Authors: Alex Mueck
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I
T WAS A GLORIOUS beginning. Two murders down, one close to fruition. Religious hate crimes were at an all time high. Extremism was on the rise. In order to sell his message, Myth Man needed to expose mankind’s collective stupidity. Take them to the peaks and valleys, and a level plane will be found.
The media was in a cooperative frenzy. He didn’t have to plan for that; it was a given. From the headlines, editorials, political cartoons, and reader feedback section, the theme was religious tension.
It was almost worth detouring from his plan and sticking with the denominations he’d already provoked. Could he skip the Hindus and move the Jews up to Purim? Perhaps he should have planned better. After consideration, he stuck with his original script. The cops would know soon enough, and maybe he could escalate things yet.
He thought of better things, the best being the fall of Dominick Presto. It took awhile to get rid of his weighty presence, but the end result was well worth the wait in mental calories lost. His contact said the disgraced detective had not contacted an attorney or union official in his defense.
Presto, it’s magic. Myth Man made the fat detective disappear.
Confident, Myth Man walked past a washer and dryer and opened a door that led to the garage. He was wearing the homeowner’s clothes. This time it was a thick and badly stained flannel shirt, which he did not tuck into denim carpenter pants that looked antiquated enough that the crackpot carpenter Jesus might have worn them. A biker leather jacket finalized the “I’m tough” look.
How did his patsy have so much trouble with the ladies?
He had the perfect wheels, too—a 1977 Chevy van. The interior had a displeasing pungent odor that persisted through two air fresheners. Littered garbage, including soda and beer cans, graced the passenger floor space. The van was in poor shape. A stale coat of paint would have helped immeasurably over the body that was half Bondo. Better that it was not too flashy. Why draw attention? Besides, the most important part was the engine, and the 350 still looked pristine and had plenty of juice.
Inside, he tossed a duffel bag on a passenger seat and started the van. He hit a remote button, and the garage door opened. After he pulled out, he pressed again, and the door shut. Before entering the street, he rolled the window down. He needed some air. The car smelled like a medley of perspiration, farts, and whatever stale scent the topless girl air fresheners consisted of.
He set out early to avoid typical New York traffic. The destination was a Kali temple in Jamaica, Queens.
Originating around 4000 BC, Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest religions, based on oral texts known as Vedas, which are considered the eternal truth. They were only written down when we reached the degeneration age. These and other texts add and reinforce the Vedas of a polytheistic religion that believes a human soul is reborn thousands of times, in many forms, unless one reaches moksha, or a release. Myth Man likened it to the Greek gods. He preferred polytheism to monotheism. At least the bullshit was more fun to swallow.
Today was the holiday Maha Shivaratri. The day honors the time Lord Shiva, one of the three gods who make the Hindu trinity, created and married Parvati. One of their zoomorphic children, known as Ganesh, has an elephant head, because his father did not recognize him and beheaded the boy while he’d been protecting his mother. Shiva replaced it with the first creature he saw, which happened to be an elephant.
Despite his anger for people hooked on religion, Myth Man loved this shit. Better than the doom and gloom of the major monotheists. Kama sutra, baby!
Like most religions, the Hindus had different sects. While homage was typically paid to all the primary gods, some Hindu temples favored certain deities. After a short deliberation, he selected a temple that catered to Kali, a frightening manifestation of the mother goddess.
Kali is depicted with four arms. Two hands are empty, but in her third is a sword while the fourth holds a severed head. Naked except for a skirt of severed arms, Kali has a third eye centered in her forehead, a cobra around her neck, a necklace of skulls, and a long dangling tongue that drips with the blood of her victims. Kali was one of his favorites except, disappointingly, she is a destroyer of evil and creator of life.
A few minutes off the Van Wyck Expressway, and he was in a different world. The predominant West Indian culture was evident with the ethnic restaurants, window fashions, and places of worship. He turned left onto a residential street and slowed as he passed the Kali temple, which was a converted house. Modest.
He parked a few blocks from the temple and killed the engine. He looked around, saw no one, and slipped into the back of the van. He sat on a bench, opened a black bag, and pulled out his makeup kit.
