Predator (21 page)

She felt the devil’s hands move under her and gently lift her up like a limp corpse. Chris tenderly lifted Grace in his arms like his dead bride and kissed her on the forehead. In her semi-conscious state, she felt the zombie-like man walk like the undead as he crossed the threshold into the buttery.

In his stupor, Chris remembered the last time he had held Grace like this. It was the semester of the fall and all the classmates were playing truth or dare. Chris had accepted the dare to lift Grace and walk 10 metres, which he gladly did. She used to be a healthy girl back then, and he’d almost stumbled in the last metre. Back then it was all just fun and frolic. Unlike today.

Today, she was as light as a feather. He could lift her effortlessly. She had lost a considerable amount of her body weight in the past five days. Chris felt a pang of remorse as the drug slowly started to wear off. He loved her. It was a pity she didn’t love him back as she ought to have. She was to blame for her misery. He was innocent.

The symphony resounded within the large, dome-shaped cellar that had wine casks stacked from the floor to the ceiling. Flaming torches bathed the buttery in a grim, ghostly yellow light and their flames flickered eerily. It took every ounce of her strength to stay awake and she saw four figures looming around her in black robes as Chris slowly bore her towards what seemed like an altar lit with candles in an ornate candelabra. What had seemed like a floral pattern from the distance now became clearer. It was the devil’s logo, three sixes joined at their circles. Grace remembered seeing this pattern tattooed on her rapists. It was obvious they were devil worshippers of some order, and she was to play a key role in their pagan ritual.

Chris paused at the altar. On the floor was a large white pentagram, the symbol of Satan, upon which stood an embellished antique bathtub or cauldron of some sort with carved clawed feet.

Grace was too exhausted to care anymore, and didn’t resist as Chris gently placed her inside the tub and looked at her with sadness as he removed the blanket that covered her. The rapist! As she lay inside the tub, Grace was a just a living, breathing, soulless corpse with five pairs of eyes staring her down at her.

‘Hurry up and change, son, the ritual must begin. Get the branding iron,’ said Joe softly and placed a hand on Chris’s shoulder.

When Chris stood in front of the altar in a hooded black robe, Joe, Ram Singh, Prince and Manja flanked him to form a circle.

Grace lay broken, bleeding and naked in the cauldron, and at each of the five points of the pentagram star stood the five incarnations of the devil.

As the vocals of Beethoven’s Choral slowly reached a crescendo, Joe lifted his head to see Chris approach them slowly with a large, red hot, branding iron in hand. The symbol of the triple six glowing at its tip, he walked like zombie to the tub. He seared Grace’s abdomen with tip of the branding iron.

Her scream resonated in the chamber as the music climaxed into its final crescendo. Grace’s determination to stay conscious strengthened with the new agony. Pain had been her constant companion during these last few traumatic days. Pain had become her strength.

The stench of burning flesh and smoke filled the air as the music continued to play. Grace was now completely immobile. Her tears were her silent screams of pain and were best suppressed lest the beasts imagined they had won. They would never have her soul.

The pain dissipated as every inch of her body hurt and each part of her anatomy vied for attention. As she waited for a total blackout, she remembered her English teacher to whom she’d run every time someone hurt her whilst in the playground. She had said that pain was the only truth that makes a person cross the sea of life. But never in her wildest imagination could Grace have imagined that this was the kind of pain that her teacher had meant.

She was now intimately acquainted with pain. She felt proud of herself for walking hand in hand with pain for so long. Grace hadn’t realized just how strong she was. Not that she’d ever wanted to be, but she knew the end was nigh, and was totting up her brownie points.

The mind numbing pain of a branding iron on her stomach made her realize that it was the last hug that she would ever feel. Tears now came unbidden, and Grace, in her semi-conscious state, smiled.

Joe nodded and Ram Singh bowed and walked away only to return within moments with a large vat of freshly cleaned grapes and placed it beside the tub. He then delicately selected a few of the freshly plucked grapes, and tenderly placed them on her burnt abdomen.

Within a few minutes, the tub was filled with grapes and only Grace’s smiling face from the neck up was visible. Her flowing hair was a tangled, bloodied mess. Her soft neck lay completely exposed, waiting to be slit so she could join the other victims of the Predator.

