Devil's Rock (14 page)

‘You might ask our guest if he wants a demonstration!’ protested Mrs Dalal.

‘Of course he wants a demonstration,’ declared her husband, selecting a long, double-ended drum from the collection in the corner of the room and slinging it around his waist.

‘No stopping him now!’ Anusha laughed.

‘You must excuse me, I am really a tabla player but, since I think the bracelet is from Sri Lanka, I am going to play the
yak bera
. It’s the drum they use to accompany the Devil Dances.’

Mr Dalal began to chant and as he chanted his hands flicked and slapped and tapped the tightly stretched skins on the ends of the long drum, echoing back the rhythms and tones of the chanted syllables: ‘Dhin-dhin,’ he chanted. ‘D-hin-d-hin,’ sang the drum. ‘Dha-ge-ti-ra-ki-ta, ta-na, ka-ta, dha-ge, ti-ra-ki-ta . . .’ Faster flew the hands, faster and faster; driving the rhythm into ever more complex configurations, drawing out deep bass notes over which exploded cascades of high, staccato beats that he struck from the very edges of the skins. To Zaki it seemed as if a whole band of drummers had entered the room; it was impossible that one person could produce the intricate crossings of rhythms and tones.

Quietly, Mrs Dalal rose and opened one of the larger instrument cases. She lifted out her cello and her bow and tightened the bowstring. Soon, the cello’s sonorous voice joined the cavorting dance of the drum, filling the whole room with its resonance. Sitting a few feet away, it seemed to Zaki that the cello’s strings were within his body and that every note, every change of pitch and rhythm, vibrated through every living cell.

Now a third voice joined the other two and Zaki turned to see that Anusha had her violin. The fiddle’s bow rocked and sawed across the strings, sending a flurry of notes to skip lightly around the cello’s measured steps. Then the cello swept its counter melody between and around the fiddle and drum. Zaki was flying again, but not as a seagull, not as a hawk. The music lifted and carried him. Occasionally, he would become aware of the musicians, see the looks that passed between them, and he understood how this family had developed its wordless method of communication.

Looking up, Zaki’s eyes fell again on the grotesque mask that hung on the wall. Now all the light seemed to drain from the rest of the room and the colours of the mask to glow with greater intensity in the surrounding gloom. As Zaki watched, the eyes of the mask bulged, swelling out from their sockets like boils about to burst. The protruding teeth twisted into a ghastly grin, the nostrils flared and a snake wormed its way out of one ear and proceeded, tongue flicking, to coil itself around the hanging head. The cacophony of voices that Zaki had first heard in the cave, and then again in
Curlew
’s cabin, burst in, drowning out the music; a press of faces, some painted, all streaked and shining with sweat, crowded in around the grinning mask. Zaki’s nose, mouth and lungs filled with the choking smell of wood smoke. Then the awful voice that had first growled the name ‘Rhiannon’ two nights before on the dark street spoke again: ‘No! You will not drive me out. Time for you to die!’

Zaki would have screamed if someone else hadn’t screamed first. The sudden, shrill cry broke the spell and all was bright and normal in the room, except that Anusha was pointing excitedly at the bracelet on the table and shouting, ‘Look, everyone! Look!’

The etched inscriptions on the rim of the bracelet, instead of being dark lines and curls, now shone as if lit from within, shone with the intensity of liquid metal in a crucible, shone like the white heat of a furnace. And they were moving, transforming as though being written and rewritten by an invisible hand.

Zaki, instinctively, reached for the bracelet but dropped it with a cry of pain as its heat seared the skin of his hand.

As Zaki and Anusha watched, the markings on the bracelet darkened and stood still.

Anusha’s mother, having laid her cello in its case, came to see what had so excited her daughter. ‘What happened?’

‘The bracelet! Didn’t you see? The writing was moving!’

‘And it’s burning hot!’ added Zaki, nursing his hand.

Mr Dalal leant between his wife and Anusha to touch the bracelet. ‘Warm. I wouldn’t say hot.’

‘But, Dad! Look at the writing!’

Once more, Mr Dalal used the napkin to lift the bracelet.

‘Hmm. That is odd.’

‘What is?’ asked Zaki.

‘The inscriptions – they don’t look quite the same.’

‘I told you, they were moving! And they were shining!’

‘But that’s not possible,’ said Mrs Dalal.

‘No, but – they do look a little different.’

‘You’ve not remembered them right, surely.’

Mr Dalal scratched his right earlobe thoughtfully. ‘Where did this come from?’

Zaki and Anusha glanced furtively at each other. ‘It was Zaki’s grandmother’s,’ lied Anusha.

‘Was?’

‘She’s dead,’ Zaki explained.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Mr Dalal passed the bracelet to Zaki. ‘You should take great care of it. It’s certainly most unusual. It may even be quite valuable.’

