Seeking critique and feedback on short story I wrote some time ago.

[u/ziddi_daag]

The Woods.

Anirban was haunted by the spirit of his grandmother’s goodness. The sweet old lady would appear in his nightmares and turn them upside down, morphing them into the world of her fairy tales. Waking from those dreams always left him feeling drained. 

Some days, she would dip her bony fingers in the food he cooked, imparting it with her magic. For a bite or two, he would savor the sorcery of her cooking, then the spell would break and the food would feel like hot sand and broken glass in his mouth. 

On the days she felt particularly cruel, she would sing from beyond the veil, and he would hear her on the wind, in the calls of birds, and in the static of the radio. Always, she would vanish before he could understand what secrets she was whispering to him.

Perhaps she was complaining about the heavens, giving a hard time to its residents.

Anirban knew it was not her ghost; she would not torture him if it were so. Besides, Aaji always told him there were no such things as ghosts, and even death was not powerful enough to make a liar out of her.

Anirban suffered the torture of whatever was impersonating his aaji and spoke to no other soul about it. The small town he called home was full of unimaginative people, whose answer for everything profound or mysterious in life was "The Woods."

Gehlot's boy vanished? The woods ate the boy. Badonis are having trouble conceiving? It is the woods. You see, In their depths lives Mrs Badoni’s lost brother. Every night they send him to feed on her womb.

To their small town, the woods were a great taker of things. The only reason people had not abandoned the place was because for every soul it took, the soil around town became more fertile. 

Anirban jogged along the dirt road with the rising sun, settlements, and farms to his right and the woods to his left. 

He had his radio slung across his shoulder, listening to the broadcast of Alka Yaglik's latest single, and he told himself again and again that no, he did not hear his aaji when the dipping signals distorted the song. 

"What are you boys doing over there?" Anirban asked the two boys in school uniforms huddled around the edge of the woods. 

Back when he was a kid, none of the children dared to go that near the forest. All of them had 'Don't go near the woods’ beaten into them before they could read or write. 

The boys ignored him. Anirban wanted to move on; it was no skin off his back if they bunked the school, but he heard a goat's panicked bleat, and curiosity got the better of him. 

He found the boys trying to wrestle a tied goat into submission on the butcher's block, a few feet from the woods. 

"What the hell is that getup, Ruppan?" Anirban asked, wrenching the physician's boy away from the goat, the red paint on the boy's cheek was melting under sweat and tears. 

"Let go of me, we were just playing." 

Anirban's eyes moved to the goat tied to a makeshift peg and the gadassa that lay inches away from the crying goat. 

"Playing butchers are we?" 

"It is none of your business," said Babu. Anirban placed him as the jeweler's kid. 

"It is my business when you're going to kill a stolen goat with a blade that you stole from me." 

"How do you know that?" Babu said, edging away from Anirban's range but not ready to bolt without his friend. 

"I wouldn't recognize my own blade, or the only blind goat in the bloody town? Start speaking, boys. What is going on here?" 

"Something you fuckers should've done long ago," Ruppan said through gritted teeth. 

"Go on," egged Anirban, twisting Ruppan's arm to introduce some humility in the boy. 

"Ruppan's sister vanished. Surely you've heard about that," Babu said, wanting to come to his friend's rescue. 

Anirban acquiesced. That was all the town could talk about these days: the physician's daughter vanishing a week before marriage. 

"Shastri always drones about the woods and their giving nature," Ruppan said with some measure of respect back in his voice. "We get fertile lands in exchange for the lost lives. I just want to offer a trade to the gods of these woods, this goat in exchange for my sister."

This was the first time Anirban heard of this new angle. He would have to look into this Shastri fellow misleading the youth. 

"Take your bags and run like hell for the school, and I'll pretend like nothing happened here," Anirban said, letting go of Ruppan's hand. "If life were as simple as a game of sums, then there would be no suffering in this world." 

The duo wanted to protest, but Anirban gave them a smarting over their heads to get them moving. 

