“Tantra, I have just a few more questions for you. You told me that the funds for our salaries and the maintenance of this building are taken out of the budget for Refugee Relief. Do you know who is in charge of this program? Where can I find him?”
Whatever doubts or concerns he may have still held, Tantra decides to give K all the information he seeks.
5
Finally, some answers. Just as K suspected, the answers to his questions are to be found in the Refugee Relief Center. When he first comes face-to-face with the person in charge, the man’s initial refusal to say anything at all does not surprise K. He already knew that the man has received orders from above to keep his mouth shut. But K presses on, and once he convinces the man that he’s already figured out at least some part of picture, he comes about, telling K all he wants to know.
From this man, K learns that the ghost of Darko Dachilko has been on a killing spree, not only at the Holy Igitur Monastery and the Planet Bosch Research Center, but also at City Hall and the Papal Court.
“It seems to target people linked to the research on Planet Bosch in one way or another,” he tells K with trepidation. “The authorities understood what a serious matter these incidents were, but they thought it best not to inform the general public, thinking that the ghost of Darko Dachilko opposes the spread of the knowledge of Planet Bosch to the citizens of our Holy Empire.”
“Now it makes sense. So, let me see if I’ve got this right—while we were at the Holy Igitur Monastery, a secret gag order was implemented?”
“That’s exactly right. That’s why no one at City Hall or the Papal Court would tell you anything. We received a communiqué from the Papal Court prohibiting the discussion of any matter in connection with Planet Bosch. In fact, we even had to clean out all traces of the agency in charge of the research center.”
K gives him a puzzled look.
“But wouldn’t it make more sense to close down the Planet Bosch Research Center altogether?”
“Yes, you’re right, of course. To tell you the truth, this is something I don’t understand either. Do you know why they didn’t do just that?”
Now it’s K’s turn to answer questions.
“I wonder. I certainly don’t have any answers. Nothing made sense when I went to City Hall. All I know is that once I gave up, some kid came out of nowhere, bringing me my appointment papers.”
“Oh, really?”
The man’s face lights up as he listens to K’s account of recent events.
“Actually, I read your letter of appointment as a part of the approval process for your salary. Everything looked to be in order, so after making a copy, I sent it up the chain recommending approval. Oddly enough, I still haven’t heard anything back from them, so it does seem like all of this is being kept under wraps. My guess is that the Papal Court still wants you to secretly continue your research on Planet Bosch, while keeping it all outside the official channels. I mean, with all the trouble with the ghost these past months, that only seems prudent.”
The man fixes his gaze on K’s face.
That seems to makes sense.
K appears to have found some satisfaction with these answers, at least for now. But this little sliver of insight turns out to be short-lived. Once he gives the matter some more thought following his return to the office, his doubts return, now more overpowering than ever. In the end, all of it is nothing more than idle speculation. The truth he must recognize is that none of this makes sense at all.
For one thing, K has done nothing since he first arrived here other than sit at his desk all day, without any specific tasks to accomplish. If the Papal Court wants him to serve officially as the director of the research center, surely specific instructions should have come by now. But no such thing has reached him. His salary has been approved. That’s it. Nothing else whatsoever. And so, once again, K returns to ponder these riddles, still unable to come up with any answers that make sense to him.
A few days later, Hoffman contacts K.
Not once had the telephone on his desk rung since K first arrived here. When it rings for the first time, it takes no time for K to somehow surmise that it might be Hoffman on the line.
“Hi! K? It’s me? Do you remember?” Hoffman shouts from the other end of the line.
“Yes, Hoffman. It’s been a while. How have you been? Busy at work, I assume?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” he replies. “After we parted ways, I didn’t end up going to the Sacred Genetics Research Division after all.”
“What? Why?”
“I fully intended to go. But on the way there, something seemed off to me. So, I followed my instincts. I asked to be taken to Central Station and boarded a train right away. I went straight home. I’ve been hiding here ever since.”
This news unnerves K.
“What are you talking about? Hoffman, why don’t we get a meal somewhere? It’d be better than talking on the phone.”
“Sorry, K, that won’t work for me. It’s been two days since I’ve been back, but I’ve been getting a bad feeling about all this again. I only came back to confirm something that had crossed my mind. But now, it’s time for me to get out of here.”
“Just what is going on? You’ve completely lost me.”
“The incident. Remember, at the monastery?”
“Just as I thought.”
“As you thought? Did something happen at your end too?”
“Yeah, the ghost made an appearance over here too.”
“Oh.”
A heavy silence hangs on the other end of the line.
“Hello? Hello?” came K’s impatient words.
“Yeah.” Hoffman’s voice quivers. “So, I just thought it might be best if I warn you too. I’m calling from the station right now. K, our lives might be in danger. That ghost of Darko Dachilko, I think he’s after us. Listen, K, listen to what I’m telling you. Remember all those people at the monastery? No one else is left. Everyone’s gone missing.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s true. Several bodies with their necks wrung like Abir’s have been found. All the rest of them must have met a similar fate. Well I should get to my train. Maybe I still have a chance of getting away. But what about you? What are you going to do?”
