Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (7 page)

For another thing, even if I ignored the cows, everything I saw was completely off the wall. Even though it was dark out, men and woman still ran around with things on their heads like trays of food, and brass jugs, and even bales of hay. There were carts of leather shoes, vegetables, and spices, and I was pretty sure I saw a camel. From the looks of it we were in some kind of outdoor market or bazaar. Incense filled the air with a sweet smell, like fruit mixed with nuts and smoke. Long rolls of bright yellow, orange, and red fabric sat in bundles. And it was raining. It was raining like I had never seen it rain before. Already the street was beginning to flood.
 

The rain wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it was that I was mad. Really mad. Mostly mad at Zak, partly mad at myself, and even a little bit mad at my mother for leaving in the first place. I didn’t further discuss whatever had just leapt over us in that grassy field with Zak. I didn’t discuss it for the same reason that I hadn’t discussed the talking elephant at the bottom of the pool, or the weird dreams; because I didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like either of us knew what we had just seen. All I knew was that I was freaked out, I suspected Zak was freaked out, and I hoped, for the time being at least, that was the end of it. Of course, things don’t always turn out like you hope. They do, however, sometimes turn out like you dream, but I didn’t know that then. What I knew was that whatever that roaring, panting thing was, it didn’t matter for the time being. We had a whole other set of concerns.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“We just got here,” Zak replied.

“We are going to get into so much trouble when we get back.”

“Not if we don’t tell anyone we were gone.”

I leaned back against a lamppost. Already I was soaked to my skin in the heavy rain. Litter and trash floated past my ankles as the street flooded. I saw signs written in letters I couldn’t understand and goats and people going about their business like it was the middle of the day, even though it looked like the middle of the night. I’ve got to admit, at that moment, what I was experiencing was a nightmare. There was no other way to put it. A few hours ago, I had been in a beautiful hotel. Now I was in the street in the middle of some city that I didn’t even know the name of, hungry, soaked to the skin, and I really needed to go to the bathroom.

The more I thought about our predicament, the worse it got. We had no money because my allowance was back at the hotel and I’d forgotten to change it into rupees anyhow. I didn’t have any contact info for my mom. My hip hurt from spending the last three hours lying on my side in a hard steel box. And that was without even dwelling on whatever panting thing had jumped over us in the field. The thing that really got me though, the worst thing about it, was that Zak seemed to be enjoying himself.
 

I admit that at that moment, I began to cry. I don’t know why. I don’t know if I’d just been holding it all in for too long, but I broke down and began blubbering away like a baby. The hot tears ran down my face with the rain. I felt myself begin to hyperventilate as I tried to get ahold of my emotions. I’m not a person who cries a lot. I like to be in control. But I don’t know, something about everything that had just happened just begged to be released. I blubbered on like a baby for at least a minute. I’m not sure if Zak saw me. I couldn’t see him.
 

 
Through my tears I saw a cow splash by, followed by a man pedaling a three-wheeled bicycle with an empty seat in the back. I knew that the three-wheeled bicycle was another kind of rickshaw, but I didn’t pay it much attention. An old lady with golden hoops in her ears and deep lines on her face came up to me. I didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but I thought she might be begging for money. Of course, I didn’t have any. I’d be joining her soon.
 

“Sorry I don’t have money,” I said between gasps. “I really don’t have anything.”

As the words left my mouth, a light blue butterfly with black spots on its wings fluttered by. The old lady smiled and moved on, and the rickshaw driver turned to us. I didn’t know where she had come from, but I now saw a beautiful woman wearing a royal-blue sari sitting in the back of the rickshaw. The crowd was moving quickly though. In another moment the beautiful woman had disappeared from my sight and another woman, this one blind in both eyes, approached. There were sewn-up black holes where the woman’s eyes used to be. I had to look away because I wanted to scream. India was turning out to be much more than I had been prepared for. I took a deep breath, struggling to get ahold of myself. I turned my head and this time I saw Zak, a little farther off in the crowd. Typical boy I thought to myself. Not worried about a thing. He seemed to be having a blast.

“Hello India!” Zak screamed into the rain.

I slouched lower against the lamppost and ran a hand over my tears. We needed to get out of there. We needed a plan.

