When the school dismissal bell rang, it felt to Ayan as if the sound was drifting in from a great distance. It was as if someone were striking his brain with an iron hammer from the bottom of a deep well. His classmates were quickly packing their bags and heading out. The laughter, the screeching of chairs being pulled, and the commotion gathering in the corridor—everything was normal.
Except, for Ayan, the world had come to a standstill.
He was staring fixedly at the empty bench where Arif used to sit. Raiyan slung his bag over his shoulder and yawned.
"Hey, why've you turned into a statue? Come on, let's go to the canteen. I'm starving."
Ayan looked at Raiyan. There was no anxiety in Raiyan's eyes, no questions. He was preparing to leave the room quite casually.
Ayan cleared his throat and said in a trembling voice, "Raiyan... where is Arif?"
Raiyan knit his brows. There was a strange emptiness in his gaze. "Arif? Which Arif?"
Ayan's heart seemed to stop for a moment. He gripped Raiyan's hand tightly. "Don't joke! Arif... who always sits in the front row. He came wearing a blue shirt today. Did you really not see him?"
Raiyan grew slightly irritated now. He wrenched his hand away and said, "Look, your head is really gone from fiddling with that trashy notebook late last night. There is no one named Arif in our section. And that front seat has been empty since the start of the semester. Did you come to class on some kind of drugs today?"
Raiyan's words rang heavy like lead in Ayan's ears. Drugs? Crazy? Was he truly seeing a delusion? But he could remember it so clearly—Arif had said hi to him while entering the corridor this morning. Arif had wanted to see his notebook once. Were those memories a lie?
"Ayan, Ayan Rahman!"
The teacher called out while tidying the desk. Ayan looked up with a start.
"Are you in some kind of trouble? Class is over, leave now," the teacher said in a detached voice. His eyes looked glazed behind his spectacles.
Ayan dragged his feet to the teacher's table. "Sir, Arif... that boy... where did he go? He was right there during your lecture."
The teacher froze for a second. The muscles in his face hardened strangely, as if he were trying to recall a memory but couldn't. Immediately after, an artificial smile appeared on his face.
"Ayan, there is no one named Arif here. That seat was empty. I think you need some rest."
Ayan didn't push further. He realized that in this entire classroom—perhaps in this entire world—Arif's existence was now confined only to his own brain. He quickly picked up his bag and walked out of the classroom.
The corridor felt unnaturally long today. The ancient Gothic arches of St. Jude's College seemed to be reaching down to crush him. The shadows on the walls were not still. In the fading afternoon light, the shadows of the window grills slithered across the floor like snakes.
He was walking, yet it felt like he was standing in the same place. While passing the auditorium, he suddenly felt a cold breeze. Yet, all the windows were closed.
Ayan reached into his bag. That notebook. It had grown unnaturally heavy inside the bag, as if someone had stuffed a slab of stone inside instead of thin paper. He stood huddled in a corner and pulled out the notebook.
His heart was thumping. The palms of his hands were soaked with sweat.
He opened the notebook.
The previous sentence—"The first one is complete"—had become a bit blurred. Beneath it, new letters were emerging. Not ink, it seemed as if someone were writing by tearing through the fibers of the paper with a reddish glow of blood.
"Memory is the first sacrifice. He who forgets him is saved. He who remembers becomes a debtor."
Ayan's breathing grew rapid. A sketch now appeared on the page of the notebook. The silhouette of a person whose face was blurred, but he was wearing a blue shirt. The person in the picture seemed to be screaming in agony, while a cluster of black shadows like snakes coiled around him from beneath his feet.
Written below the picture— "Time for debt repayment: Before sunset. Location: Library Basement."
Ayan's head began to spin. Debt? What debt? He hadn't wanted this book. He had merely found it lying in a corner of the library.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him.
Snapping the notebook shut, he looked back. No one was there. But in the dark corner at the end of the corridor, he saw a shadow. The shadow wasn't merged with the wall; it was three-dimensional. It moved lightly like the wind.
Ayan started to run.
He was heading for the gate. He would get out of this college. He didn't believe in magic; he wouldn't accept any curse. He reached near the gate. The massive iron gate was open. On the other side, the road was visible, rickshaws were passing, people were moving about normally.
He crossed the gate.
One step, two steps.
Suddenly, the sounds around him fell silent. As if someone had muted the world's sound system. A flash of intense light hit his eyes.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
There was no pitched road beneath his feet. He was standing in that same corridor, in front of the auditorium.
He ran again. He crossed the gate again.
The same result. A few seconds of intense void, and then he was back inside the college again.
That meant he had seen correctly. He was a prisoner. St. Jude's College had swallowed him.
"Ayan?"
A cold voice from behind. Ayan almost jumped.
He saw Jara Mehjabin standing there. She had glasses on and a laptop bag in her hand. She was looking at Ayan with a strange expression.
"Why are you running toward the gate and then coming back toward the auditorium? Are you exercising or have you gone mad?"
Jara's logical voice sounded like an angel's to Ayan's ears. Gasping for breath, he said, "Jara... do you know Arif? From our class? Can you get out through the gate?"
