by Sean Platt
“I failed to kill that last man with his bat.” He pointed at one of the dead black men. “And him? I promised I would break his leg bone through skin, but I failed to do so. Can you forgive me, for them?”
The Asian man stared at him, then nodded.
“Good.” Amit grabbed the man by his broken leg and hauling him toward the pulley in the barn’s center. “Then you and I can get started.”
Chapter 5
10:59 A.M. ON FRIDAY
Amit was uncharacteristically nervous.
He was a monk; he was supposed to be able to master his emotions. He mostly had. He’d learned to suffuse disappointment and appreciate patience; he’d fought anger even in the face of infuriating things. In his youth, he’d had a temper, and his parents steered him into hobbies that they’d hoped would vent his aggression, like hitting the heavy bag that hung in their basement. But in his years at the monastery — since he was 5 or 6; Amit wasn’t sure — he’d learned to deal with his frustrations in other ways. When he wanted to blow up, he meditated. When the elders had refused to acknowledge his advancement in his teens, he’d almost hit them, before meditating his way through it. Amit was no longer an angry or violent man. And if he could overcome those emotions, learning peace and tranquility, he could overcome any emotions.
Except for one. Two, if you counted his nervousness now.
Nisha had said she’d explain everything. But was this a confession or a date? Amit didn’t know. That pesky emotion he’d felt since first meeting her had muddled his thinking. She was so back and forth. He knew she loved him (or thought it anyway; damn the persistent, chaotic nature of affection), but she was also troubled by that thing she kept from him. And that duality had muddled everything further. When Nisha was upset, was it because of Amit or because of the unknown menace? It would be so much easier, he kept telling her, if she’d simply confide in him. But she said that doing so would be dangerous. Nisha had to choose her islands of trust very carefully.
Today, she promised to explain, but the location was as ambiguous as his feelings — or her apparent feelings for him. Usually, when they met at the abandoned barn, they did so to be alone, and sometimes to engage in behaviors the monastery forbade a monk. The elders suspected that the girl who had come to the monastery (to hide, she’d said) was causing a stir with some of the younger men, but so far Amit believed he’d kept their relationship secret, hiding their rendezvous in the barn that had become their special place. But if her purpose today was to tell him what she’d been hiding, why had she chosen a spot so amorous? Confession, for a change, might have actually made sense at the monastery.
Unless purpose had two sides. Amit felt his not-quite-subdued monk’s heart swollen by the thought.
He stepped over the barn’s threshold, peering around as always before darting inside to make sure that nobody saw him. The barn seemed to be unused, but the cliché of the angry farmer with the pitchfork was one they both knew, and so they’d always been covert. And what of the monastery elders? Amit didn’t think the other monks would care enough about his deviations from protocol to spy on him, but you never knew, and everyone in the order could move like wind. If he was cast out, then what? His family was long gone. Amit had nobody, and no skills other than the hard-trained, nearly inhuman muscular and perceptual talents taught by the order. If he were tossed out, could he simply move into an apartment and get a job? That was a world he’d never known. He’d been a monk all his life, training for …
For the next life, he supposed. For nirvana. For a connection with spirit. But given the intense conditioning they all received, they could almost be warriors. Yet violence was strictly anti-doctrine. Amit thought of his old, heavy punching bag, of the cathartic thrill of venting frustrations. He thought of his training, and how it was all for the sake of itself. Really, what was the point?
“Nisha?” he whispered into the silence.
The barn wasn’t quiet at all. He could hear her heartbeat and breathing, there in the stillness. It was some sort of a lovers’ game of hide and seek. That sounded like Nisha. Except that …
Something was wrong. Her heartbeat was too fast, but simultaneously too weak. She sounded almost as if she were hibernating — the heartbeat of a wintertime bear. Her breathing was raspy. Almost wet. It seemed as if he could sense others nearby. Yet, Nisha had specifically wanted to be alone.
He walked farther inside, increasingly nervous. He pushed it down, closing his eyes and drawing a slow breath, remembering his training. Love made him sloppy. He was letting things in that he shouldn’t.
When he felt more in control, he tried again: “Nisha?”
This time she answered. “Amit!”
Urgency. There was urgency in her voice. And her voice, frantic like her breathing, sounded wet. As if in shallow water. And that heartbeat …
He scampered forward across the clay floor, pulling his orange sash tight around his waist so he wouldn’t make sound.
Then he saw her.
Nisha was near the middle of the barn’s open floor, lying in a pool of blood. She was on her back, mouth wet as if she’d coughed up some of the blood that ran down her cheeks and joined the torrent that spilled from her throat. There had been a terrible accident. Amit searched for its source, and then in a split second realized that whatever she’d fallen into or run across that had impaled her no longer mattered. Only fixing the damage mattered now. He looked around for something to staunch the bleeding, found a surprisingly clean rag within reach, and pushed it against her throat. Nisha hadn’t just gotten a nick. Whatever she’d managed to do to herself was worse than Amit had originally thought. Her throat was sliced open in a giant gash. Dark, arterial blood welled up and poured from the wound, spilling into a crimson river around her. There was no accident. This was murder on its way.
