Song of Kali

Chapter Thirteen

"Bobby it was dreadful. The one o'clock flight was delayed until three. We sat there and sat there, and the air conditioning wasn't working much of the time. The stewardess said that it was a mechanical problem, but a Bombay businessman next to me said the pilot and the flight engineer were having some sort of feud. He said this had happened several times in the past few weeks. Then they brought the plane back to the terminal and we all had to get off. Victoria had spit up all over me and I didn't have time to change into the other blouse I'd packed in the carry-on bag. Oh, It was dreadful, Bobby."

"Uh-huh," I said and glanced at my watch. It was just 9:00. Amrita was sitting on the bed, but I still stood by the open door. I could not believe that she and the baby were actually there. Damn, damn, damn. I had the urge to grab Amrita and shake her fiercely. I was dizzy with fatigue and confusion.

"Then they told us to board another flight to Delhi that stopped in Benares and Khajuraho. I would have just been able to make the Pan Am connection if it had left on time."

"But it didn't," I said tonelessly.

"Of course not. And our luggage was never transferred. Still, I was planning to take the seven-thirty flight to Bombay and fly BA to London, but the incoming flight from Bombay had to go to Madras because of a problem with the landing lights at the Calcutta airport. They rescheduled the flight for eleven but, Bobby, I was so tired, and Victoria had been crying for hours. . . ."

"I understand," I said.

"Oh, Bobby, I called and called but you weren't in. The manager promised to give you my message."

"He didn't," I said. "I saw him when I came in, but he didn't say anything."

"That matyeryebyets," muttered Amrita. "He promised." Amrita never indulged in cursing unless she could do so in the anonymity of another language. She knew that I didn't speak Russian. What she did not know was that this particular obscenity had been my Polish grandfather's favorite Russian word to describe all Russians.

"It doesn't matter," I said. This changes everything.

"I'm sorry, but all I could think about was taking a cold shower, being able to feed Victoria, and leaving with you tomorrow."

"Sure," I said. I went over and kissed her on the forehead. I could not remember seeing Amrita so upset before. "It's all right. We'll leave tomorrow morning." I looked at my watch again. It was 9:08. "I'll be right back."

"You have to leave?"

"Yeah, for a few minutes. I have to give these books to someone. I'll only be a little while, kiddo." I stood in the doorway. "Listen, make sure this is locked and put the chain bolt on, okay? Don't open the door for anyone but me. If the phone rings, let it ring. Don't answer it. All right?"

"But why? What —"

"Just do what I say, damn it. I'll be back in thirty minutes or so. Please, Amrita, just do what I ask. I'll explain later."

I turned to go then but stopped when I saw Victoria waving her arms and legs from the blanket where Amrita had been changing her. I crossed the room, swept the baby up in the air, and blew noises on her bare stomach. She was naked, soft, wiggling with joy. She grinned widely at me and reached for my nose with both pudgy hands. She smelled of Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo, and her skin was soft beyond imagining. I laid her back down and bicycled her legs with my hands. "Take care of your mom until I get back, okay, Little One?"

Victoria stopped her wiggling and stared at me solemnly.

I kissed her stomach again, touched Amrita on the cheek, and hurried out.

I never got to the Kalighat. I had just come out the front door of the hotel and was thinking about how to get rid of the Durrell book when the black Premiere pulled up next to me. The heavy man in khaki was driving. A stranger opened the backdoor.

"Get in, please, Mr. Luczak."

I stepped back and clutched the bag of books to my chest. "I . . . I was supposed to go . . .to meet someone at the Kalighat," I said stupidly.

"Get in, please."

I stood frozen for several seconds. Then I looked up and down the street. The hotel entrance was only twenty paces away. An affluent-looking young Indian couple laughed together under the awning while porters carried their luggage from a gray Mercedes.

"Here," I said. "This is what I promised him." I fold the top of the sack over and handed it to the man in the backseat.

He made no effort to take the books, "Please get in, Mr. Luczak."

"Why?"

The man sighed and rubbed at his nose. "The poet wishes to see you. It will be brief. He says you agreed to this."

