“We are furious that you killed Anjali.”
“I didn’t kill her!” he’d replied, surprised that the being spoke English.
The creature’s body expanded and grew until its head touched the living room ceiling. “You try to lie to us, you pitiful human? We know you did this, and now you will either take her place or we will take your daughter from you as punishment. Because of you, we are losing battles we should win. If you want your daughter to live, then you make the correct decision. The choice is yours.”
The Asuras blamed him for every battle they’d lost since Anjali’s death. They told him things about Anjali that he’d only briefly allowed his psyche to consider.
He’d always wondered how his wife knew so much. Her mind seemed to be filled with excessive information. It appeared as if she’d had the memories of one who had lived and studied for many lifetimes and that line of fantastical thought turned out to be true.
The Asura left with the promise to return in just one week’s time to hear his decision. Sitaula used that time wisely and became a man on a mission. He studied old photos of his wife and her family. He sneaked around her parents' home when he visited and perused family albums dating back decades. He even took one of the paintings her father had in an unused bedroom and had it dated. It was a painting of Anjali, but it was hundreds of years old. No matter how far back Sitaula searched, in each painting he saw Anjali, her father, and mother, always appearing the same age. And then he took to the internet. That week he spent his nights searching for information about Anjali’s father and he found his father-in-law’s birth certificate. It claimed the man was over three hundred years old and Sitaula knew that this family had found their fountain of youth. But at what cost? He was pretty sure he knew. It was at the cost of the lives and souls of children.
When the messenger returned, Sitaula learned how his father-in-law had started Korgin Stanley centuries ago. They invested first in the gold mining trade, moving up to drilling and foresting. And one day on an excavation in the Pacific Northwest, one of their miners found something they didn’t understand. It had been a portal, an opening to another world, and through that world came a creature asking for help. It made a simple request to his father-in-law. Bring them children and they would trade them for liquid Amrita.
In Buddhist lore, Amrita was said to offer immortality, but in real life, on Earth, that tale was more the stuff of legend. It was a simple drink monks imbibed, and it was more sacramental than secular and used in rituals and prayers.
But the liquid the Asuras provided from Aihika was anything but a simple drink. It came from the very chalice that had started the Devic war. A sip every year was all it took to freeze time for them. Anjali and her family eagerly complied, so that they could live forever. Then, when the battle was won, they were promised the entire remains of the chalice, enough for them to live more lifetimes then the eons left on earth.
So when the Asura returned with the threat that if Sitaula didn’t comply he would lose the very thing he loved most in the world, he was so terrified, he agreed. But the moment the Deva left, he went on the run. That next day he took Bianca out of school, quit his job, and disappeared into Canada. He’d emptied whatever accounts he had, diverted funds to off-shore accounts so his father-in-law couldn’t track them, and then went off the grid. Sitaula knew he had to change his life, their lives, and had to make amends for the atrocities his wife had committed. He had to hide, hoping the Asuras would not find him. Hoping that if he lived a righteous and pious life of Buddhism that somehow the Buddha himself would take pity on him and protect him. He knew Asuras were Buddhist Devas of the god realm and he knew he had to appeal to someone higher in authority that could help him.
They hid in remote towns and took shelter in remote places. They changed their names and used disguises.
It was a stupid, human plan. He never realized the indelible mark one’s soul makes in the universe. A human soul shines so brightly it is never truly hidden, and no matter how far you ran, you could never hide well enough. One fateful night, early in their escape, the Asuras found them.
The blinding golden glow lit up the small one room cabin. It was midnight and Sitaula slept on the couch while Bianca slumbered in the sole bedroom. Creatures broke down the door and attacked him. They held him tight when Bianca’s screams started.
“Leave her alone! I promise I’ll do what you wish!” Sitaula shrieked.
The Deva bent one of his three faces to Sitaula’s and his breath scorched his skin. “Too late. Now she’s ours. You want to keep her alive? You start doing what you’re told to do, or she’s dead.”
When they finally released him, he ran into her bedroom, but she was gone, and unless he supplied them children, they would kill her.
So Sitaula did what they asked and he became a shell of a man because of it. He kidnapped children from their beds. He stalked them walking home from school. He crept through bedroom windows and plucked infants from their cribs. Once a month, he brought each child through the portals and delivered them straight to the Asuras. In return, they fed him Amrita and he drank it so that he could continue to do his job without the stress of sickness and aging. And if he did that, they would keep Bianca alive. But if he stopped? They’d kill her. In his mind, the longer he lived, the better chance that one day he’d see his daughter again.
Sitaula closed his eyes and fingered the gun in his lap. The last three years were all coming down to these next few minutes. He settled in Skagway and used the legend of Sasquatch to hide his true actions. It had been so easy to blame all of the kidnappings on the Tlingit’s tales of Kushtaka. Everyone knew the story of Bigfoot. It was infamous. Even in Australia they called these creatures Yowies. Every culture knew a similar legend, and he blamed the Tlingit monster specifically for all of it.
