In-Between Room
Rahul hated missing-person cases.
No blood, no body — just a name on a file. Vijay Kumar. Forty-two. Last seen in Room 308 of the Shanthala Palace Hotel.
The manager’s pen paused mid-signature when Rahul made his request.
“Room 308, please.”
“You… want that one?”
“Yes.”
“That room… it’s had strange stories. Old superstitions. It hasn’t been cleaned since the missing…” The man’s voice trailed off.
“Good,” Rahul said, taking the key before the hesitation could become refusal.
The hallway was dim, lined with silent, shut doors. At the far end, 308 waited, its brass numbers dull with age.
The air inside was stale, unmoving. A glass of water sat by the window, a skin of dust on its surface. Clothes lay folded on the chair, untouched. The bed was unmade, the sheets twisted into a shape that almost suggested a person still lying there.
Rahul moved gradually, scanning every inch — the nightstand drawer, the bathroom tiles, the curtains. Nothing spoke. The bed held no secrets — only a place to lie down.
He sat down in the chair, jotting a few notes. The silence pressed closer. His eyelids felt heavier than they should.
He decided to start the real work tomorrow. For now, a few hours’ sleep wouldn’t hurt.
The bed groaned faintly as he lay down, uncomfortably soft, as if it wanted to swallow him whole. Or maybe that was just the springs.
Sunlight spilled through the curtains when Rahul opened his eyes.
For a moment, he forgot where he was. Then the heavy air, the smell of dust and wood polish, pulled him back. Room 308. Vijay Kumar. Missing.
After a quick shower, he stepped into the hallway, notebook in hand.
The manager claimed Vijay had checked in alone. Rahul went through the register — Vijay’s name, neat handwriting, time-stamped at 7:42 p.m. The entry before his belonged to a family of four, the entry after to an elderly businessman. Nothing odd there.
Until the receptionist swore she’d seen Vijay leave the hotel around midnight.
Rahul frowned. “You’re certain?”
“I saw him,” she said. “Suitcase in hand. Walked right past me.”
But when Rahul checked the corridor CCTV, Vijay was never seen leaving his room. The footage showed the hallway all night — no movement, no door opening.
And outside, the street camera facing the hotel? It caught nothing except a stray dog and a milk delivery truck. No man with a suitcase.
Two truths. Both solid. Both impossible together.
Rahul jotted them down, feeling that familiar pulse of curiosity in his chest. First day, first contradiction.
Rahul left the security room, head buzzing. The receptionist’s story was airtight — yet so was the footage.
He decided to check Vijay’s belongings. The manager hesitated.
“The police sealed the room the night he went missing,” he said. “No one’s touched a thing since. You saw it yesterday — same as now.”
When Rahul unlocked the door, the same stale, heavy air greeted him. The bed was as he’d left it that morning, the curtains half-closed. On the side table sat a phone, wallet, and a neatly folded shirt — all undisturbed.
Slipping on gloves, he picked up the phone. The call log ended at 11:47 p.m., minutes before the receptionist claimed Vijay walked out with a suitcase. But the photo gallery… that made him stop cold.
The last image was timestamped at 12:14 a.m. — just hours ago.
It was taken inside this very room.
It showed Rahul, fast asleep in the bed.
He stared at the grainy image, his own outline lit faintly by the bedside lamp.
Someone had been in here with him last night.
Rahul’s grip tightened on the phone. The timestamp blinked back at him: 12:14 a.m. This morning.
He scanned the corners of the room — the curtains, the shadows, the faint gap beneath the door. Nothing moved.
But as he scrolled back through the gallery, another detail snapped into focus.
The second-last photo wasn’t of him. It was a blurry shot of the hotel lobby clock, its hands frozen at 12:06. And behind it, half-reflected in the glass, was the receptionist. She was talking to someone… someone holding a suitcase.
Rahul leaned closer. The man’s face was turned just enough for recognition. Vijay Kumar.
Which was impossible.
At 12:06, according to the CCTV footage he’d just seen, Vijay had never left Room 308.
Rahul’s chest tightened. The photo clearly showed Vijay in the lobby… but the hallway camera swore he’d never left this room.
He switched the phone to Messages. The last text sent from Vijay’s number was to an unsaved contact at 12:20 a.m.
> Outside now. Going to the station.
The problem? The cell tower log — which the police had pulled the morning after Vijay vanished — placed that message’s origin inside the hotel.
Even stranger, the phone’s Wi-Fi history showed it was still connected to the hotel network at the exact second the text was sent.
Vijay had been both “outside” and inside at the same time.
Rahul rubbed his temples, staring at the phone screen.
Suitcase in the lobby. No exit on CCTV. Text from inside saying he was outside. Two realities, both impossible.
He replayed the footage, searching for a flicker or frame jump, but it was flawless. The hallway denied it, the lobby swore otherwise.
His notes turned into messy lines, arrows connecting contradictions until the page looked like a spiderweb strangling the facts.
His breath quickened. The walls seemed closer, the air heavier. The fluorescent hum drilled into his skull.
His eyelids sank shut—
—and suddenly, a jolt. He sucked in air like he’d been drowning.
The room around him was dim and still.
