Skillful Death (77 page)

Eventually, I reach the fire.
 

The old monk brings me a cup of tea. It smells like eucalyptus.
 

He goes away. From the darkness recesses of the cave, a young-looking man in a white robe approaches. He lowers himself to his knees and warms his hands over the fire. When I smile at him, he smiles back.

“Are you the oldest?” I ask. From Bud’s story, I know that looks can be deceiving with these guys.

“I am. And I’m so glad you’ve returned,” he says.

“No. I’ve never been here before,” I say.

He nods.

“I understand,” he says.

He understands, but do I? It’s his lips that give away the secret. I watch his lips move while he says, “I understand,” and I realize that he’s not speaking English, or Russian, or Polish, or any other language I should know. It’s happening again. I’m in another place for the first time and yet I can understand the people, and they seem to know me already.

I need to just get what I came for and get out.

“Can I have candy?” I ask.

He laughs. His laugh is light and delicate. It sounds like the bells that drew me here. Speaking of which… I squint past the dim light of the fire and look at the cave walls. I find what I’m looking for. There are walled up little arches, built into the sides of the cave. I bet there are dead or dying monks behind those walls. I can’t believe they still practice this bizarre custom.

He covers his laugh with his hand.

“You came for candy?”

“The green candy. The kind that makes you remember,” I say.

“Oh,” he says, “that candy. That’s a very special kind of candy. We will have to make that for you.”

I don’t say anything, but the annoyance must show on my face.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We cannot keep that candy around. It’s made from the sap of a plant and it doesn’t stay fresh and potent for long once it’s mixed with the honey.”

“Really? Bud kept it for years before he ate his, and his memory returned.”

“Bud?”

Shoot. They wouldn’t have called him Bud. What would they have called him? Dom? Constantine? Torma? Wait, what was that other name, the name he used when he was a sailor? Osman…that’s it.

“Osman,” I say. “Do you know of Osman?” It suddenly occurs to me that this can’t be the same monk. Bud was here a hundred years ago. Why was I thinking it would be the same monk?

“Of course,” he says. “Osman. Yes, Osman. And you say it was years?”

“Years. And it worked. He remembered everything. I wrote it all down.”

“How curious. Regardless, we have none of that candy. It will take about ten days.”

Ten days? My extraction team will come and go and I’ll be stuck here in the mountains with these monks. Maybe I can get one of the monks to take a note down and leave it with my gear. If I climb down there, I don’t think I will have the strength to climb back up. Hell, I’ll probably never find this cave again.

“Would you mind starting right away?” I ask. “I have money, and gold, and gems, back at my tent. I’ve read that you don’t care about material things, but I wasn’t sure what else to bring.”

“You’re correct. We have no use for such things, but we would take your story as payment. While we wait, you can tell us your story.”

“Of what? My life? I don’t remember very much. That’s why I’m here.”

“Then you will tell us of Osman. You said you wrote it all down? I would like to hear of Osman again. It has been so long. That will be all the compensation we require for supplying you with the candy.”

“Fair enough,” I say. I ask also about taking a note down to my campsite. They don’t have paper or pens, so white robe sends rust robe down for my pack. I feel bad that he has to hike down and up, but he’s probably used to it.

I try to start the Osman story, but white robe wants to wait for the other guy to return. It takes hours. White robe just sits there. He doesn’t shift his folded legs or give his knees a break, he just sits. I can’t imagine. I shift my position every few minutes, take a sip of tea, scratch my face, and look around. He just sits. I can imagine a dozen just like him, cross-legged in the little alcoves cut into the cave walls, patiently waiting in the dark to ring their bells once a day.

The silence will drive me insane if I let it continue for another second.

“Why haven’t you done the bell thing?” I ask. I point to the nearest walled-up alcove. “If you’re the guy who knew Osman, then you must be over a hundred years old, right?”

“The ascension is not for me,” he says.

“Why not?”

“I chose another path. I chose to stay here and learn all I can of the mortal existence. I guide the others on their journey.”

