, even if it meant she had to die with her.

That night, police were alerted by a fire at Weller Lane.
When they arrived, they found the attic untouched.
On the wall, scratched in charcoal:
“She buried the bodies. Then she buried herself. But one day, she will wake again. So today, I’m burning her with me.


Six months later, in another town, a young woman rented a studio apartment above a shop.
She introduced herself as “Neha.”

The landlord said she seemed quiet, polite. She wrote in a journal often. Smiled at children. Drank chamomile tea. A perfect tenant.
And she loves seeing her face in her mirror now and then, a beautiful antique hand-mirror.