Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘This isn’t much of a place, is it?’ he asked. ‘A man like you, with fifty thousand dollars to spend, why doesn’t he have a suite at the Hotel Denpasar?’

  ‘I prefer someplace modest,’ Randolph said. ‘Maybe you could call it a fetish of mine.’

  ‘Well, this is modest all right,’ Michael agreed.

  ‘Is the temple far?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘It’s just beyond the market on Jalan Mahabharata. We can walk if you prefer. It’s more calming to walk.’

  Michael had recommended that Randolph begin his training first, before Dr Ambara, since the doctor was already acquainted with the Trisakti, and with the demons and gods who influenced the natural world. Michael had also insisted that the first week of training be undertaken here in Denpasar, the navel of the world, where the spiritual forces were strongest. In Memphis it would be far more difficult for Randolph to sense the subtle changes of atmosphere that preceded the death trance; it would be even more difficult for him to sense the closeness of the spirits, both benign and malevolent.

  They walked together along Jalan Diponegoro. Michael seemed more settled than when Randolph had first met him, although he talked quite busily, waved in a friendly way to several stall-keepers he knew and kept his eyes flickering around as if he were always alert, always looking for the tiniest indication that the forces of the spiritual world might be making themselves felt in the everyday bustle of the streets.

  ‘Did you make up with your girlfriend?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘We’re still a little on edge,’ Michael confessed.

  ‘What happened the last time you went into a death trance? Was it really as dangerous as she claims?’

  Michael reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. ‘I was trying to trace the dead husband of a woman who lives in Sanur. She was pretty wealthy. Her husband had been a merchant and when he died, he left everything to her. At least he said he had. All of a sudden his former secretary started driving around in a new Mercedes.

  The woman wanted me to find her dead husband for her and straighten things out, to find out just how much he had given his secretary. I guess her actual intention was to challenge his will.’

  ‘That seems like a very mundane, materialistic reason for doing something incredibly spiritual,’ Randolph suggested.

  That’s what people pay for,’ Michael said, shrugging. ‘You don’t often see much in the way of sentiment, not in this business. If people have enough money to pay for a death trance, they’re usually the kind of people who are looking for more money. You know what I mean? Their greed goes even beyond the grave.’

  He guided Randolph across Puputan Square. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘I was approached by a man once who wanted to see his dead mistress just so he could insult her. I refused to take him. You can’t go into a death trance when you’re angry or upset. Well, you can, but it’s too dangerous. The leyaks have terrific sensitivity for negative emotions. They can pick up your anger almost instantly, and then they’re on to you.’

  He led the way across Jalan Durian and between a host of jangling bicycles. ‘That’s what happened the last time. The woman confronted her dead husband and he admitted that he had given his secretary something like two hundred thousand dollars. Before we went into the death trance, the woman had promised me faithfully that she would keep her cool no matter what her husband said to her. But when she heard him say that, she went crazy. She was absolutely hysterical. I couldn’t get her out of the trance, she was so furious, and I couldn’t very well leave her there. The leyaks were after us like wild dogs. I managed to keep them off, and in the end I managed to bring the stupid woman around, but it was pretty damned hair-raising at the time.’ He opened his shirt and showed Randolph an ugly tear-shaped scar that looked as if some vicious animal had tried to bite a lump of flesh from his chest. ‘One of them got me just as I was coming through. I was lucky they didn’t follow me; I would have been dead meat for sure.’

  He took a deep drag at his cigarette and said, ‘That’s when Nanti made me promise not to do it again. Well, I don’t blame her. She had to nurse me for nearly two months. I couldn’t go to a doctor because he would have asked me how I got hurt, and the death trance is against the law. The bite went septic, septic like you wouldn’t believe.’

  They walked together along the narrow, shabby street where the Pura Dalem still stood, the Temple of the Dead. Randolph stood back, staring in silent apprehension at the carved effigies of Rangda and Barong Keket, thick with moss and wound around with creeper.

