I’ve grown up in a part of Mumbai, India that has always identified themselves as Nastiks, meaning non-believers. Non-believers in everything – from the great Gods to the damned Devils. But something happened in this quaint town that crushed this belief to blunt shards.

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            My town is located on the outskirts of the National Park, so close to the woods that it gets preposterously chilly, especially at night. Outsiders find it eerie but to us it just means that ice cream lasts longer.

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            I was unemployed for the longest time but managed to get a job as a postman, thanks to my childhood friend TEJAS who works as an accountant at the local post office. Now, postmen get designated zones in which they have to deliver and lucky for me, I got assigned the area where Tejas and I have lived all our lives – the outskirts of the National park. Unlike in foreign countries, Indian postmen do not get vehicles for delivery and have to deliver post mostly on foot. I didn’t mind that as I thought it would help me shed the extra pounds that I had put on while I was unemployed.

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            But delivering posts turned out to be a thankless job. To pull my spirits up, I would plug in my earphones, trying to bob my head to the sickest beats on the way to the houses. Sigh! It seldom helped. I would often cross our town’s colourful marketplace where I was always greeted by this cute little black and white street dog. I called her PATCHY. She would jump in glee and put her forelimbs on my hips because she knew, I carried in my shirt pocket, the tastiest roasted chickpeas – a form of healthy energy replenishment in case I got really tired, which was often. But I would still give her a handful of chickpeas as it was extraordinarily amusing to see her relish the snack. She’d nibble and lick my hand clean in a matter of seconds but made sure that her teeth never hurt me. Patchy was undoubtedly the highlight of my day – the smile in my miles of misery.

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            One morning, I got an earful at the post office for having delivery backlog and was given an ultimatum by my supervisor to finish off all the deliveries by the end of the day or else ... he’d fire me. I was not ready to face the demons of unemployment again and so was hauling ass across town to make the backlogged as well as the new deliveries. I was rushing past the marketplace when I heard a bark from across the street! Oh no, not today Sweety, I thought. No time for doggy-loving when your ass is on the line. No pun intended. But the black and white cutie barked again and gave the cutest smile. It was enough to make a heart of stone melt and mine is merely made of tinder. I reached for her favourite roasted chickpeas in my pocket. I could literally see her salivate, not even kidding. Patchy darted to cross the street. And in a flash, a fucking sedan just steamrolled over her out of nowhere. Gosh, the horrid yelp! It is an imprinted scar in my memory like a third degree burn. Passers-by tried to stop the car but the reckless prick sped away. But I didn’t care for that. All I cared for was the highlight of my day and she was just crushed under its wheels. I ran to her and sat down on the filthy road where she laid. She looked ... surprisingly fine but motionless. So I lifted her head in my palm. It felt wet. No it wasn’t blood. It was her fucking brains. One side of her skull was missing and her brain was spilling out of it. In shock, I just sat there with the dog in my arms for the longest time. My buzzing phone jolted me out of the daze. It was my supervisor, “I hope you are done with most of your deliveries. Report back to me at 6pm on the dot, hopefully with your postbag empty.” But the fact was that I had barely started. I laid Patchy back down, wiped her brains off my fingers with my handkerchief and looked around for help. Luckily, a nearby shop owner was already on call with the authorities. He gave me a nod and I’m not proud of it but I left the beloved street dog and rushed to complete my deliveries. I had lost one worthy thing in my life. Made no sense losing the only supposed other.

