A large picture of Kali, set in a heavy frame.

They pulled at the lower edge, but nothing happened.

“If there was something, it should have fallen out by now.”

“Why don’t the lot of you just bring her down?” Jyathaima said, “Then see if there’s anything behind her.”

They saw it, as soon as they brought her down and turned her around. Screwed to the wooden frame, covered in cobwebs and dust—a small diary.

“Peeyu kahaan!” screamed a toothless mouth downstairs, “Peeyu kahaan!”

“Oh! So many, so many crows! Pecking and pecking the glass from this side, that side. Flapping their wings. And in the middle of all that, someone singing! Binu smiling nonstop. I couldn’t hear a thing. Then, like a voice in an empty room … I heard him clearly … he spoke—and then he died again just like that other time.”

Harbart could sense it. He would have to charge-barrage now. Binu had had his time. It was Harbart’s time now. He would have to produce pandemonium—rip apart everything, turn everything upside down until the entire universe reeled in the dance of devastation.

Once upon a time, this land was home to many sages who were spirit-knowledge masters. We have heard that, in the present time too, elsewhere in the world too, many spirit-knowledge masters have been born. But their opinions are different from those of our sages. According to our sages, when one has become a ghost, then that ghost may be called or attracted, and that even the ghosts of gods and goddesses may be so called or attracted … We have heard that the present-day spirit-knowledge masters can, or indeed do, summon any dead person; in fact, one of them is rumored to have called the soul of the Buddha, no less.

—Mysteries of the Afterlife

With a sputter in my chest and a flutter in my breast, I drew closer to the window, I had but risen from my bed a moment ago—when my glance fell low upon the floor and I saw—to my astonishment—five or seven freshly severed human heads rolling about the room. Their monstrous mocking smiles—their furious frowning eyebrows—their lick-lolling tongues aroused in my heart a terror so extreme—I stood there, frozen like a statue—not daring to take even a single step more. The very next instant there came another sky-splitting scream.

—The Horribly Haunted Circus

“Peeyu kahaan! Peeyu kahaan!”

*

Krishna-dada went back home, and Harbart told Jyathaima that he’d be using the downstairs room for his business.

Five

If you do not offer this great sacrifice

Our India shall never arise, never arise

—Dwarakanath Gangopadhyay

It was Dhanna who told the whole neighborhood about Harbart’s dream-discovery of Binu’s diary. When Dhanna told them, sitting at the Corporation park one Sunday evening, Barilal, Khettra, Gobi, Unjey, Hartal, and the other elders were stunned.

Gobi, the alcoholic, turned his bloodshot eyes to the waters of the Corporation pond, and said pensively, “Actually, you know what, it’s all the Mother’s doing. Who knows whose head she’ll tap with a divine finger. How else could our Harbart pull off such a miracle?”