Tantrics Of Old

by Bhattacharya, Krishnarjun

  ‘Adri?’ Maya spoke up suddenly.

  Adri stopped writing and looked at her.

  ‘Where had you gone?’ she asked. ‘I mean, before this?’

  The flickering light played on Adri’s face, half cast in shadow. ‘I found some of my father’s old books down in the basement,’ he replied. ‘I was reading, and remembering him.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be inquisitive, but are you, are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘My father has disappeared, Maya. I’m not okay.’

  Adri’s blunt reply stung her, but she realised she was prying. Heck, she had started prying with the diary itself. She felt guilty. But then she did not know what to think of Adri. She saw someone before her, and she read about someone in the past; and she could not blame Adri for his actions. The diary spoke volumes about Adri and the way he was brought up, about Victor Sen and the house, and about Adri’s loneliness. She thought about his mother; about his anguish through his words, through his recollection of that particular summoning with Aman, even though Adri was never too expressive in his diary entries. Still confused about the state of things, she went back to her book.

  Night gradually stole into the house, and a sense of ease and relaxation crept over everyone as they seemed to realise how tough time was to kill. It was silent, apart from the crickets, and the moon was visible through a patch in the partly broken roof. Adri could not write any more. He put his pen down and looked at the others. Maya was still studying her Demonology book; Gray had dozed off, and Vishwak was still humming his tune, louder now and with more confidence. Adri lit the usual cigarette and leaned towards the old man, trying to hear his song better.

  Go to sleep my son

  There’s nowhere left to run

  The sun does set, blood red

  The final day is done

  Don’t tremble so, just sleep

  Make no noise, don’t weep

  They are here as promised, hear

  And promises, they keep

  The earth shall crack open, they said

  Fire shall rise in each riverbed

  The music shall bell, the tunes of hell

  Walk among us they will, the undead

  The creature will rise from the Lake of Fire

  Blood on its head, flesh its desire

  Men will turn, the city shall burn

  Burn after death, a funeral pyre

  The air shall be thick with venoms of old

  Wrath shall rain through hearts ice cold

  Those so far lived will be hunted down swift

  No legend or lore shall live to be told

  Blood bone darkness steel shall mould

  Powerless shall be the Tantrics of Old

  With each one that dies, the four will rise

  The Horsemen will ride again as foretold.

  ‘WHAT?’ Adri cried out as the old man began humming his song all over again. ‘What did you say?’ He leapt across the room and hunched in front of old Vishwak.

  Vishwak looked confused. ‘Adri. Adri, look. I’m not a prophet, like your friend accused. He accused me, Adri, but wrongly.’

  Adri shook his head violently. ‘The Horsemen will ride again as foretold? Isn’t that what you just said?’

  ‘This is a warning to the wise, Adri. A warning.’

  ‘What do you know about the Horsemen? Tell me. TELL ME!’ Adri grabbed the old man’s collar and shook him roughly, losing control for a second.

  ‘You can only kill me!’ Vishwak gasped. Adri stopped, and stared into Vishwak’s blank eyes. He let go and the old man slumped against the wall, fighting for breath. ‘Adri, you don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’ Adri snapped. ‘What do I not understand?’

  ‘The warning! This was a warning, and I carry it. You are fortunate enough to have heard it.’

  ‘You are a crazy old man,’ Adri spoke, taking deep breaths. His anger was slowly ebbing away. ‘You are a crazy old man and I’m a blooming fool.’

  Vishwak burst into laughter, showing dirty yellow teeth.

  ‘You know about them, but I can’t get it out of you,’ Adri told him, his look turning into grim amusement as Vishwak went on cackling with laughter. When the old man did calm down, Adri had him sing his warning once more. He did, and Adri slowly memorised it—years of memorising incantations and an entire dead language gave one an excellent memory, if nothing else.

