The flash threatened again, dredging up another memory. I managed to block it out. I arm-twisted my attention to the open book in my hands. The breeze flipped a few pages, seemingly more interested in the plot than I was. It was a standard urban fantasy tale; a witch in an imaginary world full of vampires and demons. Every nasty two-bit character in the paperback was out to kill her. Witches, vampires, demons, death-threats… No witches or vampires yet. But the demon…
That face…
No! Stop! Focus, damn it! Anything but that!
I looked out of the window again. The train’s motion usually lulls me into semi-consciousness. Today, it did nothing at all. The scenery was fantastic. India’s western coastline in all its lush green glory was laid out in the beautiful twilight of a winter sunset. The sky was streaked a hundred impossible hues of pink and orange. I could spot the sea peeking between trees and hills. Ideally, I would be sitting at the door, the wind in my hair, soaking in the beauty. But today, it all seemed pretty pointless. What would all the beauty in the world do for me if I was going to end up dead or in jail? I tried to focus on the colours. They blurred together, coalescing, becoming something else.
Back to this morning…That moment…I was desperately thinking of words to make sense of what I’d seen, saying anything I could, everything I could. That face did not let me think! My words ran together into an incoherent mess. I was blabbering. I had broken into a sweat. I had to stop this. Back to the personal film trailer of my life. Stuff I wanted to think about…
A series of images this time. All the jobs I skipped through. All the things I had tried doing. Talking to a bunch of strangers, selling them crap I didn’t believe in. Writing eulogies and obituaries of movies. Interviewing idiots who did not know enough to justify their pathetic self-importance. The money. The alcohol. The loneliness. The lies. The words. Always more words.
The trailer was beginning to look like that of an arty disaster flick. Words! I needed words! I quickly went through a succession of nonsensical words in my head. Air, dreams, breathe, go, swim, live – taking comfort from them.
Twist, twirl and stir words. I was cooking up something I had never understood and did not need to understand. I just needed comfort. Words comforted me. Words were my companion; they stood by me, instantly responding to my discomfiture.
And then, in some horrible parody of events, the music track on my phone changed to Boulevard of Broken Dreams. (I was having an extended Green Day). This time when the memory from the morning came back, I gave in. Play it again, Sam. Knock yourself out.
***
I have always hated mornings. I was supposed to be born in the morning and came along at noon. Hell, it was a Sunday! But this morning was special. I had a client meeting over breakfast at the Sheraton. Very promising indeed. I was going to read to him from the book and walk out with my 50% advance on a hefty amount.
I was up and about by 8am, an incredible achievement, especially given the weather. It was rainy and cold, and I just did not want to go anywhere. But I managed to brave it all and got out, groggy and still upbeat. I grabbed a cup of tea and my morning smoke at my favourite Irani café, watching the wind blow little droplets of rain against the window in perfectly random patterns. My phone beeped, reminding me of my imminent appointment. I got on my motorbike, flicking the cigarette away into the wind and rode off.
I was rehearsing my spiel in my head as I rode in the heavy morning traffic. I was mildly irritated at things not going my way. I had not expected so much traffic early on a Sunday morning, but then you should always expect traffic in Mumbai. And the rain was not helping. I already had several damp patches on my blazer, my favourite at that. I had to work at keeping my mood upbeat.
Manoeuvring in and out of lanes of traffic, I talked to myself and hummed in between breaths. One particularly nasty traffic snarl up ahead caught my attention. I was falling behind schedule and really could not afford to be stuck in a lane for fifteen minutes. I decided to get off the main roads and catch the back lanes. That was the first mistake. With every turn, I discovered that the entire city was in some kind of a gridlock, a huge conspiracy to screw up my day. I had to skip to narrower and narrower lanes to find a free road. Finally, I hit a deserted lane no one else wanted to be on, and from then on the going was relatively easy…until I realised I was lost. I zoomed from one abandoned street to another, finally recognising an old district of the city I had no business in. I was clearly overdressed for this quarter and did not even consider stopping to ask for directions. Mistake number two.
