Kaun Hai Woh Qaatil

Chapter 7 - Who is Alice?

The kitchen is getting burnt. Avni stuck inside and fire burns her skin and she screams. Neil is shouting. Avni faints. Neil screams, "I'll die in the fire as I can't live after your death." Neil jumps into the fire. He remains unaffected by the fire. The Avni's body gets burnt completed. Neil shouts from his bottom of the throat.

45 minutes ago,

After Neil escaped from the vase thrown by Avni, Avni falls unconscious. Neil runs and holds her. Neil makes her rest on the bed. He sprinkles some drops of water on Avni. Avni wakes up and stays numb for two minutes and even Neil do the same. Neil could not understand what Avni spoke and what she did. But Avni is clueless why she screamed like that and why she threw a vase on Neil and regrets for that. Neil breaks the silence, "Avni, you rest here. I shall call the doctor now." Neil is about to leave the room, but Avni asks him to come back. 

"Neil, I have seen some weird things in my dream. You said that Nayan and you were serpents in your previous birth. But I saw you and me as serpents, Neil," says Avni nervously.

Neil is stumbled to hear that. After Nayantara and Tara's exit from their house, he decided not to overthink about those facts regarding shape-shifting serpents.

Avni breaks his thoughts by continuing, "I have heard someone shouting relentlessly 'Its the beginning, not the end. Apart from that, I saw a house in the middle of the water area, a burning temple and a cruel murder of a couple and a lady screaming something."

Neil gets into thinking. Avni is sitting scared covered her body, excluding the face with a bed sheet. "Shall we call Nayantara for help?" asks Avni. Neil didn't reply. Avni says, "I think this place have some strong connection for us. Other than Nayantara, there is some other thing hidden in this place or we haven't checked thoroughly what we get." 

Neil - "Shall we look at her diary and photographs again?" 

Avni - "There is no use of that, Neil. We shall search the house once again. I am going downstairs and you can search here" 

Neil nods and he starts to search. Avni goes downstairs and looks into the room which is attached to the stairs. It was locked. Avni brings a hammer and breaks the lock. She gets inside the room and switched on the light. The room looks so tidy and it didn't look like it was locked for several months or years. To her surprise, there were one more stairs in that room that could take her even down. The floor in the bottom was not made up of concrete or tiles, but it was made up of wood. She keeps her leg on the wood and it feels like she is walking on a wet soil due to the improper placement of wood slabs. As she steps forward, the wood pressed into the soil more. Avni kneels down and removes one piece of wood from the floor, which comes up easily without a stress. She even removes wood from the floor and shocked to see a portrait.  The portrait was full of wet mud. She wipes the photo with her shawl and it was Manyata's (Nayan's mom) death portrait.

She noticed the rusted wood border of the portrait which was minutely carved and noticed some details written in the portrait about her birth and death. Avni is shocked as she saw something fishy in the portrait. She covers the mud with the wooden floor pieces and goes upstairs where Neil is there. Neil looks at the portrait of Manyata. Before he is to figure out what Avni said, Nayantara and Tara come back breaking the windows of the house which shocks the couple.

Tara's eyes burn with vengeance whereas Nayantara's anger is evident in her attitude. Neil and Avni stand confused. Neil - "So, what do you want now? Have you found the murderer?"

Tara drags Neil and pushed him downstairs and he rolled down on the stairs. He is severely injured. Avni comes down and looks at the injured Neil, who is passively conscious. She goes to the kitchen for taking water. Tara and Nayan comes back and looks at Avni and smirks at Neil. Tara recites some mantra so that the kitchen where Avni standing was ignited fire