Warlock

by Vickram E Diwan

She could switch on even a single point of light in the farmhouse, fearing that it might be seen from afar, revealing her presence to the Warlock. She lay on the floor with her back to the bed, in that creepy & dark farmhouse. Every time a window or door shook because of strong winds, her heart leapt to her throat. Any sudden noise made her feel that the Warlock was back; in those horrifying moments of the hour, she had lived a thousand deaths.

  She lay on the floor paralyzed with anxiety and terror; alone in the darkened room surrounded by her own demonic imaginations and fears, hearing strange sounds and noises. She did not dare to go to the door or open a window; she ‘knew’ that the moment she opened it, the menacing golden mask of Warlock would greet her before the evil sorcerer grabbed her. Neither the need to go to the loo could shake her out of her conviction of Warlock’s presence just outside the window or the door of the room.

  After what seemed like ages, she rose up, shaking her feet. Her bodily needs got the better of her terror as she dared to open the door of the bedroom to go to the loo. After which she sneaked out of the rear door of the farmhouse; wondering what should be her next move. Should she go straight for the fence, or should she wait for a while longer?

  Upon reaching a decision, she walked away in the moonlit night to the distant ruins, remembering the added advantage of the ruins immediate vicinity to the fence from where she could escape whenever she felt that it was safe.

  She had to fall on the wet grass, her face buried in the ditch when she heard the noise of the toy-train rushing her way. She looked cautiously at it, raising her head a little, she could see the worried and irritated & frustrated Warlock, as he rushed on his train in the direction of the farmhouse, not knowing that she was lying only a meter away from the tracks, staring at him.

  She resumed her journey to the distant ruins, with the help of the moonlight. Away from the distractions of the city lights, it was an amazing specter, the zenith full of shining stars, constellations, galaxies, distant and unknown worlds. Another time and in other circumstances, she could have spent hours at that place, watching the spellbinding sky above. Strange; what an evil man can do, to an otherwise calm place, blessed with heavenly beauty.

  After spending nearly half an hour, at a specific place near the ruins, performing a specific job, Payal went to the old Gypsy ruins. She chose a large and spacious if shattered house; it was in the somewhat better state, compared to the rest of the ruins; but that was about it. For rest of the part, it had only one half of its ceiling left, while the door and windows were completely missing, leaving a wide cavity for cold winds to creep in.

  Tired of her labours, she lay down on the cold and dirty, muddy floor of the house; feeling her abject loneliness in the extreme, in that desolate place in the middle of nowhere. Alone, without anything to do and in no immediate physical danger, she allowed her mind to drift in the course of its own choosing. Once again her thoughts went back to the basics, her ambition to become a ‘star’. That was how it all began; her watching Rudolf Schönherr on TV, visiting his institute of performing arts and the subsequent events, which had led her to her present predicament.

  Abhay’s face appeared behind her closed eyes and she cursed herself for her rashness and folly; if only she had stuck to her decision to go on a dinner date with him and not to go with Rudolf Schönherr, how different things would have been?

  After a long time, in her perception a few hours, Payal got up from the floor and came out of the broken house. The breeze was as cold as earlier, the moon and the stars shone as brilliantly as earlier. It was almost impossible for her to tell whether it was thirty minutes to dawn or three hours. But her confidence was now restored, she had decided to take her chances and go ahead with the final, and the most delicate phase of her plan to escape.

  She went to the tracks of the toy train and walked between them, heading towards the direction of the farmhouse very far away from that place. But that was not her final destination; she intended to leave the tracks, once she reached the middle of the estate, and move towards the iron fence. She knew of a place, about the middle of the estate, where the fence ran at a small distance to the main road of the Mehrauli area, which ran outside the estate.

  She had improvised on her earlier plan and had chosen the middle of the estate instead of the vicinity of the ruins for escaping. She hoped to climb but of the secluded area of the fence in the middle of the estate; considering it was the safest possible ‘exit-point’ or ‘jump-off’ point for her. The Warlock would be expecting her trying to cross over from near the front iron gates or the section of the fence near the Gypsy ruins.

