Rage

The oldest entity of evil is born through the unintended incest of brother and sister

The drums. The insistent drill of the drums awakened me from my slumber. Strange, how when every other sound seems so stifled, that the drums should permeate the walls of this woman’s womb to reach me stark and clear. Penetrating. The staccato beat rings in my ears, its vibrations juddering through my yet unformed body. I am not troubled, rather I welcome the throbbing clatter like a brother. It is part of me. It is who I am. It is part of what I am. 

The village kattadiya began his preparations for the ritual. His golayas, faces serious and somewhat fearful, hurried about their duties, setting stage for the most potent and dangerous ritual a kattadiya could be called on to perform.

Susantha, biting his nails, hovered over the bed where his wife lay. “Chi!” exclaimed his mother-in-law, “eating your fingers! That shows what a weak spine you have!”

“Shut up, woman!” snapped Susantha, whipping his hand down, wiping the spit off his fingers on his sarong.

“That’s the way to talk! Can only scold women, can’t stand up to any man. How much I told my daughter not to mix with a dog like you, but won’t listen.” Susantha shivered in anger, gritting his teeth.  Don’t let her get to you, he told himself, its not worth the argument, she never liked you and never will. Keep calm; Pavithra needs you.

“Anney, my duwa! What has happened to you, why did you go marry this devil? My heart, my heart.”

“Can’t you take her out of here?” asked Susantha, his voice trembling in anger, “Rohan, please take her and go!” he told a burly, dark, bearded fellow, the only other person in the hut.

“Come, amma,” said Rohan gently. The woman stared over the bed at Susantha, and her son-in-law winced at the look of spite in her eyes. Why does she hate me so much? God, why? He turned his attention back to his wife. He moved his hand to feel her forehead. Something fell from his heart to his stomach when, before the back of his fingers were even a couple of inches away from her skin, he felt intense heat radiating from her. This is not normal.  No one could have a fever of a hundred and eighty and still be alive. The kattadiya was right. She could only be possessed. But how, my darling, how could a beautiful, sweet creature such as you ever be capable of possessing an evil spirit? Susantha closed his eyes, his palm on Pavithra forehead, and bowed his head. He was never sure quite what he experienced in the moments that followed.

He felt, rather than saw, a light flash, as if it came more from within him than without. He opened his eyes and looked up. The air felt heavy, mouldy. He tried to take a breath; it felt like breathing fine sand. His chest felt clogged and heavy. I am dying, he thought, my heart must have broken, I am dying of sadness.

“IF ONLY YOU WERE!”

The voice was a giant fist that slugged into him, throwing him backwards, off his feet. He lay on the floor, clutching his chest. The demon has emerged, he thought to himself. He was so scared he tried to crawl under the bed to hide. 

“GET UP NAIL-BITER, COWARD,” the voice was taunting now. “I SAID YOU WERE A SPINELESS DOG!”

Susantha went rigid. He knew the voice. This was no demon-possessed wife of his. He gripped the edge of the bed and slowly pulled himself up. He looked over his prone wife at the woman who was the mother of his mate and almost fell back a second time. Standing there was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. 

“Who are you?” he thought more than said.

“Do you like what you see, dog?” The woman smiled, perfect white teeth showing through petal-shaped lips. 

“Who are you?” he asked again, louder this time.

“Do you really want to know? Can a coward such as you handle the truth?”

This is a dream, I am dreaming.

“This is no dream. Recognise me now?”  Susantha stared. She can read my thoughts! The woman’s face rippled and stretched. It seemed to him that there were insects crawling just under her skin. The skin bloated and then seemed to resettle on her face: on the face of Pavithra’s mother.

He panicked and looked about the room.  “Rohan…” he saw his friend frozen to the spot, his hand just over the woman’s shoulder. Only he wasn’t completely still. It looked like he was moving in extreme slow motion. His fingers were just an inch away from his mother-in-law. Susantha grasped for his wife’s hand. She was so hot; he felt he would burn himself. “Why are you doing this, you are her mother, aren’t you?” he pleaded.

“I am your mother too, dog!” she cackled. “At least your father had some guts. He even managed to bind my powers these past twenty years; until he died.”

Susantha was silent, staring. Rohan’s hand moved a fraction of an inch closer.

“Yes, you are my son; my weak, pitiful son.  Now do you know why I hated you? I hated you for marrying your own sister; my precious daughter. That is why she should die. No fool of a kattadiya has any idea what he is dealing with. I am sending her back to the spirit world to free her from the torment she must face if she is allowed to bring forth a child. The child who will be the very devil incarnate.” 

Rohan touch was a hairsbreadth away.

“You are not my mother,” Susantha gasped.

“I am. Didn’t that s**t ever tell you? She found you one day outside her hut. Where I put you. I needed to separate you from your sister. You mustn’t bond, mustn’t allow your seed to germinate within her. The time is yet not right. Do you understand, dog?”

