Agniputr

by Vadhan

  Raghuram Surya clutched the assassin’s hair and delivered a blow with the edge of his palm, like cutting with a sword. Amit’s nose caved into his face. The cartilage lodged itself into the brain. He died instantaneously.

  Raghu turned to the bedroom just as Sheila stepped out.

  ‘How’s he?’

  ‘He’s alive. We stopped the bleeding but we must take him to a hospital.’

  ‘The bullet?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s still inside his chest.’

  Half an hour later they rolled into the hospital in Javaaram as the clock struck eight in the evening. They rolled the unconscious Poti on a stretcher into the duty doctor’s room where a young physician and a couple of nurses examined the wound.

  ‘Sir, this is a police ca...’ the attending physician started off.

  ‘I am Raghuram Surya!’

  It was a lion roaring. A beast of prey.

  The hospital administrators rushed out followed by other duty doctors.

  An older physician said, ‘I am sorry Babu Garu, I will see to the injured man right away.’

  The unconscious Poti was wheeled into the emergency operating room.

  CHAPTER 42

  ON the way back, Raghuram was grim while Sheila was crying mutely. As they neared Gudem they noticed the large crowd outside the memorial hall. Raghu braked to a halt.

  ‘What is it?’ he yelled as he ran down the road. The car had stopped on its own.

  ‘Babu garu, do you not see it?’

  A deathly moan sprang up from the memorial hall, like wind through a funnel. Eshwar did ask them to bravely enter the memorial hall at night. Raghu was not worried about the Sable Parch. He was ready for it. His worry was the Sutram. It was then that he saw the spectacle in the night sky. He froze for a moment. The human mind cannot comprehend images that are so totally out of sync with its trained sensory perception. It tries to blunt the impact, more to protect itself than anything else. Thus, the couple were left to stare into the night, utterly wordless.

  People were floating in mid-air, their silhouettes stark against the moon. Just like Vidush and Priyanka. Only, it was out under the open skies. It could only mean one thing. The Sutram had managed to fray its shackles.

  Doom.

  To everyone.

  ‘What the Hell is happening here?’ said a familiar voice. Major Kant stood with a bandaged chest over which he had flung a shirt on. A gun belt was wrapped around his waist. ‘Who strung those people up there?’

  ‘The Sutram is breaking free. We don’t have much time. I must get into the hall or more people will die. The world will die.’

  ‘There is no way you’re going to save the world without me,’ Kant declared.

  ‘Kant, you fool, you don’t know what you’re getting into. Keep away from the memorial hall. I am going in right now. The both of you stay here.’

  ‘NO!’ Sheila screamed. ‘If you’re going in there you better be clear that I am going in right with you.’

  ‘Sci-fi...’

  ‘I am Sheila, goddess of the planet and seeker of the universe and you will obey me,’ she declared and started towards the hall.

  Kant said, ‘I am not around for a few days and people get delusions of grandeur.’

  He started at a brisk pace behind Sheila. Raghu set off after them.

  ‘Serves me right,’ he said when he had caught up with Sheila. You do realise that maybe we won’t make it back alive, don’t you?’

  ‘I love you darling, do you think I would let you go in alone? And besides, it could be the greatest scientific discovery of our age,’ she observed with forced humour.

  They were almost near the doors when screams from behind them caught their attention. A few villagers who had gathered around the memorial hall to gawk at the corpses strung in the sky started running helter skelter. They were being hunted by weird looking, lanky creatures.

  ‘God,’ thought Raghuram, ‘it’s a regular zombie movie.’

  This was Gudem, the village of hunters, they could protect themselves, Raghuram knew.

  He ran forward to the gates of the memorial hall with Kant and Sheila by his side. Kant had his side arm out by the time they pushed the gate open.

  Raghu ran into pitch darkness. A flash of lightning struck the door they had just pushed open, blowing it to pieces. Govind Kiromal and the tantrik were running towards the hall.

  ‘Now it’s a running race,’ Raghu mused.

