Valley of Death

by Vickram E Diwan

  The maid woman from the nursery came to take away the baby and the four old friends spent their time in easy conversation until Payal’s mother came and they ate the meal of daliya (yellow lentils), ladyfinger with chapatti. Abhay’s relationship with his mother-in-law had improved tremendously since the early days of his courtship with Payal. But he still felt a little inhibited before the gutsy and catty eyes, Mrs. Chatterjee, unlike his father-in-law, who was a far easier going person.

  After the meal, Naresh and Shalini left, Abhay too went home around 9:30, to come back in the morning with tea and breakfast, while Payal’s mother was to spend her second successive night in the nursing home. They expected permission to take mother and daughter home the coming day after Doctors came on their morning round and had checked them both.

  The vast estate of Rudolf Schönherr was plunged into darkness; he was by himself in the farmhouse near the lake, sitting in the kitchen and had lit up two thick candles. A sudden fluctuation in the voltage had led to a spark and a section of the internal wiring had burnt, because of which lights had gone out 15 minutes earlier. He had to open all the doors and windows for the smoke and stench of burned P.V.C. wire to escape.

  He was considering going to his bungalow in Vasant Vihar, and send an electrician tomorrow to carry out the necessary repairs. He was expecting his friend Rohit at his farmhouse and therefore could not leave until the latter’s arrival. He had forgotten to charge the battery of his mobile phone as usual because of which it had stopped working. That was the reason why couldn’t alert Rohit mid-way and ask him to meet him at his Vasant Vihar residence. Rudolf was thus waiting for him, thinking he would leave with his friend as soon as the latter arrived.

  A sudden noise caught his attention; it was as if someone had gently tapped on the glass of a window. He went up to the open French windows of the bedroom that overlooked the vast stretch of the emptiness of the estate, holding the candle stand with two thick candles in it. As the quarter moon came from behind dark rain clouds, the grassland was briefly lit up. A strong wind current blew across with tiny droplets, which told of the imminent rain. The long and dark shadow that fell behind him shuddered as the flame of the candles flickered in the wind.

  He must have been hearing things, Rudolf mused, as there was no one who could have made the noise; or maybe the wind was the real culprit. He turned around with a half-smile of self-ridicule on his lips to go back to the kitchen. But the loud noise of breaking glass stopped him dead in his tracks; he turned on the heels to look at the window. The shock of what he saw made him step back, with utter disbelief. With his mouth hung open, he saw one of the most amazing sights of his life, as a chill went down his spine.

  A fat 8-year-old girl wearing a ghagra-choli and bleeding profusely from her forehead was trying to get inside the room through the window, breaking its glass in the attempt. Rudolf recognized her as one of his early victims, who he had abducted and sacrificed at the altar before the Devil. He recalled her screams of agony, her wailing, andpleading; before he had murdered her. He felt gooseflesh all over his skin and ran away; for the first time in his life, he felt scared!

  But another chilling sight awaited him in the kitchen. On the chair of the dining table that he had left empty was sitting an old woman. She was an obese woman with a wrinkled face, long, unkempt hair, who looked sickly and coughed because of severe chest-congestion. She had no one to provide for her or get her treated. “My son, can you give me some food and water? I am very hungry,” said she and then began to cough.

  Rudolf had a strong sense of déjà vu; it was a replay of the incident, which had occurred 3 years back. But how could that be? He had brutally sacrificed that old woman on the altar, deaf to her pleadings, after he had brought her to his estate from the road, from where he had found her wandering. Was he going crazy? The palms of his hand were sweating and he could feel the wall against his back; his mouth had opened involuntarily and he was gasping for breath.

  Before he had recovered from those disturbing sights; the door of his bedroom opened; a boy came out of it and unhesitatingly walked in the kitchen. Ignoring both Rudolf and the grumpy old woman, he opened the door of the refrigerator, picked up a piece of cake and went away. Wasn’t that the boy that he had found sitting all by himself in the doorway of his house and had lured into coming with him by promising him cake and pastries? Rudolf recalled that he had never fulfilled that promise and had instead chopped off his head on an Amavasya.

