The Case of the Vicious Vampires

by Ketaki Karnik

  Calm down? At a time like this, when I’m a whisker away from being murdered. Incredible, what an imbecile I had been. I should have seen this earlier. I had walked right into it. And now, because of me, we were all going to… Anna’s advice, actually, was excellent. Calm down, I told myself. Think calmly. Where would you have placed the murder weapon if you were the murderer?

  “Let’s check the Lab. Look for anything out of the ordinary.” The others followed as I barged into the main Lab area. Time wasn’t a luxury we had. But being haphazard wasn’t going to help either. It’s better to know two chapters well instead of flipping through the entire book, not really learning anything, before an exam. Raima, Anna, Varun and Sid followed my lead and started examining different sections of the Lab. A minute later, Raima called out, “Guys.”

  We scurried towards the middle of the Lab. A bubble shaped glass beaker containing a thin layer of bright blue crystals stood on the work counter. The beaker was half filled with a transparent liquid. The mouth of the glass beaker had been sealed with a cork. Two glass pipes, extending from within the beaker and through the cork, were the only outlets. A short, narrow glass pipe pointing upwards had been left open. A longer broader glass pipe ran from within the beaker to a triangle shaped container, quarter full of a transparent liquid.

  “What’s cooking?” said Sid.

  “Sid, seriously,” admonished Raima, as she extracted a small white bottle from the garbage bin below the work platform. ‘Beware: highly noxious when mixed with water. Explodes on contact with hydrochloric acid.’ The warning was in bold, black letters. Raima unscrewed the cap. Three deep blue crystals were stuck to the bottom of the bottle. I glanced at the balloon-shaped glass container. One bubble rose through the liquid.

  “And that,” said Raima shakily, pointing to the triangular container, “Must be hydrochloric acid.”

  Utter silence. My throat was parched, drier than the deserts of Sahara.

  “Is there any other way out of the Lab?” asked Anna, her voice trembling. I shook my head. “How can that be? All places need to have an alternate exit. The law says so,” Anna’s voice turned shrill.

  My heart pounded loudly. So loud that I wondered if Sarla and Venky sir, back at the Academic Block, could hear it. Raima’s eyes were swelling with tears. Varun and Sid were too stunned to say anything. They were still digesting our imminent death.

  “At least, let’s not stand next to the gas,” said Anna hoarsely. We zombie-walked to the reception area. And froze.

  Finally, Varun said, “There has to be something we can do.”

  “Screaming is out of question. We are too far out for anyone to hear us,” replied Sid. “Our only hope is to stop the poisonous gas and explosion.”

  “Someone really does want us dead,” said Anna. “And is taking no chances. Two ways to murder us - that’s obsessive.”

  What would a detective do in such a situation? Apart from not having strolled into the T-Rex’s lair, of course. Focus, I admonished myself.

  “Can we stop the gas?” I willed my voice to remain calm, but I couldn’t quite manage.

  “We could break the bubble-shaped beaker,” said Varun.

  “I’m not so sure that’s a smart idea, Varun.” Anna pursed her lips. “The crystals are already wet. Releasing them might hasten the process.” Made sense. We didn’t know how these crystals would react when exposed to air.

  “What about stopping the explosion?” No suggestions.

  “We don’t know a thing about the properties of these chemicals. So, I’d rather not touch them,” said Anna. “We might cause another reaction. At least this way, we have some time.”

  “How much time do we have?” asked Raima.

  Anna had no answer. “We are not yet feeling drowsy or strangled, so I guess that means the gas hasn’t started to affect us yet. As for the explosion, no clue at all.”

  “Kavya, if there ever was, this is the perfect time for one of your wacko ideas that always seem to work,” pleaded Raima.

  Stop panicking, I commanded myself. Think.

  “Can we use the smoke idea again?” I asked, looking up at the fire detectors.

  “The smoke alarm is loud, but I’m not sure if it’s loud enough. Would Appa, Sarla and the others be able to hear us?” asked Sid. “It is definitely worth a try, though.”

  “Hang on,” cried Varun excitedly. “I remember Dad mentioning that some advanced detectors have volume control options. This Lab must have used the most high-tech detectors available, with volume control settings. Let’s make sure the alarm is on maximum volume.”

