Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘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.

  Til 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, fulfilment. 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.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Randolph asked. He began to retreat towards Michael, the host of the dead silently following him.

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought I saw something.’

  ‘What? What is it?’ Randolph asked. He felt seriously alarmed now. It had been traumatic enough to touch the hands of people who had been dead for forty years, but to think there might be real demons around was terrifying.

  ‘What can you see?’ Randolph asked, straining his eyes towards the distant shadows beneath the trees. He wished he had his glasses.

  Before he could say anything else, Michael seized his sleeve. ‘Run!’ he shouted and began pulling Randolph back along the pathway.

  Randolph stumbled and almost fell. ‘What is it? For God’s sake, tell me!’

  ‘Leyaks!’ Michael barked.

  The dead spirits in the cemetery began to mill around in rising panic.

  ‘What about them?’ Randolph shouted. ‘What about all these people?’

  They’re dead!’ Michael retorted.

  Randolph hesitated. He could see the girl called Natalie raise her hands in horror, and for the first time, he could see the leyaks, grey-suited, ashen-faced, ten or eleven of them emerging from under the trees. A terrible moan of fright went up from the men and the women in the cemete
ry and the children began to shriek and cry.

  ‘How can we leave them?’ Randolph begged. He had sudden visions of massacres that he had helplessly witnessed on television: Vietnam, Lidice, Petrograd. Now he had the chance to save some of the victims, or at least to save their spirits.

  But Michael darted back, snatched at his sleeve again and screamed at him furiously, ‘They’re dead, for Christ’s sake! They’re dead! There’s nothing you can do!

  Now run or you won’t stand a chance!’

  Randolph looked back at the dead. Behind them he saw the eyes of the leyaks burning in their faces like coals smouldering in the grates of hell. He saw something dark hurtle through the air; it might have been a child. Then Michael was wrenching at his arm, pulling him helter-skelter along the brick pathway towards the cemetery gates.

  Although they ran with all the swiftness that had startled Reece and Stroup, the leyaks ran equally fast. They were still more than fifty yards from the gates when Randolph glanced anxiously to the right and saw the glowing orange eyes of two leyaks as they ran parallel to them between the rows of headstones. He turned and looked quickly behind and saw five or six more, their grey faces contorted in hunger and fury, their eyes alight.

  Nobody in the cemetery apart from Randolph and Michael could see the leyaks because the creatures belonged to the realm of the dead. The Dutch women in their black coats had found their husbands and were now promenading solemnly between the tombs, carrying their sprays of white flowers, unaware that only three pathways distant they were being passed by the fiercest of ghouls. They turned with disapproving frowns as Randolph and Michael ran by, but somehow Randolph and Michael were little more than shadows themselves, and the sound of running feet.

  The cemetery gates were still agonizingly far away, and beyond the gates there was still the street to be negotiated before they reached the temple. Randolph began to gasp for breath. He was fit but he had not run as far and as hard as this since he was twenty years old. The blood began to thunder in his ears and his heart pumped wildly and he knew he was close to having to give up.

  The leyaks who had been running parallel to them now began to edge their way nearer, hurdling the rows of headstones one by one. The leyaks behind them were gaining, and another group appeared on their left-hand side.

  Randolph gritted his teeth and tried to force one last burst of strength from his body but it was too much. His right knee gave way; he staggered, almost regained his balance and then pitched onto the brick path, grazing his hand and lacerating the side of his chin.

  He saw Michael stop, turn, hesitate. ‘Run, for God’s sake!’ he gasped at him. ‘Don’t worry about me!’

  Almost at once he felt a heavy body hurtle on top of him, and then another, and the next thing he knew, there were savage claws tearing at his face, teeth ripping at his clothes. He screamed in terror, thrashing and rolling and trying to beat off the leyaks.

  Their stinking breath blasted into his face; their eyes burned incandescent in front of him. He felt fiery pain as one of them raked its claws all the way down the inside of his thigh, and then a third leaped on top of him and sank its teeth into his bicep.

  Oh dear Jesus, he thought, they’re tearing me apart.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  He could hear somebody shrieking. He could hear snarls and furious roars, and then suddenly he was tossed sideways across the path. A hand touched his shoulder, a friendly hand. And then he was being pulled upright, onto his knees at first and then onto his feet. He staggered forward blindly, his face smothered in blood, one of his arms dangling uselessly, and then he collapsed again.

  A cloth was wiping blood from his eyes. He looked up and saw Michael. ‘Have they killed us?’ he asked through swollen lips.

  ‘Hurry!’ Michael pleaded, his voice that of one who knows it might already be too late.

  Numbly Randolph looked around. He could not believe what he saw. The cemetery path was crowded with the Dutch dead and they were throwing themselves at the leyaks, scores of them, men and women, beating at the beasts with upraised fists, jumping on their backs to try to bring them down to the ground, shrieking in anger and overwhelming the leyaks.

  ‘My God,’ Randolph whispered. ‘My God, Michael, they’re doing it for me.’

