Valley of Death

by Vickram E Diwan

  He went to the rear seat of his station wagon and putting his arm behind it found an old raincoat, which he normally used to keep there for just those kinds of unforeseen contingencies. He put it on with some difficulty, in the narrow space of the car and went back to his seat. He was startled to see Anshul awake; she was looking straight at him with God's simplicity and a child’s innocence. Abhay slowly opened the cloth with which he had tied her to the seat; she yawned after a long sleep and smiled at him. He took her in his arms; Anshul yawned again opening her little mouth, and drew closer to Abhay’s chest, resting her head on his shoulder. The love of a father rushed through Abhay’s veins like molten lava; he felt his heart going out to his child – to the innocent baby who kept her head so trustingly on his shoulders. As if showing by that just one single gesture of how safe she felt in his presence. The electronic watch on the dashboard was showing three minutes to midnight; there could have been no more running away from it – that was it, the moment of truth!

  It was at that moment that Abhay finally realized how difficult it was going to be for him. In flashes of memory, he recalled the long and anxious wait for the child, the joy when he saw and held Anshul for the first time. All the nights he spent waking, moving to & fro in the house, trying to make the crying baby sleep; the fun he had playing with her. He also recalled how he would spend hours playing, talking and simply looking at her with affection, after he came back from his office in the evening. How could he murder Anshul – his own flesh and blood! In those excruciating moments, his inner struggle reached its peak; his mind was tearing him apart, pulling him in two opposite directions at the same time. Just as the time kept running away, his tension mounted, heightened to unbearable proportions, until it finally reached the point of criticality just as the clock finally struck midnight.

  Abhay was heaving on his seat like he had come there after an arduous marathon. His heart was bouncing, pulling him to Anshul who was still resting with her head on his shoulder, while his mind was pushing him to the very edge. His jaws were clenched and his hands closed in fists were full of sweat. In a state of fright and panic as Rudolf’s words hit his mind again and again – ‘She is not your daughter; she is the result of your wife’s adultery. She has to die if you have to live; if you don’t sacrifice Anshul, the evil black power will not return, without taking away your life from you.’

  As if in a dream, he covered Anshul with the cloth that he had previously used to tie her to the seat; he then covered her with his raincoat and opened the door of his car. In the heavy downpour, he went next to the edge of the filth-filled drain, which was flowing between the enclosures of two tall cement walls. The shouting words in Abhay’s mind were maddening him – ‘It’s either you who will live or that evil child; you have to kill her. He tied the red cloth on Anshul’s wrist. He was by then deaf to the loud crying of Anshul who was getting wet in the rain. The tension, the inner struggle, and the shouting words reached their climax ten seconds before the elapsing of that minute of midnight – ‘YOU HAVE TO KILL THE EVIL CHILD!’

  He raised Anshul in both his hands and threw her down in the filthy drain with all the brute force that he could manage. Through his eyes blurred with tears, he saw the little body wrapped in the cloth falling down in the air. When it hit the black filthy water with a thud, Abhay felt like someone had hit his heart with a forceful punch. He literally was pushed back on his feet with that soul-hitting punch, which coincided with the body of the little crying baby, hitting the filthy waters. He walked back to his car in a dazed manner and drove away, almost as if in a dream. The red taillights of his car grew distant and distant until it finally vanished.

  A dark shadow standing at a little distance, the silent witness to the entire incident walked towards the area of wet bushy ground beside the cement edge of the wall of the drain; from where Abhay had thrown down the baby. The heavy boots of the shadow stopped next to a shinningobject; he stooped and picked up that glittering object. It was a broken gold chain that had fallen off Anshul’s neck. He slipped it in the pocket of his raincoat and adjusting the waterproof ‘Dick Tracy’ hat on his head; he walked back to the direction from which he had come. He opened the door of a Prado Land Cruiser parked at some distance and got inside. Sitting in the driver’s seat he threw away the hat on the rear seat and looked at the adjoining seat.