As the music played, Joe, an ancient book in hand, gestured at the candelabra, and chanted in a language so ancient it was forgotten by mankind. Was he as deluded as Chris thought him to be? In his mind, Joe was the ultimate Godman, paying obeisance to the devil,
‘Ka la re, Ja Sa, maale naar tor ni kin sau tak! Horka ne su te woo de sa!!’

The chanting continued for close to half an hour, while the others stood watching Joe in awe and fear. Joe abruptly snapped the book shut, and announced, ‘It is here. I can feel the presence. Make the offering, Chris … ’

Chris slowly reached into his pocket and fished out a baroque jewel box. The box contained a shiny new scalpel cocooned in soft blue velvet. As Chris took out the blade, it gleamed brighter reflecting the flaming torches on the walls of the buttery.

Chris then knelt by the tub and looked at Grace lovingly for one last time. Without further ado, he placed the blade on her neck and forced a deep cut in her neck three inches long.

Grace closed her eyes and smiled as her life blood spurted and flowed from her neck. Life swam in slow motion. She remembered her favourite childhood poem, ‘The Brook’, by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Amidst all the evils associated with the devil, Lord Tennyson provided solace to her soul. He had given her one of the most beautiful gifts in the whole wide world. His words.

Reality became a blur as the tears of pain made her remember her last memory with her mother. It had been a bright sunny day. She was sitting in the shade of a tree in the back garden with her mother. Her mother was braiding her hair. Grace had a poetry book in her hand and she was reading a poem called ‘The Brook’ along with her mother. Grace closed her eyes and remembered a few lines before she lost consciousness. She could smell the stench of death …

‘And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river
,

For men may come and men may go
,

But I go on for ever … ’

Joe watched the grapes washed in the fresh blood of yet another young girl who had been kept in pain and suffering for five days. In a few minutes, it would be midnight. Like the others, Grace would die on the sixth day of captivity.

Joe’s eyes shone with hedonistic pleasure as he watched her die. After he’d killed his wife a long time ago, the sheer ecstasy of watching a young woman battle for her life gave him a perverse thrill. Her last few minutes as she give up her life for his grapes fuelled his madness to brew the perfect wine. Silver Mountain.

Many lives had been sacrificed for the Devil’s brew, young women had been raped and killed over the ages for his vineyard. After all, success was a whore that demanded a steep price. Joe was willing to pay; he’d paid his dues to the devil with his soul. Now that he enjoyed it even more, there would be just no stopping him.

He broke out into a maniacal laughter as Grace’s head bobbed up and down with the blood spurting out of her body to soak his grapes. When he won the award, he would need to brew like never before, not just once in six years with six victims. The devil had replaced God and Jonathan Jones was going to rule the world.

The sound of a sledgehammer battering the thick heavy door of the buttery broke the cadence of the ritual, and Manja yelled, ‘Boss! The cops! Inspector Khan and the rest are here!’ He tore off his robe and made a dash to Grace’s erstwhile prison which had the secret trap door. He wanted Joe to escape from the buttery by taking the flight of stairs that led to the woods. It was the trapdoor through which Ram Singh brought in the victims. The buttery was part of a labyrinth that passed right beneath Joe’s living room.

‘Quick! To the trapdoor! And remember our oath. If someone escapes, he must carry on the legacy, no one talks about the other!’ yelled Joe as he was helped out of the robe by Ram Singh. The heavy pounding on the thick, wooden door made Prince realize that it was only a matter of time before Inspector Khan and his team burst in.

‘No … nobody move … or I’ll kill you all!’ screamed Prince, brandishing a revolver. Manja moved into the shadows as Prince’s eyes were focused on Joe, Chris and Ram Singh.

Prince was dead even before he slumped to the floor as the thick branding iron split his skull. His blood and brains splattered the floor. Manja had bludgeoned Prince and had killed him. ‘Quick, set this place on fire and burn your robes!’ barked Manja as the wooden door had begun splintering with the battering.

Ram Singh grabbed a can of kerosene from a corner and doused the wooden floor by the door. He hurled the candelabra stand at it and with a whoosh flames leapt out of the floorboards and moved towards the casks.

‘My wine! My wine!’ wailed a distraught Joe. He rushed to the flames to save what he could, but was wrestled to the ground by Ram Singh. Ram Singh hurled the black robes into the flames to destroy the evidence and tried to drag his wailing master towards the trap door.

