Ghostwriting by Eric Brown Page B

the mouths of children, high-pitched screams of entreaty, ululating in the night’s fetid heat.
    Perhaps twenty yards ahead he made out a lighted window in the wall of the building to his right, and it was from here that the screams seemed to be issuing.
    He slowed his pace, despite Krishnan’s prompting. The screams grew louder as they approached the lighted rectangle. The window was open, he saw, revealing a small, white-tiled room.
    As they passed, his abductor hurrying him along, Madison turned and stared, and then wished that he had spared himself the sight of what was taking place within the room.
    He cried out. The image, brief as it was, would live with him for ever.
    Panic clutched at him. “What have you done to my wife?” Madison cried.
    Krishnan walked on, ignoring him.
    They came to a door in the wall, and Krishnan ushered him through into a tiled corridor of what might have been a hospital building.
    “What...?” Madison began. “What in God’s name where they doing to...?”
    Krishnan gestured along the corridor, towards the room where Madison had witnessed the torture.
    He stumbled, resisting. Krishnan, showing aggression for the first time, took him roughly by the shoulders and pushed him down the corridor.
    “Mr Madison, you are not in England now. This is India, and we are an impoverished country. How do you suppose children are to earn a living, if they have no trade, no skill, and are illiterate? Begging is their only option.”
    “But... such butchery!” was all Madison could say.
    He could still hear the screams, though deadened now by intervening brickwork.
    They came at last not to the room, as he had feared they might, but to an outside courtyard strung with a garland of electric bulbs that dazzled him after the dimness within the building.
    He stumbled outside and Krishnan released him.
    He stood, peering feebly into the dazzle.
    Across the courtyard he made out some kind of seat, or rather throne. A cloaked figure was seated upon it, with a dozen Indian men crouched on either side in attitudes of obeisance.
    What was extraordinary about the seated figure was the headpiece that sat upon its shoulders – a great, blood-red mask, all flaring eye-brows, staring eyes, and a mouth set in a fearsome, grinning rictus.  
    Krishnan murmured into his ear, “The Chosen One, the exalted disciple who, this month, is the favoured one of Kurti. With Chola,” he went on, “the Chosen One can better appreciate...” He fell silent then, but gestured towards the old hospital ward where amateur surgeons were mutilating the city’s street children.
    Madison moaned out loud and staggered. Krishnan caught him, eased him upright.
    He gathered himself, looked across the courtyard the masked figure, and suddenly knew that his search was drawing to a close. He understood, then, that Caroline had not become a victim of the Kurti sect...
    He stepped forward. “Caroline?” he said.
    The throned figure raised its hands, reached for the mask and slowly lifted it from its head.
    Madison took a breath in surprise and stared at the revealed figure.
    McAllister sat upon the throne, watching Madison with rheumy eyes. He seemed even frailer, more decrepit, than he had at their first meeting. “I must apologise for my earlier dissimulation,” McAllister said. “I had to make certain that you were acting alone, and not in league with the authorities. We of the sect must... practise certain safeguards, you understand. India is a tolerant country, but some people in positions of power might find our predilections somewhat... outré , you might say.”
    McAllister stood up then, swaying, and Madison looked into his eyes and saw the light of madness there.
    “Caroline?”
    Then the old man said, “Come, Mr Madison. Your wife is awaiting you.”
    And it was all Madison could do to stumble forward and follow the madman from the courtyard.

    ~

    They passed down another corridor and stopped before a door.
    McAllister