  ‘That’s Rangda, the Witch Widow,’ Michael explained. ‘Take a look at that statue and pray you never meet her in the flesh.’

  Randolph turned to Michael and attempted a smile, but Michael was not smiling.

  They pushed open the green copper gates and stepped inside the outer courtyard.

  Although the sun was shining brightly, it hardly penetrated this courtyard and there was an unexpected chill in the air. They took off their shoes. Michael walked across the courtyard on silent feet and Randolph followed him.

  ‘Doesn’t anybody use this temple any more?’ Randolph asked in a hushed voice.

  ‘Only me,’ Michael replied, looking back at him with dark Balinese eyes.

  ‘I’m surprised the city administrators let the place stand.’

  ‘It’s sacred ground. Inside these walls we are neither on earth nor in heaven. The general belief is that when this temple finally collapses, it will be sucked away into the world beyond the veil and there will be nothing left here at all.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘When you believe it, tell me,’ Michael replied.

  They went through to the inner courtyard. Michael said, ‘Please take off your clothes and then sit on the floor. I must light the incense.’

  ‘Do we have to be naked?’ Randolph asked.

  Michael was already stepping out of his shorts. ‘To begin with, yes. It’s very difficult for a novice to pass through the spiritual levels of death when he is carrying any physical reminders of the real world. Remember that we will be going out of this world, and we have to go out of this world in the same condition as we entered it.’

  Rather reluctantly Randolph undressed and folded his clothes neatly beside one of the shrines. He eased himself onto the stone floor and waited while Michael went to each of the incense burners and lit them. Thick, pungent clouds of spices and sandalwood began to drift across the courtyard, half-obscuring Michael’s lean, bare figure.

  When all the burners were lit, Michael came over and sat facing Randolph cross-legged, his hands spread out with the palms facing upward.

  ‘Is your mind at peace?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Your mind must be completely at peace. It must be a bright blue lake whose surface is utterly tranquil. You must think of nothing; you must not even wonder if you are at peace or not. You must ask no questions, doubt no doubts.’

  Randolph sat still and tried to empty his mind. It was not as easy to do as Michael had made it sound. He could picture the bright blue lake but its surface was ruffled by fretful little questions. Was he really going to be able to see Marmie and the children? Was he making a fool of himself, sitting here bare-ass naked in a stone-floored courtyard in Bali? Would Sun-Taste allow him more time to make up the shortfall in supplies? Why was his back aching so much? How the hell had he managed to get himself into this? And for fifty thousand dollars too.

  Michael said, ‘You’re too agitated. Your mind is like alphabet soup. Calm down.

  Make a deliberate effort to calm down, a really strenuous effort. Then relax. After the second or third attempt, your mind should remain calm.’

  Randolph closed his eyes and tried to force all the jumbled questions and fragmented worries out of his head. At last darkness and emptiness began to supervene and he relaxed.

  ‘That’s better,’ Michael said. ‘You may have to do that again in a moment, when the thoughts start forcing
their way back in again. But next time you will find it much easier to dismiss them.’

  Randolph opened his eyes. Michael was watching him expressionlessly.

  ‘This morning we are not going to enter the region of the dead,’ Michael said, ‘but I am going to take you to the first spiritual plane so you will understand both the togetherness and the separateness of your body and your soul.’

  Randolph was aware of the doubts and the questions babbling back into his mind and he made another fierce effort to quiet them.

  ‘Sit in the way that I am sitting,’ Michael instructed him. ‘Keep your eyes open, look straight ahead and try to picture your spirit as something that has its own freedom, a life force that is occupying your body simply as a way of manifesting itself in the physical world. It will help you if you repeat the mantra Om, the sacred word that embodies all the divine principles of Hindu theology.’

