The Honeycomb of Hollow Pines

The transfer order came through on a Tuesday, typed on brittle yellow paper and smelling faintly of mothballs. I was told to report to the sub-divisional office at Ghoramara, a speck on the map of Odisha, buried in the Eastern Ghats. The order specified that I was to oversee the minor forest produce collection for a cluster of villages that didn’t appear on any road map I owned. I was fresh out of the state administrative training, unmarried, and too proud to complain. So I packed my single steel trunk, a box of books, and drove my second-hand motorcycle east, through landscapes that slowly thickened from scrubland to monsoon forest.

Ghoramara was a settlement of about two hundred people, mostly tribal families and a few forest officials. The government quarters were a line of crumbling concrete bungalows, painted with faded limewash, their roofs rusted corrugated iron. I was given the last one, at the edge of the colony, abutting a dense wall of sal and teak trees. The forest here was different from the manicured plantations I knew—it was ancient, tangled, with vines thick as arms hanging from branches like lank hair. The locals were polite but wary. The older ones avoided direct eye contact. They called the forest ‘the Honeycomb of Hollow Pines’ because of the many dead, hollow pines that stood like sentinels, their tops broken by storms, their insides bored out by insects and time. There was a legend, I later learned, that these trees were not dead but dreaming, and that they remembered the ones who had been taken.

My work was simple: I had to supervise the collection of tendu leaves, sal resin, and mahua flowers from the forest floor. I would walk through the forest with a local guide, a thin, wiry man named Birsa, who spoke in a low, singsong voice. Birsa was my age, but his eyes seemed much older. He knew every trail, every tree, and every hollow. He never spoke of the legend, but he always avoided the densest part of the forest, the place where the pines grew in a rough circle, their hollow trunks facing inward like a puckered mouth. I asked him about it once. He looked at me with a strange, empty gaze and said, ‘The pines drink the sound of the wind, and when they are full, they sing. You do not want to hear them sing, sir.’ I laughed, but he didn’t.

It started with a sound. I first noticed it late one night, about two weeks into my tenure. I was reading by the weak light of a kerosene lamp—the electricity had failed, as it often did—when I heard a low moaning, like wind through a pipe, but deeper, almost human. It seemed to come from the forest. I went to the window, but the night was absolute, thick with darkness and the sound of insects. The moaning would rise and fall, sometimes carrying a rhythm, like a breath. The next morning, I asked Birsa about it. He stiffened and said it was the pines, the hollow ones. ‘They are always thirsty,’ he said. ‘But when the moon is dark, they sing for the lost.’

I dismissed it as the sound of animals or distant trucks. But the sound persisted, and it began to infiltrate my sleep. I would dream of walking into the forest, drawn by the moaning, and coming to the circle of pines. In the dream, the trees had faces, not human, but ancient, with bark like wrinkled skin and eyes that were dark, hollow holes. They would speak in whispers, not words I could understand, but sounds that felt like they were being pulled from some deep well of sorrow. I would wake drenched in sweat. A colleague of mine, a forest guard named Sadanand, a seasoned man with a drinker’s nose, noticed my haggard look. He gave me a knowing glance and said, ‘Trouble sleeping? The forest does that. Some advice: don’t go near the hollow pines. They’re not just trees. They have a hunger.’ I wanted to argue, but he had already turned away.

The first disappearance was a man named Ghasidas, a part-time honey collector. He was a wiry, cheerful man who often sang when he worked. One day he went into the forest to check on a beehive he’d spotted near the pine circle. He never returned. The villagers organized a search party, but they avoided the pine circle. I insisted we go there. The headman, an old man with a face like cracked earth, shook his head. ‘He is already gone. The pines have taken him. We will only find his clothes, maybe his bones, if they are generous.’ I went with a few men despite their reluctance. We stepped into that circle, and the air felt wrong—too still, too heavy. The pines stood around us, their hollow trunks yawning. At the center, there was a patch of bare earth, and on it, a single leather pouch that belonged to Ghasidas. There was no sign of struggle. No honey. We left quickly. I noticed that the hollows in the pines seemed deeper, darker, as if they had swallowed something.

The second thing was more personal. I started finding small objects in my room that I didn’t recognize: a child’s hair clip, a rusted knife, a broken pair of spectacles. They appeared on my desk, on my bed, even in my shoes. I tried to lock my doors and windows, but they kept appearing. Birsa told me, ‘They are giving you gifts, sir. They are courting you. Do not accept them. Nothing the forest gives is free.’ I threw the objects into the forest, but they kept coming back. The staff at the office began to look at me with pity. One of the peons, a young man named Tukaram, whispered, ‘The pines have chosen you, sir. You have the mark.’ I asked what mark. He pointed to my forearm. There, just below my sleeve, was a faint pattern, like a spiral, reminiscent of the rings of a tree, only it seemed to be slowly growing, weaving into my skin.

I was too frightened to go back to sleep in my quarters. I started sleeping in the office, but the moaning followed me. It was in the walls, in the ceiling, in my skull. I began to lose weight. I could not concentrate. The final straw came when I was summoned by the district collector to explain a sudden lapse in my paperwork. He was a distant, bureaucratic man, but he noticed my state. He said, ‘You have been in the forest too long. Take a week off. Go to the city.’ But as I was leaving his office, I saw, in the window glass behind him, a shadow that was not his—a tall, thin shape with branches for arms. It was there for a split second, then gone. I turned, and nothing.

I knew I had to confront this. I armed myself with a flashlight and a machete, and against everything, I went to the pine circle at night. The moon was a sliver, and the forest was a black wall. I followed the moaning, which grew louder, more desperate, until I stood in the center of the circle. The hollows of the pines were like mouths, open and waiting. And then, I saw something that broke my mind: within one hollow, there was a faintly glowing figure, shaped like a man, but its skin was bark, and its eyes were dull, hollow holes. It was Ghasidas. He was not dead, not alive. He was becoming a tree. His arms were fused to the inner wall, his legs swallowed by the wood. He opened his mouth, and a sound came out—a low, animal moan, but it shaped words: ‘You are next. Fulfill the cycle.’

I turned and ran. I did not look back. I went straight to my motorcycle and drove through the night to the district headquarters. I submitted my resignation the next morning, citing health reasons. The officers were bewildered, but they accepted. I left that place, and I have not returned. For years, I thought I had escaped. But recently, I have noticed that the mark on my forearm is spreading. And at night, I hear the moaning again, from the walls, from the floor, from the very marrow of my bones. I have come to realize that the pines are not in the forest. They are in me. And they are patient. They will wait until the cycle is complete, and I will go back, to the hollow, to the circle, and I will be the next one to sing.