The day he gets the tattoo changes everything.

He hasn’t stolen the book. All the matron has to do is call the librarian, who loaned it to him—without a card—knowing how much he loves reading. Instead, she accuses him of theft. When he refuses to confess, she resorts to her preferred punishment: whacking the insides of his wrists with a metal ruler, alternating between the flat side and the sharp edge. Red lines well up on his forearm, resembling a modernist painting smeared in blood and shame.

I didn’t take it. I didn’t.

Why won’t she believe me?

The ruler stings, but not as much as the disbelief.

He runs. Not because he’s ready. But because staying feels worse. He forgets his diary and the book. Without them, his boldness begins to dissipate like the grey smoke from the surrounding factory chimneys.

I’ll come back for them. Someday.

He’s heard harsh stories from the other children, those who’ve spent time on the streets waiting to be adopted. He knows no one in the city. He wasn’t even born here. Would the police believe him? Maybe he can stow away on a ship in the nearby docks.

Fourteen-year-olds are inexperienced in running away, he concludes.

Flickering neon lights in a glass window across the road catch his eye. He stumbles on a loose cobblestone and falls, clutching his knee as tears envelop him—scalding, fast, and not from the physical pain. It’s the thoughts that sting. Eventually, he’ll have to go back.

Aren’t tears supposed to be salty?

He has nowhere else to go. On impulse, he crosses toward the blinking sign that reads “Tattoos & Piercing” in orange, blue, and green. Rust-red paint flakes from the wooden door, the chips scattered on the sill like dead ants. The handle rattles, but the door is jammed, as if untouched in years. He pushes hard and it swings inward. He half-expects it to creak—but instead, a bell chimes with the hollow sound of a submarine’s sonar deep underwater.

The parlour is empty. A chair sits heavy in the centre of the room, facing the door. It looks like it’s been scavenged from a bankrupt barber. One armrest is missing, the headrest is tilted as if the last customer had a broken neck. Posters of tattoos—mundane and grotesque—cover the black-painted walls. Behind the counter, a curtain printed with sunlit mountains and clear skies sways in still air. The boy stares at it.

I wish I could live in such a place. Somewhere clean. Somewhere quiet.

Blood has clotted on his knee. He can’t tell if the pain is coursing up or down the leg. Trained to ask permission for everything, and unsure if he’s allowed to sit in the chair, he remains standing.

The curtain parts. A large man steps out, smoke curling around his head like fog from another world. His beard is threaded with tiny bones and metal beads, not decorative—just there, like scars.

His eyes flicker, taking in the boy, then the blood.

“What happened to your leg?”

His voice is gravel rubbed on stone, less threatening than tired.

Startled, the boy turns to flee, but a cluttered mirror halts him. Stickers cover the glass. One stands out: two overlapping D’s, like chain links.

The boy mumbles something. The man nods. “Sit. I’ll clean it.”

After tending the wound, the man asks, “You want a tattoo?”

His finger drifts to the Double-D. He can’t look away.

“I’ve seen that before,” he murmurs. “But I don’t know where. Or when.”

The man shrugs. “Could be déjà vu.”

“No,” the boy says, louder this time. “It’s more like… something I used to know. Before I forgot it.”

Why does it feel like it already belongs to me?

“Where do you want it?”

The boy turns the inside of his left wrist — where the ruler had struck deepest.

As the needle burns through flesh, the boy feels something awaken. Not just courage. Something older. Something embedded beneath memory.

It’s not new. It’s coming back.

From that day on, whenever anxious or low, touching the tattoo became a ritual. A way to reclaim control. A secret. Even a compass.

+

Twenty years later, high up in the Swiss Alps, the car cuts through the wind, spinning up the winding road toward Albula Pass. His hands turn the wheel before he thinks to, fingers tightening just in time for the curve like they already know the rhythm. His foot taps the brake instinctively, syncing with a bend he shouldn’t anticipate.

He blinks.

Why do my palms feel like they’ve gripped this wheel a hundred times?

