Act II

Hemantha panted into the darkness. His eyes were wide open, but he couldn’t see. A sound had woken him, he was sure of it. That sound, that creaking of wood like a whisper, it hadn’t come from his dream. It had come from inside the house.

“Pamu. Rangol. Wake up.” He shook the two sleeping men until they stirred, still wrapped in the blankets they’d taken from the wardrobe. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Pamu sat up against the wall. His naked chest heaved, his muscular arms rested on his knees as he rubbed his eyes. “I was sleeping, man. What time is it?”

Hemantha checked his watch. “Past midnight.”

Rangol turned around on the floor, pulling the blankets up over his shoulders. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“There was a noise,” Hemantha hissed. He stood and went to the door, peeked out into the hallway. “Someone else is here.”

“Like a person? Or an animal?” Pamu was suddenly on his feet. “If it’s a bloody leopard, I will haunt both of you in your next lives. Forest shortcuts and shitty trucks, just what I needed.”

Hemantha shook his head. “Not a leopard.” He aimed his torch as he padded out into the hallway. A faint brightness crept up from the main staircase ahead of him, foam shimmering atop a morass of shadows.

The row of windows lining the hallway revealed the landscape below submerged in darkness, as if the house was buried underground, its windows black spots of mold.

“Someone’s here,” Hemantha whispered again. As he moved toward the great hall, the chandelier hung over his head like the discarded exoskeleton of a tree tarantula. “Downstairs.”

The staircase was made from a kind of timber Hemantha didn’t recognize, and its steps had taken on a spectral shimmer. Like a pallid river, it lapped over the top of the stairs and seeped around Hemantha’s feet.

“There,” Hemantha whispered without checking behind him for Pamu and Rangol. The ornate entrance stood open, and the white light rolled in. It overwhelmed the darkness nesting inside the house and created a clearing in the center of the hall.

“What the hell?” At the railing next to Hemantha, Rangol gaped as sticky light unfurled into the main hall.

“What is it?” Pamu brushed the dust on the railing, his palms pale.

The light washed over the floor and seeped into every nook and gap, illuminating the floorboards. It moved slowly, thicker than water. The main entrance was a tunnel of light, and Hemantha glimpsed movement within it.

“The White Lady,” Pamu whispered. He grabbed the railing so hard Hemantha thought he would break it. “The Waggoner’s Bane. She who waits for the lonely traveler on stormy nights, when the trees bloom white.”

A shape moved in the paste-bright entrance. Hemantha rounded the railing and slowly made his way down the stairs until the shimmer licked at his ankles.

“No, Hemantha,” Pamu hissed. “Are you crazy?”

Maybe he was crazy. Hemantha drew in long, shaking breaths, fighting hard to calm himself. Despite his fear, something drew him downward, toward the light. He took tentative steps, not able to stop himself. As he neared the bottom, he turned to the others. Pamu and Rangol hadn’t moved from their spots at the railing. Their eyes shone as feeble pinpoints in their faces, their mouths ajar.

Hemantha reached the ground floor, trapped inside the mechanical movements of his own body. All around him, maggots oozed over the walls in thick clusters. They crawled beneath the lamps and dangled on threads from the chandelier. They shimmered like living pearls, white colonies that squirmed out of the shadows.

It was too much—the maggots, the brightness, everything. As a shape thickened in the cocoon of light, spread out like a bouquet of pale jasmine flowers, Hemantha’s terror broke the spell, and he ran.

 

“It’s busted.” Hemantha slammed the hood shut and wiped his hand on his pants. He brushed past the cluster of plastic bottles dangling beside the exhaust as he rounded the vehicle. The sound of the heavy metal panel crashing back into place rolled through the forest like thunder, and barbets and hornbills thrashed in the treetops. “It’s properly busted.”

He spat into the grass. The lorry had stalled in the middle of the road and its load of freshly cut logs now blocked the way. “Just take a shortcut, yea? Take the old road, it’s what seeya used to do. Well, did seeya ever tell you how his truck broke down in the middle of the goddamn forest?”

