Raju looked at his mother as the old bus eased off the highway onto a narrow, pothole-strewn road. Fatigue cut deep lines on her face; strands of hair, freed from a hastily tied bun, quivered in the wind.
Outside, vast paddy fields hemmed by distant hillocks greeted his eyes but offered no comfort. It had been mere weeks since his father’s death—a grisly accident at a Kolkata metalwork, where a malfunctioning machine shot a steel rod through his chest. The pittance in compensation barely dented their debts, forcing his mother to return to her ancestral home deep inside Malabar.
A gentle nudge broke his thoughts. They had reached their stop. His uncle waited at the bus stand, a stout man puffing on a beedi, his face curling into a sneer at the sight of them. Raju wanted to turn and bolt, but his mother’s brittle form rooted him in place. He followed silently as she trailed her brother along the winding path to the house.
The ancestral home squatted on a hillside, surrounded by dense woods and swaying paddy fields. His aunt emerged at the threshold, exchanging hushed words and quiet tears with his mother. Raju lingered on the wide veranda steps, hesitating, when a rasping cough echoed from the depths of that ancient house. His mother’s anxious glance urged him inside.
The interior was dim despite the bright summer day. Dark wooden furniture loomed below walls with stern portraits. Raju’s eyes adjusted slowly as his aunt led them across the hall to his grandmother’s chamber.
The stench hit him first—bitter medicines and decay. On a massive teak bed lay a crone, her face shrouded in shadow, a sliver of light illuminating her gnarled hands. One beckoned them closer, skeletal and trembling, like the hands of a corpse Raju had once seen at a medical exhibit.
“You’re back,” she croaked at his mother. “He’s gone? Good.” Her eyes slid to Raju. “His spitting image,” she cackled.
2
They took her old room, its window overlooking a crumbling cattle shed. She hurried to the kitchen to help his aunt, avoiding Raju’s gaze as she had for days. He stood by the window. Crows cawed outside. Tears blurred his vision—grief had finally gnawed through. He bit his lip to stifle sobs, tasting blood.
Soon, his mother appeared in the doorway. “Your uncle’s calling,” she said curtly. On the veranda, his uncle thrust a gunny sack at him. “Pick the betel nuts,” he slurred, nodding toward the slender trees dotting the land, his words barely intelligible.
Raju worked mechanically, grateful for the distraction. The task stretched into twilight, and he neared the cattle shed—its mud-brick walls sagging, its thatched roof gaping. A faint whiff of dung and rotting wood hung in the air.
Bending to gather nuts, he caught a flicker of movement in his periphery. He jerked upright, scanning the shadows. Nothing. Yet a primal dread gripped him, whispering of something lurking behind the shed. Heart pounding, he fled back to the house, too terrified to look back.
Dinner came late. The two of them sat on the coal-black floor, sharing a thin meal of rice and coconut chammanthi by the flicker of a kerosene lamp. Silence stretched between them. Later, in their room, she spread a mattress for him and took the bed. She cracked the window, blew out the lamp and soon her soft snores filled the dark.
Despite the fatigue, sleep eluded Raju. Moonlight streamed through the window, stirring memories of a tale his mother had told him long ago, one she didn’t want to complete—a primordial, child-shaped entity that haunted the hills of Malabar. A being so powerful that it was the very fount of life. When invaders from distant lands conquered and enslaved the native people, tributes to the entity ceased.
Soon, a curse befell the hill, an unknown blight ravaging trees, crops and animals; even the most fertile soil turned lifeless, ashy pale. Women gave birth to short-lived monstrosities, and men’s genitals putrefied. When the mysterious maladies began picking off the settlers, their panicked leader sought out the elder of the vanquished hill people.
The leader ordered the elder to find a solution for the plague. The wizened old man, revenge roiling his blood, told the settlers of a ritual that he said would appease the entity.
Desperate to stem the destruction, the settlers, on a moonless night, gathered on the very spot where the demigod’s shrine once stood. Excavated for stones, the temple site had sunk into a pit.
In the light of palm-leaf torches and oil lamps, they performed the ritual, so twisted and vile that even the hardiest settlers stood petrified. The process had the intended effect but not the one expected by the settlers. The godly entity was defiled, and its ancient form, coalesced even before life on earth began, was irreparably corrupted.
Once benevolent, its nature turned vicious, evil. That night, the fates of the leader and kin were sealed in a generational pact for a terrible tribute.