She already carries my child.

“NO!”

This time the force of the voice threw him like a rag doll against the far wall. At that very instant, the tips of Rohan’s fingers touched Pavithra’s mother’s shoulder. There was a blinding flash of light. She swung around screaming, her hands outstretched.  Rohan ducked, but the clawed fingernails of the woman’s hand slashed across his face. He fell to his knees, his palm pressing hard into his eye. He was moaning in pain. Pressing hard against the injured eye, he felt something warm and slimy in his palm, like jelly. He moved his palm away expecting to see blood. What he saw instead made him pass out. The woman had sliced his eye right open and milky white gel from his eyeball was dripping from his palm.

The woman was scrambling over the bed, not bothering to go around to reach Susantha; he staring at her, clutching at his chest. Pavithra’s eyes opened at that second, and something red flickered in them. The old woman halted, looking down at her daughter. Pavithra’s mouth opened to a low moan, slowly increasing in volume. Her mother’s body went rigid, pale. “He is alive,” she whispered, “He is alive!” Pavithra’s voice reached an ear-deafening pitch when there was a sudden flash of intense light from eyes and mouth. Her mother was thrown back, engulfed in flame, and then vanished in a blur of smoke before she struck the floor.

Silence.  Susantha lay, his eyes fixed on Pavithra.  She was still, but there was some movement between her legs. A bloodstained clot wriggled under her skirt moving down her legs, finally sliding over the sheets and plopped down on the floor. It halted and pushed itself up on miniscule forelimbs, black beads for eyes scanning its surroundings. Its eyes rested on Susantha, who could still do nothing but stare. Many moments passed as the thing struggled across the few feet of floor to reach Susantha’s feet. It looked up straight into Susantha’s face and smiled, showing ragged teeth. “Hello, Father,” it spoke, splattering black flecks of blood.

Susantha drew a sharp breath and never exhaled.  He had died of fright. The thing slowly crawled up Susantha’s body, up to his face. With its tiny limbs it pried open his mouth and, ducking his head inside, wriggled the rest of its body through. A bulge moved down Susantha’s throat down towards his chest, where the heart is.

Susantha’s eyes snapped open. There was a flicker of something red just behind his pupils. His lifted his hands in front of his face, inspecting them. He rose to his feet, looking down at his body. He looked over at Pavithra, walked over and felt her forehead. It was ice-cold. It felt like touching smooth, wet concrete.  Pavithra was dead.

The kattadiya and two of his golayas entered the room. Looking around at the bloodstained room, he started forward. One of his goloyas turned around and ran out of the hut, the other rushed to the side of Rohan, who had woken up and was moaning on the floor.

“What happened?” demanded the kattadiya.  Susantha was still looking down at Pavithra.

“We were too late,” he said without looking up, “the demon took Pavithra and her mother before you could drive it out.”

“It cannot be,” the man stated, “A demon, once in control of a human soul, does not easily give it up. If the person dies, it will look for another occupant.”

“Oh?” queried Susantha. “And where do you think the demon could be now?”

“It must be hovering around here somewhere, we need to perform the exorcism fast, before it takes anyone else.” The kattadiya’s eyes were searching the air around him. “That is, unless…” his eyes rested on Susantha’s.

Susantha smiled back at the aged man. There was a red flash behind his pupils just as the man opened his mouth to yell a warning. The kattadiya started trembling, and then broke out in a torrent of foul language, his body gyrating on the spot, his head rolling around and around.

How sweet the taste of vengeance the thing inside Susantha spoke to the old man, you thought yourself strong enough to drive out my demons from the people of this village?  See if you can fight every one of those demons within your own body.

“The demon has entered that man.” Susantha spoke to the golaya, pointing at the kattadiya. The golaya, a round-faced young man in his late teens, whom everyone in the village called ‘Mahatoom’, gave a frightened look at his former master, glanced back at Susantha and nodded. The other re-entered the hut with two of the villagers he had called for help. Mahatoom pointed his finger at his old master.  “The demon has taken him, the demon has taken him.”

The villagers and the other golaya needed no further confirmation. Tearing the curtain down from the doorway of the hut, they wrapped the struggling man in it and carried him outside.

Susantha was left alone with his dead wife. He smiled again. Someone had started beating the ceremonial drums. The fools were actually about to attempt to drive the demons out of the kattadiya. Their devil-dance wouldn’t work. The incompetents would try to use the devil’s strength to fight the devil. How foolish! But that was not important.  What was important was he was alive. The oldest most destructive spirit in man’s history was finally born in the flesh.

My time is finally here.  My reign has begun…

Reviews

[Irin Chendale]

Interesting. Names are a bit difficult to pronounce and I'm not sure about some of the imagery, but over all a good read.