A Strangler In Seonee

By Shreyas Adhikari

Dawn had broken over the town when Ganga Dass produced an aromatic wad of paan from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. A travelling sweetmeat maker had sold him the delightful concoction earlier that day, with loud claims that it was the fabled stuff of Benares. Indeed, as spicy and sugary juices enveloped his tongue, the old constable felt the coins he’d parted with were well spent.

The other man standing sentry, thirty-five-year-old Bhala Singh, murmured an old song from his native village. At six feet five and blessed with shoulders as broad as oaken beams, Bhala Singh looked like he could easily wrestle bears. Right now, however, he was occupied in mending a boot. The burra sahib wanted it done before the evening inspection.

“What do you think, friend?” Ganga Dass spoke through a mouthful of paan. “Will Applegarth sahib increase our salary by three annas?”

“Three annas is too much. Methinks it will be half. Not enough for men who risk their lives daily in the name of the Company eh?” Bhala Singh replied, piercing a lace hole with a bodkin to enlarge it.

The older man nodded and smiled. He had in his home a young, unwed daughter with a considerable dowry to pay and a wife who suffered from some inexplicable sickness of the lungs. Stroking his beard, he resolved to beg his superior for a few days’ leave and visit them.

“Aiee, you speak as if you leap among bandits every day with naked scimitar in hand!” Ganga Dass shouted, slapping his thigh. “The last raid we accompanied Raheem Khan on was three months ago. And that too, to punish some bootleggers.”

Bhala Singh put down the boot and picked up a length of lace, darting a sidelong glance at his friend. “Man must find adventure where he can. We are the Company’s hounds. And a hound bites, whether the victim is dacoit or moonshine-seller.”

Ganga Dass was about to comment on the young man’s wit when he saw something strange. About ten paces ahead of their post, a yellow light suddenly bobbed into existence amid the thick winter fog. He immediately hissed an alarm and grabbed his rifle from where it lay propped against his leg. The light swayed unsteadily as if held by a drunkard, creating a bar of amber in the clouds of grey.

As the two constables watched, a dark figure eventually materialized behind the light. It was a man, they realized, a man tottering and teetering along the pucca road. He held an oil lantern in one hand. Ganga Dass raised the rifle to his shoulder and levelled the barrel at the newcomer.

“Halt!” he challenged. “Who goes there?”

The man stopped. In the garish light spilling out of the lantern they saw that he was gravely injured. His long black locks were matted with blood and a flap of skin hung down one side of his face. There were bruises upon his knees and elbows as if he had been dragged behind a galloping horse over several miles. Patches of red marred his ragged clothes. The man had no shoes. His feet wept claret.

Bhala Singh held up his hand and stalled Ganga Dass. Thumbing the chhura belted to his waist, he moved forth to stand right in front of him. The wounded man stopped. He looked up at the giant’s bearded face and must have gleaned some trace of compassion in them.

“What is your name?” Bhala Singh growled.

There was no reply. On that cold, dreary morning, a raven suddenly cackled and took flight from the bosom of a nearby gulmohar. The two sentries glanced at each other. This could very well be the victim of a bandit attack. The thickly wooded and hilly country around Seonee was stocked with rogues of every stripe. Perhaps some of them had caught this poor fellow unawares and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

The standard procedure was to take him to the nearest hospital which was two kilometres away. But the events were still fresh in the man’s mind and the burra sahib would want a statement as soon as possible. The Rajah of Nagpur, in tandem with the insufferable Englishmen, had roused his militia to scour the forests and end the menace preying on his trade routes. Every scrap of information was a gain. Ganga Dass pondered for a while. Then he rested the rifle on his shoulder and gently lifted the man’s chin.

His eyes were oddly sharp and focused. It appeared he was determined to endure his agony to the bitter end. Though he could not explain it at that moment, Ganga Dass would describe something akin to a sliver of ice brushing down his spine as he stared into those eyes. As if Yama himself had come to lay cold, clammy hands upon his soul.