  Randolph sat in the way that Michael was sitting, his hands outstretched, his back balanced and perfectly straight. Under normal circumstances he would have found this position desperately uncomfortable. He remembered sitting on the floor at a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco and ending up with a backache for a week afterwards. But this morning, somehow the position seemed to be perfect. He did his best to keep his mind empty and he stared straight ahead, and when Michael prompted him, he began to hum the mantra. ‘Ommmmm …’

  He hummed on and on, keeping his brain as calm as he could. It was strange but the humming of the mantra seemed to set up an extraordinary vibration within him, as if his bones were resonating. It was infinitely tedious, humming and humming like this, and yet he found it peculiarly difficult to stop. Somehow the idea of stopping seemed to be unpleasant, almost threatening.

  ‘Ommmm …’

  He could not imagine what to expect. The temple courtyard appeared to remain the same as before, with its crumbled rows of shrines. Dried leaves still rustled across the flagstones and incense-smoke still wafted thickly in the air. The humming went on and on, overwhelming everything: the traffic, the sound of distant music, the roar of a plane above. Randolph felt as if his whole being were vibrating, as if he would shatter into dust if he tried to stop humming the mantra.

  He stared at Michael. Then he stared at him again more closely. He wondered if the incense was making his eyes water or if he needed to wear his glasses more often.

  But Michael’s outline appeared to be blurred; it was as if hot air were rising between them, or as if Michael were lying just below the surface of a clear but quickly running stream.

  He wanted to say something, to ask Michael what was happening, but his mouth refused to do anything but hum the mantra. Then, right in front of his eyes, a liquid kind of creature slithered out of the top of Michael’s head and spiralled off into the smoky air. Randolph followed it with his eyes as it spun and danced and hovered over the courtyard, and then as it slowly returned towards Michael, and he was stunned with fascination and fear. The liquid creature was actually Michael; it looked like Michael except that it was translucent and completely fluid. Randolph could distinguish Michael’s features, he could recognize his face, and yet Michael’s forehead kept rippling and stretching, his arms and legs flowed and twisted.

  Michael’s real body remained where it was, sitting on the floor of the courtyard, its eyes open, still staring blankly at Randolph and humming the mantra.

  Michael’s spirit - for that was what the liquid creature actually was, his antakaranasarira - beckoned with both arms to Randolph and smiled a fleeting, watery smile. Randolph heard a slight deflection in the endless vibration of Om and it seemed to mean to him, ‘Rise, rise up, join me, rise out of your body and join me.’

  For an instant Randolph thought: This is impossible, it can’t be done. But then the split second afterwards, a huge and sudden realization rushed out at him with the darkness and power of a hurtling locomotive and he was yanked out of his body upside down and sent spinning end over end; he saw rooftops, clouds, walls, traffic and trees before sinking again, much more slowly now, sinking towards the courtyard floor; and there below him was himself, naked, cross-legged, humming his sacred mantra.

  Michael’s spirit flowed across to meet Randolph as he descended. All of Randolph’s fear had left him now. He slowly approached his material body and drifted around himself to see what he looked like. He found the experience astonishing. He looked much older than he had imagined himself to be, and much more heavily built. His stomach could do with some exercise, he thought, and there was a wider bald patch at the back of his scalp than he had realized; but apart from that, he was not bad looking. Michael’s spirit followed him, watching him, and then raised an arm to point upwards, towards the sky.

  Together they floated high over the temple, higher than the rooftops of the tallest shrines, higher than the trees, floating like two kites over the markets and the streets and the glittering river. They dived and dipped and soared and then at last began to sink back towards Jalan Mahabharata, and the Temple of the Dead, and their material bodies.

  Sliding back into his body felt to Randolph like sliding under the bedclothes on a summer’s night. For the first few moments he felt hot and stuffy and constricted, and he shook his arms again and again to relieve the feeling of heaviness. Michael laughed and stood up.

  ‘Everybody does that. You’re feeling the weight of your body after having had no weight at all.’

  Randolph stared up at him and then turned to look at the sky. ‘Were we really there?