“Seeya didn’t have a truck, he had horses.” Rangol grimaced as he leaned against a tree at the side the road. “And he always kept his horses in good order.”

“Are you saying I don’t take care of my truck?”

“You tell me.” Rangol pushed off from the tree and strolled back toward the vehicle. “Can you fix the thing, or what?”

“Not without spare parts.” Hemantha shook his head. “We have to get someone to tow it, but they won’t make it before nightfall.”

Pamu emerged from behind the truck. “Nah, they won’t. So, is there anywhere to go, Mr. Seeya-Knows-A-Shortcut? Or are we spending the night in the truck?”

“Let’s all take a breath. This bickering, will it help us?” Hemantha glared at his coworkers. “The truck is wrecked, and we are in the middle of the forest. I think we better get moving.”

“Moving where? Rangol, does your seeya have any tips for that, huh?”

“As a matter of fact, yea. Seeya always stopped in a village at the edge of the forest. There should be a fork somewhere up the road. It’s not that far.”

Hemantha looked around. The jungle was thick and lined the road in an unbroken wall of green. Palm leaves as big as a man teetered in the warm breeze, and the treetops closed in a canopy overhead.

“All right.” Pamu shrugged his broad shoulders. “Let’s take a hike.”

They walked silently until they reached a crossroads where a milky river gurgled between boulders and vanished below the road, surfacing again on the other side. Monkeys climbed in the branches of a tall tree and screeched at them as they passed. The gloom behind the shrubbery deepened by the minute. Hemantha hoped that they would reach this village before nightfall. He had a torch with him, but the jungle would still be dark—and in the darkness, danger.

“Is that your seeya’s village?” he asked Rangol.

An old temple appeared from out of the murk, built into the hillside, overlooking a bend of the road. Its stupa was a skeleton dome with ragged flaps of fabric. Wind and rain had washed away the faces of the Buddha statues around it.

“Hilarious.” Rangol barked a bitter laugh and pressed on with long strides. “I don’t even think it’s the village temple, just some shrine. Or a monastery.”

“Who builds a monastery in the middle of the forest? How would they feed the monks?”

“There’s a road, no? But it's probably a shrine. Pretty big one.”

“And pretty abandoned. No one has prayed here since your seeya was young.”

When Hemantha closed his eyes, he could almost hear a choir of male voices carried down the hill by the breeze. “Unless you want to spend the night here, praying we don’t see a leopard, we need to move on.”

“Right.”

They continued along the road and left the hill behind. The soil turned to mud, and their feet squelched with every step. Mosquitoes buzzed in the air, and Hemantha swatted them as they bit at his arms and neck.

They passed a signpost overgrown with vines and tried to decipher the name on it. Andakunthu? Adakanthu? It was too faded for Hemantha to make sense of, and the name didn’t ring any bells.

When the sign was far behind, they came upon a bus depot, with four rusted busses hulking under a sheet roof.

Hemantha scanned the bus depot. “You’re not leading us into a ghost town, Rangol, are you?” Judging by the state of the vehicles, no one had come here in years. This had to be a part of the public transport fleet abandoned for lack of gas and spare parts. “You think any of those busses still go? Nah, right? If the tank is empty, we could get some petrol from our truck…”

Pamu didn’t even slow down. “Forget about it. Any gas would have been scavenged long ago. And it wouldn’t be good now anyway. We’ll get someone to tow or repair our truck tomorrow. Let’s find this village, if it exists.”

 

The forest beside the road grew darker and denser with every step. Hemantha held his torch in hand but didn’t turn it on. The remaining sunlight filtered down through the branches, but it wouldn’t last much longer.

Pamu walked ahead, his shovel-like hands buried in his pockets. “How far do you think it is? Rangol?”

“I’ll know when we get there, just like you. Just enjoy the walk, will you? You know, seeya had a story for every tree. Listening to him, the forest was filled with ghosts and white elephants. At every waterfall, a pair of lovers had plunged to their death, and every trail led to a forgotten hermit or a cache of gold.”

Pamu snorted. “A cache of gold would be nice.”