  All of a sudden she began to feel a slight sensation near her feet; it seemed to be emanating from the iron tracks between which she was walking. She dropped to her knees and put her left ear to one of the tracks. It was unmistakable; it was as if, as if…the toy-train was rushing in that very direction!

  She panicked, paralyzed with fear, knowing not what to do. But she was more courageous than her realisation; something inside her seemed to step to the forefront and take charge of the situation, whenever she was in deep crisis. And it was that power, which made her sprung to her feet and run with all her might to the opposite direction, towards the Gypsy ruins, from which she had come. She ran and ran until there came a time when her feet seemed to be scarcely touching the middle of the tracks at all.

  It was when the ruins appeared in her sight that the noise behind her grew to deafening proportions. Not slowing down a fraction, she looked behind her, to see the most unbelievable and awesome sight of her life. The toy-train was hurtling towards her at its top speed; the lone circular light on its front threw a beam of light on the tracks. And the Warlock, instead of sitting, was standing on its first carriage; in the moonlight, his golden mask seemed to be shinning. He had outstretched both his arms, raising them above his head; he stood with his boots on the edges of the first carriage and was howling like a wild and mad beast at the top of his voice.

  It was a maddening and spine-chilling specter; to see the crazy megalomaniac and vicious killer, in his evilest and meanest of moods, standing like that, with outstretched arms and howling, on a racing train. The train, which was hurtling like a shell fired from a cannon, towards Payal, who ran in the middle of the tracks. The train almost seemed to have assumed a life of its own, and a will to run over her!

  She was losing her breath by the time she was near the ruins; when she looked behind, she saw that the light of the train was falling straight on her, as it was about to run over her any approaching second. Using all the strength left in her body, she increased her speed, but the train was getting closer with every passing second. The light behind her was illuminating the tracks in front of her, while the maddening noise of the engine combined with the howling of Warlock deafened her.

  In a fraction of a second, before the train was to touch her leg, she leapt in the air and tot off the tracks of the toy-train. Warlock watched with shocking disbelief, as her body flew in the air and fell in a ditch next to the tracks of the train. The Warlock’s head turned on its own to look at her unexpected stunt and its conclusion.By the time he looked back in front of him, it was already too late. Warlock felt the earth gave way under him, as the toy-train derailed and on its top speed hurtled straight into a ditch beside the Gypsy ruins, taking him along with it.

  Unknown to the masked-man, Payal had picked up an iron rod from amongst the junk of the Circus and had laboriously worked to remove the fishplates of the tracks before she went to hide in the ruins. It was her last trump card, her final insurance policy and she was delighted to see that it had succeeded. She sat on the ground of the ditch, unbothered by her minor injuries as she saw it all happen. She could hardly believe that it had actually happened, that her ingeniousness, imaginativeness, and intuition had triumphed over Warlock’s intrinsic evil, cruelty, and ruthlessness. That she was free, free at last!

  But her relief and jubilation were short-lived before she had a few moments of c
alm, an explosion shook the estate, as she fell on her back on the reverberating ground. The loud explosion in the ditch where the toy-train had crashed into barely seconds earlier, had thrown up debris high into the air. The engine appeared to have exploded. Huge flames leaped into the air; lighting the entire area like a day.

  In a few seconds the fires in the debris of the train reached the numerous gasoline cans, which the Warlock used to store in the last carriage. Successive explosions followed, increasing the tall flames even higher into the air. She got up from the bottom of the ditch and climbed back on the tracks of the train.

  She slowly walked away from the fires, limping slightly as a result of her leg injuries. After she had walked only a few paces, a sudden noise stopped her; her head turned on its own to look behind. Her eyes focused one frame after another, as she saw the completely unbelievable sight of her life. Right there, in the middle of the tracks of the toy-train stood Warlock.

  Payal stood paralyzed with shock when she saw the evil-sorcerer standing with his hands on his waist in the form of fists. He shouted at the top of his voice, “A mere fire can’t destroy me, girl. For I’m the Warlock, who epitomizes Evil in this age!”