A missing child down the coast was never tracked to him. When tourists or adults went missing, even though he wasn’t the reason, it simply helped his cause. He listened to the town gossip and then fueled the rumors of Kushtaka himself. Who would ever accuse a gentle monk who ran a spiritual retreat of being a murderer? Sitaula had built a rock solid reputation in town. A man who aided the townfolk, watched over their children, tutored them, took them in and lived a simple, pauper’s life. A man who fed the hungry and helped the infirmed. He had the perfect cover.
He closed his eyes, remembering the Asuras first orders.
“Bring us children…”
“How old?” he’d whispered.
“Under three, but we’ll take older children as well. They will be able to care for the younger ones until we don’t need them any longer. That is what your Bianca is doing right now. She is caring for the children you bring us.”
He’d not wanted to give them little Bobby Witherell. But, he’d been late with his previous delivery and with no young children in the area, or time to get one, and a death time stamped on his daughter’s head, he’d been desperate. It wasn’t hard to intercept the boys. The short cut was a well-known route that the children could practically walk in their sleep. He remembered they’d been laughing and giggling as they strolled through the woods and it had been so easy. They’d been frightened and Bobby was small for his age. He chose Bobby over Jake for that very reason. It had been easier to overpower him. Sitaula had worn the Yeti costume, made some gruff shrieks, hoisted the screaming child over his shoulder and ran into the mountains with him.
Sitaula glanced behind him to the back wall of the cave. The tub was filled to the brim and he grimaced at the red tinge. Bobby had struggled at the end and blood had been spilled. He’d had to hit him a few times to subdue him and get him into the portal. He grimaced, remembering how hard the boy had fought. But Sitaula won with just a scratch to his own arm, and he’d delivered the boy alive as he had been instructed. He had done enough to save his daughter. He’d completed his end of the bargain. For the time being.
It had all started to crumble when the Yetis began to show up. They were th
e reason he was late with the last shipment. Those damned animals were complicating his mission and his daughter’s life was on the line because of them. What the hell were they even doing here in this realm?
A few weeks before, he’d traveled to one of the more remote Native American Indian reservations and had snatched a baby strapped into her car seat. The parents had placed her on the driveway next to their car for just a few moments while they stepped back into the house to care for another child. The infant’s older brother had fallen and Sitaula could see the parents tending to him just inside the front door. While they were engaged, he simply took the entire car seat holding the baby and fled into the woods. He steeled himself to their screams when he finally heard them. A shriek from a devastated mother travels far.
He took the child to this very cave and had been about to use the portal when a great white Yeti showed up, grabbed the child from him, and clubbed him to the ground. Then, it jumped into the portal with the baby. It had closed before Sitaula could do anything and he knew it would not open again for weeks. His schedule for his once a month delivery had been compromised and that terrified him.
He’d been so furious, fearful and confused. Yetis were real? Why had they taken the child? How did they even know about the portal and what he’d been doing?
And more than that, what would happen to his daughter if that child was not delivered? Were the Yetis delivering the children now in his place, or where they doing something else with them? He’d had no answers and that’s why he’d had to snatch Bobby when he’d had the chance. Between Kelsey showing up and no other babies in the area, he’d had no more time. He'd had to make an offering so they wouldn’t hurt Bianca.
He grimaced, realizing things had spiraled out of control quickly in just days. He hadn’t wanted to kill Charlie, but he’d had no choice. Who knew he would be in Dyea that day acting as tour guide for Kelsey and her brother? Sitaula had come up through the woods, and damned if Charlie hadn’t seen him walking towards the cave in his ape suit, while holding the head of the costume in his arms. The old man bellowed how he knew he was the one stealing all the children and there was no way he wouldn’t blow his cover. Sitaula had no choice but to silence him.
It was then he saw Kelsey and Ari strolling near Charlie’s taxicab and he realized he’d have to do away with them in order to protect his secret as well. He had lined up his shot, but he had missed. Who knew Ari had a gun? He hadn’t counted on that. His being the same boy his daughter had dated all those years before disturbed Sitaula. He realized his carefully hidden trail was not as secure as he had thought.
Sitaula placed his fingers on his temple and closed his eyes. His transgressions plagued his soul. He didn’t want to hurt people. He never had. He’d hoped that opening this retreat and trying to do good in the community would help him find some sense of peace and solace on a daily basis, but he knew it was all a lie. A lie to hide what a horror he had become. He was just as bad as Anjali. Instead of killing for the liquid gold to keep him young, he did it to keep Bianca alive. He kept telling himself that his situation was different than Anjali’s. That he didn’t do this for immortality or power. He did these crimes out of love. It was all for Bianca, and Sitaula knew it was all going to come to an end soon if his plan worked.
Bianca. I’m coming.
He finally heard noise at the mine shaft entrance and began his mantra. Over and over he repeated the chant of the Asuras. The same prayer he’d been repeating for years. The idea had formed one night after a gruesome trade. His delivery had been botched and he’d heard the tortured shriek of the infant as it entered the portal. But something happened in the transport and he’d been left holding the infant’s bloody, torn arm. The only part of the baby not to make it through. After it happened, Sitaula was so horrified, he traveled two towns away where no one knew him and drank himself into a stupor. When he woke up in the back room of the bar where they’d let him sleep it off for the night, the idea came to him. Over and over he repeated the mantra, uttering it daily, during prayers, before bed. He spoke it during his rituals, and before every meal.
