Death Trance (30 page)

Reece gave a quick shake of his head and Stroup translated, 'Put the mask down, Jimmy, will you? Richard wants you to put it down.’

Heacox tossed the huge mask up into the air, caught it and then challenged both Reece and Stroup with a lopsided grin. 'Don't tell me you're scared of it? Come on, Bob. Don't tell me that. How about you, Richard? Chicken?’

As a last defiant gesture, he lowered the mask over his head and shuffled from side to side, shouting, 'Grrr! I eat fat-assed Americans like you for breakfast! With stir-fried noodles!’

He laughed harshly and raised his hands to remove the mask. But his laugh suddenly changed and he let out a horrifying scream, the kind of scream that Bob Stroup had not heard since three of his men had dropped into a
punji
trap full of sharpened stakes in Vietnam. Heacox clawed wildly at the sides of the Rangda mask and staggered around the courtyard.

'Jimmy!’ Bob Stroup shouted and caught hold of him. For one moment Stroup found himself staring straight into Rangda's face and he could have sworn he felt a chilly blast of sour breath. But then Heacox buckled and collapsed and the mask hit the stones of the courtyard with a hollow, wooden sound and rolled away.

As it rolled, the mask left a batik pattern of bright scarlet blood on the ground. It came to rest against the plinth of a nearby shrine.

Stroup turned around slowly to stare at Jimmy Heacox. He had seen some horrific injuries during the war: men with half their bodies blown away, yet still capable of smiling at you; men with no arms; men with no legs. But he was completely unprepared for the sight of Jimmy Heacox. Even Richard Reece, when he came up and stood beside him, looked apprehensive and the two of them were silent and unmoving for almost half a minute.

Heacox's head had been torn off his neck, leaving nothing but his larynx and his tongue: a long ribbon of red, torn-off tongue, like a grisly necktie.

'Holy shit!’ Stroup breathed at last. And then they turned simultaneously towards the mask. Reece made the gesture they had used during silent advances through the jungle to indicate that there might be booby traps around.

Stroup frowned at the mask in disbelief. 'A booby trap? What kind of booby trap can tear your head off? There wasn't any kind of explosion.’

They approached the mask cautiously. Reece prodded it with his foot, trying to roll it over so they could see inside it. Eventually they pressed the soles of their boots against it to try to topple it away from the shrine. They jumped back as a sensible precaution against a rigged explosion, but also out of fright. They could deal with danger they understood, but this was something different. Both of them knew there was no antipersonnel device ever invented that could have torn off Jimmy Heacox's head like that. Reece made a quick sign to Stroup that the way Heacox had been decapitated reminded him of a shark bite.

'Something with teeth anyway,’ Stroup agreed.

They bent forward and peered inside the open neck of the mask. Stroup took off his mask so he could see better. But the sunlight at this corner of the courtyard was quite bright and the illumination inside the mask was enhanced by the two glowing pinpoints that shone through the Goddess Rangda's eyeholes.

'It's empty,’ Stroup whispered. 'Where the hell's his head?’

Reece kicked the mask again but it was obvious that it was totally empty. Jimmy Heacox's head had been torn off, devoured, and was gone.

'I never saw anything like this,’ Stroup said in wonder.

Reece looked back at the body and shook his head in a way Stroup understood to mean, ‘The stupid jerk should have done as he was told and left the goddam mask alone.’

'He was scared of it,’ Stroup remarked. 'He was only trying to prove to himself that he was tough.’

Reece nodded towards the place where Randolph and Michael had been sitting, where Stroup had glimpsed the shadow. He did not have to make any gestures for Stroup to know what he was thinking. This death-trance business was a lot more hair-raising than either of them had realized. A lot more difficult too. And even if they
did
manage to bring the kid home for Mr Graceworthy, would Mr Grace worthy thank them for it? Christ Almighty, a mask that could bite a man's head off? People who could walk across a courtyard faster than you could even lift your gun to take aim at them? Devils and demons and who the hell knew what?

Stroup scratched the back of his neck and stared around the temple. 'We gonna stay?’ he asked. 'Supposing there's worse.’

Reece, behind his expressionless mask, indicated that they had a job to do, a job for masters who would not be patient if they failed. Heacox had disobeyed the first two laws of safety and survival:
Do not touch unless you have to, and then do not touch until you've checked.
And maybe here in the Temple of the Dead there was one more law, even more important:
Do not touch until you understand it.

What neither Reece nor Stroup knew was that the shock of Rangda's attack on Jimmy Heacox had rippled through the realm of the dead like a minor earthquake, rousing up fear and funeral debris, disturbing corpses in their graves, making ashes shift in urns. The dead suddenly raised their faces to the sun that never shone and listened, and through the world of veils and half-forgotten memories, there was a sharpened rustling sound. The leyaks had been alerted. Eyes glowed. Feet hurried through leaves and bone dust.

Randolph and Michael had just reached the corner of Jalan Vyasa, opposite the plain brick wall that surrounded the Dutch Reform Cemetery. Randolph had found their progress there hypnotic. They had walked in a curious gliding motion through the streets of Denpasar, and the sunlight had seemed blurry as if his face were covered with a translucent scarf. Noises had been strangely indistinct. Yet he had been able to see Michael clearly, and he was aware of a sharply heightened sensitivity, not to the everyday things around him, but to feelings and emotions in the air. At one street corner he had suddenly sensed regret. Not his own, but the regret of a woman who was sitting at a second-floor window staring out over the market and fanning herself.

Michael had said, 'You feel it? That's good. She has just lost her husband; there are still complicated emotional ties between him and her. Eventually they will unravel, you know, but right now they're still strong enough for you to be able to pick them up.’

