Something struck me in the head. I saw pinwheel colors and fell, striking stone, falling again. I landed on my left hand and yelled in pain and shock. The matchbook slipped from my fingers. I kneeled and felt around wildly for it, ignoring the pain, expecting a second blow to descend at any second.
My right hand found the cardboard square. I was shaking so hard that it took three strikes to light the first match. My gaze followed the light upward.
I was kneeling at the base of the Kali idol. My head had struck her lower, outstretched hand. I blinked as blood trickled from my brow into my right eye.
I stood up despite the terrible dizziness. I would not kneel in front of that thing.
"Do you hear that, bitch?" I said loudly to the dark stone face four feet above me. "I'm not kneeling in front of you. Do you hear that?" The blank eyes were not even looking my way. The teeth and tongue were a child's comic book terror.
"Bitch," I said, and the match burned out. I stumbled off the low dais, away from the idol and into the black emptiness. Ten steps, and I stopped. There was no reason to feel around in the dark now. There was little time. I lit a match and held it until I could fumble out the airline receipt. My tiny torch threw a fifteen-foot circle of light when I held it aloft and looked around for a door, a window. I froze until the flaming paper scorched my hand.
The idol was gone.
The pedestal and dais where it had stood a second before were empty.
Something scraped and scrabbled beyond the fading light. There was movement to my left, and then I had to drop the burning paper and the darkness returned.
I struck another match. Its puny glow barely illuminated me. I pulled the spiral notebook from my safari shirt pocket, tore pages out with my teeth, and switched hands. The match died. Something made a sound not ten feet from me in the dark.
Another match. I spat out the crinkled pages, kneeled, and set the flame to them before the blue glow died. Light flared up from the tiny pyre.
The thing froze in midmovement. It crouched on six limbs like some huge and hairless spider, but fingers groped and twitched at the end of some of its limbs. The neck arched, jutting the gaunt face toward me. Breasts hung down like eggs from an insect's belly.
You're not real.
Kali opened her mouth and hissed at me. Her jaw gaped wide. The crimson tongue slid out, five inches, ten inches; it unrolled like crimson, melting wax, until it touched the floor where it curled at the tip like a questing serpent and slid quickly across the cold stone toward me.
I screamed then. I screamed again and put the rest of my notebook to the flame. Then I lifted the burning cardboard and stepped toward the hissing nightmare.
The tongue whipped sideways, barely missing my foot, and the apparition scrabbled backward on six bent limbs until it disappeared in the darkness beyond my flickering light. The notebook was already burning my fingers. I flung the dying brand in the direction of the scraping sounds and turned and ran the other way.
I ran full speed, seeing nothing, sensing nothing, arms pulled in, and if I hadn't struck another match while I ran I would have run headfirst into the waiting wall. I hit it anyway and screamed as the flame expired. I spun around while striking another match. Eyes gleamed coldly to my right. There was a sound a cat makes when vomiting.
I backed up against the wooden wall. If there had been a curtain of any sort, anything combustible, I would have torched it then. Better to die in the flaming brilliance of a burning building than to be alone in the dark with it.
I slid along the wall to my left, lighting match after match until only a few remained. The eyes were no longer visible. I felt boards, splinters, and nails against my injured hand but no door. No window. The scrabbling sounds were everywhere, cartilage scraping on stone and wood. The dizziness was much worse now and threatened to throw me to the floor.
There has to be an exit.
I stopped, lifted my curling match, took a breath, and ignited the rest of my matchbook. There, in the brief, bright flare, on the wall three feet above my head, were visible the outlines of a window. The panes were intact but painted black. The light faded as the dying flames nipped at my fingers.
Dropping the burning matchbook, I crouched and leaped. The window frame was inset, and my fingers found a grip. My legs battered against the smooth wall, trying to find leverage. Somehow I pulled myself to one elbow on the narrow sill, my cheek touching the blacked-out squares of glass. I bal anced there, my arms shaking uncontrollably, preparing to break the painted glass with my forearm.
Something grabbed at my legs.
My forearm came down full weight on my broken finger, and in a second's instinctive arching I teetered backward, lost the precarious balance, and slid down the wall to sprawl on the hard floor.
The darkness was absolute.
I had risen to my knees when I felt the presence near me.
Four hands closed on me.
Four arms roughly lifted me and carried me.
One's spirit does not depart immediately after death, but, rather, watches the disposition of events much as a disinterested spectator might.
There were distant voices. A light shone through my eyelids and then was gone. Cool rain fell on my face and my arms.
Rain?
More voices, raised in argument now. Somewhere a tinny car engine started up, exhaust rattling. Gravel crunched under tires. My forehead ached, my left hand pulsed intolerably, and my nose itched.
This can't be what dead is.
The noise of a four-cylinder engine was very loud. I tried to look around, and discovered that my right eye would not open. It was caked shut with drying blood from the cut on my brow.