Jara knit her brows and looked at her watch. "Arif? Are you talking about that imaginary friend Raiyan just messaged me about? Ayan, listen, you are very stressed. And the gate is inaccessible because there seems to be a chemical leak outside; the police have cordoned off the area. A thick fog has formed outside. This isn't magic, it's pure science. Probably some industrial accident."
Ayan was listening to Jara, but his gaze was behind her.
Where Jara stood, there was no shadow on the floor. Yet, the tube lights in the corridor were on.
Ayan realized that the darkness wasn't surrounding Jara; rather, Jara herself was becoming a part of the darkness—and she didn't even know it.
Ayan opened the notebook again. There was no time to hide. He saw a new line added below the sketch:
"Jara Mehjabin. Logic cannot save her. The key to the curse is hidden in her blood."
Ayan's throat went bone-dry. He wanted to tell Jara, "Run!" but no sound came from his voice.
At that exact moment, a long scream wafted from the direction of the library. The sound wasn't human, yet not animal either. As if a soul had been screaming in agony for a thousand years.
Ayan knew he had to go to the library. Arif's body might be there. Or something else.
He bypassed Jara and started running toward the library. Behind him, Jara kept calling him, but that call was growing faint.
When he pushed open the library door, a musty, rotting smell hit his nostrils. A smell Ayan had only sensed beside a grave.
It was dark inside. But he had to go. A map had now appeared on a new page of the notebook, drawn in blood.
The map of the basement.
That is where the first account of this 'Ledger of Blood' had to be settled.
Descending the stairs to the library basement, Ayan felt as if he were entering the esophagus of some ancient creature. With every step, his chest felt like it would burst from the musty smell of dust and damp paper. The flashlight on his phone was trembling. Suddenly, a blue cloth was caught in the perimeter of the light.
Ayan's heart skipped a beat. Arif's blue shirt! He hurried forward and took the cloth in his hand. Yes, the exact same texture, the same blue color. So Arif was here? But there was no human around him, only rows and rows of dark bookshelves.
Just then, a flash of intense light surged from the direction of the stairs. Ayan closed his eyes.
"Ayan? What are you doing inside this hell?"
It was Jara's voice. In the light of her powerful LED torch, the entire basement became day for a moment. Jara stepped forward quickly. There was curiosity and annoyance in her eyes.
"Jara, look! This is Arif's shirt!" Ayan held up the cloth in excitement.
Jara shone her torch directly onto the cloth. Ayan froze. The thing he had certainly seen as Arif's blue shirt a moment ago turned out to be a dirty rag used for wiping the library's old cupboards in Jara's intense light. Torn, patched, and gray with dust.
Ayan stared at his own hand in disbelief. "But... I saw it was a blue shirt..."
"Your brain is showing you exactly what you want to see," Jara said in a calm voice. She took the cloth from Ayan's hand and threw it away. "It's called 'Pareidolia.' Under extreme mental stress, humans look for familiar patterns."
Ayan leaned against the wall, panting. "And the gate? Why can't I get out through the gate, Jara? Every time I go out, I end up back in front of the auditorium. This isn't normal in any way!"
Jara panned her torch around. "Ayan, be a bit rational. Haven't you noticed what's happening outside? There's a chemical gas leak from the industrial zone behind the college. The police have cordoned off the whole area and are firing tear gas to keep everyone inside. That thick fog and gas are causing you 'sensory disorientation.' When people lose their sense of direction in fog, they unknowingly start walking in circles. You didn't exit through the gate; rather, you lost your way in the fog and walked right back into the campus."
"And your shadow?" Ayan countered. "A moment ago in front of the auditorium, you had no shadow!"
Jara smiled lightly, as if explaining a lesson to a child. "See these emergency lights in the basement? These are multi-directional. When equal light comes from all sides, the shadow becomes 'diffused' or disappears. This is called a shadowless environment. And in the corridor, the way the lights were flickering due to voltage fluctuations, it's only natural for shadows not to form."
Ayan went to pull the notebook out of his bag, but Jara snatched it from his hand before he could. She flipped through the pages.
"These writings... 'The first one is complete'... Ayan, these are your own handwriting. Do you know that when a person is under intense trauma, they can engage in 'automatic writing' or write in a trance? You were probably imagining a story about someone named Arif in your subconscious, and now your brain has blurred the lines between that imagination and reality."
Ayan stood there, stunned. Every one of Jara's arguments was bulletproof. She was grinding everything to dust with science, environment, and psychology. But Ayan's heart was still trembling. If Jara was right, was Ayan going mad?
"Let's get out of here," Jara placed a hand on Ayan's shoulder. "Dr. Rafiq has been informed. He said I should take you to his office. You really need to talk to a doctor or a mentor right now."
Ayan started walking listlessly behind Jara. While climbing the stairs, he looked back once. In the light of Jara's torch, the darkness of the basement seemed to be laughing.
And at that very moment, a pair of invisible footprints appeared over that dirty rag lying on the floor—as if someone had just walked right over it, someone whose existence neither Jara or Ayan could see.