High above, slow-moving grey clouds play hide-and-seek with lofty jagged peaks. Birds catch rides on air currents across sharp ridges. They look like crows, but he knows they are yellow-billed Alpine choughs. A domed concrete bunker appears beside a sharp bend. Its rusted door is marred by graffiti: two overlapping D’s.

He hadn’t planned to leave Boston. But when an international boarding school in Zuoz, Switzerland invited him to interview for the role of an English teacher, the Alps, clean air felt like a break he hadn’t known he was waiting for.

Still, there was something about the email, the school’s name, the location. It scratched at something just beneath the skin. Not memory. Not quite. But a pull.

His fingers twitch toward the tattoo under his watchstrap. The skin tingles.

Just a coincidence, he tells himself.

But why does my stomach drop like I’ve seen this before?

He swallows. The mountains blur.

And suddenly, he’s back.

+

It wasn’t a prison. Not officially.

They called it a “transitional academy.” But everyone whispered that word differently. Like it meant something else.

He was sent there after being picked up by the police. Silent. Tattoo bandaged. He doesn’t remember who signed the papers.

Only the school.

A place for children with “unusual circumstances.” Polished stone. Quiet rules. Curtains that never opened fully. Doors that closed with clicks, not slams. A nurse’s office that smelled like antiseptic and lavender. Eyes that were too flat. Calm, soothing voices. Always soothing. Like lullabies in a haunted house.

And the symbols. Carved into a stair rail. Scratched beneath a desk. Two overlapping D’s.

It’s just coincidence, he told himself. Even then.

But they kept appearing.

He saw the symbol on a pendant worn by a visiting administrator. On the seal of a report card. One night in the library, he opened a book and found it drawn in the margins—in his own handwriting.

He didn’t remember writing it.

There was a girl. He can’t remember her name. Something with K. She had wild, tangled hair and a habit of drawing eyes. She rarely spoke, except to ask strange questions.

“Do you ever hear music when you sleep?”

Once, she touched his wrist, just over the tattoo, still healing under the gauze.

Her fingers paused. “Did they give it to you too?” she whispered.

He didn’t know how to answer.

A week later, she vanished. “Placed with a family,” the teachers said. But her bed was still rumpled. A half-finished eye sketched on the wall above it.

That night, something scratched at his window.

He told himself it was the wind. But the next morning, there was a red crayon left on the windowsill. Broken in two.

In her desk drawer, he found a folded sheet of paper covered in ink.

Dozens of Double-Ds, drawn in red.

After that, time blurred.

He began waking in odd places. The stairs. The nurse’s cot. Once barefoot in snow, standing on a balcony in the dark.

He asked questions. They said it was trauma. “Your mind is protecting you.”

Then, one morning, just weeks before his eighteenth birthday, he was moved.

Another school. Another life.

+

Now, his fingers rest on the tattoo.

It burns. Not sharply, but steadily, like a beacon.

I didn’t choose this. I thought I did. But I didn’t.

Past the hospice on the summit, the mountains sink in the fall evening. The rock-lined road drops as steeply as it had ascended. The car’s headlights pirouette around tight turns like a graceful ballerina, as if he has practised each curve hundreds of times. By the time he crosses the village of La Punt Chamues, a mist has arrived. Thick as pancake syrup, it stirs around the car. He turns left on the main road without consulting the GPS. A few minutes later, he follows a neat hand-painted sign onto a gravel road. Bushes and shrubs caress the vehicle like a lover as it rocks and bumps along the narrow path. Half a mile in, the car comes to a halt next to a board with crimson letters: CHALET STADELIN. Printed below, in gothic German and English: Your Haven For Rest And Peace.

A sign from his past dances before his eyes: Disciplined Preparation Leads To Success. He can’t remember which foster home or adoption centre he has come across this doctrine.

The rental car is small for his tall frame. He gets out, stretches, and for a moment, stands beside the vehicle, listening to the stillness. The swirling fog in the wide clearing and the faint full moon behind a clump of tall trees seem more suitable for a grove of druids than a chalet. He recalls it described on Airbnb as a hundred-year-old wooden jewel. The chalet looks just like the photos, rustic yet elegant.