“Do you have place to stay for the night?” I overheard a woman’s voice say.

I glanced back through the sea of arms and legs to see Zak speaking to the beautiful woman in the back of the rickshaw. The woman’s hair was long and dark and there was something luminous about her, her bright eyes sparkling in the night.

“Not yet,” Zak said.

“Well, if you’d like, I can help you with that.”

“Can I drive?”

“Ask him.”

Zak motioned to the driver, a little man with deep bags under his eyes wearing a cloth skirt for men called a lungi. The lungi really wasn’t much more than a cotton sheet tied around the waist, or so I had read, but I guessed that in a hot place like India, it was comfortable. The driver seemed to understand what Zak wanted because he got into the back seat. Thinking back to my reading, I was pretty sure that the rickshaw driver was called a wala. Basically, wala was a word for someone who did something in India, so it made sense that the driver would be called a rickshaw wala. Zak hopped onto the front seat of the bicycle rickshaw and started to pedal, ringing the bell like he was driving a bus. He pulled up right in front of me.

“Staying there?”

“Not if I can help it,” I said, hoping that he couldn’t tell I’d been crying.

“Then get in.”

“You’re the reason we’re in this mess. Why should I come with you?”

The blind woman pushed forward, extending her hand to me. Then she removed her long checkered scarf, a gumcha I think they call it, to reveal a scaly pinkish snake she had coiled around her neck. My heart skipped a beat and I jolted backward as the snake slithered down her arm and into her hand toward me. I’ve got to say right now: I hate snakes. I don’t know why, but they just creep me out, like circus clowns, and rats. There was only so far I could go to get away though. I backed right into a wall. The pink snake looked nearly translucent in places, its forked tongue tasting the air.

“Please come,” the woman in the rickshaw said. “It is not safe here.”

Really, it’s not safe? Imagine that. Did she think I wanted to stay? Without warning, the blind woman placed her bony fingers over my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. The snake was close to my face now. Close enough that I could hear it hissing in my ear. I pulled my head away from the woman’s bony grasp.

“You will see,” the blind woman said.

Maybe I would see, but whatever I did, whatever I saw, I knew that I couldn’t stay where I was. I carefully shuffled away from the snake woman and climbed into the back of the rickshaw.

Zak pedaled the rickshaw through the crazy streets as the weird jumbled madness of the city flew by. There were pigs snuffling through heaps of garbage. There were tiny stores selling all kinds of medicines and meats and nuts. And there were thousands, maybe millions of people just waiting in the rain. Now that I was done with my crying jag, I almost felt numb. It was like I wasn’t even there. Like I was watching the craziest movie of my life. I sat in the back of the rickshaw with the woman in blue on one side of me and the rickshaw wala on the other, feeling nearly hypnotized by the never-ending activity around us.

“Why are you helping us?” I asked the woman.

“Because you need a place to stay.”

“You know we have no money to pay.”

“I know.”

“What’s you name?” I asked.

“Amala.”

“Amala,” Zak said loudly. “I like that name.”

“Do you know why we’re here, Amala?” Zak asked.

“Yes,” Amala said.

Zak turned his head to look back at us, narrowly avoiding a pole as he did.

“You’ve come to find the Leopard,” Amala said.

“No way. How did you know about that?”

“Many people seek the Leopard,” Amala said.
 

“Wicked,” Zak said.

“Pull to a stop there, in front of the white building.”

 
There was now at least a foot of water in the street and Zak braked as best as he could. The bicycle rickshaw’s brakes screeched as the water sprayed off of them. The white building had a lone lamp above the door and a cracked wooden sign hanging off the front of it. The sign’s brass letters identified the building as the Swallowtail Lodging House. The place looked like something right of a fairy tale. There was a beautiful spotted blue butterfly on the sign. The butterfly was a good size, like the one I had seen in the street and it twitched its wings gently. The same spotted blue butterflies hovered in the doorway. Though the hotel was tiny and run-down, I was pretty sure it would be dry.
 

“Second floor, third room on the right,” Amala said. “Please stay for the night. If you’re hungry, Sai will cook for you. Tomorrow I have a friend I’d like you to meet.”