  “Where would the volume control be, Varun?” asked Anna, trying to assess the height of the ceiling.

  “On the main control unit, not each individual detector,” replied Varun.

  “Which would be where?” asked Sid.

  “Actually, could be anywhere,” he said slowly, shrugging his shoulders.

  Very helpful, Varun. Like promising an out-of-this-world yummy moist chocolate cake and telling you to search for it across the city. Right now, we don’t have time to play treasure hunt. If you want to be a detective when you grow up, act like one, I told myself sternly. Stop whining. Where would I have installed the main control unit? “The most logical place is near the reception. Let’s start there.”

  Anna spotted it instantly. A small box was stuck onto the wall behind the reception. “Guys, serious problem.” Hollowness filled Anna’s voice, as her arms drooped by the side. She twisted and twirled two loose broken wires between her fingers.

  “The murderous monster! He destroyed the fire alarm,” exclaimed Varun, tightening his fists.

  “You have to hand it to our murderer. Mind-blowingly meticulous – nothing’s escaped our killer,” I added, shuddering.

  An emptiness surged in me. As if all my blood had been sucked out. I was trapped in a tiny room with the walls closing in and no one could hear my screams.

  Somewhere, in this dark abyss, a weak thin voice said to me, “Don’t give up hope, Kavya. Think logically.” That is precisely what I’ve been doing, the rest of me boomed back. We don’t know how to stop ourselves from being poisoned or blown to bits. So should we think illogically, the booming voice asked sarcastically?

  Illogically? I jerked my head. I felt like I was in a movie theatre with 20 different movies playing at the same time. And, I was trying to make sense of them all.

  A bizarre idea started taking shape. “Instead of stopping the explosion, what if we caused an explosion?”

  “Caused an explosion?” Raima’s eyes widened to the size of planets. “Have you totally lost it Kavya? Do you want to kill us sooner?”

  Sid and Anna stared at me like I absolutely needed to be packed off to a mental asylum.

  Varun, otherwise cheer-leader for my hair-brained schemes, was dying to add a lot more to what Raima had said. Instead, he braced himself, with obvious huge self-control, and asked, “Kavya, do you have something in mind, or did you just…” He deliberately didn’t complete the sentence.

  “There’s nothing we can do to stop the poisonous gas or explosion. Plus, we are trapped in here and there is no way to leave the Lab. The only way out is to attract Sarla’s or a Venky sir’s attention to the Lab.”

  “And how do we get Appa to come here? We don’t even have our phones.”

  “By creating a huge explosion.”

  “It’s a crazy idea but the only one we have,” said Anna slowly.

  Clearly, we needed an explosion that wouldn’t kill us. And we needed to make it happen quickly, before the blue crystals erupted.

  “This Lab seems to have every chemical in the world. We only need to figure out what to use,” said Sid.

  “We need a powerful and contained explosion,” said Anna.

  Absolutely. We now only had to crack the super easy puzzle of how to create an explosion. We gaped helplessly at each other. This was turning out to be like one of those endless computer games, where you keep moving f
rom level to level, but the game doesn’t end. Every time we came up with an idea, we hit a wall.

  “We could start a fire,” said Varun.

  “And burn ourselves too?” said Raima. “No. We need something more like a rocket. You know, like those Diwali firecrackers that will go through the wall and into the sky, so everyone can see it.”

  “That’s brilliant, Raima,” said Sid, with a wry smile. “Except, none of us know how to make one.”

  Raima’s description was perfect. If only there was a way to build a rocket.

  Come on Kavya, I told myself. You’re a super-enthu member of the Science Club. There surely must be something useful you’ve learnt. I knew more about our universe and the planets than most people in my class and I know some really cool stuff about how the brain works. But solar flares and neurons weren’t going to help me create an explosion. Solar flares? What if…?

  “Guys, I think I may have a way. But only if we can find a hydrogen and an oxygen gas cylinder.” I said suddenly, excited. My heart beat ultrafast, like the drums in the music Varun listens to. Finally, there just might be a way. Just might. But that was way better than a certain probability of zero.

