Rea and the Blood of the Nectar

by Payal Doshi

  Rea got up needing to use the bathroom. It was still dark out. The time on the wall clock read 4:20 in the morning. The door to the bathroom was closed, and Rea assumed Rohan was inside.

  “Hurry up, I need to pee,” she said.

  There was no reply.

  Rea rapped on the bathroom door, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

  “Rohan, GET OUT!”

  She banged the door harder, and it swung open. The bathroom was vacant. Rea relieved herself and then walked back into the living room. She must have missed the lump of his form, asleep next to her, but when she pulled aside the blanket, the bed was empty. Rea tip-toed across the living room and peeked out the front door. Wearing no shoes or chappals, she walked the roads leading from her house. In one of the gullies, she stepped on a foot. A homeless man stirred in his sleep and Rea leaped aside.

  Shadows creeped over her. Everywhere she looked, she met a dark, chilly silence. Rea rushed back. Three oak trees from her house, she spotted Rohan’s bat and ball strewn to the side.

  Of course! He had to be sleeping in Amma’s room like he did whenever they fought. With a sigh and a shake of her head, Rea picked up her brother’s cricket gear and headed home. She was relieved, but also irritated at having to carry his mess. Groggy with sleep, she slipped on something on the front steps, and grabbed the door handle to arrest her fall. She looked down at the culprit, a crimson piece of paper with her muddy footprint on it. Rea picked it up. Pasted on it was a hideous scrawl of letters.

  ‘TiME tO sAy GoOdbYE.’

  Rea wasn’t sure what it meant, but she didn’t like the sound of it. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure Rohan was in Amma’s room. She dumped the bat and ball on the sofa and rushed into Amma and Bajai’s bedroom. Amma sat up right away, and switched on the bedside lamp. A quick glance across the floor confirmed Rohan wasn’t there.

  “Rohan isn’t home, and I found this outside the door,” Rea said, handing over the cryptic note.

  Amma read the piece of paper. With a cry of fear, she sprang from the bed and ran through the kitchen, bathroom and living room calling his name. She threw open the front door and ran into the darkness.

  “ROHAN!” she screamed.

  The night was velvety thick. The sky was full of stars, and Rea could smell the scent of trees on the intermittent breeze. An owl hooted in the distance.

  “Rea? Kunjan?” Bajai’s wrinkled voice called from inside and she turned on a flashlight to see what the commotion was about.

  Rea snatched the flashlight from her hands. Circling the house, she flashed it behind cans of paint, their bicycles, and the clothesline with a drying bedsheet. She kicked aside the mess of pipes, fallen roof shingles, and a pile of logwood.

  “This isn’t funny, Rohan,” she shouted. “Where are you?”

  Her calls traveled to the moon and back, but there was no reply.

  “Reeli, come inside,” Bajai said. “Come inside where it’s safe.”

  Rea flicked the shaft of light onto the village road. Maybe if she walked back to Scenic Point, she might find him. She stepped onto the road when Bajai’s voice sounded behind her, sharp and tense.

  “Don’t take another step.” Bajai had slipped out of the light of the doorway and into the darkness. Rea couldn’t see her, but she felt her fingers curl tightly around her arm. “You are not going anywhere. Come back inside. Now.” Bajai’s unflinching eyes, chilling as the night, ordered Rea to stop fighting her.

  Shocked, and a little scared, Rea let her grandmother pull her back inside. The moment they entered the house, Rea heard her mother weeping in the bedroom. Rea ran to her.

  With tears falling down her cheeks, Amma had opened their shared family closet and was shuffling through Rohan’s clothes. Leaving it in a mess, she grabbed his school uniform out of the laundry basket and went through all the pockets. Finding nothing, she unzipped his school bag and emptied its contents onto the floor. Textbooks, a pencil box, the stub of an eraser, a half-eaten chocolate bar, and the tiffin box he had forgotten to remove came tumbling out. She stared at the scattered objects. Shivers engulfed her body and the school bag fell from her hands.

  Rea watched, mesmerized, and confused. Why was Amma behaving like Rohan was gone forever? It had only been a few hours. He was out there somewhere, sleeping in a field, or at a friend’s house…

  In the living room, Bajai thumbed her necklace like prayer beads. Rea went over and held her hand.