The rickshaw wala handed me an old-fashioned brass skeleton key and a photograph. Even the key looked like something out of a fairy tale. And I haven’t even gotten to the photograph. The old streaked color photo was a picture of a guy that, to me at least, could only be described as a crazy man. The man was quite old. He was at least as old as my grandfather and his hair was a wild thicket of gray and black. He wore yellow and red face paint and his body was covered in white ash. His lips were bright red and he had what looked like a wooden necklace of brown and red beads around his neck. He sat smiling and cross-legged, and basically naked except for a lungi and a large spotted lizard on his shoulder. From what I’d read, I guessed that the man in the picture was a sadhu, the Hindi name for a holy man, or maybe a yogi which I kind of thought was the same thing. I knew a yogi was someone who did so much yoga that they somehow developed almost magical powers. I didn’t know if the guy in the picture was magical or not, but he sure looked nuts.
 

“His name is Mukta,” Amala said. “Take the Number Six train to Moon Surrie in the morning. You’ll find him from there.”

We sat there for a moment in the rickshaw, the rising floodwaters flowing past its tires. Zak didn’t move from the bicycle seat, so I tapped him on the shoulder. It was raining so hard that the fast-moving drops ricocheted back up off the flooded street creating a storm of white water. I could barely see Zak through the mist. Finally, Zak stepped down into the watery street. The floodwaters were already up to his shins. When I stepped down to join him, I noticed that the rickshaw wala was still there, but Amala wasn’t. I joined Zak on the steps of the hotel and, as I did, a storm of blue butterflies fluttered past me. Their wings were so soft that I felt like I was walking though a flying carpet. As they flew into the street, one of the butterflies came to rest on my hand. I admired its spotted blue wings before turning to take a final look up and down the flooded street. Amala was nowhere to be seen.

We ate at in a little kitchen on the bottom floor of the hotel. There was a woman there, Sai, I guess, with some noodle soup in a big blackened aluminum pot. Sai stirred the soup with a long crooked stick. I don’t know why she didn’t use a spoon, but I was too tired and hungry to ask. I’m pretty sure the soup was the Indian version of Mr. Noodles and I thought it was pretty good. I knew we didn’t have any money, so I was thankful she didn’t ask us to pay. We sat at a wooden table in the smallish room and slurped back the slightly spicy broth. I kid you not that I did not say a single word to Zak. He seemed to get the hint because he didn’t say anything to me either. Maybe he’d seen me crying earlier. Maybe he was just respecting my privacy. I didn’t know. We thanked Sai with a smile and a little nod when we were done, and went up to the room.

What can I tell you? The room was no Delhi Grand Palace, but I didn’t really care because I was totally exhausted and just glad to have a place to rest. The medium-sized room had a concrete floor and stained plaster walls, with two beds and a single ceiling fan churning the heavy air. The rough wooden beds had scratchy ropes strung across them to make mattresses, kind of like a hammock. I locked the door with the dead bolt and lay down on the nearest bed without saying a word. I swear I was fast asleep before my head hit the ropes.
 

I had another one of my weird dreams that night. It started off pretty normally given the events of the day. I dreamt I was in a confusing, crowded city. I was being followed. I looked behind me and I couldn’t see who was following me, but I knew that whoever it was, he was there. I walked more quickly, bumping into people as I moved, but still, I was being followed. I broke into a run, then hid in a doorway. It didn’t matter. Whoever it was, was still coming. I ran up the stairs and hid in a room. The room looked a lot like the room I had gone to sleep in. Plaster peeled from the walls and a ceiling fan spun slowly above. I could hear footsteps. There was nowhere to go. I hid on the cool concrete floor under the rope bed. I couldn’t see much from under there, but I heard the footsteps enter the room. Then the footsteps faded away. Sunlight flooded the room. It was day. And when I looked across the floor I saw four giant muddy paw prints on the concrete.
 

 
I woke up. I was in the same room as in my dream. The slow-moving fan continued to spin, sunlight filtering in through the dirty, cracked window. Zak was still asleep on the other side of the room. I watched as more of the delicate spotted blue butterflies fluttered around. I had read about them in the flora and fauna section of my guide book. They belonged to the Swallowtail butterfly family. I was pretty sure the one’s here in the hotel were called Blue Mormons. I stood up and stepped across the room to shake Zak awake.