The House of Hollow Gold
Part 1 – The Boy with the Sharpest Eyes
In the heart of a sunburnt village called Noorabad stood a house unlike any other. It wasn’t the tallest, nor the grandest, but its walls whispered secrets louder than thunder. Locals called it “Sunehri Haveli”—the House of Gold—because of its honey-colored bricks and the tales of hidden wealth that surrounded it like a halo.
But the real story of the house wasn’t about treasure. It was about a boy named Rafay.
Rafay was the youngest of five siblings—three sisters, one brother, and then him. He had the sharpest eyes in the family, the kind that sparkled not with mischief or innocence, but calculation. Where others saw trees, Rafay saw firewood. Where they saw a cow, he saw profit. He was clever—too clever for a child.
By the time Rafay turned twelve, he had already learned how to lie sweetly, steal quietly, and manipulate gently. His mother used to say, “Rafay ke aankhon mein paisa bolta hai”—money speaks in Rafay’s eyes. She meant it as a joke.
It wasn’t.
A Family Held by Threads
The family lived under the rule of Baba Kareem, their father, a stern man with cracked palms and a voice like thunder in the hills. He was strict but fair, and everyone in the house feared him—except Rafay.
Baba Kareem loved his youngest too much. Maybe because he was born when Kareem was already old and tired. Or maybe because Rafay knew how to charm with just a tilt of his head.
Kareem had one rule: “No one touches the chest in my room.”
It was a heavy wooden trunk at the foot of his bed, bound with iron and sealed with a thick brass lock. Everyone assumed it held their father’s life savings, maybe even gold coins from the days of the princely state.
Rafay was obsessed with that trunk.
He would sneak into the room, press his ear against the wood, and imagine what it sounded like to be rich. His sisters scolded him, his elder brother warned him—but he smiled like a cat in the sun.
“I’m not stealing,” he’d say. “I’m studying.”
The First Betrayal
When Baba Kareem passed away after a sudden illness, grief hit the family like a monsoon. The house, once loud with arguments and laughter, fell silent.
At the funeral, Rafay stood dry-eyed while his sisters wept and his brother, Rameez, held their mother upright.
The day after the burial, they opened the chest.
Inside was no gold. No coins. Just papers—deeds, old letters, bills, and a single envelope addressed to Rameez.
Rameez opened it. Their father had left the land and house in his name, not because he was the eldest, but because he had trusted Rameez to take care of the family.
Rafay’s face went white.
“He didn’t trust me?” Rafay asked, his voice small.
“It’s not about trust,” Rameez replied gently. “He knew you were still young. This isn’t a competition.”
But Rafay heard only one word: “Not.”
Not for you. Not enough. Not yours.
The Greed Awakens
Months passed, and Rafay grew colder. He began keeping account books of who used what in the house. He locked the grain storeroom with his own padlock, demanding payments in chores and favors. He sold their mother’s sewing machine to “help with expenses,” though no one asked him to.
The sisters—Amna, Laila, and Sana—watched helplessly. Rameez tried to reason with him, but Rafay had mastered the art of twisting every conversation into a debt.
“If I didn’t run things, we’d starve!” he’d yell. “You want to be in charge? Then pay for it all!”
He began hoarding money. No one knew where it came from—some said he gambled, others whispered about shady dealings with men who visited late at night. He carried a black leather bag everywhere, always clutched tight to his chest.
The house became a prison.
The Sisters' Rebellion
It was Amna, the eldest sister, who finally spoke.
“We can’t live like this. He treats us like servants.”
“We are nothing to him,” Laila agreed. “He sees us as burdens.”
Sana, the quietest, added, “He thinks love is something he can sell.”
Together, they approached Rameez.
He tried one last time to speak to Rafay.
“Look,” Rameez said, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re trying to control things because you’re scared. We all miss Baba. But this isn’t the way.”
Rafay pushed his hand away. “You think I’m scared? I’m smarter than all of you. I’ll make sure this family survives—even if I have to own it.”
That night, Rameez moved out.
The sisters began sleeping with keys under their pillows.
The Curse in the Walls
Then strange things began to happen.
Rafay claimed he heard someone walking at night—bare feet on the courtyard tiles. But no one was there.
His black leather bag disappeared for two days, only to be found in the old well, completely dry.
He started having nightmares—visions of a man with cracked palms and a voice that thundered like hills.
He heard it whisper:
“I left you nothing because you would turn it to ash.”
One night, Rafay woke up to find gold coins spilling from the chest in his father’s room. But when he blinked again, they were gone.
He didn’t tell anyone.
Instead, he went to a local sorcerer.
“I want to know if there’s real treasure hidden in our house,” Rafay demanded.
The old man looked at him and asked one question:
“Would you bury your family to find it?”
Rafay didn’t answer.
But the sorcerer saw the answer in his eyes.
The House of Hollow Gold
Part 2 – What Lies Beneath
Rafay became a ghost in his own home.