He repeated it all the time, and kept saying it right at the moment Ari and Kelsey finally moved into the mouth of the mine shaft. Sitaula raised his voice louder, reciting the words by heart. He kept reiterating it when he raised his gun and pointed it at Kelsey’s rain-soaked form.
He kept saying the prayer even when he fired and hit her. He repeated the words when he saw her fall backwards out of the cave entrance and he said the prayer even when her brother fired his own weapon and hit him squarely in the chest. For that was what he had wanted all along.
To be killed.
Through the pain and through the haze, Sitaula repeated the prayers while his life drained from him and he heard the prayers like a whisper on the wind as his soul finally left his body.
May he, gold-handed Asura, kind leader, come hither to us with his help and favor.
Driving off Raksasas and Yatudhanas, the god is present, praised in hymns at evening.
He said the prayer as he died and heard the prayer in his subconscious mind right until he woke up at the base of Mount Sumeru. He stared upward towards the sky that was lit with fire from the Devic battle miles above.
Energy surged through his being and he pulled himself up from where he lay. Sitaula raised his six arms, and with them, touched his three faces. He felt powerful and unconquerable. He stood and spread all his arms wide and wanted to boast to the world of his indomitable might. No one could stop him now. Not Anjali, not his father-in-law, and not a Yeti. He was invincible.
The battle raging above him was fierce. He could feel the other gods, could feel their energy, but more important than all of them, he could feel her. Her soul was here in this realm. He knew where he needed to go. Knew where he needed to be.
His plan had worked.
He’d become an Asura.
Bianca, I’m coming…
Chapter 23
“Kelsey!” Ari turned his back on Sitaula and propelled himself out of the cave. He knelt next to his sister and placed his hand behind her back for support.
Kelsey sat on her backside in the mud where she’d fallen. She gripped her side and her fingers were slick with her blood.
Ari’s face was a mask of worry. “I have to get you out of here. Come on, let’s get you back to town.” He made to lift her and she brushed him off.
“There’s no time and no one to drive us back, remember? Ari, listen to me. Help me up and take me inside the mine shaft.”
“Are you insane? You need a doctor right now. I have my cellphone, remember?” He took it out and stared at the bars in disgust. “Dammit, no service.”
She grimaced. “See? Look, it’s just a superficial wound. The bullet nicked me and is sitting in that rock over there. I’m not going to die from this.”
Ari glanced at the rock and saw the bullet lodged inside it. He gritted his teeth. “I don’t care that it’s planted there and not sitting in your gut. Stop trying to be a hero. At the very least, you need stitches.”
She glared. “I’m going to say this to you just once. If you want to find Bianca, you help me get inside that mine opening right now and get me to the tub of water that I’ll bet is inside. You got that?”
He scowled. “You’re so goddamn stubborn. You’d rather bleed to death just so you can have the last word, wouldn’t you?” But, still, he complied. With a grunt, he swooped her up in his arms and carried her effortlessly into the cave.
Sitaula lay on his back with his eyes open and vacant. Blood dripped from his mouth and there was a gaping, bloody hole in his chest.
Kelsey bade Ari to stop for a moment and stared at him. “Did you hear what he said before you killed him?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what he said.”
She sniffed. “You should. He repeated that same prayer I heard him uttering my entire stay here. He repeated it again right before he died.” She glanced at the back wall of
the tunnel. One direction led deeper into the mine shaft and the other had been carved out like a cave. She nodded triumphantly. “I knew it! That’s what I was looking for. Take me over to the tub against the back wall. There had to be a way he was bringing the kids through. A portal is right here.”
Ari stood next to the tub and was about to put her down when she shook her head. “No, you need to step in.”
He squinted. “Are you serious? It’s filled with blood. What about my boots?”
Kelsey rolled her eyes and grunted in pain. “Will you just listen to me? I’ll buy you another stinking pair. Now get in already! You’re such a whiner.”
With a huff, Ari stepped into the water.
“Ok, now bend down until your knees are resting in it as well.” For once Ari complied without comment and kneeled in the blood-soaked water. Kelsey’s backside went under as well. “You’re getting wet, too, you know,” he muttered.
“That’s the idea, genius. Have your gun ready.”
Ari glanced at her, startled. “Have my gun ready, why?”
Kelsey reached over and grasped the rubber hose sitting to the side of the tub that extended from the wall. She placed it in the tub and fresh water dripped in. “Just do it.”
“Kelsey, I don’t…” It was all he managed to say before they disappeared.
#
“…understand,” Ari finished, then fell onto his butt on sooty ground. Puffs of ash smoked around him. Kelsey landed unceremoniously next to him and grimaced in pain.
He jumped to his feet and stared around, startled. “Holy shit. Where the hell are we?”
The sky above them erupted in lightning, and flames exploded like fireworks. Embers rained down on them. The tops of the mountains soared so high they disappeared into the dark storm clouds that blanketed the sky. The air stank of sulfur.
The Call of Mount Sumeru Page 18