  She was shuddering; standing in the cold winds of the longest night of her life, while the fires behind Warlock continued to leap higher and higher into the air. It seemed that the ruins in the vicinity of the ditch had also caught fire, increasing the unnatural light even further. Suddenly she turned on her heels and ran away at top speed without any sort of prelude.

  The howling Warlock ran behind her with all his menacing might, he was waiving his sacrificial sword in his right hand. Just when he was about to leap on her, She turned back without any warning and with all her strength kicked him between his thighs. He screamed with pain and fell on his knees, his face disfigured with pain. The sword fell out of his hand as he fell down; she immediately picked it up and tried to stab him in his back.

  But before it could pierce through his skin, his strong hand rose itself and caught Payal’s wrist in mid-air. She tried to loosen his grip on her wrist but was unsuccessful; Warlock was much too strong for her. He shook her wrist violently and the sword fell away into the long bushes nearby. Before he could get back on his feet, she cruelly hit him again between his thighs. He screamed at the top of his voice as his eyes closed with pain. Shaking off his hand from her wrist, she ran off where her nose took her.

  She didn’t know how long she ran like that, but when she could run no longer she fell to the ground panting. Her heart sank when she saw the fire at a distance; for it meant that she was still close to the place where the toy-train had crashed. It took her a while to realize that in her panic she had run in a circle and had come back to the place from where she had started!

  She cursed herself on her stupidity while she lay on the ground; it meant that the masked-man was still near. She was beginning to get more than a little scared of a man hidden behind the Golden mask; he seemed to have almost inhuman powers. She still couldn’t get over the shock of seeing him alive; or could figure out how could a man have survived that kind of disastrous accident and fire, unless of course, he was not a mere man; not an ordinary mortal. She desperately was in need of help, but who could help her in that wilderness?

  Payal’s eyes fell on a shadowy figure approaching her; when it came nearer, she saw in the moonlight that it was Bittoo: the madman. He seemed to be in a fit or one of his peculiar moods. He was leaping into the air as he moved, his hands were outstretched and he was shouting some incomprehensible words from his mouth. She was too much in shock, too much exhausted in her nerves to recall that Bittoo was supposed to be mute, how could speak? Or maybe he wasn’t mute at all, only pretending to be for some unknown reason or whim of his.

  She shouted, “Bittoo, Bittoo; you have got to help me. Please!”

  But her pleas fell on deaf ears; unbothered by it, he continued to leap in the air in a series of continuous jumps as he moved away in that moonlit night, mesmerized in his own world of make-believe. Chanting incomprehensible words, which she thought rhymed with “Baba, Baba black sheep; Baba, Baba black sheep!”

  Before she had a chance to gather her thoughts or her senses, she heard the mad howling of the Warlock. Turning her head she saw him rushing towards her from behind. It was as if a charge of electric current passed through her veins at lightning speed. Maybe it was the fear of death itself, which made her jump to her feet, and forgetting her injuries and limp, she ran away. She was charging towards the fence near the sight of the accident, from which tall flames and clouds of smoke were still rising high into the air.

  He had raised the sword above his head, locked in his two hands and was chasing Payal like a panther hunting its prey. He was getting closer and closer to her; she knew that, as she constantly turned her head to look at him while continuing to run towards the fence which was still far away. It seemed only seconds, before the vicious black-magician hunted her down, whose feet scarcely were touching the ground below him by that time.

  Both Payal and the Warlock alike were shocked by the suddenness of what followed; out of nowhere, a fire engine appeared outside the section of the fence of the estate, towards which she was heading. It rammed straight into the fence, taking it down violently and moving on that fallen section to rush into the estate grounds. It was followed by an uncountable number of police vehicles with flashing red lights on top of them and with their deafening sirens.

  The fire engine stopped right next to the sight of the accident, while the police vehicles screeched to a halt right in front of Payal. It was an awesome sight to comprehend, the moonlit night with a massive fire in a vast estate, with the headlights of the Police vehicles focused on a masked man in a hooded robe, holding a sword. The policemen had all taken out their guns and revolvers, which they had aimed at the Warlock; whose body was shining in the headlights of their S.U.Vs.

