She was standing in a large underground cavern. Its floor was strewn with bones. Strange-looking plants grew from the cracks between them, shrubs and bushes that glowed eerily. They had succulent leaves that gave off a shimmer, like live coals. The flowers had petals with serrated edges that whipped out like sinuous blades. The thick stems were covered with eight-inch menacing-looking needles that were slowly moving, pushing out and retracting.

The walls of this subterranean chamber were covered in what looked like a spongy coat of moss – but instead of green, it was the colour of clotted blood. There were also vines growing across the floor. These were a baingan-purple colour, as thick as commercial shipping ropes. As they rustled and twisted, Rani Grace saw that the vines sported razor-sharp black thorns, which resembled the dorsal fins of sharks sticking out of the water.

At the centre of it all stood a rooster the size of an autorickshaw. It had kohl-black feathers that shone like satin. The intense black plumage of its tail would have made a peacock’s multi-colored feathers look plain in comparison. The rooster stood still, its eyes like black glass beads so dark that even the flare from an acetylene torch wouldn’t have brought a flicker of light into them.

The only glimmer that broke through the bird’s blackness was a red glow that came on and off from deep inside its chest, like the moving beacon of a lighthouse. Rani Grace realised that this light was the glow of the creature’s large pulsating heart.

On top of the fowl, sitting sideways, was a man who looked, at first glance, like somebody’s Uncle. He was middle-aged and not very tall. His shape was well-rounded, like a prize Imam Pasand mango, and he was dressed in the sort of cement-grey safari suit that had been considered high fashion in the 1970s. He had a head of tightly spiralling black curls, parted on the left: thick locks that coiled and twisted like moving tentacles.

His face was like a hologram. If you tilted your head slightly one way, he looked like a jolly, clean-shaven desi Santa Claus; but if you changed the angle of your gaze ever so slightly, it made his face look demonic and villainous.

He had eight hands in total, four on each side. Each wrist was adorned with a two-inch-wide gold watch.

He wore black Bata sandals. His feet seemed to have too many toes.

“Hello! Hello, ma!” he said in a voice both sweet and dangerous, like someone offering you a spoon of fresh kesari that you know for certain is poisoned. “All okay? You didn’t hurt yourself, no, when you fell?”

Rani Grace didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. She heard herself say “I’m fine.”

“Appada! Excellent! Now, dear, please sit. Utkaranga! Please sit.”

From beneath her, just behind her bum, an inverted rib cage of unknown origin rose up from the floor of bones on a stem of vertebrae. As it rose to meet Rani Grace’s rear, it sort of scooped her into a sitting position, and the whole seat slid closer to the strange Uncle and stopped when it was a foot away from him.

He leaned forward, bowed his head, and folded all eight of his hands into a mandala-esque Vanakkam.

“Welcome ma, welcome!”

Now that she was closer to him Rani Grace noticed that none of the hands on the dials of his eight wristwatches were moving in the same direction.

“Do you know who I am, chellam?”

“No. But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” said Rani Grace, surprising herself with how cool she sounded.

“Shabash! You have solid spark I tell you! Excellent!” he said, clapping two pairs of hands together while the other four gave the thumbs-up sign. Then he brought one of the hands in front of him and pointed it at his sternum.

“Myself, Boochandi,” he said, with a small nod.

Rani Grace was taken back. The Boochandi was a bogeyman, a fairytale monster used by harassed parents, grandparents, and older siblings to threaten difficult children. If you don’t go to sleep, the Boochandi will come and take away what you love the most. Her own mother had never told her such tall tales – it hadn’t been necessary, Rani Grace had never been a difficult child—but she knew that for all the other children of Puthuyirpet, the Boochandi was the number one classic cautionary tale villain.

“Chanceless. You’re a children’s bedtime story,” said Rani Grace.

The Boochandi chuckled heartily. The rooster turned its head towards her and made a soft clucking noise. The Boochandi stroked its neck and said to it, in a coaxing voice, “What da Mani, chuch chuch chuch! Be calm, raja, be calm.” Then he turned back to his guest and continued.

“‘You are very correct, my girl, you are very correct! But you yourself must know that tall tales told over countless generations eventually somehow happen to become true, no? The legend of the Boochandi has existed from so long, long ago, from the beginning of time—before all these countries, these cities… before everything was born. Arrey, before there was even electricity, ancient mothers inside caves told their bachchas stories about me to make them go to sleep by the light of dying bonfires. You see, my dear…” He leaned towards Rani Grace – and this time his face was fixed in its demonic aspect – “I am very real.”

As he whispered these words, a lock of his hair stretched out from his head, whipped over to the nearest plant with the in-and-out needles, wrapped itself around one of the spikes, broke it off, and then – moving at lightning speed all the while – whipped back and stabbed it into Rani Grace’s arm.

She yelled and dropped her spade. A proper trickle of blood flowed down to her folded kurta sleeve.

Rani Grace was mad. She rarely got mad, but this was an unprovoked surprise attack.

“Okay, so you’re real, then. Why did you bring me here? What do you want?”

“Aha! Very good! Let us get to the main matter. See ma, your mother is going to die within one month. She is very sick, but neither she nor you know it yet.”

“Rubbish.”

“No, no, no – not rubbish! God Promise! She is going to pukka die,” Boochandi said with childlike sincerity. “Furthermore, she cannot be cured by any doctor-shoctor Edison-medicine and all. But I, myself, can help. Of course, on one small condition.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

He snapped his fingers with three of his right hands, and pointed to Rani Grace with three of his left.

“Shabash! Balle! Correct! But my dear, how do you know I am not telling the truth?”

They stared at each other. The Boochandi’s eyes were intense, and after a moment Rani Grace averted her gaze and looked down at his feet. She noticed that sticking out of the end of each chappal were twelve toes, all identical in size, and that at the tip of each digit there was a little opening like a mouth, from which a tiny forked snake-tongue flicked out.

When she looked back up into his eyes, she knew that what he had said about her mother was true.

“Okay, save my mother then, and in return you can have my life.”

“Th, th, th, th, th, too easy ma, too easy!” Boochandi tut-tutted. “I like to see people having a hard time, da. Suffering is what feeds me, you know.”

“Fine, so what do you want?”

“I will take your first true love.”

Rani Grace stared at him. Romantic love was the farthest thing from her mind. She had never given it a thought, nor had it ever crept up on her and taken her by surprise. It just wasn’t something she’d ever considered.

“Excuse me, what?” “I said, I will take your first true love.”

“Uhh… okay.”

The Boochandi’s eyes gleamed like two bright LED bulbs.

“Are you sure?” he said slowly. “Because when I do take them from you, you cannot say please and all, and beg me to give them back.”

Rani Grace looked straight into those now almost blindingly bright eyes. Her own eyes hurt, but this time she refused to lower her gaze.

“I am sure,” she said firmly.

Boochandi smiled and swung his legs up and down happily, like a kid on a swing. The tongues of his toes were flicking about madly.

“Super!” he said, and held out one hand for Rani Grace to shake. Reluctantly, she held out hers and shook it. Then the Boochandi cackled, withdrew his hand at super speed, and ran it through his ever-moving hair.

Rani Grace woke up in her own bed to the sound of pouring rain. She stared at the tear-off calendar on the wall. The date on it was the next day.

Excerpted with permission from ‘The Legend of Rani Grace’ by Rashmi Ruth Devadasan in Bandigoat: A Collection of Strange and Horrible Tales, edited by Rakesh Khanna, Blaft Publications.

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