  The tantrik screamed something. The earth itself shook once. It cracked open to let more of the lanky creatures climb out. Raghu was reminded of the ghost soldiers in the movie, ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

  They had stricken contorted looks on their ghostly faces, as though they didn’t like to be back on the planet one way or another.

  ‘Is there a prophecy as well? This might be the right time for it,’ Raghu muttered to himself running as hard as he could. He couldn’t believe he was actually running into the hall to save himself from the demons outside it.

  ‘How in God’s name do you kill a...whatever that is?’ Kant asked aloud.

  ‘Trying shooting it, think of something, you’re the soldier boy,’ Raghu hollered.

  The demons chased after the three humans into the hall.

  They had reached the door at the other end and there was no Sable Parch. They leaned against the door to catch their breath. Kant fired a couple of rounds. Either he completely missed them or bullets had no effect on the creatures.

  Suddenly Eshwar was in their midst. He was just there. He was in armour of matted black, twin blades sheathed one on top of the other, dhoti and knee length boots. He drew both his swords.

  ‘Keep shooting,’ he yelled at Kant.

  ‘Who the Hell are you?’

  ‘P. Eshwar.’

  The man ran towards the creatures filing into the memorial hall, both swords drawn. Kant fired his gun, reloaded and fired again. He was on one knee, both arms forward, picking out the ghouls like they were target practice. They fell like nine pins. Eshwar was so swift it looked like he was all over the place. His blades were a blur as he ran through the ghouls.

  Raghu felt its presence much before the Sable Parch glided just beyond his peripheral vision. As black as night, its shiny crystalline skin glistened in the half light.

  ‘My wife,’ Raghu said to the Parch, pointing to Sheila. Not entirely true. But close enough.

  She whirled to her side at the same time that the Parch moved in her direction. At least she thought the blackness shifted her way. Then it turned back to Raghu.

  Something lashed out. A shaft of pure black.

  Raghu flew across the room.

  Sheila screamed and made to run towards him. She found herself being lifted bodily and lowered to the ground away from Raghu. She looked up into the inky darkness spread out in front of her.

  ‘Why did you hit him?’

  The Parch did not respond to her query.

  ‘Father...’ Raghu was lurching forward.

  A bolt of agony crushed the lawyer. He fell to the ground with the tantrik above him. ‘Time to die, I say, you will die,’ he cried to Raghu.

  There was a blur of movement.

  ‘I say he will not,’ Eshwar’s blades swished in the air. The tonsured man fell to the floor with a grunt. There were two criss-cross wounds on his back.

  Raghuram rose in a trance and lurched towards the Sable Parch. The Parch lashed out at him again. Raghu crashed to the floor. He did not move.

  Sheila screamed.

  Govind Kiromal had his arm around her neck from behind her, nailing her to his body and was pushing her into the inner hall. The lair of the Sutram.

  ‘Let me go you...bastard,’ she screamed.

  ‘Shut up, shut up or I’ll break your neck, you fucking whore,’ Kiromal spat. ‘You killed my uncle, I will see you and that bastard, Surya, suffer, I promise.’

  Sheila tried to remember all the techniques Kant had taught her during their initial days of training.
She strained forward from Kiromal’s bear hug to gain as much distance as she could muster from his body and hefted her leg violently. Her rigid heel slammed against Kiromal’s shin.

  Govind yelled in pain but he did not let her go. Instead, he whirled her around and slapped Sheila so hard she fell to the ground in a heap. Taking hold of her hair, the Minister dragged the dazed woman towards the hall.

  The blackness that was the Sable Parch appeared uncertain. It looked towards the hall door where the tantrik was running behind Govind.

  ‘Raghu...help me, Raghu...’ Sheila screamed pathetically.

  Kant ran after her into the inner hall.

  Eshwar cut the last ghoul to dust.

  The tantrik threw his hands forward and had Kant not dived to his side, a bolt of electrical energy would have struck him dead. He hit the ground rolling and used the momentum to get back up on his feet. The tantrik threw another bolt of energy, on Eshwar this time, who simply swatted the lightning away with the flat of his sword and ran on behind the tantrik. By this time Govind had taken several steps into the inner hall. The whoosh of searing hot wind from within was deafening.

