The Narrow Road to Palem by Sharath Komarraju Page A

Her fists clenched, and her face contorted into a grimace. ‘There is only one thing that can help me,’ she said, baring her teeth.
    Sister Agnes paled at the sight and took a step back, but held firm with her hand. ‘No, my dear, the only person that can help you right now is Christ; he is our saviour, our lord…’
    ‘Enough!’ Lata stooped low, looking up at the nun with her hair falling over her face. ‘Move away, woman. I am going.’
    ‘You will take lives.’
    ‘They killed us,’ said Lata, in a voice she barely recognized herself, ‘they killed us when we – when we were –’
    ‘Child.’ Sister Agnes reached into her blouse and brought out a cross, fumbling.
    Lata waved her arms around to knock it out of her hands to send it sliding on the floor and under the desk. She turned to the door and opened it, but Sister Agnes was behind her, both hands on her waist, and this time she immediately recoiled.
    ‘Who – what are you?’
    Lata turned around and grinned. ‘Yes, what am I? What am I, woman? I was a woman five days ago, until you gave me that sitar to play. Now what am I?’
    ‘Oh, Lord. Our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name –’
    ‘Oh, yes, very hallowed indeed. Where was the father when they killed us when we were – when we were in union? Where? Where!’ In blind fury Lata struck out with her right hand at the woman, and she saw Sister Agnes clutch at her neck in shock.
    Lata held up her hands. They were the hands of a crone; the fingernails had grown long and sharp in the last few minutes. One of them – or all of them – had struck the old woman’s artery. She was whimpering now, and Lata found herself laughing with her head thrown back as the figure before her hunched, then collapsed on the floor with a groan.
    Lata knelt down in front of the woman and closed her fingers around the neck and squeezed, making Sister Agnes give one final moan. The notes of the tabla in her head reached a crescendo when she heard the last breath of life leave the sister. Lata was just about to lift her hands up to her mouth when she heard a sound in the adjoining room. Lights had come on, and at least four people were approaching.
    Lata moved into a crouch, and propelling herself with her forelimbs, lunged at the front door and closed it behind her. She sensed her stomach churning, her intestines transforming into tentacles, and one of them smoothening on the outside and forcing its way out through her belly-button, wrenching a groan from the depths of her throat. She staggered to her feet and tore her clothes apart, and just as she heard screams from within the house, the skin on her back gave way to sharp, triangular bumps that clicked and clicked and clicked…
    She fell forward on her forelimbs again, craning her neck up at the moon and baring her teeth. The sound of the tabla still ringing in her ears, she galloped up the path and on to the main road to Palem. Her mind’s eye saw only one image now, frozen in time – that house and the field and the well and the ditch and the two of them buried in it – Well, today they would not stop her! Today they would not stop them . They had come so close forty years ago, but no matter, they had another chance now. Now she would go and awaken him. Yes, my brother, my love, I am coming for you . No one could now stop them becoming one with each other. No, not now.
     

Peaceful Are The Dead
     
    Rama Shastri had just finished his evening prayer and sat down on the fibre mat in front of his plate when a knock appeared on the door.
    Arundhati, his wife, looked up and said, ‘Who could it be?’
    With a sigh, Rama Shastri got to his feet. He spread his shoulder cloth around himself and went to the door. Someone or the other always came to the temple in the evening in search of stray pieces of coconut the devotees left behind, but today, Rama Shastri had brought them all home because Arundhati had wanted to make pickle.
    ‘Must be a beggar,’ he said,