  He ran out of the door of the kitchen and into the vast swathe of grassland, where his legs took him. When he got tired, he stopped beneath a tree and rested his back on it. He was heaving and his eyes were closed as he found himself slipping against the stem of the tree. He sat beneath it and covered his face with his hands.

  “Look at her!” The old woman’s rebuking voice made him open his eyes.

  When he looked up, Rudolf saw the body of a young woman hanging by the branch of the tree underneath which he was sitting. She looked scary with her ogling eyes; her tongue was hanging out, her neck was swollen and her face was blackened. Her body was slowly rotating by the sari, from which she had made the noose and she wore a torn blouse and petticoat, with no undergarments beneath.

  “You tell her to get down from there; I have asked her so many times not to do this, but she doesn’t listen to me,” complained the old woman to Rudolf.

  He looked back at her in a foolish manner; remembering that the young girl Sushmita worked as a fashion designer and was stuck in Mehrauli with a flat tyre. Instead of helping her, Rudolf had dragged her in his station wagon. He had taken off her sari, torn her clothes and started to rape her in the car itself. After reaching the estate the naked dance of bestiality was repeated many times as he had repeatedly violated her in every conceivable way throughout the night. Intoxicated with the hubris of his power he had been deaf to the pleadings of the girl.

  He gagged and held her captive in the glass pyramid in the morning, intending to sacrifice her two days later, on Amavasya. But when he had returned, he found that she had somehow managed to free her. Instead of running away, however, she had chosen to hang her by her sari on the branch of one of the trees in the farmhouse. When Rudolf found her; Shusmita’s body had stiffened and her face had turned black. He had taken off her body from the branch of the tree and had dumped it in a ditch by the roadside in Mehrauli; from where the police had found it a few days later.

  He had read the daily pleas of the girl’s parents in newspapers, for her captors to release her unharmed and requesting for any clues regarding her whereabouts. The Police for their part had questioned and detained dozens of people, after a media and public outcry over the incident, but had been unable to solve the case. Since her abandoned car had been found in Mehrauli area, the cops had questioned all the owners of farmhouses and staff employed therein, covering a four-mile radius, even sending teams across NCR, but to no avail. They had come to Rudolf’s farmhouse as well and had conducted a routine inquiry but had left satisfied with his answers.

  And now the incident was replaying itself – but how was it possible? Rudolf wondered as he looked at the face of the girl hanging by the tree. All of a sudden the eyes of the corpse opened; as he jumped out of his skin! The hanging-girl began to laugh; the bone-chilling laughter of the corpse sent a shiver down his spine. The old woman began to clap jerkily; the duo was enjoying the ordeal of their former tormenter, on who the tables had been turned.

  He wanted to get up and run away but was paralyzed. His legs did not have the strength needed to get up. The hanging girl and the old haggard woman was joined by the fat girl, who had broken the window-glass and the boy who held a cake piece in his hand. They formed a semi-circle around Rudolf, who appeared to have aged within the space of a few minutes and gave the impression of a broken man who was not sure of himself, a mere caricature of his earlier self, as he tried to shrink within him, like a scared rat or mongoose.

  “What…what do you want?” He asked i
n an empty voice.

  “Revenge!” declared the hanging girl.

  “But…but you had all died!”

  “We have come back from the dead, to punish you and take you with us,” said she.

  “Do not be afraid son,” said the vagabond woman, “death isn’t as bad as people try to make it. And we all would also be there, to keep you company.”

  “I don’t want to die!”

  “Did we want to die?” Asked the hanging girl in a bitter voice. “Did you or death showed any mercy on us?”

  “You all can’t hurt me; I am in league with the Devil. I am the most intrinsically evil man, I am all powerful, I am invincible!” He declared in an agitated manner as if to reassure him.

  All the ghosts laughed heartily hearing that; the small boy ate the cake and was oblivious to what the elders were doing. The hanging girl opened the noose around her neck and jumped down on the ground; she caressed the hair of the boy and stood next to him. “He was such a sweet child, see what you made him,” she said to Rudolf.