Every night, the whispers grew louder. The hallway mirrors showed reflections that moved a moment too late. The old radio in the living room crackled static at 3:00 a.m.—always the same time—and then a faint voice would emerge:
“You were given a family. You chose a price.”
Rafay stopped sleeping. His eyes sank into dark hollows. He locked every door, hid his hoarded money in floor cracks, buried small boxes of coins under the neem tree. But still… he felt watched.
He didn’t know the house was watching him too.
The Divide Grows
Rameez came to visit once, bringing sweets for their mother and gifts for his sisters.
Rafay refused to open the gate.
“You left,” Rafay spat from behind the bars. “You don’t belong here anymore.”
“I left because you poisoned this place,” Rameez replied calmly. “But I’ll be back. This house belongs to all of us. Baba didn’t build it just for you to break it.”
“Try coming back again, and I’ll burn it to the ground,” Rafay hissed.
That night, the kitchen caught fire.
The family barely escaped as flames licked the wooden beams. When they turned to find Rafay, he was standing outside, watching, unmoved.
He said the fire was “an accident.”
But the sisters whispered otherwise.
Treasure in the Dust
A week later, Rafay made a discovery.
While repairing a cracked wall near the storage room, he hit something solid—stone, unlike the mud bricks. He dug feverishly with bare hands, removing layers of earth until a black slab revealed itself.
Etched in Urdu were words faded by time:
"Below lies the inheritance of the Thorns. Only the cursed shall claim it."
Behind the slab was a hollow chamber.
Inside: gold. Not coins. Artifacts. Ancient idols, jeweled daggers, a crown with sapphires as blue as the night sky.
It was real.
His veins hummed with triumph. All his greed, all his torment—justified.
But there was no joy. Only a cold certainty.
Now he had something worth destroying for.
The House Turns on Him
From that night, the house began to change.
Doors slammed by themselves. Shadows grew longer, darker, stretching toward Rafay when no one else was around. His sisters stayed locked in their rooms, crossing verses of the Quran above their doors.
One night, Rafay saw his father in the courtyard.
Not a memory—a vision. Baba Kareem stood by the neem tree, face heavy with sorrow.
“You thought gold was power,” he said. “But it’s a promise... one soaked in blood.”
Rafay screamed and threw a stone. It passed through the figure.
His mother, frail and shaken, finally spoke:
“You were born into a family. Not a kingdom. You were meant to love your siblings, not rule them.”
But Rafay couldn’t listen anymore.
He decided to sell the treasure.
The Final Betrayal
Rafay contacted smugglers through a man in the city. Late one night, a black SUV rolled up to the gates. Four men stepped out, armed, quiet, dangerous.
They entered the chamber.
Rafay didn’t hear the full conversation—but he heard the gunshot.
One of the men turned on him. “No witnesses.”
Rafay ran.
He locked himself in the upper bedroom, heart pounding. Outside, his sisters were screaming. The smugglers searched every room. But something strange happened.
The moment they reached the old prayer room—where their mother still kept her father’s Quran—the ground shook.
The walls cracked.
And the house fought back.
The Curse Awakes
Tiles burst upward like teeth from the earth. The chandelier crashed down with unnatural force. The smugglers tried to flee—but the main gate had sealed shut. Rafay watched from the window as a force he couldn’t see dragged one of the men into the courtyard well.
Another ran but was caught in the kitchen as flames reignited from nowhere.
Only one escaped, screaming that the house was alive.
Rafay collapsed.
For hours, he lay unconscious in the same room where his father once warned him: “Greed turns kings into corpses.”
A Boy Alone
When Rafay woke, the house was quiet.
Charred. Cracked. But still standing.
His sisters had packed their things. Rameez had come for them at dawn.
Only their mother stayed behind, sitting in silence near the neem tree. When Rafay approached, she turned her face away.
“You broke it,” she said. “The house. The family. Yourself.”
He fell to his knees, gold dust still clinging to his palms.
“I just… wanted more.”
“You had everything,” she replied. “You had us.”
A New Dawn, or a Long Night
Years passed.
The house was never repaired. Rafay stayed, alone, aging faster than time. Rumors said he spoke to shadows. That he still wandered the old hallways at night, whispering names that no longer answered.
The villagers called it cursed.
No one crossed the gates again.
Only Rameez returned, once a year, to lay flowers at the base of the neem tree—where his mother was eventually buried.
And where, one morning, he found a note.
“I sold my soul for hollow gold.
I wish I had kept my sisters’ laughter instead.
– Rafay”
No one ever saw him again.
Some say he left the village.
Others say he joined the spirits in the house he once tried to own.
But the neem tree still grows, tall and proud, its roots wrapped around secrets, and its branches whispering warnings to every child who passes by.
The Moral
In the end, Rafay didn’t die of hunger or sickness. He died of want—the kind that never ends. His wealth became ashes, his family became strangers, and his legacy became a caution.
The House of Hollow Gold still stands.
And its doors are always locked.
Not to keep people out.
But to keep something else in.
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