The heavyset driver frowned and turned sideways in his seat as if to say something. The man in the back put a hand lightly on the other's wrist and spoke. "The poet has something he wishes to give you. Please get in, Mr. Luczak."

I was amazed to find myself bending to enter the vehicle. The door slammed and we accelerated into traffic. Into the Calcutta night.

Rain and flames. Highways, side streets, alleys, and muddy ruts past overgrown ruins. The glow of lanterns and reflected city lights. And through it all, I waited for the Kapalika to turn to me, to demand to inspect the books. I waited for the shouts and fists to follow.

We rode in silence. I held the sack of books on my lap and kept my face to the window, although I remember seeing little detail except my own pale reflection staring back. Eventually we stopped before a high iron gate. Somewhere nearby, two tall brick chimneys poured flame into the night. This was not the way I had come before. A man in black came out of the drizzle and opened the gate to let us pass.

The headlights revealed empty brick buildings, railroad sidings, and a small mountain of dirt on which an abandoned truck lay half-buried in the weeds. When we finally stopped it was in front of a wide door illuminated by a yellow bulb. Insects threw themselves at the light.

"Get out, please."

There were doors and corridors. Two men in black carrying flashlights joined us. From somewhere there came the muted strum and crash of sitar and drums. At the top of a narrow staircase we stopped and the men in black spoke sharply to the driver. Then came the search.

One of the men took the sack of books. I stook passively while rough hands patted my sides, poked along my inner thighs, and ran quickly up and down my legs. The driver opened the package and took out the first three paperbacks. He flipped the pages almost angrily, tossed them back in, and removed a larger, hardback book. He showed it to the other three. It was not the Durrell anthology. The man in khaki tossed it back in, folded the sack, and handed the package to me without speaking.

I stood there and began to breathe again.

The Kapalika in black gestured with his flashlight and I followed him up another short staircase and then to the right down a narrow hallway. He held a door open, and I entered.

The room was no larger than the first one we had met in, but there were no curtains here. A kerosene lantern sat on a wooden shelf next to a porcelain cup, some wooden bowls, a few books, and a tiny bronze statue of the Buddha. Strange that the avatar of Kali should keep an image of Buddha near.

Das sat hunched and cross-legged on the floor near a low table. He was studying a slim book, but he looked up as I entered. The brighter light made his affliction all the more evident.

"Ah, Mr. Luczak."

"Mr. Das."

"You were kind to return."

I looked around the tiny room. An open doorway in the back led to darkness. From somewhere came the smell of incense. I could faintly hear the discordant strumming of a sitar.

"Those are the books?" asked Das and gestured clumsily with his heavily wrapped hands.

"Yes." I knelt on the wooden floor and set the package on the low table. An offering. The lantern hissed. The greenish-yellow light illuminate circles of flaking corruption on the poet's right cheek. Deep fissures in his scalp showed whitely against the darker skin. Mucus clogged Das's torn nostrils, and his breath whistled audibly over the hiss of the lantern.

"Ahh," sighed Das. He laid his hand almost reverently on the wrinkled paper. "Manny's Booksellers. Yes, I used to know him well, Mr. Luczak. Once, during the war, I sold Manny my collection of romantic poets when rent money was scarce. He set them aside until I could buy them back some years later." Das's large, liquid eyes turned up to look at me. Again I was all but overwhelmed by the knowledge of pain visible there. "You brought the Edwin Arlington Robinson?"

"Yes," I said. My voice trembled and I roughly cleared my throat. "I'm not sure that I think as much of him as you do. You might reconsider. His 'Richard Cory' really is not worthy of a poet. It holds out no hope."

"Sometimes there is no hope," whispered Das.

"There's always some hope, Mr. Das."

"No, Mr. Luczak, there is not. Sometimes there is only pain. And acquiescence to pain. And, perhaps, defiance at the world which demands such pain."

"Defiance is a form of hope, is it not, sir?"

Das looked at me for a long minute. Then he glanced quickly toward the darkened back room and lifted the volume he had been reading. "This is for you, Mr. Luczak." He laid it on the table so that I would not have to take it from his hands.