“Tell me your name,” the constable whispered.

The man licked the blood off his split lips.

“Bheriya. I am called Bheriya.”

Inspector Lawrence Applegarth was a very fastidious man. He did not believe in the newfangled nonsense of fighting three wars on four fronts, no thank you very much. If the brass wanted him to solve the case of the Umballa murders, he would do that until the villain was caught. If it was to provide security to the rather unabashed Resident while he visited disreputable pleasure houses, so be it. But what he could absolutely not accept was being asked to handle another problem while he was solving one.

So when the fresh arrival from Jubbulpore crashed through the door of his office, turban askew and whiskers in a tangle, it was all Applegarth to do to restrain a barked curse. The man was huffing and puffing like a greyhound at the end of its race. He put aside a sheaf of papers and glared at him.

“What is it?”

“Sir, you must come to the gates immediately!” The constable yelled.

Applegarth felt a flash of irritation. He leaned back in his chair and fixed the man with a hard frown. The natives had always been a bunch of fidgety fools, making a huge mountain out of a non-existent molehill. When he was posted in Cawnpore, he had once been summoned to a remote village to put down a bull that had munched on some datura fruits and now charged everything in its path. The way the villagers described it, however, produced the image of a demon come barreling out of the bowels of hell.

“Why? Has Mrs. Fanshaw lost her bulldog again?” he asked. “Tell her we cannot divert men to look for it now.”

Ganga Dass gulped, wondering how to tell this arrogant gora that the situation demanded not only his presence but the attention of every able-bodied man in the vicinity. In the end, he decided to blurt out the truth.

“It is Bheriya, sir. Bheriya is at the gates.”

In a trice, Applegarth snatched up the heavy cavalry sabre from his military days, pushed the regulation pistol into the holster at his side, and rushed out of the office. The entire thanah was in an uproar. Two other constables had come out of their bunks to join the crowd. A sweeper woman and a chuprassi lent their wild theories to the excitement. Pushing, shoving, and babbling like a madhouse, the police station turned inside out as everyone made for the gates. To get a glimpse of the bloody devil.

Applegarth led the small throng. He found the tall Sikh named Bhala Singh, who had arrived with Ganga Dass two days ago, standing guard over a man of rugged, savage aspect. He bled from a variety of ghoulish wounds as he sat cross-legged on the floor. Applegarth found his throat constricting as he beheld the man.

“Are you really him?” he questioned firmly. “Are you really Bheriya?”

The man looked up at him, paused for a brief, ugly second, and then nodded. Gasps of fear and surprise went up all around. The sweeper told one of the constables about the person kneeling at their feet was actually a shapeshifter, the child of a rakshasa able to turn himself into a wolf when he desired. Applegarth’s temper rose again.

“How come you are here eh? It sounds too good to be true,” the inspector wondered aloud. Suspicious indeed it was. For six months he had pursued Bheriya through the leopard-infested jungles of Nagpore and taken his fair share of knife cuts from his gang of thugs. One night, he had even come close to being throttled and gutted in one of their macabre rituals before faithful Ram Charan, ever the bold sepoy, leapt to his rescue with rifle spitting hot lead.

Applegarth’s scars twitched as he looked at Bheriya. “It is not every day that the fawn comes ambling to the hunter. Did he have any other men with him?” This to Bhala Singh.

He shook his head. “No sir. He was alone. Just stumbled in through the fog.”

The inspector ordered a thorough search of the entire perimeter. Though sudden razziahs were the prerogative of the dreaded Afghan hillmen, he did not trust Indians overmuch. The rod of civilization was yet to work its wonders upon them. Ganga Dass gathered the other constables on account of his seniority and lead them to beat the jamun thickets that grew around the thanah, disturbing many foxholes and mynahs as they sought hidden phantoms. None were found.

