Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

Shannon took a step back. “You know,” he said, “this isn’t doing much to help my stress. Or my well-being, for that matter.”

He got no reaction from either woman. Not even a crack of a smile. Backing up, he left the shop.

He tried the music store first. The kid working the cash register shrugged when Shannon asked him about the yoga studio. “I see some nice looking girls going in and out of there.” He scratched his chin, frowned. “I tried talking to a couple of them. Not the nicest experience.”

“How so?”

“They’re kind of spacey, you know, and not that friendly. One of them wouldn’t even look at me. Made me feel like an idiot. Another, it was like she looked through me instead of at me. I stopped bothering after that. But they are nice to look at.”

Shannon thanked him. As he got to the door the kid mentioned the smell from the yoga studio. “Sometimes it gets in here,” he said. “I think they’re smoking pot down there. Although it don’t smell quite like pot.”

Shannon got less information from the night club. At the sushi bar, the only thing the chef told him was that none of the yoga students ever eat at his restaurant.

“I wanted to put a flyer there offering their students a twenty-five percent discount, but they wouldn’t let me do it,” he complained. “Very unfriendly. Very un-Boulder like. Also smells bad.”

True Light’s compound turned out to be only a twelve minute drive from the yoga studio, but the building seemed as if it were in the middle of nowhere. Located off a new road near the southeastern part of Baseline Reservoir, there was nothing for miles around it. And even though Pauline Cousins had described the compound to him, Shannon still didn’t expect what he saw. The place did remind him of a prison. Not that the building didn’t look expensive, and not that it wasn’t loaded with cathedral ceilings, large bay windows and stone chimneys. Maybe it was the gray stone they used, or that it was so isolated, or the six-foot iron fence surrounding the property-with each iron post topped off with a dagger-like spike. Or maybe it was the way the building seemed to be comprised of several unrelated smaller structures, all jammed together making it less like a house than something industrialized. It made Shannon think of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of a gothic mansion gone horribly wrong.

After pulling up to the main gate, he got out and rang the intercom buzzer. A woman’s voice asked him who he was. Shannon identified himself and told her he was there to speak to one of their members, Melissa Cousins. The intercom went dead. After waiting several minutes, Shannon realized the woman had no intention of responding back. He rang the buzzer again.

Angrier than before, the woman told him that Melissa did not wish to speak to him and he should leave.

“I’d like to hear that from her.”

“Too bad because you won’t.”

Again the intercom went dead. Shannon pushed his thumb against the buzzer and held it there until two men with shaved heads came out of the building, both of them wearing white robes and sandals, their faces twisted into angry scowls.

“Stop ringing that buzzer!” one of the men yelled at Shannon.

He was the larger of the two, but other than that they were almost indistinguishable. Both had square-shaped heads, flat noses and small, almost baby-sized ears. As the larger man unlocked the gate, Shannon took a step back. He watched curiously as the two men stormed through it, scowls on both faces deepening.

“Are those silk robes or polyester?” Shannon asked. “My guess is polyester. Doesn’t seem to have the texture of real silk.”

The two men came towards him, stopping only when they were a foot away. Up close, they looked vaguely familiar but not as much alike as Shannon had first thought-it was more of an optical illusion caused by their shaved heads and identical outfits. Maybe they were enough alike to be brothers, but not identical clones. They were both young, probably in their early twenties. The larger man had beadier eyes, while his partner had a more angular face. Shannon realized why they had seemed familiar; the larger one resembled Curly Howard from the Three Stooges, while the other could’ve been a young Shemp with a shaved head.

He couldn’t help feeling angry as he thought of these two pushing Pauline Cousins to the ground. Swallowing it back, he said as flatly and evenly as he could that he was there only to make sure that Melissa Cousins was okay.

“Why don’t the two of you back away from me,” he added with a tight grin.

Lips separated from the Curly look-alike showing small white teeth about the size of corn kernels. He threw both hands outward trying to push Shannon in the chest. Shannon sidestepped it and grabbed Curly by his elbow as he stumbled forward off balance, then swung him head first into the fence. Curly’s forehead clanged off of it and he shot backwards as if he had come out of a cannon. As he lay unmoving on the ground, a gash showed over his right eye and blood from it trickled down and stained his robe.

“I hope you don’t try something stupid also,” Shannon told the other man. “Cause as you can see I’m not a ninety pound middle-aged woman. I’m a little tougher to push around.”

As the Shemp look-alike stared dumbfounded at Shannon, his face screwed into a look of fury. He screamed like a banshee and charged forward, throwing a wild uppercut. Shannon blocked it and, in almost the same motion, grabbed him above his wrist and swung him backwards. The man kept screaming until he tripped over his partner and hit the back of his head against an iron post, making the same clanging noise that Curly’s head had made. Then, his eyes rolling inward, he slumped forward and lay crisscrossed on top of his partner. Shannon checked to make sure they were both breathing, then walked through the unlocked gate to the front door.

Like the gate, the door had been left unlocked. Shannon opened it and stepped down into a marble foyer that had been set up as an altar. Facing him was a life-sized painting of the cult leader, Vishna. In it he wore a long, flowing golden robe as he sat cross-legged, thumbs and forefingers touching, hands resting on his knees, his black eyes just as piercing as they were in the brochure photograph. On both sides of the painting were ornamental tables where candles and incense burned, the odor similar but not exactly the same as the one in the yoga studio. What looked like small offerings-flowers, jewelry, silk scarves-lay scattered on the floor in front of the painting.

As Shannon took all this in, a woman with long black hair reaching to the middle of her back entered the foyer. She was wearing the same type of white robe as the two men who had attacked him. Like Melissa and the women from the yoga studio, she was young, petite and very pretty. Also like the women from the yoga studio, her eyes had an expressionless, almost glazed look to them. Still, seeing Shannon standing there, her jaw dropped, although no sign of her bewilderment showed in her eyes.

“What-who are you?” she asked, stammering slightly.

Shannon recognized her voice from the intercom. “The two thugs you sent after me are lying outside your gate. They probably need medical attention.”

She walked past Shannon and looked out the front door. When she turned to face him again, her eyes were wider but still had the same expressionless, glazed quality to them.

“They attacked me,” Shannon told her. “I could file assault charges against both of them, and maybe you also as an accessory. But I won’t. Not if you let me see Melissa Cousins.”

“T-That’s not a decision I can make.”

“Then talk to someone who can.”

She stared blankly at Shannon for a good minute before blinking and nodding her head.