Darinda (Adam Khoor) By Sajeela Nisar

About this novelette

Darinda (Adam Khoor) (Urdu: درندہ آدم خور, “the beast, the man-eater”) by Sajeela Nisar is a short Urdu horror novel set in London, where something stalks the city at night. On stormy nights it climbs the walls of buildings, and it leaves the police nothing to work with but blood.

It opens on a black, rain-lashed night. Lightning flashes, trees bend in the wind, and anyone who stepped outside in weather like this would be calling death to himself. Yet someone is out there: a barefoot figure climbing the side of a building with frightening ease, crossing from ledge to ledge, hanging upside down by its feet and prising a window open with its long nails. Inside, a man lies asleep. The figure sits on the roof for a while first, face turned up to the rain, smiling, enjoying the storm.

طوفانی رات، لندن کی عمارتیں، اور ایک ایسا شکاری جو انسان نہیں۔

What happens in that room is the reason for the title. Sajeela Nisar doesn’t hold back, and a second man who sees too much doesn’t get away either. By morning the house has become a khooni imarat, worse inside than the storm was outside.

The police search every room for evidence, knowing they probably won’t find any. All they find is a line written in blood on a glass pane: “Kuch bhi nahi milega.” And about a kilometre away, a man sitting on top of a box is watching the house.

At 97 pages it’s a fast, gripping read for fans of khaufnaak stories. It’s dark and gory in places, so it isn’t for the faint-hearted.

You can read Darinda online here or download the complete PDF for free. For another horror novel, try Chaar Ratein or browse our Urdu horror novels. Sajeela Nisar also writes lighter stories such as Saddi Yaari SubhanAllah; see the Sajeela Nisar novels page.