It was an old book, thin, beautifully bound, with thick, heavy parchment pages. I ran my hand over the embossed fabric cover and opened it. The heavy pages had not yellowed or grown brittle with age. The spine had not stiffened. Everything about the thin volume spoke of craftsmanship and care.

Some of the poems were in Bengali, some in English. Those in English I recognized immediately. The flyleaf held a long inscription in Bengali, but the same hand had penned a final note in English: For young Das, the most promising of my 'Chosen Eight.' Affectionately — The signature would have been indecipherable had I not seen it very recently, behind glass, hastily scrawled beneath a Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Rabindranath Tagore, March, 1939.

"I can't accept this, sir."

Das only stared at me. The eyes were ancient beyond age, sad, yet lit with a purpose I had not seen before. He stared at me and I did not argue again.

A tremor went through the poet's body, and I realized what exertion it must take for him to speak, to concentrate. I rose to leave.

"No," whispered Das. "Closer."

I dropped to one knee. There was a smell that rose from the poor man's disintegrating flesh. My own skin crawled as I leaned over to hear better.

"Today," he rasped, "I spoke of power. All violence is power. She is such power. She knows no limits. Time means nothing to Her. Pain carries the sweet smell of sacrifice to Her. This is Her time. Her song knows no ending. Her time has come round once again, you see." He slipped into Bengali, then a smattering of French, then a torrent of Hindi. He was raving. His eyes were focused elsewhere, and the pained, sibilant rush of words went nowhere.

"Yes," I said sadly.

"Violence is power. Pain is power. It is Her time. Do you see? Do you see?" His voice rose to a shout. I wanted to hush him before the Kapalikas rushed in, but I could only stay there on one knee and listen. The lantern sputtered in rhythm to his agitated hissing. "The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world! Her song has just begun . . ."

The old man leaned forward, dry breath wheezing up out of his damaged lungs. He seemed to come back to himself then. The wild, distracted look left his eyes to be replaced by a terrible weariness. The leprous hand stroked the stack of books on the table as if it were a cat. When he spoke, his voice was calm, almost conversational. "Know this, Mr. Luczak. This is the age of the unspeakable. But there are acts beyond the unspeakable."

I stared, but Das was not looking at me. He was not looking at anything in the room.

"We have always been capable of committing the unspeakable," he whispered. "She can commit the unthinkable. Now we are free to follow."

Das stopped. Saliva moistened his chin. I knew now that his mind had been damaged. The silence stretched out to several minutes. Finally he brought himself back by a great effort and focused his gaze on me. A rotting stump of a hand, wrapped in filthy, reeking rags, raised itself in a gentle benediction.

"Go. Go now. Go."

I was shaking violently when I stumbled out into the corridor. Flashlights bobbed through the darkness toward me. A rough hand took the Tagore volume, turned it over, handed it back. I clutched it in both hands and followed the circle of light down the maze of halls and stairways.

We were at the open door; I could see the car and smell the rain, when suddenly the shots rang out. Two sharp sounds, almost simultaneous, sounding flat and final in the dark.

The four men stopped, shouted back and forth in Bengali, and ran back up the stairs. For several seconds I was left alone at the open door. I stared blankly out into the dark and rain. I was numb, disbelieving, afraid to act, barely able to think. Then the heavy man in khaki ran back down the stairs, seized me by the shirtfront, and dragged me upstairs with the other running men.

The lantern still spilled its cold white light. Flashlight beams bobbed and converged. I was pushed forward, scraping through shoulders, past the circle of noise into a center of silence.

Das seemed to be resting his head on the table. The small chromed pistol — gripped firmly in his left hand — was thrust obscenely into the bulging mouth. One eye was almost closed, while the other showed only the white and seemed to balloon out as if some great pressure were still building within the shattered skull. Already a pool of dark blood had accumulated in the steady flow from mouth, ears, and nostrils. The air was redolent with incense and cordite.

