Echoes in the Dark is a work of fiction, but its roots grow from the soil of reality.

The story draws inspirated from real-life ritualistic murders that shook everyone between the 1980s and early 2000s—cases where belief, obsession, and madness blurred into horror. It also borrows from the psychology of real detectives who have spoken about the haunting silence that follows every crime scene: the kind that doesn’t fade even after the case is closed.

This is not a story about monsters hiding in the dark.

It’s about the darkness that hides in men—the one that wears a uniform, holds a gun, and still wakes up shaking at 3 a.m. wondering if the evil he chased has already found a home inside him.

The fantasy elements in this story are symbolic: the maze-like dreamscapes, the shadows that whisper, the illusions of time. They are the language of trauma—how the mind reshapes truth when it’s too unbearable to face.

So while the names, places, and events are fictional, the emotions are not.

The fear, the obsession, the guilt—those are real.

And sometimes, that’s where every true horror begins.

–S

They called it a copycat case.

I called it déjà vu.

When Detective Arin Dev receives a midnight call to a murder scene—a woman posed with coins on her eyes and a ledger page pinned to her chest—he feels something stir in the back of his mind. A pattern. A shadow. A memory.

The crime mirrors an unsolved ritual murder from 1987, a case buried and forgotten. As Arin investigates, each clue becomes a mirror, reflecting fragments of himself. He begins to see connections no one else can—threads between past and present, between the killer and his own fears.

But the deeper he maps the case, the more the boundaries blur. Are the clues leading him to the murderer… or back to his own darkness?

By the time the final “dot” connects, Arin will uncover not just the killer—but the haunting truth that every crime leaves behind an echo, and sometimes… that echo lives inside you.

Acknowledgement ♠️

This story is for those who walk through the night and still search for the truth.

To the detectives, investigators, and unseen minds who spend their lives tracing shadows—your silence tells stories the world never hears. You carry the weight of the dead, and still manage to chase the living.

To the survivors of real crimes, whose pain echoes long after headlines fade—your courage is the reason stories like this exist.

To the psychologists, profilers, and writers who look too deeply into the human mind and dare to stay there—thank you for proving that darkness, when understood, can become its own kind of light.

To every insomniac who reads stories like these before sleep—may you find beauty even in the most haunting corners of imagination.

And lastly, to the unseen hand that led me through this maze of crime, memory, and dreams—

you know who you are.

Or maybe… you don’t anymore.

The phone rang at 2:37 a.m.

It was the kind of sound that doesn’t belong in the middle of the night — sharp, electric, wrong. I opened my eyes to the darkness of my apartment, to the faint hum of the refrigerator and the steady rotation of the ceiling fan slicing the air. For a moment, I thought it was part of a dream.

It wasn’t.

...----------------...

“Detective Arin Dev?”

“Yes.”

“There’s been a homicide. Sector 12, near the old riverbed."

...----------------...

The line went dead before I could reply.

The world outside my window was drowned in mist. Streetlights glowed like dying embers, and the rain was caught between wanting to fall and wanting to freeze. I poured black coffee into a cracked mug, took a sip that burned my tongue, and stared at my reflection in the kitchen window. For a second, I thought the reflection blinked before I did.

It wasn’t fear. Not yet. Just recognition.

Something old was stirring.

...ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ...

By the time I reached the scene, the city had swallowed its own voice. Only the sound of water dripping from the branches and the click of the forensic team’s boots broke the silence.

The body lay beneath an ancient banyan tree — the kind that grows roots like hands reaching for lost souls. The woman’s face was pale, lips painted in blood-red lipstick, stretched into a smile that was too wide, too knowing. Two rusted coins covered her eyes, glinting faintly under the flashlight beams.

Her right hand held a candle stub, its flame trembling but never dying despite the damp

air.

And there — written across the stone wall behind her — was a single thing.

Not a word. Not a symbol.

A year.

1987.

At first, it meant nothing. Just a number. But something inside me twisted. A faint echo from another life — a file I’d buried, a case that still bled in dreams I never spoke of.

The Sundarpur Ritual Murders.

Four victims.

Coins. Candles. Smiles.

Unsolved.

Back then, I was a rookie — all logic and adrenaline, no fear. I thought monsters were men who could be caught. I was wrong.

“Looks like ritual killing, sir,” said the constable beside me.

I nodded but didn’t answer. I crouched beside the body, tracing the outline of her hand without touching. There was no struggle. She’d been placed, not dropped. Arranged.

Everything was deliberate — the position, the symbols, the eerie calm of it all.

In my head, the map began forming.

That invisible web I see when the world starts to break apart.

Coin — left: mark of passage.

Coin — right: silence.

Candle — flicker of life, snuffed.

Lipstick — same shade as 1987 victims: “Crimson Ghost.”

Number — a link, a message.

...----------------...

The threads began to connect in my mind — thin, white lines stretching from clue to clue, looping back to faces I could barely remember. I saw the original victims flash before me like ghosts in an old photograph.

Same arrangement.

Same handwriting.

Same calm.

But that case was closed. Officially. Files burned in a department fire ten years ago.

So why now?

Why her?

---

A sudden movement in the dark caught my attention — a flutter between the roots of the banyan. I turned sharply, gun half-drawn, flashlight beam cutting through mist and shadow.

Nothing. Just fog curling against the bark.

But then I saw it — a scrap of paper pinned to the trunk with a small brass pin. I pulled it free carefully. The page was torn from an old ledger. On it, written in smeared ink, were five words:

“To see the pattern again.”

