“The fluorescent tube above Arjun's bed was flickering again—not the lazy, random flicker of a dying bulb, but a rapid, deliberate pulsing, like a signal. In the strobing light, she saw—or thought she saw—a figure standing at the foot of the bed. An old woman. Short white hair, curled close to the skull. Dark eyes behind glasses. Red lips pressed into a thin, knowing line. She wore a black sari—not the white of widowhood or the colours of the living, but black, the colour of temple shadows and moonless nights and things that should not exist in the waking world.”