The Bookworm Chronicles - Hostel Diaries by Vinay Palsamudra - HTML preview

Chapter 16 – Last Draw

 

“Good acting Ms. Sridevi” teased Disha as Praneethi had convincingly drawn the attention of the crowd  and also had acted so good on the recovery, that the crowd actually felt happy & relieved to see the girl on  her feet again.

 

“Maybe it is my destiny!” added Praneethi and the two had a good laugh  “I guess the girls would have  done their job by now, but it has been well over an hour now, shouldn’t they be back”

 

Meanwhile at the Principal’s office,  “what was all the commotion about, Thapa?” asked Aadarsh Prasad to  the security guard.

 

“A girl, saab, she had fainted, she, she is ok now” said Tej Bahadur Thapa, a Nepali Gurkha, known for  their bravery and aggressiveness.

 

“Who is she? Did her parents take her away?” asked Aadarsh.

 

“Saabji, I don’t think so, all the children have left, except for these two”

 

“Two?, who is the other one?”

 

“Disha, Class 12, Praneethi Class 9”

 

“Well, where are they now?”

 

“They are both at the infirmary, Saabji, Ms. Sadhana took them there”

 

“Send Ms. Sadhana across, tell her I called her, on second thoughts, forget it, I will speak to her later, you  go now” Aadarsh dismissed Thapa from the room.

 

Back at the infirmary, where Praneethi had been taken by the school staff for a checkup, the girls were  getting tense,  “they should be here as planned, something might have went wrong, what if Peeya was  bluffing! Oh! We must never have trusted that loony” said Praneethi.

 

“No, Praneethi, Peeya is clean, tears don’t lie, something else is wrong, maybe the old lady is not Peeya’s  grandma at all, maybe it was a trap” said Disha.

 

“Maybe that house is haunted after all! Oh! We shouldn’t have let them go by themselves, perhaps there  was a better plan to slip past the security” Disha had gotten very tense.

 

“They are at the house, your mutts are useless” Aadarsh was speaking to someone over the phone in his  office.

 

“It will be taken care of, you don’t have to worry, just like you haven’t all these days” the voice on the other  side of the phone replied.

 

“Should we approach the police? What will we tell them? We will sound so stupid! Should we alert Ms.  Sadhana or the principal?” asked Praneethi.

 

“Don’t be naïve, princi will rusticate us if he finds out what we have been doing, not to mention the drama  our parents will enact, once they come to know, I will be in college this year, Praneethi, I can’t risk it”  explained Disha  “The Book! I guess the book is the key, we need to finish where Chavi has left”

 

“But the keys to their room, it would be locked, won’t it” asked Praneethi

 

“Not if I open it for you” said Ms. Sadhana who had been chatting with the nurse all this while, when the  two girls had started talking about Chavi & Peeya.

 

The trio quickly dashed towards the hostel, where Ms. Sadhana retrieved a duplicate key to room no 417.  They could not see any activity at the bungalow from the room’s window, but they could find the book  lying over Chavi’s bed, Disha started from the page that Chavi had bookmarked.

 

“The vacations were finally knocking on the doors, it was time for Priscilla to step out of the school, to  the city’s dark alleys, and an old shaman lay in wait for her arrival. It had been foreseen and foretold.  Priscilla Schneider stepped out with the last ounce of energy left inside her and a force guided her to the  shaman.

 

The place was expectedly dark, cold and dusty. There were vials and jars filled with the mummified  carcasses of lizards, Gila monsters, bats, frogs, snakes, and thousands of dead maggots and locusts  cramped in air tight glass jars. There were signs and symbols that the little girl could not understand.  The atmosphere in the damp basement shop of the old Shaman was eerie and there was death all  around the place.