‘Get them out of here, quick! Here, hold this,’ shouted Manja, and thrust the murder weapon into Chris’s hands, ‘Just keep your mouth shut and don’t speak!’

Chris stood transfixed as Manja leaped into the flames and disappeared. Chris stood dumb beside Prince’s dead body, watching the flames leap closer to the claw-footed cauldron where Grace lay dying. The chamber was rapidly filling with acrid smoke.

Ram Singh was trying to keep a half-crazed Joe pinned to the floor when Inspector Khan rushed towards him through the flames. Officer Amar Singh wielded a fire extinguisher and barked out orders to the rest, ‘Quick! Grab the other fire extinguishers and douse the flames! Over there, yank them off the wall!’

‘About time too, Officer, where the hell were you?’ shouted Inspector Khan and grabbed Chris from behind as he stood dumbfounded, rooted to the spot, branding iron in hand. ‘Get Dr Pinto in here quick, I can see Grace over there! Now!’

Ram Singh let go of Joe and lunged towards Inspector Khan, who, caught unawares, crashed to the floor. Ram Singh moved at lightning speed to the wall and shoved the casks in an attempt to crush Inspector Khan under them. Chris suddenly snapped out of it and hit Ram Singh hard on the shoulder with the rod he was holding.

Chris stood watching Ram Singh collapse in a heap to the floor and writhe in pain, as a dazed Inspector Khan got back to his feet, grabbed the branding iron from Chris and said, ‘What the hell? You saved my life! Thank you … ’ The culprit he was intent on capturing had come to his rescue in time.

A crazed Joe was howling like a lunatic watching his kingdom go up in flames. ‘Get him out of here, arrest him. This mad man seems to have lost it,’ ordered Inspector Khan sternly to the couple of cops who were obviously riveted, and watching with fascination as the helpless God, Jonathan Jones, came apart at the seams.

‘Get an ambulance, she’s still breathing!’ yelled Doc to his paramedics who wasted no time in lifting Grace out from the cauldron and carrying her out on a stretcher. Doc ran alongside trying to manually stem the flow from her jugular vein using his gloved hands.

Inspector Khan put a cigarette between his lips and patted his pockets looking for a light. He nudged the dead Prince with his boot, to see if he was still alive. Officer Amar Singh walked up to him and flicked a lighter to life, and, as Inspector Khan inhaled on the cigarette, he said, ‘The fire has been put out here, sir, but, by God! it has begun spreading through the tunnels, it is going to burn the place down soon and we are likely to have cave ins. Mind if we step out, sir?’

‘Yeah, sure, bring this piece of human trash with you. Or better yet, let’s go and leave him to burn,’ said Inspector Khan and walked to the exit, ‘Let’s go’.

Before following Inspector Khan, Officer Amar Singh glanced over his shoulder to take one last look at Prince’s dead body, ‘Burn, motherfucker, burn! By God!’

Intensive Care Unit

Derek paced up and down in the Intensive Care Unit of the City Hospital. Hound sat motionless flanked by Goose and Chief. It was one of the best-equipped hospitals in Mumbai. The hospital was a skyscraper, and with its platoon of well-qualified auxiliary staff and skilled doctors, it served as a lifeline to the terminally ill and people in dire medical emergencies. The Medical Research Centre was a majestic new building that stood beside the hospital.

The ICU was on the third floor of the old hospital building. Inspector Khan was on the phone. Salmonella spoke to the head nurse enquiring about Grace’s condition. She had suffered major trauma, and, if sepsis sets in, was in danger of succumbing to multiple organ failure. The rapists had been brutal beyond imagination and if she was still alive, it was only because of her sheer grit and determination.

The chief surgeon emerged from the ICU in a voluminous blue gown. Grace had undergone two major surgeries in quick succession with barely a few hours between each procedure. According to the worried-looking surgeon, Grace’s condition was unstable and critical, ‘I’m not God. I cannot honestly tell you whether she will survive or not. To be frank, I’m not sure what would be better for her … ’ he trailed off. Hound stayed calm as the surgeon spoke.

‘She’s on life-support systems and is in a critical condition. There’s severe internal bleeding due to sepsis. It’s a severe blood infection that could lead to organ failures. She’s running a high temperature as well. Miraculously, her mind is still very alert,’ said the surgeon in a softer tone to Salmonella.