Stepping inside feels like entering a memory someone tried to bleach away. A gust of cold wind pinches him as he places his luggage in the semi-dark corridor.

The owner must have left a window open to air the place.

He pulls his tweed jacket tighter before gently pressing the light switch. A wooden coat of arms hangs beside the door. Two serpents twin upward, encircling the barely visible Double-D.

Rusty bells dangle from coarse jute twine. One is shaped like a frog’s face. Another tinkles as the door clicks shut. In Switzerland, bells are supposed to bring peace and keep evil spirits away, he has read somewhere. The air is cold and smells faintly of wax, paper, and something sour, like old breath sealed in wooden walls.

The corridor leads to the living room. Everything is layered and intimate—paintings, books crammed into shelves, utensils, ceramics, trays, and knick-knacks.

A woman crouches on the side of a mountain in a life-sized painting. Swirls of white, tan, and black surround her as if she is stuck forever in a violent storm, unable to climb. A bas-relief sculpture shows a pack of wolves feeding on prey, with painted droplets depicting blood. In a corner, masks of various materials, sizes, and shapes suspend from the ceiling with metal chains, silky tassels, and cowrie-beaded strings. Wedged into a wall is a cluster of amethyst sceptres, the colour of ripe violet grapes. A blackened, battered kettle rests on a delicate porcelain tray—heart-shaped, cracked along one side. Nearby, a wooden jigsaw puzzle of a child tucked in a bed is missing a piece—the child’s face.

He steps closer.

Where is the face? Where did it go?

A soft pressure blooms behind his eyes, like tears trying to return.

The kitchen walls are the blue of forget-me-not flowers. A linen hand towel hangs behind cracked glass in a wooden frame next to the oven. The eggshell-white cloth leaps out at him as though placed behind a magnifying glass. Faint reddish-brown smudges that look like accidental Rorschach inkblots with two linked loops. Someone has displayed the fabric unwashed as if preserving a memory.

He blinks, and the memory hits like cold water.

A swing. A blur. Blood blooming down his lip.

A gentle, trembling hand pressing the towel to his face. Someone humming softly. Not a lullaby. Something older.

Was it a foster mother? Or someone else?

His chest tightens.

The smell from the memory and the room now—wax, damp, old threads—match exactly.

A cast iron pan waits on the hob, with freshly prepared Capuns. The smell of melted cheese feels like he has stepped into a cellar and a barnyard rolled into one. Next to it is a glass plate, on which are finger-thick slices of Salsiz decorated in the shape of a dachshund, with ears of bias-cut carrots and a trail of mustard making up the tail.

Did I fill out a food request while booking the house? How did the host know I wanted to try the local cuisine?

Outside the bathroom, his eyes snag on a mask. It dangles from the ceiling on a claret-red satin cord. Double the size of the man’s face, the wood mask is vertically split into half-human and half-beast. The human side is mottled, as if the mask was tortured with a burning cigar, its hair pulled out in clumps and mouth sewn shut in permanent agony. The animal side bears bloody fangs. Grey hair hangs down like stalactites. Across its face: a scar on the bridge of the nose, like a slash of memory.

It stares at him.

No. Not again. Not here.

The bathroom is tiled in ivory white. Photos of children line the walls: a boy skiing down a slope, a bunch of kids splashing in a swimming pool, school children on a picnic, teenagers sailing on a lake, a girl holding a catch of fish, a baby perching on an old lady’s lap, two girls petting a dachshund puppy.

Didn’t I have a dog once?

He sees a blonde-haired boy balancing on a swing. Staring into the camera, he grins through broken front teeth, as if the sunny playground is filled with the scent of candy. The unmistakable Matterhorn looms behind him.

Below it, faint handwriting: Doublé Demeure, 1997.

That’s me. But it can’t be. I don’t remember this. How could I forget this?

