by Neil D'Silva
While he was contemplating on whether to say something flattering to the woman, she turned sharply to face him.
“We have been walking for a long time,” said Maya. “This does not seem to be the right path.”
The highway loomed ahead of them. Trucks and tourist buses of all sizes buzzed by on the arterial route.
“Let’s turn back then,” said Akram. “Maybe it is that route.”
Maya looked once more at the route they were walking on. Indeed, it did not seem like the right path. She turned and followed Akram who had already started out on the path they had left behind.
Once more, they kept on walking in silence, nearing the spot where they had started from. Maya began to think what her mother had said.
End of the street…
Just where the chawl ends…
Beyond the butcher shop…
Yes! Beyond the butcher shop. Her mother had distinctly said that on the phone.
“Akram,” said Maya, “this is the right path I think.” She pointed to a small path that started out from the butcher’s shop.
“You think, Maya?” asked Akram. “Don’t you think we have walked enough?”
“Not just think, I know.”
She walked resolutely up that path. Akram caught up with her and then took the lead.
It seemed to be the right way. The chawl was thinning into nothingness and shrubs and bushes began to prevail.
“There it is,” she said excitedly after walking for several minutes. Akram looked in the direction of her forefinger.
It looked like a garage, no doubt, because of the piled up junk cars in front of it. There were all kinds of cars, right from antique versions of the early years of Ford to the modern inventive sedans with automated features. All of them lay discarded now, smashed beyond recognition, and piled one above the other. Apart from these tumbledown vehicles, no one could have realized this place had been a garage once.
“Is this the place?” asked Akram.
“Seems to be.”
“You think your friend is inside here?”
“All right, I think I should tell you,” said Maya. “Someone spotted my husband going inside here. He was inside for a long time. I don’t know what he was doing. But it wasn’t anything good, I feel, mainly because that person also told me they heard a woman’s sound inside. A woman screaming.”
“This is getting more and more dangerous, Maya.” Akram’s perpetual smile had vanished and had been replaced by a frown.
“It’s not like that,” said Maya wanly. She looked quite stricken as she said that, and in that moment, Akram found her irresistibly beautiful.
“Let’s look for the entrance,” he said.
Akram went ahead. By now, darkness had begun to once again reign upon these faraway reaches of the suburb. Creatures of the dark such as dogs and rats were slowly spilling out into human habitation.
They went round the whole place once. But aside from the junked cars, they could not see anything. There wasn’t an entrance of any sort. “Where do we get in from?” asked Maya.
Then they spotted a rat. The rodent was of a fairly large size, much larger than an ordinary house mouse. The rat leaped over the fenders of the cars that were stacked one atop the other and reached the highest car. It perched itself at the top for a moment, and looked at the people below. And, as they were still looking at the rat, it lunged forward and disappeared into nothingness.
“There must be an opening there,” said Akram.
Maya nodded. “I remember now. I was told he jumped in from the roof.”
Akram undid the buttons of his cuffs and folded his sleeves up to his elbows. “I am going there,” he said. “All this property belongs to my father in a way. This is an extended part of the Hussein Lakdawala Chawl. See the board there. I need to know what’s going on there.”
“Shouldn’t you take someone along with you?” Maya said, fear beginning to creep up into her.
“It’s all right! I am a karate black belt, earned when I was 15,” said Akram. “Let’s see if that really amounts to something. Do you think your husband could be inside?”
“I spoke to him over the phone about two hours ago and he did not seem to be here.”
“In that case, I can easily fight off a couple of rats, I think.”
Maya stayed back and saw the young man climbing atop the heap like a gymnast going for the winning prize. It wasn’t as difficult as she thought, and she wanted to try it out too, but she stalled. Akram reached the topmost car, sat on it, looked down at her once, and yelled, “There’s a hole in the roof here.” He bent down to look into the hole. “There’s some light inside, someone seems to be there,” he said. “I am going in.”
Then, he crept slowly towards the opening, and then, in one swift movement, pulled himself into it.
***
Akram landed on his feet. His martial arts training had helped him so far. He had been taught to use the surroundings to his best advantage. Instead of allowing his feet to fall squarely on the ground all at once—which could have lent grievous injuries for it was a near ten feet straight fall—he managed to drop them one after the other, allowing one foot to bear the brunt of the fall and then the other.
He walked silently, like a gazelle, and waited till his eyes got acclimatized to the dim light.
The first thing he perceived was the stench.
It was a severely unholy odor—that of rotting flesh—and he tried to hold his nose but to no avail. The unexpected assault of the odor made him throw up, and he squatted by the nearest corner of the abandoned shed to let it go. But he almost fell over backwards, when a huge rat, much larger than the one he had seen entering the shed, ran over his toes.
He lay on the dirty floor for a while and then smiled to himself when he realized it was just a rat. Perhaps the absence of humans in this place had made them so bold. They were the kings of the domain here; they knew no fear.
The stench—probably the rotting flesh of dead rats—pervaded all over the area. Many may have lived and died in these confines.