“That’s noble. And you’ve been doing this a long time?”

“I’m not as old as the mountains, but I came here when these caves were still young,” he says.

“I’ve heard that.”

“I know.”

“I may not remember everything about my life—that’s why I’m here—but I’m certain that there’s no space in my timeline where I could have visited here before. Why do you keep acting like you know me? Can you tell me that?”

He smiles. It’s not a kind smile.

“I collect knowledge and I try to assimilate each new thing I learn so that it might coalesce into wisdom,” he says. “As years pass, collecting the knowledge is no more or less difficult, but fitting new pieces into the puzzle of what I understand takes an extraordinary amount of effort.”

With that, he stops. He stops as if he’s just answered my question.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“From this cave, I observe. I see everyone’s portrait painted on these walls. There’s a piece of you over here, and a bit of you over there. I know everyone, whether they pass through the mouth of the cave or not.”

“So why hear my story, if you’ve heard it all before?”

“Perspective. Everyone has a different view of events. I would hear your perspective so it would inform my own.”

We sit. I fall asleep after a while. When I wake up, my pack is next to me. The fire is rebuilt and it gives off a lovely heat. The monk with the rust-colored robe brings me a mug of thin soup. It settles my stomach. As I write my note, I sometimes peer into the darkness at the back of the cave and I wonder where the white-robed monk goes when he walks back there. How deep does the cave go into the mountain, and how does he see to find his way around?

I give my note to the monk with the rust-colored robe and he nods. He leaves again. I hope he’s not going to take it back down the mountain now. It will be dark soon.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

I wake again before the bells and I’m glad. I want to be awake when they ring. I want to see them move. I lay on my side, next to the bones of the fire, and stare in the direction of three of the bells. They’re suspended on sticks and little strings disappear into holes at the top of the bricked-over alcoves.

The monk in the white robe appears and sits next to me.

“When do they ring?” I ask.

He looks towards the mouth of the cave where the morning sun is streaming in.

“Any time now,” he says. “How do you feel today?”

“Better,” I say.

The string on the right twitches. It jerks again and the bell sways but doesn’t ring. Finally, with a couple of good jerks, it dings a few times. The sound seems to wake the other bells and they go off on either side of us. The white-robed monk beams.

“How many?”

“Three are beyond. Twelve are below,” he says.

“Where do they all come from? Were they all living here before? How come it’s just you and Rusty now?” I ask, jerking a thumb towards the monk in the rust-colored robe.

“They come in a group from the temple where they’ve studied. Only I stay here permanently, and I keep one apprentice.”

“Apprentice? Does that mean he’ll eventually take over your role?”

“No. I suppose apprentice is the wrong word. Student?”

“And after they all ascend, you move to another cave?”

“Would you like to visit with students from an earlier group?”

“Yes,” I say.

Standing isn’t too difficult, but staying upright and walking is a major challenge. The monk in the white robe—Whitey—takes my elbow and helps me towards the light. He pauses at the mouth of the cave and raises his hood. I can’t see his face as we exit, but I see his hand. It looks much, much older in the sunlight.

He walks us down a narrow path to the adjacent cave and directs me inside. We wait for our eyes to adjust from the sunlight to the gloom of the cave. When we’ve walked a dozen or more paces into the dark, he removes his hood and smiles at me. For a second, the light fools my eyes and I’m looking at a grinning skull that is bare of skin and hair. His empty eye sockets are deeper and blacker than the cave.

He points to the wall.

They’ve removed the bells and bricks. I see the alcoves. About half are filled with sitting mummies. They sit in the lotus position with legs crossed, feet turned up, and hands resting open on their thighs. Their dark, leathery skin is wrapped tight around shriveled bones. They look like tightly-wrapped skeletons with bared teeth ready to bite.

Each mummy wears darks sunglasses.

A frantic laugh comes to my mouth when I see those glasses. They look like they’re all going to head out to the beach to work on their skeleton tans.
Don’t bother,
I think,
you’re already as dark as charcoal.