  The dark shadow of Harry was sitting there, who said, “You have done it Warlock!”

  Rudolf was ecstatic, over excited and unable to suppress his laughter anymore. He laughed and laughed, the whole of the station wagon was filled with his loud and unending laughter. So much so that Harry feared that he had gone mad! The latter seemed to be unable to control either himself or his mad laughter; Harry had never seen his master so overjoyed.

  Rudolf’s eyes were shining with victory; the expression of purest evil in those eyes scared even Harry, who was by definition beyond all fears. “I did it; I pulled it off. Oh, I am good; I am damn good at this!” He declared after he was able to control his laughter. “Who can surpass this evil? Who else deserves the title of the intrinsically evil man? None, none!” he said arrogantly. “Harry,” he declared bombastically, “I’ll go down in history as the most evil and cruel man ever born. I have made a father murder his own child; does it get any better than this?” Rudolf again broke into his peel of outburst, laughing his head off in mad joy of evil.

  “You really fooled the poor man to that extreme Warlock,” Harry said.

  “I told you, Harry, exactly how I would do it and I did it precisely in that fashion,” Rudolf said starting the engine of his Land Cruiser, which was soon flying on the Ring road, heading towards South Delhi. “Oh I loved every moment of it; I knew this man, this Abhay would easily break, all it needed was to put pressure on him at crucial and vulnerable spots.”

  “Yes Warlock; poor Abhay, he never could have known that it was I, who was scaring him on your orders. That it was I who planted that cat-skull in his garage and the red cloth inside his pillow’s cover. Abhay could never guess even suspect that it was me, Harry, who was doing all that and not his faithful wife Payal.”

  “Of course he never figured it out,” Rudolf said driving the car in the rain, “that is why my plan succeeded. I play only to win Harry; I never lose a battle, not ever! Payal was lucky that winter night in my den; if Police hadn’t busted into my estate at that crucial moment, then I would have got her right then and there.”

  “What do you intend to do next, my master?”

  “I feel a sense of anti-climax; now that Abhay has murdered Payal’s daughter. All this has dragged on a trifle too long, and I want to wrap up things now and get on with my life.”

  “Your enemies would definitely regret this,” Harry said.

  “They would not get a chance to regret, in face of my lightning strikes,” Warlock a.k.a. Rudolf said with an iron determination in his voice.

  The red taillights of that Land Cruiser shone brilliantly as it drove away towards Vasant Vihar on that rainy night. The roads were by then completely deserted; only the L.E.D lamps on the tall poles stood on a lonely vigil, lighting the roads in one of the darkest night ever to befall upon the city.

  CHAPTER 9: THE END GAME

  Payal woke up in her bed with a severe headache; the uncomfortable rays of the Sun had managed to penetrate the curtains of the window and were falling on her face. In her drowsiness, she picked up the timepiece from the bedside and was astonished to see that it was two in the afternoon. What had happened to her? She had never slept for that long in her entire life; she looked at the cradle in the room with her half-open eyes.

  Anshul was not there; where could she be? Abhay must have taken her downstairs, she thought, as she remembered the pleasant change in her husband’s behaviour since the previous evening. She smiled to herself and thanked him mentally for his shouldering the responsibility of taking care of their child. She decided to get a bath first and then go downstairs to relieve him of his duty of lookin
g after their daughter.

  She took out a dress from the wardrobe, threw it on the bed and taking a towel went into the bathroom, trying to suppress her yawn. She stood for a long time under the shower; the cold water was falling on her hair and all over her body. She put back the wet hair from her face and let the water wash away not just her sleep and drowsiness but also her headache. Her head was still spinning; something was definitely not right, she thought. Had she eaten or drank something to have caused that? But then Abhay too had eaten all that; she stood there under the shower as long as she wanted to, letting the water run through her hair, her back and fall on the marble floor after touching her ankles.