Hemantha blocked out his colleagues’ banter and concentrated on the forest. These were old trees, many of their canopies so interwoven that they seemed inseparable—like one enormous organism. The trunks had white patches on them, a rash that spread over their roots and up into the branches. Maybe a fungus, maybe chemicals, maybe an infestation of vermin. Hemantha had seen many trees die from such causes, and more than once, his own cargo had suffered.

The only thing was that these trees didn’t look dead. They had white rashes as if someone had splashed bleach on them, but they showed no signs of sickness: no fallen branches, no loose bark, no discolored leaves. They seemed as healthy as the day they sprouted, decades or centuries ago.

“Rangol? Pamu? Have you seen this, on the trees? Any idea what it is?”

Rangol scratched his head, and Pamu shrugged: “Fungus? It proliferates after rain and can sprout anywhere. I’ve seen it on one tree, then all over the place a few days later. As long as there’s water, it’ll grow.”

“Yea. That must be it, right?” Hemantha didn’t press the topic. After all, what did it matter? When morning came, they would leave this corner of the forest and never return.

“It’s getting dark now.” Pamu craned his neck to glimpse the sky through the canopy. The bright red of sundown washed through the branches and stained the landscape a brown and yellow mélange.

“Let's hurry,” Hemantha said as he turned on the torch and quickened his stride to pull the others with him. Bats swarmed over the treetops, and the shrubbery filled with movement. The jungle shifted as nocturnal animals emerged and timid daytime creatures scrambled for cover. The trees oppressed the road, loomed over it with muscular branches and thick leaves. Flying squirrels jumped amidst the highest branches. Rats and civet cats rustled in the grass. Moths fluttered over the path and circled around Hemantha and his flashlight.

The sun fell fast, and the evening glow dissolved into gray ash. The road took another turn, and Hemantha's mind raced. If they didn't reach this village soon, they would have to sleep in the forest.

“What are we going to do? For the night, I mean.” Hemantha spoke into the night and half-expected silence in response.

“It can’t be far.” Rangol had gotten serious, thrusting his legs forward with force. Soon he’d pulled so far ahead of them he was not much more than a dark outline on the road. “We just have to hurry.”

They trotted along the forest road, but each new bend led deeper into the wilderness. There was no sign of humans here, as if they had traveled back to ancient times before even the kingdoms of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.

The trees squeaked and chattered. Fist-sized holes yawned between their roots, a network of burrows that looked far-reaching and deep. Bald patches shimmered along the roots’ gnarled skin and filled the shadows with faint motion.

Then, familiar movement in the gloom. Was that a kid? Hemantha’s heart pounded so high in his throat he feared he might throw up. At the end of a corridor of trembling branches, a boy waved, a near-translucent form between colorless ferns.

Hemantha blinked. The boy’s light pierced the trees and rolled through the tunnel of twisted black shapes. But as soon as Hemantha had caught his breath, the boy had disappeared. Now in the narrow beam of light he glimpsed something pale, the color of eggshell and the size of his head. A half-sunken stone with inscriptions, withered and overgrown by moss.

“Hey! Are you dreaming, Mantha? Keep your torch on the road.”

“Sorry.” He panned the torch back to the path. “Let's go.”

They followed the road, and the forest reluctantly gave way. The undergrowth thinned, and the trees withdrew their branches. All of them knew the signs: they were approaching the fringe of the jungle.

“There! We found it, look.” Rangol sprinted a few steps, then paused again. “It’s right there.”

The forest opened up onto paddy fields, and Hemantha discerned a glow in the distance. The lights of a village, no doubt. But they shone from the other side of the fields, separated by an expanse of shadows and swaying rice stalks.

“Not there. Here.”

Hemantha followed Rangol’s gesture. At first glance, he took the shape ahead for a hill or a stone formation. But its lines were too straight, its angles too sharp. A large building crouched there, wedged between the jungle and the fields.

“This isn’t a village,” Pamu said with a grimace. “It’s an abandoned house.”

Hemantha nodded to himself. He saw the roof now, the windows and walls. The house stood out from the paddies, disconnected from the trees. It didn't belong here.

“Who lives there, the King of Kandy? Look at the size of that place.”

