Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I’m over here!’ he yelled at them. ‘What are you, chicken? Are you chicken, Reece?

  Are you only brave enough to kill women and children? Come on and get me if you’re so goddam tough!’

  He glanced back into the street anxiously. The leyaks were less than seventy yards away now and approaching fast. There was still no sign of Michael. He had disappeared into the doorway of the restaurant and showed no sign of coming out again. Randolph hoped to God that he hadn’t decided to save his own skin, leaving Randolph caught between three flesh-tearing beasts from the world of the dead and two cold-blooded killers from the world of the living.

  Reece and his henchman began to run across the courtyard towards Randolph, their guns raised. Randolph was caught between Reece’s slow-motion mortal running and the irresistibly rapid advance of the leyaks. He checked the street again, desperately frightened now that the leyaks would reach him well before Reece did.

  He stopped shouting and waving his arms and stood half-in and half-out of the temple doorway, his head lifted, and thought to himself, This is it. My God, I can’t escape from this. He had always known that he would have to die but he had never imagined that death would approach him like this, like three black express trains rushing in on him from all sides.

  He could hear the dusty sound of the leyaks’ feet on the sidewalk, the snarling undertone of their breathing. He could hear Reece shouting something at him: a long, slow, indistinct blurt of sound. He saw Reece stop only a dozen feet away and raise his automatic.

  It was at that instant that Michael came sprinting and leaping across the street; he was carrying in upraised arms a large, dazzling mirror. With his sneakers scuffling on the sidewalk, he hurtled himself around, pushed Randolph away from the temple door with his back and held the mirror up towards the oncoming leyaks.

  ‘Come and get us, you stinking corpses!’ Michael screamed at them. ‘Come on, come on, this is what you wanted! Come and get us! Good fresh flesh for your Mistress Rangda!’

  The effect of the mirror on the leyaks was extraordinary.

  They stopped only a few feet away and raised their hands to protect their eyes, edging off as if in sudden terror.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Randolph asked. He was pressed against the wall, well out of Reece’s line of fire. ‘Why have they stopped?’

  They’re frightened,’ Michael panted. He lifted the mirror higher and waved it at the leyaks threateningly. ‘They think I’ve gotten hold of a picture of them and they’re frightened. There’s only one way you can destroy leyaks and that’s to get a picture of them and then burn the picture in front of their eyes. They don’t realize that this is a mirror.’

  ‘How long is that going to hold them off?’ Randolph wanted to know. ‘And what the hell are we going to do about Reece, or Ecker, or whatever he calls himself?’

  Just then Reece appeared at the temple doorway, his gun lifted, and stared at Randolph and Michael through the slits in his mask. Although his face was covered, it was obvious that he was astonished at what was going on. To him, the leyaks were invisible and all he could see was that Michael was waving a large restaurant mirror from side to side and Randolph was leaning against the temple wall, his shirt and pants torn, his face covered in congealing blood.

  Reece took off his mask and Bob Stroup did the same. Reece nodded to Stroup and Stroup said, ‘Let’s get inside. I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to do but you’re going to attract too much attention out here.’

  Michael worriedly licked his lips and said to Stroup, ‘Hold this mirror for me. Then I’ll come in. Randolph -‘ and with a jerk of his head, he indicated that Randolph should step inside the temple. Randolph eased himself away from the wall and obediently shuffled through the gate.

  ‘I ain’t holding no mirror,’ Bob Stroup said indignantly.

  Reece cocked his automatic and raised it so it pointed directly at Michael’s head.

  Only Michael and Randolph could see the three flame-eyed leyaks who were now trying to shuffle their way closer to Michael on three sides, hoping that one of them would be able to jump on him before he could destroy the ‘picture.’

  ‘Listen,’ Michael urged Bob Stroup. ‘You know what’s going on here, don’t you?’

  ‘Some kind of screwball religious ceremony or something.’

  ‘The death trance, don’t you understand that?’ Michael had to enunciate his words very slowly to make himself comprehensible.

