Amballore House (39 page)

While he was running, he saw an unbelievable sight. The dead bodies in the pauper’s graveyard started rising. The corpses rose one by one, and soon there was a huge crowd of the walking dead. They were coming toward him. They were revolting against his judgment. Each of them held a placard that stated, “JUDGE IS GUILTY” and “DOWN WITH THE JUDGE.”

He ran fast, but they ran faster. They caught up with him and caught him. They dragged him to the graveyard’s court of law. They took him underground, where a skeleton judge was sitting in a packed courtroom of corpses. As soon as the defendant joined them, they waved their placards wildly, shouting and screaming at him.

The prosecution read the crime sheet of the defendant. It was a one-sentence charge sheet. It said, “The defendant, the Amballore court’s judge, is found guilty of issuing unfounded judgment.” That was it. The defendant was neither allowed a lawyer, nor was he allowed to self-defend. The judge passed his judgment after banging on his desk made of skulls, with a gavel made of bones.

The skeleton judge declared in his funeral-solemn voice, “Found guilty. The defendant is to be buried alive in the pauper’s graveyard.” He was condemned to stay underground indefinitely. He was forbidden to issue any further judgments. He was asked to abdicate his judge position.

The judge ran from the court screaming loudly. He climbed up and out of the pit, panting heavily, covered in mud. He resumed his race along Hell’s Highway. He ran away from the corpses.

Wild animals in the wilderness along Hell’s Highway were awakened by screaming from the sprinting judge. They came out of the jungle and spilled into the highway. They chased the mud-covered judge. Suddenly he found himself transformed into a soccer ball both in size and shape. Elephants trumpeted and growled. They started playing soccer. They grabbed him with their trunks and threw him from one to another. One elephant scored the goal with such a powerful kick that it sent him to the outer fringes of the solar system. He stayed there and became a changed man by transforming to a dwarfish planet. He was ordered by an intergalactic judge to be imprisoned around the sun in an orbit just outside of Pluto.

No, he did not stay there long. Subashini flew to rescue him from the unending winter of the outer solar system. She grabbed him with her claws and transported him to earth, traveling a zillion miles from the outer frontiers of the sun’s gravitational reach. She
dropped him along Hell’s Highway.

He ran like a madman along Hell’s Highway to get away from the madding crowd of mad elephants and wild animals who continued to follow him. He was chased by an army of monkeys, their tails holding posters that read “Wrong Verdict.” They descended from banyan trees lining the highway. They came in flux like ocean waves and climbed on him. Some dropped banana skins in his path, felling him during his sprint. They picked him up. They started playing volleyball by tossing him to one another. They carried him to the top of mango trees and dropped him. The man of law fell, screaming.

The judge picked himself up and ran and ran. He ran into the outstretched arms of the apsara nymphs of the abandoned temple. They led him to the temple pond, where he drowned along with a crowd of star-crossed lovers, who spilled out of the temple after worshipping blooming paarijatham flowers.

Suddenly he found himself standing in a queue of sacrificial animals to be slaughtered to please the demigods. The animals looked at him suspiciously and sang in a chorus,

Evil judge, evil judge

You’re not welcome here

You issue wrong judgment

Your sacrifice pleases none

A demigod appeared, picked him from the line, and took him to the altar. A sword came down, splitting him into two pieces.

That is when judge woke up, screaming wildly and sweating profusely and wiggling like an oversized worm in his bed. Eli was there at that moment at his wet bar, relishing the moment and witnessing his face contorted with fear. She had been there throughout the infernal dream sequence, drinking his toddy, weaving dreams, and having a good time. She now threw the toddy glass at him, bloodying his forehead. The glass bounced off to the marble floor, shattering into countless pieces.

The man of law was about to get up and start sprinting along Hell’s Highway, when he realized the present scene was not a continuation of the dream scenes that he had been besieged by. He looked at Eli with unbelieving eyes. He looked like he was seeing a ghost.

Being satisfied with the massively demonic dream that she had induced on the sleeping judge, Eli prepared to leave with “mission accomplished” written on her face.