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            I ran and I ran like the wind even though my appalling fitness allowed me only to move like slow breeze. I crossed the marketplace many times but Patchy still lay there in the middle of the street. This is what often happens in my country. The authorities don’t give a shit about us, much less a dead dog. Dry tears crusted my cheeks as the afternoon and then the late evening heat scorched her dead body to the point where it began to emit the stench of decomposition. I covered my nose with my kerchief until I realised I was inhaling Pathcy’s brain off of it and shoved it back into my pocket. I couldn’t help but just go on with making deliveries. The deadline of 6pm flew by as if in seconds. I made deliveries into the dead of night that day. Was cursed by the sleepy home owners. And still, I was unable to finish all the deliveries. It was just impossible with all the backlog. My crazy supervisor called me to the post office at that hour only to fire me and take away my ID card and the remaining post-letters. I phoned my friend, the post office accountant Tejas but even his pleas to the supervisor didn’t help. Worst day ever! Dejected and defeated, I walked homewards alone. The chill and the fog from the National park crept in. Once more crossing the marketplace, I dreaded seeing the dead dog again but she wasn’t there. Thank God! The authorities had picked her up for a decent burial, I thought. I walked up the dreary desolate street, shop-shutters down. Not a sound but that of the whooshing wind. I saw a shadow moving down the street. It went past the light of the streetlamp and appeared beneath another. This time not a shadow as it was clearly lit. My eyes widened. It was a dog. I couldn’t believe it, it was black and white. It was Patchy. No doubts about it. But she looked strange. A little off. I felt a lump in my chest – a ball of fear or happiness, I knew not. How could she be alive? I saw her die this morning. I held her brains. Smelt her decomposing stench this evening. How could she be alive? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. She started limping towards the curb. There was a decrepit woman sitting there – white hair, multicoloured Sari but I couldn’t see her face. Not that there wasn’t enough light. There was. She was sitting under the streetlight but her face was complete darkness. As if she was faceless. She stretched her hand out to the Patchy and started applying a yellow paste on the dog’s head where the skull had broken off. ‘Ah! That’s turmeric’, I thought. Turmeric is a local antiseptic found widely in Indian kitchens. She was applying it to heal the street dog. Maybe I was misreading the situation. The woman was here to help. Hell, she practically resurrected my beloved Patchy using ancient Indian medicines! Still applying the turmeric, the woman looked at me. A chill ran through my entire body. My muscles, which were aching after the horrid day, throbbed in much greater pain and then suddenly ... relaxed. Feeling strange but relieved, I smiled at her. She picked up something from beside her – pieces of brain and shoved it inside the dog’s head. Her entire fist was inside. The dog let out a deafening howl, brandishing her teeth which appeared much larger than before. Then it struck me why Patchy looked strange. She had somehow become bigger ... in a matter of hours ... when she was supposedly dead. This is not my Patchy and this woman is not a woman! I gasped out loud in realisation as my gut sank a thousand feet. Now Patchy turned towards me and growled as if I was the one who shoved a hand down her skull. I backed up. Patchy jumped up onto her hind legs just as the Old decrepit woman stood up. I waited for the dog’s forelegs to come back down but they didn’t. What the fuck! The darkness in the woman’s face became bigger, as big as a wrecking ball. It seemed as if she had opened her mouth wide. A low rumble filled the air. My chest vibrated like a tuning fork and my stomach churned. I vomited. My ears hurt like hell. Blood trickled out of them. The fucking dog, I won’t say Patchy anymore, started sprinting menacingly on its hind legs towards me. The black and white face with ghoulish black shiny eyes and a yellowish-red head scowled and drooled. I ran back down the road I had come from as fast as I could, not looking back even once. I dashed into the post office and locked myself in the storage booth. I heard a loud bang on my door. Howls! Then scratching claws. ‘Why does Patchy want to kill me? I was good to her. I fed her. No, she’s not Patchy.’ Thoughts plagued my mind all night. I don’t even remember whether the scratching stopped first or exhaustion consumed me.

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            I was woken to knocks and my Supervisor’s bossy shouts early next morning, “Who has locked this room? And what are these scratches? I have important files in here.” Truly relieved, I opened the door. My supervisor and standing behind him, Tejas, were shocked to see me broken. My clothes were stained. I had shit in my pants due to fright during the night’s ordeal. I hadn’t even realised it. Tejas took the day off, took me home, bathed me and sat with me patiently even though I didn’t say a word to him. He made me food and put me to sleep. A true friend indeed! In the evening I said to him, “I want to tell you but I don’t understand myself.” “No need,” he said, “Let’s go out for drinks to your favourite place.” That brought a small smile on my face in a time that seemed darkest but sadly wasn’t.