The idol's hand.
Through the slit of my left eye, I saw that I was being supported — halfdragged — by the heavy man in khaki and another Kapalika. Several other men, including the bald one in white, were talking animatedly in the rain.
You can go back to sleep. No!
The rain, my aching hand, and an intolerable itch kept me from sliding down the dark chute into unconsciousness again. One of the men supporting me turned his face my way, and I quickly shut my eye — but not before I caught a glimpse of a green van, the driver's door dented, windowless in the back. A sick sense of recognition washed through me.
The men continued to argue, voices rising shrilly. I listened, and it was as if I suddenly had become proficient in Bengali. I knew without any doubt that they were discussing what to do with my body once they carried out the bald man's orders concerning me.
Finally, the man in khaki grunted, and he and another Kapalika carried me to the back of the van. The tops of my feet dragged across gravel. They let me fall forward into the airless interior. My head struck the side of the truck and struck again on the metal floorboards. I risked opening my eye long enough to see the heavy man and the other Kapalika climb in the back with me while another jumped into the front left passenger seat. The driver turned and asked something. The heavy man kicked me sharply in the side. The air rushed out of me but I did not stir. The Kapalika laughed and said something that began with "Nay."
That's two I owe you, you fat motherfucker.
The anger helped. The hot fire of it served to clear my mind and to quell the fog of terror that filled me. Still, as the van began to move and the sound of crunching gravel came to me through the metal against my ear, I could think of absolutely nothing to do. This was the point in a thousand movies I'd watched where the character overpowers his captors after a vicious fight.
I could not fight them.
I doubted if I could sit up without help. And not all of my weakness was because of whatever drug they had put in the tea. I hurt already. I didn't want them to hurt me anymore. My only possible weapon was to continue feigning unconsciousness and to pray that this would give me another few minutes before they hurt me again.
He broke my finger. I had never had a broken bone before. Not even as a child. It was something I had been vaguely pro
ud of, like having a perfect attendance record in school. Now this sweaty son of a bitch had broken my finger with no more thought or effort than I would take to turn the dial on a TV. It was this matter-of-fact callousness that convinced me that these men would not just dump me off somewhere to let me find my way back to the hotel.
All violence is an exercise in power, Mr. Luczak.
I would have begged them to let me go then if a greater fear had not held me in check. I was paralyzed by the dark uncertainty of what they would do next; but somewhere, just beneath the panicked scurry of my thoughts, was the realization that as long as they focused their anger on me, Amrita and Victoria would be left alone. So I said nothing, did nothing. Nothing except lie there in the hot darkness, smelling the dried shit and old vomit stink of the van's interior, listening to the banter and nostril-clearing sounds of the four Kapalikas, and praising each precious second that passed without further pain being inflicted.
The van shifted up through gears and moved at speed onto a paved section of street. Several times the high sound of the exhaust echoed back to us as if we were between buildings. Occasionally I could hear the blare of trucks, and once I sneaked a glance that showed reflected rectangles of headlights flitting along the van's inner wall. A second later the Kapalika in khaki said something to me in soft, sneering Bengali. My heart began to pound.
We stopped then. The brakes squealed, and the other Kapalika in the back with us shouted angrily as he was thrown forward. Our driver shouted a curse and palmed several sharp blasts on the horn. I could hear a shouted reply from outside. There was the crack of a whip followed by the angry bellow of an ox. Our driver screamed obscenities and leaned on the horn.
A minute later I heard the front van doors open as both the driver and the other Kapalika in front jumped out to continue shouting at whatever obstacle was in our way. The curses continued. The third Kapalika squeezed forward, jumped out, and joined the unseen argument. That left only the man in khaki in the van with me.
This is my chance.
Knowing that I had to act was not enough to make me act. I knew that I should make a dash for the open doors, strike out at the squatting man next to me. Do something. But although I somehow was convinced that this would be my last chance at surprise, my last chance to escape, I could not translate my thoughts into actions. Only lying there seemed to offer the guarantee of a few more minutes without confrontation. Without new pain. Without being killed.
Suddenly the rear doors exploded open. The heavy man, shoved violently from the side, fell clumsily to the floorboards. A hand gripped my arm and roughly pulled me to a sitting position. My legs flopped outside and I blinked in pain, my right eye twitching open against a crust of blood.
"Come! Stand! Hurry." It was Krishna's voice. It was Krishna's face looming over me, hair flying, sharp teeth exposed in a gleeful, maniacal grin. It was Krishna's thin right arm that braced me upright and supported me firmly when I almost fell forward onto my face.
"Nahin!" shouted the Kapalika and vaulted out of the back of the truck. He was twice as broad as Krishna and his face was distorted with fury. "Muté!"