Zaki returned it to his pocket. It was no longer even warm but the glare of the fiery inscriptions seemed burnt into his retina so that their bright traces danced in his vision and swam in a sea of red each time he closed his eyes.

‘Bedtime, I think,’ said Mrs Dalal, with a yawn.

Zaki stood up, then realised he didn’t know where he was going to sleep, and waited, rather awkwardly, for someone to show him to his room.

‘Come on,’ said Mrs Dalal. ‘I’ll show you where everything is.’

‘That mask,’ asked Zaki as he followed Mrs Dalal upstairs, ‘where’s it from?’

‘That’s Riri Yakka the Demon of Blood,’ said Mrs Dalal, rather dramatically. ‘It goes with the drum Sandeep was playing. They both came from Sri Lanka. They’re used in the Devil Dances.’

‘Devil Dances? What are they?’

‘Ceremonies for driving out demons.’ She opened the door to the spare bedroom. ‘Here you are. Sleep well. And I hope that mask doesn’t give you nightmares!’

g

Chapter 15

Lying in a strange bed in a strange room, Zaki thought he had only just closed his eyes when he was woken by a soft tap on his door. He sat up quickly and wondered, for a moment, where he was. The door swung slowly open. In the darkness, he could just make out a figure in the doorway.

‘Are you awake?’ It was Anusha.

‘Yes,’ Zaki whispered back. ‘What are you doing?’

‘There’s something you have to see. Come on,’ said Anusha, and disappeared.

Zaki struggled into some clothes and stumbled, half awake, into the corridor.

‘Follow me,’ said Anusha.

She led him to the back of the house and out through the back door, which she held open and then closed carefully behind him. The concrete paving slabs were cold and wet under Zaki’s bare feet and it was very dark in the back yard.

‘This way,’ hissed Anusha.

Zaki followed her shadowy form to another door at the end of a short path. They stepped inside the building.

Little lights and dials glowed in the darkness. There were banks of knobs and sliders on a sloping, black desk, and one end of the room was closed off by a glass partition behind which were microphones on stands.

‘Wow!’ said Zaki. ‘You’ve got a recording studio. My brother would love this!’

‘My mum and dad do music for films and stuff,’ said Anusha.

‘Do you . . . ?’

‘Play on the soundtracks? Sometimes, when they need an extra violin. I had to sing once. But look at this.’

She sat at a keyboard to the side of the mixing desk. Her fingers clicked expertly over the keys and a large video screen flashed into life.

‘You can sit there if you want,’ she said, indicating an office-type chair beside hers. Zaki perched on the chair and stared up at the screen.

‘I’ve downloaded the camcorder recording. You can see a lot more on this big screen than you could on the camcorder’s screen.’

Anusha clicked the mouse and an image appeared on the screen. Zaki saw himself, back to the camera, sitting on the edge of the landing stage. It was the recording Anusha had made that morning.

‘Wait, I’ll fast-forward it; nothing happens for a bit except for that stupid woman with the dog.’

The image jiggled and there was a scrabble of sound from the surrounding speakers. The woman and her dog appeared and seemed to scamper about like comic figures in a silent movie, then the picture steadied and the sound returned to the soft sighing of the wind. A gull flew in from the left side of the image and settled on the landing stage not far from the seated Zaki.

‘Can you stop it there?’ asked Zaki.

Anusha froze the image just after the figure of Zaki turned to look at the gull.

‘Yeah. Now can you zoom in?’

The image got larger in a series of jerky steps until the head of the gull, with its bright yellow eye, filled the screen.

‘OK. Go on, and watch the eye,’ said Zaki, knowing instinctively that the eye was what they should be looking at.

Anusha unfroze the image; the eye blinked but still retained the gull’s characteristic glassy stare. The eye blinked again and it was as though a shadow passed across its surface, like the wind-ruffled shadows that race over the water on a sunny day. When the shadow had gone, the eye appeared to have gained added depth, reminding Zaki of peering down into deep water on a still morning. Although the eye was the eye of a gull, it no longer appeared to be the spirit of a gull that looked out through it.

‘Did you see?’

Anusha nodded. ‘It changed. It stopped looking like a gull’s eye. It was you, wasn’t it. You were looking out of the eye.’

‘Yeah, it was me. I know it’s weird, but . . .’

Anusha gave another little nod; he didn’t have to go on; he didn’t have to explain. She had seen it and she believed him.

The eye still filled the screen.

‘Can you zoom out?’ asked Zaki.

Several clicks of the mouse and Zaki’s seated figure came back into frame. There he was, sitting beside the gull, except . . . the gull was now him and the thing that looked like him – was what? Something, somebody else.

‘Shall I run it on?’

‘Yeah – please.’