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            The most favourite, extravagantly secretive and magical place for us locals to drink was the National Park. The Park stays shut at night. So we entered unnoticed from a secluded end of town. We had broken a hole at the bottom of the National park’s tall boundary wall. That night Tejas and I purchased our whiskey from the local liquor shop and entered the park’s woods through the hole in the wall. It was serene, quiet and calm like this town is always supposed to be. It took my mind off the horrific memories of last night – the Dog and the Shadow Woman. The howls and the yelps. Oh God! I closed my eyes while walking. A tear fell on my cheek. Good thing, it was pitch dark in the woods so Tejas could not see them. What sort of a man cries in front of another man, I thought. A manly one, I realised later. Soon, we were drinking and smoking heavily, reminiscing about how we used to score girls in school. How I kissed girls in urinals despite the sulphuric stench! And how Tejas would fuck girls three years his senior. He also had a kind of romance with our class teacher. The turd always had a thing for relics. Oh how we laughed! Once, in the middle of the class, the girl sitting next to this fucker moaned in ecstasy as he fisted her relentlessly. A haunting image came screaming back to me – that of the decrepit woman shoving her hand inside Patchy’s head. I stopped laughing. “What happened, dude?” Though Tejas could not see my face, he could sense something wrong. “You hear that too?” he asked me. “Hear what?” The faint sound of hooves thumped the ground. It came from Tejas’ direction. The thumping increased as if there were hundreds of somethings approaching, we couldn’t decipher what. The woods here is laden with ferocious leopards infamous for claiming many innocent lives. But so many, that too together? “Run,” whispered Tejas and we ran blind in the opposite direction, leaving all our booze behind. I crashed into a thick tree. I couldn’t see a thing but could feel fear like water up the nose. Tejas helped me up and we darted through the thicket, bruising ourselves with whips from the bushes. But then we heard approaching hooves from this direction as well. Then the left. We ran towards the right. All four directions were lava. The thumping was so loud that Tejas and I just huddled together and sat down waiting for an inevitable stampede. The hooves sped towards us but stopped merely a centimetre short of us. Wind gushed past as dust filled the air to a stifling point. Silence! We still couldn’t see a thing. With trembling hands, I lit my mobile’s flashlight expecting to see leopards or panthers or wild boars. But no! They were Deers. Hundreds and hundreds of deers. Like mannequins. Standing paralysed in fear. What were they petrified of? Us? Unlikely. I couldn’t understand but I just hoped that they weren’t scared shitless of the same thing I was one night ago. I reached for Tejas’ hand. It was frigid, much colder than mine. We slowly stood up and started squeezing past the deers, making sure not to touch and alarm them. Suddenly we heard footsteps – Bipedal. Something heavy beneath which twigs and branches snapped like crackers. Whoever or whatever it was, stealth was not its tactic. Fear was. I tugged at Tejas’ shirt, indicating him to stop still. Suddenly a loud thud as if something jumped into the crowd of deer and us. Chaos ensued as the deer ran helter-skelter. Slashes, growls, yelps and pounding hooves filled the night. Warm liquid sprayed over us from all directions. And into my mouth. I still remember the metallic taste. Blood! Something was slaughtering the deer ruthlessly. I shined my flashlight in the direction of pandemonium and beyond the carnage of the bleeding dead and scurrying injured, we saw it, me for the second time and Tejas for the first – Standing on its hindlegs, the Dog ‘Patchy’ had become grotesque and taller. Nine feet. Still with the yellowish shade on his head. A throbbing brain poking out.  With vicious claws and incisors. Covered in blood. It saw us and shoved aside the deer in our path. It curved its lips ominously when it looked at me. Almost like a smirk. Tejas pulled me back but I was trampled down by a running deer whose hoof snapped my right forearm in half but I somehow managed to stand back up despite the piercing agony. The sinister Dog growled at Tejas and charged. Instead of running away, Tejas too charged at it with clenched fists. The Dog opened its mouth wide. I squealed at Tejas to stop but it was too late. It cleanly bit Tejas’ head off as swiftly as plucking out flowers. Just when did life leave his body? I don’t know. Because even without his head, his clenched fist delivered an almighty punch square in the Dog’s thigh. But it didn’t affect the Dog one bit. It approached me slowly. The gore and shock of my best friend getting brutally beheaded made me freeze where I stood. It spat my friend’s head at my feet – all slimy and bloody, cut up by the Dog’s incisors beyond recognition. The Dog started bending, letting out steamed breath onto my bloody face. It smelled horrific, like the rot of the many bodies it had just slain before my eyes. It went past my face, below, and poked its chin at my shirt pocket. I didn’t understand at first but when I noticed the crunching sound coming from my pocket whenever it was chinned, I realised that the Dog wanted to eat the roasted chickpeas within. I had carried it to chomp on while having drinks with Tejas, whose disfigured head was now lying at my feet. This monster! Wants the roasted snack? Perhaps a part of my cute little Patchy was still alive inside this insidious abhorrent despicable Creature. With my working left arm, I fished out a fistful of roasted chickpeas and threw it to the ground. The Dog roared and spat right into my face. I thought I would disintegrate. I took out another fistful of the snack and held it out in my trembling palm. Just like the Patchy I knew, the monster nibbled and licked my hand clean in a matter of seconds. I thought surely, it would chew my hand out but the teeth shockingly never hurt me. The brute licked my face. The roughness of its tongue almost peeled my skin off. Then it grabbed Tejas’ limp body between two of its long skinny fingers and dragged him into the murk, away from the reach of my frail flashlight.