  After she had bathed and dressed up she went downstairs. She went through the entire ground floor; even looked at the garden outside and the veranda behind. But there was no sign either of Abhay or of Anshul in the entire bungalow; where could they have gone? She questioned herself. She had noticed that the car was not standing in the driveway; that meant that Abhay had gone somewhere, but where could he go? And why did he take Anshul with him? Thousands of such questions ran through her mind as she sat on the sofa of the living room on the ground floor. Maybe she was getting worked up over nothing; Payal told herself, maybe Abhay had just gone to the nearby market or something and would be soon back. But if that were so then why did he take the car? It is not easy driving a car and holding a two-month-old baby at the same time, her mind kept arguing with herself. She kept on repeatedly calling his mobile phone, but there was no response; he was not picking it up.

  By the time the hour had elapsed, her patience ran out; she was walking to and fro in the room with anxiety and agitation, written on her very face. She had even forgotten the fact that she had not eaten anything since the preceding night; the tension of the whereabouts of her husband and daughter lay so heavy on her mind. Suddenly the doorbell rang loudly in the lobby; Payal hurriedly went to open the door, expecting to see Abhay holding her baby in his arms.

  She stood paralyzed in the doorway with her mouth hung open; the man outside was the last person that she expected to see. Before her stood Rudolf Schönherr! She just kept standing there, looking at him and disbelieving her eyes. “You?” Her voice seemed to come out of a deep well.

  “Yes me, in person,” Rudolf said with a most lively smile on his lips. He dramatically bowed his head a little and added, “The intrinsically evil man himself, in flesh and blood.”

  “What...what do you want?”

  “Do I really need to spell it out; have you already forgotten the last night at my estate? We both have some unfinished business to take care of, don’t we?” Said Rudolf with a malicious smile.

  Payal tried to shut the door at his face but anticipating it, Rudolf had put his foot between the door and the doorway. He violently pushed open the door and went inside; Payal who was trying to close the door was pushed back and could stop herself from falling only with great difficulty. “Get out from here!” she shouted.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Payal,” Rudolf said calmly, “I thought you were much more sensible than this.”

  “You want to take revenge,” Payal who had by then regained control of her senses said in an unemotional voice.

  “Shouldn’t I? After all that you have put me through these last few months; is not my desire for revenge justified? I think it is,” said Rudolf.

  “You are a vicious, megalomaniac, evil person; you…you think you can kill me and get away with it?”

  “Yes, I am all that, and yes I think that I can very much get away after killing you. When so many murderers can go around scot free then why not me?”

  “I’ll be damned before I offered myself willingly as a victim,” Payal said and ran away upstairs as fast as she could.

  Rudolf did not try to run behind her; he calmly closed the front door and climbed up the stairs at a leisurely pace. He stopped before the closed door of Payal’s bedroom on the first floor and said, “Come on, Payal, don’t act childish; you think that this mere wooden door can stop me,” said he.

  “Don’t think that you can trick me into opening the door like this,” Payal shouted from inside the room.

  “All right, you have it your way. It won’t make the slightest difference; right Harry?”

  On the mental command of Rudolf, Harry materialized inside the bedroom and walked towards the door. Payal immediately moved away from the door and shrank back to the farthest corner of the room. She saw Harry’s shadow hand reach up to the latch of the door and the next thing she knew, Rudolf was walking inside smiling, through the open door.

  “See how easy it was,” he said cheerfully as he sat on the bed before Payal. He snapped his fingers and immediately Harry vanished from the room.

  Payal sat down on the floor and said, “I guess there is no use talking sense into you; that won’t make you change your mind.”

  “Very intelligent.”

  “What would you gain by killing me?”

  “Not much really, I have to admit. But we all have our vices and mine is the attachment to one of the most primitive of human traits, the lust of revenge and the satisfaction one derives out of it.”

  “You walk into a house on an afternoon and kill a helpless woman, big deal, some bravery in it,” Payal said in a contemptuous voice.

  “But my dear woman, that’s where you are completely wrong. You have not even begun to understand Warlock, his true evil nature; you still are utterly clueless as to how mean and evil I can really be.”