The faraway corner caught his eye. It was a platform of some sort, and there were even a few utensils on it, and something that looked like an ancient stove. He cocked his head in puzzlement. Who could be using this place as a kitchen? A fear gripped him. Was this place occupied by junkies? That could be the case. He had heard of several such abandoned spaces being taken over by druggies, who even manufactured their devil’s brew in what they called their ‘labs’. If this place was indeed used to manufacture drugs—which is what he suspected at the moment—he thought he should immediately go out and inform the authorities. It was on his father’s land, after all.
But curiosity got the better of him. He had to have one look at the cooking place. He moved closer, his nerves a mixture of intrigue and fear. The stench was strong here—what was being cooked?
He came up to the platform. There was a vessel on the stove, shut with a lid, and some steam still emanated from its corners. That’s recent, he told himself and proceeded to get the lid off the vessel.
As he did so, an immediate explosion of steam escaped from the opening he had created. The steam blinded him for a moment, and the hotness of the lid caused him to drop it down with a noisy clang, and then he saw the contents of the vessel.
Boiling away in the water, was a neatly cut away portion of a human foot. It was unmistakably female, as suggested by the crimson nail paint on the toenails that had begun to peel off.
Suddenly, a feeling of claustrophobia rose within him. It might have been the stench of the stewing human flesh, but the place seemed too confined for him.
For goodness sake, he had just seen a boiling human foot!
He wanted to get out of there. There was no air to breathe. He stumbled and tried to run towards the spot from where he had leaped; there would certainly be an opening somewhere that led out.
He tried to jump to reach the hole in the ceiling, but then he fell right back o
n the floor, his spine hitting something soft.
It was something in the darkness that he hadn’t seen earlier. Now, as he fell over it, he saw. It was a heap—a heap of assorted human body parts. An arm here, a limb there, and there was even a head with its scalp of hair neatly cut off. He fell right on the cutaway torso of an unfortunate human, his nose rubbing against what he thought to be an intestine.
His fall disturbed the creatures who were already present there, feasting on the decaying booty. The rats scampered in every possible way as he fell, and he was deafened by the raucous noises of their squeaking.
Fear numbed him. He couldn’t move a muscle, but then, from his prone position on the floor, he saw a door opening in the far corner. He was still down on the floor, and he could see someone—a living person this time—emerge from the opening door. He couldn’t see much at first, only the feet of the person and the brass anklets around it. The feet began to proceed towards him and the person became clearer.
His observant eye caught an aberration—there was something wrong with his foot.
It was a terrible sight. The person who emerged out from the door was horrifyingly naked and scarred, and blood flowed from an open wound in his ear.
Akram was still looking at the blood oozing out of the wound when he felt something close upon him.
And then he felt the terrible, terrible pain of a sharp instrument being pierced brutally into his foot.
~ 23 ~
A Nervous State of Panic
The yell startled Maya. Her heart heaving wildly in her bosom, she debated on whether she should make the move inside the place or get some help. Maybe she should have run right then and brought in the authorities. But she strongly suspected it was her husband inside. Her deep faith in her mother’s instincts told her she was right this time too as always.
She tried calling Bhaskar again. The call wasn’t to speak with him; it was to try and figure out where he was. She pressed the phone firmly against her ear, hoping to catch the smallest shred of sound in case the phone was answered. His caller tune blared into her ear till it practically deafened her, but even as she waited for the call to be answered, it did not happen.
She had to find out what was inside. She had to find out what the yell was about.
Should she go in? Or should she go get help?
What if she went to the police and there wasn’t anything for them by the time they returned? If it was indeed Bhaskar inside and he got to know that Maya had called the cops, how would his behavior be at home?
There were too many thoughts.
In the end, she decided to call her sister.
“Namrata, Namrata… do you hear me?”
Maya was so much in a state of panic that she spoke on her phone even before it had connected. Something was seriously wrong, she felt it within her, and it had to be corrected as soon as possible.
There was no answer. The phone went on voicemail.
Maya stopped trying. There was no one else she could turn to at the moment. This was the time to see how brave she was. Very gingerly, hitching her salwar up with one hand, she put a foot atop the fender of the lowest car.
***
Namrata slowly got herself out of the embrace of her boyfriend and was immediately appalled.
“Hemant,” she said crossly, “how many times have I told you I don’t want to see you smoking?”
“So it’s okay if I smoke, but you should not see it?” Hemant asked, still holding the cigarette in his mouth.
Namrata reached out and snatched the cigarette from his mouth. Then she took the lighter and threw both the offending objects under the bed.
“Never smoke in bed. Never. What if there’s a fire?”
Hemant laughed at her playfully. “Seriously, girl, haven’t you heard of the great pleasures of post-coital smoking? Maybe you should try it too.”