As a child, he learned to hide, not for fun with games like hide-and-go-seek but to escape. His father was a stern, religious man. Discipline and punishment were necessary in molding a child.
As a youth, Myth Man continually wet his bed. His father decided he found the solution to the problem. He made his son urinate in empty apple juice bottles over the course of a few weeks, and then capped and collected the samples. Each morning, he inspected his son’s bed.
It happened one early Sunday morning. Myth Man woke and immediately felt dampness and then humiliation. He ran from the bed and grabbed an undershirt and new underwear from his dresser. He tried to dry up the wet bed sheet, but it did not help much. He took off his soggy underpants, slid them under his bed along with the shirt, and put on the new briefs. He grabbed his bedside iced tea and dumped it over the saturation spot.
There were two quick knocks on the door and it opened. His father strode in. “What in God’s name is going on?” His father sniffed the bed and then smelled him. “You trying to cover something up, boy?”
“No, I, I spilled my drink.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear,” he pleaded, scared.
His father continued the inspection. When he looked under the bed, Myth Man gulped.
“Uh huh,” his father announced, pulling out the wet garments. “I’d make you put them back on, but I got something better.” He smacked his son in the back of the head and yanked him from the bedroom to the bathroom. He left the boy and told him to strip.
Inside the shut bathroom, Myth Man heard his father return and leave several times. After several minutes, the door opened. In each hand, he had the urine filled bottles. He dumped them in the tub and then repeated the ritual with the rest of the stock. The frothy pool was a few inches deep. For good measure, his father unzipped, and added some volume and warmth.
“Get in,” he ordered.
Naked, he wanted to beg for forgiveness, but he knew he could not overcome his blatant lie. He thought about calling out for his mother, but she was meek and as scared of the man as he was. It was then, as he stood over a tub of urine, that he first entertained the idea of killing another human. Sure, he’d experimented with animals like frogs, birds, and squirrels. Then he was in control, and death was methodically realized. As the aroma of urine invaded his nostrils, he felt something different—a rage.
If he had the power, he would have done his old man right then and there, but instead, one foot went in the tub, then the other.
“Down,” his father commanded. “You sleep in it; you bathe in it.”
On the toilet seat was a Bible with a bookmark. His father handed it to him. “Read, sinner.” He opened the bathroom door and sat on a chair he’d dragged from the kitchen. He whistled, read the paper, and monitored his son for an hour.
Events like that made Myth Man dream of the power of invisibility. But he knew that was impossible. But then another thought occurred to him. He’d seen enough TV, mostly at friend’s homes, to grasp the magic of makeup. Age, gender, weight, height, and eye, hair, and skin color could be manipulated. You could even be a creature, like a zombie in those horror movies he enjoyed.
He researched. There were books by professionals in the craft. With his paper route money, he began to purchase items like wigs, beards, mustaches, foundations, powders, and grease paints and began to create his own prosthetic devices.
He stretched and exercised to grow limber and allow body contortion. He learned different styles of walk, especially important when passing as a female with the usual slight hip sway. He purchased audio lessons by a renowned vocal instructor. He practiced and excelled.
When he was thirteen, his father came home unexpectedly and caught him dressed up as a woman. He caught a beating and a lecture on what the Bible said about homosexuals. He swore his father had it wrong and explained his fascination was the art of disguise. His father didn’t believe him, and for weeks his father peppered him regarding his interest in women.
His story was a half-truth. There was a sexual side to his attempts to pass as girl. He wanted to visit places restricted to a man like women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, especially the one at the town pool. He dreamed of seeing his neighbor, Heather Honeycutt, naked. He was not sure how his father would have taken the truth, so he decided to leave that tidbit out.
Seated in the van, he reached deep into his bag of tricks and memories. This time, he was to play an Englishman who just spent seven years in Calcutta, which literally translates as “Kali’s steps.”