  “Oh really? Please do enlighten me,” Payal said in a challenging voice.

  “You can be sure I will,” Rudolf said smiling, “that is why I am here. By the way, I never got a chance to congratulate you on your marriage and motherhood. Accept my heartiest congratulations,” he said sardonically.

  “What do you mean?” Payal asked raising her eyebrows.

  “Is there anything wrong in congratulating you about your husband and your lovely daughter? I mean all said and done, the fact is that we both go back a long way. Maybe not as far as time scale is concerned, but consider how much we both have gone through facing each other. It is we two who started all this, the inclusion of the rest was only occasional and temporary. In the end, underneath it all, it was you and me who were the prime factors. Who amongst us is the protagonist and who the antagonist, well it depends on from which perspective we look at the events,” Rudolf said calmly.

  “But you keep my husband and daughter out of this,” Payal said in a stern voice.

  “Why should I? And do you really think that you are in a position to give me orders?”

  “But why do you have to get them involved in what you yourself have just said, was and is the struggle between me and you essentially, from the beginning to the end, why them?”

  “You would find it hard to believe I am sure, but the fact of the matter is that I actually feel sorry for your husband. Poor man, his sufferings are the result of his imprudent association with you, and not because of a fault in himself.”

  “What have you done to them?” The alarm in Payal’s voice was clearly evident.

  “Warlock’s revenge is evil and complete; he spares none, none!”

  “What have you done to them; where are they?”

  “Who? Abhay? Or the piece of your heart, your darling daughter Anshul?”

  Payal sat with her mouth hung open before Rudolf, she felt like a thousand loud sirens were deafening her ears. “Anshul!” she was able to utter with great difficulty.

  “Lovely girl, that Anshul is, isn’t she? Are you not worried where she might be? What kind of a mother are you anyway? I thought a mother would go crazy if she was not able to find her two-month-old daughter, didn’t know about her child’s whereabouts for so many hours.”

  “Shut up, just shut up,” Payal said heaving, “Where is Anshul?” She asked looking directly intoher tormentor’s eyes.

  Rudolf got up from the bed and took out a folded newspaper from the pocket of his trousers and t
hrew it at Payal. She picked it up, unfolded it and turned to the front page. There screamed a headline in bold letters:

  TWO-MONTH-OLD BABY GIRL’S BODY FOUND IN DRAIN.

  She hurriedly read the story accompanying it; according to the newspaper the dead body of a baby was discovered in the Najafgarh drain that very morning. Some passer-by had spotted a cloth in the filthy drain and had informed the police about it, which in turn, with the help of fire brigade had taken out the dead body of a baby girl from the drain. The body had been apparently stuck in the large pieces of stone in the drain and hence had not drifted away. It was found quite close to the spot where the cloth was found afloat on a sheet of dried filth.

  The Police as yet were clueless, according to the Midday afternoon newspaper, as to the identity of the dead child or the purpose behind that gruesome murder. The newspaper also carried a photograph on the back page, of fire brigade personnel wearing his customary helmet and gumboots, holding the filth covered body of that baby, apparently just after he had got out of the drain. The paper had published the request of the police to any person who knew about the child to immediately contact the nearest police station.

  Payal raised her face to Rudolf who was sitting calmly and in an unhurried manner on the bed before her. “What does this mean?” she asked raising the paper in her left hand.

  “You yourself read it; I just wanted to be the first person to break this news to you.”

  “You don’t really expect me to believe this, do you? What are you trying to say here anyway? Go on, spell it out.”

  “Are not you at least a little concerned that it may have been your Anshul, the news of whom is printed in this paper?”

  “No I am not,” Payal said in a confident voice. “I know all about your little tricks Rudolf, and your psychological warfare; contrary to what you like to think, I did learn my lessons back at your estate, which was that you cannot be trusted and that your word can not be taken as gospel. You’d do anything to attain your objectives, to browbeat your enemies before you force them to surrender on their knees before yourself.”