Amballore House (38 page)

The group of five in the defense team, a bird, a robot, and three aliens, boarded the Midnight Express parked outside the courthouse. Eli steered the spaceship on the wheels, as it was known, to the perimeter wall of Amballore House and floated over the wall. She then ignited the attached rockets and the spaceship/bus disappeared from the scene.

Later, these people would gather inside Amballore House’s underworld, to enjoy their freedom far from the madding crowd of the Amballore court.

7
REVOLT ALONG HELL’S HIGHWAY

The chief justice of Amballore court, the Honorable Pillai, could not sleep on the night of the sensational trial, “People versus Amballore House.” His conscience was bugging him. He was not convinced that he had delivered a fair judgment. He should have dismissed the case because of the lack of tangible evidence. Passing judgment based on circumstantial evidence was bad enough; even worse was the severe punishment imposed on the defendants—an indefinite imprisonment!

One could argue that the preponderance of circumstantial evidence decided the trial outcome in favor of the prosecution. However, a more appropriate yardstick in criminal case was “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and this measure was certainly not met by the prosecution. If this were a civil case, the prosecution would win beyond reproof. But that was not the case.

The trial and its judgment catapulted him to the zenith of fame and glory, since the case was closely watched by the entire State of Kerala and beyond. However, he doubted if he deserved the fame; he felt that he trampled on the justice system by locking up an upstanding citizen called Vareed, whether he was a human being or an alien. Pangs of conscience pricked him.

He tossed around in bed, unable to rest his mind. Finally he got up, dressed, and drove himself to his office, over protests from his wife. She was not altogether unhappy that he left the bedroom, since his tossing and turning were disrupting her sleep.

The judge drove along Hell’s Highway to his office located there, remembering his wife’s words, “Venu, don’t run over any ghosts along Hell’s Highway; it is night; don’t you forget that.”

Being a diminutive man, nobody could see him while he drove giving the impression that his was a self-driven car. Hell’s Highway was a bizarre place where populace had seen innumerable strange things, and therefore no one gave special attention to a self-driven car.

To be in his office at the odd hour of midnight was not unusual for the judge, believe it or not. Since he had a fully furnished underground apartment below his official chambers, he used it as often as he could, partly to get away from his nagging wife, and partly to have a one-man booze party. His basement apartment had a fully furnished wet bar.

Prior to the trial, he was frustrated by the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy that prevented important documents from arriving at his desk in a timely manner. This inhibited his ability to pass proper judgment. For most of the cases that came under his jurisdiction, he did not have essential facts in front of him prior to judgment. This was frustrating.

He needed to get all his ducks in a row; that is what he wanted to happen. He was a man who worked hard and meticulously while preparing for judgment, which, in all probability, would irreversibly affect many a human being’s life. He was aware of his power to make inroads into people’s lives, and so was very conscientious of his judgments. He prepared well in advance too.

He had been desperate to get the bureau’s documents prior to the trial. But they had not been forthcoming. The bureau was not eager to dispense the important papers he had requested. The agency had some of the smartest lawyers who knew what they were doing, and therefore scare tactics did not work with them. In short, the bureau could not be forced to submit documents they did not want to share, court order or not. The judge knew that it was also a possibility that the bureau did not have documents to prove that Amballore House’s owners were the culprits behind the massacres. Maybe that explained why they could not be coerced to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

It surprised him that the bureau, though being the prosecution team, did not present anything substantial to prove their case. So his assessment about them was right—maybe they did not have any solid proof against Amballore House’s occupants. What they did was to create a smoke screen, to produce a paper tiger to scare the defense. Their tactic might have been to scare the defense into submission and make them confess to the crimes. But that did not
happen, leading him to wonder who in the hell perpetrated the crimes.

While brooding over the events of the day over a number of toddy glasses, and while images of an erroneous judgment played out in his mind, he fell asleep. La-la land was a welcome change to a stress-filled day. He drifted into the dream as if he entered a movie theater to watch a fantasy show.