Hemantha shrugged. “I’m looking at the sky, and it looks black. Doesn’t matter who lived here, we take shelter till morning and then find help in the village. It’s on the other side of the paddies, and it would take us a while to get there. Two hours in daylight, but four at night.”

“Yea. Let’s stay at the house.” Pamu agreed reluctantly. “A palace for the night, no?”

 

The entrance of the house was a cavern of exquisite crawling woodwork and peeling plaster. Hemantha stepped over the threshold and onto the stone floor of the grand hall.

Above the expansive staircase, the chandelier hung as high as the canopy of a hora tree, and all the windows were taller than Hemantha himself. The dimensions of the house seemed almost industrial, like a warehouse or the timber mill to which they delivered their cargo. Scuffing his worn leather shoe over the dusty stone entry, Hemantha corrected himself: to which they would deliver their cargo, one day later than planned.

“There are so many rooms here.” Pamu pushed past Hemantha and proceeded into a long hallway. He opened every door to peek into the rooms, eager to find something of value. “This one is the kitchen,” he exclaimed. “Some fancy cutlery, and a whole shelf of jars. Looks like amma’s kitchen, everything in there from soup to buttons.”

Hemantha paused at the sound of rummaging emanating from behind the entrance through which Pamu disappeared. He imagined his friend digging through the kitchen drawers like an animal through a trash heap.

“It’s a wonder that stuff’s still there.” Rangol swiped his finger around the rim of a vase next to the staircase. “Very little dirt, no?”

“There’s no water,” Pamu called, still bustling about in the kitchen.

Hemantha shrugged. They just needed a place for the night, nothing more. “Are there bedrooms, Pamu? Somewhere to sleep?”

“Probably upstairs.” Rangol put a probing hand on the railing and started up the steps. “Rich people don’t sleep on the ground.”

“And you know about rich people, huh? Pamu, we’re going upstairs. Shout if you find anything.”

Hemantha followed Rangol onto the upper level. The stairs didn’t bend, they didn’t creak, they remained solid and silent. Apart from a thin veneer of dust, they looked quite clean as well. But the paint and plaster of the upper hallway was like wrinkled, leathery skin. All the doors along the length of the hall stood open, and Hemantha wandered into one of them. Empty bookcases lined the walls of this room and on the far side of there was a passage into another chamber, but Hemantha had seen enough. The air was suffocating here, and he tasted a thousand stiff pages on every breath.

“Rangol, any luck?” Hemantha called. The next room he checked was a master bedroom, and Hemantha shouted again: “Never mind, I found it. Pamu, get up here. I got us a place to sleep.”

The king-sized bed had a tangle of yellowing mosquito nets dangling above. A luxurious nightstand carved with lotus flowers stood next to it. There was a bathroom beyond the bed, a wardrobe in the corner. The windows facing the forest admitted writhing shadows.

“If you walk in that direction, you get to the truck,” Hemantha said, pressing his nose against the glass as he looked out into the night. “Let’s keep that in mind for tomorrow, yea? Rangol?”

“I know how to get to the truck. I’m not an idiot.” Rangol strolled into the room. Behind him, Pamu’s labored footfalls sounded on the stairs. “You know what this reminds me of? This lonely house in the forest, and all that fungus on the trees?”

“I do.” In the doorway, Pamu held up a plastic bottle. “Not a drop of water in the whole house. I’ve heard this story. The White Lady, right? Waiting in the jungle with a baby in her arms, the trees painted white, leaves dripping with rain? Preying on lone men driving home at night when they should have been with their families. She waits for them, and then she eats them whole.”

“Yea.” Rangol rolled his eyes as he tapped his fingers on the nightstand. “Mushrooms grow like spilled milk around her. Her thousand eyes and teeth blink and chatter beneath the trees.” He snorted. “Scary stuff, huh?”

“You shouldn’t joke,” Pamu said, frowning. “It’s an old story, and old stories don’t lie. That’s why we trusted your seeya, isn’t it?”

“No, we trusted him because he is my seeya, and because he has taken that road many times.”

