The Revenge of Kali-Ra Read online

  “Wow,” said Nadia, sitting down cozily next to her. “Tell me more about these Enlightened Ones.”

  “It may cost you,” said Melanie. “Mrs. Ricardo wants twenty thousand a week as a consultant to the picture.”

  “We can work something out,” said Nadia, giving Melanie a dismissive wave. She turned eagerly back to Lila. “Did these, like, Enlightened Ones sort of guide him? I feel I have Spirit Helpers from another plane who led me to the Kali-Ra books.”

  “Of course they did,” said Lila. “Nothing happens by chance. It is all part of the twisted skein of fate. You and I, Miss Wentworth, were meant to meet and work together, so that the world might know the strange, alluring power of Kali-Ra and all she stands for. Valerian will assist us from beyond the veil.”

  “Well, if that’s settled, there’s some filing I should do,” said Melanie, eager to get away from Lila’s presence. She’d give a heads-up call to George, Nadia’s business manager, and let him know that Nadia was once again being played for a sucker by some greedy leech, and this time she was swallowing the pitch whole.

  CHAPTER V

  AN UNEXPECTED LEGACY

  The next time Nick went to Grandpa’s apartment at Manderleigh Manor was a few days after the funeral. The old man had had one great big stroke. Nick’s mother had said this was a blessing, as his last years had been so sad. The funeral had been very nice and seemed to cheer her up a lot. Some of Grandpa’s old cronies from the lumberyard were there and told Nick and his mother how much everyone loved Bill and how he was always a solid guy who could estimate board feet to the inch with a mere flick of the eye. An old neighbor lady said that after her husband had died, Bill Johnson had mowed her lawn every Saturday during the summer for years.

  Now Nick and his mother were going through Grandpa’s things. It was pretty depressing folding up all his clothes and putting them in boxes to take to the Goodwill—the plaid shirts and work pants he used to wear to the lumberyard, and his old worn-out slippers.

  “There’s really not much, thank goodness,” said his mother with a sigh. “We got rid of a ton when Mom died, and then more when he moved in here.” She gazed over at the wall. There were two black-and-white framed photographs—a wedding portrait of Grandpa and Grandma and a picture of Nick’s mother as a baby—and color pictures of Nick and his sister taken when they were two and eight. “I’d like that picture of Mom and Dad, and that’s about it.”

  “Whatever you want,” said Nick apologetically. Grandpa had astonished everyone by leaving everything to his grandson. The will had explained that Bill Johnson had taken care of his only daughter during his lifetime. This he had done by turning over his house to her in some weird scam Nick didn’t understand so that Manderleigh Manor wouldn’t get it all and Medicare would have to pay for more of Grandpa’s nursing home or something. The will had also noted that Nick’s older sister was doing well, which was true. Elizabeth was a dentist, married to another dentist.

  At first, Nick felt embarrassed by his status as sole heir. After thinking about it for a while, however, the whole thing gave him a nice warm glow. Grandpa must have liked him, must have appreciated, in some way, his awkward visits. Unfortunately, it turned out Grandpa didn’t really have much. Just the contents of the apartment here, a little cash, and a few municipal bonds that added up to seven thousand dollars. Seven thousand dollars didn’t seen like a lot for a guy who had worked hard all his life. You couldn’t buy a new car with that or anything. Nick hadn’t decided what to do with it yet, although he was tempted to use it to travel to somewhere warm. With palm trees.

  “What should we do with the furniture?” asked his mother with a sigh. “The Goodwill too, I guess. Although maybe that colonial stuff is coming back in style. Everything does eventually.”

  To Nick, the maple coffee table, the green sofa with the wooden arms and the flounce, the flowered chair with matching footstool, all had a certain charm associated with an era he imagined as safe and cozy—an era when parents didn’t get divorced, when mothers wore aprons and were unharried instead of unmarried, and kindly dads were on hand to play catch in the backyard. It was an era Nick was sorry he had missed, experiencing it only vicariously in television reruns.

  “I’ll keep the furniture for now,” he said. “I think it looks kind of homey.”

  Mom sighed. “I remember how much I hated it when they bought this stuff when I was in college,” she said. “I wanted them to get a Parsons table and big cushions for the floor. I was such a pretentious little thing.” She began to weep a little.

