Free The Narrow Road to Palem by Sharath Komarraju Page B

tree.
    Now, without her knowledge, her mind was being taken over by these notes, and it was floating away, borne by them, into Palem, and this time she was taken into Avadhanayya’s field behind his shack and the irrigation well next to it. Unlike the images of the previous day these were sharp and fluid, as though an old movie was playing in front of her eyes. She went to the well, peeped inside, then went around it to the back; and there she stopped.
    She opened her eyes with a start, in cold sweat, suddenly aware that her fingers had been playing of their own volition on the sitar; that control of her fingers was only now gradually being returned to her. She could hear the notes of the tabla recede, and it seemed like tendrils that had wrapped around her mind were loosening their hold…she looked around the room once again just to make sure that she hadn’t attracted notice…and her eyes fell on Sister Agnes, who was watching her with a curious expression in her eyes…yes, she would have to tell her tonight. She had to tell her that she had to go back to Palem, though she did not know why or for what.
    No, she corrected herself, aware of it only as she was doing so, not for what , but for whom .
     
    * * *
     
    13 September, 1970
     
    Dear Brother Abraham,
     
    Thank you for your kind words. Whatever I feared for in my previous letter, I think, has come to pass, though I am still not sure if we were the victors or the vanquished.
    It was exactly thirteen days after Lachi disappeared. She was just – gone. Without a trace left behind. Her son and daughter did not know where she had gone. Avadhani denied having anything to do with her. No one in the village remembered when they had seen her last.
    That started it. Things started to disappear from the village: Komati Satyam’s langur, which he tied to the corner of his peanut field to scare monkeys away, was gone one night, taken with the rope that tethered him. Avadhani’s own Jersey cow also vanished, and later half its torso was found floating in the Godavari a few miles up north. A couple of stray dogs went missing; so did a pig and six of its piglets.
    All this while, Lachi’s son and daughter were getting bigger and bigger, while Avadhani got thinner and thinner…
    One evening I was sitting with Komati Satyam on his verandah and suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt that same feeling of ice down my back. Why it should have come at that time I do not know. Perhaps it is because at six o’clock every evening, Avadhani went to Ellamma cheruvu and washed his legs. It was a routine he did not miss in all these years, not even when he had that fracture in his arm when he fell off his father’s bicycle. But today, today, sir, he was nowhere to be seen. I knew almost immediately that something was wrong, and I told Satyam that we should go. He got up and picked up a spade, handing me one as we left. ‘You might need this,’ he said.
    When we went to Avadhani’s house the first thing that struck us was the smell. For long periods now his house has been locked up with no outsider ever entering. When we approached the windows we saw that they were all papered up. There was a soft whirr of a machine coming from inside the house, with an occasional jarring rumble. We exchanged a glance, Satyam and I, and decided to barge through the front door. The wood was rather weak, and it was half-eaten by termites, so it gave in on our very first push.
    The view inside – god, it still churns my stomach, sir – they were at least partly human, that much I can vouch for, with human legs, arms and faces. But their chests were tough and rubbery, of a dark green colour that one would see on toads. Lined on their waist on each side were three blinking sockets that I could discern were eyes of some fashion. Their backs were scaly, not unlike that of garden lizards, and little beady structures clicked and clucked under the skin. From what ought to be their stomach there slithered out a