THE THOTAVEEDU

Jancy, thirteen and fast asleep, blinked when she found her cousins no longer with her.

A beat.

She blinked again.

Strange.

Just moments ago, these suckers were playing Truth or Dare next to her bed, laughing and giggling while she rolled her eyes at them fondly and threatened to throw a pillow at their heads. Her cousins had cackled at her, and she had fondly rolled her eyes.

They had all come to their grandmother’s *thotaveedu*—a palatial ancestral home in Tirunelveli—for vacation, as they always did every summer. The house stood thick and deep within sprawling gardens in the middle of the village, ancient and enormous beneath the darkening sky. Their parents were at the smaller house nearby, playing cards, joking and laughing, threatening each other playfully over who cheated whom in Rummy.

Meanwhile, her *achi* had gone to sleep. She had threatened every grandchild with metaphorical and literal death if they ever disturbed her from her slumber.

Jancy had opted out of the games since she had a nasty cold from the weather and instead chose to watch her cousins and roast them playfully from beneath her blanket. So, the kids decided they would have their own fun: nine-year-old Josh, ten-year-old Annie, twelve-year-old Nancy, and sixteen-year-old Rani.

There they were—her ragtag group of cousins—playing Truth or Dare with full and utter nonsense.

Josh had teased her dramatically. “Perhaps we should find out whether Jancy’s nose makes a waterfall.”

Jancy added dryly, “Perhaps I should throw you out of the window.”

Josh had mockingly gasped. He swooned playfully, pointing at the locked window dramatically. “KILL ME NOW!” he whined. “Witnesses here see thee—my own sister has betrayed me!”

Nancy choked with laughter and Annie fell over her own pillow giggling.

Rani had sprawled across the mattress like a dying carp and announced solemnly, “Let us all raise a finger for Joshua, who died under Jancy’s siege.”

Joshua clutched imaginary pearls dramatically and placed a hand over his heart. “Not the window, sis…” he inhaled dramatically. “I am destined for greater things. I have dreams and ambitions and a future—”

Jancy raised a finger. “You ate my brownie,” she said flatly. “You die.”

Nancy wheezed with laughter, collapsing onto the pillow. Annie kicked her legs against the mattress, cackling like a malfunctioning fish. Jancy smirked despite herself, rolled into the blanket like an angry burrito, her messy French braid splayed across the bed.

“Your future,” she cracked playfully, “is as likely as One Direction ever reuniting again.”

Josh pointed at her, scandalized. “See? See how she wounds my soul?”

“She’s right, though,” Nancy wheezed.

“Peak *akka* behavior,” Annie added between giggles.

Josh pointed at her like a betrayed Victorian duchess divorced thrice. “You hear this cruelty?” he cried dramatically, swooning again. “I come with nothing but love, kindness, and generosity, and my own sister threatens me with murder and death. Waahhhh—”

He collapsed dramatically onto Nancy’s lap.

“You did steal her brownie,” Annie reminded cheerfully.

Josh gasped. “Traitor,” he whispered, clutching his forehead like a swooning maiden. “Et tu, Annie? I thought we were soul-bonded—”

Annie nearly fell out of bed laughing. “EW!” she screamed. “We are cousins, idiot!”

“Love knows no blood relation, sister!” Josh exclaimed dramatically.

Immediately, Nancy and Rani collaboratively threw pillows at his face.

“STOP TALKING—” Nancy declared.

Jancy added dryly, “As a service to society.”

They laughed. Rani snorted Coke out of her nose. Annie made an entirely undignified sound. And that was what Jancy remembered as she had fallen asleep.

And now—

Complete silence. Crickets.

Well… she could still hear the adults laughing from the other house. Her parents and uncles and aunts were still there, talking and laughing. The songs still played on the TV her grandmother usually put on before sleeping.

Jancy frowned. Strange. Very strange.

Maybe they had all gone downstairs to grab snacks. Or maybe Josh had finally snapped everyone’s patience and gotten sacrificed to the village ghost. Jancy sniffed hard enough that she felt her nose attempt active resignation and submit a leave letter. She rubbed her nose with a tissue, the blanket wrapped around her like a warm battle-worm cloak from *Lord of the Rings*. She looked around, rubbing her sore eyes.

The room was dim now except for Rani’s Buzz Bee night lamp, flickering softly in the darkness. The curtains shifted near the windows. Their shadows flickered against the walls. Empty pillows. Empty mattresses.

She huffed weakly. “Idiots.”

The room answered her with pitch-black silence.

She rolled her eyes, sniffling. “Brilliant. Just brilliant.”

And then she turned her head—and froze.

Because in the window, she did not see the pitch-black night sky. She saw her own bedroom. From the blue-painted walls to the yellow Buzz Bee night lamp, she saw all of them: Annie, Josh, Rani, Nancy. Playing as usual. Laughing. Shoving each other. Arguing loudly.

And then—she saw herself among them. Laughing. Playing.

Her breathing stopped.