Krishna's left hand shot up, straight-armed, a crossing guard stopping traffic. The heel of his palm, rigid as a brick, went forward into the advancing man's face. The Kapalika's nose flattened like a pulped piece of fruit. He screamed then and arched backward, banging his head against the van's rear door, dropping to his knees, pitching forward. Still holding me upright with his right arm, Krishna brought his left leg up rapidly in a stiff arc that ended when his shin slammed into the heavy man's throat just under the hollow of the jaw.
There was a sound like thin plastic breaking, and the Kapalika's scream cut off abruptly.
"Come! Hurry!" Krishna pulled me along, tugging me upright as I teetered to one side. I shuffled as fast as I could, trying to find my balance on legs that felt as if they were full of Novocaine. I looked over my shoulder at the fallen man, at the van with all of its doors open like broken wings, and at the bullock cart beyond, blocking the intersection and the narrow street. The three Kapalikas stood frozen next to the cart. For several seconds they stared at us with stupefied expressions and then began running our way, shouting, waving their arms. One man already had what looked to be a long knife in his hand. The bullock cart creaked off into the darkness.
"Run!" shouted Krishna. My shirt ripped as he pulled me along. I almost fell then, waving my arms as I pitched forward, but he grabbed the back of my torn shirt and pulled me up.
We ran left into a pitch-black alley, left again into a courtyard bathed in lantern light. An old woman looked up in surprise as we came in through an open door. Krishna swept aside a curtain of beads and we leaped across sleeping forms on the floor of a dark room to go out a back way.
Shouts and screams rose behind us as we emerged into yet another courtyard. The three Kapalikas exploded from the dark doorway just as we ducked into another, narrower gap between buildings. Garbage was ankle-deep there, and we bounced and splashed through it. Even there were the sheeted, silent figures, squatting, huddling from the water that still dripped from eaves and filled the low spots. Krishna actually jumped over the bony knees of one squatting form that looked to be more corpse than man.
I could not keep up with Krishna, and when we had to run up two flights of wooden stairs, I finally collapsed to my knees on a dark landing, gasping for breath. The Kapalikas shouted to one another in the courtyard below.
Krishna shoved me through an open door. There were a dozen people in the room, squatting near an open fire or huddled back against cracked wallboards. Part of the ceiling had collapsed into the center of the room, and broken masonry and plaster had made a small mound upon which they had built their fire. Smoke streaked the walls and sagging ceiling.
Krishna hissed a rapid sentence in which I thought I heard the word Kali. No one looked up at us. Deadened eyes continued to watch the low flames.
There were footsteps on the stairs. A man shouted. Krishna grabbed my elbow tightly and led me into a tiny room empty except for several bronze pots and a small statue of Ganesha. An open window gave out onto a narrow alley between the buildings.
Krishna stepped to the window and jumped. I stepped to the low sill and hesitated. The alley could not have been more that five feet wide. It was at least a twenty-foot drop to nothing but darkness. I could hear a squelching sound where Krishna had jumped but nothing else. I knew I couldn't leap into that lightless pit.
Suddenly I could hear the Kapalikas shouting at the entrance to the outer room. A woman screamed. I cradled my left hand and jumped.
The garbage must have been seven or eight feet deep where I landed. I went into it up to my thighs and fell sideways into something soft and vile. Rats squealed and scurried away along the walls. I could see nothing. My legs made soft, gasping sounds as I tried to wade forward in the narrow space. I began thrashing about in panic when I continued to sink above my waist in the yielding, putrid mass.
"Shhh." Krishna grabbed my shoulders and held me still. Above us, the faint rectangle of light was obscured as a man leaned out. He disappeared back into the room.
"Quickly!" Krishna seized my arm and we began wading down the reeking trench. I pressed off from a wall and tried to swim forward through the soft refuse. Our arms flailed at each other to gain leverage, but it was like wading through waist-deep mud.
Suddenly, behind us, someone held a flaming board out the window from which we'd jumped. The man deliberately dropped the brand into the muck of the alley. It bounced once and set some greasy rags to smoldering where it came to a stop. Krishna and I froze. We could not have been more than shadows amid the heaps of garbage all around us, but one of the Kapalikas pointed our way and shouted to the other two.
I don't know whether the man with the knife jumped or was pushed, but he screamed as he fell into the alley with us. The torch was beginning to sputter out in the dampness and human waste, but it and the burning rags gave enough li
ght to show hundreds of furry, squirming forms — some as large as cats — hunching over the heaps of waste toward us as they fled the smoke.
My skin actually rippled in revulsion. I had not known that such a reaction was physically possible. Krishna leaped back the way we had come. The Kapalika rose like a diver coming to the surface of a pool. His arms flailed and steel glinted in his right hand. The fire was all but extinguished now, and Krishna was less than a shadow as he closed with the other man. Their grunts were barely audible over the rising screech of the fleeing rats. Fat, wet bodies touched my bare arms, and I vomited then, retching helplessly into piles of foul-smelling darkness.