Waverley nodded and Reece got up and brought a chair over for him. Above their heads in the white iron framework of the conservatory, birds fluttered and sang and the sun shone saffron through the elaborately patterned glass. Waverley’s conservatory was spectacular. Built onto the back of his house in 1914, it was a hundred-foot-long cathedral with a spire, an upstairs gallery and two winding staircases, one at each end. Rare tropical and subtropical plants had been brought from all over the world, including the finest collection of palm trees in the mid-South: rattans and doums, coco de mer and raphia. Waverley admired palms because they were useful and profitable as well as attractive; they yielded everything from vegetable ivory to sago.
‘You should feel at home here,’ he told Michael, leaning on his cane. ‘The atmosphere is not dissimilar to Bali, I shouldn’t suppose.’
Michael nipped out his cigarette and flicked the butt on the floor. ‘In Bali,’ he said, ‘people have respect for each other’s freedom.’
‘But, my dear friend,’ said Waverley, ‘I have no intention of keeping you here against your will. The only reason Mr Reece brought you to see me in a rather more pressing manner than usual was because I was somewhat concerned that you might have misconstrued my intentions.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Michael said. ‘Reece here - or Ecker, or whatever he calls himself - has already killed one man that I know of and probably several more, and he tried to kill me, and from what I understand so far, he did all of it on your instructions.’
Waverley pursed his lips. ‘Richard does tend to be impetuous.’
‘You call wholesale murder impetuous”?’
‘Perhaps impetuous isn’t quite the word. But Richard is certainly no more than headstrong. Correct, Richard?’
Reece grinned and attended to his nails.
Michael said to Waverley, ‘All right then, what the hell’s happening here? You’ve dragged me to this place for some reason; don’t you think I ought to know what it is?’
Waverley nodded. ‘Commendably direct of you. I like directness. That’s why I can never bear to do business with the Japanese. I brought you here because I understand that you have a very unusual talent. I understand that you are capable of meeting and talking to people who are no longer with us, people who have gone on to a higher spiritual plane, so to speak.’
‘You mean the dead,’ Michael put in.
Waverley raised his hand to indicate that ‘dead’ was a word which, for reasons of taste, he preferred not to use.
‘I understand that you can not only achieve this remarkable condition yourself, but that you can guide others into it.’ Waverley paused and then said, ‘For recompense.’
Michael remained where he was, hunched forward on the bench, his hands clasped together, his grubby sneakers tapping out a soft rhythm on the tiled floor.
Waverley said, ‘Some years ago - thirty-one years ago, to be precise - I lost my dear wife after a series of family misfortunes.’
He paused again and swallowed, and then he took off his glasses. ‘Her name was Ilona. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and charm and grace. I always knew that I would miss her deeply, but I had no idea that my grief for her would never fade and that it would forever be a burden to me, a heavy weight that would never leave my heart. I miss her as much today, Mr Hunter, as I missed her in nineteen fifty-three, the year she died, and I have to tell you that I would give anything to see her again.’
Although the request itself remained unspoken, Michael knew this was a clear demand for him to take Waverley into a death trance. He sat back, reached into his shirt pocket and shook the last Lion cigarette from a crumpled pack. As he propped it between his lips, Waverley snapped his fingers to Reece and said, ‘Light him.’
Michael, however, ignored Recce’s proffered Zippo and lit his cigarette himself with book matches.
‘Well?’ Waverley asked at last.
‘Well what?’
‘I wish to see Ilona again. Will you help me?’
Michael shook his head. ‘I’m already committed.’
‘You mean to Randolph Clare?’
‘You’ve got it. And besides, I don’t much care for your way of doing things. All this violence and guns and leaning on people. A person who does things the way you do wouldn’t be safe in a death trance. Too many negative thoughts going on in your head, too little calmness, too little repose. The leyaks would come after you the moment you passed through the gate.’
‘The leyaks?’ Waverley queried. ‘Now what on earth are leyaks?’
Take it from me,’ Michael said, ‘you don’t want to know what leyaks are, not now, not ever.’
