Superstar: Horn OK Please (13 page)

As Lobsang lifted the glass lid of the dried flowers, Cathy screamed as she turned around, “No! Don’t touch anything! This place is dangerous”.

“These flowers and the powder, Cathy, my sixth sense is going crazy. There’s more to this place than just evil. I know Winston was working on it. I touched the jar and it freaked me out”, said Lobsang as she handed the lid to Cathy.

Cathy knelt down beside the jars and carefully took a whiff, taking care not to touch them. She paused, her face turning white with horror as she said, “Oh! My God! This is the Devil’s Breath! And those dried flowers are from the most dangerous tree in the whole world, they come from Colombia known as the Borracherro tree. These are the same strange flowers that this entire mansion is filled with. And the powder, the diary makes a mention of something called the ‘Devil’s Breath’…..Holy Shit! Now it all makes sense!”

“Calm down, auntie, you’re sounding like Uncle now. Can we please speak English around the place?” Jenny’s voice cut through their conversation like a knife gliding smoothly on a cube of butter.

Gasping and pausing to catch her breath, Cathy explained, “Look. The white powder is the most dangerous drug in the whole world. It’s called the ‘Devil’s Breath’. It is made of chemicals that are derived from the flowers of the Borracherro tree. It’s called Scopolamine. Your great grandfather was creating the Devil’s Breath right here in this room, 350 years ago.”

“OK, so what does it do and why would Winston manufacture it in here?” asked Lobsang, completely puzzled.

“Well, this is an odorless and tasteless drug which turns people into virtual zombies. Once the drug has been administered, the drug takes full effect. In a nutshell, this white powder, I can keep a little in my hand and blow it on your face. Within minutes, you will become my slave. Your memory will be erased and you be incapable of forming new memories…..I take over your very soul, I take away everything you are about today – I take away your free will for life!”

Jenny looked on, wide-eyed, unable to fathom the fact that her own great grandpa could have been the wicked being who walked the earth.

“The morons were right. Winston had strange powers, they’d said. Beyond sorcery, he used science to deprive all the local plantation owners from all the lands they possessed….and we live in luxury while they slave for us in penury. He would have blown this powder on his victim, taken away his land from him, given him the money in return to keep his name clean”, said Cathy, in a whisper, worried if the ghost of Winston might be listening, “There have been cases where people have given away their organs under the influence of this drug with no recollection of their pasts. That bastard!” 

“So, this is what Scopolamine can do? Is this why we see paintings of the Borracherro tree’s flowers on this wall?” said Jenny, coming out of her trance.

“Yes, it is made out of those beautiful, white and yellow flowers, the same flowers we have carvings of all over in the house” Cathy said loudly.

“But he must have done it for another reason as well, right? I mean, from the legend, Winston had felt remorse and become a complete recluse. He used to disappear for days and now we know where he was. That would mean that the remorse was just a cover up, a lie. He was after something else too….” Said Lobsang, getting up as she looked around and spotted the clay urn that Jenny was staring at for quite some time when she walked in.

“Only you should touch that urn, Jenny. I know. Don’t ask me why, but I know”, said Lobsang as she pointed to the south-east corner of the room. Jenny knew that as well as she slowly walked across the small room and grabbed the urn. As she turned, she went into a trance as she levitated from the ground slowly. Lobsang and Cathy watched in shock and horror as she slowly came back to the ground and spoke, “I’ve had visions. Just pick up that damn diary and run now! He’s going to coming after us now!”

Not waiting to comprehend, Lobsang and Cathy grabbed their flashlights and turned to the door. Cathy managed to grab the diary before darting out of the secret laboratory. Lobsang followed suit as she glanced to see Jenny shut the door behind her, urn in hand. Jenny had barely closed the door when she saw flames erupt in the secret laboratory, as if by magic. As she turned to run, she saw a very large beast – a big wolf materialized inside the room from the fire as the flames leapt higher. The sound of the howling was loud and the stench of death enveloped the passage. As Jenny ran, she glanced back to see the secret laboratory engulfed in thick orange, red and blue flames and the beast banged at the door repeatedly, forcing it to open. It was after them.