  “I’m sure he’s okay,” she said. Bajai looked at her and nodded with a shaky smile.

  “H-How did this happen?” Amma said, facing Bajai. Her face was swollen and streaked with tears. She held the door as if it were the only thing keeping her from falling. “We did everything. They were with us the whole time. Rea with me, Rohan with you.”

  Rea glanced at the bat and ball on the sofa. That wasn’t entirely true, she thought, guiltily. She and Rohan were not with them for the few hours they were at Scenic Point.

  Oh, the cricket match! That’s it!

  Rohan must have gone to a friend’s house after losing the game! He was quite the sore loser, especially when it came to cricket. Then, Rea’s heart dropped. If he didn’t show up soon, she would have to tell Amma and Bajai they had snuck out at night after they had pretended to go to sleep. Stupid, stupid Rohan.

  “Um... maybe his friends know where he is?” said Rea.

  “Why would they know where he is? He was asleep when I went to bed,” said Amma.

  “I don’t know… maybe his friends called him, and he went to see them?” replied Rea. If she could get away with a small, white lie instead of telling Amma the truth, she was going to try her luck.

  “What friends? Did you see anyone? Where did they take Rohan?” Amma’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and she hurried towards Rea. There was a crazy look in her eyes, and Rea stepped back.

  “I don’t know! I didn’t see anything! You’re acting as if Rohan has run away or something so I’m just suggesting that maybe his friends know where he is.”

  Amma rushed to the telephone. She opened the drawer and grabbed the telephone diary. Scanning through the names, she began making call after call to Rohan’s friends’ houses. A few didn’t answer, and the ones who did didn’t know where he was. Not knowing what to do, Rea closed her eyes. The charcoal sketch of her father appeared.

  Baba, Amma will ground me for life if she finds out what we did. I swear on the moon I’ll never fight with Rohan again. And even if I do, I promise to let him win. Please, please, bring him home.

  When she opened her eyes, Amma was sitting still, the diary left open on her lap. The circling wail of a siren somewhere in their village shattered the muteness in their house.

  “Can I see the paper?” Bajai asked. Her outstretched hand trembled and Amma handed her the blood-red note.

  A look of fear came over her and Bajai crumpled her handkerchief close to her chest. Tears filled her eyes and she wiped them before one fell.

  “Kunjan…” she ventured, as though she was afraid of Amma’s reaction. “Should we involve the… police? Rohan might still be out there. They could find him.”

  “Wait, the police?” Rea shouted out. If they were going to call the police, she was going to have to tell them the truth. “I-I don’t think that’s necessary, right Amma?”

  “They can’t help us,” Amma said to Bajai, and Rea flopped onto the sofa with relief (and surprise that her mother had actually agreed with her.) “This is beyond what they can do, you know that. And they’ll never believe us. This is all—” Amma stopped. She stared at the walls, her lips quivering in defeat.

  “This is all what?” asked Rea, exasperated. “Are you both not telling me something?” This was exactly like when she asked them questions about Baba. The secret exchange of glances. The veiled way in which they answered the questions, if they did at all. Mostly, the way they ignored her. “Why wouldn’t the police be able to help? Do you know something?”

  They both said nothing.r />
  “Say something!” Rea cried out. “Rohan’s going to come back! Why are you behaving like he won’t? Let’s go look for him if you think something’s wrong.”

  Rea marched to the door, but Amma’s face hardened the way it did when she wanted to evade a question. Rea turned to Bajai for an explanation, but she stared at her thick-veined fingers.

  “Are you sure you didn’t see anything?” Amma asked Rea. She stared at her with a look so fierce, Rea was sure she could see through her lies and into her soul.

  Rea hesitated.

  Once Rohan came home, he was going to have to tell Amma what really happened and then she’d be caught red-handed for lying. No matter how bad her punishment would be, she was better off enduring Amma’s wrath than crowning Rohan as the good-little-truth-teller.

  Amma had looked away but the harshness of her gaze lingered on Rea. If anything had actually happened to Rohan, Amma would never forgive her for lying.

