The Tenacity of Darkness: Book # 2 of A Thorn for Miss R.

by Sakiv Koch

  The small hair at the nape of my neck, which had had no time to settle down ever since I had stepped out of Odeon Carlton more than an hour ago, prickled to a new level of verticality again.

  “We can’t take you anywhere, man,” the unseen brother said, speaking from somewhere behind me. “We are running from the guys you want us to go back to. And you!” he apparently addressed his sibling. “Why did you attack this man? Didn’t you see him fighting and killing our enemy? Tell me, you fucking lunatic! You knew we didn’t have a moment to lose! I leave you here to do your part of the job and you go messing up everything, as always!”

  The man standing before me said nothing, but I saw him squirm.

  “One of us would rather die than go back there!” the man standing before me said, choosing not to answer his brother’s accusation. “So that at least one of us can escape.”

  “With our loot!” the other one said with a little laugh. He was evidently inured to his brother’s oddities.

  “So, were those men upstairs —,” I waved at the basement’s ceiling to indicate the bodies lying up there, “ — looking for you two?”

  “You got it, boy!” the other brother said. “We have been burying something hereabouts, a little at a time. Gotta dig our treasure out and hotfoot it before the real cavalry arrives. The men you killed were just sniff dogs. You can play with us or you can walk away. Your choice. We won’t take you anywhere and we don’t have any information to give you about any kings or any beggars. We were lowly kitchen help in that devil’s lair. The big men there scoffed at us day and night. Called us their girls. The bastards wouldn’t even give us our own guns. There was nothing stirring there when we left a couple of hours ago. Turn back and run, if you want to live. If you don’t, take the dirt-road behind this clearing. It will take you to the place we are never visiting again, not even in dreams!”

  That was pretty definitive. And pretty scary.

  “I won’t interfere with you,” I said, keen to get rid of them as soon as possible, “if you don’t interfere with me.”

  “Suits us,” the man standing in front of me said.

  “We have five minutes’ work down here,” the man standing somewhere behind me said. “If you promise not to come back to the basement after once going up, we’d promise not to come up after you.”

  They could be lying. They were probably lying, but I couldn’t see a better and quicker way to end that standoff without risking more stab wounds, not to speak of attempting to kill two brothers who looked and felt more like boys than men.

  “I am going upstairs now,” I informed them. “I hope for your sakes as well as mine that you don’t come after me. ”

  “Go on,” they said in perfect unison, laughing together in a chorus.

  I exercised all possible caution as I inched away, stepping over the man lying at the foot of the staircase — the one I had shot at from beneath the stairs. He stirred and moaned, but I didn’t stop to examine the exact state of his health.

  My auditory powers were divided into two halves — scanning for telltale sounds above as well as below. The hyena brothers allowed me to ascend without any attempt at injuring or killing me.

  The flashlight that had fallen from its owner’s hand when I had shot the aforementioned owner still emitted its yellow beam of light dutifully. I could never see that article without being reminded powerfully of my own watchman’s flashlight, presently in my mother’s loving care thousands of miles away.

  I picked it up and switched it off. It could come in handy at some point in time, but it had presently ruined my hard-earned night vision. I tucked it in the inner pocket of my coat. The three corpses scared me with an almost-superstitious fear. I had the feeling that they were following me in the dark with their dead eyes, that they would grab me and tear me limb from limb.

  I had become strangely fond of Grinning Gun’s gun in such a short period of time, but it had just one bullet left in it. It was with a heavy heart that I put it near a dead man’s hand, perversely hoping that it would one day be reunited with its true master. I then pried a departed gentleman’s twig-stiff fingers off his weapon — a weapon I had seen while the torch was still on. Extracting something from a deadman’s grip had to be amongst the most unpleasant things I had ever experienced until that point in time.

  But the reward I got was a great uplifter of spirits and confidence: it was a Model 29, as like my own beloved revolver as possible, down to the 270 mm barrel! Examining its chamber revealed it to be loaded to its capacity. While I had done remarkably well with the single-action Colt (as the poor men scattered around would testify, if they could express their sentiments), this Smith & Wesson handgun felt like an organic extension of my right hand, making me feel invincible.