 

The Shaman herself, an old wrinkly Hispanic woman, dressed in the traditional garb of native  American Shamans, face painted in brilliant white streaks and blue & orange lines in between, giving  her the resemblance of a brightly colored baboon. Her headgear made of flaming red Flamingo feathers  tied together by a head band painted in native tribal patterns, the flowing gown was largely black, with  streaks of yellow and orange, it was made with the wool of the mountain goats, and large beads at the  tip of her dreadlocks and around her neck completed her look. A crude seasoned wood staff with a  mummified ram’s head made up for her only accessory.

 

Priscilla was drawn to the evening sun filtering through the dust and the smoke that was coming from a  recess in the shop. She could hear an old woman chanting hymns in Native American, a prayer was  being offered for the invocation of the spirits to the world of the living. Priscilla’s father, Guss, was being  summoned.

 

The shaman invoked the spirit into her own domain; Guss would speak to his daughter without hurting  her.

 

“Why?” asked Priscilla, she was no more scared, it didn’t hurt anymore physically. It only pained her  emotionally, it was still unclear to her, and if her family really deserved the end it met. Was it her  father’s sins that the entire family was paying?

 

“Because, they were scared! They always were! Those maggots would gnaw on my corpse, tearing  away the last inch of flesh left on me. I made me, they will pay!” the Shaman trembled and spoke in her  own voice, but in riddles, though little Priscilla was making sense out of it.

 

Guss had always been over ambitious; he had even married Augustine to get instant fame and fortune.  His quest for more, led him towards wrong company, his dealings in the arms business killed scores and  he had the blood of the innocents on his hand. Augustine died; perhaps she turned a blind eye to her  husband’s dangerous liaisons, her love overwhelming her rational thinking. Benjamin’s death however  was unfortunate and he died a valiant death, trying to save an innocent’s life. Guss’s wealth had grown  beyond his own control, he had taken on corrupt politicians and powerful industrialists and rival arms  dealers. Anyone could have been his killers. But, he kept his enemies very close. He always was on  guard. But he had the terrible mistake of trusting the wrong men. But Guss, was without regret, even in  his after life, he was miserable, his vast fortune being spilt into the gutters by people he did not care  about, had created such a great unrest in him, that he was forced to rise from the dead. He narrated the  truth behind his death to Priscilla. He was not particularly trying to redeem himself in her eyes. He  wanted the people who had encroached upon his money to suffer. He could not do anything, without the  help of his flesh and blood – Priscilla. Fate had favored him and Priscilla had survived the attempt on  her life. She had joined the school and now Guss had manifested himself into something so greedy and  dangerous, that would be satisfied only at the sight of death. Death of the trust board members. His soul  would not rest, until he would see that his money would reach the hands of his daughter.

 

Priscilla learnt that Teddy Birmingham and Lt. Sam Perez were her family’s killers and that Rory  Medvev had masterminded the taking over of her parents’ fortunes for his own benefits. She would have  to avenge her mother & Uncle if not her father, whom she had begun to detest and she would have to  stage the deaths of the trust board, Rory included in order to banish her father’s greedy soul back to  Hades’ underworld.

 

“This book only says about how Priscilla gains strength and supernatural powers from the Shaman and  how she defeats Teddy and Sam” said Disha disappointedly and goes on  “Look here it says that Priscilla  had a huge set erected that looked like her school and roped in actors who were disguised as Rory and  other trust board members. The whole set was blown to pieces with the help of her mother’s friends in LA  and this is how Guss finally left Priscilla to live in peace”.

 

“What clues could you possibly get from this?” asked Praneethi.

 

“May be it is how we interpret it, Praneethi, the books talks about how Priscilla confronted Teddy and  Sam and she defeated them both with the sheer resolve of avenging her mother and Uncle. The shaman  had helped her though, may be her mother helped her in her quest too”

 

“Peeya has the resolve, her strengths are us, we will help her defeat her enemies, obviously the ghost  stories are just the work of some mischief mongers” said Disha.

 

“How long have they been out?” asked Ms. Sadhana  “Come on, don’t hesitate, I know all about Peeya, I am  here only to protect her” after seeing that the girls felt uneasy sharing their secret with her.

