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It was a humid Mumbai evening, and the common corridor of Palm Heights Society buzzed with erratic Diwali lights and echoes of a distant dhol. Mrs. Meera Sakhalkar, the housing society secretary, had just stepped out to check on the GenSet when she saw the locked door of 7C — still unlit, still shut.
The resident of 7C, Vihaan Joshi, was a reclusive but charming mid-30s podcaster, known for his viral audio series ‘Voices of the Void’ — an investigative psychodrama laced with real confessions, urban myths and ambient soundscapes. He rarely stepped out, worked odd hours, and rarely spoke unless it was to his mic.
The last anyone heard from him was three nights ago — during a livestream that abruptly ended mid-sentence. Some thought it was a tech error, others assumed it was one of his many stunts.
But Mrs. Sakhalkar thought otherwise. She’d heard something no one else had noticed — the doorbell. Hidden beneath the layered sound effects of rainfall and creaking swings, there was a distinct triple-tone entry chime recorded seconds before the audio cut.
The police finally agreed to break the lock. The flat was neat. Cool. No body. No sign of a struggle. Just Vihaan’s podcasting rig, still active, headphones resting neatly on the desk. The last audio file had a glitch midway, as if forcefully shut — but no one in the tech team could find signs of tampering.
The investigation unearthed little. No witnesses saw Vihaan leave. No evidence of anyone entering. His flat was like a sealed time capsule. Except for one strange detail: the ceiling.
Above Vihaan’s 7C was a duplex studio — 8C. Recently purchased by Sid Vani, a rising indie singer and Instagram sensation whose moody music videos were often shot in his flat. No one knew they’d gone to college together in Nagpur. Or that Vihaan had once accused Sid of stealing and monetizing one of his early concept audio plays.
Mrs. Sakhalkar used society maintenance logs to dig deeper. According to pest control reports, Sid had requested installation of high-density acoustic panels on his floor six weeks prior. That included a two-way duct vent hidden under a false mattress support — directly positioned above Vihaan’s desk.
The audio tech, Manoj from Floor 3B, mentioned something odd: hypersensitive parabolic mics like Vihaan’s could sometimes pick up through metal if aligned right — not clearly, but enough to register sounds beneath. Which meant the odd creak at 9:12 was not a floorboard… but weight shifting above.
A week later, Vihaan’s body was discovered — not above, not below — but within. Sid’s music video, titled “Buried in Silence,” released online to rave reviews. It ends with him laying a cutout mattress over a hollow cavity. The location tagged as ‘home’.
What triggered suspicion? In one frame light bled from beneath the studio floorboards — an optical illusion created by mirrored LED strips, according to Sid. Except Mrs. Sakhalkar had another theory. Using duplicate society keys, she entered 8C during one of his shoots and dropped a marble. It danced, spiraled… and vanished into a floor crevice.
When confronted, Sid claimed artistic license. But engineers found structural anomalies beneath his studio. Vihaan’s body had been lowered through the duct, wrapped in thermal blankets to suppress scent, then concealed beneath an acoustic sub-floor — something Sid had claimed was installed for bass insulation.
The motive? Not jealousy. Not revenge. But message. Vihaan had started an exposé episode titled “Echo Crimes” — meant to reveal how performance artists plagiarize lesser-known creators. The real killer’s face was never shown in Vihaan’s episode — but his song titles all matched the podcast’s unreleased master list.
In a final twist, Vihaan had mailed his episode to one person before going live — his ex-girlfriend and audio tech Fiona, now in Berlin. She uploaded it two days after his disappearance. The full version. With unmasked, unedited audio.
The voice behind the doorbell in the final minute wasn’t a delivery agent — it was Sid, saying: “You should have stayed quiet.”
Palm Heights Society now insists on background checks, and Meera Sakhalkar has started her own podcast.
It’s called: “Across The Walls.”