Jenny felt a sudden urge to run faster but her feet won’t oblige. She looked at Cathy and Lobsang who were distant now. Suddenly her heart skipped a beat as she saw that she was alone in the tunnel and the Devil was just a notch away. She knew her mind was playing tricks on her. She closed her eyes for a second and thought about all the people who loved her, who cared for her. Suddenly she got adrenaline rush and the determination to nail the beast came naturally to her. She regained her speed and was soon following Cathy and Lobsang.  

Jenny could feel the breath of the beast right behind her as she ran. Running wild, not looking back, she yelled, “Derek! For Heaven’s sakes, close the damn door as soon as I get out. It’s the beast!”

Cathy and Lobsang leaped through the trapdoor as I shone the torchlight to see Jenny half way up the stairs, followed by a huge beast with shining, red eyes. It was the same beast we had seen earlier before reaching the resort that night.

“Now!” yelled Jenny, as she leaped out of the trapdoor, skipping a few stairs, as I grabbed her, lifting her to safety as Hound clenched his fist, turned it into a hammer ball as let it fly at the beast. The hard punch hit the beast squarely on its rabid jaw as it briefly lost balance. It gave Hound enough time to step back and shut the trapdoor right on the beast’s face as the sound of angry growls filled the room.

“Get out everyone, before it comes out of the trapdoor”, yelled Lobsang as she closed the door of room number seven behind her once everyone was out. Then she took off her necklace and hung it on the doorknob. The sound of painful howling filled the mansion as Lobsang bowed her head, closed her eyes and folder her hands in prayer, facing the door.

Then she flung her arms open and seemed to look heavenwards. The sound of a beast in pain intensified before turning into a whimper as she placed her hands on the door and chanted something in a very angry tone. Soon the howling subsided and Lobsang removed the necklace and put it back around her neck. She opened the door to check if everything was back in place. The smooth flagstones on the floor were back in position. It was just another room again.

“Where’s that fool, Derek?” asked Jenny angrily.

“Calm down, he isn’t here right now. He should be back any moment”, I replied, not wanting to tell Jenny that right now, he was probably banging her Doppelganger. He was about to get his ass whooped by Jenny soon enough.

“He’s never there when I need him. That bastard”, muttered Jenny angrily as Hound put his arms around her.

Lobsang walked coolly to the couches in the lobby where we stood and then pointing to the evil, ugly portrait of Winston just above the fireplace, she said, “Take that evil portrait down right now and we shall be safe for a while”.

Hound and Jeremy went across to the fireplace and gleefully yanked the portrait off the wall as Jeremy stared at the sacrilegious act, holding his head in his hands. While we waited for Lobsang to set the house in order, Cathy and Jenny filled us in with what they had learnt down in Winston’s secret laboratory. It did take the wind out of me. Not from what I heard from Cathy and Jenny, but from what Goose told Jenny. He ratted out on Derek, telling Jenny that her boyfriend had awesome, out-of-the-world time with her Doppelganger. That freaked me out and left Jenny seething. She was awfully quiet.

“We’re safe for the moment. We have lesser time than we think we have. I’d say we have less than 24 hours. They have decided to kill Jenny on the dot of midnight when she turns 23”, said Lobsang calmly, as she grabbed a bottle of water from the larder near her, “We need a plan in place in the next one hour! Let’s go to Hound’s room.”

“Who’re
‘they’
?” Goose asked, wondering if she had made a mistake.

“Both! Jenny’s Doppelganger as well as her sweet, great grandfather – Winston D’Silva. They want her dead”, said Lobsang as she noisily emptied the bottle of water.

I looked at Jenny and said, “Congratulations, O’ gorgeous woman. Your chances of survival just went down by another 50%”. Ha! Ha! Ha!” She didn’t laugh. She just stared at me in disgust.

“Worse, we went through all this shit just to find out that there are two devils after you. And the icing on the cake is - we still don’t know how to save you”, said Goose as we both burst out laughing. Unfortunately, as I wiped my tears, I realized that it was just the two of us who found it funny. Hound glared and Derek, who had just joined us, scowled.

“Make that three you dimwits. You missed out Derek”, said Jenny sarcastically. She was livid and it showed. The embers in the fireplace suddenly caught fire and a raging inferno ensued that kept Jeremy and the broomstick Nanny busy for some time.

