The Colony of Shadows

by Bikram Sharma

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A GRIEVING CHILD.
A MYSTERIOUS COLONY.
A LURKING MENACE.

After the untimely death of his parents, nine-year-old Varun struggles to adjust to his new life in Bangalore with his perceptive aunt and bedridden grandmother. When he climbs through a hole in the wall of their back garden, he discovers a mysterious colony that lies abandoned and in ruins. It's strangely familiar, and the more he explores it, the more it resembles his old home in Delhi. But the comfort of familiarity is deceptive, for something dangerous lurks in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike - and wreak havoc. Will Varun survive this threat? Or will he vanish from the world, swallowed alive by the colony of shadows?

In this gripping debut novel, Bikram Sharma tells an emotionally rich tale about loss, grief, and hope, and the lengths we go to for the people we love.

Release date: September 25, 2022

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 256

Sample

1

Jyoti stood barefoot in the back garden and hung laundry on the clothesline. The grass was damp from the rain and the trees in the grove behind her rustled with every gust of wind. From the nearby construction site came the high-pitched whine of stonecutting, punctuated by drilling, hammering, blares of traffic, and the explosive hisses of pressure cookers from the adjacent apartment complex. She rubbed her forehead. There was no peace in this city. Development was relentless. Soon some enormous shopping centre would be leaning against their boundary walls and once again they’d be forced to debate whether or not they should just chuck everything and sell the place. It was a shame Varun couldn’t experience the Bangalore of her youth. She carried the laundry basket back inside the house.

In the kitchen, Seema was stirring masala, which sizzled. Jyoti brushed past her and slid the laundry basket under the counter. ‘Is my mother awake?’

‘No.’

‘Very nice. She’s going to end up sleeping through the entire day.’

‘I’ll clean her room? It hasn’t been done for so long.’

Jyoti pressed a button on her phone and listened to the automated voice state the time. ‘No, it’s too late. Leave it.’

Sliding her hand along the walls, she headed for the guest bedroom but stumbled into a stool. She winced at the flare of pain in her shin. She needed to remind Varun that in this house he couldn’t leave stuff all over the place. Poor thing. All these new rules.

‘Varun?’ She knocked on his open door. ‘Varun?’

There was a flurry of movement, the scrape of a chair. ‘Hi, Jyoti Aunty.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Homework.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Promise?’

‘I… yes.’

She sat on his bed, patted the bedcover, and found Lego pieces and something larger that he’d been building. Balancing it on her palm, she traced its shape with her fingertips.

‘An aeroplane?’

‘It’s not yet finished.’

She twirled the propellers attached to its wings and felt a painful catch in her chest. Anu would’ve been so proud.

‘And your homework?’

‘It’s also not yet finished.’

‘Okay, well, maybe you could do that first, and then we could unpack your boxes? There are still three left, no?’

The boxes were stacked on top of each other by his wardrobe and she was keen to strike them off the to-do list. It would help, she imagined, to have his clothes fill the wardrobe, his drawings hang from the walls, and his toys litter the floor. Maybe then he would feel more comfortable here.

‘Can I go outside?’ he asked.

‘Weren’t you just now saying your homework isn’t finished?’

‘I don’t even have school.’

‘I’ve told you, you have to keep practising. Otherwise, things will be extra difficult when you rejoin classes. This is important.’

‘Just for a short while. Please?’

There was such eagerness in his voice. She remembered playing a game with him when he was a baby, small for his age yet heavy in her arms. She would place him inside his crib and hide her face behind her hands. His agitation would grow, and just when it seemed like he was on the verge of crying, she would re-emerge with a whoop. How he spluttered with delight. Where’s your Jyoti Aunty? Here she is! Yes, here she is! Disappear, reappear, disappear, reappear. What limitless joy he took from the game, from the moment of her return.

‘Okay. You can go play. But,’ the chair scraped back, ‘make sure you come back for lunch and don’t get caught in the rain and please be careful okay?’

He was already thudding his way out.

How had Anu managed? In their conversations, her sister always mentioned classes and after-school activities like swimming, trips to heritage sites, and fun little experiments in engineering. And yet, here she was, struggling to make him follow a bare-bones timetable. A month had passed and she still didn’t know what to do with him. What would happen when she went back to work?

