Chapter 1
The domed umbrella hung low over the man in white, shadowing his face in darkness.
Heavy clouds in the crowded sky above cast a soft grey light over the little temple town in the middle of nowhere but known to all devotees alike, before thundering into hues of dark blue and black. The man tilts his umbrella to look at what governs him above, his back against the doors of his big car, and as the rain returns with the threat of a harsher shower than before, he turns to the man standing beside him to the right. He doesn’t have an umbrella, only a flimsy piece of scarf like cloth draped over his bald head, one that is already wet and soaking from the rain before and will likely offer very little help in this next rainfall.
Meeting the eyes of his boss, the bald man clears his throat before addressing the man before them both, who was digging a pit in the ground, shoveling through the now heavily wet mud, stopping to wipe at the moisture soaking him wet throughout. Sweat, rain, it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the job done, come rain or shine. Well, he hoped the clouds would clear soon and it would shine, he had been at this for most of the early morning, having been awoken from a dead deep sleep in his hut by the big, gold and gated entrance to the holy grounds, to do a rich man’s bidding. “Quick, old man. We haven’t got all day.” The bald man spoke gruff, rude, with all the radiating confidence of a proud number two.
The wealthy never paid for their crimes. They barely even paid their accomplices enough for their silence, the man digging thought, but didn’t voice as always. It wasn’t just cultural expectations or formality that determined why such people couldn’t be questioned. You couldn’t challenge people that towered over you on a pedestal made of the riches they owned, their high position itself was enough to threaten one into becoming voluntarily mute, as it had the man who finally finished with his task after much hard work.
“Hmm.” The man hidden beneath the umbrella is neither satisfied or disapproving. As the poor laborer knows, from the countless times before through the many, many years, the dark is not yet done in it’s entirety. The rich man, his right hand subordinate, and the the man who once considered himself a respectable security guard, now reduced to a little more than a slave, all turn to the four men before the grave, who hold the limbs of a dead young girl tight, her body slightly lifted off the soaking brown mushy ground, clothes tattered and torn. “The sun will rise soon.” Is all he says, avoiding looking towards the young lady who had been unwillingly pursued, brutalized and rendered dead, like she was akin an ensnared, poached animal.
Prey might have had better luck actually, compared to the growing dedicated system these horrible men had devised to hurt the vulnerable. You might be able to escape a trap, but when one in power sets their sights on you, well, you’d most likely end up like this girl here.
The four men sprung into action, knowing everything had to be wrapped up before the sun was fully up. Anything later than the cryptic deadline offered by the rich man, dressed impeccably in pristine white, his form sheltered from the rain and any mottle, unlike the men who surrounded him whilst carrying out his will with much haste. The young girl’s body, pale and brutally decorated with wounds and bruises that would never heal, dripped some blood that was quickly washed away, as she was carried to the pit which would become her unmarked grave. And like a sack of potatoes, the girl who had been happy, healthy, andaliveless than a day ago, was another body added to the expanding list of victims of this rural region.
“Sir, if I may…” The grave digger wiped his hands on his beige, loose trousers; they wouldn’t dry. “Could I ask…if you could…I mean, it is possible to…to…the other day, I mean, there was this…oh…?” His voice was weak, his request perhaps even weaker to the man in power, if he could verbalize it coherently. The rich man couldn’t wait around here, he couldn’t be seen, but curiosity took over as he bought out a cigarette and pressed it between his lips, his right hand man lighting it for him, cupping a hand around the flame to preserve fire against wind and the cold.
After the cigarette sizzled from a deep inhale, the rich man looked down at the poor, “What is it, Virata?” The rich man’s voice was deep, hoarse, commanding forth a straightforward answer from the nervous and bent old man who had religiously done what was asked of him for the past two decades. Virata was a cowardly witness; he made the perfect accomplice.