He used an Indian accent when he called the temple pandit. He said he knew an Englishman who said the he spent years studying with a shaman in Calcutta that dabbled in the occult. He fled India and claimed the goddess Kali now possessed him. Now in New York, he was looking for someone who could release the spirit from him. The Englishman was very wealthy, he explained, and would make a substantial donation. The pandit agreed to meet, alone, at his hour of choosing.
Myth Man strapped on a fake belly that had a spongy realistic give if poked. On his back, he stuck a sword. He pushed his legs through baggy, thick-corded trousers and then pulled on a loose white cotton turtleneck sweater. He wore shoes that were a size and half too big but were stuffed at the heel for comfort and realistic footprints. After each kill, he donated the shoes to the homeless. He was a swell guy.
The wig was full and mostly gray. He applied matching fake eyebrows and then went about aging his face.
The mirror told him when he was finished. He put on an overcoat and grabbed a case holding a loaded syringe. He looked out the back of the one-way mirror and cheerfully stepped out form the van.
The man he was meeting was considered a Sadhu, or holy man, who owned nothing but a water bowl. Talk about having nothing but a pot to piss in. Myth Man smiled. Naturally, the Hindu was willing to take his promised donation of ten thousand dollars. The pandit explained the money would help fund a more glorious temple.
He walked under a canvas-covered arch that led to a red door. As he strode forward, on either side of the walkway stood white marble statues dressed in cloth. The stoned sentries watched the killer walk by.
He reached the door, and the sense of anticipation grew. Stupid Hindus. People are starving, and you don’t eat bovines?
Holy cow, here I come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
K
AMAL VALKAR HAD BEEN in America for thirteen years. After today, his long held dream might finally be fulfilled. Most of the Hindu temples were converted from homes, warehouses, and grocery stores. They deserved something better, not for sheer grandeur but to give purpose and unite the local community as well as Hindus across this country. They had a foothold, and this money could provide the traction to run a temple worthy of the deities.
The ascetic pandit had no use for money. He had long distanced himself from material goods, but money was a necessary evil in today’s world. The temple needed electricity and blessings of fruits and incense for the gods. The community was generous, and they managed, barely, to get by.
He was dubious when he received the request to help a man possessed with Kali. Even the caller suspected the Englishman, Roger Yardley, was not all there, but he vouched for his character and wealth.
Valkar trusted the deities would reveal the truth. In the meantime, he pushed away thoughts of the Englishman’s arrival and performed the morning’s aarti. He dipped his hands into a metal aachamanakam cup composed of sacred water from the Ganges, Yamuna, and Kaveri’s rivers.
Today was a holiday honoring Lord Shiva, so Valkar began at his station. He sprinkled three spoonfuls of the same water over a large conch shell and then blew it three times. Then he lit an odd number of incense sticks. This time it was nine.
Deep in thought, he rang a bell while he gyrated a small flame in his other hand. The hand circled seven times.
Next came blessings to the gods. He offered praise by bestowing gifts of bananas, strawberries, and flowers.
The pandit went from station to station and honored the temple’s gods. He always ended with Kali.
As a boy, he feared that he was cursed. His mother died delivering him to the world. There were also complications. His left foot was noticeably clubbed, and his forehead bulged. Weak and sick all the time, no one thought he would survive.
His father, brother, and sisters looked at him differently, not because he had deformities but because his creation brought their mother’s fatality. He was convinced that this life on earth was doomed.
As a boy, he enjoyed going to temple. He prayed his next life would be better than the one he was now living. In the meantime, bad luck stalked him like a starving tiger.
When he was ten, he went fishing with his brother and a friend. He lost his uneven footing and fell into a swirling river. Unable to swim, his brother jumped in, pushed him to shore, but then got swept downstream. His head hit a rock, and by the time they got to him, it was too late. Seeing his older brother and hero’s face, eyes rolled open, slack mouth, and lifeless expression brought him to an uncharted depth. Years later, he wondered if they could have saved him if they’d known CPR.
Life at home grew more difficult. With much time alone, he devoted it primarily to prayer and education and was well regarded at both school and temple.
Solidifying his belief that he was cursed were the events surrounding his thirteenth birthday, which also marked the anniversary of his mother’s passing.