Hemantha sighed. “Really, anyone would think you two have been married for twenty years. We’ll spend the night here and move on tomorrow, all right? No ghost stories, no jokes. Let’s find some blankets and go to sleep.”

 

With his arm shielding his eyes from the terrible brightness—from the terrible shape within the brightness—Hemantha sprinted across the ground floor hallway. His feet hammered over the stone, the light from his torch surrounding him with rushing shadows. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t bear to see that strange figure again. Though it was more solid with every passing moment, it wasn’t natural.

The corridor stretched impossibly long, and Hemantha fought a cramp in his side as he ran. The air burned in his lungs with every step, but he didn’t slow down. The house released him, and Hemantha flung himself out into the garden. But even here, milky illumination flowed over the grass and dripped from the bushes. The duckweed-covered pond stirred with bright eyes, tree branches hung low with the weight of cocoons. Behind him, pale brightness wavered on the other side of the ground floor windows, tracking him through the hallway.

Breathing too fast, he stumbled through the overgrown garden. Thorns and burrs raked across his skin, tore into him. He paid them no attention. But he couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder, though already the exertion and fear threatened his heart. When he turned back and gave himself fully to his flight, the forest swallowed him with its broad-leafed maw.

All around him, the night forest breathed. Leaves rustled. Branches sagged under pattering paws. Ferns bobbed up and down under the weight of creatures that Hemantha couldn’t see. He put his hands to his knees, and panted like an animal. As he caught his breath, the dark veil of panic cleared from his eyes. The forest was bright enough to see a trail, a path through fern fronds and orchid blossoms. The soil was waxen as if moonlight licked over it, but the canopy still shrouded the sky.

Hemantha heard no monkeys, no birds, not even the wind. It was suddenly so still that Hemantha wondered if he’d walked into a dream. A strange noise reverberated through the air, and Hemantha flinched. Metal against metal.

“Rangol? Pamu? Are you here too?” The path snaked over bare roots, and Hemantha picked his way through the forest as the hollow metal beats grew louder. He stumbled, fell hard onto one knee. Something gave way inside him and he twisted in pain. When he called out for help, the tree branches above him writhed like snakes.

“Who’s there? Someone, anyone? Please.” He struggled back to his feet, but one leg no longer supported his weight. Brightness dripped from his arms onto his pants, which were already soggy with a strange mix of dew and light.

The path led Hemantha deeper into the forest, an old trail cut through the foliage, now used only by the sambar and the creatures that stalked them. The white light welled up from a clearing to reveal a human shape, something resembling a woman but unsteady, her skin in constant motion.

A boy sat on the ground between Hemantha and the woman-shape, a naked teenager with tangled hair. The light formed puddles on the forest floor around him. The boy opened his mouth, and his teeth shone bright.

“Uncle Ushu?”

The boy had arranged empty tin cans into a semi-circle on the thick mat of grass and fallen leaves in front of him. Behind the center can was a pile of dark, oily seeds clustered like spider eyes. He held a spoon in one hand, and with the other he dropped a seed into one can after another, striking each can with the side of the spoon. Each strike rattled and echoed through the jungle like an axe striking a tree. The woman’s skin vibrated in tune with the sounds, rippling like water, shedding smaller drops of light that then scurried across the forest floor.

How could this be? Hemantha’s head was spinning, but he tried to focus. “Who is Ushu?”

“She only adopts children, uncle.” The boy’s spoon trembled in mid-air. “I thought you were Ushu. I thought you had come back from the house.” The boy rose from the ground and stepped into the embrace of the shifting woman-shape. Fog covered the trees like colonies of pale fungus, billowing underneath the canopy. “I am sorry.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Hemantha whispered. The forest floor seemed to rise up in a single body to swarm around him. Tiny white feet scuttling over the soil, fur brushing against fur. Hemantha's blood curled in his capillaries as he pushed against the leaves and branches that seemed to have gathered behind him. “I’m Hemantha, not Ushu.”

“No.” The boy shook his head, and Hemantha pressed his eyes shut.

A different voice spoke to Hemantha from behind the child, at once female and feral: “No, you are red milk and broken bones.”