***

In the dream, he was standing by the side of Hell’s Highway, alone and at midnight. He looked like a midnight statue by the side of Hell’s Highway. He started seeing things.

Suddenly, the gates of the lunatic asylum opened, and patients spilled out of the building and into Hell’s Highway. Not to be outdone, Amballore Jail’s gates opened, and a flood of prisoners bailed out. They followed the patients, and together, they moved toward the Amballore Investigation Bureau building. The building was deserted because it was midnight, and all the employees were long gone home.

The judge stood in the street, transfixed, surprised at the illegal escape of the inmates in direct violation of his orders to imprison them. After staying in his standstill position for some more time, he decided to enter the bureau headquarters, because curiosity, the cat, told him so. Curious George prodded him as well. He also had an ulterior motive: to steal the bureau’s confidential papers to help him to get to the bottom of the mysteries he already passed judgment on. True, no one would believe an act of theft to come from a respectable judge. Such a felony, under normal circumstances, crossed the world of improbability and encroached upon the world of impossibility. No judge was going to approve such a misdemeanor, but what the hell, he was a judge himself, and he would give his nod of approval to the acts of trespassing and stealing.

As soon as he entered the spy building, the judge saw Sam-Som was busy coordinating the activities that involved the lunatics and the prisoners. For some reason, the drug lord had two black horns
attached to his forehead. He was also holding a spear. He had a tail. He looked like the spitting image of a devil.

The judge knew through his newly acquired power of extrasensory perception that Sam-Som’s plan was to storm the intelligence building with an army of criminals. Their task was to comb through piles of intelligence reports to get a heads-up on the bureau’s findings on his drug cartel operation, and to steal them. Most of the lunatics were fake patients playing a game of outwitting the legal system. They were Sam-Som’s drug employees, steeped in crimes that included murder. A few in the loony crowd, however, were genuine patients. Somehow, judge became aware of all these intricacies instantaneously.

Under Sam-Som’s guidance, the intruding crowd started sifting through the bureau’s confidential papers. It was clear the operation was preplanned.

What greeted the judge upstairs was a cluster of trios and duos of criminals, huddled together by the sides of filing cabinets, their faces shining in the soft light of countless candlesticks: a memorable scene, unquestioningly, in a silent midnight; a scene resembling a large number of devotees offering midnight prayer, except it wasn’t. Prayer was the last thing these thugs would offer. They held candlesticks in lieu of electric lights to see but not to be seen by people passing by. They had turned off the lights.

As soon as the assembled crooks saw the rude intruder in their midst, in the form of a short man whom they recognized as not one of them, they came forward toward him en masse, in lockstep, to capture him and perform a crucifixion. But they stopped suddenly as if they were struck by lightning. They recognized who the diminutive man was. He was the famous judge of Amballore court, for crying out loud!

The first reaction of the crowd was that he was there to apprehend them. That got them scared. The lunatics knelt in front of him to confess all the sins they committed ever since they were born, and beg for his forgiveness.

The gathered crowd was afraid that he came after them from the
nearby courthouse, having got the news that they broke into the bureau building. They were afraid he would sentence them again to hard labor and movie-less nights.

The judge was keenly aware of the threatening look of most of the gang. He somehow saw them as a lynch mob, inching toward him to capture him. He stared them down with his official look, challenging them to cast the first stone if they were not guilty, like Christ asked the Pharisees when they accused the adulterous woman. They dropped their invisible stones one by one and just stood there, transfixed by the sight of the judge about to hold a midnight session of the court and condemn them to death by drowning.

Sam-Som directed the crowd to capture him. They approached him, grabbed him, and tied him down with the intent of tackling His Honorable menace after finishing their task at hand—that is, after gathering all the confidential information from the bureau’s safes.