  Nick put his arm around his mother, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. “It feels weird not to have parents anymore,” she said. “Even at my age.”

  “I can imagine it does,” said Nick, patting her shoulder and feeling helpless and inadequate, as he often did when she turned to him for emotional support. It was at times like this that he felt like calling Dad and yelling at him for ditching out and leaving Mom alone.

  And where was Elizabeth? She should be here helping Mom. She claimed she couldn’t afford to, because her time was so valuable and she and her husband had to keep about eight chairs going at once, just to pay the interest on their student loans. Nick, who had loved and admired his big sister when they were children, felt distant from her now. He reflected sadly that if there had been anything in Grandpa’s estate worth squabbling over, Elizabeth and Dan would have dropped their drills and raced down here as fast as their silver Lexus could carry them.

  Nick’s mother sniffed bravely, wiped her eyes, stood up straight and looked around the little apartment. “I don’t know how much of this I can take.”

  “Listen, Mom, we don’t have to do all this now. Let’s just do one load now. Then I’ll come back and get the rest later. We can go through it slowly. Okay?”

  Nick’s mother agreed. They loaded up as much as they could fit in the back of her old Volvo station wagon, including some mysterious boxes that had once held canning jars, and took everything over to Nick’s basement apartment in St. Paul. Then Nick took his mom out for a pizza and a movie, which, with his employees’ courtesy pass, cost him nothing.

  It was the next day, while all by himself in his apartment, that Nick opened the canning jar boxes and found bundles of letters, all neatly folded in their envelopes. The first batch was from World War Two—letters his grandparents had exchanged while Grandpa was overseas. Nick read them with fascination. Here was this guy who could die at any moment, and a couple of people who were madly in love, at least they were engaged, but neither of them seemed to sense the drama of it all. “How’s the prettiest girl in the world? I’m counting the days, honeybunch, ’til we can be together. Can’t wait to sit on that porch and smooch. Say hi to your folks.” “Dear Billy, We pooled all our butter coupons and made a couple of pies today. Mama’s leg is better. I miss you too.”

  There were also letters his mother wrote home from college and his own misspelled crayoned missives and letters from camp. What Nick found most interesting, however, was the one letter from Uncle Sid.

  Los Angeles, California August 15, 1962

  My dear nephew Bill,

  Life’s a queer thing. Who would ever have thought that I, Valerian Ricardo, once lionized by the masses and the companion of dukes and duchesses, would have to throw myself on the mercy of a stranger, a man I have never met, but to whom I am connected through the most sacred of human ties—that of blood? I can only hope and pray that some remnant of family feeling still exists.

  Although I have never been fond of children, I remember your mother as a pleasant child. She must have been about eight when I left Minnesota for good. I don’t know what your mother told you about her uncle Sid. I’m afraid the family was never open-minded. Anyway, I left, vowing never to return, and led a life devoted to literature and the study of the Esoteric Secrets of Hidden Masters. I regret nothing and believe my destiny was cast long before I entered this earthly plane.

  Unfortunately, while my a
stral life is very satisfactory, materially speaking, I have never been as low as I am now. I’m afraid, Bill, that your great-uncle is a lonely old man, living alone with his memories, and hounded by unfeeling creditors. The sad truth is that I find myself in considerable (although temporary) financial distress, and I would be very grateful if I could borrow some money to tide me over. That an artist of my stature should find himself in this position reflects poorly on the kind of world ours has become. A few thousand dollars should take care of my most pressing obligations.

  It seems to me that it isn’t too much to ask, seeing as under the present circumstances, you will inherit the rights to all the Kali-Ra books after I have passed over into the Beyond. I have no will, and you are my only living relative. Frankly, the family was never very kind to me, but I am willing to forgive and forget all if I sense you have the kind of family feeling that will move you to take some responsibility for my situation.

  Ah, perhaps you are you sneering now. Perhaps you are saying, “The world has forgotten Valerian Ricardo! Those copyrights are worth nothing!” It is true that my work is out of print at the present time, but I believe with all my heart that the world will come back to its senses and appreciate truth and beauty once more.

  Do you think you could see your way to wiring the funds? Time is of the essence.