  Reece made two or three quick gestures and Stroup said, ‘Okay. One of our friends just got killed here while you were away. He put on that mask thing you’ve got lying there in the courtyard and it chewed his goddam head off.’

  So that was it, thought Randolph. They had interfered with the sacred mask of Rangda. No wonder the leyaks were alerted so quickly. And with the sharpest of pains, he thought of Natalie.

  Michael insisted, ‘You have to hold the mirror for me while I get inside the temple.

  Otherwise the same thing is going to happen to all of us.’

  Bob Stroup was annoyed and baffled. ‘Do I believe you or not?’ he demanded of Michael. ‘I mean, what is this shit? There’s nothing out there. The street’s empty. What do I have to hold that goddam mirror for? What are you trying to do? You trying to make me look like an asshole?’

  God, thought Randolph, don’t worry about that. You look like one already. He was almost ready to collapse from shock and pain.

  After a tense and uncertain moment, Reece gestured that Stroup should go along with Michael and take the mirror. Stroup tucked his automatic into his belt and took the mirror sullenly. Michael took one quick step backwards, onto the sacred ground of the temple, and then gripped the back of Stroup’s combat jacket.

  Stroup had been out of the leyaks’ reach in the real world, but Michael was still in the realm of the dead and his grip on Stroup’s clothing was just enough to draw an infinitesimal part of Stroup’s spirit into the realm of the dead with him. It was similar to the way in which Michael had guided Randolph’s spirit out of his body and into the skies above the temple. It was insubstantial and indefinite, but since the leyaks had the fiercest appetite for living spirits, for them it was enough.

  ‘Will you let go of my -‘ Stroup snapped, annoyed and twisting around to shove Michael off.

  As he did so, he turned the mirror away from the leyaks and in one screeching second of terrifying rage, they flung themselves like wolves onto his shadowy spirit and literally began to tear the life out of him with guzzling teeth, snatching claws and flaring orange eyes.

  Stroup screamed and fell into the street as if he had been shot. The mirror smashed across the sidewalk, a hundred silver knives. Michael quickly jumped back into the temple, clutching a long, bloody scratch on his hand where one of the leyaks had caught him a glancing blow. Reece, tongueless, grabbed Michael and shook him, but then stopped and stared in horror at what was happening to his lifelong friend, the man who had saved his life.

  None of Stroup’s physical body was in the realm of the dead, only his spirit was. He twisted and jerked and screamed as the leyaks tore his spirit into shreds, yet there were no physical wounds on him, no blood, no gashes, no bites. He looked as if he were suffering an agonizing epileptic fit, but the leyaks were savaging him just as viciously as if they were a pack of wild animals, and just as fatally.

  It took no more than a minute. Stroup lay still. Then, as quickly as they had first attacked, the leyaks hurried away. Only one of them turned around at the corner of the street to stare back at Randolph and Michael with lighted eyes. There was an expression of demonic hatred on its ashen face that Randolph would have nightmares about for weeks to come.

  Reece lowered his gun and walked out into the street. He knelt down beside Stroup and felt his pulse. He gently slapped Stroup’s cheeks, but Stroup’s head fell sideways against the gritty ground and they knew he was dead. A broken man, lying amid the fragments of a broken mirror. Reece uttered two or three strange, glo
ttal cries and then stood up. With a wave of his gun, he indicated that Michael and Randolph should carry Stroup’s body into the temple and close the door.

  Michael said to him wearily, ‘I’m sorry about your friend. Believe me, it wasn’t my fault. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with here.’

  Reece took no notice and prodded him with his gun, urging him to hurry. At last they managed to manhandle Stroup’s body through the gates and lay him down among the dried-up leaves in one of the temple’s broken-down pavilions.

  Michael said to Reece, ‘We didn’t kill him. It wasn’t us. There are spirits out there. Ghosts, if that makes it easier for you to understand. They killed him. He shouldn’t have turned around. It was only the mirror that was keeping him safe.’