I felt something cold slip through me, like water finding a crack in stone.

--

By dawn, the forensics van took the body away, and the site was taped off.

I stood alone under the tree long after everyone left. The candle was still burning.

I watched the wax melt slowly into the mud and thought of how fragile patterns are — how they hide in everything we can’t understand. A murder is never just a killing. It’s a message written in a language only the broken can read.

And I was fluent in it.

---

When I got back to my apartment, I pinned the evidence photos on my wall — the coins, the candle, the number, the message.

Then I drew the first line connecting them.

1987 to 2025.

Same ritual.

Same silence.

Same fear crawling up the spine.

This wasn’t random.

It was a return.

And if the pattern was truly repeating, then somewhere in the city, someone else was already marked.

As I turned off the lights, my reflection in the window smiled back at me — just slightly off-sync, as if it knew something I didn’t.

That night, I didn’t dream.

But I heard whispers in the dark — not from outside, but from within.

“You’ve seen this before.”

And I knew then that this case wasn’t starting tonight.

It had been waiting.

For me !

......................

Morning came, though it felt more like an afterthought.

The sun didn’t rise that day — it merely appeared, pale and unsure, like it too was afraid to look at what the night had left behind.

I hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. My thoughts played on repeat — coins, candle, smile, the number 1987.

Every time I closed my eyes, the symbols rearranged themselves in my mind, forming new shapes, whispering new meanings.

By the time I reached the precinct, my coffee had gone cold. The corridors were silent, just the faint hum of ceiling lights. Crime boards lined the walls, each case neatly labeled, boxed, solved. Except mine.

“Sector 12, victim identified,” said Meera, my junior officer, sliding a file toward me. “Name: Sana Verma. Thirty-four. Teacher. Lived alone. No signs of forced entry.”

Her voice was steady, but I noticed her hands trembling. She’d seen the scene. Everyone who did carried it afterward — like smoke that clings to your skin no matter how hard you wash.

I opened the folder.

Photographs stared back at me — the smile, the coins, the candle. I studied them carefully, the way I used to study faces in the mirror: looking for something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Sir, could it be a ritual killing? Religious motive maybe?”

Question drifted, but I wasn’t listening.

Something in the photo caught my eye — the shadow beneath the candle flame.

It wasn’t round. It was shaped like an eye.

I blinked, looked again.

Gone. Just wax.

I pushed the photo away, my pulse quickening.

Hallucination? Maybe. But I’d learned not to dismiss what the mind sees — sometimes, it sees before reason catches up.

---

Back in my office, I pinned the pictures to the wall.

Every case I’ve ever worked begins like this: chaos first, then the quiet order of patterns emerging.

I took a red marker and drew my first web.

Victim: Sana Verma.

Occupation: teacher.

Date: October 8th.

Symbol: 1987.

Candle. Coins. Crimson lipstick.

In my mind, the connections glowed like threads in the dark. Each detail hummed with something familiar, like a forgotten melody trying to play itself again.

The year 1987 — that was the key.

Back then, the killer had left poems at each scene, not numbers. But the structure was identical.

Ritual. Message. Silence.

At noon, I drove back to the scene. The police tape fluttered like yellow ribbons in the wind. The banyan tree towered above me, ancient and still, its roots curling around the earth like veins.

I walked the perimeter, noting footprints in the mud — too many to separate. But near the roots, I noticed something strange: a chalk outline, faint, circular, drawn beneath the candle’s place.

No one had mentioned it. Forensics hadn’t reported it.

I crouched closer. The circle wasn’t random. It was perfectly symmetrical, drawn by someone meticulous. In its center, I found a small indentation — as if something heavy had been placed there and then removed.

“Sir?” Meera’s voice cut through the silence behind me.

“What is it?”

“We found something in the victim’s house. You should see it.”

Apartment smelled of old perfume and burnt incense. Everything was clean, organized, untouched. Too untouched.

On the study table, a single book lay open — The Psychology of Ritual Behavior.

Beside it, a hand-drawn map.

At first glance, it looked like a city layout. But when I looked closer, I realized — it wasn’t a map of streets.

It was a map of memories.

Words circled in ink: Fear. Obsession. Guilt. Control.

And at the very center, one word repeated three times —

Arin.

My name.

I froze.

“Who else has been in here?”

“No one, sir. The door was locked when we arrived.”

The walls seemed to shift. The shadows lengthened. I could almost hear the sound of the marker scratching paper — slow, deliberate, as if someone had drawn that name with purpose.

My heart pounded. Logic tried to reason — maybe she was a student of mine once, maybe coincidence. But instinct whispered otherwise.

The case wasn’t about her.

It was about me.

That night, I stayed late at the precinct, staring at the board.

The lines I’d drawn in red now looked like veins.

The photos — eyes.

The candle — still burning in my memory, though it should have melted long ago.

Sleep didn’t come. Instead, I saw flashes: the banyan tree swaying without wind, the number 1987 pulsing like a heartbeat, and a voice — faint, rhythmic — repeating from somewhere behind the walls.

“To see the pattern again…”

I woke up at my desk, sweating, nails digging into my palm.

On the board, someone had drawn a new line.

Connecting my photo — to hers.

And beneath it, scrawled in red:

“First impression is the last.”

I didn’t remember writing it.

But the handwriting was mine.

And for the first time in years, I felt something colder than fear —

recognition.