 

“Oh my God! Their lives might be in danger, we need to inform the police right now!” Ms. Sadhana turned  towards the door and was stopped at the sight of her husband, Sandip Talapatra aka Mallesh, standing at  the doorway.

 

“Good you are here! The girls are in grave danger, they are in the bungalow with amma” said Ms. Sadhana  Talapatra aka Shanti.

 

“Relax, Shanti, the girls will be fine, I am sure they will receive the hospitality that they deserve” Mallesh’s  tone had made Shanti extremely anxious and she was now beginning to suspect her husband’s integrity.

 

“How much do you know about this?” she asked

 

“Enough” he replied.

 

“Since when have you been playing this game, Mallesh” Shanti addressed him by his name, indicating that  she was now aware of his schemes and she had to confront him now.

 

Meanwhile at Ararat,  “How is this possible? The chloroform should have put them off for at least another  hour!” cried Peeya all the while holding on tightly to Chavi’s forearm, forming a red impression.

 

“Very clever and brave indeed girls, but you were foolish enough to think that no one was looking” came in  Aadarsh Prasad behind the gnarling Rottweilers.

 

Chavi & Peeya were flabbergasted  “SIR!” they cried out in unison.

 

“You, you girl, Chavi, you couldn’t keep your nose out of this, could ya?” the stout, bespectacled, school  principal spoke and the girls were still in a state of shock.

 

“I tried to warn you many times, you wouldn’t listen, you Idiots” thundered Aadarsh.

 

“You! I had warned you against making any friends, not to speak to anyone, now why would you disobey  your principal?” grinned, Aadarsh while addressing a hapless & scared Peeya.

 

“I did not, I swear, but then, they had found out somehow, about me” sobbed Peeya  “And you thought,  they could help you find the truth!” added Aadarsh.

 

“Well, I will give you the truth, if that is what you wanted! But I am afraid, you girls will take it to your  graves” Aadarsh again gave a sadistic grin that was cold and scary.

 

“Let us go, Mallesh, the girls, they have to be saved, for God’s sake, don’t do this! It is amma, how can you  do this to her?” she pleaded  “Money, honey! Everything’s for money. What did you expect? That I would  end up a poor nurse’s poor clerk husband? Richmond was from a village and so were we, he made it big  and all I could think of at the end of the month was to buy some decent clothes to cover ourselves up! We  did not have any babies, Shanti, we didn’t have the money for it, remember?” he justified.

 

“Do not cover your inabilities on my pretext, Mallesh, you had always been over ambitious, you could have  achieved everything, if you had the skills to achieve them, one never gets more than what they deserve”  Shanti tried to mollify her husband who had gone astray.

 

“Too late, Shanti, I have too much at stake to let them go, I have worked too hard to reach here and I  won’t let you spoil the game for me” warned Mallesh and his eyes reflected his intentions. Greed makes a  man desperate. He was ready to destroy the very life that he had struggled so hard to achieve.

 

“Were you involved in Richmond Master’s murder? Tell me!” screamed Shanti unable to withhold her  emotions.

 

“He had to be cleared from the way, he had gotten suspicious, he somehow, came to know that I had  murdered the Kamat family” Mallesh said.

 

“You are the devil himself! I lived with you all these years, I trusted you, I respected you, you don’t  deserve to live” she yelled as she lunged towards him with all her strength but was no match for the gym  instructor’s brute strength and raw resolve, one smack in her temple region, and Shanti was down on the  ground, unconscious.

 

“Now, girls, I am sorry to do this” Mallesh approached Disha and Praneethi.

 

“That friend of yours, Pawan, yes, that’s his name, he was lucky, he would have been dead by now or in a  coma, if not for you” smiled Aadarsh  “the boy had the nerve to be a spy” he explained how he had  retrieved the information, which Pawan had searched on the internet, from the computer’s cache.