  Like opening the doors of Hell.

  Like being in the presence of a primordial predator.

  It was Govind’s first view of the Sutram’s lair. Nothing had prepared him for it. The hall was a hive of dwarf electrical storms. The moan he had heard outside the hall was now an ear shattering howl.

  The Home Minister swallowed hard. This was not what he had expected. Still it had to be done. He had come this far. He needed to complete his journey to conquer the world. There was no use turning back now.

  Govind disappeared into the hall dragging a screaming Sheila by her hair. The tantrik stepped through the doorway into the inner hall tentatively. He was screaming incantations as he ran into the chaos. Kant did not bat an eyelid as he followed them in.

  Raghu was unconscious on the floor.

  The Sable Parch peered down at him.

  CHAPTER 43

  ‘A virgin is the best offer for a God of Agony,’ Govind yelled to Sheila through the din of crackling electricity and blowing winds. ‘Do you know what is better than a virgin you fucking bitch? A pregnant woman,’ he screamed.

  ‘I am not pregnant,’ she screamed back at him.

  ‘Oh yes you are. Don’t doubt the Surya seed.’

  ‘I am not, I swear. I know what the Sutram can do. Get out while you still can.’

  ‘Shut up whore, you’re pregnant, you just don’t know it yet,’ Govind screamed hoarsely.

  Eshwar caught up with the tantrik and announced his presence with a well-placed kick on his back. The tantrik lunged forward and would have crashed onto the floor if not for translucent hands that erupted from the ground to hold him up. He turned on Eshwar, his face twisted in manic rage. Bellowing a mantra, he cast a spell. Nothing happened. Eshwar walked up to the tantrik and with two swipes cut off his arms. The tantrik shrieked hideously.

  Dark smoky arms bellowed out from his shoulders in the place of his dismembered ones. His face convoluted in a terrible grimace of rage and fear, the tantrik stalked after Eshwar.

  Govind, braving the inferno of lightning and stinging hot winds, was on the precipice leading to the chasm. Sheila was only vaguely aware of being dragged into what seemed to be the very core of things.

  ‘Let me go,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Shut up, whore,’ Kiromal repeated though there was no bite in his words. He was as exhausted as his prisoner.

  ‘Let her go Kiromal, or I swear I will shoot you down,’ Kant screamed. His gun hand did not waver an inch in spite of the fresh blood spurting out of his opened stomach wound.

  ‘Oh shut up, Kant. Get lost.’

  The shot wasn’t audible in the din, but it was fired nevertheless and made a neat hole on Govind’s chest. The minister saw his blood spurting out like water from a leaky tap. He let go of Sheila to put both his hands to his chest dramatically. He collapsed to the floor.

  The tantrik’s attention was drawn to the injured Govind Kiromal. He threw out his new translucent hands and weaved his dark magic. Like a puppet, Govind jerked back to his feet. The talisman on his forearm was burning into his skin. He twisted around, stared at the tantric, and screamed, ‘Guruji, it hurts.’

  The tantrik did not bother to answer the hapless politician. He moved his wrists like a maestro in an orchestra. Govind whimpered silently as his mind lost all control over his body. It was as though he was trapped inside a coffin. He could not as much as speak a word. He knew he was moving only because he saw himself get closer to the precipice.

  He knew now what the tantrik had intended for him. Sheila was never the sacrificial lamb, Govind realised with growing horror. It had always been him, primed and fattened until the final moment when the tantrik would use him as an offering for greater power. It had always been about the tantrik. He was just a pawn.

  The talisman was the tantrik’s remote control. And now he was using it.

  Govind tried to struggle but nothing happened. The only thing in his control, the Home Minister realised, were his thoughts. They didn’t matter. Not in the least. He thought of Shanti, his wife, whom he had wronged so much. He wanted to tell her he was so sorry. His struggle for power had turned out be nothing more than chasing after fool’s gold. He could have loved her better. Cherished her. He could have made her smile at least once. That would have been worth it. In this moment, when everything was coming to an end, Govind Kiromal realised how much of a fool he had been all along.