  “A-Actually,” Rea said with a gulp, “at midnight, Rohan went to play cricket with his friends. I went too. He hadn’t invited me even though it was our birthday—”

  “You left the house in the middle of the night?” gasped Amma, and Bajai’s hand flew to her chest. “Where did you go? Where was Rohan? Why weren’t you both together?”

  “We went to Scenic Point. After the match ended, he left before I did...”

  “You let him walk back alone?” Amma’s voice rose, her breathing loud.

  Let him? It’s not like he had asked. And hadn’t he, too, left her to walk home alone? Amma didn’t know she had Leela for company.

  “He left because he was upset that I won,” Rea said, matter-of-factly.

  “All alone? Alone at night. Alone in the dark. No one would know. No one would see him. It would be so easy…” muttered Amma.

  Same here. I walked back in the dark too. No one could see me, either.

  Amma’s eyes darted around the room and she looked at Bajai, trying to say something.

  “Think Rea, think,” she said angrily. “Was he sleeping when you got back?”

  Bajai touched Rea’s arm gently. “Baccha... try and remember anything you can. What road did he take? Are you sure he was going home? Did he say anything about where he might be going...?”

  Rea’s anger rose. “I don’t know! I only saw him leave Scenic Point. But I did find his bat and ball close to the gutter by the house.”

  “But he wasn’t there, was he?” Amma said, her voice low.

  Rea shook her head. Amma covered her mouth and cried with her whole body. Bajai held her close.

  “He’s been taken!” Amma cried. “I failed him. We failed him. And now it’s too late.”

  Taken? Too late for what? Rea shook her head. This had to be some stupid game Rohan and his friends were playing. As creepy as the note was, it was made with awkwardly cut letters, badly glued to the paper. Amma needed to calm down. This was not as bad as she was making it out to be.

  “Why would anyone want to take Rohan?” asked Rea. “He’s a plantation-boy. It’s not like we have any money to offer for his return. It makes no sense.”

  Amma and Bajai glanced at each other. Their silence felt a lifetime. Rea dropped her head, giving up trying to make sense of their paranoia and their secrets.

  “Everything isn’t always as it seems,” Amma said, her gaze unwavering. She had stopped crying, but her words had daggers around them. “Life is more complicated than that.”

  “Then explain it to me,” pleaded Rea. But Amma turned to Bajai and collapsed into her arms. Rea squeezed her eyes in frustration. Amma was acting as if Rohan had died. If only she knew he was the mastermind who had lied to everyone and organized the cricket match. Her perfect son, not being so perfect after all.

  Suddenly, Rea’s throat clenched. Her breath came in wheezes and a cloud of pain bloomed in her chest. She felt herself falling from a great height and the locket around her neck burned. Realizing what was happening, she scrambled into the kitchen. Every once in a while, when an extreme emotion or physical reaction affected Rohan, its effect rippled onto her and she could feel it too, no matter how far they were from each other. The same thing happened to Rohan. It was a twin thing.

  Rea dropped to her knees, gasping for breath. Was someone choking him? Was he not at a friend’s house? Did someone really take him? The sensation hit her again and she fell, prone on the floor.

  Wherever Rohan was, something bad, very bad, was happening to him.

  The moon lingers, a freckled marble in the infinite grey. Clouds float, stretched like wads of cotton. Rea’s hair flails in the ferocious wind.

  A blurry object, yellow as a school bus, swerves towards her. It stops and a door opens. She steps inside. It has no beginning and no end; just a long, sun-colored tube. And it’s empty. The person she’s looking for isn’t there.

  The object careens through the viscous morning. It roars as it turns left then right, then right then left. Scrawny branches poke through its windows. Broken twigs litter its insides. Abruptly, it screeches to a stop and her body hurtles through the front.

  A mist hangs like powdered chalk. Its lithe tendrils swallow the air. She wades through a bog, her shoes and socks clogged in muck. A fetid smell rises.

  In the distance, a shaft of light shines, silvery and grey. Rectangular stones, white like ghosts, loom ahead. The talon-shaped moon glows brighter as the morning grows darker. The gravestone plinths get closer. They stand at awkward angles. Everything is coated in midnight blue. All except one plinth. It sparkles a luminescent white.