I slowed at a corner to orient myself. And then it started.
As I turned around to try and remember the lane I had come from, someone ran into the bike from the front. I braked hard and turned to see a man collapsed on my bike’s handlebar. I barely managed to keep the bike standing as the man sagged to one side threatening to take me down with him. I stared at the back of his head, resting on my headlight, his hands wrapped around my handlebar. I had been doing 10 kilometres an hour and could not believe that I had hurt the man.
I did my biker trick of propping the bike on its stand, while still sitting on it. I had never done it with someone collapsed on the handlebar though, and still managed to pull it off. As I strode around, I shouted at the man, “Hey! You drunk or what! Isn’t it a little early in the day?” There was no reaction and the man dangled from my parked bike. I placed one hand on his shoulder and yanked. He just swooned right into my arms. I was not prepared for this, and staggered, trying to manage his full weight. My balance was better on a bike. I could not stay on my feet and collapsed in slow motion, cushioning the man’s fall with my body. His face was an inch from mine when I first saw it. Blood! I let out a strangled yell and pushed him off.
There was blood all over him. I had never seen so much blood before. The man had huge slashes across his torso. There was one particularly ugly one that went right across his throat, the blood bubbling. I’m not much of a medical man, but I figured that was not a good thing. He was unconscious, which was probably not good either. I went a little closer, extremely reluctant yet drawn like the clichéd moth to a flame. And on cue, he came awake, gasping for air and spluttering bloody bubbles. "Run!" The little voice in my head screamed at me. I almost did. But I wanted to do something to help. I decided to stay and see if I could. Strike three! Last and final mistake.
I crouched beside him, tentatively reaching out one hand, bracing myself to touch him. I was trying to find a dry spot. There weren’t any. “Dude,” I said, and almost choked over how lame that sounded. He gasped and choked some more. I looked around, but couldn’t see a soul. Didn’t anyone live here!
I finally managed to touch him, doing my best to ignore the warm, sticky feel of the blood. I cradled his head and pulled him to my lap so that it would be easier for him to breathe. In response, he coughed and threw up a gout of blood and clotted stuff all over me. I gagged at the sight and retched a couple of times. The man grabbed my free hand and gasped one word, “Take!” There was a bloodied notepad in his hand that he was pressing into my hand. I shoved it into the back pocket of my trousers. “Act-two, Act-two,” he gasped. Act two? What was this? Some kind of murderous tragedy play? I considered the possibility that he wanted to say something else. His speech gurgled in a stomach-churning manner, with blood and I-don't-want-to-know-what-else getting in the way.
I yanked one hand free from his death-grip and pulled out my phone. There was a missed call from my client. I hit ‘Cancel’ and speed-dialled the first number I had saved; an old friend from back in school. The phone went through the mandatory beeps as the call tried to get on the network. As I waited impatiently, I noticed a few things about the man. He was a foreigner, occidental; slight of build, dressed in very tasteful but completely shredded clothes. He was muttering some words over and over again. I could make out something that sounded like ‘guilt’ and ‘silver’. And then, I heard the word ‘demon’.
A moment later, I heard the dem
on.
It was an impossibly monstrous sound, caught between a howl and a screech. It had the sound of a challenge and a question to it. Call it intuition, but it was the swiftest deduction I had ever made. That had to be the demon!
It was the most surreal moment of my life. The call to my friend went through and his caller tune—Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini—started playing. I heard the man muttering something. Again, isolated words. Demon, Scape, Guilt (or was it Guild?), Hunter. I quickly shut him up with my free hand. I swallowed another gag reflex as I felt the slimy blood and ragged flesh around his mouth. I could see a vague shadow looming larger as something walked up the adjoining alley - it did not look pretty. I did not want the dying man drawing any attention to us…or rather me. The friend I was calling was apparently asleep and the caller tune was replaced by a machine telling me that I should try calling later. I ignored the machine and hit redial. Eight beeps and then ‘Itsy bitsy’ started again. The shadow grew larger. The demon or whatever it was let out that blood-curdling sound again. And suddenly, it was there.
