“It is such a weird arrangement,” Shakuntala overheard him telling a woman at the store one afternoon. “I make my way to him at midnight on Wednesday. He lives in that old house in the middle of the wood, you know, and he does not seem to have any mode of transportation. The day I first met him, he walked to my shop from his place. So my assistant and I have to take the cart to his house at midnight and drive up to the back of the house. He has a lady-servant greet me. She is almost as odd as he is, with skin that is just as pale and eyes with the smallest whites I have ever seen. She helps us unload the goods—oh, and here is the strangest part! He does not order food! No, it is only inedible materials—rope, chain, wood, candles, bed linens. I gave his servant a gift of mangoes once, and she flinched. I insisted that she take them, which she finally did, but Atul says he is certain he saw her toss them into the trees just as we were pulling away.”
Soon after this conversation in the general store, the animals started disappearing. At first, it was a goat here or there. They would be found with their limbs missing and their bodies startlingly tiny, the blood practically evaporated and the little hub of their bones and flesh barely anything. But then cows started to be mauled—and then to disappear. This was, of course, not only terrifying but sacrilegious. People would gasp as they saw the limp, soiled hides in the road, but a more gradual, more terrifying fear would set in when they took count of their livestock and realized that a cow or two had gone missing entirely. What sort of person could steal a cow without leaving a single trace of its kidnapping?
Several weeks after the disappearances had begun, a very bizarre invitation was nailed to the front post of Mr. Seth’s shop. Written on gold-plated paper in a script much pointier than normal Hindi, it invited everyone in town to a gathering at the old estate:
To the new neighbors,
Please come for an evening of dance and song at the home of Mr. M. H. Singh. November 4, at ten o’clock in the evening. Potluck. Please, no children.
Cordially,
Radha Mehta for Mr. M. H. Singh
The invitation was odd for a number of reasons. First, it indicated no address, although the town was so close-knit that the only house left as a possibility was, indeed, the old estate that had become newly inhabited. Second, it was a strange time for a party to begin, and it seemed redundant that children were forbidden, considering that ten o’clock would be too late to take children to a party in the first place. But the strangest issue was one of food; what self-respecting host would make his first event a potluck dinner? Why invite people out for dance and song but no prepared food? It seemed a particularly selfish—and lazy—thing to do.
And yet, everyone went. It was whispered around town that people would meet at Mr. Seth’s store and then make their way through the woods to the estate, their various dishes cupped in earthenware pots still hot from the heat of their respective ovens. Mr. Seth stood in his doorway dressed in his best kurta, of brown raw silk and with matching shoes.
“Welcome, welcome, yaar,” he said to each person that joined the group, and he seemed at once excited, scared, and anxious. Every time he put his hands together in greeting, he made sure to show off the big ruby ring on his right index finger—clearly a fake, but nevertheless showy. He had done an amazing lot of business in the past week, as everyone had bought groceries for the potluck dinner from his store. He must have taken great pride in seeing the vegetables, spices, and meats from his shelves reconstituted in these pots, but still, it seemed to unsettle him that Mr. M. H. Singh had never used any of those products himself. Why hire a storekeeper with such a vast array of foods to deliver inedible goods these past few weeks, only to have everyone bring food from that store in one fell swoop, to be tried in one sitting?
By the time all of the guests were assembled, it was ten minutes until ten o’clock. About forty people had shown up. The hubbub was deafening. They set out in a crowd, laughing nervously and stepping lightly, with kerosene lamps held in front of them. Had they pickaxes and knives instead of lamps, they would have been a mob ready to take on a dastardly foe. Indeed, any foe would have been truly disarmed by the delicious smells emanating from their dishes. By the time they got to the estate, they were ten minutes late, and the heat of their food had dropped to a comfortable warmth.
At first, they thought they might have gotten the house wrong. All of the lights were out, and if they hadn’t brought their own, they would have been standing in complete darkness, as tall trees swayed ominously over their heads and twigs cracked underneath their feet. But then they saw the front door of the house open—a darkness opening among the darkness—and two figures emerge from it. It was hard to make them out.
“Mr. Seth,” a man’s voice said, calmly but so coldly that there was a collective stiffening of the crowd. One woman, Mrs. Jindal, dropped her rice; the clay pot landed with a tough crunch.
“Yes?” Mr. Seth said, in a voice that was as timid as his usual voice was assured.
“Mr. Seth, please come forth,” the voice said again, and it was so commanding that Mr. Seth found himself running to the front steps of the house, his lamp threatening to spill its oil onto the ground. As he approached, the light illuminated the two figures bit by bit until the lamp was snatched by the figure on the left, a woman, and threw the two people entirely into view.
The crowd gasped. The man and woman were dressed in elegant robes unlike anything anyone in the crowd had ever seen. The robes were red; the light of the lamp sank into their folds and lit the edges. The man wore his hair in two long braids, the woman in the same manner, except she wore a peculiar hat with feathers coming out of its top. They looked out at the crowd, ignoring Mr. Seth as he shrieked and covered his mouth.
“Welcome, my new neighbors,” said the man. “I am M. H. Singh, and this is my maid, Radha Mehta. We would like to invite you all inside for a beautiful evening of revelry.” At this, he clapped his hands, and—the people of the town would all remember this for the rest of their lives but would never utter a word of it to each other—Mr. Singh’s house lit up like a carnival. The front doors swung open to a brightly lit hall full of candles and flowers and furniture so elegant that it could have come from the queen’s parlors at Buckingham Palace. The top floors beamed light into the night sky; even the lights in the basement cast bright carpets on the dirt below.
Nobody moved at first, and the terrifying duo in front of them did not budge. Everyone knew that danger lurked here. There was simply too much that was unfamiliar in this situation, and this was a town where everyone could map the events of any given day before it happened, so engrained were they in their day-to-day business.