The Lattice of Unfinished Chimes

It was a humid Sunday in 2019 when I first heard the story. My friend’s father, Mr. Anil, a retired history lecturer, had invited us over for lunch. After the meal, as we sat on his veranda, he began to speak about his teaching days. He had spent twelve years at a government college in the town of Baranagar, a dusty, forgotten place on the edge of the Thar Desert. The college was surrounded by nothing but scrubland and a few dying khejri trees, and it had a small hostel for the students, most of whom were from distant villages.

Anil uncle was not a man given to fancies. He had a sharp, analytical mind, and he taught with a dry, precise manner. But that afternoon, his voice dropped to a low, deliberate tone, and he told us about the incident that had forced him to transfer to a different city. It happened in the winter of 2004, during his second year at that college.

As he spoke, he looked out at the bushes in his own garden, as if expecting something to move among them. He described the college campus: a row of single-story classrooms, a library with broken windows, a common room with a rusted gramophone, and at the far end, a tall, skeletal water tower. The hostel was a long, low building with a veranda that ran the entire length. On that veranda, at the very end, hung a set of wind chimes. They were made of old, cut brass pipes, and some had been bent or cracked. Nobody knew who had hung them, but they had been there for decades, and they never rang except when the wind was strong. The students had a superstition that if the chimes rang at night, someone would die.

Anil uncle rarely stayed at the hostel, but that winter, a water shortage had made the town’s wells unreliable, and the hostel’s well was the only one that hadn’t dried up. So he took a small room there, across from the veranda, to be close to the source. He had a habit of reading late at night, and on the second night, he noticed a peculiar thing: the wind chimes would sometimes ring even when there was no wind. He chalked it up to the old building settling, but the sound was too regular, too deliberate—a sequence of three high notes followed by a low one.

On the fourth night, he woke to the sound of the chimes. The veranda was lit by a single yellow bulb. He saw a student—a boy named Ramesh, a quiet, studious lad from a village near the border—standing under the chimes, staring up at them. Anil uncle called out to him, asking why he was awake. Ramesh did not answer. Instead, he pointed at the chimes and said, ‘They are counting us.’ Anil uncle asked what he meant, but Ramesh just turned and walked away, his feet making no sound on the cracked stone floor.

The next morning, Anil uncle asked the warden about Ramesh. The warden, a grizzled old man, said that Ramesh had been acting strange for a week, muttering about a ‘ladder of light’ and refusing to eat. He also mentioned that Ramesh had been sleeping at the end of the veranda, right under the chimes, because he liked the sound. Anil uncle did not think much of it, but that afternoon, he saw Ramesh sitting alone by the water tower, sketching something in a notebook. When he approached, Ramesh closed the book, but not before Anil uncle saw the drawing: a complex latticework of lines and circles, with the chimes at the center, and small figures that looked like bent people.

The next night, the chimes rang again, this time in a frantic, clattering rhythm. Anil uncle rushed out, expecting to see the wind, but the air was still. On the veranda, he found the hostel’s night watchman, an old man named Gopal, lying on the floor, his eyes wide open, his lips moving silently. He had a fever and was muttering, ‘The chimes are a door.’ Anil uncle called for help, but by morning, Gopal was dead. The doctor said it was a heart attack, but the village people whispered that the chimes had done it. Anil uncle felt a cold dread, and he decided to leave the hostel.

But before he could, Ramesh came to his room, holding the sketchbook. He looked different—drawn, with dark circles under his eyes. He said, ‘Sir, I have to go back to my village. The chimes have taught me a pattern, and I must finish it at home.’ Anil uncle asked what pattern, and Ramesh showed him the final page: a drawing of the wind chimes, but with each pipe forming a letter, and the letters spelling out a message in a language Anil uncle could not read. Ramesh said, ‘When the wind is right, it will play a song. But the song is not for us. It is for the ones beneath the ground.’

Anil uncle dismissed him, but that evening, he saw Ramesh climbing the water tower. He shouted, but Ramesh did not stop. He reached the top, stood for a moment, then fell. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the town hospital. The wind chimes did not ring that night. They were silent for the next month, and Anil uncle tried to forget the whole thing. But a few weeks later, during a dust storm, the chimes rang so loudly that the entire hostel woke up. And in the morning, Anil uncle found a small, torn piece of paper under his door. It had a drawing of the lattice, and in the middle, a word that he later learned meant ‘exit’ in an old desert dialect. He never figured out who had left it, or why.

He requested a transfer, and he never returned to that place. But sometimes, on a still night, he says he can still hear a faint tinkling, like a chime, and he sees the image of Ramesh standing under the tower, pointing at the sky. He told us that he had kept the sketchbook, but when he looked at it years later, the drawings had faded, except for one: the final page, with the word ‘exit.’ He burned the book after that, but the burned ashes, he said, formed the shape of a bell.

Anil uncle fell silent. We sat there, the afternoon heat oppressive. A dusty wind rose, and from somewhere in his garden, a small wind chime that we had not noticed before began to ring—three high notes, then a low one. Anil uncle’s face turned pale, and he quickly went inside, locking the door behind him. We looked at each other, then at the chime. It swayed, though there was no breeze. And as we watched, it stopped, and a single leaf fell from a nearby tree, landing on the exact spot where the chime’s shadow fell. Careful not to touch it, we left soon after, and none of us has ever brought it up again.

But that night, as I tried to sleep, I heard a faint sound outside my window—three high notes, a low one. When I opened the window, I saw nothing. But the wind was blowing, and my curtains moved, and I swear I saw, for just a second, a figure standing under the streetlight, pointing at my window. And then it was gone.

I never visited Anil uncle again. But sometimes, when I am in a quiet place, I still listen for that chime, and I wonder if the lattice is still there, waiting for its completion.