My grandfather left me his audio cassette collection when he died. Forty-seven tapes, all labeled in his meticulous handwriting: *Mussoorie Mornings, 1983-1987*. Each one supposedly contained recordings of dawn sounds from different locations in the hills—birds, wind, temple bells, the distant rumble of trucks on mountain roads.
“Your nana was obsessed,” my mother said, handling the dusty box with distaste. “Every morning, 5 AM sharp, he’d take that recorder and disappear for hours. Even in winter. Even when he could barely walk.”
I was a sound designer for films, so I understood obsession. I took the collection back to my rented cottage in Landour, curious about what sounds the hills had offered three decades ago, before the construction boom and tourist chaos.
The first tape played exactly what I expected: the metallic clang of morning milk cans, someone’s grandmother singing a bhajan, crows arguing over scraps. Nostalgic but unremarkable.
The second tape was strange. It started normally—the swoosh of pine branches, a distant dog barking. Then, around the four-minute mark, a voice. A woman, speaking in Garhwali, her words unclear but her tone unmistakable: she was counting. The numbers came in a rhythmic pattern—*ek, do, teen, chaar*—but every seventh count, she’d pause and make a sound like she was swallowing something.
I rewound, adjusted the equalizer, isolated the frequencies. The swallowing sound wasn’t organic. It was reversed audio—someone’s exhale, played backward. My skin prickled. Who was she? Why had my grandfather recorded this? There was no label on this tape except the date: March 17, 1984.
I called my mother. “Did anything happen in Mussoorie in March ’84? Something involving Nana?” A long pause. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m listening to his tapes. There’s something odd—”
“Rohan, throw them away.” Her voice was sharp. “Those tapes were part of his… illness. Toward the end, he became paranoid, said he’d recorded something he shouldn’t have. The doctors said it was dementia.”
“What did he think he recorded?”
“Throw them away, Rohan.”
She hung up. I played the third tape. The woman was there again, but this time she wasn’t alone. Multiple voices now, all women, all counting in the same pattern. The reversed exhales came in chorus, creating an unsettling rhythm that made my jaw clench. And underneath it all, a sound I couldn’t identify—something wet and rhythmic, like fabric being wrung out. Over and over.
The tape label read: *March 18, 1984. Near the old well.* I knew that well. It was a fifteen-minute walk from my cottage, abandoned for years, its stone rim crumbling and marked with fading government warnings about unsafe drinking water. Locals avoided it. When I’d asked why, my landlord had shrugged: “Bad luck place. Nothing grows there.”
I didn’t want to go. Every rational part of me said to stop listening, stop investigating. But sound design had taught me to chase the unexplained—that perfect creak, that impossible echo. I needed to know where these recordings had come from. The well looked different at dawn. The mist made it seem deeper, older. I set up my portable recorder—a far cry from my grandfather’s heavy cassette machine—and waited. Birds called. Wind moved through sal trees. Normal sounds.
Then, faint but distinct, I heard it. Counting. *Ek, do, teen, chaar.* My recorder was off. I turned it on with shaking hands. The counting continued, clearer now, coming from the well itself. Not from inside it—from its stones, as if the rim were speaking.
I approached slowly. The well was empty, its bottom lost in shadow. The counting grew louder. More voices joined in. Seven women, all speaking in unison, reaching the seventh count and then—
The backward exhale. And I understood. It wasn’t an exhale at all. It was the sound of drowning, reversed and repeated. The sound of lungs filling with water, played backward so it sounded like breathing out.
I stumbled back, my recorder clattering on stone. When I played back what I’d captured, there was nothing. Just wind. Just birds. But I’d heard it. Heard them.
The fourth tape was waiting at my cottage when I returned, though I’d brought the entire box with me. It sat on my doorstep, labeled in handwriting that looked like my grandfather’s but fresher, the ink still dark: *March 19, 1984. You’re listening now, aren’t you?* My hands shook as I loaded it. This time, my grandfather’s voice came through clearly:
“I’ve been recording them for four days now. The women at the well. At first, I thought I was hearing things—altitude sickness, maybe, or my blood pressure medication. But I’ve checked. The tapes don’t lie. They’re there. They’re always there at dawn, counting. Seven women, seven counts, seven pauses. “I went to the municipal office today. Asked about the well’s history. The clerk, old Dubey-ji, he got very quiet. Said I shouldn’t ask about that place. But I pressed him, and finally, he told me.”
“1977. There was a scandal.” Seven women from the sweeper community were found dead in that well, all at once. The police said it was suicide—a pact born from desperation. Something about their children being taken away, sold to adoption agencies without consent. But Dubey-ji said people whispered other things. That it wasn’t suicide. That they’d been thrown in while they were still alive, because they’d threatened to expose who was running the adoption racket.