Thunder rumbled across the grey clouds, the rain gaining and loosing momentum, like the weather was undecided of how it wanted to present this early morning. Some said it reflected the ferocious goddess’ mood, that same deity this little area was built in devotion to many centuries ago. But if that were true, she was certainly blind to the atrocities committed in her abode, lest the city would sink into the ground forever. Nevertheless, money and man were Gods now, and the rich man and his prestigious family were worshipped akin to it in the light well enough that they could engage in their depravity in the dark.
Well, to be honest, the rich man hadn’t given into his instincts in a long time. Too much on the line, currently. But the same couldn’t be said for his young son, who’d inherited all the cleverness and competency just as his had the derangement and lust. There just wasn’t a release, an adrenaline rush, or ecstasy like claiming a spirit determined to be free, and would even run or fight for it, and then draining the life out from within them, snuffing it quicker than a budding flame and relishing in the soul that became a part of one’s hide of horrors.
Maybe he ought to join his son on his endeavors one of these days, since the brat didn’t seem to show signs of stopping or even want to perhaps. They might as well indulge together, and add to their personal graveyard, lands on which people walked barefoot and honored as divine.
It was an odd satisfaction, carrying such a secret but still respected and revered.
“I…” The old man’s gaze is suddenly distant, his hands ceasing to fumble nervously in front of him, the four men behind him having their eyes intently on him, wondering what he had to say. The right hand man shifted his eyes between his boss and subordinate. The rain pattered gently against the top of the umbrella. “She…she haunts me, sir.” Virata’s voice is an echo from within himself, like he’s in a trance and envisioning the horror he wants to describe.
“The girl is dead, senile crow.” The right hand man gestures to the body in the pit.
“Chandappa.” The rich man holds a hand to silence his secondary, and Chanda quiets immediately, albeit with a subtle grit of his teeth, right hand hanging by his side curling into a fist momentarily. His other hand is held up by a cast, as punishment from his boss for not disposing of a body in time and causing the boss’ son some panic, after which the psychotic brat had enforced his insanity on Chanda’s limb.
It was why the rich man was here at all, call it a corporate visit if you like. Chanda was relieved somewhat, it wasn’t on him, he was just the only person answerable for it in the hierarchy, being the boss’ right hand man. Virata and the henchman took their time, having gotten lax in their routines, and hopefully the boss saw that, so Chanda could get off the hook.
His arm would still take another five weeks to heel though, and he kept count of every sliver of pain to give back tenfold to Virata, or whoever low enough he could take his wrath out on for their incompetency that had resulted in Chanda’s punishment.
“The girls come and go. I see them sometimes, in the same severely torn clothes they are buried in, in the same brutalized bodies they carry to the afterlife…Sometimes they glare, sometimes they ask for an apology, sometimes they avoid this poor accomplice all together…” Virata appeared to be losing his mind or perhaps his guilty consciousness was finally catching up to him, twenty years too late. The rich man hoped he didn’t have to face the same, his burden would be heavier than Virata’s, and the fact remained that he just didn’t care to feel remorseful. The world was his playground, and the women he picked to torture, pawns in his playing field. Any other analogy was just too boring and un-thrilling of a possibility to consider. “But I am frightened not of them, buther.”
“Who is?” Chanda snapped, not liking the ominous atmosphere.
The rich man had finished with his cigarette, toying with the butt, hearing everything and saying little. He was a man of little words, always had been, his thoughts many times reserved for the ears of those whose lives he took. He was also thinking about the early accessible to all breakfast function he had organized on the other side of town in smaller temple grounds, where the media and his fellow politicians would be waiting. The rich man had to make sure to stay clean and unstained by even the faintest of marks, as said before, there was a lot on the line.
“Her, sir.” Virata’s voice had dropped lower, a deep timbre of fascinated fear and caution. “In all my life, I’d never known it to be true.” By that he meant that he’d never fathomed it to be a perceivable reality. Once a devout man of different Gods worshipped in his hometown, much had changed for him since he’d settled in here. He had been stripped of all faith entirely, a witness to the horror capable by those in power and expected to protect, a voluntary mute with a motto followed blindly of having to do as told and nothing else.