  The gentle face of the boy was replaced in an instant by a mutilated face, with one eye and skin missing from various places, from where bones were showing. The fat girl that stood with the boy had dirty hands, with thick blackened fingers and long nails. All of which scared Rudolf, who felt difficulty in breathing. Suddenly the ground beneath him began to reverberate, and he hurriedly left his place. He saw two small hands come out of the ground and then a head, as the labourer’s buried child, which he had sacrificed in front of Payal tried to dig himself out of the ground. The ghosts of Rudolf’s victims began to close in on him as he shouted in an agitated manner, “Don’t come near me! Stay the hell away from me!” The stench of the mutilated corpse overpowered him and he vomited, as he felt his face being splashed with water.

  “Rudolf! Rudolf!” He opened his eyes and saw the concerned face of Leena, his girlfriend looking down at him. She wore a black coloured nightie that revealed half of her large breasts. “What happened to you? You were shouting ‘Don’t come near me’; were you having a nightmare?” She asked.

  “I was sleeping?” He asked in a confused manner.

  “Don’t you remember? You are at my flat in Gurgaon; you came here last evening and we ate dinner together,” she tried to remind him. “Go to the bathroom and clean yourself; you have vomited on your pyjamas. Maybe the meat we ate was not fresh and has caused indigestion,” she reasoned.

  Rudolf got out of the bed and walked to the bathroom; he put on the latch of the door and emptied his bladders, before washing his face and taking off his soiled vest and pyjamas. Cleaning his body with a towel, he put off the latch and holding the door ajar said, “Leena! Give me a fresh pair of vest and underwear.”

  But no reply was forthcoming; he repeated his request before he opened the door fully. He was startled to find that he was looking at the bedroom of his own bungalow in his farmhouse in Mehrauli. Turning back, he found that behind him was his own bathroom and that he was not in Leena’s flat in Gurgaon. Half falling he came out of the bathroom and sat on the carpet clad floor heaving. He was definitely going crazy! There was no other explanation of what was happening to him. One moment he was at his farmhouse seeing ghosts of his victims, next moment he woke up at Leena’s flat and the very next instant he finds him back at his farmhouse. He tried hard to remember; he recalled that he had gone to Leena’s place, ate supper together and had great sex before he went to sleep. But was that on the same day or on another day in the past week?

  “Rudolf! He heard the sharp rebuke in the voice of his maternal grandmother – the infamous Witch of a small town on Austrian-German border. Opening his eyes he found that he was once again a small boy; in the woods with his grandmother. “Sie müssen allesauswendiglernen” (You have to learn it all by heart), she was scolding him in German.

  "Wenn du Fehler machstoderversagst, werdendich die dämonischen Mächte töten. Seien Sie nicht prüde und arrogant, nur weil Sie Tauben, Hähne, Hunde und Lämmer ohne Zögern und Reue töten können. Menschen zu töten kommtnichtleicht; Sie müssen Nerven aus Stahl besitzen, um einesolche Aufgabe ausführen zu können. Wenn Sie mir richtigfolgen und gehorsamsind, werde ich Sie wieeinen Soldaten machen, der eine Tötungsmaschine ist, die ohne Gefühl töten kann. Aber wenn Sie in kritischen Zeiten Angst bekommenoderdie Nerven verlieren, werden Sie selbst getötet. Zeige niemandem Gnade. jeder ist ein Feind und ist außer dir entbehrlich ,”she said poisoning the mind of the young and impressionable child.

  (If you make mistakes or fail, then the demonic powers will kill you. Don’t be prudish and arrogant just because you can kill pigeons, cocks, dogs, and lambs without hesitation and remorse. Killing humans do not come easily; you have to possess nerves of steel to be able to carry out such a task. If you follow me properly and are obedient, I’ll make you like a soldier, who is a killing machine, who can kill without feeling. But if you get scared or lose your nerve at a critical time, then you yourself will get killed. Show no mercy to anyone; everyone is an enemy and is expendable except you.) She said poisoning the mind of the young and impressionable child.

  He watched horrified as the ghosts of his own victims came from behind and pounced on his granny and hacked her to death. After which they turned to him. “Don’t make it harder for all of us Rudolf! You can’t escape us or your fate,” said the ‘hanging girl’.