She set the aeroplane down. It was a feat of imagination like the origami she and Anu used to make when they were children, or the paper boats they launched across puddles. Back then they loved embarking on adventures in the grove. They pretended to be fearless discoverers, though their bravery deserted them every time they returned home late to find Mama frothing at the mouth with worry.

She reached for her cane by the front door. Perhaps it would be best to bring him back and have him focus on homework for now. Keep him safe. But she hesitated. After she lost her vision, there were no more games or adventures in the grove. She was forbidden from entering it. How will you go? Mama asked. All those thorns and roots. Who will help you walk between trees, huh? One trip, one fall, then I’ll be the one rushing you to the hospital to take care of your broken bones.

She tapped the floor with her cane. Maybe being in a constant state of worry was what it meant to be a parent, and maybe climbing trees or playing hide-and-seek with the shadows was what Varun needed right now. Some time and space. Let him be, she convinced herself. It would be good for him to explore. And where was the harm? It wasn’t like he was going to vanish without a trace.

2

Varun walked through the grove behind the bungalow. He’d spent the past week counting the trees on the property and only recognized three. At the end of the driveway was the massive banyan, hundreds of roots dangling from its branches and weaving into one another to form delicate curtains he could brush aside. By the side of the house was the guava tree. Even though Jyoti Aunty had warned him to be careful, he’d still scraped his elbows climbing its trunk. And the guava he plucked was so hard he couldn’t even bite into it. Poppy had sniffed the guava without interest, then chased after a squirrel and barked as it scurried across branches. The third and final tree was the most special. A bougainvillea in bloom by the boundary wall. Ma’s favourite. Sometimes they would go for a walk in the colony’s park and she would point at trees and ask him to guess their names. Bougainvillea had been the easiest to learn because of how difficult it was to spell. Who knew a word could hide so many letters? Ma had laughed the first time he guessed at its spelling.

The smell of wet earth was rich this deep inside the grove, with its muddy puddles and leaves turning to mulch. It reminded him of rain on stone, of Ma’s hands after gardening.

It was winter in Delhi. His school sometimes closed for days because of the pollution, and he and Komal liked to sit in front of the television and watch cartoons all day long, warming their feet against the portable heater. Outside, a dense fog would hang low among the tree branches, coating the roofs of parked cars with moisture.

In Bangalore, there was no fog. The air was light, bright, and not even that cold. Peering through the gaps in the canopy, he could see kites flying in graceful circles, their wings spread wide and their bodies dipping with the wind. How did they do that? He would have to look this up when he got home. Then he remembered home was packed into suitcases and cardboard boxes. He didn’t even know if they’d brought Ma’s nature books or Pa’s gigantic leather-back volumes of Indian history. What about the gramophone?

The back of his throat prickled. He kicked at a tree trunk. The sight of its scraped bark immediately made him whisper an apology.

No, the boxes in his room only contained his old belongings, not theirs. Maybe there were other boxes hidden away, but Jyoti Aunty was so keen to unpack and shelve and tidy up that he would’ve noticed. There was always something she wanted him to do.

He pinched himself. It wasn’t fair to think cruel thoughts about her. Ma had told him that Jyoti Aunty faced difficulties he could never understand. He picked up a stick and, keeping his eyes shut, tapped the ground and moved forward with an arm outstretched. He tripped over a root. He splashed into a puddle and soaked one of his shoes. His sock squelched with every step. He tripped over another root and stumbled headfirst into a wall.

Here he was, struggling to walk a few feet. Meanwhile, Jyoti Aunty could cross roads without hesitation.

He removed his shoe and squeezed the water from his sock. The wall he’d walked into was the boundary wall, and from the other side came the incredibly loud sounds of construction. There were great booms and hoarse calls. He wasn’t sure what was happening out there, but clouds of dust drifted over the wall and settled on the leaves and branches of the grove. Following the boundary wall, he caught sight of the bougainvillea and tried to recall what Ma had told him. The vines have long, spiky thorns, so be careful! The flowers are actually white but they’re surrounded by a cluster of pink leaves called bracts.

What else?

Above him, shards of glass from broken bottles had been wedged into the cement at the top of the boundary wall.

What else had Ma told him? How could he have forgotten so much? The last time they went for a walk in the park, he’d ditched her for a game of seven stones without even saying goodbye.

He remembered Pa plucking bougainvillea near Feroz Shah’s tomb and threading it through her hair. And the jar in the living room, which she liked to fill with small pebbles and delicate pink bracts. And the time when she bandaged his fingers after he pricked himself on their thorns and was surprised into tears.