His father and oldest sister had set out early that morning to the village market. They never made it back.
Their car lost control and rolled down a ravine. It took days before they were found, their bodies over a hundred yards from the wreck. They had survived and tried to crawl back to the road, but his sister perished first, and her father chose to give up.
The death of his parents, brother and sister, as well as his abnormalities pointed him to the field of medicine. He was gifted and quickly earned a reputation in the Indian medical establishment.
While his career flourished, his personal life continued to wither. For the first time, at age twenty-seven, he became close with a woman, a fellow doctor. They dated, became serious, and planned to marry. A week before their wedding, she suffered a brain aneurysm while attending to a patient afflicted with dysentery.
The day of his fiancé’s death and hours before Valkar received the devastating news, he saved the life of the son of a man who owned the second largest diamond polishing company in India. The fourteen-year-old was thrown from and then trampled by his polo horse during a heated match. The parents insisted that Valkar treat their son.
Valkar took pleasure in helping others, and the day, he thought, seemed especially gratifying when the surgery was a success, and the boy’s condition stabilized. Then he received the news of his fiancé’s death.
That night, in a state of despair, he heard an inner voice like a beacon of light fighting through swirling, dark clouds. In the shifting murkiness, a face appeared, one he recognized—Kali.
She spoke: “Kamala, from death comes birth. This is natural. You must accept this. Oh, Kamala. Each life’s soul is tested, none more so than yours. There is a reason. It is time to end your endless cycle of soul transmigration and achieve moshka. Your luck is about to change, but that is another test. What do you do when your luck turns for the better? What if you came into a sudden fortune? Do you live in luxury or without? Kamala, you have faced much evil. Now I shall devour it. Oh, Kamala, what will you do?”
Kali can look frightening. Yet, Kamala had never witnessed such beauty. As her face dimmed, scattered, and disappeared, he felt a short remorse. Then hope.
He tried to interpret the message when he was prodded and yelled at. Thinking he was being visited again, he tried to concentrate but then became conscious that it was his sister, and only surviving sibling, that summoned him. She had come to stay with him during his mourning.
“Kamala, wake up. I’m sorry to intrude. A man is here. He says you saved his son’s life.”
Annoyed that he could not meditate the message, he rose from his bed.
In his living room was a man dressed in a tan suit with a crisp, white button down shirt. He looked about fifty with white at the temples slightly wrinkled skin. His fingers and neck glittered with diamonds, as did his beaming smile.
“Doctor Valkar,” he addressed with a light bow. “My name is Atal Bhutu. My wife and I cannot thank you enough. We are in your eternal debt. You were better than the accolades praised upon you.”
Kamala blushed. “I always try my very best. Your son is strong and brave. Without his will, my work would not have mattered.”
“You are most kind,” Bhutu replied. “We’re devastated to hear about your loss. My condolences, doctor.”
A bolt of grief pained Valkar, but he thanked the gesture.
Bhutu let the moment of silence pass. “We made a significant donation to the hospital but wanted to thank you personally with something as well.” He smiled generously.
“You have already thanked me with your kind words. That is all the blessing I could ask for.”
“That may be, my good doctor. I have more money than even my biggest rival. When you have more money than the gods, you should reward the good like they do.”
“My staff works hard and are less compensated. They deserve your generosity more than I.”
“I somewhat agree,” Bhutu countered with a smile. “That is why I dispatched my staff to go find them. They will be rewarded as well,” he said like a man who was used to doing business. He smiled triumphantly. “But I came here personally. Your staff deserves my thanks but not more than you, doctor. Oh, Kamala,” he said raising his voice, “I do not take no for an answer.”
It appeared he was stunned speechless, but Valkar had a flashback to his vision.
Oh, Kamala. Your luck is about to change
.
Valkar snapped back to the present and smiled. “I’m not sure what to say. Obviously, I have been through a lot. My mind is out of focus.”
“I will fatigue you no more, my good fellow,” Bhutu replied warmly. He clapped his hands, and a servant appeared with a black suitcase. He gave it to Bhutu and left. Bhutu then handed it to Valkar. “Once again, my condolences. Thank you for saving my boy.” He then reached out, shook Valkar’s hand, and left.