Yet, the midnight haunting of those dark red eyes…
Virata shuddered, feeling her presence behind. He veered around as to check, to the amused eyes of the rich politician and the confused annoyance of Chanda. There was no one, except the four silent brutes who stayed still until they were offered a command, and Virata took in a measured breath of relief.
Still, her presence was all around, it was hard to escape.
“Who isher, Viratappa?” The politician asked. Virata flinched involuntarily, the dissonance striking. Back home, he was Virat. Here, he was Virata, hey, you, dog, old man, coward, and on the occasional times, Viratappa. As though they actually respected him enough to attach a mannerly suffix. Him, the outsider, the chosen one to carry out the dirty tasks at night. Virata’s eyes now distantly fixed on a brown, muddy spot at the bottom of the politician’s white, waist garment, not that he’d alert him to it.
The politician lifted a neatly threaded brow in patience of Virata’s answer, handing the crumbling remnants of the cigarette, the same cheap ones he has Chanda buy from Murali’s stall, to his right hand man. The Marlboros were for the MLA of Kalivasa; the rest for the vehement man within, once a midnight prowler himself, before his hunger had shifted focus as his inherent passion passed down his progeny. Now, he couldn’t leave a traces as he covered up; an accidental fancy cig-butt found in these areas would raise many questions. No poor villager had a liking for branded cigs, and in this town, they were all poor, if not poorer.
They said they liked the simple way of life, but that’s what all those without money tended to boast. Once you got a taste of the green, the power that came with it, it was hard to believe anything else felt as good ever before.
“Well?” Chanda snapped at Virata, and the old man’s eyes focused once more.
“Her, sir.” He said like they should know. Like saying her name would invoke her. At the silent pause that followed, Virata realized he would have to unfortunately verbalize the name of the one who haunted him. “Kali.” He looked behind himself, between those two trees he’d seen her last, when he were burying the last young girl not too long ago. Asha, the daughter of the headmaster of the boys school in town. Her posters were still hung up, her family were still desolate, and the search for her still continued, amongst the many, many others. They were all considered missing, though they were dead.
“What?” Chanda swallowed, suddenly nervous.
He then cleared his throat, straightening his back to look taller and bigger, “What?” He tried to sound more gruff, not wanting to appear weak in front of his boss, even though there was a momentary tremble in his knees. He was a man raised within the Goddess’ abode, having grown up hearing stories of her, both protective and ferocious, and tales of those who said to have glimpsed her, whether within temple grounds or late night strolls or within woes of trouble.
Chanda himself had never experienced anything direct with the Goddess, but as far as believers went, he was a believer, although his alignments in the last few hours were enough to make him the all-Goddess’ enemy. If she real, that is.
Virata nodded, firm and believing, his grip tight on the spade, body half still within the pit with the dead girl, so they were looking down into his crazed, calm eyes, “Kali. The Mother.” Like there was no other truth.
The politician’s brow lifted higher in skepticism, his smirk unfaltering, but Virata was sure of who she was, because how could he not be?
With her blood red eyes ravenous and striking in the night, dark blue-black skin blending into the shadows around like the dark was a part of her, perhaps what she even materialized from, the chilling clinking of the skulls in her deadly garland, numerous arms with their terrifying weapons spreading around behind her, hair long and thick and black like tendrils of encompassing darkness, and the worst…her lolling tongue dripping with the blood of wrongdoers, ever-thirsty for more…
Virata suddenly felt her everywhere, from the breeze that swept past him and seemed a carry a whisper of his name airing past his ear, to the freezing in his bones, an icy paralysis that threatened to creep up and bury him with this unknown dead girl.
Well, actually, hedidknow who she was. Naga, the milkman’s daughter, Deepa. Just having finished ninth grade, with a bright light like smile, and having only just gone around town the day before last to hand sweets to the people because she’d been a top-scorer in her exams. And here she was, hunted, raped, defiled and dead, dumped in an unmarked pit, the rain settling in the mud after, so no one would ever know. Just like the many, many others here.