But he couldn’t remember anything else Ma had told him about bougainvillea.

He rested his forehead against the wall. Its surface was grainy, browned over the years with plenty of cracks and chips. It looked like it could collapse from the slightest of touches. He half-wished it would.

Voice tight in his throat, he whispered, ‘I want to go home.’

The wall gently shook with the pounding of construction. The movement disturbed a lizard from its hiding place. Varun watched it skitter across the wall. It was pale green and so translucent that he could see veins branching beneath its skin. Pa was terrified of lizards. The way they move! Yikes! Why are they so unpredictable, man? He would flee from the room while Ma, laughing, would nudge the lizard into a cup to set it free in the colony’s park.

‘Hello, little ghost,’ Varun said, just as Ma used to say. He offered his open palm to the lizard, but it disappeared down a hole in the wall. Kneeling to get a better look, he was surprised to find the hole was large enough that he could squeeze through. On the other side were a filthy courtyard and an empty swimming pool.

Varun frowned. He’d expected to see blue tarpaulin sheets and bamboo scaffolding, piles of sand and cement mixers. Not an empty swimming pool. Where were the construction workers? Everything was carpeted in a thick layer of dust. Filthy and drained of water, the swimming pool looked strange. Like it didn’t belong there. And yet there was something familiar about it.

He thumbed the edges of the hole, the wall’s insides with its mossy bricks that were powdery yet rough to the touch. If he wanted to, he could cross over. He could have a quick look around and be back on this side without anyone knowing. He could. There was no one to stop him. Grandma hardly left her bed and Jyoti Aunty never stepped inside the grove. Even if Jyoti Aunty did wander past this spot, it wouldn’t matter because she couldn’t see.

His neck burnt with shame. No, that was not nice. He shouldn’t have thought that. Picking at a scab on his elbow, he considered going back to the house to finish his homework, maybe help Jyoti Aunty unpack the remaining boxes. But then he spotted something inside the pool. It was small, circular, casting a shiny speck of a reflection. A coin. Waiting to be found.

Varun glanced over his shoulder, then squeezed through to the other side. Seconds later, the hole in the wall sealed itself up.

3

Poppy twitched her nose. The hairs on her back stood on end, bristly as thorns. She could smell it in the wind, sense it in the air. Something was very wrong. There had come a swift predatory sound from the grove, like a cat leaping to snatch a pigeon, crushing a windpipe between its teeth and muffling panicked wingbeats by clawing flesh.

She pawed the front door.

‘You want to go out?’ her sister asked.

She barked.

‘Okay, okay, no need to be so noisy.’ Her sister slid her hand along the wall and guided herself to the front door, which she opened.

Poppy padded out and listened. The insects in her territory had gone deathly quiet. She sniffed the grounds around the house, seeking the source of this disturbance, and soon picked up the scent of the boy.

Sweat.

Stone.

Blood.

She sneezed.

Grief.

The last one was potent, like orange rinds turning rancid in the summer. She’d grown accustomed to it hanging thick and oppressive inside the house, especially over her poor ma, but here it was, spilt outside.

She lowered her nose to the ground and followed the boy’s scent. Along the way he’d stumbled. Had he used a stick? Here was a scuffed trunk, here a shallow puddle, and his tracks. Her apprehension mounted as she moved away from the outer rings of her territory into hostile underbrush. Several times she heeded the warning calls of birds and took off, only resuming her search when she was sure she wasn’t being watched. She kept expecting a scene of violence, feathers and blood. Just as she was beginning to tire, her joints stiff and aching, she arrived at the boundary wall where the boy’s scent winked out.

Gone.

Vanished.

And in its place stood a vertical line of darkness, hissing and crackling at the edges.

Poppy yelped and scurried away. She hid behind a tree and sniffed the earth, the roots. A tunnel! How was this possible? She’d always believed they were stories told to pups to warn them of the pipes under the city. What was this, then? How was she supposed to defend her territory against something that was like waves of heat trembling on the horizon? This was no prey that could be savaged by her teeth.

Where was the boy? The boy, the boy! This was his doing, climbing over boundaries without sensing the danger lying in wait.

She thought about leaving. She could go back to the house, eat her rice and mince and laze in the garden, or maybe walk her sister up and down the dri. . .