***
 

CHAPTER NINE

***

***

Roses are red and violets are blue,

The Devil’s stooge has been met by a few;

They walk the earth today, they’re messengers of evil,

They reap the innocent, they collect loving souls for the Devil;

She took a flight of fancy, her dream came true,

It was magic, something supernatural, away she flew;

She had a purpose, a mission that would change her inside out,

It was not about her anymore, humanity it was all about;

She had a purpose when she entered the Circle of Light,

She would deal with the Devil, she’d learn wrong from right;

She was upset; she was hurt when she decided to go,

But love and luck were on her side, she didn’t know;

The animal of jealousy, it slapped her on her face that night,

She really didn’t know anymore if he was Mr. Right;

But the hand of fate is unknown to us all,

She was ready that night to take a free fall;

She was alone, yeah, that’s what she was then,

She chose to walk alone, right into the Devil’s Den;

But if smiles and Imagination makes you say ‘Cheese’

Drive on, that’s the spirit of Horn OK Please…

***

Why they want Jenny killed:

The night was cold, merciless and endless, just like every other night we had spent in this estate. I sat in front of the fireplace, listening to the crackling of firewood. I wondered why we came here in the first place. This was supposed to be a holiday. We, the four morons, were to do our own things yet hang out together as buddies. Life sure played mean tricks on us this time.

All kinds of gloomy thoughts invaded my brain as we sat in Hound’s room and Jenny delivered a tight slap on Derek’s left cheek, “You filthy bastard! I leave you alone with your moronic friends and you go out and hump my Doppelganger? You just went away when I needed you the most….”

“And he took Motormouth with him too, Jenny”, I said, hoping she would have some pity tucked away in her large heart somewhere. But that was not to be.

“Shut up, you idiot of a Chief. You’ll be ‘Deadbull’ when I’m done with you”, thundered Jenny, pointing her forefinger at me.

“Now that’s rude, Jenny!”, said Goose, unable to control his laughter.

“You fat bird! I’ll roast you alive if you come out with one more insensitive remark”, Jenny continued.

“Ignore those morons, Jenny, go get some sleep. In fact, all three of you, just shut up! It’s already 4:00 AM”, said Hound.

“And what are you going to do, Mister, in these two hours while I get my beauty sleep? Are you going to tell me how I can kill that bitch Doppelganger and that bastard Winston when I wake up?” said Jenny, cooling down, knowing fully well that Hound had never let her down. The sensitive, senile prick that he was, Hound took it to heart.

“That’s exactly what we shall do. Cathy, can I please have Winston’s diary? You and Lobsang can shack up here with Jenny. We’ll leave you girls alone. If you need us, just holler, we’ll all be there in Derek’s room. Meet you at 6:00 a.m., I’ll wake you up”, said Hound, ever the ladies’ man.

“And keep an eye on that horny bastard for me, Hound. Kill him if he goes after that ghost of a woman again. I swear you’ll make me a very happy person! Make sure you have a plan!” said Jenny, slamming the door hard on Hound’s face.

“OK, which one of you morons ratted out on me?” said Derek, rolling up his sleeves.

“Dump it, Derek. We don’t have time to fight. We need to get cracking on this diary right now”, said Hound, as he prodded Derek towards his room. “Oh! By the way, it was Goose who let out the secret”.

Thump!....Thump!....Thump!

That wasn’t Jenny’s bed banging on the ceiling. It was Goose getting thumped by Derek for tattling the tale to Jenny. I must say, Goose looked cool with a black eye, it brought out his ugly, dark soul and lent color to his character, literally speaking.

Within the next few minutes, Lobsang and Cathy sashayed into the room.

“Well, we figured you might need some help, so here we are”, said Cathy, smiling, knowing fully well that we needed to crack this together without Jenny here with us right now.

“Where’s Jenny? Is she alright?” asked Derek meekly.

“Yeah, she is, she knows it’s not really your fault. She’ll be alright after a quick shut-eye”, said Lobsang, grinning from ear to ear, “She just needs some time away from you, Derek”.

The Jigsaw puzzle:

There was much to read in the thick, black moleskin diary anyway, but many pages had been torn off. Probably, they had been the most important pages and contained the answers we sought. We took turns at it, with each one of us doing 15 minutes of reading and 30 minutes of drinking Scotch straight from the bottle. Our scientific approach to the problem must have shocked Lobsang and Cathy, who sat in the corner of the room. They spoke only when they were spoken to or when they had a point to make.

