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Sanya arrived at the guest house in Dharapathar just past dusk, the light crawling out of the mountains like a dying breath. The caretaker, Mr. Gupta, led her through a musty corridor stained by decades of woodsmoke and damp. It smelled of ash and cold stone.
“Not many guests this time of year,” he said, handing over the iron room key. “Most avoid the monsoon.”
She gave the usual polite smile, tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear, and dragged her suitcase upstairs. Room 3B. Wood-paneled walls, creaky floorboards, a framed photo of some long-dead minister. The place felt preserved in amber: unlived, untouched.
She was here for a ten-day isolation retreat—writing sabbatical paid for by a travel grant. Her goal was to finish her upcoming novel, or at least jumpstart it. But something about the room—the silence, the dark skies, the sense of waiting—it nudged her mind toward dreams, not plots.
That night, she dreamed of falling through a black window that led to a staircase winding endlessly downwards. The air was thick, oily, like ink. She saw herself scribbling down pages in a book she couldn’t recognize.
In the morning, while sipping tea on the veranda, she wandered into the main hall and saw the thick guest logbook placed on a podium near the reception bell. Its pages were old and yellowing. Among names, destinations, and years, a section titled “COMMENTS/DREAMS” had been scrawled in blue ink decades ago. The last entry was dated July 3, 1989.
Out of curiosity, Sanya flipped to a blank page and, impulsively, wrote: “I dreamed of falling into a staircase that had no end. My ink bled, but the paper drank every word.”
That night, she dreamed again. This time of a man sitting at the edge of her bed, peeling something invisible off the walls. When she tried to scream, her mouth filled with dirt.
She wrote the dream down the next day—this time believing it might help her break through her writing block. It didn’t. But by the fourth dream, something shifted.
In one entry, she described seeing another guest—an old woman with a hunched back—locking herself in Room 2A and weeping softly. The next morning, Room 2A, previously empty, wasn’t locked anymore. Its door was ajar.
Sanya peeked in. A stained shawl lay draped across the armrest. Damp footprints led into the bathroom. She asked Mr. Gupta if any elderly guests had checked in.
“No one new. Just you.”
Even stranger things followed. After a particularly vivid nightmare involving her own mother wandering barefoot through snow, calling Sanya back to a home that no longer existed, she discovered a call received and logged in the guesthouse record—supposedly from “Mrs. Sanya Kapoor.”
Her mother had died in 2017.
The calls continued. The dreams grew more lucid. Every night, she’d dream, and every morning, she’d write. It had become compulsive. She told herself it was therapy.
Then, four days before her stay was to end, she dreamed she couldn’t wake up.
She wrote: “I dreamed I was awake, but when I looked out the window, the mountains weren’t there anymore. Only a flat, blank sky and millions of moths beating against an invisible wall. I tried screaming but felt hands pushing me back into the bed.”
That morning, she didn’t wake. Not right away.
When she finally did, it was dark. Her phone battery had died. The power was out.
She went downstairs, but the hall was empty. No Mr. Gupta. Just the flickering oil lamp in the corner.
The logbook sat open.
But not at her last entry. It was several pages ahead now.
Entries she hadn’t written filled the pages, all in her handwriting. Each dated future days:
July 25: Sanya tries to leave by foot; reaches the guest house again.
July 26: Sanya forgets her name.
July 27: She looks into the mirror and sees someone else writing.
July 28: The dream begins again.
Panicking, she tore out the pages, burning them with a match. The ink bubbled, hissed. The flames licked the words clean.
She packed her bag and began to walk downhill. No signal. Only fog and dense green.
Thirty minutes later, the path turned oddly familiar. The same wooden sign: Government Guest House – Dharapathar, 700m.
She was back. Without ever turning.
Sanya now stays in Room 3B. She writes in the guest log each morning, though she no longer recalls dreaming. But the entries keep appearing without her, sometimes before she sleeps.
Last week, another guest arrived and asked her for the key to his room.
She smiled.
Handed over the heavy iron key.
And said: “Just write your dreams down. It helps.”