“Nisha! What happened?”
She couldn’t speak with the rag pressed tightly to her throat. Nisha tried anyway, nudging his hand, but he held firm and shook his head, tears welling his eyes at their corners. Another betrayal of emotion, his body being more intelligent than his conscious mind; it knew she would die even as his hands tried to save her.
“Who did this to you?”
Amit swore inside as soon as he’d said it, his mind returning to his teen years when he’d still fought with anger, when he’d still picked up so-called bad words and enjoyed using them. She couldn’t answer, couldn’t tell him anything if he was to hold pressure on her throat.
Blinking away his tears furiously, angry with himself, Amit refocused. He could only ask yes or no questions. And he had to ask, because he had to know what to do next. How to quell this strange, new — yet oddly ancient and familiar — emotion building within him through some sort of action.
“Is this because of the secret? The thing you were going to tell me?”
Her eyes met his, big and brown and softer than usual. They seemed to want to slip into somewhere far-away, beyond Amit and the world. Below his pressure, without moving her severed neck, she gave a tiny nod.
Already Amit was empty of questions. There was nothing he could ask that could be answered with a yes or a no. And there was so much else beyond the yeses and nos. Who had done it? Why? And how can I find them?
Instead, he looked down at his Nisha. Her eyes kept wanting to go, but he wasn’t ready to release them. He couldn’t take it. He wasn’t prepared. All his years of training in spirit and substance and right and wrong and good and evil and in striving to reach paradise in realms beyond this one, and none of it was helping him now, as he stared down at this visceral piece of real-life horror.
“Nisha,” he whispered. “I love you.”
She nodded, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Tears welled in her eyes, untouched and pure of the blood beneath her.
Amit took her hand, finding the one on this side dry and soft, as it had always been. It was slightly cold, but otherwise it was Nisha’s, same as yesterday. He looked at the hand, then up the a
rm to her sleeve, to Nisha’s simple, floral-print dress — the dress she’d been wearing when they’d met, when she first came to the monastery for help, hair bundled down her back in a thick braid of black. It seemed unfair for her to die in the same dress — that such pleasant, sweet, innocent memories were soiled with such an ending.
She squeezed his hand, weakly. He looked at her face, her big, brown eyes. He read the squeeze, and her expression, knowing what she was saying: I love you, too. And goodbye.
Amit gave a small, silent nod.
Then Nisha was gone.
He laid his head on her chest, feeling tears wanting to return as he fought them all back. Sadness was impotent. Helpless. Right now, he needed someone to blame. Something to do. He needed a way to give himself the catharsis he felt sure was moments from tearing him open.
The earlier sounds were back and sharper. With his head still on Nisha’s unmoving chest, her limp hand still clasped in his, Amit could make out the slow footsteps of five men, and five heartbeats.
A voice said, “Well, lookie what we got here.” And then, from the other four, a light chorus of laughter.
Amit closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He had to be still. Calm. Focused.
It seemed he would be getting his catharsis after all.
Chapter 6
9:20 PM ON FRIDAY
The Right Hand sat on the floor with his back against the bed, two of his fingers broken far enough that they looked like they didn’t belong, his wrist so shattered he had to hold it with his left hand to keep it from flopping over like a rag. Even if the Right Hand still had any fight left in him (which he did not), or if he’d posed a threat even fully functional (which he definitely did not), Amit wouldn’t have had to worry. All the man had right now to fight with was his legs. And if he was going to use them for anything, it’d be for running away.
“We are taught to be calm and pure of thought in my order,” said Amit, sitting on a seat at the bedroom’s bay window, looking out at the front lawn. He had one knee up and his hands knitted around it, reclining, looking casual and not at all monastic save his garb. “In a way, it was my fault. She came to us for protection. If I hadn’t broken from the discipline of my training and grown enamored, she might never have been in danger. We might have sheltered her as she wanted, hidden her as requested. She might not have ever felt compelled to leave the compound to escape the elders’ disapproving eyes to be with the monk she’d come to love. In a way, I and my imperfect hiding place led her straight from our protection into your hands. Do you agree?”
Amit turned to look at the Right Hand.
“I keep telling you, I don’t know anything about this woman … ”
“Nisha. Her name was Nisha.”
“I don’t know anything about … ” He looked at Amit, saw something in the monk’s eyes that bothered him, “ … about Nisha. An order was given to me. I passed it on. That’s all it was. Business. Nothing personal.”
Amit stood. He crossed to the Right Hand, then glanced back through the window. He could see a long line of lights in the distance, approaching on the main road. Reds and blues, the oranges of ambulances. Thanks to the second call he’d had the Right Hand make, white headlights were probably the news.
“I assure you, it was personal to her. And to me.”
The Right Hand flinched as if waiting to be struck, but during the past day, Amit had managed to regain the control he’d lost so early this morning. Ironically, he was more emotionally in control now than he had been in weeks, now that Nisha and her distracting, muddling love were out of the equation. He’d already gotten the information he needed from the Right Hand, and there was no real logical point in torturing him further. He deserved to die as had all of the others — the five men from the barn, the Right Hand’s guards — but his more important function was to convey a message, and an emotion. Uncertainty, and fear.
