The Cursed Shell

35

Brute Coyle and Krystene were at the airport and were waiting for their plane to arrive which was delayed by fifteen minutes.

Dhawan had booked two different rooms for them in a five–star hotel where they had stayed for the last night. Brute was now in no mood of sharing details about his secret mission with Krystene. Even Krystene didn't ask anything about it as she knew that Brute would deny responding. The event that happened last evening had pushed Brute into.....not exactly a very great unhappiness, but something like that.

Brute fished his phone out of his pocket and wished not to reply the message he had received.

"Who's it?" Krystene asked, trying to lean over the screen of his iPhone.

"Ritesh Dhawan," Brute replied. "Not important."

"At least read the message," Krystene said. "In last few days, I've learned that every message is important. Even if it is sent by an unknown number."

Brute, unwillingly clicked on the message's notification. Soon he was hit by a big shock and his eyes went wide.

He felt restless and uncomfortable. He could barely move his hands as they were tied with something. He could feel his legs tied too. His eye-lids felt heavier whenever he tried to open them. As he was doing so, his faded vision came back. He wasn't sure what happened to him. He just remembered four bull-like men pulling his body. Right now, when his eyes were opened, he found himself in a candle-lit room with several religious paintings and statues and a pillar depicting the scene of Samudra Manthan at the middle.

'Where am I?' Dhawan thought. He tried to pull his body up, unsuccessfully, as he was tied. It was weird that when he tried to pull himself up, he seemed to float forward. He gazed down to see what he was tied with. He crossed his eye-brows. Was he on a wheelchair? Yes, he was.

"Oh, my dear friend, you regained your consciousness?" Josh's voice came behind him.

Dhawan tried to whirl back, but Josh had already turned his wheel-chair. Now he could see Joshua Lamb with only a white cloak covering his body. 

"Oh, what a luck I have!" Dhawan raised his eye-brows. "I am in front of the great man who has done the greatest crime of the year."

"If you hear everything what I did," Josh chuckled, "you'll come to the conclusion that I'm currently busy in the greatest crime of the century. Or I think it is the greatest crime till date."

Dhawan smirked.

Behind him, he could see five corpses. It wasn't hard for Dhawan to recognise them. Four of them were the bull-like men who brought Dhawan here and the last one was Josh's best-friend, Blake Johnson.

"You killed your best-friend?" Dhawan exclaimed with his eyes widened in surprise.

"Yeah," Josh said like he hadn't done anything big, "sometimes, we've to take big decisions. Very big decisions. He was a good friend of me. But he had to die."

Dhawan chuckled a little, "What else could I expect from an inhuman who killed his own father?"

"A little sacrifice, Dhawan," Josh said. "It was nothing more than just a little sacrifice for this holy activity I'm going to perform."

"Holy activity?" Dhawan laughed.

"Yes," Josh said, "you know, it was a very hard decision for me to kill Blake. He was the only person who could understand me after my mother's demise. But he was helping me in this crime. His soul was filled with sins. So he had to die."

"Oh!" Dhawan said. "So why don't you just kill yourself? I don't think you have any objection to the fact that your soul is filled with sins too."

"I've a sinful soul indeed," Josh said. "That's why, my dear friend, only a few hours of my life are remaining."

"You'll kill yourself?" Dhawan crossed his eye-brows.

"Yes," Josh said, "what do you even know about why I am here?"

"I don't know," Dhawan said, "I thought you've brought me to this place to kill me."

"No," Josh chuckled. "I'll not kill you. I've brought you here because I need you for the ritual I'm going to perform!"

Dhawan rolled his eyes. "Okay! So, what role do I have in this senseless ritual of yours?"

Josh walked till the painting depicting Samudra Manthan. "If you've seen Vishnupuran, do you remember the episode of Samudra Manthan in it?"

"I don't have time to watch TV", Dhawan said.

"In that episode," Josh said, "the Devas were churning the ocean from one side and the Asuras were doing the same thing from the other side. It was necessary to have good at one side and the bad at the other. As I'm going to reciprocate that event, I need you to be opposite to me for the whole time."

"You really believe in these things?" Dhawan laughed.

Josh walked towards Dhawan and stood in front of him, face-to-face. "I believe because I know it's true."

"I'm sorry, man," Dhawan said. "But I don't believe anything which I haven't seen."

"Oh, then you must see this", Josh took his cell-phone out. "By the way, you know where you are?"

Dhawan looked around himself. "I think it's a very old temple or something like that only."

Josh shook his head. "Do you remember that Lamb Corps, an historical and archaeological research corporation created by my father, had a deal with an undersea mining company drilling inside the Indian ocean a few years ago?"

"Yes, I've heard about that deal", Dhawan said.

"We are," Josh said, still focused on his phone, "inside an undersea mining tower of the same company. Surprised?"

"Well, no," Dhawan said, "I am not surprised if you're talking about the tall tower-like structures built under the seas for research or mining. But yes, I always wonder how these towers are built under water. I think that the tower is made first, and then the ocean is poured around it. Only this makes sense to me." Nothing was made up, Dhawan had seen this statement in a meme on Google.

Josh laughed. "Well, the point is that we're currently at almost the deepest point of this tower. And I think you should have a look at the water around us." He showed the screen of his phone to Dhawan.

It was the CCTV footage of the water outside the floor of the tower where they were at the moment. The water was completely white and it seemed like it was a dump of foam.

"What do you see?" Josh asked.

"Highly toxic water", Dhawan replied.

Josh slapped Dhawan as hard as he could and shouted, "How dare you call this holy place toxic?"