  Ignoring the siblings’ stares, Adri moved back to his corner, repeating the song over and over again in his head. He thought about it. Interesting. Especially the fact that it involved both Necromancers and the Horsemen in a swirl of all kinds of horrible predictions. He needed to dig for information about the Horsemen, and the one person he had hoped would clear his doubts was missing. As if he didn’t have enough troubles already.

  The first scream, rapidly morphing into a screech, unholy and inhuman in its very essence, yanked him right out of his thoughts. A screech that stayed in his ears long after it had receded. He had heard these before. Gray and Maya were sitting upright, alarmed; Vishwak hadn’t reacted. Adri quickly formulated their next move. It was wisest to visit him now. Adri had planned this visit for the next morning, but now it seemed their departure would be more rushed than usual.

  ‘We leave now!’ he spoke, his voice urgent, but hushed.

  ‘What was that?’ Gray asked, his eyes wide with fright. Another screech ripped the night air, this time considerably louder. Closer.

  ‘Keep your voices down!’ Adri hissed. ‘Maya, let’s go!’ Maya, who had frozen, hurriedly stuffed her book in her backpack. Adri checked the bullets in his shooter, then looked at Vishwak. Vishwak hadn’t moved, showing no reaction to the noise or their panic. ‘You planning to die here, old man?’ Adri asked. ‘We don’t have much time, let’s go.’

  Vishwak’s eyes twinkled in the semi-darkness as he turned to look at Adri. ‘Thank you for the meal, son. But I must stay. The warning, my life, everything comes together at last. Everything makes sense.’

  ‘The witches will rip you apart, old man!’ Adri barked in an undertone. ‘I’m asking you for the last time, because I can’t carry you!’

  Vishwak grabbed Adri’s shoulder, old fingers digging into flesh. ‘Sometimes,’ he whispered, ‘you must do what is crazy. Others might think you crazy for it. But when you see what’s coming over the horizon, that is exactly what you must do.’ He gave Adri a push, causing him to stumble back. ‘Now go! Go before they catch you.’

  Adri tried pulling at Vishwak’s arm, but he only got pushed back again. There was no time. Adri couldn’t think. The old man’s words ran in his ears and he swept them aside as he gestured for the siblings to leave. Blindly grabbing his backpack, Adri led them through the house to the back door, out into the night. Grass, seven to nine feet tall, lay before them, illuminated by the moon. Adri dived in. Maya and Gray followed. They started moving through the tall growth, Adri leading the way, parting the grass as fast as he could. Their progress was rather slow, but it was progress nonetheless as they put the house behind them, as fast as they could, not daring to speak.

  The grass swallowed them most eagerly; it was everywhere, like an ocean, and gave them refuge for the moments that the witches chose to scour the house instead of giving chase.

  ‘I trust they’re not slow old women right now?’ Maya panted, stepping on Adri’s heels more than once in her hurry.

  ‘Stop stepping on my heels,’ Adri panted back. ‘And no, right now I would call them a lot faster. Keep up.’

  They ran onward, blind, into unending grass, and Maya was reminded of the wilds of Africa—the grass in which the lions hunt the gazelle. She imagined herself to be one of the gazelle’s kind, galloping away in an unplanned direction, heedless of all but escape. The image did take her mind off the current situation for a while, her body running mechanically while her mind drifted—though not for long. More shrieks split the night air, bringing Maya’s attentions swivelling back to ground zero.

  ‘Sh
it, they’re already done,’ Adri cursed as he ran. Maya and Gray were having trouble running; their legs were beginning to burn. They weren’t used to so much running, they were normal college-goers with junk food diets. Adri though, was used to running, the Guardians giving him constant practice in New Kolkata. No, his problem here was the dry grass that was ceaselessly brushing against his face as he ran.

  ‘What do you mean, done?’ Gray shouted.

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ Adri snapped back in an equally loud shout, throwing caution to the winds in his irritation.

  ‘The old man—’ Maya started.

  Adri felt them then. In the grass. Behind them. Gaining fast. Running like a pack of wolves. The grass slowing them down only momentarily. He shouldn’t have shouted back at Gray. Think. There is no time. They are coming.