He was lying on the same bed in Room 308, heart pounding.
The curtains were half-drawn, the bedside lamp still on.
No phone.
No notes.
No CCTV room.
Only his own breathing.
Cold realisation settled in — he hadn’t even begun the investigation.
It had all been a dream.
Rahul sat up, his shirt clinging damp to his back. The taste of dust was sharp in his mouth. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand — 12:14 a.m. He’d only closed his eyes for a moment… hadn’t he?
A sharp knock rattled the door.
Three taps. Slow. Even.
He froze.
Another knock — same rhythm, as though the knocker had been waiting for him to move.
Rahul stood, crossed the room in two strides, and yanked the door open.
The hallway was empty.
Just the hum of the ceiling light and the faint smell of polish.
He stepped out, looked left, then right. All the doors were closed.
A prickle of unease sent him downstairs to the security room. The night clerk barely glanced up as Rahul rewound the corridor footage.
The last hour played out in perfect stillness. Not a single door opened. Not a shadow passed. Certainly no one stopping at 308 to knock.
And yet he’d heard it. Felt it.
Back upstairs, he searched the room again — under the bed, behind the curtains, inside the wardrobe. Nothing.
It wasn’t until he checked the nightstand drawer that he found it: a small, leather-bound notebook, its corners worn smooth.
The first few pages were filled with neat, slanted handwriting. Vijay’s.
Halfway through, the script shifted — messier, sharper.
His own.
A note sprawled across the page:
Stop looking for me.
Below it, a date.
Last week.
Impossible. He hadn’t even taken the case last week. He’d never seen this notebook before tonight.
He closed it, hands trembling.
From somewhere behind him…
…the bed creaked.
The bed creaked again.
Rahul turned slowly.
The lamp still burned steady, but the shadows in the corners seemed to have deepened, swallowing more of the walls than they should.
The notebook felt heavier than it should. He let it fall open.
A receipt, dated three days ago:
1 pack of batteries
2 bottles of mineral water
Room 308 – one night stay
At the bottom — a card payment signature. Not just any.
His sister’s. The same slanted loops she’d practiced since high school.
And beneath it, in bold: Payment ID – Geetha R.
Her name.
She lived two cities away. They hadn’t spoken since the fight. She’d cut him off — blocked his calls, vanished into silence.
The items made his chest tighten. She hated bottled water; said it tasted like plastic. And batteries — she always carried spares, a nervous habit left over from power cuts when they were kids.
She wasn’t the type to check into strange hotels. She never even traveled alone.
So why Room 308?
The air shifted behind him — a faint shuffle, like someone’s socked feet crossing carpet.
Rahul snapped the notebook shut and turned toward the sound.
The wardrobe door was open just a fraction wider than when he’d checked it earlier.
Rahul tugged the wardrobe door open, meaning only to glance inside. Instead, a small envelope slid from the top shelf and fluttered to the floor.
Inside was a photograph — him, standing in the hotel lobby, eyes half-closed like he’d been caught mid-blink.
On the back, in thick black ink: 3:17 a.m.
Rahul’s stomach knotted. That time hadn’t come yet.
He set the photo down, meaning to grab his phone — but the envelope was back on the shelf. Still sealed.
He froze. Reached for it—
—and jolted upright in bed, heart hammering, breath tearing in and out. For a second, the room felt wrong — too still, too heavy.
And then it hit him.
He’d already woken up once tonight. Not here. Not now. In the other room. With the photo.
That was a dream.
And if that was a dream… what was this?
His gaze slid, almost against his will, to the nightstand.
3:17 a.m.
His chest tightened, the air suddenly too thin. This isn’t possible. The number burned in his mind — the same as on the back of the photo.
He gripped the sheet in both fists, trying to steady himself, but the thought pressed in harder: the dream hadn’t just shown him a time. It had shown him this time.
Somewhere in the jumble of panic, a thought clicked into place.
It wasn’t clear, not yet — but it was enough to make him feel colder.
The thought unfurled, slow and cold.
In the dream, before he’d woken up inside it, he’d seen himself — asleep in this very bed.
The timestamp matched one he’d found in Vijay’s phone gallery: 12:14 a.m.
He’d woken in the dream at 12:14.
Now, in this one, at 3:17.
The room seemed to shrink around him, the weight of the pattern pressing in.
Pieces began slotting together — jagged, reluctant.
The missing man. The photographs. The times.
A memory stirred — something he’d once read, half-buried in a late-night scroll. Trishanku. The king who begged for heaven, cursed instead to hang between heaven and earth, caught forever in the in-between.
It spoke of a curse that could pull anyone into a limbo-dream: the body vanished, the soul looping forever — never reaching heaven, hell, or waking life.
His final, uneasy conclusion: the bed might be cursed.
Absurd.
But so was everything tonight. And he had no other explanation.
Rahul’s mouth felt dry.
If the curse was real, there was no waking up — just falling from one dream into another, forever.
He stared at the bed, the sheets still creased where he’d been lying moments ago. How many others had woken here, thinking they were free?
The clock ticked to 3:18.
He lay down. The mattress yielded, too easily.
The lamp flickered.
Daylight poured through the curtains.
Rahul sat up.
The clock read 12:14.