  “I’m sure there has to be one in the Lab,” said Anna, opening the glass door to enter the main Lab area.

  Instantaneously, my throat felt parched. Every mini drop of water was sucked out. Varun coughed – a horrible cough, like two rough metal plates grinding against each other. Again and again. Raima’s eyes turned bloodshot red and started watering. Anna clutched onto the side of the table to stop herself from fainting. Sid panted loudly and repeatedly.

  But, this was nothing compared to what awaited us.

  We rushed towards the cylinder racks, examining each one. What I really wanted to do, though, was bolt out of the Lab area to the relative comfort of the reception area. I forced myself to study the labels carefully. I saw Raima grab Sid’s arm and pull him towards her. Through oceans of tears, she couldn’t see the label clearly, but she thought it was…she pointed to the cylinder in front of her, on the lower rack. Sid gave a thumbs-up and helped Raima carry it outside the main Lab area. Varun hauled a cylinder of oxygen.

  Anna slammed the connecting door shut. For a few seconds, none of us spoke. It felt like heaven to be out of the gas chamber.

  “We need to hurry,” said Raima dabbing her eyes. The tears reduced, but the redness stayed. “What else do we need?”

  “We need a bucket of water and mug. And we need to create a spark.” My throat was steadily getting drier.

  “The TV wire,” said Varun. “I need a scissors or knife to cut it.” Anna rummaged through the reception table drawer and found a pair of scissors. She collapsed on the chair, holding her head between her hands. Varun charged into the guard room. Raima followed, to drag a chair out into the reception area and set its back against the outer wall of the reception. Her tears were flowing again. Meanwhile, Sid helped me open the nozzle of the oxygen cylinder so that the gas escaped. Darts of burning coal started bombarding the insides of my throat, going all the way down to my stomach. Varun broke into a fit of coughing.

  “I’ll go help him,” said Sid, as he walked unsteadily towards the guard room. Raima squatted on the floor, barely able to see. Varun and Sid brought a bucketful of water and a mug from the guard’s bathroom and the cut-off TV wire. Anna helped them scrape off the rubber covering from an inch of the wire so that the copper cores were exposed. But she could barely move her hands. The poisonous gas had wrung out all her energy.

  “Oh damn! I forgot,” I cursed. “We need a really thin tube to insert into the nozzle of the cylinder.” Thin enough not to block the nozzle completely.

  No one wanted to venture into the Lab again. The reception area was already a hellhole. I couldn’t imagine how bad the Lab area would be. I looked around: Anna would faint any minute now, Raima couldn’t move, Sid was like a leaf in a hurricane and Varun’s cough would kill him. And me, I was on fire, like I was on the sun.

  “I’ll go,” I said, in a fit of insanity.

  “You can’t enter the Lab alone. I’ll come with you,” said Varun between a spurt of coughing, laced with saliva. I refused. Thank God there wasn’t any blood, I thought to myself. But for how long? The way he was going, he’d be dead the moment we entered the Lab.

  “Come Kavya, let’s go. You search the cupboards above the work counters and I’ll search the ones below.” Raima stood up, holding the edge of the reception table. No wonder she was my BFF. Before leaving, we instructed the boys to fill the empty oxygen cylinder with water, up to the brim, and place it in the bucket filled with water, upturned.

  Raima and I glanced worriedly at Anna. We had to make the explosion work. Soon.

  Taking a deep breath, Raima and I entered hell’s core. Raima, with stinging eyes, streaming non-stop tears. And me, with my blood having turned into white-hot coal.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I am gassed and dying

  I held Raima’s arm to guide her to the nearest work counter. Only Anna’s state kept me from running out of the lab. My favourite cousin had always been my protector. If she hadn’t even offered to come into the Lab with me, Anna was in way, way worse condition than she let on.

  On the second shelf above the counter, to the right, were coils of rubber. I grabbed all of them. Raima nudged me to show an assortment of tubes she had found. Her vision was blurred; she couldn’t make out which was the right one. No way we wanted to spend a second more, here, than absolutely necessary. We ran out, taking all the tubes with us.

  Sid looked like a ghost: pale, sunken eyes and trembling. I freaked as I espied a few spots of blood on Varun’s tissue.