 

“You survived too, darling, while the horse should have stomped you to pulp, if only that drunkard of a  trainer had not snorted coke and tortured the animal, bloody junkie” he confessed without an iota of  shame.

 

“And you killed my granddad and my parents too?” asked Peeya

 

“I don’t do the dirty work myself, my child, I am the brain, my arms and legs are many” he boasted.

 

“The Kamat family, Richmond, Russell, your mother, they were all mere pawns, now that I have taken  them off my path, I only needed to smoke you, Richmond’s heir, out of your hiding hole and I let this  delusional old hag to live, only in anticipation to this day. It wouldn’t be difficult for me, to take over the  entire D’Costa business, sell it for a whistle and leave this country for good! How is the plan? Pretty good  huh?” Aadarsh praised himself.

 

“Please don’t do anything to us, we won’t say a word, It’s my last year in school, you won’t even see me  after the exams are over” Disha pleaded  “and I will leave the school immediately” cried Praneethi.

 

“I will save you all the trouble girls, you see this here, it’s my trusty old friend” Mallesh wore a sinister  smug face while he drew a sharp blade from his sports jacket.

 

The window panes in the room had been banging the iron grills and the wind outside was growing strong.  It seemed like a storm was brewing outside and the room was thrown under a pail of darkness while the  clouds covered the evening sun.

 

A sudden gust of wind from the window pushed the light plywood door towards Mallesh who had all the  while standing on the threshold. The sudden movement of the door shocked him and in his bid to recover,  he tipped over Shanti who had fallen unconscious on the floor, the soft lower back of his skull hitting hard  on the concrete parapet wall, immediately knocking him out cold.

 

“What just happened? Sadhana Madam, Sadhana Ma’am” the two girls shouted in unison, while Praneethi  attended to Shanti, Disha ran down towards Sadhana aka Shanti’s office room and immediately dialed up  the police.

 

Sadhana slowly came to herself and Praneethi explained what had happened.

 

“I think it is Richmond Master himself, coming to save you girls, quick, we must rush to the Bungalow,  you stay here, I will take Thapa” Shanti stormed towards the main gate and Thapa and she made a dash  towards the bungalow.

 

“You ungrateful dog! Richmond brought you from his village, he sponsored your education, and he made  you a learned man. You are what you are today, because of him” Lily Mary exploded in a fit of rage, no  longer able to hold on.

 

“Well, you are not loony after all, nice act you had put Lily, you had us fooled all this time, not bad for a  village girl” Aadarsh teased Lily Mary and was unperturbed by the turn of events, as if he had known  everything all the while. It did not matter to him anymore, he had lured Peeya out into the ‘haunted’  house, and no one would suspect a thing.

 

“Shame on you, you bastard, you deserve a horrible death” cursed Lily Mary.

 

“More horrible than that of Richmond?” laughed Aadarsh as he patted the Rottweilers on their heads  “Thank the boys for that”.

 

“I suppose you would want to know, why?” said Aadarsh and Lily Mary just looked up at him.

 

“I respected Richmond like a father, he was everything to me, he was my hero and my role model, I always  wanted to be like him, I saw in myself a son that he would have one day, until Russell came into your lives,

 

I was sent away, banished to a prison, I counted each and every holiday that I had to spend alone, every  birthday that I had to celebrate in silence, every..” his speech was cut short by Lily as she screamed  “You,  wretch! You are Satan himself! How could you think that way? Richmond should have never saved you  from the sewers you were born in, he named you Aadarsh which you have none. Your soul will forever rot  in hell” Lily cursed again.

 

“That is enough talking Lily” Aadarsh offered no respect to her who had supported her husband’s decision  to support his education and now she cried, with regret.

 

“Thapa, be very careful, those dogs are trained and extremely dangerous, we must save the lady and the  girls at any cost, don’t worry I will be right behind and the police should be on their way” Shanti  instructed Thapa as they hunched their backs and bent down with one knee on the ground.