  Reece’s mouth tightened with suppressed frustration and emotion. His cold eyes darted from Michael to Randolph and back again. His instructions from Waverley Graceworthy had been quite explicit: kill Randolph Clare and bring Michael Hunter back to the United States alive. But there had been explicit conditions too. Randolph Clare was supposed to be killed so that his death looked like an accident and Michael Hunter was supposed to be brought out of Indonesia without any complications from the immigration authorities.

  Bob Stroup had been essential to the carrying out of these conditions. Not only had Bob Stroup understood exactly what was wanted, he had been able to express in words every nuance of Recce’s feelings. But now Bob Stroup was lying dead, Jimmy Heacox had been decapitated by that gruesome mask, and the only accomplice Reece was left with, Frank Louv, had been as mad as a goddam hatter ever since Khe Sanh, when a stray fragment of shrapnel had taken away half his brain.

  What was more, for the first time since he had been captured by the VC in Cambodia, Richard Reece felt frightened. He could deal with muscle, he could deal with knives and guns and broken glass. But what had happened here at the Temple of the Dead was the kind of thing that could turn a guy’s guts into clear-running water. If Randolph and Michael had not been standing there watching him, he would have dodged out of that courtyard as fast as he could run and there wouldn’t have been a leyak alive or dead that could have caught him.

  He pushed his automatic back into his combat-jacket pocket and buttoned up his jacket. He looked at Randolph and Michael with an expression like Barre granite, and then he lifted one finger. A warning. Don’t think that you’ve seen the last of me, my friends, because just as sure as bears do what bears do, in the goddam woods or out of them, you’re going to see me again, and I’m going to make you suffer for what happened here today. You know, like totally suffer.

  He turned and walked with a quick, muscular gait out of the temple, hesitating for just a moment by the gates and then disappearing south on Jalan Mahabharata.

  Randolph collapsed on the floor of the courtyard but still Michael refused to let him rest. ‘Randolph, we have to get out of this trance. We may be safe from the leyaks but the Goddess Rangda could still get to us unless we’re careful. And besides, you’ve stayed in the trance too long. There’s a danger you’ll never get out of it.’

  Randolph allowed Michael to half-carry him across the outer courtyard, through the candi bentar and into the inner temple. There they saw what had happened to Jimmy Heacox. Michael helped Randolph down to the floor of the courtyard and then walked across to give Heacox’s body a cursory and disgusted inspection. Heacox’s exposed tongue was already alive with glistening blowflies. Michael turned to look at the mask, which was lying on its side only a few feet away, staring with malevolent hatred at the sky.

  ‘What happened?’ Randolph asked. He kept his eyes averted from Heacox’s body.

  Michael circled around the mask of Rangda cautiously. ‘The mask is very magic.

  How can I put it? It is Rangda in a way, as well as a representation of Rangda. It guards the gate, as well as helping us to create it. Rangda does not discourage the living from entering her realm, not by any means, but she makes damn sure that you do it with respect, and on her terms.’

  Randolph wiped blood from his nose. ‘How come she let us through but killed this guy?’

  Michael gingerly draped the mask in its ritual silk scarf and carried it back to the centre of the courtyard. ‘That’s because - like all truly evil beings - the Goddess Rangda is completely unpredictable.’

  Michael returned and sat down, studying Randolph carefully.

  ‘Remember too that it’s only a mask, even if it is a magic mask. The Goddess Rangda herself is something else. Something a hundred times worse.’

  Randolph felt that he was going to faint soon. The Temple of the Dead seemed to grow dark and he could have sworn that he saw movements in the shadows: figures, ghosts. The day was so humid now that sweat was streaking the dried blood on his cheeks and he did not know if he was shivering from cold or from shock.

  ‘One question,’ he said. ‘When you went hunting leyaks, how did you kill them?’

  ‘With a Polaroid camera,’ Michael said simply. ‘Provided you can stay out of the leyak’s way long enough for the picture to develop, you’re in business. You hold the picture up in front of him and set fire to it with a cigarette lighter.’

  ‘And what happens when you do that?’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Michael, ‘you don’t want to know what happens when you do that.’

  Michael began to recite the words that would bring their bodies and their spirits together again and restore their mortality. ‘O Sanghyang Widi, we ask your indulgence to leave this realm … fragrant is the smoke of incense that coils and coils upward towards the home of the three divine ones.’