After about half an hour the men returned sweaty and scratched by low-hanging branches. Bheriya had no accomplices waiting to pounce on the posse of policemen. Slowly, Applegarth considered the possibility that this might indeed be his lucky day.

“Well, it turns out you are not the cunning demon we were all expecting eh?” he prodded the squatting thug with his boot. “What’s this then? A surrender?”

Bheriya chewed on his moustache as he answered. “Surrender? No, sahib. I know nothing would please you more if I laid down my rumaal and placed my neck on the chopping block. But I burn with the fire of vengeance today. These wounds you see were caused by the very men I called my brothers for so long. They were my brothers, and look what they have done!”

Applegarth inclined his head to the side in interest. Upon being gestured to continue, Bheriya drawled an extraordinary tale of how he and his two brothers, two dreaded stranglers named Essuree and Kamran, had been laying low in the fertile wildlands outside Bhokara. They had recently murdered a rich, fat moonshee and his bride and were laden with gold. Naturally, as it happens with these things, the two lesser members of the trio began arguing why Bheriya was entitled to a lion’s share of the wealth when it was they who did most of the work. Bheriya attempted to explain to them that he was their jemadar, and as such ordained by divine right to seize the largest part of the loot.

Upon hearing this Essuree grumbled something incomprehensible and retreated into his bedroll. But when night crept over Nagpore and Bheriya went outside the camp to urinate, Essuree rose and struck him thrice on the back with a log. The jemadar tried to defend himself but Kamran, all ties forgotten, helped the other thug to restrict his thrashing limbs and sliced his face with a dagger. After a while, Bheriya ceased his futile struggle and allowed his greedy brothers to roll his still-breathing half-corpse into a shallow ditch by a stream and leave with the haul.

In the dead of the night, Bheriya awoke from uneasy dreams to find himself naked and bleeding. He pulled himself out and began stumbling towards town. The clothes and lantern he stole from the hut of a woodsman.

“So now you have dragged yourself all the way here for what? Your vengeance?” Applegarth inquired at the end of the tale. “You presume to use Her Majesty’s police service for your filthy vendetta? Bah!”

Bheriya growled like the animal he was named for. “I can lead you to their hideout and you can arrest them. Tie them like little pigs and bring them back. Wouldn’t you like that, inspector sahib?”

Indeed he world. For a few seconds, Applegarth remembered the hills of Seonee where he had done battle with most of the local thuggee. What a terrifying day and night it had been! The swift, sure-footed jackals clad in nothing but a loincloth and black rags that shrouded their faces had flitted in and out of caverns. Dragging good men screaming and writhing to their demise. The muzzle flashes of pistols and rifles, the cracking of guns rolling like thunder across the entire Satpura. He remembered plunging his sabre into the body of a man who screamed a battle cry in Hindi and simply clawed at him till he had disembowelled him.

He would have to take care. These people were utter fanatics. Sleeman was fighting them across India, but Seonee remained firmly outside his circle of attention as of now. Applegarth had the faint thrill of knowing that he was about to embark on some dangerous crusade.

“These friends of yours. How do you know where they are?” he posed another question.

“It is a new moon tonight,” Bheriya replied. “They will have gone to our temple in the Chuha Gufa for preparations.”

“They almost slew their jemadar and stole his share of the plunder. Won’t they be forsaking ritual for flight right now?” Applegarth narrowed his eyes at the thug. “How can you be so sure about their whereabouts?”

A grunt. “No thug worth his rumaal will ever stoop so low as to not offer a sacrifice to the Mother on a new moon. It will sully his name. He will never be welcome again at any fire, nor be allowed to strangle prey along the great highways of Hindustan. It is too great a risk. And the others will always know they have broken their oath.”

The crowd, which had been listening to the exchange between Applegarth and his foe in rapt attention, uttered exclamations of awe. The Englishman knew he had to avoid letting Bheriya cast the religious line too deep. Strange things happened in this godforsaken heathen country in the name of the gods.

