THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Read online

  ‘I am going to kill you, Chanti.’

  ‘Huh?’ Chanti looked up, and his eyes expanded as Aravind’s arm rose and pointed the knife at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I am going to kill you.’

  ‘But—you can help me.’

  Aravind looked away, and his grip faltered. ‘I am going to kill you. I know it.’

  ‘What?’

  He straightened his posture and stood in front of his victim, one hand clutching his shoulder and the other holding the knife. ‘I have to kill you, Chanti.’

  ‘Have to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, you don’t have to.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But… but why?’

  ‘Because I already have.’ He took a step, bent down, and drove the knife home.

  Arvind sat down and looked up at the white dome. It was not as white or as bright as it had been in his dream, but it was the same. He had known it the moment they arrived there that evening to dig, when he had looked up and seen the white structure loom over them. He had known right then that only one of them would come out alive. He had not known, of course, which one of them would kill the other. It would have been ironic indeed if all those years ago, he had dreamed of his own death and had contributed to it. As it turned out, it was Chanti, and it was his own self that he had controlled via his dream.

  He looked at the body. Chanti’s eyes were closed as if in a peaceful sleep. In a sense, Aravind envied him. How nice it must be to just let it all go and leave? He pushed the ball of cloth he had torn from the tip of his shirt deeper into his wound. He didn’t know how much of the blood that surrounded Chanti was his. How much had he bled? How long would he be able to survive? Was there anything left to survive for?

  He was the last of them left standing. What did that mean? Did that mean that he was the tool that she had chosen? Or did he manage to outsmart her and kill all her minions? But there was still the whole village left to take care of. All this time and they had not yet unearthed one of the beings. Thatha said there were five. How could he take on five of them and win?

  The sixth dreamer.

  The phrase came to him out of nowhere. It had flashed similarly in his brain when he had left Chotu to get help. It had been pushed further back into the recesses of his mind, out of reach in the wake of all the other happenings since, but now, with everything so quiet, the thought came to him again. The whole village was sleeping—no, it was knocked out unconscious—so he would have time to think. Just think.

  The ditch was deep enough, it would have revealed at least the tentacles if she had been there. All they had been able to retrieve was loose, dry mud mixed with some evening dew. Nothing of the sticky, gooey fluid that oozed out when you cut one of those things. It was not here then, maybe somewhere in the vicinity, though. How did one check? He had to go and take Thatha’s help again. He had to enlist the help of someone young and able-bodied… Maybe someone from the city…

  The sixth dreamer.

  But there was no sixth dream. There had only been five—one for each of them. After that, Thatha made everyone swear that they would not control any more of their dreams. And they had kept that promise. He knew he had. It was pure fright more than any scruples about a promise that had made him stop. And they had not stayed in Palem for long after the incident. They had moved away, for different reasons.

  So what did the sixth dreamer mean when there was no sixth dream?

  His father had banged his head into Mandiramma Banda until his head broke. Sarayu’s father hanged himself. Sundarayya, Ramana’s brother, got picked by Thatha’s langur. And Chotu’s father jumped into a well. Four deaths that had happened in the space of two days—yes, two days after that day. Just like the five deaths that happened over the last two days here.

  But what was that day?

  That was the day when they had burnt her. No, first, they had burnt Sarama and then they had burnt her. They had dug her out of the ditch under the old lingam and burnt her. Just the five of them—like Thatha had told them to.

  The sixth dreamer.

  They had all been in a trance that night, it had all felt so surreal. There were screams of delight as the dog yowled and thrashed and sprinted. They had surrounded her and drenched her with more oil, more kerosene—until she stopped moving and collapsed. But they had not stopped. They had stood in a circle around the burning heap of flesh and doused it with more oil. They had smelled the burning flesh and cackled in glee.

  There had been something about it. Yes, there had been voices in their heads, telling them what to do. So was it possible that they were puppets in someone else’s dream that night? But whose? Only the five of them had come in contact with the being, and only the five of them had the capacity to dream.