  Sincerely,

  Valerian Ricardo (Uncle Sidney)

  CHAPTER VI

  ON THE SPOOR OF KALI-RA

  The ad in the Yellow Pages for the House of Seven Genres Booke Nooke read “For the Discerning Connoisseur of Yesterday’s Sensational Literature. Mystery. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Horror. Suspense. Adventure. Collectibles. Book Searches. Mail Order. We Buy Libraries. Ask about Our Cozy Mystery Tea Time Book Discussion Group. Subscribe to Our Thuvia, Maid of Mars Newsletter. Visit Our Gothic Cellar—If You Dare. Visa. MasterCard.” The ad also included a website address and a 1-800 number.

  When Nick telephoned, he was delighted to learn they had five Valerian Ricardo books for sale and what the nasal clerk of indeterminate sex referred to as “some other Kaliana. But you’d better hurry. There’s going to be new interest in this area because of the Nadia Wentworth movie.”

  Nick hoped that the clerk wouldn’t be erasing the old prices and penciling in new ones in the time it took him to find the store. The Booke Nooke was wedged between a Laundromat and a martial arts school in a drab strip mall in the suburbs.

  Through dingy glass, Nick observed a jumbled window display. A listing nineteen-seventies department store dummy with sideburns and a white painted grin dressed in a Sherlock Holmes cape and deerstalker. A poster showing a pneumatic science-fiction babe in hubcap bra and chain metal G-string crouching aggressively. Some curling old black-and-white movie stills, scattered at artistic angles. Plastic Star Wars live action figures.

  Inside, behind the counter, there was a young, strapping female clerk who looked as if she could eighty-six five rowdy guys from a truck stop. She gave him a curt nod and continued reading a mystery called Marcel Proust and the Missing Madeleine.

  The phone rang, and the clerk grabbed it. “Seven Genres.” She listened for a moment, then said, “Hamsters and gerbils? No. Just cat and dog mysteries. Mostly cats,” and hung up.

  “Hi! I called about the Valerian Ricardo books and the Kaliana,” said Nick. He had already decided to go ahead and splurge and buy everything they had. After all, he was Valerian Ricardo’s great-grandnephew. Uncle Sid may have been a sleazebag, but he was a romantic figure, the only interesting relative Nick had ever come across. Uncle Sid had had the gumption to get out of Minnesota and run off to Europe and lead a glamorous life before hitting the skids in Los Angeles. He’d lived.

  The clerk put down her own reading with an air of reluctance. “Here,” she said, pushing a stack of books across the counter.

  Eagerly, Nick opened the one on top. Opposite the crumbling yellow title page, The Temple of Kali-Ra, A Tale of Evil and Intrigue by Valerian Ricardo, author of The Wrath of Kali-Ra, The Curse of Kali-Ra, The Sins of Kali-Ra, etc., was the following dedication:

  To all who yearn for adventure, may the spirit of Kali-Ra take you far away from shop and farm, from provincial town and grim little village, and transport you to a realm where life is lived to the fullest and the feelings of pain and pleasure are keen, if only for a little while. V. R.

  He opened the novel somewhere in the middle and, noting the musty smell of the old pages, began to read:

  “So, you stubborn Englishman, you try once more to foil my plans. Your foolish attempts are in vain as always.” The woman was transforming before his horrified eyes. The mocking green eyes with their hypnotic light, the cruel, sensuous mouth twisted with twisted pleasure replacing the sweet, innocent face he’d barely noticed at the doorstep. Raymond Vernon felt the cold steel of the manacles cutting painfully into his manly wrists and ankles.

  The trim little French maid with the demure lace cap who had let him into this house of horror had been yet another of her uncanny disguises! For he was looking once more into the face of the Queen of Doom—Kali-Ra!

  “You!” he said. “Still up to your old tricks, I see. World domination! Well, you won’t get away with it.” But even as he said these bold words, doubt crept into his soul. Could she be stopped? But she must! It had to be done. All of civilization, everything that was good and decent and civilized hung in the balance.

  Yet there was something about her cruel beauty that touched a darker place in Raymond Vernon’s soul, a place tainted, he realized with a shudder, by this very creature, part woman, part goddess, complete fiend.