The judge was not sure how he could see what he saw now—he saw Eli was in his chambers next door, another astonishing episode of the night, another aberration of the already unbelievable night! She was standing in his basement apartment, helping herself to toddy from his wet bar! What an outrageous thing to do to him, an honorable judge. After consuming the alcohol, the devilish woman put on his robes! The perpetration of another arrogant act!

Through the special power of extrasensory perception that he acquired for no known reason, he was able to gather that Eli was headed to the bureau building, with a mission of capturing him and killing him. He realized that Eli knew he trespassed on the spy building with intention to steal!

Eli arrived at the scene in the bureau building. To the spectators, she was invisible; all they could see was the judge’s robe levitating and moving toward them, since she had worn the official dress while getting drunk in his private bar. Loonies in the crowd started weeping in fear, seemingly seeing Count Dracula on a night mission of drinking their blood. They mistook the judge’s robe for Count Dracula’s.

Sam-Som, the head crook, suspected foul play as soon as he saw the floating garment of the judge. The only person doing levitation magic in Amballore was Eli. He immediately realized that Eli, the terror of Amballore, was in their midst!

She must have dropped by, not to exchange midnight pleasantries, but for inflicting some serious damage. He also suspected that Eli and the judge were conspiring. Why else was she wearing the judge’s robes? She was not a judge. His Honor had not held a court session to anoint Eli as a new judge, as far as he knew. He smelled foul play. Eli appeared soon after the judge came into their midst, and this meant that fireworks orchestrated by them were about to commence. Their collusion to come together at an odd hour to the bureau building was highly suspect.

As for the judge, he thought his robe came in search of him to give him official status to qualify him to face the criminals and pass the judgment to summarily execute them. He was about to pull out his gavel and bang his desk to announce “order in the court,” when he suddenly realized that he was not holding a court session. Moreover, he was tied down by Sam-Som’s gang and he did not have a gavel handy.

The robe came floating by and wrapped itself around him. As soon as this happened, Eli imitated the judge’s masculine voice and announced, “Order in the court! This is an order.” She then banged the nearby table three times as if a gavel rapped on it.

This incredible scene of the judge talking without opening his mouth and rapping a table beyond his reach with an invisible gavel was too much to take, and the crowd panicked, running for the nearest exit. They thought that the famous judge died and that his demented soul was in command of the building to capture them, and hand them over to the devils in hell, his most probable post-death destination. All the criminals all over the world were adherents of the belief that the judges went to hell after their deaths.

Eli got ready to unleash her nightmarish powers. She quickly assessed the situation and realized that the judge was tied down by Sam-Song’s gang. Since his position was compromised, he would
be the one to be downed by the nightmare that she was going to unleash. She was OK with that scenario.

Eli did not need to target anyone; all she needed to do was to create a panic, and the resulting pandemonium would take care of the rest. And that is exactly what happened.

The first things that moved were the filing cabinets. The bionic arms of Eli did the mesmerizing act of cabinets with invisible wings spontaneously taking off into the air, like supersonic jets. For the spectators, the scene closely paralleled a bunch of large nocturnal birds having suddenly come to life and flying recklessly; it resembled a large number of drones having gone berserk and aimlessly flying and hitting anything on their paths.

The cabinets were soon joined by their impatient colleagues: chairs and tables. Some in the crowd were hit by the flying objects. Those who escaped the hit became members of a stampeding union, faithfully trampling on their colleagues. Some jumped out from the second-floor window to the asphalt driveway, instantly killing themselves.

There were tons of papers spit out by the cabinets, and they spread like gigantic tickertapes from a huge wedding procession. These flying papers blocked everyone’s vision, and most of them did not know what hit them. Some flying papers extinguished the lit candles, while some caught fire from them, and a fire started spreading.

The building was on fire.

The judge managed to untie himself. He ran down the stairs like a maniac. He ran to the outside and ran along the Hell’s Highway like a lunatic who escaped from nearby asylum. He ran with his robes fluttering in the wind, like a short version of Count Dracula.