With an hour wasted, we now had exactly one hour to come up with a plan to save Jenny’s life. Fortunately, the Doppelganger had decided to leave us alone. She must still have been smarting from her wounds, licking them after Derek’s banging and Motormouth’s humping.

I realized that all the missing pages had been deliberately torn out. Those pages were all about Winston’s visit to Cambodia and perhaps, the gory details of the deal between him and the Wolfman. Now putting together the pieces, the story had become a lot less murky and we were now much closer to solving the puzzle. The only bothersome bit that we couldn’t find an answer to was saving Jenny, which of course, would have been useful in helping save Derek and Hound from Jenny’s wrath as well. The girl sure packed in a fiery temper.

The notes from the diary had revealed much and our discussions had been highly productive. Jenny held on to the urn that contained a tornado of souls. 199 dead people with their souls trapped inside a dinky, clay pot. There were 200 graves at the local cemetery
,
so that one grave remained a mystery to us
.
Maybe, it was Winston’s, but we couldn’t say for sure, for we had learnt that his last few days were spent in the mountains. Winston had chosen to tear away the pages pertaining to this one. Still, the answers pointed to something truly fantastic, something supernatural.

Winston had manufactured the Devil’s Breath in his own secret laboratory, which we learnt, is medically known as scopolamine. They say it’s a new drug that very evil men use to take away freewill from their victims. Winston used it for his revenge on the local farming community. We know he had a bone or few to pick with them. He used it to take away their lands and all their belongings. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite stop at that. He was pure evil. He was collecting their souls and trapping them in an urn made of clay.

It was the evil Winston’s very own special piggy bank of souls. All those 199 people that Jenny had told Derek about, the ones who rested in the old, deserted cemetery were brutally killed and torn into pieces by a beastly wolf. The living had to search and pick up their mangled remains and respectfully bury them at the local cemetery. It seemed to be Jenny’s favorite hangout. It was the place where we had met her for the first time, one stormy night, just a few days ago, and quite close to this mansion.

Since just the body parts of the dead and mutilated were buried at the cemetery, their ghosts roamed all over the countryside, howling in pain every night.

From the notes in Winston’s diary and from what we heard from Cathy, we learnt the horrific truth. He had gone to Colombia where he learnt the art of manufacturing scopolamine. He practiced this art in his personal laboratory under the mansion. He kept a watch on all members of the house through the periscope. He had visited Siem Reap somewhere deep in the jungles of Combodia, to seek out the Wolfman with the stolen gold from his Portuguese master.

Winston had made a note of it in his diary. It said that the Wolfman is the Devil himself, ageless. He granted Winston his wishes for something. In return for each plot of land, the Wolfman had sought a soul. The soul was to be trapped in the urn. However, the riches were meant only for Winston and not his family. The horrific deal Winston entered with the Wolfman was that once he had trapped 200 souls, he would return to Siem Reap, Cambodia and seek out the Wolfman yet again. Winston wanted unlimited power, immense riches, perpetual youth and immortality.

It meant that Winston had waited for 350 years for the last of his lineage who hadn’t yet procreated, to turn 23. It was the time when the transformation of the evil Doppelganger would be complete. For 350 years, Winston waited for the last of his progeny to be born. As fate would have it, it was Jenny, his great granddaughter. She was about to turn 23 soon, was unmarried and didn’t have children when the Doppelganger would be fully formed.

Winston had written in his diary that Wolfman had granted him dark, secret powers with which he could transform himself into a beast, at his own will. This led us to believe that the beastly wolf was in reality, Winston D’Silva himelf. He didn’t die; he merely changed into the beastly wolf - the beast that killed 199 poor plantation farmers. Winston’s body, they say, had never been found. So it made sense.

While Winston’s soul was trapped in the body of a beast, he now sought a new container, a fresh body if he had to turn human again. That container would be Jenny. It couldn’t have been someone else, for he had to continue his lineage. He had watched his brothers die and would not let history repeat itself. The D’Silva clan from the mountains had to perpetuate and rule. So Winston had no choice but to try to take over Jenny’s freewill if his soul were to find a new home and form once she turned 23, for then, the Doppelganger would become more useful to Winston than Jenny herself. Free will was the catch here, something we humans take so much for granted.

On the other hand, Jenny’s Doppelganger was a body without a soul. On Jenny’s 23
rd
birthday, when the Doppelganger’s transition would be complete, she would need Jenny’s soul to become Jenny. So, while Winston craved for a body for his soul, the Doppelganger sought a soul for her body.