  But the boys had managed to upturn the water-filled cylinder into the bucket of water. I was way too freaked to remember, or even care, what law of physics kept the water in the cylinder from rushing out. “We need to fill the cylinder with hydrogen gas and air in 2:5 ratio.”

  Raima raised her eyebrows, “Kavya, how…?”

  “Approximate is fine. We’ll just have to hope we get it somewhat right.” Given this was our only chance, even if a 1% chance, no one argued.

  I picked the narrowest tube and inserted it into the nozzle of the inverted water-filled cylinder. I thought my fingers would burn the pipe into ash. Sid connected the other end to the closed nozzle of the hydrogen cylinder.

  “Lift the hydrogen cylinder. And let the gas flow through the tube till the cylinder feels a little more than half heavy.” I looked up startled. Anna’s voice had gone thin, practically unrecognisable, but it still felt so amazingly good to hear her. Anna tried, but couldn’t get up from the chair.

  It was scary to see that both Varun and Sid were needed to lift the hydrogen cylinder off the ground. Ordinarily, either would have easily carried the cylinder. Varun opened the nozzle. The pipe filled with a gush, as hydrogen escaped from the pressurized cylinder. Raima and I slightly tilted the water-filled cylinder, to allow water to escape as hydrogen gas rose into the cylinder.

  “Should we stop?” asked Sid, a few seconds later. “The cylinder feels nearly half as heavy.”

  “Guess so,” said Varun.

  Raima and I kept the cylinder tilted, allowing the remaining water to flow out and air to enter. As the last drop of water flowed out, we closed the nozzle with a cork.

  “We need to insert the exposed wire cores into the cylinder through the cork,” I said. What should have been a fairly easy task, turned out to be near impossible. Sid’s hands shook uncontrollably and Raima couldn’t see clearly. The fire within me wouldn’t allow me to stand still for longer than a second. Between fits of coughing, Varun managed to insert the two exposed wires through the cork. I tinkered with the wires to make sure they were very close together, though not touching each other.

  Sid helped me place this cylinder on the chair, diagonally, the nozzle facing downwards while the other end rested against the wall and the back of the chair. The cylinder wasn’t transpa
rent, so hopefully, I had placed the wires correctly. Sid plugged the other end of the wire into the socket.

  We didn’t know how the explosion would turn out. For starters, hopefully there would be one. A loud one, at that. Which, most importantly, wouldn’t harm us. In any case, we needed to be as far away from the cylinder as possible. Going into the main Lab area was completely out of question. We’d rather take our chances here. Dying of a blast seemed less painful than being gassed to death.

  The only option was the guard room.

  “Come Anna,” Raima supported Anna, and with Sid’s help led her into the guard room.

  “Ready?” asked Varun, his finger hovering over the power switch. I nodded. If there’s anything like a miracle, we desperately, desperately needed it now. Varun’s forefinger turned the switch on. Clutching hands, Varun and I sprinted towards the guard room. Sometimes him pulling me along and sometimes, me dragging him.

  I heard the wires spark as we entered the guard room. My heart was thumping and unbearably hot blood scurried within me. Varun and I collapsed behind a table, along with Raima, Sid and Anna. Would this work? At least we had tried, I consoled myself.

  I felt like I was inside a fire breathing dragon. The time had come. The horrible thuds in my brain and heart told me that end was near. For me. And the others.

  Suddenly, a defending bang sounded, rupturing my ear drums. Instantaneously, I covered my ears. The bang sounded again and again, merging with the echoes of the earlier bangs. Torrents of blood slammed into my ears. I further pressed the palms of my hands to my ears. The torture persisted. We were going to die from sound instead of gas. Wow!

  As the drumming reduced, gradually, the fire in me swelled. My insides were dying of heat.

  “Anna,” shrieked Raima. “No, no.” I spun to my left. Anna had passed out. She was still alive. But only just. And only for now. My muscles turned to lead; I couldn’t move my hands. Or feet. Or any part of me.

  A haze descended, like trying to see through kilometres of dense smoke. Was it the death-gas or smoke escaping from inside me? Frankly, I couldn’t care less what it was. The only thing that mattered was: why hadn’t anyone heard us?