There were shouts. At least eight or nine men were in the room, more in the dark hall. One man was screaming. Another accidentally jabbed me in the chest as he swung his arms around. The man in khaki reached down and jerked the pistol from Das's clenched jaws, breaking a front tooth off as he did so. He waved the bloodied pistol and let out a high, thin wailing that might have been a prayer or a curse. More men shoved into the room.

This is not real. I felt almost nothing. There was a loud humming in my ears. The buffeting all around me was a distant, unrelated thing.

Another man entered. He was older, bald, and wearing a simple peasant's dhoti. The plainness of his appearance, however, was belied by the deference with which the crowd parted for him. He looked down on Das's body for a moment and then touched the leprous head gently, almost reverently, the way the poet had touched my gift of books. Then the man turned black eyes my direction and said something softly to the crowd.

Hands closed on my shirt and arms, and they took me away into the dark.

I sat in an empty room for an unknown time. There were sounds beyond the door. A small oil lamp gave me light. I sat on the floor and tried to think about Amrita and the baby but could not. I could concentrate on nothing. My head ached. After a while I picked up the book they had left me with and read some of Tagore's English poems.

Sometime later three men entered. One held out a small cup and saucer to me. I saw the steam rising form the dark tea.

"No, thank you," I said and returned to my reading.

The heavy man said, "Drink."

"No."

The man in khaki took my left hand and broke my little finger with an upward twist of his wrist. I screamed. The book dropped to the floor. I grabbed the injured hand and rocked back and forth in agony. The tea was offered again.

"Drink."

I took the cup and drank. The bitter tea scalded my tongue. I coughed and spluttered some out, but the three watched until I swallowed the rest. My little finger jutted backward almost comically, and there was a nerve of fire running up my wrist and arm to a point at the base of my neck.

Someone took the empty cup and two of them left. The heavy man smirked and patted me on the shoulder as one would a child. Then they left me alone with the bitter taste of tea and cowardice in my mouth.

I tried to tug the finger back into place, but even the act of touching it made me cry out and come close to fainting. Sweat poured from me and my skin turned cold and clammy. I picked up the book with my right hand, flipped to the page I had been reading, and tried to concentrate on a poem about a chance encounter on a train. I was still rocking slightly and crooning soft syllables of pain.

My throat burned from whatever had been in the tea. A few minutes later the words on the page slid crazily to the left and ran together.

I tried to stand then, but the oil lamp chose that second to flare into blinding brilliance and then to fade to blackness.

Blackness. Pain and blackness.

The pain brought me out of my own comforting darkness into a less benign but no less absolute lack of light. I was lying on what felt like a cold stone floor. There was not the faintest gleam of light. I sat up and cried aloud as the pain coursed up my left arm. The ache throbbed more fiercely with each heartbeat.

I felt around with my right hand. Nothing. Cool stone and hot, moist air. My eyes did not adapt to the dark. The only time I had ever experienced darkness this total was one time spelunking in Missouri with friends when we had turned off all our carbide lamps. It was a claustrophobic, inward-pressing darkness. I moaned as a thought struck. What if they have blinded me?

But my eyelids felt normal enough to my hasty touch. There was no pain in my face, only the sickening dizziness that the tea had brought. No, thank you, I had said. I giggled, but stifled the ragged sounds while I could.

I began crawling, cradling my throbbing left hand to my chest. My fingers encountered a wall — smooth masonry or stone. Was I underground?

When I stood up, the dizziness grew worse. I leaned against the wall, pressing my cheek to the cool surface. A quick touch told me that they had left me dressed in my own clothes. I thought to search through my pockets. Shirt pockets held an airline receipt, the smaller of my two notebooks, a felt-tip pen, and flakes of clay from the stone I'd carried there earlier. Trouser pockets held my room key, wallet, coins, a slip of paper, and the book of matches Amrita had given me.

Matches!

I forced myself to hold the matchbook in my throbbing left hand while I struck a match, shielded it, lifted it.

The room was actually an alcove, three solid walls and a black curtain. Déjà vu rose up in me. I had time to lift back the edge of the curtain and to sense a larger darkness beyond before the match burned to my fingertips.