“Very well. Vishnu,” he snapped his fingers at the moonshee who stepped forward eagerly. “Send a dispatch to Jubbupore. Let them know we have captured a vicious thug leader. As of half past seven in the morning, he is about to lead us to the hideout of the last two remaining members of his gang. We shall, of course, try our best to capture them. But if they resist, we will have no other option but to use lethal force.”

Ganga Dass volunteered to stay back and watch the prisoner while the other constables went about gathering men for the operation. Abel Pennyworth, a historian fascinated by Hindoo rites arrived at the thanah not soon afterwards and so did Rudrabhan Singh, a Rajpoot prince of a minor aristocratic family who was currently vacationing with his wife in Nagpore. It seemed Rudrabhan could not resist the stirrings in his martial blood. Applegarth thought it pointless to involve civilians but then, the prince brought his own stallion and a sword, so who was he to raise objections? The more, the merrier.

Two hours later, a party of good size assembled in the thanah drill yard. Five native constables including Ganga Dass and Bhala Singh, Pennyworth ready with his journal and bottles of ink, Rudrabhan resembling a warrior about to march to war. Applegarth sighed. He had hoped for more men, smelling a trap somewhere in the hills. This would have to suffice.

“Gentlemen, we are about to head into extremely dangerous terrain,” he addressed his soldiers loudly. “Do not at any cost stray from the path and attempt to scrutinize something on your own. Be alert at all times. There are more than serpents and tigers crawling around Seonee these days.”

With that, he clambered onto the saddle of his bay and flicked the reins, riding out of the yard. Bheriya, hands secured with a knot of good rope, trudged beside him. The train of soldiers followed in his wake, hooves clop-clopping on washed stone. A wreath of fog rolled inside through the open gates as they left. The cold sun blinked at them, while far away in the distant forest, a lone wolf howled.

They made good progress through the streets of Seonee. Not many of the townsfolk were about, today being Saturday. A padre from the local church gazed at them in mild curiosity. Fifty paces away from the postern wall Applegarth nodded at his superior, a taciturn copper named Barnaby who was buying Kashmiri apples from a withered old woman. Before the officer could finish his purchase and hobble towards them to ask the meaning of this endeavour, they trotted out of the town.

A dense jungle swallowed them up for a while. Rudrabhan, used to lush preserves artificially stocked with deer and pig for hunting, swatted at mosquitoes that buzzed around his head in irritation. Applegarth had by now come to accept the little pests as part and parcel of the land. The Indians chatted in nonchalant camaraderie and Pennyworth scribbled furiously in his diary. How he managed to keep his balance on the ill-tempered horse without touching the reins was a wonder.

“Say, Mr Applegarth,” the professor began, “Do you think we will get to see one of these much-vaunted sacrifices?”

Applegarth snorted. “Nothing vaunted about it. They waylay ignorant, unassuming travellers in secluded regions of India and choke the life out of them. Then they drag some of the corpses to makeshift altars and offer them to Kali, who is some manner of a demon witch from what I gather. It's a ghastly process.”

Pennyworth tapped the pen on his temple. “Orientalists will disagree with you, my man. Kali is one of the most powerful goddesses in the Hindoo pantheon. The mistress of time and death. Certainly not a demon witch.”

“Seems like you’re half in love with them,” the inspector laughed and flicked the reins, moving ahead. Bheriya raised his head slowly to blink at Pennyworth. He smiled back. The thug nodded, then scrambled ahead as the rope lashed to Applegarth’s saddlehorn stretched tautly.

The posse of men had been riding for about an hour or so when all the sounds in the jungle abruptly stopped. Not a songbird trilled. Not a wild cat slunk through the underbrush. Dappled shadows played across faces and torsos as the horses entered deeper, encountering stiffer snarls of branches. Tall teak and gargantuan deodar stood like ancient sentinels around them. It was not only Applegarth who felt the sudden, sinister absence of sound. The natives had also stopped laughing and cracking jokes. One even clutched an amulet dangling from his neck.