“Me? I don’t know.”
“Well, give it some thought. Think up a plan for how you’re going to deal with things. Take care of yourself.”
Hoffman hangs up the phone.
Stunned, K does not move from his seat. A strange sensation sweeps over him, as if black curtains drape right before his eyes, increasingly drawing him into their darkness.
A voice jolts him back to the world.
“K?”
Martha stands behind K, jasmine flowers draped around her neck. K’s face conveys his relief at the sight of her. No longer is she a mere stranger to him.
“Those are beautiful.”
“Can we talk?”
“Of course. Where’s your father?”
“He went out. To the market, I think. Probably won’t be back until the evening. It’s hot in here. Shall we go to the back room? It’s much cooler in there.”
Martha’s eyes glitter with moisture. She holds K’s hands in hers, guiding his fingers under her dress, inviting them inside. She is already wet.
The pair step into the dim light of Martha’s room. Not a moment passes before they fall into each other’s arms. The carnal pleasures of their lovemaking continue until well past the setting of the sun.
No longer can K climb out of the depths of the depravity he has fallen into. Night after night, he devotes himself to his debauchery with Martha. It has become his only relief from his growing fear of the haunting of the ghost of Darko Dachilko.
Still, K remains ill at ease. It’s a ghost he will have to face, after all. There’s simply no getting around that problem. In fact, more than just a mere ghost, Darko Dachilko has the ability to freely jump the streams of the various flows of time, posse
ssing the knowledge of the techniques to appear and disappear through hyperspatial dimensions. What chance does he have against such a being? Only Martha can be his salvation now. So enchanting, so intoxicating are the pleasures of her flesh that when K is with her, he can leave behind all his fears, even if only for a moment.
No doubt, the growing intimacy between Martha and K must have gratified Tantra. Thinking that K’s relationship with his daughter might secure his own position, his persistent requests increasingly become more brazen. Does he think he has K in the palm of his hand? Is that why he repeatedly pesters him for some spending money?
Of course, this annoys K to no end. But for some reason, he finds himself unable to simply shut him down. Perhaps he worries that addressing his problems with Tantra will also damage his relationship with his daughter. No, it isn’t worth risking Tantra taking it out on her should he throw a conniption. Besides, the stresses of living in fear of Darko Dachilko’s ghost must get to him too, making his behavior more pathetic than anything else. Pestering K for money to buy the bottle of the tequila he so wants, just so he can drink himself to sleep every night—that may be the only thing that lets him momentarily take his mind off this constant fear.
There is no escaping their fate now, no place for them to hide. No matter where they go, the ghost of Darko Dachilko is sure to follow them. This place has now become their prison. But what a depraved prison it is! An administrator drunk out of his mind by the middle of day and a director without any work to do but indulge himself in the sweet charms of a woman’s body.
Their lives carry on for a month. Then two months. With the passing of these months, little by little, K realizes just how far he has fallen. This isn’t who he was before. The K who completed the Sacred Service Examination now seems like a different young man altogether, one who embraced lofty ideals, one full of ambition and a clear purpose to his life.
Things are different now. I wouldn’t even dare say the great name of The Holy Igitur anymore. Innocence and purity are now things of the past, replaced by an altogether different kind of man, a beast of a man.
Depression and disgust at himself fill K’s thoughts at times.
If I could at least truly love Martha, then perhaps there could still be some hope for me.
But the truth is that K feels no such affection for her in his heart.
The purposeless passing of each idle day would have surely continued had an opportunity to learn more about Darko Dachilko’s secrets not presented itself to K.
One day, Tantra brings back an old book, telling K that he happened to stumble upon it while he was out and about in the market. Just one glance at the title of the book is all it takes for K to know that he wants it. Seeing K’s newly aroused curiosity about the book, Tantra tells him that it’s a very expensive book indeed. Of course, Tantra is just up to his usual schemes. Knowing him, he would have bargained the price of the book down to nearly nothing when he purchased it. But K cannot be bothered with such trivial concerns now, so he just hands over the money without a word of complaint.
The Enigmatic Heretics, by G. G. Bervera—K recalls hearing about this author during one of the discussions about Darko Dachilko with Mullin and the others at the Holy Igitur Monastery. He gets right to it, examining its pages without delay. Bookworms have chewed through quite a few of the pages of the book, a telltale trace of its age, having likely been published more than three hundred years ago. It’s a shame that K does not have the complete text, but still, some two-thirds of it remain legible.
Though it employs a fictive style of narration, much of the content is supposedly based on factual accounts. According to the story, Darko Dachilko once loved a disciple of his teachings, a young woman named Barbara. Quite a stunning beauty, she was the youngest daughter of a wealthy family.
The author Bervera describes the young woman:
She was such a delicate maiden, possessing the elegance of a fragrant white jasmine. Always, she wore her hair long. Always dressed in white. Always sitting alone contemplating the garden.