“Let this nightmare be your lesson and your punishment,” Eli the dream maker told him.

She then disappeared into the night outside.

8
VAREED PAYS A VISIT

Sam-Som, the king of the drug underworld, was closely monitoring the trial of Vareed and Eli, also known as “People versus Amballore House.” He was glad that he was absolved of any crime. Not that he was a defendant in the case. Nevertheless, it felt good that a judgment in the Amballore court targeted someone other than him. He was the perpetual defendant in Amballore’s court cases.

He was also happy that he had to cut short his court attendance prior to the trial’s conclusion because of other commitments. This action saved his life.

He was thrilled to see that Vareed was convicted and hoped that he was rotting in jail. These two were the titans in Amballore, and it felt good that his adversary was dethroned by the court. Vareed was the owner of Amballore House and its underworld, and Sam-Som was the owner of the drug underworld. Each of them was powerful in his own right. Theirs was an alliance of titans, not that Vareed wanted to have anything to do with Sam-Som, the scumbag.

Sam-Som fondly thought that no one was going to steal the limelight from him anymore, since Vareed was behind bars. He wanted to retain his title of the most important citizen of Amballore. Per the press reports, Vareed and his wife were handcuffed after judgment to serve their terms in jail. Sam-Som convinced himself that this was a fitting conclusion to the story of the ghost-man, Vareed. That is the name he gave to Vareed—the ghost-man.

It was while he was thus evaluating the trial and its aftermath, sitting in his comfortable office of the fortified Sam-Som’s Entertainment Center, that Vareed walked in unannounced. The drug capital was located along Hell’s Highway, not far from Amballore House.

He was surprised to see Vareed well and alive and kicking. The ghost-man must have escaped the jail, Sam-Som told himself. He made a mental note to report the jail breaker to the police. Vareed
had been sentenced for an indefinite term in the maximum security prison, and yet here he was, free as a bird, and as if nothing untoward happened! Having heard and having been convinced of an untold number of horror stories about Vareed, Sam-Som was scared of the impromptu visit. He smelled foul play. He called his guards, who promptly came to his side, ready to defend their boss.

To be fair to Sam-Som, he was not aware of the flight from justice that Vareed and Eli had expertly executed after the trial. Somehow, he was unaware of the following Amballore
Times
report that came out in the aftermath of the sensational trial:

The Midnight Express was surrounded by innumerable police cars just after the trial’s conclusion. This measure was taken to block the couple from escaping, in the event of them breaking out of the handcuffs slapped on them after the judgment. The police was aware that the couple was capable of doing this. The Midnight Express was encircled by two layers of police vehicles to ward off their escape. That was when the unmentionable happened: an earthquake started shaking the grounds, toppling the police vehicles, and creating mayhem. The bus lifted off and flew up in the air and away, escaping the deathly claws of the quake. A volcano, the evil cousin of the earthquake, erupted at the same time, and its molten lava boiled and fried the humanity leaving the courthouse. Vareed and Eli survived the judgment, earthquake, and volcano. They just took flight.

Now, Vareed was back, catching Sam-Som by surprise. He wanted to discuss some urgent business with the drug lord.

After walking into the drug complex as if to visit an old friend, Vareed did not have much to say. He was a man of few words and announced that he was there to screen a movie!

Of all the damned things in the world, the ghost-man wanted to show him a movie! Was he missing movies in the jail and so jumped its walls to see one in the company of king of the underworld? How bizarre, Sam-Som told himself. He was, however, flattered by the gesture.

He also made a mental note that a perfect partner for Vareed to watch a movie was his wife, Eli, the terror of Amballore. Seeing Eli was like watching a horror movie, and marrying her had given Vareed a daily pass to see one, so Sam-Som thought sarcastically. He chuckled at his own sarcasm.

Maybe the ghost-man wanted to see a nice romantic movie for a change, and that was why he was there, Sam-Som convinced himself. He was about to suggest that they should order popcorn, when Vareed jumped into the business at hand, turned on his laptop (a device available to Vareed in 1960, a product of the futuristic technology of Amballore House), and delved right into the show.

