“I cannot go more.” The skeletal porter shook a finger at the void in the forest, a black archway in the dark gloom of huddled trees.
“What? Why not?” Tolly asked.
“That is evil, sir.” Bulging eyes wide and white, the porter shivered in the nighttime heat. He kissed a metal coin that hung from a black thread around his veiny neck.
“Nonsense. Evil is . . .” Tolly was unsure of how to explain evil to the porter. He would not understand the respectable philosophies of Hume or Leibniz. The skinny Indian porter carried around an overflowing inventory/stockpile of superstitions with his pagan Hindoo religion of ash and gods. The only real shibboleths were those the Company used to keep the natives in check.
“Your name again, porter?”
“Thyagarajan, sir.”
“A little slower, please.”
“THYA GA RAJ AN,” the porter enunciated slowly.
“I’ll stick to porter, that’s a bit easier for me.” Tolly laughed. Some of these Indians had the longest names. Far too many syllables. “We have one mission, and that is to find Edison Moore. You will now come with me to find him.”
Tolly tested a fingertip through the black archway. It felt cold and gelatinous, like a chilled jelly. Rubbing his two fingers together, a thin clear slick dried under the torchlight and fell from his fingers like dust. Perhaps it simply opened up to a cave. That would explain the temperature gradient. Cartographers had not yet scouted these areas, so these villagers’ superstitions gave life to quite irrational explanations.
“I’m sorry sir,” the porter said.
Tolly turned around. The porter was running back the way they came.
“Wait!” Tolly cried after him, but the man was gone, lost to the backwaters of the Malabar night. Shoulders slumping, Tolly turned back to the black arch.
He stepped through it. The cold, gelatinous film skimmed his face, then his shoulders, arms, his torso and finally his leg, and he was through. His torch went out without a sound. Maybe the wind? Dust and a faint scent of frankincense filled his short, sharp breaths. His hands searching in the darkness, he felt jagged, dry stone walls. He inched forward like a blind man lost on a mountain expedition. A light flickered far away, like a single unsure firefly.
Tolly thought about the prior day. He had been writing to Director Wallace of the recently annexed Malabar District. His assistant interrupted him by rushing into his office to tell him Moore had gone missing. Tolly spilled some black ink on the British East India Company letterhead and had to discard it into a waste bin under his large oak and ivory elephant shaped desk. Edison Moore had been assigned to compose a basic, simple census of the villages in the district, as the locals kept no written records.
“Accurate, but the more generous the better,” the Director had said, knowing full well the larger the district, the bigger his budget and relevance would be. He sailed for Great Britain soon.
How hard could it be to take a simple census of a few villages? How many people are in your village? How many men, women, and children? Mark their religion and caste, whatever foolish gods they followed and be done with it. Edison, an idiot with an ear for local superstitions, probably got caught up in village nonsense.
Tolly’s hands glanced a cold wetness on the wall. He pulled away quickly and wiped his hands on his uniform. He hated India. When he first received his assignment, he was thrilled. Adventures in a faraway land full of princesses, snakes, mystics, and gold. Oh, he’d seen plenty of snakes—in fact, a snake greeted him on arrival. And there was the additional welcoming gift: vomiting and diarrhea throughout his first month. Wallace had congratulated him on surviving. “Lieutenant Tolly doesn’t get bitten, he does the biting,” the Director had said using a thumb for emphasis.
As Tolly edged forward, the smell of oranges and copper began to fill the corridor. A repetitive banging of drums stopped him in his tracks. Their sounds thundered rhythmically every few seconds. A deep, boundless chant accompanied the haunting percussion. Four syllables.
BA KA SU RA.
Drumming.
BA KA SU RA.
Drumming.
Tolly reached an edge lit up by a murky yellow light. He peered around the jagged rock.
Hundreds of naked bodies danced. A man holding an axe, shaking and jerking. A woman with a knife, swaying back and forth. A child dressed in feathers twirled on one foot. She reached into a bowl to stuff the dancers’ mouths with something dark and wet. Some undulated like willow trees while the rest lurched around like skittish street dogs. They were marionettes with deranged puppet masters.
The murky light lit a familiar face. A sharp, birdlike nose, longer than it should be. Edison Moore. Naked like the others, a firearm in hand, he swirled around, pointing his rifle at the man with the axe, then himself, and then at no one in particular. The child in feathers stuffed something into his mouth. Moore aimed the rifle at the child.
Tolly pulled back and started breathing again. A new band of sweat broke out on his neck and forehead. He thought of returning the way he came, back through the cave entrance and back to Calicut. He could write off Edison Moore as missing, taken by the locals. Yes, taken by the locals. No, no. That would require retaliation. Edison Moore had lost his way, tripped and drowned in the river. Yes, drowned. No, no. What about his body? Tolly would be assigned to find it to send it for a proper burial. He could tell the truth. Yes, tell them he found a profane Moore dancing about naked in a cavern of savages. Moore did have a predilection for paganism, after all. No, no. Why didn’t you try to bring him back, they would ask.
Lieutenant Frederick Tolly stood straight, closed his eyes, and repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Tolly was not a god-fearing man, but it never hurt to pray. Pascal’s Wager and all that.
He walked down the cave passage as it opened up to the cavern. All eyes turned to him. The dancers stopped, the drumming stopped, the chanting stopped. One by one, they pointed in another direction.
Then Tolly saw it. Skin like wrinkled parchment, an immense face - older than ancient, larger than the full moon on a clear night - hanging in the center of the cavern. Bloody tears dripped from a darkness where its eyes would have been, leaving streaks of red down its visage. Spindly creatures with thousands of legs crawled out of its open mouth and onto the floor.
The drums and chants began again, echoing through the cavern. A cold chill washed over Tolly.
“BA KA SU RA,” Tolly whispered.
The drumming sound turned to murmurs, the chants to whispers.
The man began taking off his clothes.
