The Last Bell

I never believed in ghosts—not until the autumn of my second year in Prayagpur, a dusty town that swallowed students whole. Every evening, the streets choked with rickshaws ferrying teenagers to coaching centers that promised IIT-JEE glory. The air smelled of diesel and desperation. I was one of them, a cog in the machine, my dreams compressed into practice tests and rank lists.

It was September, the month when the monsoon retreats and leaves behind a sticky heat. I remember a group of girls in my hostel corridor, huddled near the water cooler, their voices low and urgent. ‘Have you heard it?’ one said, her eyes wide. ‘After 1 AM, near the old gymkhana, someone cries—like a wounded animal.’ Another girl shivered. ‘I heard it last night. It made my blood run cold.’ I rolled my eyes and walked past. Girls and their dramatics. I had more important things to worry about—mock tests, syllabus backlog, the constant ticking of the clock in my head.

My routine was rigid: study till 11 PM, then sleep like the dead. I never heard anything. Perhaps because I was too exhausted, or perhaps because my mind refused to accept the whispers. But one night, everything changed. My mother had come to stay with me, worried about my recurring fevers. That evening, I had to take her to the hospital for a checkup, and by the time we returned, it was past midnight. I decided to study for a while longer to make up for lost time, and my mother, tired from the long day, dozed off on the cot beside me.

At 12:30, I switched off the lamp and lay down. The room was dark, the overhead fan whirring in a lazy circle. I could hear the distant hum of the city, the occasional honk of a truck on the highway. My mother’s breathing was steady. I closed my eyes, but my mind was still racing with formulas.

Then, at 1:15 AM, the sound came. It wasn’t a whisper or a rustle—it was a full-throated shriek, raw and agonized, as if someone were being torn apart. It sliced through the silence, making my heart stutter. I felt my mother’s hand grip my arm. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered, her voice trembling. I nodded, too scared to speak. The shriek came again, followed by a series of sobs that rose and fell like waves. It seemed to come from just outside our window, from the patch of darkness beyond the hostel’s back gate.

My mother, who was a practical woman, usually dismissed such things. But that night, she held me close, and we stayed awake, listening to that inhuman lament. It went on for an hour, then faded into the sound of a distant train. We didn’t sleep.

The next morning, I asked around. The girls from before nodded knowingly. ‘It comes every night,’ one said. ‘Some students claim it’s the ghost of a boy who failed his entrance exams and jumped off the roof of the old gymkhana. Others say it’s a girl who was murdered by her roommate.’ I shuddered. The stories varied, but the sound was consistent. I began to dread the night.

For the next few weeks, I tried to go to bed before 1 AM. But sometimes, the pressure of studies kept me up. And every time the clock struck 1, the shrieks returned. They grew more distinct, more human. I could almost make out words—pleas, broken syllables. ‘Help me,’ I heard once, followed by a gurgle. My mother couldn’t stay forever. She had to return to our village. Before she left, she urged me to switch rooms, but the hostel was packed. ‘Just ignore it,’ she said, but her eyes betrayed her worry.

One night, driven by curiosity and a reckless desire to end the mystery, I decided to investigate. I borrowed a flashlight and crept down the staircase, past the sleeping warden’s office, and out into the back courtyard. The air was cool, carrying the smell of damp earth. The old gymkhana loomed at the far end, its windows like hollow eyes. I approached cautiously, my heart hammering.

As I neared the building, the cries grew louder. They were coming from inside. I pushed open the rusted door, and the hinges cried out in protest. The building was abandoned, filled with broken chairs and dusty blackboards. The sound led me upstairs, to a room that had once been a physics lab. And there, in the dim light of my flashlight, I saw her—a figure in a white salwar kameez, kneeling on the floor, her face buried in her hands. She was sobbing, her shoulders heaving.

I took a step closer. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, my voice shaking. She looked up, and I saw her face—pale, streaked with tears, but not ghostly. Just a girl. ‘Why are you crying?’ I asked. She pointed to a corner of the room. I shone the light there and saw a plaque on the wall. It read: ‘In memory of Arjun, who dreamed of the stars but fell to the earth.’

Arjun, I later learned, was a student who had jumped from this very room three years ago. His body was found at dawn, his hands still clutching a notebook full of unsolved problems. But the girl—she wasn’t a ghost. She was a student, a first-year who often came here at night, overcome by the same despair Arjun had felt. ‘I come here to cry,’ she said, ‘because no one else knows.’

The shrieks, then, were not supernatural. They were the cries of a living girl, hidden in the ruins of a failed dream. I should have felt relief, but instead, a cold understanding settled over me. The horror wasn’t in the sound—it was in the silence that surrounded it. The silence of a system that sees thousands of students as numbers, and dismisses their screams as rumors.

I never heard the sounds again. Perhaps because the girl moved away, or perhaps because I had unmasked them. But now, when I study late, I sometimes see her face in the reflection of my window, and I wonder how many others are crying in places no one thinks to look. The last bell rings at 9 PM, but for some, the screaming never stops. It just waits.