The Haunting of Dr. Rahim-ud-Din Shamsi & Other Unsettling Tales

Dr. Rahim-ud-Din Shamsi trained for years to understand anatomy, nerves, and the mechanics of a tooth. What he was never trained for is the moment a patient opens wide and reveals something that anatomy cannot explain. In 1990s Lahore, Rahim begins to notice patterns among the people who sit in his chair. Some have mouths that do not match the shape of a human head. Others seem to contain entire worlds inside their cavities. He tries to rationalise what he is seeing, and for a while, he succeeds. Then his patients start looking back at him. This is the first of three novellas in Ayesha Muzaffar's The Haunting of Dr. Rahim-ud-Din Shamsi & Other Unsettling Tales, and it sets the tone for what follows: a slow, precise descent from the ordinary into the unseen, rooted in a Pakistan where old beliefs and modern routines sit side by side. The second story, Finding Faraz, is a love story that refuses to end. Farwah marries the man her family disapproves of, loses him to an accident, and never finds his body. Years later, she remarries and builds a life, but Faraz returns anyway, in glimpses that feel real enough to shatter everything she has rebuilt. The third and shortest novella, The Possession of Bareera Khurram, moves to Karachi, where a socialite's bruises and voices lead her to a therapist who believes she is treating trauma and discovers something far older. Muzaffar writes with a spare, confident voice that respects the reader's intelligence. The horror here does not come from jump scares. It comes from the slow realisation that the world is stranger than you were told, and that some doors, once opened, cannot be closed. This is her first horror collection written for adults, and the stories are drawn from accounts she says are true.