His mother knew that her family, descended from the settlers’ leader, bore a curse, the reason why she fled. But distance failed to sever her damned lineage.
Just when sleep began to dull his senses, a faint wail wafted through the cracked window. Raju sat up on the mattress, his eyes straining to look through the gap. The wail rose again, distinct now. He thought of waking his mother, sound asleep, then decided against it.
He crawled closer to the window and peered outside; the cattle shed, bathed in eerie moonshine, loomed. Dread exploded in his mind when he saw a shadow move. Trembling, he sank back on the mattress, pulling the blanket over his head, eyes tightly closed, his fingers plugging his ears. He forced his mind to the memories from Kolkata—of nights on the terrace, his father’s tales lulling him to dreams. He clung to the recollection, willing it to soothe him.
3
In the rut of routine, Raju’s strange encounters slid into foggy memories. His uncle piled on chores and muttered something about repeating fourth grade in a local school next year.
The man left home early every day and wandered the small town some miles away. Late in the night, he would crawl back home, drunk and violent. The boy hid. His mother and aunt could not. Some nights, the knots in his twisted brain tightened, and muffled screams boomed inside dark chambers.
In contrast to the lush greenery he saw on the way, life wilted on the property. Trees bore shrivelled leaves, vegetables rotted on the vine and the soil lay pale and lifeless. Graves dotted the compound, some tiny. Occasionally, before nightfall, he saw his aunt, once a graceful woman, standing near the little mounts of earth, quietly sobbing.
“Amma, let’s return to Kolkata. I will also find some work. Please,” the boy pleaded with his mother. But her weary gaze confirmed his fears—no escape.
He longed to see his mother in her old self. He missed her smiles and the time spent listening to her tales during the long power-cut hours in the city while they awaited his father’s return home.
He now remembered bitterly how she would put a finger on his lips whenever he told her of his wish to visit her home. “Don’t ever wish that, child” she would whisper gently. “You, I, your father, this is our home.”
4
One late afternoon, curiosity sent him to the old cattle shed, the plot of one of his mother’s tales. Once, life thrived within. Then a pestilence descended, tearing through the cattle. Cows, a major source of income for the family, became walking carcasses, their breaths grating against hollow lungs, their teats oozing puss, before shuddering and dying one after the other.
A few meters behind the cattle shed was a quarry, the source of laterite stones for the ancestral home.
A chasm overgrown with weeds, its sides bore cut marks for about 20 feet before plunging into a jagged abyss. Amidst the weeds, he spied steep, narrow steps cut on the stone. Raju looked around. None looked. The world hushed as he climbed down, his ears only picking up his ragged breaths.
He coughed as he reached the bottom, stepping onto a thick mat of wet black mass. Raju fished out a matchbox from his pocket, one he had stolen from the kitchen. Darkness flinched as he lit a stick.
He felt around, lighting the matchsticks one after the other before finding an altar. In front of it was a tall stone lamp; its soot and oil glistened. Raju passed the flame onto the stub of a wick.
The lamp’s yellow glow coaxed an idol from the darkness—a child carved out of black stone, its skeletal frame crouching low as if caught mid-crawl. Two large, unblinking eyes had been gouged deep on a round, hairless face. Below, a crooked mouth showed jagged teeth with faint stains dark as clotted blood. In the air hung a stench of rot, as if coming from offerings left too long.
A faint shriek clawed his ears like the garbled bleat of a lamb writhing in a butcher’s grip. As his terrified eyes darted through the darkness, the wail’s pitch rose to a mind-numbing cacophony. Urine drenched his half-pants and streamed to his ankles.
He backed off, turned and ran towards the steps, scrambling to reach the top on all fours. He could see the twilight sky above him and a veiled half-moon racing towards him.
At the edge of the quarry, Raju looked back. The lamp gave off a dim arc of light. Outside its illumination, he saw two eyes, large, bulging, staring.
Raju ran into the house, desperate to be near his mother, to feel her hand on his head, to hear her gentle whispers of comfort. In the hallway, however, he stopped; hushed voices crept out from the crone’s chamber. He heard her’s croaking, persuasive, persistent, threatening.
Through the cracked doors, he saw them, his mother on the edge of the bed, his aunt standing near her, statue-like. His uncle huddled in a corner, knees clutched to his chest, rocking back and forth, talking gibberish. The hag’s raspy, forceful voice came out in a long, continuous drone. Flies buzzed over her lower body, covered in a dirty blanket. Then, the talk froze.
