Vampires of Keralam

The nail has been in that tree for eighty years. Somebody is cutting it out.

In the villages of old Kerala the dead do not rest, and the living do not ask why. A woman is put out of her house at five months and walks down a lane of fourteen doors, and eleven of them close. A scholar dies with a fault on him that nobody has computed, and comes back with his learning intact and his appetite new. A man is killed on a night road by a method that leaves nothing anyone can be accused of. A corpse in a tree tells riddles to the man carrying it, and every riddle has a price.

Eighteen tales, drawn from the Aithihyamala, the northern ballads, and the stories still told in particular villages about particular trees.

• The Yakshi, who asks a stranger for lime on a dark road.
• The Brahmarakshas, who asks a question you had better answer.
• The Odiyan, made by the same men who paid him and feared him.
• The Vethalam, who cannot stop asking.

After each tale comes a poem, spoken by the one nobody heard: the garland-maker, the maid, the iron nail, the room with the bar on the inside.

These are not gentle stories, and there are no clean hands in them.

For readers of Indian folk horror, regional mythology and the ghost stories a country tells about itself.

Book Five of Indian Mythology Retold. Each book stands alone.