Saturday, June 25, 2022
Raj (the Drifter)
Saturday, June 25, 2022
Raj (the Drifter)
THE NIGHT WAS FILLED WITH HOWLING.
Raj jolted awake in the cave that stank of his own unwashed body. Breath shallow, pulse throbbing behind the scraps of cotton T-shirt stuffed in his ears, he tore away the grimy sleeping bag and wheeled around to check the corners of the cave.
Perhaps a beast had crept in. A bobcat, a mountain lion, an animal with fangs ready to rip away flesh and tendon. Something even hungrier than Raj.
How-wooooo. How-wooooo. How-how-how-wooooooo.
The corner where Candace slept was empty but for the frayed blanket she refused to part with, wrapping it around her narrow shoulders each night when Raj was out foraging in the
camouflage of dusk. He snatched it from the sandy ground. It smelled like the tangerine oil she dabbed on her delicate wrists.
He called her—“Candace!” He had sworn he would be silent when they came for him, but there was no life without Candace. He must find her, throw her over his shoulder, and run through the tangle of wild brush and thorny cacti if he must, whatever it took to get her far from the baying creatures.
How-ooooo.
Raj froze, listening. Since he and Candace had fled his Malibu mansion seven months ago, leaving everything behind, he had grown used to the sounds of the canyon. Coyotes screwing and fighting, owls screeching, mule deer scampering through the brush. But these sounds were different: maniacal laughter, yips strung into chattering cries.
They were human.
Raj’s heart thudded in his chest.
What if he was too late? What if they had already found Candace?
He should never have let her leave the cave. But he’d had no choice. She had always viewed her independence as a sacred and necessary thing. One of her many qualities with which Raj had fallen head over heels in love.
Whenever she wished to go, he let her. Understanding the risks but not quite believing them.
And now, because of his weakness, they had found her. Hovered their drones in the sky above the ranch and spotted Candace’s heart-shaped face. Snap-snap-snapped it with their long-range cameras, uploading the photos instantly to the net. An all-you-can-scroll buffet for their millions of sheepstream followers desperate to binge on the heartache of others.
His heartache.
Raj pressed his dirt-caked hands over his face. Candace. Her heart broken so she had not spoken a word since they had fled to the highest point of Topanga Canyon. A place so far above the scourge of Los Angeles that its owners had named it Celestial Ranch. On the night he and Candace arrived, Raj had stood panting in the moonlight and saw those words, carved into a wooden sign by the property’s entry gate. Instantly, he had known this was the place. Here, close to the stars, he might keep Candace safe.
So, he had guided her by the hand through the slats of the gate and over the parched hills of the ranch until they had found the cave.
Now, Raj crawled across the sandstone floor to the cave’s arched entrance and peered outside. Through the gnarled branches of a mighty oak, up by the old shed on Hydra Hill, he saw them: a
circle of bodies lit an alien silver in the moonlight. Hands linked, they shuddered in and out of shadow, limbs windmilling, heads thrown back, necks stretched.
Raj inhaled sharply.
It was not the paparazzi parasites but the partyers. The group of trespassers (guests, the old man with the wolf dog who owned the property called them with a sneer) had congregated on the other side of Hydra Hill—his hill, Raj had come to think of it, though he had no right to be there, as he was a trespasser himself.
Still. They had no right.
The trespassers had seemed harmless yesterday when Raj watched them arrive through his military-grade binoculars, an old gift from Candace in the before times. Through their lenses, Raj saw city people buffed to a shine climbing out of luxury cars. Nameless, faceless, unimportant, like all the guests who visited the property on weekends, paying to stay in the small cabins that ringed the meadow.
But now, as Raj watched through his binoculars, it seemed a terrible force had transformed them from mere men and women into a ring of wild creatures howling at the sky. Possessed like in the stories of the shape-shifting Rakshasa his Nani had told on his childhood trips back to India. The demons whose power was strongest with each new moon.
They were singing now. Or was it a chant, some dark prayer? A call for blood?
Surely, it was the work of the flame-haired Witch. She visited the ancient couple who owned the property every week, tricking them into believing she was a friend. But Raj knew better. She came to spread her black magic. To poison the sweet old woman with the long gray braid and her husband, the big, craggy old man Raj had first met shortly after he and Candace arrived at Celestial Ranch. Raj had opened his eyes one morning and the old man’s weathered face hovered like a mirage above.
The old man had cupped the back of Raj’s head, held a plastic jug of water to his split lips. There, there, my man, take it slow.
Raj knew instantly the man was special. He was Sheshnaag the Great, the thousand-headed serpent anointed by Brahma—his grandmother Nani’s favorite bedtime story, especially on nights when heavy rain battered the clay-tiled roof of Nani’s house in Chennai, storms that seemed apocalyptic compared to the sunny skies of Orange County back home.
Sheshnaag the Protector’s sole eternal duty was to coil his tail around the earth and hold it steady. The old man became their protector, promising to shield Raj and Candace from dangers, as long as Raj completed certain assignments. And Raj had done everything the
man had asked. Even the job with the bees! The proof was all over Raj’s arms and neck and face, hot and swollen—he had not been able to remove all the stingers; and in the blood that stained his nailbeds pink even after he had scrubbed his hands in the bucket of fresh water the old man had left outside the cave.
The old man had given Raj a boning knife with a smooth wooden handle and curved, razor-sharp blade. Raj wore it belted to his waist and touched it often to remind himself he’d found an ally in the old man.
But why, why, was the old man absent now, when Raj needed him most? When a throng of trespassers crept closer, threatening to steal Candace from him?
Through his binoculars, Raj saw the trespassers still stood in a circle, but a new body had appeared in the center. His fingers trembled as he adjusted the focus knob.
The woman’s features sharpened. Blue-black hair fanned her pale heart-shaped face. There was the cleft chin he had cupped and kissed. The petite and toned surfer’s body that had been a perfect match for his own.
Candace.
They had imprisoned her.
A spasm of understanding edged Raj’s terror.
He alone must save her. He had no choice. Even the old man had abandoned him now.
Raj heard a light breeze sift through the trees. The trespassers aahed.
“The goddess hears us!” a woman’s voice squealed.
“Come to me, baby!”— a male voice.
How-wooooo. How-how-how-ooooooo.
A surge lifted Raj to his feet. He felt a strength he had not known since he and Candace had fled the poisoned world far below the canyon.
His hand closed around the handle of the boning knife. Raj now knew the knife’s purpose. This was his astral weapon. A knife made of stars. And when he was finished putting it to use, the next step would be revealed. The path that would carry him, and Candace, to redemption.
He crawled out of the cave. Overhead, the moon was a throbbing hole in the sky.
Raj walked up the hill, in the direction of the howling.
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