  The hyena brothers had not sneaked on me so far. I listened for a few moments and then crept toward the back door of the hall. It stood open, revealing the dense forest bearing down menacingly upon that little clearing. I stepped out, keeping low, and put a visibly quivering foot onto the thin trail that disappeared into the frightening foliage ahead. What were the hyena brothers fleeing from?

  Spanners of doubt fell into the wheels of my decision-making machinery, jamming it instantaneously. Wasn’t this my last chance to retreat and get help? Had I become delusional to the extent I was equating myself to James Bond, whose latest movie I had just watched before Peter had abducted me and launched me into this nightmare?

  The ultimate responsibility to protect King Sanjay was mine. My reasons for not taking Peter straight to the nearest police station when I had gotten him under my control had felt valid at that time — he could have easily made things seem the way he wanted them to appear. Just as he had done the first time we had crossed paths.

  There was nothing tying him directly to the king’s disappearance. More importantly, I couldn’t even have proved at that point that the king had indeed been kidnapped and not gone somewhere of his own accord. All kinds of unaffordable delays would have sprung from a visit to the police.

  That’s how I had felt at that time. But feelings and perceptions change rapidly when situations deteriorate quickly. I gave up. I turned back; I turned tail. I decided to run all the way back to Peter’s car and drive it to the nearest police station. I would beg the police officers to come with me. I would insist that they come. I would threaten to wake up the Indian Ambassador if the police didn’t act upon my complaint. What was the need to go there in person? I would find a working telephone and ring them up!

  Why hadn’t I thought about all this before? I kicked myself inwardly. There was no time to lose. I began to jog away from where I had been headed half a minute ago. And then something really, truly, deeply eerie happened, something that stopped me in my tracks, something that had happened to me on that original, mother night as well.

  Back then, a dog — Sheru, that beautiful, faithful Himalayan Shepherd belonging to our nightwatchman — had found me in the pitch-black jungle bordering Trumpet Hill. Sheru had led me to King Sanjay’s hideout in an old Shiv temple. Now, as my nerve failed me and I fled that terrifying place, a dog — a German Shepherd this time — came out from the underbrush and blocked my path, cutting off my retreat!

  He was a full-grown dog. He bared his fangs and growled at me menacingly. His bushy, bristling tail swayed as he advanced upon me, forcing me to backtrack. I loved dogs. They loved me back. Love generally precludes aggression and fear. But this particular encounter between man and canine comprised only of these two elements.

  Far as I could tell, the animal wasn’t rabid. I was armed, but I made myself as non-threatening as possible, making pacifying sounds and gestures. Maybe he (mistakenly) perceived me to be blocking his path? I stopped backing off and slid off to one side. The dog leaned forward with a snarl and almost pounced on me. I stopped sliding. He came out of his crouch.

  I got the idea: he didn’t want me to leave the place! I (experimentally) showed willingness to turn around and move in the opposite d
irection — the direction of the devil’s lair, to use the hyena brothers’ terminology. The dog relaxed visibly. He uncurled his lips and stopped snarling. Hadn’t the exact same thing happened to me that other time, too? A completely unknown dog had come from somewhere and shepherded me to an obscure destination (initially) against my will.

  Sheru had passed away a long time back. Was I seeing his reincarnation now? An old friend in a new coat?

  You must be dreaming, I told myself. The agonizing wound in my left arm begged to differ. Whereas the bleeding had thankfully stanched, the pain was climbing to new levels every minute.

  I decided to do the dog’s bidding. Not out of any fear. I could have gotten past him one way or another if I really wanted to (my Model 29 lent me this confidence). The dog had appeared before me like a magical mirror, reflecting my true desire, which had been momentarily overlaid by smudges of the all-too-human terrors of the unknown, of making a wrong decision, of jeopardizing someone’s very life (not to speak of my own life).