  Randolph closed his eyes. He felt as if the whole world were being compressed, with himself in the centre of it. Everything became darker and darker, and slower and slower, until he thought that Earth itself must be coming to a halt. When he opened his eyes, he was still sitting in the courtyard and Michael was getting to his feet.

  ‘Is it over?’ he asked thickly. His head pounded and his right arm felt as if it were burning.

  ‘It’s over,’ Michael assured him. ‘I want you to stay right there while I go find a taxi.

  We have to take you back to the losmen and see how bad you’re hurt.’ ‘The flight’s at three.’ ‘Let’s just see if you’re fit to take it.’ Randolph reached up and held Michael’s sleeve. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know we ran into some trouble today with those leyaks. But if Reece and those other two hadn’t interfered, it would have been all right, wouldn’t it?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Probably,’ he agreed. ‘The Dutch Reform Cemetery is always a pretty quiet place.’

  ‘I want to do it again,’ Randolph said. He raised his head and looked Michael directly in the eyes to show him that he meant it. ‘I want to do it again, and I want to see Marmie this time.’

  Michael gently pried Randolph’s fingers off his sleeve. ‘Let me go find us a taxi.’

  ‘You know something?’ Randolph said. ‘You’re a pretty rare kind of person.’

  ‘Maybe. Most of it was inherited.’

  Randolph gave Michael as much of a smile as the pain in his arm would allow.

  Michael was so much like his own sons could have been. It was strange, he thought as Michael padded off on his soft-soled sneakers to find a taxi, that when he had confronted Reece, knowing full well that Reece might be the man who had killed Marmie and the children, he had felt no rage, not even a sense of revenge.

  He had seen Reece for what he was, a hired killing machine, cruel and violent, but thoughtlessly violent. Randolph had regarded Reece with nothing more than stunned curiosity. He reserved his anger for the men who had thoughtfully and with utter malice employed him. When he returned to Memphis, he would have his pound of flesh from them. Yes, and all the blood that came with it.

  He thought he heard Michael coming back. His mind suddenly rushed in on itself and he fell sideways onto the stones.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Memphis, Tennessee

&nbs
p; Dr Ambara came away from the window, allowing the fine lace curtains to fall back, and said, ‘You should be able to go out today. I think those stitches will hold.’

  Randolph took off his glasses and set them on his breakfast tray. He had had a good breakfast of corned-beef hash and poached eggs and now he was reading The Wall Street Journal while he drank his coffee.

  ‘How long before you can take them out?’ he wanted to know.

  Dr Ambara looked even darker than usual, silhouetted against the window. ‘What you want to know is, how long before you can attempt another death trance.’

  Randolph sipped his coffee and waited while Dr Ambara packed away his surgical instruments. When the doctor was silent, Randolph asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘How long before I can attempt another death trance?’

  Dr Ambara shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The injuries you suffered were quite severe. You were lucky not to lose the use of your right arm altogether. Perhaps a month. Perhaps six weeks.’

  ‘Are you sure I couldn’t try it any earlier? I mean, once the stitches are out -?’

  ‘No,’ said the doctor, sitting down on the side of the bed. ‘It is not just your body that needs to recuperate. It is your mind too. The emotional experience you went through in Bali was enough to send many normal people into lifelong psychotherapy. You saw the dead, Randolph; you saw demons. And now you lie here in bed in Memphis and although it all happened far away, it has left you with scars.’

  Randolph picked up his glasses and began folding and unfolding them. ‘Well,’ he said with resignation, ‘I guess I did ask you to take care of me.’

  Randolph had suffered the worst of his agonies during the long journey back from Bali to the United States. Dr Ambara had patched up his wounds as well as he could but by the time they reached London, Randolph had been running a high temperature and shivering and shaking like an agued horse. Only a massive injection of tetracycline had kept his infection and his temperature under control but he had insisted on returning to Memphis, even after Dr Ambara had warned him there was a risk of septicaemia, even of death.