Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

used a pole to push the canoe alongside a rounded brick wall, just beneath a metal ladder leading to the surface.

Andie offered to triple the price if the pilot swore not to lead anyone else to their location. He shoved the rupees greedily into his pocket and steadied the canoe while they climbed onto the ladder.

Blinking like newborn babes, they emerged onto the surface near a sprawling slum. Directly in front of them was a set of railroad tracks piled with mounds of garbage that helped shield their arrival. Just down the tracks was a squalid collection of tar-paper shacks and lean-tos jumbled across a flat, swampy plain and surrounded by the skyscrapers of Kolkata. It looked as if a plane had dropped a bomb in the middle of the city, and the survivors had cobbled together a settlement from the debris.

Mani led them toward the slum. More garbage filled the streets, and the stench was almost as bad as the sewers. People were everywhere, men and women performing daily tasks or sitting in the harsh sun, dogs and children playing in the mud and filth. Only a small child sitting on the roof of the nearest shack seemed to notice as Mani herded them into a makeshift shelter on the periphery of the settlement. The “tent” was assembled from pieces of cloth and canvas, and propped up by three aluminum poles. Inside, arranged neatly on top of a pair of wooden crates, was a bundle of dirty clothes, an old milk jug, a plastic bag filled with rice, a box of matches, and two chipped bowls. In the corner was a deflated soccer ball missing half the panels.

“Here,” Mani said, looking up at them with bright, expectant eyes. “You stay here.”

Andie wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She had to admit it was the last place anyone would ever look.

“Okay,” she said, collapsing beside Cal on the packed dirt that made up the floor. She hoped it didn’t rain. “Thank you.”

Cal squeezed the boy on the shoulder. “You saved us, kid.”

The boy offered a shy smile and pointed at the rice. “Hungry?”

Andie and Cal shook their heads, starving but unwilling to eat the boy’s only food. “Go ahead,” Andie said. “We need to discuss a few things.” She handed Mani a wad of rupees that made his eyes pop. He thanked her profusely as he grabbed the rice, matches, and a bowl before heading into the slum to find a cooking fire. “I tell no one about you,” he promised.

“Oh my God,” Cal said, once they were alone. He was staring at the side of the shelter. “What just happened?”

“We’re alive, is what happened.” Her tone turned bitter. “Without the Star Phone.”

He swallowed. “Yeah. I’m . . . I’m sorry again. Do you still have Zawadi’s phone?”

She patted her pocket. “It’s here.”

“That’s some relief.”

Andie took out the phone and turned it on. “We even have a signal,” she said, though she supposed they were right in the center of downtown.

“And the credit card?”

“Safe.”

Cal slumped in relief. “So what now?”

Andie shook her head, not even bothering with a response.

An hour later, as the punishing rays of sunlight outside the tent began to soften, Andie lay on her back with her hands crossed behind her head, reeking of her own stink, thirsty, hungry, at a loss for what to do. They couldn’t stay in the slum for long. She didn’t want to drink the water or eat the food, and she feared being robbed.

But she didn’t dare surface in another part of the city.

Earlier, she had written a long text to Zawadi, letting her know what had happened. Andie had no idea where Zawadi was, if she would respond, or what help she could provide, but it was worth a shot.

After hearing Cal’s description of why he had taken the Star Phone and given it to the priest, her fury started to wane, becoming a dull throb of helpless frustration.

According to him, after the candles had blown out, the priest had started chanting and the wax effigy of the goddess had started to glow. Kali had stretched out her limbs and come alive, springing onto Andie’s back as the crimson eyes turned to stare at Cal, as real as anything he had ever seen. It made her shudder to hear him describe it in detail, and it was clear the experience still terrified him. The blood trickling from Kali’s fanged mouth, the disheveled hair and dusky-blue skin, the swell of her breasts wreathed with a necklace of skulls, the four arms that had wrapped Andie like a spider and sucked the life from her . . . it had been a waking nightmare. The entire time, he said a voice in his head kept telling him the Star Phone was causing the goddess to come to life, and that Cal had to take it away from Andie to save her. He had believed that voice with all of his being, he had known it was the truth, and had done everything in his power to save her.

She could hardly blame him for that.

Obviously, some kind of hypnosis or mind control had been exerted over Cal, and she guessed it stemmed from his encounter with the Archon. The strange words the Kali priest had uttered must have been a trigger, perhaps a common language used by the Ascendants to control their enemies during and after interrogation.

The worst part of that theory was that it could happen to him again.

While Andie had forgiven him, and even felt touched that he had tried so hard to save her, it didn’t change the fact they were stuck in a Kolkata slum with no way of regaining the Star Phone, no hope of helping her loved ones.

Despair swallowed her whole.

   14   

“Cal!” Andie said. Night had fallen an hour ago. The faint urban glow of Kolkata, seeping in from the front of the tent, was the only