THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

2001

I
t seemed to Chotu that they had all done this before. He was leading them to the field. The cracks in the ground that he had seen that morning seemed larger and drier now, opening up under the afternoon sun, baking the ground mercilessly. Behind him, Sarayu, Aravind and Chanti followed, carrying a spade, a fork and a shovel respectively. He held in his hand the biggest of all the tools—a digger, an instrument that matched his height—which he used as a walking stick, prodding the earth with each step he took.

He had become the de facto leader of the group because they all believed he could sniff these creatures out into the open. But here they were, in the middle of the field, and yet he felt nothing crawl under his skin. He heard no sounds in the corners of his mind, he saw no shapes when he closed his eyes. Could Thatha
be right? Had these creatures learnt how to hide themselves from him?

Of course, Thatha’s
theory that he had outgrown his abilities was nonsense. He had never in his life been free of his peculiar ability. As he grew older, his sense for people’s emotions only got stronger. Even right now, he could feel the fear in Chanti, the sadistic delight that bubbled over in Sarayu, and the slinky, secretive sense of guilt in Aravind. If he could feel all of
them
, why couldn’t he feel these things they were looking for?

He stopped when they got to the well at the other end of the field and looked around him, covering his eyes against the sun. The others behind him stopped too. Aravind walked to the well and looked down.

‘God!’ he said. ‘Completely dry. It has been like this for some time now.’ Everything he said reminded Chotu of the thief who robbed the temple and then joined the search party. He was hiding something. Chotu could tell that much from the smell of rotten guilt that came from him.

‘So, Chotu,’ Sarayu said. ‘Is this where we dig?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Chotu. ‘I do not feel anything.’

Sarayu gave an impatient grunt and pitched her fork in the ground. It hit a crack and fell on its side.

‘Maybe Thatha
is right, Chotu,’ Aravind called out. ‘Forgotten your little mind-reading trick, have you?’

‘I’ve not forgotten anything,’ Chotu said angrily. ‘I think we should start digging near the well and work our way towards the house.’

‘Great, so we’re going to dig the whole field in this heat?’

‘We will have to. We have no choice.’

Aravind turned to Chotu and leaned on his spade. ‘No, Chotu, I’ve been telling you numbskulls this, all morning. We
do
have a choice. We pack our bags and leave.’

Once again, that whiff of fear, a fear that people would come to know. But what was it that he was hiding?

Chanti walked up to the well, took a look inside, turned around and drove his shovel into the ground with a heave. The blade hit the ground and scraped the surface instead of slipping in. On his second try, he aimed for a crack. With his foot, he stamped the edge of the shovel into the ground and lifted a piece of it. The mud was loose and powdery, with no trace of moisture anywhere.

Chotu suddenly became aware of a wave of movement in his mind. It had awakened the moment Chanti hit the ground, and it was steadily moving towards them. It was an emotional equivalent of a swarm of bees, all driven by the same instinct, flying towards their attacker.

‘Someone’s coming,’ he said.

‘Some
one
, hell,’ Aravind said, striding ahead and looking to the right. ‘A
lot
of someones.’

‘Who?’ Sarayu asked, first looking at Chotu and then at Aravind. ‘Who is coming?’

A group of people, around fifty of them, all dressed in white, men, women and children, huddled up in the corner of the field and stood there, staring. Even from this distance, Chotu could see the pitch blackness of their eyes. At the head of the group stood a boy without legs, steady on his crutches.

‘Who are these loonies?’ Aravind asked.

Chotu read a strange emotion in them. In fact, it could not be called an emotion. It was so base, so primal, that it could only be called instinct. And the instinct he read in their minds was that of protectiveness and sacrifice, similar to what mother cats felt for their newborns, what bees felt for their hives and for their queen.

Their queen, then, was somewhere close by, and they had come out in droves to protect her. Had Chanti’s shovel inadvertently hit the right spot? He glanced at Chanti and signalled to him to strike the ground again.

Chanti raised his shovel.

The mob moved closer.

‘Whoa,’ Aravind said. ‘Whoa. What’s going on here?’

‘This is what Thatha
was referring to.’ Chotu wiped some sweat off his brow. ‘She must have seen that we’d be coming here. So she sent an army of bodyguards to protect her.’ He took a step towards Chanti. ‘Now, Chanti, I think they may allow us one more strike before they attack. Do it once more. But slowly.’

‘Whoa!’

Chanti brought his shovel down and lifted another piece of earth. The crowd moved closer still. They did not hurry, they walked at a leisurely pace, their black eyes fixed on them.

Sarayu took a step back. ‘God, look at their faces.’

There was no other word for it. Their faces were dead. Their eyes were dead. Each one of the bodies that stood before them was sick to the bone. Ribs protruded from wasted, brown torsos. Their limbs were mere sticks, their mouths twisted in grotesque, pallid grins, and their steps were halting, hesitating, fearful.

The only two healthy specimens in the group were right at the front, one on crutches, the other one-handed and blind.

‘We need to go back,’ Chotu said.

‘Really, genius?’ Aravind picked up his spade and walked back. All four of them retraced their steps, keeping the advancing group of people within their sight. When they had reached the middle of the field, the mob, by now at the far end, stopped advancing and stared.