Applegarth’s stern reprimand died in his throat. Even he could feel it. Pressing down on them from all sides of the jungle was a strange pressure, cold and turgid at the same time. It was a timeless fear for distant, dark places where nameless creatures lurked. A foreboding silence filled his ears, broken only by the rattle of stirrups and canteens.

His scalp prickled all of a sudden. Applegarth turned in his saddle to find Pennyworth staring back quizzically. What the bloody hell is happening to me? He thought angrily. I am getting the jitters all over again.

Fortunately, they cleared the jungle without any mishap and came out on a meadow. Here Bheriya paused and picked up a few sticks to scatter them in the breeze. He sniffed the air, then jerked his head in both directions. Squatting on his haunches, he then proceeded to squint at the distant foothills of the Satpura, swivelled his neck around, and blinked at Applegarth.

“The shrine is not far, sahib. Come.”

Across the meadow they went, hands firmly grasping hilts and hafts. Overhead the sky had cleared a little, the cruel grey of winter replaced by a milder blue. A stray gust of wind plucked at the men’s turbans and ruffled Applegarth’s hair. Bheriya was the only one who appeared to be in a genial mood. The thug had suddenly begun humming some kind of mantra.

Applegarth felt his hackles rise. He turned again with deliberate slowness to discern the reason. Only the silent line of trees in the distance stared back with sombre gloom.

After half a mile, the company ascended a slope of red loam and stopped. Before them stretched the hills, pockmarked with caverns and fissures that looked very awfully like the terrain where Applegarth had battled the thugs four years ago. He fought the discomfort and squinted cautiously, prepared to start firing the moment the first dark, ugly face poked out of a hole. Nothing happened.

Rudrabhan moved closer to the copper and nodded. “Perfect spot for an ambush,” he said. “You will have my tulwar and pistol to watch your back.”

“Thank you, your highness. But I think it will be hardly necessary. Here, you child of misbelief. Show us the shrine.”

Bheriya suffered the hard knock to his head and staggered forth, leading his betters over misshapen boulders and gurgling streams for a long time. At one point they passed between two monoliths that belonged to the Paleolithic Age and had been carved by human hands to ape a rough arch. Ten paces later the rough path turned right. The yawning mouth of a fairly large cavern loomed ahead.

Strewed about the entrance were pieces of coconuts and apples, vegetable peels, black smears of oil, and the bones of fowl. Pennyworth issued a low whistle and dismounted. He stopped amid the leavings and touched this article and that for a while. Then he looked at his companions with a clap of the hands.

“Looks like your prisoner is right, Applegarth. We are at the shrine. These are all offerings used in the worship of a Hindoo deity.”

Rudrabhan, who was a devout worshiper of the mighty Shiva, nodded his assent and jumped down from his stallion. The constables readied arms and whispered prayers, then waited for Applegarth to lead them. He realized he was sweating despite the chill and dabbed at his face with a scented handkerchief. Bheriya stared at him. Applegarth snarled at the man to follow his lead and yanked the rope roughly.

Inside the cavern was a ten-foot-tall of the goddess Kali in full grim splendor. She wore no raiment save for a garland of human skulls. Her four arms were raised, each adorned with a different article and one clutching the freshly severed head of a man. Skin as black as obsidian, hair dishevelled and tumbling down the bony shoulders, scarlet tongue lolling out of the terrifying mouth. In front of her dreadful aspect they stood, Indians whispering quick prayers and bowing, Englishmen watching in morbid enchantment.

Bheriya touched the goddess’s stone feet in reverence and joined his palms, uttering a steady stream of prayer. Applegarth looked at him in distaste and then at his constables, who were searching the many nooks and crannies of the shrine for evidence. Pennyworth made observations in his journal.

“Come on then,” Applegarth spoke. “Where are your friends? You said they would be here.”