“Why do they wear sunglasses?”

“They’re walled in behind the bricks for one-thousand days. I’m sure the light is very bright after all that time in the dark.”

His answer doesn’t make sense, but I can tell I’m not going to get a better one.

I kneel down in front of the closest mummy.

“So that’s what ascension looks like?”

“No. That’s what the body looks like after the spirit has ascended.”

“They don’t look too happy about it.”

“Joy doesn’t have a face to smile,” he says.

I want to touch it. I want to feel if the skin is as cool and smooth as it looks. It looks shiny, almost varnished. I think if I tapped it with my fingernail, it would sound hollow and brittle. I reach forward.

The mummy’s hand moves towards mine with a creaking sound. Or did I just imagine it? Either way, my urge to touch the black skin evaporates. Now I just want to move a little farther away.

I stand slowly, not taking my eyes from the sunglasses of the nearest mummy. What’s behind those glasses? What would I see in those eye sockets?

Whitey puts his hand on my shoulder and I nearly scream.

I turn and he’s smiling at me again. He’s holding out a tin. The lid is open and there’s a piece of green candy sitting in a bed of linen.

“I thought it would take ten days.”

“It’s been ten days,” he says. “Your friends will arrive to your tent soon. You should leave now if you want to meet them.”

Everything that comes out of this guy’s mouth is a weird fabrication. I take the candy from the tin and hold it up to the light. It’s translucent and shaped in hexagonal tubes, like a weird green crystal.

“Okay,” I say. Whatever game this guy is playing, I will go along with it. “Let me just grab my clothes and my pack.”

“My apprentice already took them down to your tent. We thought it would be easier for you.”

“Oh. Thanks. I didn’t get to tell you Osman’s story.”

He smiles. It’s a patronizing smile. He leads me to the mouth of the cave. Far down the slope, in the bright morning sun, I can see the little dot of my tent. Sure enough, there are other dots moving towards it. It must be my extraction team.

“Thank you for your visit,” he says.

I turn to reply. He’s already disappearing into the darkness of the cave.

“Thank you,” I call. “Say goodbye to Rusty for me.”

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

When I’m halfway down the mountain, my team spots me and rushes uphill to help me. I’m gripping the green candy in one hand and using the other to hike up my robe so I don’t trip. They unfold a portable stretcher and carry me down the mountain. One person takes my pulse while another straps an oxygen mask to my head.

They try to take the candy from my fist, but I clench my fingers tight and shake my head.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

Ike Hamill

Topsham, Maine

January 2013 — May 2014

About
Skillful Death

Thank you for reading
Skillful Death
. This book took a long time to write, and even longer before I attempted to cut it down to what you see here. I hope you enjoyed your time with Malcolm as much as I did.
 

If you can spare a second, I hope you’ll share your thoughts in a quick review. A brief note on Amazon will help other readers find this book. Don’t hesitate to send me a note at
[email protected]
. I promise I’ll reply, even if you have a complaint.
 

My idea going into
Skillful Death
was very simple. I wanted to write a story about a pragmatist who lives in a world where strange things happen. I had the idea that this skeptic lived in a condo in Vermont. But, a strange thing happened to me when I sat down to write that story. It turns out it wasn’t about a guy in Vermont. It was about Malcolm, and Constantine, and Bud. It was about a strange town in the woods. It was about a man whose life spanned centuries. I honestly had no plan for what came out.
 

Even though the story is all written by Malcolm, I tried to give each section its own voice. Constantine was very logical and earthy. Dom was a little naive. Bud was a genius, but lacked common sense. Malcolm was my favorite. He was so tuned in to the motivations of everyone else, that he lacked the ability to understand himself.

I’m a little nervous about this book because it’s a departure from my usual genre. Please let me know what you think of it. As always, sign up for my mailing list at
ikehamill.com
and I’ll send you my next book for free. If you’d like a signed copy of
Skillful Death
, please contact me at
[email protected]
. Happy reading!