I waited, listening. Currents of air moved against my face. I dared not light another match in case someone was waiting in the larger room. Over the ragged sound of my own breathing I could hear a soft, susurrant undertone. The breathing of a giant. Or of a river.

Testing with my foot, I slid past the heavy cloth and into an immense, open space. I could see nothing, but it felt immense. The air seemed slightly cooler and moved to random currents, bringing to me the scent of incense and of something heavier, as rich and heavy as the smell of week-old garbage.

I took short steps, moved my right hand in front of me cautiously, and tried not to remember the images — filtered through the memory of sing-song English — which nonetheless rose to mind. Twenty-five steps brought me in contact with nothing. The Kapalikas could be back at any second. They could be there now. I began to run. I ran heedlessly in the dark, openmouthed, clutching my left hand to me.

Something struck me in the head. I saw pin wheel 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 mid-movement. 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 balanced 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 — half dragged — 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 proud 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 light 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.

The two Kapalikas above us leaned and strained to see, but the alley was in almost total darkness once again. I thought that I could see Krishna and the other man pivoting in awkward jerks, two clumsy dancers in slow motion. Sparks flew as the Kapalika's knife hand was slammed repeatedly into the brick wall. Then I thought I saw Krishna behind the other, pulling back long hair, forcing him face first into the yielding pit. I squinted in the darkness and thought I saw Krishna's knee in the Kapalikas arching back, forcing him deeper, deeper . . . but then Krishna was next to me, tugging me with him, wading with me away from the window.

The two Kapalikas disappeared from the dim rectangle above us. Our own movement was nightmarishly slow. One of us would become stuck and use the other's body as leverage to free himself.

I had waded most of the length of the alley when a sudden thought made me want to retch again. There was no light ahead of us. What if we're going the wrong way, toward a brick wall, a dead end?

We were not. Five more waded steps, and the alley turned sharply to the right and the level of trash diminished. Fifteen more steps and we were out.

We stumbled out onto a wet and empty street. Rats brushed by our ankles, hopping in their panic, and splashed off through rain-filled gutters. I looked left and right but could see no sign of the last two Kapalikas.

"Quickly, Mr. Luczak," hissed Krishna; and we ran across the street, moved quickly over tilted slabs of sidewalk, and blended into the dark shadows under sagging metal awnings. We ran from shop to shop. Occasionally there would be sleeping forms in the wet doorways, but no one called out; no one tried to stop us.

We turned down another street and then dodged through a short alley onto an even wider street where a truck was just disappearing from sight. There were streetlights here, and an electric glow came from numerous windows. Above us, a red flag flapped in the breeze. I could hear the sound of traffic on nearby streets.

We stopped for a minute in the dark doorway of a caged and shuttered store. We were both gasping, bent over from the pain of exertion, but Krishna's narrow face showed the gleeful, blood-sport mask of joy I had seen there that first night on the bus. He started to speak, took another breath, and straightened up.

"I will leave you now, Mr. Luczak," he said.

I stared at him. He steepled his fingers, bowed slightly, and turned to walk away. His sandals made soft sounds in the puddles.

"Wait!" I cried. He did not stop. "Just a minute. Hey!" He was almost lost to the shadows now.

I took a step forward into the pale circle of the streetlight. "Stop! Sanjay, stop!"

He stopped. Then he turned and took two slow steps in my direction. His long fingers seemed to twitch. "What did you say, Mr. Luczak?"

"Sanjay," I repeated, but it was more of a whisper this time. "I'm right, aren't I?"

He stood there, a basilisk with a wild corona of dark hair framing his terrible gaze. The smile appeared then and widened into something far worse than a shark's grimace. It was the grin of a hungry ghoul.

"I'm right, aren't I, Sanjay?" I paused to take a breath. I had no idea what to say next. But I had to say something — anything — to keep him at bay. "What's your game, Sanjay? What the fuck is going on?"

He did not move for several seconds; and I half expected a silent rush, long fingers reaching for my throat. Instead, he threw back his head an laughed. "Yes, yes, yes," he said. "There are many games, Mr. Luczak. This game is not yet over. Good-bye, Mr. Luczak."

He turned and trotted into the darkness.