  I had no sooner swiveled around on my heels and begun moving deeper into the jungle than the Shepherd transformed into a friendly being, a companion, a guide. He worked like a living, warm sponge to soak away and wipe off the aforementioned terror-stains.

  The dog overtook me in a minute. The trail got narrower and darker as we ventured forward, so that I had to walk bent over through a zigzag corridor framed on either side by gnarled trunks reaching for and rubbing branches with each other overhead. But that choking congestion suddenly vanished after a bend in the trail, giving place to a moon-luminescent lake reposing in the middle of that forest. A small, tree-covered island lay in the middle of the water.

  There was a wharf with a couple of canoes moored to it. A signboard proclaimed the lake and the island to be private properties and therefore off-limits to the members of public. Trespassers would be prosecuted, it warned in capital letters at the bottom. A guardhouse made of wood and glass stood adjacent to the signboard. A sodium light-bulb glowing inside it showed it to be deserted.

  Perhaps the guard manning this post was among the men who had come looking for the hyena brothers and met me (their death) instead. Or maybe the man or men were patrolling a beat somewhere. I didn’t have to worry much about this factor because my quadruped companion didn’t appear concerned about anyone’s presence in the immediate vicinity. Men could hide from men, but not from dogs.

  The Shepherd ran ahead and leaped into one of the canoes. No one came shooting or shouting out of the surrounding darkness. I still covered the short distance to the wharf stealthily, moving close to the ground, keeping out of the shafts of light flowing out of the empty guardhouse. I boarded the little watercraft and unfastened the line securing it to its bollard. I had luckily gone canoeing with Cameron at least half a dozen times in the preceding weeks, so paddling the craft wasn’t so much a technical difficulty as a practical one — it required me to relinquish my weapon for the duration of the voyage and put my injured arm to a torturous exertion that would aggravate the injury, no matter how little pressure I put upon it.

  The island was just a quarter of a mile from the shore, but I might as well have been sailing across the Pacific. It was all I could do to stifle my screams as we got underway. My handkerchief, now serving as a tourniquet-cum-bandage, began to drip droplets of blood once more.

  The dog — I had begun calling him Marshal in my mind — rubbed his head against my side and licked the back of my hand, soothing my agony with the effectiveness of an anesthetic. The island was zooming ever closer; my adrenaline glands got active once again, numbing the pain further.

  Although it appeared deserted, I didn’t head toward the island’s dimly lit wharf for obvious reasons. Instead, we landed on a tiny beach situated on the other, darker side.

  Marshal jumped across the gunwale. I exchanged my Model 29 for the canoe’s paddle and stepped onto that narrow swathe of sand bordered by a stand of mixed-species trees. The trees stood so close together and the undergrowth so curtained the spaces between their trunks that a veritable wall of foliage blocked entry into the interior of the jungle. A breath of wind set the watchful leaves susurrating.

  There was something so sinister in the atmosphere that I — a born and sworn tree-lover — felt a strange reluctance to step into that looming mass of vegetation. Even the maidenly moonbeams appeared keen to circumvent that piece of water-surrounded land. But nothing intimidated the brave and noble Marshal. He circled around my feet and then leaped straight at a bush, which parted with a loud rustle and swallowed him.

  I ran after the dog, thrusting myself into the heart of that private island’s private darkness. I moved with extreme caution, trying not to snap twigs or scrape my wound against trunks and branches. It didn’t take us long to cover the length and breadth of the island. What I found there was astonishing — absolutely nothing, whereas I had expected at least one building of some kind. The only man-made things in evidence were the wharf and a lone, illuminated lamp mounted on a crude pole standing at the wharf’s head.

  Where were they holding the king? Where were they — whoever they were — holding themselves, so to speak? I had obviously come to the wrong place. Even if Peter had dared to mislead me, why would the hyena brothers do the same? Did they still have some residual loyalty left for the people they were stealing and running from?