  “No! Leave me alone!” He shouted in an agitated manner and banged his head on the stem of the nearest tree.

  Shooting pain in his head and loud and continuous noise of knocking forced him to open his eyes. He found himself back in the bathroom in Leena’s flat and heard her saying, “Open the door, Rudolf! What has happened? Why are you shouting?”

  He got up from the wet marble floor on which he found himself sitting and removed the latch of the door.

  Leena rushed inside and got hold of him. “What is happening Rudolf? Are you trying to scare me?”

  “I myself don’t understand, what’s happening to me?” He asked in a confused manner and walking out fell on the bed like a broken man.

  “You had gone to the bathroom to clean yourself before half an hour, and then I heard you shouting again. Did you fell asleep in there and had that nightmare all over again or had you slipped into a trance?”

  “Give me coke,” he demanded. “My head is splitting.”

  “I don’t keep coke at my flat; I am not a druggie,” Leena said. “Your face is all white; and did you hit your head against the wall in the bathroom?” She asked putting her hand on his head and found a bump there.

  “Give me the goddamn coke, you bitch! Or I’ll kill you, you whore!” He shouted angrily, as he pushed her back. Unable to control his seething rage and frustration, he became violent and picking up the DVD player from the side table near the bed in both his hands, he smashed it against the wall. Not content merely with it, he then picked up a brass flowerpot and threw it at a large 109-inch flat screen L.E.D. television in the room. Oblivious to the loud scream of Leena, when the television screen exploded, he got hold of her and started to strangulate her with his bare hands.

  “Rudolf! Please let go of me, you are killing me!”

  “Give me the Coke or I’ll break your neck!”

  “I swear that I don’t have it, but there’s Scotch whiskey in the bar in the drawing-room,” she managed to say.

  He nodded his head and letting go of her walked towards the bar. As soon as she recovered, she locked the door of the bedroom from inside, but Rudolf was unbothered. Sitting at the bar he opened a bottle and drank the first peg or shot neat, with shaking hands. He felt like a line of fire had gone down his neck to his stomach, burning his throat and food pipe in its wake. He persisted, albeit in a slower manner and emptied half the bottle of the Scotch in the remainder of the night, unable to sleep for fear of the nightmares.

  CHAPTER 6: THE STRIKE & REVIVAL

  Rudolf was sitting in the Nirulas ice-cream parlour in Connaught Place with his hand on the hairless
and slippery thigh of a beautiful woman. He looked lustfully at the lady with noodle hair, who wore a diamond nose-pin and a green & blue flowers print skirt. The strap of her neon fluorescent green bra was visible from her bare shoulders. The most overpowering smells were strawberry and chocolate that entered his nostrils with a gush of cold air, every time the staff opened the glass cover to serve a helping to a customer and stimulated his taste buds.

  He suddenly heard a whisper in his mind; it was Harry who was trying to approach him. Rudolf tried to ignore it, but the urgency in Harry’s voice reached his mind and immediately forced him to leave. “I will be back in a minute,” Rudolf said getting up hurriedly. His female companion looked at him with a questioning glance. “I will just go and check my car, I seem to have left something valuable in it,” he added quickly and without waiting for her response, went out.

  He walked to his Land cruiser Prado parked just outside the brilliantly lit coffee shop with a glass door. He opened the door and got inside his station wagon; the shadowy figure of Harry was sitting on the seat beside him. “What is it, Harry? What is so important?” Rudolf asked getting irritated.

  “I am sorry Master; I was unable to inform you in advance. It’s because of the minimum capacity I am functioning on these days; I owe my failure to that alone and not to my incompetence,” Harry said explaining.

  “What are you talking about Harry? And stop talking in funny riddles.”

  “It’s that tantrik, Master, Bharoo Shah Bengali! He had blinded my senses and I didn’t realize what he was up to? I admit my failure in completely underestimating him and his capabilities,” again reinforced Harry. “He has succeeded in his invocation of Moothkarni power,” he announced as if dropping a bombshell.

  For a while both of them sat silently in the station wagon it was eleven ‘o’ clock in the night and the roads of Connaught place were empty of traffic for the most part. “How did this happen?” Rudolf asked at last, breaking the icy silence.