Amit returned to the window seat, but this time he didn’t sit. He watched and waited as the line of lights approached the closed main gate.
“If it makes you feel any better,” said the Right Hand, looking down at his destroyed paw, wincing in pain, “you couldn’t have protected her, even if she’d stayed at the monastery. Not from our people. Not from my bosses.”
Amit laughed — a good-natured laugh, because he was a kind-hearted man who still saw beauty in the world. “Oh, but then you don’t realize who it was she came to. The five men you sent to kill her this morning did not.”
Judging by the look on the Right Hand’s face, Amit realized that news must not have made it up the chain yet. He didn’t know the elite assassination squad, if that’s what the group was, had failed to return. Amit took a step closer, then flexed his bare foot with its blood-dyed skin for the man on the floor.
“We are taught, through each hour of every day, to control the muscles in our bodies and to squeeze every drop of force, speed, and potential from them. Our order’s purpose is to seek the limits of humanity — to find out just how much can be done with these mortal vessels we occupy in each of our lives. I can pick a lock with my toes. I can generate enough force fast enough, even from this distance, to knock a vertebrae out of your neck before you could raise a hand to stop me, like yanking a tablecloth from under a place setting without overturning the glasses. I can climb walls with only my fingertips. I can jump from a three-story building and absorb the shock so completely that not only will I not injure myself, I will land with no sound. I was able to take on five of your men at once because I could watch their eyes and their breathing to predict their movements. Once you see how a game will unfold, it is simple to avoid being trapped within it. And we are all that way. Every monk at the monastery. You could have sent in an army, and we would have killed them all with our bare hands.”
“But you’re monks. You’re not supposed to kill.”
“We may if it is required.”
“But you came after me in cold blood. Killed my guards. Killed my men.”
Amit turned slowly, hands again knitted behind his back. “It was required.”
“So, what?” said the Right Hand. “You’re going to kill my boss?”
“Is he the reason Nisha was killed?”
“I don’t know. But it probably goes further up. The order came down hard. Whatever she was to someone, she was a significant threat.”
“Then yes,” said Amit. “I will kill him. And I will kill those above him.”
“You’ll never get to the top man. Nobody even knows who pulls the strings.”
“Someone knows.”
“You’ll never find him. You’ll be stopped and killed.”
Amit chuckled as if hearing a clever limerick, his eyes squinting down in a genuine smile. “Oh, I do not think so.”
The Right Hand’s ears perked up. “Cops. I hear them coming.”
“Yes.”
“You should go.” His tone was dismissive, not at all concerned. Amit had already told the Right Hand that he would live, that it was his job to tell those above him that a man with a shaved head and bare feet would soon find and kill them. Uncertainty and fear were cancers, eating through strength and exposing weaknesses. The Right Hand’s message would unsettle the organization he still knew nothing about, allowing Amit to peer into its cracks as it trembled.
“We were going to be married,” said Amit, watching the police and ambulances arrive at the unmanned, locked front gate.
“Good for you.”
“She was going to tell me everything. I would have been able to protect her if I’d known what I was facing. But she never got a chance. This morning, it all ended, an hour too early. I would have renewed my proposal. I was going to leave the order. She would have told me all about you. There would have been no need for my quest. You would still have your hand, and I Nisha.”
“A shame.”
Amit turned, but this time the Right Hand didn’t flinch. He was getting comfortable, content that the monk wouldn’t hurt
him.
“I should go.”
“I’ll miss you,” sneered the Right Hand.
“You will deliver my message to your boss, whom I will visit soon. And make suffer. Then I will kill him for what he did, for what he took from us.”
“And you won’t be back? You promised I could live if I delivered your message.”
“I promised. And a monk must keep his promises.”
The Right Hand nodded. Then Amit opened the window and dropped like a whisper to the grass.
Chapter 7
12:01 A.M. ON SUNDAY
The Right Hand, known to his friends by the rather non-underworld name of Telford Hayes, slipped into bed the night after his encounter with the killer monk, his new security men in place, all of the lawn lights on, fence guarded every 10 feet by a man in uniform. Security was costing a fortune, but he could afford it. No one would get through without him knowing. Even if an army of monks stormed his gates, Telford would see everything before it happened. He had a new bank of monitors in his bedroom, with several guards visible on every one.
As content as he could be with the giant cast on his arm (and holy shit had that fuckery hurt when they’d set it), Telford slipped under his sheets. With the lawn still blazing outside his window, he turned off the room lights and closed his eyes.
He was stirred when something sharp pressed against the underside of his chin.
“Greetings.”
Telford opened his eyes. It was the monk, still clad in his ridiculous garb. The man’s bald head caught the lawn lights and shone.
“How did you get in?” Telford asked. He couldn’t help asking. He’d put up an airtight perimeter, and looking at the computer monitors, he could see it was all still intact.
“I never left. I’ve been on the roof all night and day. I wanted to see the media circus. Sound carries well out there. You did admirably.”