Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

There were shouts. At least eight or nine men were in the room, more in the dark hall. One man was screaming. Another accidentally jabbed me in the chest as he swung his arms around. The man in khaki reached down and jerked the pistol from Das's clenched jaws, breaking a front tooth off as he did so. He waved the bloodied pistol and let out a high, thin wailing that might have been a prayer or a curse. More men shoved into the room.

This is not real . I felt almost nothing. There was a loud humming in my ears. The buffeting all around me was a distant, unrelated thing.

Another man entered. He was older, bald, and wearing a simple peasant's dhoti . The plainness of his appearance, however, was belied by the deference with which the crowd parted for him. He looked down on Das's body for a moment and then touched the leprous head gently, almost reverently, the way the poet had touched my gift of books. Then the man turned black eyes my direction and said something softly to the crowd.

Hands closed on my shirt and arms, and they took me away into the dark.

I sat in an empty room for an unknown time. There were sounds beyond the door. A small oil lamp gave me light. I sat on the floor and tried to think about Amrita and the baby but could not. I could concentrate on nothing. My head ached. After a while I picked up the book they had left me with and read some of Tagore's English poems.

Sometime later three men entered. One held out a small cup and saucer to me. I saw the steam rising form the dark tea.

"No, thank you," I said and returned to my reading.

The heavy man said, "Drink."

"No."

The man in khaki took my left hand and broke my little finger with an upward twist of his wrist. I screamed. The book dropped to the floor. I grabbed the injured hand and rocked back and forth in agony. The tea was offered again.

"Drink."

I took the cup and drank. The bitter tea scalded my tongue. I coughed and spluttered some out, but the three watched until I swallowed the rest. My little finger jutted backward almost comically, and there was a nerve of fire running up my wrist and arm to a point at the base of my neck.

Someone took the empty cup and two of them left. The heavy man smirked and patted me on the shoulder as one would a child. Then they left me alone with the bitter taste of tea and cowardice in my mouth.

I tried to tug the finger back into place, but even the act of touching it made me cry out and come close to fainting. Sweat poured from me and my skin turned cold and clammy. I picked up the book with my right hand, flipped to the page I had been reading, and tried to concentrate on a poem about a chance encounter on a train. I was still rocking slightly and crooning soft syllables of pain.

My throat burned from whatever had been in the tea. A few minutes later the words on the page slid crazily to the left and ran together.

I tried to stand then, but the oil lamp chose that second to flare into blinding brilliance and then to fade to blackness.

Blackness. Pain and blackness.

The pain brought me out of my own comforting darkness into a less benign but no less absolute lack of light. I was lying on what felt like a cold stone floor. There was not the faintest gleam of light. I sat up and cried aloud as the pain coursed up my left arm. The ache throbbed more fiercely with each heartbeat.

I felt around with my right hand. Nothing. Cool stone and hot, moist air. My eyes did not adapt to the dark. The only time I had ever experienced darkness this total was one time spelunking in Missouri with friends when we had turned off all our carbide lamps. It was a claustrophobic, inward-pressing darkness. I moaned as a thought struck. What if they have blinded me?

But my eyelids felt normal enough to my hasty touch. There was no pain in my face, only the sickening dizziness that the tea had brought. No, thank you , I had said. I giggled, but stifled the ragged sounds while I could.

I began crawling, cradling my throbbing left hand to my chest. My fingers encountered a wall — smooth masonry or stone. Was I underground?

When I stood up, the dizziness grew worse. I leaned against the wall, pressing my cheek to the cool surface. A quick touch told me that they had left me dressed in my own clothes. I thought to search through my pockets. Shirt pockets held an airline receipt, the smaller of my two notebooks, a felt-tip pen, and flakes of clay from the stone I'd carried there earlier. Trouser pockets held my room key, wallet, coins, a slip of paper, and the book of matches Amrita had given me.

Matches!

I forced myself to hold the matchbook in my throbbing left hand while I struck a match, shielded it, lifted it.

The room was actually an alcove, three solid walls and a black curtain. Déjà vu rose up in me. I had time to lift back the edge of the curtain and to sense a larger darkness beyond before the match burned to my fingertips.

I waited, listening. Currents of air moved against my face. I dared not light another match in case someone was waiting in the larger room. Over the ragged sound of my own breathing I could hear a soft, susurrant undertone. The breathing of a giant. Or of a river.

Testing with my foot, I slid past the heavy cloth and into an immense, open space. I could see nothing, but it felt immense. The air seemed slightly cooler and moved to random currents, bringing to me the scent of incense and of something heavier, as rich and heavy as the smell of week-old garbage.

I took short steps, moved my right hand in front of me cautiously, and tried not to remember the images — filtered through the memory of sing-song English — which nonetheless rose to mind. Twenty-five steps brought me in contact with nothing. The Kapalikas could be back at any second. They could be there now . I began to run. I ran heedlessly in the dark, openmouthed, clutching my left hand to me.

Something struck me in the head. I saw pin wheel colors and fell, striking stone, falling again. I landed on my left hand and yelled in pain and shock. The matchbook slipped from my fingers. I kneeled and felt around wildly for it, ignoring the pain, expecting a second blow to descend at any second.

My right hand found the cardboard square. I was shaking so hard that it took three strikes to light the first match. My gaze followed the light upward.

I was kneeling at the base of the Kali idol. My head had struck her lower, outstretched hand. I blinked as blood trickled from my brow into my right eye.

I stood up despite the terrible dizziness. I would not kneel in front of that thing.

"Do you hear that, bitch?" I said loudly to the dark stone face four feet above me. "I'm not kneeling in front of you. Do you hear that?" The blank eyes were not even looking my way. The teeth and tongue were a child's comic book terror.

"Bitch," I said, and the match burned out. I stumbled off the low dais, away from the idol and into the black emptiness. Ten steps, and I stopped. There was no reason to feel around in the dark now. There was little time. I lit a match and held it until I could fumble out the airline receipt. My tiny torch threw a fifteen-foot circle of light when I held it aloft and looked around for a door, a window. I froze until the flaming paper scorched my hand.

The idol was gone.

The pedestal and dais where it had stood a second before were empty.

Something scraped and scrabbled beyond the fading light. There was movement to my left, and then I had to drop the burning paper and the darkness returned.

I struck another match. Its puny glow barely illuminated me. I pulled the spiral notebook from my safari shirt pocket, tore pages out with my teeth, and switched hands. The match died. Something made a sound not ten feet from me in the dark.