“Post-coital, is it?” Namrata said and clambered on his body. “Let me give you another taste that’s better than nicotine.” She lowered herself, her fulsome breasts pressing against his chest, and placed her lips on his mouth. He took them in their entirety, and soon they were tugging at each other’s lips with frenzy. His hand moved up her buttocks and raised them, trying to position them on his raging erection.
Fifteen minutes later, Namrata got off her man and lay next to him, staring at the blank ceiling, heaving profusely.
“I didn’t know I had it in me,” Hemant panted. “Whatever happened to the twenty minute-long male plateau phase?”
“Seems you have just overcome that difficulty.”
Then, he slowly reached out under the bed again to grab the cigarettes and the lighter. Namrata looked at him, angry but not really so, and jokingly tweaked his nipples. While he yowled in feigned pain, she got off the bed, still unclothed, and ambled along the room.
That was when she saw her cellphone flashing.
She took the phone and saw it was Maya.
“My lady sulks?” Hemant asked. “See, I was just teasing you. It’s gone.” He flicked the cigarette into the dustbin and sat up on the bed holding his ears in an apologetic schoolboyish manner.
Namrata kept the phone down and looked at him looking insanely cute in his tomfoolery. Stifling her worry, she smiled and returned to bed with him.
***
Maya had almost reached the top. She didn’t mind the nicks and bruises she got along the way. One of the car fenders had a precariously jutting edge and it tore her salwar, but she moved on unmindful of them. She only made a mental note that she would require several anti-tetanus shots after this ordeal. Only once or twice did she glance down at the darkened ground to see if there was someone she could ask for help. However, that hope was in vain.
The screams became louder as she reached the roof. It was a male scream all right, and it was probably Akram’s, and that is what made her move along faster. Why would Akram scream? Who was there with him? Was it Bhaskar?
The doubts clouded her brain as she made her way to the top; and more than the doubts, there was a nagging regret that she had brought Akram to this place.
If anything happened to him—
She saw the opening in the roof. She had seen Akram go through it; and she had expected there to be a ladder or something to reach all the way down but this was just a steep fall. Perched at the rim of the opening, she groped around for some telltale signs of a ladder, perhaps a switch that could release one, but there was nothing. She realized this was all there was. She had to just let herself down.
She let her dupatta fly away to the ground; she could do without that hindrance, and she lowered herself, taking care that she didn’t get any more hurt than she should.
The atmosphere was punctuated by another bloodcurdling scream, but she was still unsure if it was indeed Akram. The sound was too high-pitched to be Akram’s but then people make strange sounds when they are threatened.
Mustering all her courage, she let herself drop. The ground had seemed pliable from the top but the landing told her how hard it actually was. She could not get off the ground for a moment. She twisted her foot either way, making sure everything was in working order. The pain was excruciating but at least nothing was broken.
Slowly, she got up and began to hobble around. Until now, she hadn’t broken the creepy silence of this place and she was determined to keep it that way. Stealth would be her weapon.
The silence of the place was broken only by the squeaks of the rodents that seemed to be running all over the walls. She tried to catch a glimpse of one of them, but they flitted around as though determined to not let her have even a glimpse of their shadowy selves. They were of all sizes; some were as large as cats, she felt, or perhaps that was the light playing its silly tricks.
The light seemed to come from another corner of the shed, from behind a particular door. The region where she had dropped into was mostly plunged in darkness and there was a suffocating stench pervading throughout. Maya wondered whether there was some sewer that pour
ed into the shed somewhere or perhaps there were dead rats, which was quite probable considering their thriving population in this uninhabited place.
The door was on the farthest corner of the shed. She cocked her ear in its direction, trying to hear even the faintest sound if she could. But now there was nothing. The screaming had stopped too. There was nothing but the silence, only punctuated by the squeaking of the rodents.
Maya took her first step in the shed. Her foot hurt every time it touched the ground, but she had to walk. She couldn’t stay in this filthy place and wait to become fodder for the rodents. She had to move. The only logical direction to move in was the incandescent light behind the asbestos door.
As she crept along, she tried to familiarize herself with the surroundings to whatever extent she could. She couldn’t see anything though. Everything was either in darkness or in shadows. She felt her mind played tricks with her as she thought she saw silhouettes of people staring at her, but that couldn’t mean a thing. There aren’t any people here, she told herself. If there were, they wouldn’t have let me walk about so freely.
The rats seemed to have increased too. She had never seen rats to be so bold; some of them even grazed her toes as they flitted by, and she recoiled at the warm prickly touch of their flesh on her body. Their bristly hair poked into her toenails and tickled her feet, and that made her shiver. Why were these blasted rats so fearless?—she thought.
One of the rats turned out to be particularly brave. It tried to climb up her knee but scooted away when she attempted to slap her knee in a reflex. It jumped off and stood still upon the floor from where it looked at Maya, its whiskers twitching. Then it broke off into a run. Maya followed the rat’s path and saw that it ran into a niche in the wall. When she looked up, she saw a kind of a storage area. It had various shelves, on which were placed several age-old tins and cans. The shelves were arranged upon a rack, which had turned quite rusty with age.