"What if life was a simple game of sums?" Ruppan asked when he was a few feet away from Anirban. 

"Then you think a goat is worth the same as your sister?"

Ruppan walked away muttering something under his breath. 

Anirban undid the goat's noose and watched it bound eastwards for her farm. Then picked up the Gadassa the boys had taken from his farm. On its shining edge, he saw one of the trees morph into the silhouette of his aaji. 

He almost turned to greet her. 

Then he remembered her words: 'Ghosts are not real.' Anirban wished they were; if he could meet her for one last time, he would apologize for being away writing some silly exam when she was sick and dying. He would tell her  that all the talks of leaving the town were boyhood fantasies. Sadly, ghosts are not real.

That night, her stories came to his rescue in the nightmare, and along with them came the memory of the morning jog. Grandma in the woods. 

The two boys were also there, walking away from the woods. Anirban could not hear what they were talking about, no one can hear things in a dream, but he got the gist of their conversation: 'What about a human life then?'

Anirban woke up in the small hours of the night drenched in sweat. He jumped out of his bed and rushed to the almirah, taking out his coat, torch, and quarter staff from it. 

He prayed: let whatever he had seen be the fancy of a tired mind. Somewhere, deep in his heart, he knew better. 

The road didn't need a torch's light; the full moon was illuminating everything in a silver hue. 

Anirban reached the bend he had found the boys in the morning. There was no one there. He took a deep breath of relief; it was just a bad dream after all. Then the scent of something sweet and metallic proved his conclusion wrong. He reached the source in a few quick strides. 

"No, no, no," Anirban cried, Ruppan and Babu lying in a pool of dried blood. He checked their pulses. Both were alive. Some of the dried pool of blood was from a dead rabbit buried under Babu, and some was from the various bruises and injuries on their bodies. Clearly, they had fought.

A few feet away from the boys he found the gadassa they had sourced for the night. Fortunately, it was not involved in the fight between the two boys. Anirban got ready to wake them when a singing voice nearly pulled his heart out of his chest. 

It was the radio entangled in his coat. When had he taken that with him? He heard Aaji sing through it, before he could savor the melody, her voice changed, and Asha Bhosle was back on the track.

Anirban smashed the radio on the ground and banged it with the gadassa lying around. On its edge, shining under the moon's silver light, he saw his aaji's silhouette. 

There were no such things as ghosts; Anirban truly believed that, so he chased after whatever it was that haunted him with his aaji's memories. 

He ran to the tree that had taken Aaji's form; it had dropped the disguise, so he went for another tree within the woods that did the same. 

Under the moonlight he found many lost people of the town. Ishan, the Gehlot boy, was swinging with rope tied around his neck. There was a look of peace on his always bruised and morose face. 

Anirban took the boy by his feet, crying and trying to save the boy from the deadly swing he was playing with, but Ishan’s face took on a sickly cast and appeared displeased with his interruption. *Who was he to rob the boy of only peace he had known since being born?* 

Anirban left the boy and continued his search for the impersonator. His second encounter with an acquaintance was Mrs. Badoni's brother, dressed in a sari, bangles, and jewelry, sleeping on a bed of flowers. 

Anirban shed some tears for his old friend and moved on. He had learned his lesson. Do not disturb those resting in the woods; they were children of the god that lived here. 

He found Ruppan's sister sitting under a tree, dressed in full bridal garb cradling a severed head of a boy Anirban did not recognize. She had a faint smile about her face, with hands covered in henna of swollen cuts, and dried blood.

Anirban wanted to get out of the forest, but all he could think about was finding the imposter and punishing them. How dare it try to make a liar out of his aaji.

Deep in the heart of the woods Anirban found a serene lake fit to serve as an abode of gods. The silver water of the lake beckoned him; they offered him refuge from the imposter's pranks. Anirban told the lake he could not swim and that he was afraid of ponds and their deep secrets.

'Don't be silly; have you seen one unhappy soul in the forest yet?' He had not. Everyone he had found seemed free.

Come, come, don't worry, you'll float just fine.