  Sleepwalker.

  Once again, the words jumped at him from nowhere. Chotu had been a sleepwalker as a child. In fact, that night when they were at the Shivalayam, that very night when they had awakened this beast, hadn’t Chotu walked home in his sleep? They had not found him when they woke up.

  I walked to Thatha’s house in my sleep.

  Aravind stiffened. Chotu had walked to Thatha’s house in his sleep that night. His breathing became irregular and he blinked rapidly, turning his head and looking around him, like a cornered cat. And suddenly he heard Chotu’s words in his brain—I cannot feel anything.

  Chotu had not been able to feel any of the beings, even though logic suggested that if the beings were bigger and stronger, Chotu should have been able to feel them more easily. They had thought that Chotu had lost the ability, but he had not; he had been able to feel all of them quite well. The possibility that the being had learnt to camouflage its presence had been suggested—yes… by whom?

  By Thatha.

  What if Chotu had been right?

  Aravind pushed himself to his feet and forced his mind to stop spinning. He picked up the knife and started walking briskly along the path he had taken back. The fog had returned and he could see no further than a couple of metres in front of him. But this was Palem. He knew where to go. And his feet knew how to take him there. All he had to do now was stop thinking until he got to his destination. Yes, his very life depended on his ability to keep his mind vacant.

  Yes. Just stop thinking.

  Chapter Thirty

  2001

  Avadhani emptied the red bowl of buttermilk into the steel glass, picked it up and twirled it around in his hands. The lantern was turned down to its lowest point. His shadow loomed tall and thin on the wall opposite, by which the stove stood. He felt the cold, smooth surface of the glass in his fingertips, but when he looked inside the glass, all he saw was black. Only the tiniest of glints shone off the rim of the glass and caught his eye. But like a blind spot, it disappeared whenever he focused on it.

  The night outside was clear and quiet. Summer was round the corner, so that was to be expected, but it was a bit too clear, a bit too quiet. He stared at his shadow and lifted the glass to his lips.

  Footsteps. Haggard, frightened, wavering—but determined footsteps.

  The door behind him opened and closed. Avadhani turned and leaned back closer to the stove.

  Aravind had a gash on his shoulder and a butcher’s knife in his right hand. He walked to the chair and sat down, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his thighs, holding the knife in both hands, watching the floor. A drop of blood trickled along the length of the blade and teetered at the edge for a second before dripping onto the floor with a soft plop.

  ‘I killed him,’ said Aravind. ‘I killed Chanti.’

  ‘Just like we planned, my boy.’

  Aravind nodded. ‘Yes, just like we planned.’

  Avadhani lifted the glass to his mouth and looked into the lamp, his stick-like fingers wrapped around the glass tightly. ‘It should have been obvious right from the start. The kind of boy Chanti was—’

  ‘Yes. The kind of boy he was…’ Aravind smiled at the floor and shook his head.
His fingers closed around the handle of the knife in a firm grip and trembled with the pressure. ‘But I don’t think he is the one, Thatha.’

  A pause. Then Avadhani said, ‘If it wasn’t him, then it must be you, my boy. There is no one left.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ramana, Chanti, Chotu, Seeta—all of them dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Avadhani swallowed the last bit of his buttermilk and cleared his throat. ‘Did you kill them?’

  ‘Chanti killed Sarayu. You know that.’

  ‘The others, boy. The others.’

  ‘I… I don’t know.’

  The window was open. The curtains, dirty and smelly, were pulled to one side. But there was no breeze. There was no sound. Too still. Too quiet. Another drop of blood—black in the dim, orange light—plopped to the floor.

  ‘If it’s not him,’ Avadhani said in a low croak, ‘if it’s not him…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you… in a strange way, it would be fitting that it was you, wouldn’t it? You were the oldest of them all. She would have chosen you. And the symptoms you’ve shown—forgetting things, seeing people…’

  Aravind nodded and stared.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask this of anyone else but you, Aravind. I don’t think anyone but you would understand.’