Since the Doppelganger was born out of Jenny’s mind, she would never be able to take control of Jenny’s free will. It was of no use for Winston’s soul to seek asylum in Jenny’s Doppelganger for that would make him a creature with a soul, not Jenny’s free will. Without Jenny’s free will, even the Wolfman cannot grant Winston eternal life. A combination of body, soul and free will is needed for eternal life.

If the Doppelganger killed Jenny before Winston could take away Jenny’s free will, all would be lost forever for Winston. Therefore, it is essential for Winston to take away Jenny’s free will first. It would be the exact same way Winston did to the 199 poor souls who are now caught in a limbo, trapped inside the urn. He had used the Devil’s Breath.

He would take away her soul and trap it inside the urn and make the count of poor souls to 200. He would then let Jenny’s Doppelganger kill Jenny to create the purest form of evil ever to set foot on earth. Once the Wolfman got his 200 souls, he would give Winston eternal life and strike a new deal to spawn a new breed of evil beings on earth.

While the world believed that Winston was struck by remorse and turned reclusive, in reality, Winston had actually spent his last few days in the mansion, inside the secret laboratory many days on end just to ensure that he had enough Scopolamine to do his job.

Neither could Jenny’s Doppelganger nor could her evil great grandpa kill Jenny before she turned 23 for obvious reasons. The Doppelganger needed her to feed upon till she was complete and Winston needed to keep Jenny alive in order to exercise full control upon the evil Doppelganger.

The night of her 23
rd
birthday would be characterized by putrid miasma. The purest form of evil would be born that night when Winston’s evil soul would be one with the Doppelganger’s body which was a manifestation of her own evil self from the dark corners of her mind. This new being would spawn a new race of hell’s angels on earth.

Winston wanted to make sure that Jenny sees through her 23
rd
birthday. For this he needed someone with a very strong mind, a person with great fortitude to whom he would lend his powers, someone he knew would protect Jenny from her Doppelganger. Winston was aware of the fact that the Doppelganger couldn’t stand fire, so he bestowed the power to create the ‘Circle of Light’ on that person. With this power, this person would always be with Jenny and would be Jenny’s protector.

Jenny couldn’t be given this power for the Doppelganger would never have come into being. Neither the drunken dolt, Jeremy, nor the headstrong Cathy, would fit the bill. It certainly couldn’t be broomstick Nanny. So Winston found a person of extreme courage when he was in the mountains. That person was Lobsang.

Winston had, in the form of a beast saved Lobsang from the troops when she was a mere child. He made sure that she survived the ordeal and came to India. He was sure that she would be sought out by someone in the family, and that happened to be the extremely levelheaded psychiatrist – Cathy. Winston had spoken to Cathy in a vision about Lobsang and that’s how he’d bargained for her life. Soon, Lobsang would get to know about her powers, the one with which she could create the “Circle of Light”.

Of course, be it Lobsang, Cathy, Jeremy or toothpick Nanny – they would all have to die once Jenny turned 23. After all, he has waited for 350 years, lurking in the form of an evil beast.

It was very easy for Winston to be present at two locations physically at the same time. In medical terminology, being in two places is possible for a doppelganger. It is called ‘Bi-location’. That was the reason how this attercop spread his cobwebs all over the place.

A deal with the Devil:

With barely 30 minutes to 6:00 AM, Hound and Derek were getting jittery. All set and done, we still didn’t have action plan ready that would help Jenny to fight the evil forces and secure her last chance to cling to life. 

“I’m so glad we had Cathy and Lobsang to help us out. Now everything falls into place about why Jenny won’t be allowed to live beyond her 23rd birthday. Do we know how to stop Winston and kill the Doppelganger?” said Goose, not quite sure of how we would go about it now. His short steps turned to giant leaps as he paced up and down the room biting his nails.

“Nope. The answers must have been there in those pages the evil bastard, Winston, had destroyed. I am pretty sure of his malevolent intentions. The actual answer may lie deep in the jungles of Cambodia, near Siem Reap. We know that Winston met the Wolfman in the ancient city of Angkor. The only way would have been to seek him out, but with less than 24 hours to Jenny’s birthday, it’s impossible”, I averred, staring at Winston’s diary as I struggled to keep the pages from crumbling into the unknown and the undecipherable. .