Valkar stood there for minutes without moving, when his sister came from behind. “Open it,” she advised. “Nobody deserves this more than you.”
He opened it like he worked for the bomb squad, carefully and with trepidation. When the lip snapped back, he flinched. Stuffed inside were rupees. It was the most money he’d ever seen. A black velvet box sat atop with a note beneath.
He read the note first:
I know something about polished gems, particularly diamonds, but also people. Everyone we met assured us that you were the very best. Not that many people can be wrong. Now, you saved our son. Inside is something small, but special.
Valkar opened the lid, which sprung back. Sparkle. Inside was a diamond. The hue was pinkish.
“Oohhh,” his sister marveled. “That is a beauty. I bet it’s worth more than the money.”
She would know, but so did he. As always, he did his homework before buying his fiancé’s engagement ring. This was much bigger and far grander.
During the following weeks, he visited a Kali temple several times and spoke with the pandit. He went into trances, meditated, and listened. Then he made a decision
His sister’s husband wanted to move to America and open a business. Valkar decided to follow and open a temple. He would dedicate his life to the deities. He gave the diamond to his sister and used the money to buy the house he converted to a temple. He could have purchased something more elaborate, like a large Victorian he’d fancied, but he gave the rest to help his sister and husband prosper in America.
Valkar immediately relinquished all possessions. His only occupation was a temple pandit, which did not earn him a salary. All donations were used to pay the bills and buy the blessings for the deities, and it insufficiently met those needs. His meals were usually gifts from the congregation or visits to his sister’s home.
Free from employment, stress, and all the distractions from everyday life, Valkar gave himself wholly to the gods. His life was never better. Well respected in the community, the temple began to draw a large following. People whispered that Valkar was the man to see if you needed a change of fortunes. The sick felt better; the poor found means; the desperate found hope. Valkar was emphatic that he had no power other than to bring them closer to the deities, especially Kali.
As he finished the morning’s aarti, he hoped the Englishman was for real. It was time to build something worthy of the gods.
Then he heard a bell ring, signifying his visitor’s arrival. He went to the door; his bare feet softly thudded on the industrial carpeting.
Valkar opened the door. There the Englishman stood. His attire was standard semi-casual attire: brown loafers, corded pants, white turtleneck sweater, brown leather gloves, and a gray overcoat. That was normal. His face was something different. Everything was proportioned with no visible defects. Instead, he exhibited signs usually seen from a shaman instilled with Kali’s spirit. His eyes were blood red, and his tongue dangled from his mouth.
His tongue retracted, and he spoke. “Kali sent me to you.”
The voice did not fit the man. English yes, but it sounded feminine. The man was either insane, an imposter, or for real. Valkar would soon know. “Follow me,” he told the portly Englishman. “Oh, and please remove your shoes.”
He walked toward Kali’s shrine several steps when a sharp pain pierced the back of his neck. Shocked, he crumpled to the floor. From the ground he saw the man walk over him.
Valkar desperately tried to move away and defend himself, but he was unable. His body lay still. Was he frozen in fear? Did he crack his spine when he fell to the ground and suffer paralysis? No. He couldn’t even close his eyes. Even paraplegics can do that. This was something different. A dream? He hoped it was, but it felt too real.
His fears were realized. The man laughed insultingly. “Fool,” he said, the feminine voice was now very masculine and normal. “One thing you can say about you religious people is you’re a gullible lot.” He stopped to gesture around. “Look at your gods,” he scoffed. “Elephant heads, monkey faces, extra limbs, and other fantastic bullshit. Don’t get me wrong; I like your religion better than most, but I still despise you.”
Valkar was on his side. He could not see his assailant’s face, but he envisioned the glare by the acerbic tone. As he prepared to die, he thought of his vision of Kali. Did he make the right decisions? Could
moshka
be on the horizon? If not, how would his next life be? He hoped it brought him closer to this life’s quest. He knew this one was set to expire.