Bengali-horror

The letter arrived on a Tuesday, though Ridwan Chowdhury would later insist it had been a Wednesday, for Tuesdays in his memory had always been ordinary, and nothing about that letter, or the house it summoned him to, was ordinary in the slightest. It came sealed in wax the colour of dried blood, bearing a crest he did not recognise: a heron standing over a drowned man. Inside, in handwriting so cramped it seemed to be hiding from itself, an advocate named Halder informed him that his g...

The launch left Sadarghat an hour after the evening azan, and by the time it crossed into the wider water I had stopped pretending to read. There is an hour on the rivers of this country when the light gives up all at once, the way a sick man gives up, and the far bank turns from green to grey to a long black seam. The wind off the water in Bhadra carries a chill that has nothing to do with the temperature. I was travelling to photograph a house before the river ate it. That was the...

It was the last night of the monsoon month of Shraban. There was no moon in the sky, only a handful of stars peeking through gaps in the clouds now and then, as if some invisible eyes were keeping watch over the village from far away. There was no fog, yet the air carried a damp heaviness, as though nature itself were holding its breath, waiting for something. At the edge of Rahimganj village, where the paddy fields end and the forest begins, stood a very old house. The villagers called...