I have watched my fair share of horror movies. Wes Craven, John Carpenter and those new age Japanese directors are my favourites. But none of them could dream up the horror standing in front of me. I shall try and fail adequately to describe it, because I know that I will never succeed. Words are my forte, but some things are beyond language and vocabulary. The demon was basically human in form. The flesh though was a curious mix of rotting grey and green, smooth and corrupted. In places, the decaying, splotched flesh ran into what looked like molten chunks of glazed glass, raised in little spikes and lumps. It had female anatomy. I guess it was a demoness or whatever a female demon is called. Parts of its body were covered in runnels of molten glass, glowing in places with liquid, muted fire. It had patches of long, light blonde hair. The hair covered parts of its face. That was a mercy, because what I did see of the face I will never forget. One eye was squelched out of shape as if it had been stepped on, while the other was a beautiful, watery green. The nose was half decomposed, misshapen, with a freak clump of glass snot that had melted off the lips and part of the jaw. The teeth were a nightmare in themselves; jagged clusters of sharp death.
The worst part of the vision was that it was real. It was so close that I could smell the decaying flesh and feel the heat of the molten glass. For a second, I was sure it was looking at me. At least, the one good eye was looking at me. Sheer terror froze me. A cold, analytical voice went off in my head, “Fright, fight and flight”. I recognised the adrenaline rush that was the body’s response to any of these three stimuli. Fright, check. Now for the decision -fight or flight? In all fairness, for all of five seconds I did consider putting up a fight. I looked around wildly for something weapon-like. My options ranged from the toolkit in my bike (which was behind the demon) to a thin piece of bamboo lying on the road beside me. I grabbed the bamboo stick and then wilted as I realised just how ridiculous it was to even consider fighting that thing with a reed thin bamboo switch under two feet in length.
The demon shrieked. That did it! I pushed the injured man off and scrambled backwards desperately. I slid and scraped across a few feet of road, stumbled on to a pavement, and finally my back hit a wall. That did not stop me. I kept kicking, my feet scrabbling on the dusty pavement, pushing myself futilely against the wall that refused to give an inch. I did not stop though. I had to get further away from that ghoulish animated corpse. My sanity, my very life depended on it. All the fight had left me. I had to get away!
The demon moved forward, quickly. As it moved, part of its jaw dropped on its torso, leaving a trail of thick blood and liquid glass. I stared in morbid fascination, as the little piece of rotted, bloody flesh dribbled down its body. Then I threw up. Violently. Remnants of sweet tea accompanied by hot sour bile came up in a liquid rush. I was on my knees for a few seconds, gasping and choking. I looked up at the demon, swaying over the man’s body. My skewed, blurred vision landed on its hands. The hands had decayed right to the bone and the curving skeletal fingers had jagged glass edges. They were dripping with blood. That explained the man’s state.
The man was staring at the demon in raw fear. He raised his hand and said something. The molten glass on the demon glowed more brightly and the demon shrieked again. I could not take it and closed my eyes. I drew a ragged breath that burned my throat, still coated with bile, dark spots moving across my closed eyes. I heard a stifled scream ended abruptly by a fleshy sound, followed by liquid spurting. I had to open my eyes. I had to see what that horrible sound was. The monster was standing over the man, holding his head in its monstrous hands. The rest of the poor guy’s body was on the ground, gushing huge gouts of blood and still kicking feebly. That was more than I could take, my screams piercing the rain.
The demon looked at me, startled, like it had just realised I was there. I continued yelling my head off, only louder. I was a natural baritone and could hold my own on the decibel scale. I did not know whether my hollering scared it off or whether it just had another appointment to keep. One moment it was there and then suddenly, it was gone. The decapitated corpse remained, seeping blood from a ragged neck. It had taken the head with it.
