Excerpt from Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

After school one evening, those same boys from his class kicked him down and took turns spitting on his head. It hadn't been the first time. But this time, he would not stand for it. He had the bold blood of his companions running through him. Something had gotten into him since then. The promise of a blood oath. Corbeau blood. He pictured himself as the scorned bird. Enough was enough.

And later that evening, while these classmates bathed in the river, he and his companions put dogshit in their shoes. Things escalated from there. They hurled rocks at each other. Skirmished, fists to cheeks, hands to throats. Fought like they had been rivals since the beginning of time.

Krishna enlisted his cousin, Tarak, to get revenge. A tall boy made even taller as he kept his long hair bundled high and bristly, like the crown of a pineapple. He was thin, but a diet of dasheen and cod had lined his body with a tight fibrousness. He had a distinct way of twitching his shoulders like a hound trying to shake its fleas. Krishna was one year younger, but Tarak admired him like he was an elder sibling. They spiked the bullies' water with Glauber salts. Exploded their bowels. The twins put scorpions in the latrine. Inevitably, someone got stung. Anaphylactic shock.

Tarak was willing to take the fall, but Krishna wanted them to know it was him.

'That poor boy could've died,' was all the sahib schoolmaster said to Krishna after being told about the bullying.

Even though his father got on his knees and begged the schoolmaster, Krishna was suspended for the rest of the school year. But the schoolmaster, taking pity on the grovelling man, agreed to consider allowing the boy to repeat the standard in September.

Krishna's mother, after hearing the news, crafted a mala from ixora flowers, lit a wick in a deya and circled it over her son three times while chanting a holy mantra. Made him wear an aranjanam string around his waist for a week in case the boys' mothers paid a demon to put a hex on him.

Krishna ate dinner by flambeau light, trying to bat away the mosquitoes from his bhaji rice. After sunset, his mother put out the flambeau. The plains were so dark now that he could barely see his own hands. The egrets flew overhead. When the toads quieted, the world outside vanished. There was nothing left to do now but sleep. As he drifted off, he reminded himself:

Don't let the dreams fool you.
This is your place in this world.
And there is no other world out there but this one.
There is no other body than the one the gods have paired you with.
And there is no other life but the one to which you are bound.

1
A Lost Prayer

Late July

The music was still playing when Dalton Changoor vanished into thin air.

Marlee, Dalton's young wife, had only realised he was gone when the winds swept up the yellow tarp that usually covered his red Chevrolet pickup. The tarp now thrashed, flabellate, between two coconut palms. Against the lightning, it looked like a giant long-winged harrier in descent. The study, where Dalton had left a record of Roaring Lion's 'Ugly Woman' playing, was vacant. As was the porte cochère where he usually kept his pickup parked. Though his sudden absence concerned Marlee, she didn't let it weigh on her thoughts. That was until she found a note on the kitchen table, written in a hasty scrawl:

Leave the doors locked. I have the spare key with me.
Tell my mother I love her.
P.S. Go to the cherries and untie Brahma.

Dalton owned three German shepherds. Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma. He bought them from a breeder who lived in Sangre Grande. The breeder, a wiry man who looked canine himself, told him to starve the dogs in their early days. It's for the best, the man said, keeps them hungry, keeps them vicious. Dalton ended up spoiling them fat instead. They were only efficient as sirens. Never gave chase, never dared to bite. But they looked like they would – that's what mattered. There had been no shortage of prowlers and larceners from the various barracks and settlements lain radial across the plain. Some of them Dalton believed to be kith and kin of past groundsmen.

Excerpted from Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein. Copyright © 2023 by Kevin Jared Hosein. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.