‘Now we know where she is,’ said Sarayu. ‘Only we don’t know how to get there.’

‘Since almost half the village is here, maybe we can make a run for the school and dig her up over there?’

Chotu said, ‘No, they will come after us.’ He turned back and saw that Avadhani Thatha
was standing by the house, watching them. He now signalled to them to come back to the house.

‘Let’s go back to the house,’ Chotu said. ‘We will deal with these people later.’

Chanti said, ‘I… I am scared to turn back.’

‘They’re not going to come after us, you oaf,’ Sarayu said. ‘They’ve stopped there. As long as we keep away from where they’re standing, I think we will be safe.’

They turned back and walked back to the safety of the house, all of them resisting the urge to break into a run. Chotu read fear in all of them, himself included, and as they drew closer to the house, the fear was slowly replaced by relief.

When they reached the gate, they turned and looked back. The crowd was still there, standing, vacantly staring.

‘Well,’ Aravind muttered. ‘At least now we know that Thatha’s story is real. The old man has not lost it.’

‘Who were the boys in front of the mob, Thatha?’

‘Who? Saidulu and Ramesh?’ Avadhani peered out of the window in the direction of the field, then came back and sat in his chair. ‘I think they’re gone now. But the moment you go out there, I am sure they will be back.’ He smiled at Aravind. ‘Remember what I said about her, my boy? She has had time to think ahead and predict most events and put safeguards in place. Survival, my boy. Survival.’

Chotu asked again, ‘The boys, Thatha…’

‘Oh yes, Saidulu and Ramesh. They are the boys that Chanti and Ramana saved seventeen years ago.’

‘What?’

Avadhani chuckled. ‘Yes, remember Ramana’s dream? He saved a boy from a car accident. And Chanti, in his dream, saved a boy from a house fire. Well, Ramesh lost his legs in the car accident, and Saidulu lost his eyes and one arm.’

Chotu shrank back against the wall and asked, ‘And do they… do they…’

‘Yes,’ Avadhani said, nodding. ‘They work for her. She chose her two main minions back then, boys. You see now what we’re up against? If we are to win against her, we have to think on our feet, and think so fast that we ourselves are unaware of the thought. Only then will it escape her, only then will it surprise her.’

‘Is that even possible?’ Aravind asked.

‘Ah, not as sceptical as you were this morning, are you, boy?’ Avadhani said. ‘I don’t know if it is possible or not. We will find out soon enough.’

Chotu said, ‘Should we not be heading out to the other places right now and looking for her, before the crowd has time to recover and follow us?’

Avadhani said, ‘Chotu, that is exactly what she would have foreseen, and I guarantee you, if you go out there now, you will walk into an army of sleepwalkers.’

‘Then what do we do?’

‘We will do what I said we will do. We will try to second-guess her, and then second-guess ourselves, because every time we change our minds, the future changes, and with every turn our thoughts take, she has to plot different scenarios and cover each one. While all we have to do is hold back our thoughts and stop thinking of it consciously until the right moment, she has to keep constant tabs and stay on constant alert. I’d say we’re at an advantage. Won’t you?’

Aravind asked, ‘So your big plan is to do nothing?’

‘Exactly! For now, we do nothing.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until at least tomorrow afternoon, we do nothing.’

‘But what if one of us…’

Avadhani looked at Chanti and smiled. ‘What if one of us gets killed?’

Chanti nodded.

‘We all stay in the house, my boy. We don’t go anywhere. We try to keep a look out for one another. After all, what danger can there be in here, inside the house?’ Avadhani pointed towards the field. ‘Out there you can run into an angry langur, but here, there is nothing to be scared of.’ He looked from one of them to the other, and said slyly, ‘Except maybe one another.’

Sarayu asked, ‘Those boys, Thatha, whom do they live with? Who feeds them? They looked like strong bulls, both of them.’

Avadhani threw his head back and laughed. ‘That is the advantage of sleeping well, my girl. They have food everyday at Saraswatamma’s house. Creamy milk every day, chicken every Sunday, and a full night’s sleep—dreamless—every night. Did you see how deathly everyone looked?’

Sarayu nodded.

‘Look at how deathly
I
look!’ Avadhani pinched a fold of his skin. It readily gave in to his fingers. ‘Stay here for a month, my dear, and you will age by ten years.’ And he looked deep into her eyes and chuckled.

Sarayu looked away.

Avadhani lurched onto his feet and reached for his stick. Leaning on it, one hand supporting his back, he made his way to the bedroom. He stopped at the doorway and half turned. ‘I would suggest you go to sleep, all of you,’ he said. ‘We have nothing to do until tomorrow and you know what they say… A waking mind is a devil’s workshop.’ He turned, and his bony shoulders bobbing up and down in hoarse, hissy laughter, closed the door behind him.

From inside, they heard the nawar cot stretch under his weight. ‘Oh, and kids,’ he called out weakly, ‘remember not to dream, and if you do, do not
do
anything in your dream. No matter what the voices say, just watch. Nothing more.’

And then there was more of the hoarse, hissy laughter.