My screams died down to whimpers, but not before getting some attention. There was a small group approaching. It looked like a family; father, mother, two kids. They saw the corpse and that set the kids screaming. The kids did pretty well on the decibel scale too, and then their mother started. I had half a mind to start again myself but was out of breath. The father took a couple of steps towards the body, trying to decide whether he should play the responsible citizen. One of the kids pointed towards me. The screaming got more frantic. The man took one look at me and immediately rushed back to his family. He grabbed the kids and wife and they got the hell out of there. I tried calling after them but I think that got them running faster. I was in a daze and did not understand what was happening. I staggered to my feet and looked around me. I noticed movement to my right and tottered back, my hands coming up defensively against the horrible apparition I had seen. That is when I realised that I was looking at a window, at my own reflection. I looked like a psychopath on a rampage. Wild eyes, tousled hair, blood on my face, hands and clothes. I was in a lot of trouble. I probably had a few minutes before the cops arrived. There would be questions. “Why was I here?” “How did the man die?” “Where is his head?” My story of a head-hunting demon sounded insane even to me. The headless body had stopped moving but was still leaking blood.
I had seen the father of the family give my bike a look as he rushed past. He might have noted the license plate details. It did have an easy-to-remember number. The irony was that I had paid a premium for that number. I remember this and a thousand other abstract thoughts going through my head as I stood there staring at my reflection. Finally, something clicked and I snapped out my shocked daze. I pulled my blazer off and used it to wipe some of the blood off my hands and face. I gave my favourite, very expensive and completely ruined blazer one last rueful look, and then dumped it in the nearest bin. I picked up my phone. There were five missed calls; two from my friend and three from my client. I hit cancel and shoved it into my pocket. I strode quickly to my bike, started it and rode like hell out of there.
***
I came back to the present; drained, exhausted. I was still staring sightlessly out the window. I could not make sense of anything I was seeing. It did not seem important anymore to do so. Life was no longer based on logic or sense. I had no clue what it was based on now.
Point of light, deep inside your head, let go of your thoughts. Forget who you are, who you think you are. Let go of your past, your identity, everything that is you. Let go and float away, to a place that is pure energy. Give into it. Plug in. Recharge. Until you’re born again.
The old litany came back to me. But for once, it didn’t work. My head was host to far too many thoughts for me to visualise the pristine point of light.
; CHAPTER 3
Weaving Scapes
He was born to crawl
And mayhap to walk
Imagination unfurled its wings
He painted himself an illusion
He leapt
And the end began
The Historian
The scape site was a bleak, uninhabited excuse for an island; a clump of volcanic rocks somewhere in the midst of the Galapagos archipelago. There were no inhabitants there, unless you counted the thousands of seabirds that flew and crapped all over the island. That day, there was a wicked wind blowing in cold spray from the sea, ensuring that everyone and everything on the island was cold and damp. Every exposed inch of land on the island was coated with guano. The wind did not help the smell much and it was acrid enough to make my eyes water.
We had landed at the nearest airport on the mainland and boarded a Guild yacht that had been waiting to bring us to the synch point. None of the remaining members of the group had spoken a word to me, though Lily Pendleton looked like she might a couple of times. I was done with my survey of the place and my forebodings. The weather, the location, the atmosphere…it was the perfect setting for disaster.
The scape was scheduled to begin in a few minutes. I was setting up my recording equipment. Most of it had been arranged by Silvus’s team. I just added the special lenses and filters that marked my personal recording signature, and installed and calibrated the equipment. Seven specialised high resolution video cameras with infrared sensors were set up at strategic locations on the perimeter. It was not easy, considering the unfriendly terrain and the vicious winds. I had to calibrate every stand and use drills to screw the equipment to the bedrock itself. I finished with the directional microphones and the satellite uplink that synchronised all recorded data to a terminal at the headquarters. The scape was always recorded and preserved, even if there were no survivors left at the end of it. I could not get over the fact that Silvus had asked for a historian on this scape. Given the number of shortcuts he was taking and the singular ruthlessness with which he was proceeding, I would have assumed that he would need no witnesses or evidence. Why bother recording? Once again, I went back to thinking about the report on the scape as I set up the solar panels and the backup power equipment.
Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) Page 3