  “Throw down your weapon and raise your hands above your head!” shouted a voice from the loudspeaker. “This is the police; you are warned that if you do not comply immediately you will be shot down. This is your first and final warning; you have only till the count of three to comply.”

  “One….” The voice from the loudspeaker shouted; immediately she heard the policemen, who had taken positions behind the open doors of their SUVs, arm their weapons, preparing to open fire.

  She ran towards them with her hands above her head, shouting, “Don’t shoot me, he is the evil man, I’m a victim. I’m unarmed, don’t shoot me with him!”

  “Two…” the loudspeaker shouted.

  She ran straight into the arms of a policeman dressed in the khaki uniform. She fell in his arms saying, “I’m Payal, don’t shoot me. This man is a killer; he is chasing me and is trying to kill me with that knife because I saw his evil deed.” Before she could say any more, her weary and exhausted nerves finally gave in, and she fell unconscious.

  Just as the loudspeaker shouted,“…three,” Warlock threw away his sword, raising his hands above his head. Immediately a number of cops ran towards him and pushed him down on the ground. In the light of the SUVs, they searched his body for any more hidden weapons after they had seized the dagger, which he had thrown on the ground. When they finally removed his Golden mask, they were able to see a blue-eyed Caucasian man with sad eyes and resignation written all over his face. They handcuffed him and rushed him to the rear of one of the Police vehicles.

  Two of the S.U.Vs backed into the ground and dashed out of the broken section of the fence, with red lights flashing on their top. One of them had Rudolf Schönherr sitting on the floor in the rear, surrounded by policemen armed with machine guns. In the other,a cop sat with Payal’s head on his lap, who lay unconscious on the long seat in the rear. Her nightmare had finally come to an end and Warlock’s nightmare had just begun.

  VOLUME - 2

  THE NEMESIS

  CHAPTER 9: THE INVESTIGATION

  Inspector Uday Thakur sat down expurgated in his
chair in the Crime branch office and took off his peak cap. “I heard that you had been called to the Headquarters,” said Sub-Inspector Bishnoi, his assistant as he joined him.

  “D.C.P Bhoopat had called me, to give me a new case.”

  “Which case?”

  “The director of a dance institute has been taken into custody this morning from his estate in Mehrauli. He was trying to murder a girl at the time of his arrest. Presently he is in the local Police Station; while the girl is recuperating in Moolchand Hospital.”

  “How come, the case has been transferred to our section so early? Is he the Mehrauli-chopper?”

  “His lawyer is quite capable and she had created a ruckus when she was not allowed to meet him. She called all the news channels and journalists and held an impromptu press conference outside the headquarters and forced her way into the office of Joint Commissioner and later met Police Commissioner himself. She protested that her client, who is a man of international repute, was in the illegal custody of the Police, without proper arrest on any specific charges.”

  Inspector Thakur did not know, but Rudolf Schönherr’s friend Rohit had gone to meet the L.G of the city, accompanied by an influential minister of state in the Central Government and had pleaded for the release of his friend and a high-level inquiry into the circumstances of his arrest. And it was the phone-call from the Lieutenant Governor’s house to the Commissioner of Police, which had swung the top brass of Police into action, with the persistent inquiries from the media adding to the pressure.

  “And since the local Police station was busy trying to control a riot in the district; the case was handed to our branch and I have been appointed as the Investigation officer,” Uday said.

  “What are details of the case?”

  “We have as yet only the preliminary statement of the girl, Ms. Payal Chatterjee, which she gave to the assistant sub-inspector Rajveer Yadav. I talked to him on his mobile and got the details. We will take her detailed statement when she regains consciousness; in the meanwhile I want you to go to ‘Rudolf Schönherr institute of performing arts’ in South Extension for inquiry. We have to verify the girl’s statement before we formally book Schönherr for holding her in illegal captivity at his farmhouse and attempted murder.”