*What the hell? What the actual hell?*

Jancy stared and stared. She blinked and blinked, and she rubbed her eyes more and more. Still there. Jancy’s eyes went wide in shock; her body went into lock. She immediately scanned the room around her, then opened her eyes again and continued to stare.

Her entire body locked in shock. She forgot about her cold, the blocked nose, and the adults laughing in the corner. No, absolutely not. She was not seeing this. She was thirteen years old; all that horror reading and watching finally took its effect and she was hallucinating, apparently. Because no way in hell was this happening. She ate too much *murukku*, watched horror movies with gremlins who had no respect for age ratings, and slept throughout. Maybe this was what happened.

Jancy stared and then stared more. She stared harder—nope, still there. She wasn’t hallucinating. Whatever she was seeing was apparently very much real. Very horrifyingly real, mind-bogglingly real. Not hallucination-real, just *real*.

The window was still showing the bedroom. The one she was currently standing in, not the pitch-black dark sky as it should be. And it was her bedroom. Not a similar one, not a weird alternate-reality one. It was her bedroom. Her bloody, exact bedroom.

The same mattresses. The same pink-painted walls with flowers on them. The same yellow Buzz Bee night lamp lights beside Rani’s pillow. The same faded Strawberry Shortcake bedsheets with tiny sewn strawberries on them. The same stack of Marvel Spider-Man comics.

The same wooden cupboard with the Disney princess stickers all over: Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Belle, Rapunzel. Every single sticker was exactly where it had been. Even the slight crumple in the Aurora sticker—the slight tear on the corner of Aurora’s hair because Annie wanted to give the princess a haircut, thinking she would look more fun before her *mila athai* (aunt) caught her.

That crooked tear on Rapunzel that tilted her head so far off and made her look like Pennywise’s long-lost cousin rather than a Disney princess; Annie had insisted it was a "makeover" in a romance movie, like *She’s All That*. Jancy insisted it looked more like Frankenstein’s decapitation. Then *mila athai* had confiscated the scissors before she could give Frankenstein a mohawk.

Every scratch, every dent on the wall—it was all there. The faded dent where Nancy had attempted to practice jujitsu. It was there, as clear as day. Right beside it, the tiny Spider-Man sketch that Rani did when she was eight.

When *achi* had repeatedly warned them not to desecrate the sanctity of their *thotaveedu*, Rani, with all the utmost confidence, had said, “Spider-Man needs to come to Tirunelveli too! He needs to taste the *halwa*.”

*Achi* had stared at her for a long moment and then exhaled. “I…” she at last admitted. “What do I even say to that? Oh, Lord! What do I do with these children?!”

Even the Spider-Man with the blue tights was there! How? How could it be possible?

Jancy’s mouth went as dry as sand. No… oh no. This could not be possible. Absolutely, logistically, universally, scientifically impossible.

Her brain naturally began to form a logical structure, because that’s what brains did. They formed realizations and opinions. This was not, *“Hello, you have unlocked Five Nights at Freddy’s.”*

Right, logic. She needed to use the logical part of her brain. Maybe she was seeing the neighbors' house? Maybe her brain was so exhausted that it felt like she was looking through a telescope?

No. Nope. Her eyes couldn't show that distance at all; it wasn't possible, it wasn't realistic. This room was on the first floor. There was no neighborhood. She wasn’t an X-Men mutant. Even if she was, no one could recreate every single scratch mark, every single mismatched sticker exactly where she remembered seeing it.

Nope. This was bloody impossible, gloriously scientifically impossible. Gloriously, incredulously, spectacularly in agreement. Mental-blockingly impossible.

Her brain, being the wonderful logical thing it was, launched a Red Alert staff meeting:

**Slide No. 1: Hallucination**

*Question:* What in the name of the *threndareal* is happening?

*Verdict:* No. Nope. Hallucinations rarely came with this much detail. At least, she was fairly sure they didn't. Unless the *Cosmopolitan* geographic section had recently published how human beings had unlocked super-vision!

*Status:* Rejected with a capital R.

**Slide No. 2: Dream World**

*Verdict:* Possible, very likely. But dream worlds made you feel floaty. You wouldn't feel this—you would feel like you were in a movie. You wouldn't feel the blood rushing to your head.

The blood was, in fact, rushing and slamming into her head—the rhythm pounding in her temples like a Michael Jackson beat. She reached up and pressed her shaking, trembling fingers against her skin and then managed to pinch a hard clump of flesh. A sharp pain shot through her cheek.

Ow. Very much real.

Jancy managed a wheeze of a breath, which felt like a balloon deflating. The other Josh in the dimension continued to laugh, his head thrown back as he ruffled up his own hair, which made it even messier. The other Rani in the mirror grinned, her dimples popping as she continued to chatter, applying her nail polish. Her brow made the warm crinkle. Nancy, meanwhile, was happily bobbing her head, listening to the beat on her headphones.

And the other Jancy looked far better than her real-life counterpart who was staring back coolly, an amused glint in her eyes.

If this was not a dream, and not a hallucination, what was this?