  He could have lived a different life.

  A happy one.

  He thought of his son. Shakti was interested in drama and music. Govind had had always seen his son as a disappointment. He had turned out to be far more prudent than Govind had ever been. The politician reckoned Shakti took after his mother. Good for him. He wished only the best for the boy. He wished he had said that to Shakti’s face. It was too late. This was a hurdle he had created for himself. Govind knew every hurdle inherently presented a way out of itself. Sure. Even the one he was in had a solution worked into it. Only, it was not the one he wanted.

  He thought of his foolish uncle. All his life he had chased after power. He believed in the wrong people. He had infused Govind with his madness. Karan Kiromal thought that everything could be bought, even a God. But what Govind saw under him was not a God. It was evil. Pure evil. And, it was waiting for him.

  Stupid!

  You deserve this.

  Let it end.

  Govind found himself at the very tip of the precipice. He cringed mentally from the horror down under. What he saw made his blood freeze. Greyish tendrils of hair drifted mildly from a greenish grey dome brewing an electric storm deep within the chasm. All of a sudden, the tendrils stretched into rigid rods aiming towards him.

  The globule buzzed like a giant beehive.

  Strangely enough, Govind could see that inside it where thin golden coloured things that looked like tadpoles. They appeared to be swimming in the electrical energy inside the balloon like head. At times they attempted to leap out but a field of power flared out to swallow them back into its fold.

  The tendrils screamed towards Govind in the blink of an eye, piercing into his body, holding him in a grip of pure agony before the politician lost his senses. Govind did not know that the tendrils were carrying him to the Sutram, he did not know that he was being sucked inside out on the way down. By the time he reached the Sutram, Govind Kiromal was not only dead, he was only skin and bones. The carcass landed on the orb and was immediately incinerated. The talisman shone for a moment and then all Hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER 44

  ASSUME a hypothetical traveller passing through Gudem. He would have turned right back the way he had come. Every instinct would have driven him back because the place had a certain repulsiveness that night. Like a sewage contaminated by industrial waste. If, in spite of that, the crazy traveller decided to go ahead, another gruesome sig
ht would have revealed itself.

  In the moonlit night, the traveller would have seen a big bunch of people floating dormantly in the air, face up, like dead fish. They were lying prone, limbs hanging loose, at least twenty feet from the ground, silhouetted against a full moon. At that point, the traveller would want to retrace his steps from the morbid place. No such luck. He would have crossed the point of no return and joined the villagers in their gory perches, his life juices being sucked out to feed the Sutram.

  WHITE filled his world. Raghu noticed the white was cracked in a few places. A putrescence was eating into the white like acid on cloth. The cones in the white shone a brilliant blue, just like the sky on a clear winter’s morning, at the same time irresistible and vulnerable.

  The blue beckoned as much as the red drove him into action. He felt more than heard the last remaining remnant of the first sound. The conclusion of a word. Like a deep hum all around him. A resonation that pulsated through his body. It echoed across the white. Everywhere. Though he felt only the vibrations, he knew it for what it was.

  The sound of the universe.

  The backwash of the one syllable that conquered speech itself.

  An echo of the primordial voice. Just an echo. A memory.

  It told him what to do.

  The Sable Parch was peering down at him. He saw that it was shiny and crystalline against the white setting. It was large and sturdy. It was time. He smiled. The Parch plunged its darkness into him. Ripping his stomach open. Spilling his guts. Raghu screamed. He clutched the Sable Parch. He did not use the word Ramaya Shastri had blurted out to him. Raghu had heard it wrong. He knew what Ramaya had meant to say. It was not baboon. His last words were, Babu…

  ‘Om!’

  It was a simple syllable instigated by the first thought. The language of the universe. Its echo still rumbled as electromagnetic pulse across the vastness of space.