  ‘Do they have a weakness for fire? You could set the grass alight—’ Gray shouted again.

  ‘Quiet, you little rat,’ Adri hissed. ‘This way.’

  He broke pace suddenly and took a sharp left. It would buy them a few seconds at most, not enough. The Dynes were after them because of their scent, Adri thought. They could not outrun them; nor could they lose their scent right now. Fighting them was out of the question; there were far too many. No time to do any real summoning; well except maybe—

  Adri burst out of the field. A construction site lay before him. He dived to the ground, a chalk already in his hand, and began to draw as fast as he could. Gray and Maya skidded to halts next to his crouched figure, panting. They didn’t question him, but kept looking behind them, into the field. They could hear rapid rustling in the silence of the night; their pursuers weren’t very far away. Maya looked at Adri, and bit her lip as he furiously finished the pentacle, checked the runes once, then spoke in the Old Tongue, ‘Arrive!’

  The Familiar appeared in seconds and stood silently waiting for orders. Maya and Gray stared at the smoky figure with unbelieving eyes, and somewhere inside, Adri was disappointed that the first summoning the siblings saw in their lives had to be that of a measly Familiar. But now was not the time.

  ‘Dynes! Distract them, lead them away. Use a smell,’ Adri whispered. The Familiar nodded and almost instantly began to radiate thick smoke. Its smell began to change as it glided back into the fields, its aura firmly parting the grass around its body. Adri turned to the two. ‘We don’t have much time. Let’s go!’ They started running again, towards the construction site. It looked abandoned, like most things in the city, but they could see their way clearly as the moon was full. ‘My Familiar, that’s a slave spirit, will not be able to distract them for long, even with a full odour of blood. I have a friend who lives not far from here.’

  ‘How did the witches find us? Is your house in their territory?’ Maya asked.

  ‘No. I don’t know how they turned up there! And it’s not important right now!’

  They entered the labyrinth of pipes and concrete, roughly maintaining a general direction as they navigated through the construction site. Shadows everywhere. Adri kept a sharp eye out for any kind of movement, even in speed. This was a better place for evading the bloody Dynes; there were many twists and turns, multiple alleys. Since their smell was being used to track them, the Dynes would probably come down the same path, perhaps slower. Nothing broke the silence for a long while except for harsh, ragged breathing as they ran.

  ‘I, I need to rest,’ Maya panted, and Gray nodded in agreement.

  ‘There is no time,’ Adri shot back.

  ‘We’ll die, man!’ Gray exclaimed; he was wheezing now, and was so loud that Adri reconsidered.

  ‘A few seconds,’ he spoke and stopped. The siblings held on to blocks of concrete as they regained their breath. Both of them were totally out of shape, Adri realised, catching his breath himself though he could have run for longer. Not their fault.

  ‘I think, I think, we lost them,’ Gray panted, looking behind him.

  Adri shook his head in firm denial. ‘We’ll have to run again, right now.’

  ‘I can’t, not right now,’ Maya replied, still gasping for air.

  Adri looked up and down the path with a calm but nervous bearing. They couldn’t move as fast as was needed to get away. There was nothing around, no sound, no footsteps, nothing. It all seemed wrong to him. It was impossible that the witches had lost their scent, not at this range and speed. They were easily audible too, with all the panting and the coughing, and they were under open sky. No, something else was happening here. Adri realised it a moment later. They were being herded.

  Extremely slow, he looked up, so as to not draw any attention to his action. His eyes furiously searched the unfinished scaffoldings, the pipes, and the pillars. He saw her soon enough. There she was, sitting atop an unfinished pillar. A black shape, crouched on all fours, tattered clothes flying in the night air like ragged wings, and clumps of long, tangled hair part of the silhouette. Her eyes burned bright red in the darkness, watching them as the moon lent some colour to the grey hair and the dark rags. She sat like the perfect predator, muscles ready to spring, frozen, mayhap in wait for the perfect moment, next to invisible, merging with the darkness. Adri’s eyes roved around but he could not see any others. Disturbing. Witches were tough to deal with, even when alone.