  Aravind smiled gently at the floor, at the drops of blood.

  ‘But you understand, don’t you? You understand what is to be done?’

  Aravind ran a fingertip along the blade of the knife, nodding in thought. He flipped the knife over, holding it so that the edge faced him. He held the handle in both hands, and they started to tremble.

  Avadhani whispered, ‘It is for the best, my boy. Palem will thank you. The whole world will thank you.’

  Aravind looked up and frowned at the old man. ‘Thatha, you didn’t ask me.’

  ‘Ask you what?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me why I thought Chanti wasn’t the one.’

  Avadhani smiled. ‘Does it matter?’

  Aravind’s grip on the knife loosened, and the edge moved further away from his chest. His breathing, slow and peaceful until then, now grew heavy. ‘Maybe it doesn’t.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘Or… maybe it does.’

  ‘You’re speaking gibberish again, boy.’

  ‘Am I? Oh, maybe I am. I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Avadhani said slowly. He took a step towards Aravind and held out his hand. ‘Give me that knife.’

  ‘Stop! Don’t move!’

  Avadhani shrank back against the stove.

  ‘Chotu asked me before he died. He asked me about the sixth dream.’

  ‘What sixth dream?’

  ‘The dream where all of us burn Sarama.’

  ‘My boy…’ Avadhani said. ‘Are you out of your mind? That was not a dream. It really happened. All of you did burn Sarama.’

  ‘I know,’ said Aravind. ‘But we—all of us, not just me—heard voices in our heads at the time. Chotu is the only one who saw that something was wrong. He and I were the only ones to realize that we were in someone else’s dream.

  ‘But we’d all promised that we would not control any of the dreams we have. Yes, Thatha, we had. We decided that the day after we had them. So one of us had broken the promise—the question was which one?’

  Avadhani asked, ‘Did you find out?’

  Aravind shook his head. ‘No. All of us denied dreaming it, and all of us promised once again that we would not control any of our dreams.’

  ‘Obviously one of you was lying.’

  Aravind nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Chotu asked me again before he died—who dreamt that sixth dream?’

  ‘I don’t see what that has got to do with anything.’

  ‘Oh, but Thatha, it has got to do with everything. And today, after I killed Chanti and when I was wiping the blood off on my shirt, something struck me—something about that morning.’

  A shadow came over Avadhani’s features.

  Aravind looked into the older man’s eyes. ‘That morning, when we woke up at the Shivalayam, Chotu wasn’t there. He had sleepwalked into the village during the night. I thought he went straight home, but apparently not. He came to you, didn’t he? He came to your house.’

  ‘Give me the knife, boy.’

  ‘Don’t move!’ Aravind said. ‘Don’t move, Thatha, I swear to god.’ His breathing got heavier. ‘He came to you. He must have passed it on to you—he must have passed some of that jelly on to you. We still had it on our hands in the morning. He must have had it in the middle of the night.’

  ‘You’re a crazy fool, boy. A crazy fool!’

  ‘I am crazy, yes. Trust me, I am crazy, but I am no fool, Thatha. But what if he did pass the jelly on to you, Thatha? What if the sixth dream was dreamt not by one of us but by you?’

  ‘By me?’ Avadhani smiled.

  ‘Shut up! I am talking. I want to do the talking. Shut up!’ Aravind pointed the knife at Avadhani and pushed him back against the stove. ‘I remember… it was you who suggested that this being was giving us all these dreams, that there was no telling how dangerous it would be if we let it go, that we have to kill it, that we have to burn it. Yes, it was you, wasn’t it?

  ‘And Sarama wouldn’t let us dig up the lingam and we had to kill her too—and who suggested that to us? It was you!’

  ‘Aravind,’ said Avadhani, his voice quivering a little bit. ‘You saw the thing. You saw it breathe. You saw it burn. You saw it pop and burst when it died.’