“The well was closed. The case was closed. Everyone who knew anything kept quiet. And the women… I think they’re still counting. Still trying to make it to seven. Seven women, seven chances to be heard. But they never get past it. They drown on the seventh count, over and over, forever.”
There was a long pause on the tape, filled with static. Then my grandfather’s voice again, softer: “I don’t know what to do with this. If I tell someone, they’ll say I’m mad. If I don’t… God forgive me, but I think I’m supposed to keep listening. I think someone needs to bear witness.”
The tape ended. I sat in the growing darkness of my cottage, the implications crawling over my skin. My grandfather had recorded proof of something—not a ghost story, but an unsolved crime, trapped in audio form. Women crying out the only way they could, through sound. Through echoes that repeated every dawn. But proof of what, exactly? Voices only certain people could hear? Courts didn’t accept spectral testimony. And everyone involved was likely dead now—the criminals, the witnesses, my grandfather.
I loaded the fifth tape. It was blank except for one minute of audio: a woman’s voice, speaking directly into the microphone. Her Hindi was accented, lower-caste markers evident in her pronunciation. “You’re his blood. You hear us too. Will you keep listening? Will you count with us? Or will you be like the others—the ones who heard and turned away?”
The tape counter read 1:07. Then silence. I should have stopped. Instead, I spent the next three days listening to all forty-seven tapes. Most were normal. But thirteen of them contained the counting. The dates spanned four years, always recorded at the same well, always at dawn. And in the final tape, recorded a week before my grandfather’s death, I heard something that made my blood freeze. My own voice. Younger, maybe eight years old, asking:
“Nana, what are those ladies saying?” His reply: “Just old songs, beta. Nothing to worry about.” But I remembered that day. I’d gone with him once, just once, during a summer visit. He’d shooed me away from the well, said it was dangerous. I’d forgotten about it completely until now.
I’d heard them too. As a child. And my grandfather had lied to protect me. Now I had a choice. The same choice he’d faced. I could keep listening. I could go to the well every dawn with my equipment, record everything, maybe try to find someone who’d believe me. Maybe track down descendants of those seven women, tell them their mothers/grandmothers were still crying out. Maybe write articles, make documentaries, force people to remember. Or I could do what everyone else had done: turn away. Delete the recordings. Convince myself it was all explainable—audio pareidolia, confirmation bias, my own subconscious projecting meaning onto random noise.
That night, I had a dream. Seven women stood around my bed, dripping wet, their lips moving in that familiar count. When they reached seven, they opened their mouths wide, and I saw: each of them had stones lodged in their throats. Someone had made sure they’d sink. Made sure they’d stay silent. When they exhaled, the stones came out as words: *Remember us.*
I woke up gasping. My recorder had been running all night—I didn’t remember turning it on. When I played it back, I heard my own voice, sleep-talking in a language I didn’t speak: Garhwali. The same dialect the women used. And I was counting with them. *Ek, do, teen, chaar…*
I stopped the playback at count six. Couldn’t bring myself to hear what came next. It’s been three weeks now. I still go to the well at dawn, still record, though my equipment never captures what I hear. The counting continues. Seven women, seven counts, forever drowning on that seventh beat. But here’s what haunts me: I’ve started noticing others who pause near the well. Delivery boys who stop their bikes for a moment, tilting their heads. Morning walkers who quicken their pace, looking disturbed. A schoolgirl who once stood frozen for a full minute before running away crying.
They hear it too. They’ve always heard it. But like my grandfather said—what do you do with a truth no one will believe? What do you do with voices that exist only in the spaces between silence?
I’m writing this down because I’ve decided. I’m going to keep listening. I’m going to be what my grandfather called a “keeper of echoes”—someone who bears witness even when the testimony can’t be verified, can’t be used, can’t change anything. Maybe that’s all ghosts are: events so traumatic they burn themselves into the landscape, playing on repeat for anyone sensitive enough to hear. Not supernatural, exactly. Just… echoes. Sound waves that never quite dissipate. Or maybe I’m going mad. Maybe this is how it starts—you hear something once, then you’re listening for it, then you can’t stop hearing it, and soon you’re the one making tapes that your grandchildren will find, wondering if you’d lost your mind.
Yesterday, I found a blank tape on my doorstep. The label, in my own handwriting that I don’t remember writing, reads: *March 17, 2026. Day one of counting.* I haven’t decided if I’ll record tomorrow’s dawn. But I think I will. I think I have to. Because here’s the thing: when I play back that blank tape—the one that should be empty—I hear someone counting. Seven voices, clear as temple bells.
And one of them sounds like—
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