  Or, perhaps, I needed to get across the lake. Nobody had actually asked me to come to this island. Except for Marshal. The dog had practically brought me here. I must keep following him, I told myself. But he had vanished somewhere! My legs shook with a new kind of panic, the kind that children feel upon discovering they are lost. I turned a full circle, actually calling out his name in a suppressed, whiny whisper before realizing I didn’t know his name!

  I began to move frantically in the tight pockets of space in that choked, choking growth, looking for that stranger I had begun to rely so much on. Troublesome questions regarding my sanity (had I imagined the dog in the first place?) had just begun to unsettle me further when I saw something flapping at a little distance.

  It was probably something entirely useless, but I went for it like a treasure hunter going for a precious gemstone — there are moments (mostly terrible in nature) when meaningless distractions acquire the value of priceless artifacts.

  It came out to be something long and silky, a strip of cloth — perhaps a woman’s scarf — snagged on a tree limb. It couldn’t have been hanging out there for long — its texture was still soft, and a sweet scent wafted out from its fabric. The incongruity of finding something so lively, warm, and feminine in that oppressive wilderness intrigued me enough that I threw all caution to the wind. I took out my flashlight and switched it on just to determine the cloth’s color, completely ignoring the fact that being detected would be the equivalent of being executed.

  My fingers didn’t get a chance to elicit a beam from the flashlight, though. They (the fingers) went abruptly nerveless. I had just seen two little orbs glow on the forest floor. A dog’s eyes shining in the dark. Marshal’s eyes. His head lay on the ground.

  Horror struck me with the power of a hundred bullets. I reeled. I almost fainted. Who could have decapitated that powerful animal without making the slightest noise? Only a demon. Something as mighty as it was evil. My blood froze in its little tunnels…

  The severed head moved. My heart lurched. Marshal grew into a whole, unharmed, unchanged being within a moment, just in time to prevent my dying on my feet. He had simply emerged from a hole in the ground! This explained his having disappeared so completely, so quickly.

  Marshal exited the cavity, only to get back into it once again. I tucked the flashlight back into my pocket and followed the dog into what felt like the entrance to a subterranean cave.

  My fright-whipped heart was still galloping at its top rate. I felt drenched in sweat. My hands shook so much I couldn’t hope to fire my Model 29 with any degree of precision. My wound was leaking and screaming incessa
ntly. Not the best frame of mind to be walking into an unspeakably dark and dank place highly likely to be brimming with all kinds of poisonous insects and reptiles, to speak nothing of higher forms of dangers.

  I felt tempted to bring out my purloined flashlight once again, but the fear of being seen outweighed the need to see. Marshal walked alongside me this time, not ahead, but keeping in constant contact with my right leg, guiding and steering me along like a blind man’s ally.

  The cave floor sloped sharply for several yards before leveling out. There were shallow puddles underfoot, which meant some kind of drainage system at work, or the place would have a much greater volume of rainwater standing in it. Marshal negotiated a hairpin bend, and we literally saw light at the end of the tunnel.

  Rays of an anemic, trembling light flowed out from under a door panel and through its keyhole. Marshal bounded to the door and put his head against it, his majestic tail swaying to denote pride and satisfaction in a difficult task executed well.

  The door looked thick and firm. Alive or dead, the king had to be somewhere behind it. I put my eye to the keyhole. An old-fashioned oil lantern placed on the floor lit up a chamber hewn out of the living rock. It went on for about three yards before forking into two passages meandering on in different directions.

  I placed my Model 29 on the floor and put my hand in my innermost pocket to extract my father’s toolkit. The lock was a good one. I was out of practice. It would take me a few minutes to —.

  Marshal suddenly barked, making me jump out of my skin. The sound was explosive in that enclosed, stony place. Footsteps originated somewhere on the other side of the door, echoing ever closer. My hands shook more pronouncedly. I fumbled my gun twice as I picked it up.

  It was an idiotic thing to do, but I put my eye to the keyhole once again. I looked inside. My heart stopped beating.

  Chapter 18: The Hangman and The Escape Artist