  ‘Yes, I am not saying that the being never existed. But I am saying you… you, Thatha, you are one of us. There are not five of us, there are six of us.’

  Avadhani smiled. ‘Oh, come now. You’re going to say I am the being’s minion? I who went to such lengths to kill her in the first place? Listen to yourself, Aravind. You’ve been saying that about everyone since you came here. Don’t you remember? First it was Chotu, then it was Chanti, then Sarayu, and now me?’ His voice softened a touch. ‘My boy, your mind is deranged. You are deranged. Stop for a while and think.’ Then he said, ‘Give me the knife.’

  Aravind held up his hand, gesturing to the other man to stop moving forward. He spoke slowly, as though he was rehearsing a tough line from a play. ‘I am not saying you are the being’s minion, Thatha.’

  Avadhani breathed out and said cautiously, ‘What are you saying, then?’

  ‘I am saying there is no being at all.’

  Avadhani sniggered, then chuckled, then threw his head back and laughed. The loose flaps of skin on his neck shook as he laughed.

  ‘I am saying we killed the being that day—that night we burned Sarama and then that… that thing. We killed her that night.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes! After that, it is all you. You are the being now. You are the puppeteer. The whole village… all the villagers are your puppets.’

  ‘Yes, and with the whole village under my control, I have lost to you, is that it?’

  ‘You underestimated me. I thought of all this when I was sitting there, next to Chanti’s body. But it was only a flash. I forced myself not to think of it. In fact, I forced myself to think that it is I who ought to die next. Until I came in here and until I turned the knife on myself, that is what I forced myself to think and believe. There was no way you could see this coming, and therefore there was no way you could make a dream out of it and send it to one of your puppets out there.’ He waved his arm in the direction of the window. ‘It’s too late now, isn’t it?’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘It makes sense now,’ he continued, ‘every single part of it. You wrote to us, asking us to come back because she had come back. You gave us the story of the parched land, the dust, the control that this being had on the people of Palem. You wanted us because we’re the only ones that know about your powers, Thatha, and we’re the only ones that remember the dreams you send us.’

  Avadhani pursed his lips and frowned.

/>   ‘Yes,’ Aravind said, nodding. ‘I know. Nobody in the village remembers any of these dreams—these visions of the future that you send them—and none of them realize that they’re changing the future just by sleeping. They don’t remember, you see. They don’t know why after a night of sound sleep, they wake up tired. But we—the five of us—remember. You knew that. And it wouldn’t do for you. Sooner or later, you knew we’d come and stop you. So you called us. Tell me, Thatha, does it really feel that good to control people’s dreams? Their futures? Is it worth killing the kids who grew up listening to your stories?’

  Avadhani scratched his scalp and muttered, ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand all of it, Thatha. You’re the one who first raised suspicion against me in Chotu’s heart by asking me where I was when Ramana was killed. And you raised my suspicion against him by suggesting that we had nothing but Chotu’s word that he was at the Shivalayam. You’re the one who sent us on the expedition together. And finally, you’re the one who told me today how Chanti is to be killed. You knew, didn’t you, that we’d end up killing one another?’

  Avadhani said, ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand, Thatha? Huh? I don’t understand how you played with us? I don’t understand how you made us hound and kill each other? I’ve seen it with my own two eyes now, Thatha. I’ve seen all your manipulation, your shenanigans, everything. And now you’re going to deny it?’

  ‘If you accuse me of being so powerful, Aravind, doesn’t it strike you as odd that I should play this elaborate game with you all? That I should not kill you right away?’

  ‘You underestimated us. You played with us like a cat plays with a mouse. But this mouse has a knife, Thatha. A sharp butcher’s knife. And it is going to use it.’

  ‘There is someone else, my boy,’ Avadhani said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘There is someone else who is more powerful than I am, and she is in your head.’

  Aravind sneered. ‘So that’s your logic? Because I’ve outwitted you, you think I had to have someone on my side?’