He detaches himself from his thoughts and exits the bathroom. A row of floor-to-ceiling doors open to an ornate balcony which runs around the house. The murmur of a nearby brook mixed with gently tinkling cowbells carries over like someone is whispering epiphanies through the darkness. A sudden shiver runs between his shoulders as if the chill has grown giant wings bellowing icy wind at him.

The temperature must have dropped.

He hurries back in and locks the doors. As he turns around, his hand brushes a thick velvet curtain. Behind it, an alcove, hiding a narrow cabinet. Inside: drawings.

Dozens.

Childish. Scribbled. But always the same.

The Double-D.

Crayoned into clouds. Hidden in tree bark. Drawn in his own hand.

He finds one final sheet: a boy holding a balloon outside a building. The plaque reads:

“Doublé Demeure Institute for Cognitive Development”

He stumbles.

His eyes tell him: no.

His skin tells him: yes.

Something clenches behind his ribs, like a fist made of time.

The tattoo hums, not just memory, but belonging. Not chosen. Planted.

It didn’t come from me. It was buried in me. Waiting.

+

Later, he stands before the mirror.

The lighting feels off and shadows fall where they shouldn’t. The reflection is his, but not quite. He raises a hand; the mirror version follows, but a beat too late. As if the glass is a second behind the truth.

As if it’s remembering how.

He watches himself breathe. The rhythm doesn’t match.

The tattoo beneath his watch strap burns steady, pulsing like a countdown.

On the dresser: the drawing. The one of the boy with the balloon outside the building.

He hadn’t brought it here.

There is something new beside the sheet now. A thin, time-worn diary, with a cracked leather cover that feels familiar and alien all at once, like finding a scar you don’t recall earning.

He picks it up with both hands, afraid it might vanish.

The first page is blank.

The second holds a sentence in his own hesitant hand:

“Darkness is only scary when viewed from outside. One step toward it, and it recedes, consumed by the light within.”

He exhales.

But beneath it, in smaller, neater letters:

“You wrote that last time, too.”

He freezes.

Flipping ahead, his hands trembling now, he finds more entries with dates long past, years that don’t make sense. Some in English. Others in languages he doesn’t know but understands anyway.

Each cycle, documented like a lab notebook.

Each self, reaching for the next.

He stumbles backward. The diary falls from his hands, hitting the floor with a sound that echoes too long.

Outside, the wind howls—high and thin, like a child’s scream far away.

His gaze snaps to the mirror.

The reflection smiles. Not mirroring him—responding.

Its tattoo flares beneath the skin like a signal fire in fog.

It steps forward—hand raised—not copying, but reaching.

He reels back. His chest tightens. The air in the chalet feels thinner now, too dense and too empty all at once.

It’s not just a record. It’s a warning.

This isn’t the first time.

But it might be the last.

On the dresser, the picture has changed. The boy outside the institute no longer holds a balloon. He’s holding a mask.

Half-human. Half-beast.

Beneath it, the institute’s name is crossed out. Scrawled below in red crayon, in red crayon, jagged and childlike:

“Doublé Demeure: You Are Home”

His mouth is dry.

He flips the diary to the last page. One more line waits, the ink still fresh.

“When the mask speaks, listen. When she speaks, remember.”

A creak behind him.

The mask on the satin cord is no longer swinging. It’s turning. Watching.

He turns. Faces it.

The stitched mouth trembles, thread unravelling like old secrets. Smoke leaks from the seams. The air cools, sharpens.

From inside the wood, a voice unfurls. The girl’s voice.

Soft. Familiar.

“You’re closer this time,” she whispers.

A pause.

“But you have to choose… before the mirror does.”

The lights flicker.

The door locks.

+++

Ankit Jamwal works in the manufacturing industry and spends his leisure time dreaming stories. His fiction has been published in The Bangalore Review, Spillwords, The Woman Inc, Femina India, and as a collection, On The Schaku Couplers. Born in India, he now lives in Switzerland. When Ankit is not working or writing, he loves spending time with his family and yearning to adopt a dog someday.