  With blazing eyes, the leyaks tore into the spirits of the Dutch dead, tearing and snatching and biting. Yet the Dutch continued to press forward and to pull the leyaks down, pressing on in hopeless but almost happy self-sacrifice.

  ‘Come on,’ Michael urged, and Randolph struggled to his feet. But he found it impossible to take his eyes off the grisly struggle going on in the middle of the cemetery. Although there were so many of them, the Dutch had no chance against the leyaks. The creatures were demonic berserkers, mindless and vicious, the snarers of souls. Their filthy, hooked claws ripped through spiritual tissue, tearing the spirits of men and women into tattered shreds. There was no blood but the injuries were hideous nevertheless. Randolph saw an old Calvinist preacher fall to the ground with half his face clawed away. He saw a beautiful young girl pirouette and collapse, her leg savaged by the teeth of two ravening leyaks. He saw a soldier caught from behind by one leyak, while another snagged open his stomach.

  The shrieking was the shrieking of those souls who had been torn too badly to drag themselves away and who knew that the leyaks would carry them back to Rangda’s lair, where they would be devoured. There was no final peace for souls devoured by Rangda. They would be ingested into her black and slippery system with their consciousness intact, forever.

  Randolph turned to Michael in desperation. The horror of this struggle was that to the real world, it was silent and invisible. The black-dressed mourners continued up the path towards their dear departeds’ graves as if nothing were happening. And the pain of it was that so many of these dead people had given up their immortal souls to save Randolph’s life.

  ‘Come on,’ Michael said in a voice that was now gentle and encouraging. ‘Come on, Randolph. They can’t last much longer. You owe it to them to get away.’

  Randolph nodded and turned. Following close behind Michael, he limped, staggered and stumbled the distance to the cemetery gates. There he clung to the railings for a moment, racked with pain, shivering, and heaving for breath, but when Michael said,

  ‘Come on,’ again, he managed to push himself upright and follow him out into the Jalan Vyasa.

  The last face he saw was Natalie’s. She had torn herself away from the struggle and run after Randolph to the cemetery gates. ‘Don’t forget mef she called. ‘Don’tforget me!’

  But then three leyaks were on her and Randolph saw their mouths gape open in ferocious hunger and tear at the girl’s neck.

  He did not need any further encouragement to limp his way along Jalan Vyasa and back towards the Temple of the Dead. Shoppers and stall-keepers noticed their passing but when they looked again, the pair was gone. They stumbled their way through the strange, foggy light of the world of veils, past fragrant satay stalls and long batik scarves that blew gently and silently in the hot morning wind.

  ‘Can you make it?’ Michael asked.

  ‘I think I’m bruised and bitten more than anything else. Come on, keep going, I can make it.’

  They turned the last corner into Jalan Mahabharata and Randolph hobbled the length of the street until he saw the stone-carved guardians of the gate, with their thick moss coverings. But there were still twenty yards to go when Michael reached out, took his arm and said, ‘Hold it. Something’s wrong. The temple gate is open.

  Somebody’s been there.’

  They approached the temple cautiously. A moped blurted past, the odd, slow-motion effect of its motor sounding to Randolph like drums and death rattles and magical sticks. Michael pressed himself against the green copper doors of the temple and made a quick survey.

  ‘It’s Ecker,’ he said. ‘Ecker and another man. They’re waiting for us in the inner courtyard. They’ve both got guns.’

&n
bsp; ‘How did he find us?’ Randolph panted, leaning against the wall.

  ‘I don’t have any idea. But the minute we reenter the real world, out of our trance, they’re obviously going to try to kill us.’

  Randolph glanced anxiously behind him but so far there was no sign of the leyaks.

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know whether I prefer to be shot or torn to pieces. It’s kind of academic, isn’t it?’

  Michael bit his lip. There’s a chance that we could lure Ecker out of there. The leyaks aren’t going to be long though. It must have been Ecker disturbing the trance gate here that alerted them. The leyaks will know where to find us.’

  Almost as he spoke, two grey-suited figures appeared at the far end of Jalan Mahabharata and began to walk quickly towards them. Michael looked in the other direction and saw another leyak approaching from the opposite end of the street.

  ‘We don’t have any time,’ he told Randolph. ‘Stand in the doorway there and wave your arms, slowly, mind you, real slowly, because you’re still in the death trance and Ecker won’t see you properly if you’re too quick.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I need a mirror,’ Michael replied, and without any further explanation, he jogged quickly across the street to the Sambal Restaurant, a small run-down Indonesian rumah makan with grubby plastic blinds, and a patriotic painting of Soekarmen, the governor of Bali, propped up in the window.

  The leyaks were closer now; Randolph could see the orange smouldering of their eyes. He took a deep, painful breath, pushed open the temple door a little farther, lifted his arms and began to wave and shout as slowly and as deliberately as he could.

  ‘Ecker! Reece! Whatever the hell your name is! I’m over here! I’m over here!’

  He saw Reece turn in amazement, Reece with his white ice-hockey mask. He saw the other man turn around too. Another blank, white face. They were almost as frightening in their appearance as were the leyaks, and he knew now that they were just as determined to destroy him.