Now, on the corner of Jalan Vyasa, both Randolph and Michael felt a sickening, prickly sensation, a sudden lurch of uncertainty.

'What is it?’ Randolph asked as Michael lifted his head to listen and concentrate.

'Something's happened,’ Michael told him anxiously. 'Something not too far away.’

'What do you mean, something's happened?’

Michael listened a little while longer but then shook his head. 'It's hard to say. Some kind of disturbance. There's a smell of leyak around the place.’

'What does a leyak smell like?’ Randolph wanted to know.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Michael said as they crossed the street. There's one group of Balinese who call themselves the Bali Aga, which means the original Balinese. They live on the shores of Lake Batur, which is very secluded, and they keep up all the ancient customs most of the Balinese have forgotten. One of the customs they've retained is that of lying their dead in the open, without coffins, and simply allowing them to fall to pieces. Well, if you go to their cemetery on a warm, humid day, when Lake Batur is thick with mist, and if you breathe in, that's what a leyak smells like.’

'Sounds like a pleasure I could happily do without.’ They reached the gates of the Dutch cemetery and flickered between the green-painted iron palings as if they were ghosts themselves. A wrinkled old man in a pink turban turned his head as he heard the gates squeak behind him, but they were gone by then. They passed the trim brick gatehouse, where three Dutch women in black were waiting for somebody, holding armfuls of flowers. Then they glided along the well-weeded brick pathway between rows of headstones so blindingly white that they appeared to Randolph to be shining through a fog. At last they turned off to the right beneath overhanging frangipani trees where the graves were older and less well-kept, and where the creeper had been allowed to grow wild along the cemetery wall. The sons and daughters of the dead who rested here were themselves dead, and so these dead were beyond remembrance.

Randolph followed Michael, his heart beating wildly. His mouth was dry, his ears sang and he was chilly with perspiration. Symptoms of fear, he thought. Indications of abject terror. It was frightening enough, entering this neglected part of the cemetery, without anticipating that you might actually meet the spirits who occupied it. He wiped his face with his hands and the salt sweat stung his eyes. The cicadas seemed to be deafening and the black cemetery birds hopped about and screeched over the graves.

'Now,’ Michael said, lifting one hand.

They stopped, side by side, where the brick path ran into gravel. Randolph looked around fearfully, excited and not knowing what to expect, not knowing what he would see or how he would react.

The spirits of the cemetery appeared beneath the dancing shadows of the trees with such sad grace that Randolph found it impossible to be frightened. They were indeed, as Michael had said, ordinary men and women and children. They approached silently and stood among the headstones only a few feet away, their hands by their sides, staring at Randolph and Michael with an expression of curiosity and longing.

‘These are really… the
dead?’
Randolph whispered.

Michael nodded.

Randolph took one or two careful steps forward. The people of the cemetery followed him with their eyes, turning around to watch him as he came among them. There were old men in black frock coats and with white hair that waved in other winds. There were soldiers with cropped heads and khaki uniforms, and eyes that spoke of inexperience and sudden death. There were women, their faces white with suffering, their starched bonnets reflecting the glow of immortality. There were children, some of them tiny, some with rickety legs, some with puzzled faces bloated by tropical disease.

Randolph walked farther into their midst and turned around and around so he could see all of them. He was so moved that he found the sweltering atmosphere of the graveyard almost suffocating. His chest seemed to be aching for air. His heart seemed to be aching for pity.

A young dead girl in a black dress came forward through the grass. Her cheeks were thin and her eyes were lambent and dark. She raised a hand towards him as if she were unable to believe that he really existed, a living being in the world of the dead.

'Can you speak?’ Randolph asked her hoarsely, his voice thick with emotion.

Michael said, ‘They're Dutch but most of them speak a little English.’

'You've seen them before?’ Randolph asked. 'You've actually heard them speak?’

The girl in the black dress said,
'We are all dead, sir. Can you save us?’

Randolph turned to Michael in desperation. 'What can I tell her? What can I say?’

Michael gently shook his head. There isn't anything you can say.’

Randolph looked back at the girl and said, ‘Tell me your name. Your name. Who are you?’

'Natalie, sir. Natalie Van Hoeve.’

Randolph slowly put out his hand, his palm turned towards the dead girl, his fingers spread. Natalie watched him and then raised her own hand in the same way. They both hesitated for a moment and then their fingertips touched, the dead and the living, the spiritual and the mortal. Randolph could feel her fingers, the delicate touch of them, but a cold tremble went through his body, a tremble that shook him to the core, not just his flesh, but his soul as well, and everything he had ever believed in.

Because if these people were still here after all these years, sadly wandering in this cemetery, where was the Lord their God? Where was their place in heaven?

Randolph drew his fingers away from Natalie's and said quietly, 'Bless you, Natalie. I hope you find peace.’

Then he went through the crowds of the dead - because there were thirty or forty of them now, and ever more gathering - and he touched them one by one. He felt their coldness and he felt their hopelessness, and the worst feeling of all was his own hopelessness because he knew that he himself would be dead in not many years to come and that all he could look forward to was emptiness, and longing, and eternal regret.

Michael had stayed where he was on the pathway, watching Randolph carefully. He understood exactly what Randolph was feeling; he had often felt the same way himself. It was too early for him to explain to Randolph that what people were in death was nothing more than they had been in life. To the passionate, passion; to the fulfilled, fulfillment. To the plain and the ordinary and the hopeless, an immortal existence like most of these people in this Dutch Reform Cemetery.

Randolph was still walking among the dead when Michael suddenly called his name. Not loudly but in a tone marked by its urgency and by its note of warning. Randolph turned around at once. Michael was pointing towards the dark, creeper-entangled wall of the cemetery where the trees overhung the graves so heavily that it was almost impossible to see the stones.