 

Thapa was an expert climber and he used the cover of darkness to climb the water pipes crawling on the  bungalow’s stone walls. Lucifer and Gabriel or their imposters, smelled the intruder and immediately  started howling and barking in the direction where Thapa was headed, just beside the balcony.

 

Aadarsh drew his pistol and aimed straight at Thapa but Chavi had flung the tray resting on Lily’s balcony  table at him. The tray found its mark and was successful in dislodging the pistol from him and it fell  straight down on the lawn.

 

Thapa jumped onto the balcony only to be met by two ferocious Rottweilers that threatened to tear him  apart.

 

Sadhana, still down below, threw up the pistol which Chavi skillfully caught. She had never before  handled a gun, her palms sweating even in the cold evening as the clouds gathered and the wind blew with  gusto. Thapa was struggling hard with the well - built dogs and their sharp fangs were digging deep into  his skin with each bite. He could no longer hold and Aadarsh was recovering from his shock.

 

“Lucifer, attack!” Aadarsh shouted and the Rottweiler leapt towards Peeya who stood closest to Thapa.

 

BANG.

 

Chavi had fired and Lucifer was down.  “Call off the mongrel or I will shoot!” Chavi screamed shivering  with fear and the adrenalin pumping her up.

 

“It’s over sir, give it up” screamed Sadhana from behind Aadarsh holding a hollow steel pipe that she had  found on the lawn.

 

“Stay, Gabriel” ordered Aadarsh and the Rottweiler just backed off and Thapa sighed with relief.

 

“The police are on their way, you have nowhere to go, you have ashamed yourself and your family”  Sadhana told him.

 

“Attack Gabriel” shouted Aadarsh. Chavi had not anticipated this move, she stood frozen. Peeya, seized  the pistol from her hand, and fired three rounds in quick succession.

 

The first one, pierced Gabriel’s heart and the mighty Rottweiler collapsed in a pool of blood, inches short  from Chavi’s feet. The other two had missed their mark and had hit the aluminium frames of the sliding  glass doors.

 

“I have nothing to lose!” cried Aadarsh and turned towards Sadhana in a desperate attempt to escape.  Peeya fired again and this time, the bullet found its mark. It lodged itself in Aadarsh’s neck, puncturing  his skin and boring a 0.32 mm hole on his spinal cord.

 

The fiend was down, though not in the manner, that Lily had wanted. But Richmond & Russell had been  avenged nevertheless. It was not poetic justice that had been delivered. But it was justice nevertheless.

 

Maybe, Richmond had been watching all this happen and he was happy, not because he was avenged, but  he now had no reason to stay on, his dear wife had a reason to live and his granddaughter had found her  true identity. In a dramatic manner, the clouds that had gathered up a storm slowly cleared away,  allowing the warmth of sunlight to brighten up everyone’s lives.

 

It was perhaps fate’s way of showing that no matter how dark the situation may seem; light always finds a  way to penetrate the gloom.

 

The police had arrived, had arrested a still unconscious Mallesh aka Sandip Talapatra, an ambulance had  been called along with the forensics, photographers, fingerprint experts and the whole Crime Scene  Investigation team.

 

Lily Mary, Peeya, Chavi, Disha, Praneethi, Shanti and Thapa narrated the entire chain of events and a few  days later, Mallesh would also confess to all of his crimes. The police were relieved that they were able to  solve a decade old case.

 

The entire village had come down to Ararat estate to pay homage to a misunderstood gentleman. This  was a sensational case and this had rocked an entire state.

 

The girls, Shanti and Thapa were all hailed as heroes. But, Peeya gave Chavi the real credit. It was the  recognition of her friend that mattered most to Chavi. She was once again a hero and this time, she had  saved two lives, reunited lost family members and perhaps even had shown an unhappy soul, the path to  emancipation.

 

“Local girl Chavi Kumar, helps police crack decade old case” Sunil read on in utter  disbelief and wonder, while Chavi slept, in her cozy room with an awesome view.

 

The Saga Continues.