Raju gasped as all four snapped their heads towards the door, as though they could hear him breathing. His eyes sought out his mother’s—where eyes should have been, twin hollows stared back.
5
As days bled away, food on the boy’s plate thinned, but tasks grew. His pants became loose on his waist. His frame shrank, face thinned, eyes hollowed and lips dried and cracked. The void in his stomach devoured his insides.
A realisation dawned on him—he must run away. The root that kept him in that cursed place—his mother—had been snapped; nothing remotely resembling his mother remained alive in her eyes anymore.
Steeling his mind that night, he kept his schoolbag ready; in one of its pockets was a soiled five rupee note, the last gift from his father. He lay on his mattress wide awake, awaiting dawn, hunger consuming his stomach. On the bed, his mother twisted, turned and muttered curses in a restless sleep.
6
He woke up suddenly panting and sweating. Snapping to his right, he found his mother’s bed empty. Thick darkness pulsed in the room. He groped around and touched the old lantern near the foot of the bed and a matchbox beside it.
He lit the lantern and found the doors open, faint sounds wafting through. In the hall, the massive double doors opening to the front yard gaped. The sound tugged at his ears, making him move. Outside, darkness hung thickly, and leafless trees clawed the night sky, illuminated by the faint glow of stars.
In the front yard, he saw light spewing forth from the pit behind the cattle shed. And then, it hit him—an aroma, delicious and soothing; its coming out of the hollow.
The boy’s mouth watered, and his reason melted. At the mouth of the quarry, he peered in; the bottom glowed with lamps and torches. Excitement painted a thin smile on his face as he climbed down the pit.
Having reached the bottom, he looked around, his stomach gurgling in anticipation. There, in front of the idol, was a large black bowl, holding something steaming, glowing, fragrant.
He knelt, staring at the liquid, and bent until his parted lips skimmed its surface. The world faded as he drew the scented potion in long, rhythmic pulls like a calf at a still pond.
After emptying the concoction, he straightened, looking at the strange idol, no longer afraid of it. Behind him, a rasping slither broke the calm. The boy turned, still kneeling, the glowing liquid dripping from his chin.
Two eyes glowed in the darkness, and, slowly, what held them loomed into view. The crone, its gnarled hands twisted into an unnatural position, its head and throat abnormally big. It crept towards him like a bat, dragging its lower body—a bloated tube of pallid mass, writhing and pulsing like a maggot engorged on rot.
The boy’s breaths stopped in his throat; he tried to stand but fell on his back, his body limp. The golden potion that spread warmly through his body had suddenly become lead heavy.
The hag slithered up his body. Above his chest, it stopped. The grin of its face disappeared, and its eyes sank into their cavities. Its jaws unhinged grotesquely when it opened its maw, showing a black chute.
In that void, the boy saw it. A small visage, black and glistening as if slick with liquid tar. It stared with unblinking eyes, mouth stretched into a wide grin, revealing yellow teeth, sharp and jagged like splintered glass.
As a scream tore off the boy’s throat, the horror began to slide out, like a fangling exiting its mother’s womb.
It spewed curses in an ancient tongue as it began possessing its new host, forcing its way into the boy’s mouth, reshaping his mortal structure and claiming a long-due tribute. With the force that kept it alive gone, the abomination became limp and fell to the side with a thud.
As life bled from him, a vision flashed in his mind: images from an unknown era. A woman, robed in red and strikingly resembling his mother, sat in front of the idol, a boy, younger than he, in her lap.
Amid the murmur of strange verses from a hundred throats, the woman, leader of the settlers, opened the child up with a dagger, inviting the entity to its first host. A lightning split the sky, drowning the place in silvery brilliance.
The demigod, the giver of life, emerged from the shadows, its benevolent form disintegrating, trembling, shrinking and corrupting into an aberration.
Prodded by vile incantations, the primeval deity writhed and crawled towards the boy. The woman held the child firm as the entity crawled into his thrashing body, a fleshy cage that would contain its wrath, his screams muffled by a firm hand wrapped over his mouth.
In a voice twisted by rage, the immortal and untamed being, now a fiend, brought down a terrible curse upon the woman: her firstborn would be the first of her kin he would claim to infest, torment and corrupt.
Even as the vision faded and Raju’s brain unravelled, inside a dark chamber of the house, a pale, gaunt body hung limp in a noose, tears dripping from her dead eyes.
The hill shivered as an inhuman wail arose from the chasm’s depths.