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            I dashed away from amongst the slain bodies as fast as my aching body could. The pain was unbearable to the point that I could see darkness, blacker than the blinding wooded night, creeping in front of my eyes. I stumbled out of the hole in the National Park’s boundary wall and collapsed to the cold numbing ground. I willed my eyes to stay open. I had to do one more thing. I saw the slabs of wall that we had broken and thrown aside. I crawled to it on my elbows, the stony glacial earth cutting deep. Grabbing the wall slabs between my left hand and both legs, I painstakingly sealed the wall. Only then I allowed my knees to buckle below me but someone held me up, didn’t let me fall. I turned to look. I saw first, a multicoloured Sari and then her face as dark as the black hole. The shadowy sinister face moved as she spoke, “You seem hurt. Won’t you let me apply some turmeric to your wounds! You’ll feel better than ever.” She put her hand in my pant pocket, pulled out the brain-smeared handkerchief I had almost forgotten about and swallowed it to oblivion. The low rumble echoed once again, engulfing me in a waves of misery. I let out a scream through which escaped every ounce of my depleted energy. It drowned in the cackling laughter of the decrepit old Woman as I faded into the killing night.

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            I somehow breathe the live cold air wafting from the National Park even today. The town still mourns the death of a young brave life. As for me, I try to get by with PTSD counselling to deal with my survivor’s guilt. We should never have gone out that night, especially with all that had happened with me the night before. My hand had healed overnight, courtesy of the decrepit woman. I’m still awaiting its haunting repercussions keeping in mind what that kind of healing has done to the once lifeless Patchy. My quaint town and now you too know the story of the birth of our town’s Dogman – Dogwoman - to be precise. It is as if it got baptised by consuming my dear friend Tejas. Even though the National Park is now permanently shut and its boundary wall is completely sealed with the Dogman inside, we are not safe. From time to time, I see the monster standing atop the tall boundary walls, now even taller – Eleven feet. Its body structure looks oddly like that of my dead friend. It lurks in the darkness of the streets. People go missing. I’m sure they are dead. But not me even though I have felt it stalking me. I can’t help but accept the fact that there is still some kind of a weird bond between me and the killer creature, the monster, the Dogman – my sweetheart Patchy!

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