  Did we really do that?’

  ‘Our spirits were there.’

  ‘I never before understood what my spirit is. Why haven’t I been doing that all my life, going out of myself? It is fantastic! Who needs to go by plane?’

  Michael tugged on his shorts and zipped them up. ‘I don’t think you understand just how much I was helping you. I practically pulled your antakaranasarira out of you by its roots. Besides, it’s dangerous to do too much of that flying around; it can get to a point where your spirit is unable to get back into your body. Then all your spirit can do is hover around and watch your body die. That’s what happens to people in comas. Their spirit leaves their body for so long that it can’t get back in again. Just remember that when your spirit leaves your body, you’re halfway dead.’

  Randolph eased himself to his feet. ‘Is that all we’re going to do today?’

  Michael said, ‘We can go back to your losmen now and I’ll teach you the first of the chants you’re going to need to know. I’ll tell you what you’re going to be allowed to eat too. From now on, until we enter the death trance, you have to stay with a special holy diet.’

  As they left the temple, Randolph said, ‘This all seems quite practical. I had the impression when Dr Ambara first described it to me that it was going to be very mystical, very religious.’

  The ways of the Trisakti have always been practical,’ Michael said. ‘It’s only through practical experience that you can achieve enlightenment. Of course there are many different kinds of enlightenment. Some kinds are completely theological, completely abstract. Other kinds can be much more ordinary, much more concerned with earthly things.’

  Randolph walked back through the streets of Denpasar feeling as if he had just been born. He felt innocent, happy and incredibly alive. He had only one regret: that he should have had to lose Marmie and the children to discover what his spirit was.

  Michael talked volubly on their way to the temple. ‘You’ll be able to feel all the magical power here once you develop your psychic talents. This city is absolutely teeming with magic. When you’re in a death trance, you can walk through the streets and look around and see demons and spirits everywhere. It’s one of the great magical capitals of the world, maybe the greatest.’

  They reached the losmen and went upstairs. Wanda and Dr Ambara were supposed to have gone out shopping while Randolph was studying with Michael, but when Randolph unlocked the door of his room, he found them sitting there. They looked
up anxiously as he entered and Dr Ambara said, ‘You’re back. I was beginning to worry.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Randolph asked. ‘Wanda? Is everything all right?’

  ‘We had a call from the police in Djakarta. They found our names in I.M. Wartawa’s address book. They called Memphis first and then Memphis directed them here.’

  Randolph slowly walked across the room. ‘Have the police discovered what we’re trying to do?’

  ‘No,’ Dr Ambara said. ‘But in some ways it could be worse than that. I.M. Wartawa was found dead outside his office early this morning. His throat had been cut.’

  ‘My God!’ Randolph breathed. ‘Do the police have any idea of who might have done it?’

  ‘Well, of course that was what they wanted to know from me. They said that three or possibly four men were seen driving away from the building shortly afterwards.

  Americans in appearance, but nobody was sure.’

  ‘It’s Ecker again, isn’t it?’ Wanda asked.

  Randolph ran his hand through his hair. All the exhilaration of releasing his spirit into the morning sky had been deflated now. ‘It certainly sounds like Ecker.’

  ‘And the probability is, of course, that I.M. Wartawa told him where we are, and why, and with whom.’

  Michael asked, ‘Who’s this Ecker?’

  Randolph went over to the small refrigerator and took out two bottles of beer. ‘Do you want one?’ he asked Michael, but Michael shook his head. Randolph pried open the cap of one of the bottles and drank the beer straight from the neck. Then he said,

  ‘Ecker is one of four very tough-looking characters who have been following us all the way from the continental United States. Ecker seems to be the leader, although we’ve never heard him talk. Maybe he’s a mute, something like that. Whatever, they’ve been sticking pretty close to us and we have reason to believe they might be the same people who murdered my family.’

  ‘In which case, they probably want to murder you too,’ Michael said equably.