Virata’s eyes fall on the girl randomly. He screams. Her eyes are open. “Oh, oh my, she-she…” He bumbles and points, but they’re closed again, like it was a trick of the light, a
fragment of his crumbling mind. Chanda reels back after peering in, a little pale from when talk of the Goddess begin. Virata can’t look at the girl again, not even to make sure her eyes are closed. The attacking grip in his chest eases slightly, but it stills feels as though it is held somewhat tight in the fist of another.
Chanda goes to say something, and then another time, and then just looks at his boss.
“Kali, hmmm...” The politician mused, like she were an old friend, looking up at the sky again as the rain ceased for the time-being, the thick clouds a warning that they weren’t fully done however. “Viratappa, I think you’ve been working for us for too long.” Is all the rich man has to say, that he barks out as a laugh. It is many things at once, a realization of time served, a compliment of loyalty, a recognition of the old man’s weakness and guilt. But most importantly, it is a threat. “Finish up here quietly.”
Chanda rushes to open the car door for his boss. Two of the four henchmen join him in the car, alongside Chanda who takes the passenger seat, hopping in after folding the umbrella. The other two henchmen help Virata out of the pit abruptly, and grab spare spades to fill up the pit, the wet dirt and mud falling onto the dead girl, covering her. Virata keeps his eyes away until the ground has swallowed her face, and he doesn’t help in shrouding her, his eyes rooted on at politician, who was unaware of the stain on his clothes. As the car starts to leave, it stops abruptly, and the rich man rolls down his window.
“Viratappa…” He says, voice hoarse and eyes amused.
“Yes, sir?” Virata felt too disconnected from everything but the fear that was the all-mother’s presence and her awareness of his wrongdoings.
He was no victim, he knew that, though he felt alike it many times. He could die fighting for people who would never know justice against the powerful and predatory, or he could serve the perpetrators and live another day, earning a little more than he did at his regular job, that helped him with his daughter’s education in the far city. He couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful, although he wished for it all to stop. Enough had died. Enough to summon a Goddess.
“The next time Kali’s around…send her my way.” The laugh is evident in his voice. Virata kept his eyes on the brown spot on the sparkly white garment, his lips pressed together.
The window rolls up and the car drives off into the distance, towards the event that requires the politician’s presence. Later, he would appear on the news, where he’d be the kind, benevolent, people’s prince who had bought the people so much, from more land for farmers through the government, to the lowering of prices of produce while increasing revenue and earnings for farming families, to the limitation of unfair panchayats, increasing opportunities for children of the town to advance to city-based higher education programs, not to mention the Maha Kali Temple construction, and-there were much good he’d done for the people.
And there was much he took from them as hidden payment in the dead of the night.
Daughters, sisters, wives, grandmothers. It had gotten younger as time passed, they were easier and more enjoyable to hunt, it had been said.
It was sickening, that a man capable of such demise, had bought so much fortune.
And later, on TV, he’d say he needed the people’s support one more time, to help himbecome a part of the upper house of the parliament, to get more attention to then disappearing in town, what was traced back to the spring 1986, so they could get more federal support in solving this persistent mystery, and support communities who had begin blaming each other for the crimes and were escalating aggravations and attacks. The people feel justified
in their growing animosity alongside the increasing and sensitive boundaries, because they say the vanishing of women and girls begin when certain groups of people, a few of other varying religions, some of other castes, some of distant, unfamiliar regions, migrated to the town.
Some did for so jobs, some through government displacement following decades long disputes regarding residency in the country after the partition, some for love after meeting in the city, and many, many, because of the sky high and extremely vast Temple of Kali that was built in 1985, that was now in consideration to become an official Hindu pilgrimage site.
Another goal for the politician who promised big for the town.
Virata looked behind him once more as the henchmen finished the burial.
There was no one there, despite the goosebumps along his body telling him otherwise.
Or perhaps they were invisible to his eye now, or had vanished in a dark blue wisp, just before his eyes had found them. Rain begin to fall, quiet pitter patters quickly becoming fat drops accompanied by thunder and lightning.
Something was coming for them, for the good and the evil all alike.
He felt it in his bones as he did in the clinking of deathly anklets in the air.