Bheriya raised a hand and touched the congealed blood on his face. A droplet coated his fingertip, and he then smeared it on one of the idol’s toes. The inspector’s insides roiled. He rued the day his lord father had gotten him a commission in the Army and shipped him to India. The things he had seen, the people he had interacted with on a daily basis, and the fetid weather that wreaked havoc on his nerves. Applegarth wished he could just shove his badge and truncheon into a fire and catch the first ship back to England.

He was about to slap the thug again when he crouched and began rocking back and forth on his heels. Applegarth recoiled and let go of the rope. Behind him, Pennyworth picked up a strange green prickly fruit and sniffed at it, then scowled.

“Datura,” he remarked. “But someone has taken a bite out of it.”

“Hist!” Rudrabhan barked at the same time and drew his scimitar. The sound of well-honed steel rasping out of its scabbard filled the cavern.

As a confused Applegarth fumbled for his gun and turned on his heels, two huge shapes came lumbering into the shrine. The first thing that struck him was how stark naked, how caked in human faeces and mud they were. Both the creatures emitted ferocious growls and launched themselves at the group of men, claw-like hands outstretched to do murder. The constables immediately scampered for cover in the face of what they saw as a supernatural assault.

Only two men maintained their wits. Rudrabhan moved swiftly, pushing one Indian out of the way as he crunched back his leg and delivered a great kick to one of the attackers. The beast screamed and fell back, then lunged at the prince again, spittle flying from the decayed mouth. Firming his stance like an experienced soldier, Rudrabhan let his sword fly in a diagonal, silvery slash that lopped off his opponent’s head.

The constables had gathered their courage by now and banded together to herd the last assailant towards Applegarth. Ganga Dass used the buttstock of his rifle like a club and hit the creature on its chest. It barreled backwards, arms flailing, right into the barrel of Applegarth’s cocked pistol. He pulled the trigger without hesitation. There was a deafening blast with nigh busted the eardrums of everyone present. A spray of blood gushed out of the beast’s chest, showering walls and the goddess with blood.

The ambush was over in less than three minutes. The stench of black powder and blood hung heavy in the air, and the posse of men who had ridden out of Seonee was visibly rattled. Rudrabhan pranced to the head he had freed from shoulders and bent to examine it, while Pennyworth looked dazed as he delicately used a coconut shell to scrape the dung off another one’s face.

Applegarth drew three or four shaky breaths, then sprang to Bheriya and grabbed a fistful of his greasy locks. The criminal did not look surprised in the least.

“I should slit your throat and leave you to die here, you scoundrel!” he cried. “You let us straight to an ambush!”

“Hardly an ambush, inspector,” Pennyworth called him from behind. “Both these men were gripped by religious frenzy. I can see that they have consumed an entire thorn apple each, known as a potent hallucinogen, and scarred their faces with vitriol. We were attacked by fanatics who could hardly comprehend reality.”

“Still, he might have placed them here!” Applegarth roared, shaking Bheriya like a terrier shakes a rat.

“Let the man go or you will have one less villain to try in Jubbulpore,” Bhala Singh uttered. He had taken charge of the knot of constables and stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “Look at him, sir. He is wounded and almost delirious with shame and pain. Hungry for revenge.”

Applegarth was in a mood to scold his uniformed men as well, but he sullenly admitted that Bhala Singh had the right of it. Bheriya was still his biggest catch in Seonee to date. If he managed to kill the man in his rage it would only be a loss to the police force. So he let go and took stock of the situation. Two corpses, one headless. Essuree and Kamran. The last of the Seonee thuggee.

“Mr Pennyworth, would you be so kind as to lend us your horse for the transportation of these cadavers?” Applegarth asked. The professor shrugged. Being a man of science, he hardly found blood and other fluids detestable. Applegarth decided he would take one of the corpses on his own bay.