  She laughed cruelly, a chilling but strangely exciting sound, like the pealing bells of some pagan temple. “Perhaps I shall keep you alive. For a while. For my amusement. Ah! I see you still bear the mark of the lash from our last encounter.” She stepped forward and drew the tip of her finger across the scar on his temple, the scar that mocked, yet strangely excited him every time he looked in the glass and observed his clean-limbed Anglo-Saxon face.

  Nick could see why Grandpa’s mother had said the books were trashy. Whips. Manacles. Dungeons. It read like a low-rent Story of O. And the writing was incredibly bad. Could a face be clean-limbed? And should a mouth twist with twisted pleasure? The idea that Uncle Sid had alienated his stolid relatives by getting rich off this sleazy stuff amused him, and he smiled.

  When he looked up, he saw that clerk was sneering at him and his apparent pleasure in the sadomasochistic text. “Valerian Ricardo is a specialized taste,” she said.

  “It’s pretty crappy stuff, isn’t it?” Nick said, with a little laugh that he hoped didn’t sound as forced as it was. “Actually, Valerian Ricardo was a relative of mine, and I was curious about his work.”

  The clerk shrugged her beefy shoulders and said, “Whatever,” adding with a hint of envy, “I guess you’ll get some money from the movie, and they might reprint in paperback.”

  Nick had already investigated this possibility after finding Uncle Sid’s begging letter to Grandpa. Unfortunately, in Uncle Sid’s day, copyrights lasted twenty-eight years. His last book, The Lash of Kali-Ra, had been published in 1926, remaining in copyright until 1954. Uncle Sid could have extended the copyright. Judging from the letter, dated 1962, he had. But he could only renew for another twenty-eight years, or until 1982.

  “They’re out of copyright,” said Nick as he checked out the other books in the stack. Four more moldy novels and a scholarly-looking modern work from some university press, called The Whip Hand: Issues of Gender and Genre in the Work of Valerian Ricardo. There was also a volume in a tattered dust jacket protected by a plastic library wrapper, called My Life with Valerian Ricardo: The True Story of the Fabulous, Forgotten Genius and Master of Metaphysics Who Created the Sensational Kali-Ra, as told by his life’s companion, Lila Lamb Ricardo.

  “That biography is from some vanity press,” said the clerk with contempt. “The author sold it out of the back of her car at fan
conventions.”

  Nick examined the Valerian Ricardo portrait on the cover, a sepia-toned studio shot of a dissipated-looking Uncle Sid. The eyes were haunted, the mouth sensuous but weak. His hair was carefully oiled and slicked down and his long-fingered hand was wrapped around a smoldering cigarette. Actually, though, he also looked vaguely familiar. Nick had the same slightly cleft chin. On the back of the dust wrapper was an author photo of a glittery-eyed woman of about sixty with a white pageboy, high cheekbones, and too much makeup.

  “I’ll take them all,” said Nick, removing his MasterCard from his wallet. He had decided for once in his life not to look at prices. He’d be getting his inheritance any day now, and had already planned to pay off his MasterCard balance then. This was fun.

  The clerk had written down all the prices by hand on an old-fashioned receipt, and now she was running the card through the scanner in a put-upon way, eyeing the Marcel Proust mystery with longing. The phone rang. She sighed and answered it as the receipt inched its way out of the machine.

  “Seven Genres.” A pause. Her scowling face suddenly took on a beatific light. “Wow! Really?” she said. “The real Nadia Wentworth?”

  Nick felt an exciting leap of his heart. The glow of celebrity emanated from the stack of his relative’s books and now from the phone receiver in this grungy little store. Suddenly, it seemed, life could be glamorous.

  “As a matter of fact, we do,” the clerk was saying. She sounded, perhaps for the first time in her life, eager to please. “I have them right here!”

  With a circular sweeping motion, she scooped away the books from where they sat in front of Nick and slid them to her side of the counter. “We’ve got five of the novels. The Temple, The Blade, The Spear, The Gong, and The Lash of Kali-Ra. No wrappers but all in good condition. The Spear is a first. London 1923. We also have a book of criticism, The Whip Hand: Issues of Gender and Genre in the Work of Valerian Ricardo, and,” here she lowered her voice dramatically, “a very rare, privately printed memoir with original dust jacket: My Life with Valerian Ricardo by Lila Lamb Ricardo, Long Beach 1978. Do you want them?”