The Third Hour

My name is Arjun, and this is the story of my friend, Vikram, and the night we spent at the Old Bellows House, a place with a history so grim that locals avoided it after dark. It was monsoon season, and the lockdown had trapped us in a small, rain-whipped town. Vikram had been having nightmares, always at the same time, between two and three in the morning, followed by a weight on his chest that left him gasping. With our exams postponed indefinitely, we thought a change of scenery might help, even if it was just a rickety old house on the outskirts, known for its creaking floors and the strange, dried-up well in the backyard.

That night, we set up our study materials on a heavy wooden table in the living room, the only source of light a flickering kerosene lamp. The rain hammered against the tin roof, a relentless drumming that filled the silence. We drank black coffee and tried to focus on equations, but Vikram kept glancing nervously at the old grandfather clock in the corner, its pendulum swaying with an eerie monotony. At midnight, we decided to turn in. Our bedroom was upstairs, a musty room with two narrow beds and a window that rattled in the wind. We left the door slightly ajar to let in a sliver of light from the hallway, where a single bulb had been left on.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, I was awake, my heart pounding for no reason. The clock had stopped, but I could feel it was around three. A sound, like dry leaves skittering across a floor, came from the corner of the room. I turned my head, and there was Vikram, lying rigid, his eyes wide and unfocused, his hands clawing at the bedsheet. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water, but no sound came out. I had seen this before—the paralysis that seized him every night. I reached for the glass of water on my nightstand and, as I had done when we were kids, I flicked a few drops onto his forehead.

His body shuddered, and he let out a strangled gasp. For a moment, he was free, and his eyes found mine. ‘Arjun,’ he whispered, his voice raw, ‘there’s a woman, standing in the well, she’s calling me.’ I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. ‘It’s just a dream,’ I said, but my own voice was shaky. Then, from downstairs, we heard a slow, rhythmic scrape, like something heavy being dragged across the floor. Vikram’s face went pale. ‘She’s coming up,’ he said.

We didn’t dare move. The scraping grew louder, and then there was a wet, slapping sound, like feet on wet wood. The door at the top of the stairs creaked open. A shadow fell across the hallway light. Vikram squeezed my hand, his fingers like ice. ‘Don’t look at the well,’ he breathed. But it was too late. I turned my head, and through the gap in the doorway, I saw a pale, skeletal hand grip the doorframe, its fingers long and thin, with nails crusted with mud. Then a face peered in, a face with sunken eyes and a mouth stretched into an impossible grin. It was the face of a woman, but her features were all wrong, as if they had been washed out by water.

We couldn’t move. The woman stepped into the room, her wet hair plastered to her head, leaving a trail of water on the floor. She moved slowly, deliberately, toward Vikram, ignoring me. Vikram was frozen, his eyes locked on her. She reached out a hand, water dripping from her fingertips, and touched his forehead. He let out a soft groan, and his eyes rolled back. I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. Then, as suddenly as she had appeared, she withdrew, and with a whisper that sounded like the wind in the well, she was gone.

We didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. When dawn broke, we packed our bags and left, vowing never to speak of it. But Vikram was never the same. He began to sleepwalk, often ending up at the bottom of the garden, staring at the ground. A week later, he was admitted to a hospital, raving about a woman in the well. The doctors called it a nervous breakdown. But I know what I saw. And sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint scraping sound, and I feel the cold touch of that hand on my forehead, and I know the woman hasn’t forgotten us. She’s waiting for the next time the clock strikes three.