"Cut!!! It's a wrap!", shrieked the director, bringing to an end the last day of the final schedule of the movie. The entire unit of 30 odd people had been shooting tirelessly for the last 30 days in a remote location at the outskirts of a village 50 kilometers outside Jodhpur.
"Finally, its over!", thought Madhavi as she stared at herself in the mirror. The relief was visible.
She had lost count of the number of people who had advised her against this movie.
"Too many variables", they had warned her - absence of a influential production house, tight budget, a brand new crew, relatively new actors, sync sound and the 3D camera. "The director is a nutcase. His penchant for perfection will give you a nervous breakdown!", they cried. "No decent financier is going to back this project ... don't you know what sheer duds his last two movies turned out to be at the box office?", they reasoned. "A Horror movie so early in your career is a one-way ticket to failure!", they almost pleaded with her to not sign across the dotted line.
Madhavi had fought hard to suppress these voices. The director was half-mad yes, but he was a genius. She knew that if the movie worked, there was nothing stopping her from signing films with the big banners. She had decided to take the risk and give her 200% to the movie.
And so she had tolerated the whims of the director, agreed to the numerous re-takes with a smiling face, rehearsed her lines like crazy, and even cooked for the crew on the sets! The summer heat made her dizzy. She had passed out on a couple of occasions right here on the set. The doctors attributed it to dehydration and she found it very embarrassing. What had really been pushing her close to the edge of sanity though was the string of eerie "disappearances".
The events of the last four weeks had nearly threatened to shelve the movie. Her hairdresser, her language coach and her choreographer's assistant had all disappeared mysteriously. Local police were not of much help given the rural nature of the "realistic" location and the so-called experts from Mumbai hadn't fared much better. They had questioned everyone. And if the heat hadn't been enough, their questions drained whatever little energy was left within her. Rumor was that they suspected the gypsy tribes in the area but the extra layer of security they added around the set had proved to be futile.
The filmmakers couldn't have found a worse location for shooting! A dilapidated mansion of a feudal lord long since forgotten. The caretakers of the estate were overjoyed when the crew approached them for renting out the premises for their film. The building had fallen to ruin over the last few decades when most people living around it had moved to the city in search for "lucrative employment", they said. The art director and his team had salvaged a lot of furniture from the ruins which they had used in the film. The grandfather clock, the timber chest, the full length wide mirror, several pictures and a carpet miraculously untouched by rats.
The one thing that kept her sane was her co-star Sanjay. He too. like her, was a newcomer and they had hit it off from day one. In fact, she was quite sure that their chemistry was not just artificial. She was glad the shooting was done. All she wanted now was to get out of this godforsaken place and onto the plane with him. Back home, away from this miserable heat!
Most of the crew was out packing and there he was now, calling out to her. She could feel the energy sapping out of her once more. Her head felt light and she knew she was passing out again. Was it mere coincidence that these "disappearances" always happened after pack up and at the same time when she had lost consciousness before?
As Sanjay walked in, the last thing she remembered thinking was, "What a bizarre movie plot this was! A cursed mirror ... home to a vengeful spirit ... that possessed a person to commit murder if he or she stared at it for too long!"
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