It was noon when they started back towards Seonee. This time, the native constables took the vanguard with Ganga Dass forming the tip of the spear. Rudrabhan brought up the rear, while Applegarth and Pennyworth lead their horses on foot. Two savage, clothless bodies flopped pathetically upon the two horses as they trotted. All of them wrinkled their noses at the odour wafting into their nostrils but marched silently. Enough action had been witnessed for the day.

The wall of green black trees waited to greet them back into its bosom. Applegarth steeled himself for the unnatural shift in the air. But a feather of chill still brushed his spine.

***

Back in the thanah, the horses were taken away to be watered while the constables went running to fetch the keeper of the small local morgue. Applegarth thanked his companions for their help and treated them to some toast and jam and sweet tea in his office. They soon left for their respective domiciles. A police doctor arrived soon to tend to Bheriya’s injuries, who now sat on a cot inside one of the cells and stared at the floor blankly. His vengeance complete, he had nothing more to do than answer for his own crimes.

Meanwhile, a small crowd gathered at the gates, composed mainly of fruit sellers and cobblers, tanners, metalworkers and other townsfolk. They cheered the inspector and his intrepid crew, and chucked a few stones at Bheriya before the constables drove them off. Barnaby dropped if for a quick chat with Applegarth and congratulated him, leaving before he could be burdened with official paperwork. Like most officers in the top brass, Barnaby crawled out only to hog credit when most of the task was over.

Bhala Singh came back from the harbour to report that the Wainguga was devoid of ferrymen who could make another trip to Jubbulpore tonight. There was some winter fair taking place in the larger towns downstream and all had taken their vessels there. The dispatch was sent through and an answer was awaited, but they had no choice but to keep the prisoner in Seonee until the next day. Applegarth found the reason nothing but troublesome, though he accepted it. He had chased the dreaded strangler for so many years. It was only fitting he be given one night to torment him as the latter had tormented him.

A curtain of Stygian darkness fell upon Seonee. One by one the oil lamps flickered to life as the constables on duty took up positions around the thanah and the staff went home. A dinner of mutton stew and boiled rice was set before Applegarth, who devoured it with great relish. The excitement of the day had given him quite the appetite.

After a few mouthfuls, the inspector looked up to find Bheriya staring at him. Just staring. His eyes were two pools of limpid lampblack peering from the scant shadows of prison. There was something very lupine about that stare.

"What is it, old friend?" Applegarth asked. "You hungry? Want a bite?"

Bheriya did not respond. He hugged his knees and gazed at the copper as if he was not a man, but an object of great interest. A bottle of Burgundy for a drunkard. A dolled-up girl for the lecher. Applegarth felt uneasy being subjected to that glazed, placid gaze.

"What are you looking at huh?"

The thug tilted his head to the right. Outside, a couple of crows cawed and sounds of revelry floated down from the banquet house. Someone was throwing a party.

"Would you like to see a magic trick, sahib?"

Applegarth was taken aback. What was the damned man getting at? He leaned back in his chair and spooned another mixture of gravy and rice into his mouth.

"Oh yeah? Go on then, show me."

A grin split Bheriya's face. It was a bizarre transformation of his dour, saturnine face. Couple with his ominous stare, it made him look crazed.

"But before that, I must tell you a tale. Two weeks ago, two of your constables ran afoul of a trap I had laid near the village of Turi. We killed them, naturally. The bodies were never found."

Applegarth knew of whom he spoke. They were good men, honest police constables. Reliable in a scrap. That the thuggee had snared them was not unknown to him.

"Yes? So?" He said.

"You decimated my band. Came to our home and salted the earth with the blood of my brothers. I took an oath to strike back then. Strike back so hard you goras will be talking about it for a hundred years."

For a second, Applegarth frowned at the sudden jerk in the tale. Then he slapped his thigh and guffawed. "Well, aren't you a funny chap? You killed my men to avenge your brothers, then came begging for my help to kill the brothers that betrayed you? This one is for the dime novels."