  Rea falls to her knees. Clouds of air form at her nose and mouth. With the palm of her hand, she wipes away the dirt. Chiseled in stone are five words.

  FIND ME OR I DIE.

  She screams.

  Chapter 6

  Wood Rot & Withered Flowers

  “I need a favor,” said Rea.

  It was late Saturday afternoon. Two days had passed with no sign of Rohan.

  “Of course,” said Leela, her expression a mixture of sadness and sympathy. It was the same look everyone in the village gave Rea now. Rohan’s disappearance was all anyone could talk about.

  “Do you—” began Rea but Leela shushed her, and pointed.

  Rea understood immediately; Leela’s family, including her parents, three cousins, two sisters and grandparents were listening through the open door. Leela and Rea walked a few steps away.

  “You were saying?”

  “You’ve heard of Mishti Daadi, right? The fortune teller who lives in Pokhriabasti?”

  Leela chewed on a fingernail. “Uh-huh…”

  “I want to meet her… but I don’t want to go alone, and I need um... a…” Rea paused. She wasn’t sure if she could call Leela a friend. It didn’t feel right. “I—I was hoping you would come with me. I know they say only crazies go to her, but I really want to see her.”

  “My aunty went to see her when her daughter couldn’t find a husband.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” said Rea. “So, will you come with me?”

  Leela hesitated, looking uncomfortable. “The thing is, I don’t like going to fortune tellers, tarot card readers, crystal ball lookers, or clairvoyants. They scare me. I’m happy not knowing about all the bad things that are going to happen in my future. Ignorance is bliss, you know?”

  Rea was taken aback. That was exactly how she felt. Her life was hard enough, and she preferred not to find out about the crappy things in store for her. She wondered for a moment what had happened in Leela’s life for her to be worried about her future. She always seemed so happy; Rea had assumed her life was pretty good.

  “You don’t have to get your fortune read. Only I will so I can find out about Rohan. I—I just need the moral support…”

  Deep down, Rea knew if Mishti Daadi predicted the worst—that Rohan was really missing—she didn’t want to be alone when she heard it.

  Leela looked like she needed more convincing.

  “I’ll give
you all the sweets I get for Diwali and do your homework for a week,” beseeched Rea.

  “Oh, no no! Friends don’t have to bribe each other. It’s not that I don’t want to help you. I really do but…” Leela looked at her feet. “My aunty died a few weeks after meeting Mishti Daadi. In my heart, I know Mishti Daadi didn’t have anything to do with it, but my Amma is convinced her black magic killed my aunty. Although it doesn’t make sense, the thought of dabbling in witchy stuff gives me the creeps,” Leela said with a shiver, as if she could catch bad luck by simply saying the words.

  “It’s okay, I understand,” said Rea. “And I’m sorry about your aunty. Losing someone you love is the worst.”

  Rea mounted her bicycle and pedaled away. She should have known better than to expect someone to help her. How she wished Baba was here with her. She would’ve run into his arms and he would have fixed everything.

  “Wait, I wasn’t done!” Leela ran behind her. Rea braked and turned.

  “After my aunty and cousin went to see Mishti Daadi, my cousin found a husband, and a really good-looking one too! So…” Leela looked at Rea, but Rea wasn’t sure what she was trying to say.

  “Let’s go see her,” said Leela. “I hate that Rohan’s missing and what are friends for if you can’t count on them, right?”

  Rea cringed internally. Leela considered her a friend even though she didn’t feel the same way. A sliver of guilt crept into her but at the same time, Rea couldn’t believe Leela had changed her mind.

  “So, when do you want to go?” asked Leela.

  “Now!” Rea said, excitedly.

  “Now? Uh okay, on one condition. We’ll cut through Sanobar to get to Mishti Daadi’s house. It’s also the quickest route.”

  “You mean, Sanobar, the forest?” Rea gulped. She hated dark and dank spaces.

  Leela nodded. “If anyone from my family, and there’s a lot of us, sees me go to Mishti Daadi’s house, my Amma will start keeping tabs on me.” Leela shook her head. “I cannot have that. I need my freedom.”