Anusha allowed the action to resume; the gull took off and flew out of frame, the camera remaining on the seated figure. Obviously, Anusha had been quite unaware of the significance of the gull while she was filming.

‘Can we run it back?’

‘There’s something more important you need to see.’ Anusha’s fingers click the keys and the image jumped forward. ‘I kept the camera running as I walked towards you.’

Zaki heard Anusha’s voice on the soundtrack call his name. He saw the figure’s head and shoulders turn and the eyes looked straight into the camera. Anusha froze the image once more and zoomed in on the face – his face – but not his face. Not his face because the eyes were not his eyes.

A chill of fear ran up Zaki’s spine. A cornered wolf might look like that just before it leapt for your throat – treacherous, vicious, cruel, waiting to attack.

Anusha allowed the recording to run on in slow motion. The wolfish eyes shifted uneasily and then the head turned away as though trying to hide the face from the viewer. A few moments later the screen went black.

‘That’s all I have. Do you want to see anything again?’

‘No thanks,’ said Zaki.

Anusha was busy for a few minutes shutting down the equipment, then she swivelled her chair to face him.

‘I’m sorry if I didn’t believe you straight away – about being the gull and about it not being you that attacked me – but it’s all so strange. Where do you think that thing – the thing that took over your body – where do you think it is now? Maybe it died when you – when it – when your body fell over the edge. Maybe it’s gone – maybe you’ve killed it. Do you think?’

Zaki tilted his head. ‘Is the cut on my cheek still there?’

Anusha leant forward. The only light in the room was the glow from the dials and the little LEDs.

‘It’s kind of hard to tell. It’s very dark in here.’

Zaki ran his fingertips across the smooth skin. ‘It’s gone – feel.’

Anusha felt along his cheekbone then sat back. Zaki could sense she was frightened.

‘So that means . . . ?’

‘That the thing is still there; it’s still inside my body. How else could that cut have healed up so quickly? And it spoke again.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight, when you were all playing that music and the bracelet was going crazy.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said, “Time for you to die.”’

‘Die! What did it mean? Aren’t you frightened?’

‘Of course I’m frightened!’

‘There must be someone we could talk to – someone who could help.’

‘And what do we tell them? That I’m possessed? That I’m in danger of turning into the beast from hell? Do you seriously think anyone would believe us? No – I’ve got to sort this out.’

‘You mean, we’ve got to sort this out.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know,’ said Anusha firmly, ‘but I’m here, aren’t I.’

They sat in the semi-darkness, wrapped in their own thoughts, each waiting for the other to say something.

Eventually, Anusha broke the silence. ‘The bracelet . . . and the music . . .’ she said slowly.

‘And the mask,’ added Zaki.

‘What? Our mask?’

‘On the wall – it came alive.’

‘Perhaps you
are
possessed.’

‘Your mum said the masks were used to get rid of demons.’

‘That’s right, the shaman wears the mask and becomes a demon, then, through the music, he can drive out the demon that’s in the person they’re trying to cure.’

‘Perhaps that started to happen tonight. Perhaps my demon felt threatened. Perhaps that’s why he spoke. Listen, I want you to find out everything you can about these Devil Dances. Ask your mum and dad; see if they’ve got any books or pictures, or anything.’

‘OK, but . . .’

‘I know; it’s completely unreal.’

‘I’ll get everything I can.’

‘Do you suppose I could borrow the mask?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you could. I’ll say we need it for school – for Mrs Palmer.’

‘Yeah, good. What about music? I think the music’s important.’

‘Don’t ask me to play the drums, I’m useless!’

‘Pity. And we can hardly ask your dad.’

‘How about a recording?’

‘A recording – hey! Yeah – it might work!’

‘Drums on soundtracks . . .’ Anusha thought for a minute. ‘Yes . . . I think . . . Yes! I’m certain! “Varanasi” – he used that drum on “Varanasi”.’

Anusha pulled open a filing drawer and flipped through the rows of filed CDs and DVDs. She pulled out a CD and held it out for Zaki. ‘Here. This just has the drum track on it.’

‘Fantastic.’ Zaki took the proffered CD.

‘Now what?’

‘We need to know what we’re doing. We need to read the logbook. It might tell us all sorts of stuff we need to know.’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ve got all day.’

‘Well, not quite all day. I need to take the dinghy back to
Morveren
. Remember?’

‘We’ll take the logbook with us! Read it on your boat. Then no one can disturb us.’

‘Brilliant! And there are charts on the boat if we need them.’

Zaki felt better now that they had a plan of action. He had to admit that it wasn’t a very clear plan but at least they were going to do something, not just wait for things to happen.

Anusha locked up the recording studio and they crept back into the house. Back in his unfamiliar bed, creatures with eyes of fire pursued Zaki through his dreams so that he woke feeling more tired than when he had gone to sleep.