  ‘Move. Now!’ he spoke in a tone he hoped would betray the urgency of the situation.

  ‘One minute please?’ Maya bleated.

  ‘Maya, they’re on to us. You want to live, don’t you?’ Adri spoke fast and low. He glanced at the pillar again. The witch was gone. He looked around, much more insecure, tightening the grip on his shooter. He started walking, fast. They could not risk a run now. The siblings followed, wrestling between their fear of the witches and God’s implanted desire for air. They did not get far. It came out of the shadows, right before they were almost out of the construction yard; Adri’s reaction time wasn’t fast enough, as he glimpsed the fiery eyes and the silent, unfailing figure in mid-air. The Dyne sliced Adri’s left shoulder and landed, on all fours, on a pile of rocks behind him. Ignoring the pain, Adri spun around in tandem with the creature and squeezed off a single shot. BLAM. White smoke. The witch was gone.

  ‘Did you get her? Did you?’ Gray asked, panting, as Maya stood frozen with horror.

  ‘No, the shooter doesn’t make them disappear,’ Adri replied. Pain. Shooting up from his left shoulder. Everything was silent. The witch had survived. They needed to get out of here, and fast. Adri already knew why there was just a single witch after them—they were a competitive lot, and this one wanted all three of them for herself. She wouldn’t call her sisters unless she was dying, and Adri knew he was in no condition to kill a witch. Not anymore.

  Truth be told, he was clueless about how they’d found him. They mostly never hunted outside territory. Flight had been his first instinct, he hadn’t really stopped to think about the reasons behind their appearance.

  ‘You’re hurt. I can see blood,’ Maya exclaimed.

  ‘I know. We need to get out,’ Adri replied, forcing his attention back. He led the way again, hobbling. He had not looked down at his shoulder yet and he didn’t intend to until they were out of here. Claws of a witch were honed to the maximum, always razor sharp. You’re getting careless, man. It’s only a flesh wound, now move!

  Gray had picked up a metal pipe from somewhere and he held it tense as they walked. No one dared to walk fast now. A mud road led towards a railway crossing and beyond, and they looked everywhere, suspicious of all shadows. It was quiet again, and Adri held the shooter tightly in his good arm. With luck, the Dyne would have smelt mercury during the first discharge and would know what it was up against; it would be more cautious, even though it wouldn’t give up. The railway crossing was unmanned, and they stepped over the tracks, crossing to the other side. The area was slowly becoming residential once more—walls ran along both sides of the mud road, trees grew every few yards, casting the path in darkness. Streetlights were visible in the distance, as
were houses and a few scattered people. Adri knew that was where they would be comparatively safe, but it was still a good deal away.

  The siblings were scared, even more so as they saw the red trickling down Adri’s shirt. But he was still leading them, and the lights in the distance made them hopeful even in their fear. Maya felt a familiar fear grip her as they started walking beneath the trees. It had overcome her when the thing had attacked Adri; she had been frozen stiff like on the train, on the verge of tears. She had to focus, she had to keep her mind trained on making it to the lights.

  A branch creaked. Maya looked up. Red eyes, gleaming. The loud gunfire came as a shock. Adri had seen the thing too and fired, and despite his good arm trembling, he hadn’t missed this time. The witch screeched in what could only be agony and jumped off the tree into the depths of another, further away from them. It was gone in seconds, and looking around, it seemed to Maya that she had just imagined all this happening, as if it was all part of some magical dream and they were simply out on an undisturbed evening stroll. It was merely a touch of escapism. She hurried to Adri and examined his wound.

  ‘No, we must get to safety first, we aren’t out of the woods yet,’ Adri muttered. He sounded weak. Gray offered to support his weight but Adri declined; the group slowly moved towards the buildings in the distance. There was no sign of the witches again as they reached a crowded street and walked through, unnoticed.