Echoes That Named Themselves

 The messages didn't stop.

Every day, my inbox filled with new emails—dreams, memories, confessions. Most from strangers, many from places I'd never visited. Mexico. South Korea. Finland. Uganda. New Zealand.

Each spoke of similar things:

A banyan tree.

Red cloth.

A woman in white whose face couldn't be seen, but couldn't be forgotten.

Some had never even heard of Bali.

Still, they described the same things I had seen.

I stopped replying. Not out of disinterest—but because I was overwhelmed.

There were too many.

Yet I read every single one.

It felt like stitching a map from pieces of a shattered mirror. One shard at a time.

I created a new section on my site.

I called it "Echoes."

Every day I posted one of their stories. I left them raw—unedited, anonymous unless stated otherwise. Some came in with pages of background. Some with just a sentence:

"I heard her say my name through the wall."

The more I posted, the more they kept arriving.

Each one amplified something I hadn't realized until now:

This wasn't about me anymore.

This was about everyone who had felt something strange but never knew how to name it.

One night, a voice message landed in my inbox.

No subject. No signature.

The voice trembled, like the speaker had just run a mile or barely escaped a nightmare.

"She touched my shoulder. I turned around. There was no one. But the red cloth was tied to my door the next morning. I live in Toronto. I've never been to Asia."

It repeated in my head for hours.

Whatever this was—it wasn't staying in Bali.

It had spread.

Not like a ghost. Not like a curse.

Like a rhythm. A frequency.

Like a name that had never been said out loud finally finding breath.

A few days later, an elderly woman from Istanbul sent a scanned photo.

It was old, black-and-white, slightly yellowed with time.

It showed a girl standing near a cracked stone gate, one eerily similar to the one I had seen in Tenganan.

The girl wore white.

Her eyes, though, were blacked out. Not from damage.

Someone had deliberately smeared them with charcoal or ink.

The back of the photo read:

"We weren't allowed to say her name."

That was all.

I emailed back, but the address had been deleted minutes after sending.

That night, I dreamed of a hallway of mirrors.

Each reflected not me, but someone else.

Some wept. Some chanted. Some stood silently.

But they all stared directly into me.

As though I wasn't the observer—I was the reflection.

In the last mirror, she appeared.

The priestess.

But her face was no longer hidden.

Her eyes were carved with ancient symbols. Not blind—marked.

She opened her mouth.

But instead of sound, smoke poured out.

I called Pak Ketut the next morning.

He picked up on the first ring.

"You saw her again," he said. No question. Just certainty.

"Yes," I replied. "But she wasn't alone. She's showing herself."

Silence.

Then, with the calm of someone who'd known for far longer than he let on:

"You became a temple. Not of stone—but of words. And people are praying through you."

That shook me.

"You mean… they're connecting through this?"

"Yes," he said gently. "In Bali, names are breath. When you speak a name, you offer life. You've spoken the forgotten names. Now others are breathing through you."

The call ended, but the weight of it stayed.

I realized I was no longer a writer.

I was a medium.

And the stories were not mine anymore.

I posted a new submission from someone named Leonie, from the Netherlands.

She wrote:

"When I was a child, I dreamed of a girl in my garden. She stood under our willow tree. I could never see her face—the leaves always blurred it. But I remembered her hands. They were bound in red. I thought it was childhood nonsense. Until I read your chapter about Laksmi. I froze. That name wasn't mine. But it came out of my mouth when I woke up crying."

I read her message aloud in my room.

The moment the final word left my lips, something changed.

A breeze brushed through my closed window.

The faint scent of frangipani bloomed in the air.

I whispered, "You heard her too, didn't you?"

No voice replied.

But I didn't need one.

She wasn't alone anymore.

None of them were.

That night, I sat in front of the mirror.

I looked into my own eyes, but didn't search for signs of her.

I searched for signs of myself.

And just for a moment—in the bottom corner of the reflection—a strip of red cloth fluttered across the glass.

It was gone as quickly as it appeared.

But I didn't flinch.

It didn't feel like fear.

It felt like acknowledgment.

A bow.

A thank you.

From those who had no voice to say it aloud.

And I knew, as I closed my laptop and sat in the quiet hum of my desk lamp—

Chapter 22 wouldn't just be a continuation.

It would be a ritual.

A memorial.

An offering.

✅ If you've felt her, seen her, or dreamed in her name—rate, comment, or share. These are not just words. These are steps back into the light for those who were cast into silence.