***

The robot stepped out of the Midnight Express parked outside. He did not feel comfortable leaving Vareed alone with the notorious drug dealer in his reinforced fortress. He stepped into the formidable drug castle and was glad he did so, since Vareed was in the company of Sam-Som and his equally devious bodyguards. The robot came in uninvited and joined the powerful men for a night at the movies.

The movie was named
Amballore House
, made from multiple scenes assembled from various surveillance cameras installed at Amballore House. The speculation of the Amballore Investigation Bureau members was right after all; there in fact existed an online record of Amballore House’s daily activities!

The movie’s beginning scene took the breath away from Sam-Som, because the date shown in the background was December 17 of 1956, the day the honeymoon couple disappeared from the mansion. The high quality of the picture was striking, judging from night scenes that were very vivid. Obviously, the shooting was done with infrared cameras.

Amballore House was shown with a backdrop of a setting sun. It was not night yet.

One thing that went for Sam-Som was that he was a man with an excellent memory. He was gifted with a photographic memory, as his mom would testify. He, for example, could remember exactly
how many popadums were fried on such and such occasion, a superhuman skill. He did not need to record the very many drug transactions that he completed, because he remembered every dirty detail, including who bought what on which day. His RAM excelled a supercomputer. As soon as he saw the date December 17 of 1956, he knew that the Honeymoon Disappearance movie was going to be played. He just knew.

It soon became apparent that the movie was a chronicle of events at Amballore House, as Sam-Som guessed.

9
A ROBOT AND A COYOTE

There was this man opening the gate and entering the Amballore House complex with the honeymoon couple, probably in their midtwenties. The man was the real estate broker who came to complete the signage of the property sale document, and hand over the house keys to the new owners.

The couple appeared ecstatic when the broker showed them around the mansion prior to the formal transfer of the property. This was in spite of the fact that they were seeing the property not for the first or second time. The allure of the mansion was so deeply imprinted in their minds that every time they saw it, it was like seeing it for the first time. Amballore house had been built during the British Raj, and its architecture was impressive.

The broker offered them a final tour to the major attractions of the estate that included an Olympic-sized pool, a quaint well in front of the imposing mansion, and the captivating architecture of both the interior and the exterior of the mansion. There was an eye-catching front yard with well-tended flower garden and a manicured lawn. Farther out was a mango grove, multitude of the coconut palm trees, and a medley of tropical plants, all washed in the setting sun. “This is a dream home. This is paradise on earth,” the broker added some sales pitch. They then completed the signing, followed by the key transfer. He wished the honeymooners good luck, and disappeared.

The couple playfully danced to the tunes of a popular Malayalam movie song, overjoyed at owning the mansion. They then vanished into the interior of the imperial home.

***

The agent, while wishing the honeymooners good luck, implied that he was leaving. The camera showed the broker walking quite a distance, and escaping to the shadows of a plantain tree grove, located close to the border of the property. He walked impatiently in the grove, scanning the sky intermittently, probably waiting for
the night to set in. Gradually it became darker as the sun slowly dipped in the Arabian Sea. As the night set in and the full moon started emerging, the man lay down in the grove in a temporary bed made out of the plantain leaves. He fell asleep.

After few hours, close to midnight, the mansion gates were shown opening. Someone entered the complex. As soon as he was in, he closed the gate and looked around, surveying the area. His eyes were suddenly drawn into something in the mansion. They became riveted to a lit bedroom. The honeymooners’ silhouette was showing in the window frame and that is what drew his attention. It was clear they were still awake.

All of a sudden, something stirred at a distance. Someone or something was seen in a distance, and it was coming toward him. At first, he thought he was seeing a drunkard, judging from his unsteady footsteps. As it was still heading toward, he knew it was not a human being, gathering from its mode of walking. It walked as if it was doing a close imitation of drunken Frankenstein’s wavering footsteps. It was not an animal, because it had only two legs. There was something odd and mechanical about the thing, and as it approached him, he realized that he was seeing the rumored robot of Amballore House!