Frightening incidents took place when Barbara rejected Darko Dachilko’s marriage proposal after having fallen in love with another, younger man. All of a sudden, the life of the delicate beauty was snuffed out by the hands of an unknown assailant. But that wasn’t the end of it. Some days later, her body was dug up from her grave.
Grave robberies were not an uncommon occurrence back in those days. Strangely, it wasn’t just the many valuables entombed with her that were taken from her grave but also her corpse itself. While the identity of both her murderer and her grave robber remained a mystery, rumors at the time suggested that it was none other than Darko Dachilko himself.
To this day, the truth of this matter remains a mystery. At the time though, all manner of speculation about supernatural phenomena surrounded Darko Dachilko, so it was easy to draw the conclusion that Darko Dachilko himself stole the young woman’s body for some nefarious purpose. Some believe that he had mastered the secrets of life and death, that he was actually over three hundred years old. Some believe that he intended to use this magical knowledge to realize his romantic desires by reviving her body through some strange ritual. He may have succeeded too, as records of his subsequent trial indicated that several eyewitnesses testified to seeing him conversing with a young woman around this time.
The book continues in a style that melds a romanticized story with a critical undertone:
Whispers and rumors talk of Barbara being revived every night at the “House of Osiris” (origin unknown), transformed into an elaborate mechanical doll made to do whatever Darko Dachilko desired. All this happened in a secret room built out of gold and mirrors and equipped with an apparatus that secreted a special gas that could bring the breath of life to those who had passed away. This room had no entrances. Totally cut off from the rest of the world, only Darko Dachilko himself could come and go through his secret mastery of time and space. Only a handful of his close servants even had knowledge of this room.
One time, Darko Dachilko spoke to one of these servants.
“My lover weeps and begs me to let her fall into an eternal slumber,” he said without guile. “But I have no intention of doing this, for her great beauty must be preserved for all eternity.”
“But, Master, is this not against God’s will?” one of his servants inquired. “Is this not in violation of the laws of nature?”
“You are correct,” Darko Dachilko answered. “And this is why it will bring about my own tragic and violent end. God will punish me in the same way I punish Barbara now.”
“What sort of punishment?”
“Immortality. Even if my body is hacked into pieces, I will find no rest. My own future has been revealed to me. I have foreseen my own fate. Knowing now my true place of birth, I will create a true and proper grave for Barbara. It will be the green paradise that we all seek. It is the place that Barbara had always wanted to see while she still lived. As heaven is a place of our dreams and ideals, its existence is impossible in this world, but as a proof of my love for her, I will plant the seed that will create the place that no one can yet imagine.”
“Is it like the brilliant white Taj Mahal that the Indian king took many years to create for his beloved queen?”
“No.”
“Then, is it a special tomb for the dead, like one of the pyramids in northern Africa?”
“No.”
“Where will you create it?” the servant asked. “Please tell me at least this much.”
But Darko Dachilko simply smiled without ever answering the question.
It so happens that Bervera also met a violent end.
6
That night, tragedy strikes the lives of those at the research center.
This is what happens.
Tantra returns home late at night quite thoroughly intoxicated. He must have consumed quite a bit of tequila using the money that he managed to weasel out of K for the purchase of the book. Violent drunk that he
is, he starts a commotion downstairs.
Martha flees up to K’s room, hands cupping her teary-eyed face. For a long time, she sits by the window saying nothing as she continues to sob.
K finally asks Martha what happened. At first, she refuses to give him an answer. Only when he presses her does she begin to speak.
“Tantra is not really my father,” she tells K.
Back when Martha was still a child, the long drought brought many deaths to her hometown, among them, her real parents. Traveling with the throngs of refugees, she ended up finding her way to the capital. But not knowing a single soul there, she came very close to dying of hunger. Only Tantra’s intervention saved her life.
At first, Martha thought him a kind old man. But soon enough, she would understand what a rotten soul her stepfather possessed. Tantra raised her and used her as his servant. He also used her in other ways as he pleased.
From a very young age, he made her do all the housework. But things did not stop here. When she became a little older, Tantra demanded far more dreadful things, becoming violent and losing control of all reason whenever he had too much to drink.
“I was just thirteen then, still a child. I didn’t understand what was happening. But when I refused him, he beat me to a pulp.”
K listens to her story intently.
“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? Yes, it’s shameful, I know. My stepfather was my first man.”
Tears again flow from her swollen eyes.
“Whenever he wanted to drink, he would bring strange men to our home. Then, he would let them spend one night with me in exchange for money. Yes, it’s against the law. But there is always a way around that. He’d just bribe some city officials with my body. Even this position he has now, he got by using me.”
As K listens to Martha’s story, an uncontrollable rage burns within him, a rage beyond any reason. He does not direct this hatred to just Tantra’s atrocities. No, this hatred, this anger—he feels it for all the filth of all the human beings in the world. That is when it dawns on him that even Martha now disgusts him. What is this rage that consumes him? Is it hatred? Or is it jealousy that he feels?
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