Bheriya remained unfazed. "The vitriol was hard to get, but there is a chemist in Ramtek who doesn't mind whose money crosses his palm. He sold me the material. How they screamed when I marred their features!"

His eyes now glinted with a mad light. Applegarth frowned. Had the thug gone unhinged? He was clearly spouting nonsense now. The inspector suddenly felt the urge to get up and retreat to his office, barring the door, but that would be giving Bheriya the pleasure of seeing him flustered.

Applegarth was a rational man. He glanced at the pitch darkness outside the window, punctuated by the call of shrill crickets and an occasional owl. There was nothing to be afraid of.

"The goddess Kali wants a good sacrifice. It has been a failure on my part to provide her with blood for a while now. I wish to gift her the ultimate sacrifice. A white man."

Applegarth had had enough of this gobshite. He rose and grabbed his truncheon. "Now listen here, you bloody-"

"Silence!" Bheriya snarled, smashing a gnarled forefinger to his lips. Then he lapsed into the state of calm smugness again. "Now for the magic trick."

He uncoiled from the shadows like a deadly cobra. Viscous and sinuous, like a predator in the elephant grass about to charge. His arms snaked out of the bars of the cell and cradled the heavy brass lock.

Before Applegarth's disbelieving eyes, Bheriya produced a key and unlocked the door. The heavy brass lock fell to the floor with a dull thunk.

Alarmed, he reached for his pistol to find it gone. Applegarth's heart thundered like a galloping warhorse. Where the hell had he put the damned weapon?

"Stop right there!" He bellowed. "Or I'll kill you!"

"With what, burra sahib?"

Applegarth spun around…and went deathly cold with shock. Behind him stood Bhala Singh and Ganga Dass, but who were these men? He barely recognized the towering, gaunt figures grinning in a ghoulish manner at him, eyes alive with the madness of perverse thoughts. Were it not for their uniforms, he would have mistaken them for intruders.

"Ganga Dass, what is the meaning of this?" Applegarth shrieked, trying to mask his fear.

"My name is not Ganga Dass," the old man replied. "You didn't think to check your fresh arrivals from Jubbulpore, did you sir?"

"Leave the man be, Essuree," Bheriya called out lazily from behind.

Applegarth gaped at Ganga Dass first, then Bhala Singh. The realization hit him with the force of a war elephant's swinging trunk.

But it was too late. The man called Essuree lifted his lathi with a smoothness that belied his advanced years and smote the side of Applegarth's head. His world instantly plunged into a kaleidoscope of bright lights and splotches. A blinding white agony enveloped his entire body as he crashed sideways to the floor.

Bheriya the thug, the master deceiver, the serpent in the thicket, crouched to caress his adversary's face. The man was alive but barely conscious. He shook his head and looked up at the two thugs who had come to stand over the fallen policeman.

"Jemadar," said Essuree, who had worn Ganga Dass's identity like a cloak for so long. "We did as you asked."

"Bearded the lion in his lair," Bhala Singh, who could only be Kamran, murmured.

Bheriya nodded and ordered them to bind the semi-conscious Applegarth hand and foot with the very rope he had restrained Bheriya earlier that day. "You killed your own men today, Lawrence. I want you to know that," he whispered. "I beat them and broke them and made them feral, and today you slew them with your own hands."

Applegarth groaned weakly.

When all was prepared, the three thugs carried the now hogtied inspector outside and dumped him on the saddle of the bay charger. The other constables had been suitably drugged with laudanum from the medical stores. Not a leaf stirred in the night as they stole the horses and rode out of the thanah.

Bouncing like a rag doll as he dangled from the horse's back, Applegarth's last vision was a terrifying, four-armed apparition stretching infinitely across the land. She encompassed the entire sky, the entire cosmos. Her children raced towards her temple in frenzied ecstasy as she beckoned to them. She thirsted for his blood.

He fainted from the sheer horror of it.

By Shreyas Adhikari