Reece made two or three quick gestures in sign language. Waverley frowned as he tried to interpret them and then looked back at Michael and asked, ‘Demons? Is that what he’s trying to say?’
‘Demons of a kind, yes.’
‘Mr Hunter, I’m not sure that I believe in demons.’
‘You’d believe in leyaks if one of them started to rip your heart out.’
Waverley stood up and walked in a little circle around the conservatory floor. ‘So there’s danger,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I’m sure that even demons can be overcome if we handle things properly. You’ve been into these death trances before, you’ve met these demons. How do you usually cope with them?’
‘I run,’ Michael said.
Reece tugged at Waverley’s sleeve and gave him a brief description in sign language of what had happened at the gates of the Temple of the Dead in Denpasar, when the leyaks had been pursuing Michael and Randolph and Michael had used the mirror to fend them off.
Waverley said to Michael, T didn’t quite understand all of that but apparently you used a mirror.’
Michael said, The only way to defend yourself against a leyak is to take his picture and then burn the picture in front of him. There was a time when I actually used to go hunting for leyaks, a little matter of revenge I guess you could call it. In those days I used to take a Polaroid camera with me. It was risky, but it worked pretty well. Think of the priests who used the same principle in the old days, before photography. They used to take pen and brushes with them and try to sketch the leyaks’ portraits. Most of the time they were butchered before they managed to finish even a rough outline.
There’s a famous sketch in one of the private vaults of the Museum Bali: a leyak half- drawn on a sheet of paper spattered with dried blood. That was brought back over a hundred years ago from a death trance by one of the most famous of all pedandas.’
Waverley waited for Michael to continue but when Michael fell silent, he said a little sharply, ‘The plants in here are very rare, you know. They don’t much care for tobacco smoke.’
‘Did you see me offer any of them a cigarette?’ Michael retorted. Tf you don’t want any smoke in here, sir, I suggest you let me go.’
‘Well, well, smart remarks,’ Waverley said tightly. ‘But I regret that I cannot - or will not - release you until you take me into a death trance with you.’
Michael shook his head. ‘I’m not doing it. I already made up my mind last week. I’m going in for only one more death trance, and that’s the trance Randolph Clare asked me to do. At least his mind is clear and calm, not fucked up with killing people the way yours is. Taking somebody like you into a death trance would be suicide for both of us.’
‘Even with a camera?’ Waverley asked, trying hard to control his temper.
‘In a death trance you have to use your camera the same way a deer hunter stalks a deer. You have to pick your leyak and you have to take his picture before he realizes what you’re doing, and then you have to keep out of range of his claws and his teeth long enough for the picture to develop, and then you have to hold it up in front of him and you have to burn it and make sure it burns quick. Believe me, it isn’t a picnic.’
Waverley said, ‘You’ll be very well paid. Whatever Randolph Clare has offered you, I’ll double it.’
‘No go,�
� Michael insisted. ‘It doesn’t matter how much money you pay me. If I get killed, it won’t be worth it.’
‘I could have you killed right now,’ Waverley told him coldly.
‘Well, I’m sure you could,’ Michael agreed, although not with bravado. He was intimidated by Reece, and he found Waverley disconcertingly polite and cruel and unpredictable. But there was little option. To enter into a death trance with Waverley Graceworthy would be nothing short of offering himself to Rangda as a sacrifice. All he could possibly look to for survival would be the sheer spiritual and geographical distance that lay between Bali, ‘the navel of the world,’ and Memphis, Tennessee,
‘the city of good abode.’ Perhaps the distance was great enough to allow entrance into the realm of the dead without arousing the leyaks.
After all, as far as Michael knew, nobody in Memphis or anywhere in the continental United States had attempted to enter a death trance, certainly not recently, and so the leyaks probably had had no interest in it as a feeding ground. The nearest place in the Western Hemisphere that leyaks preyed was Haiti, where voodoo adepts still entered a kind of death trance and gave the leyaks occasional live spirits to snare. In Haiti, of course, they called the leyaks by another name, zombies.
Waverley said, ‘You’re thinking, aren’t you? You’re weighing the odds. Perhaps it’s not quite as dangerous as you were trying to suggest.’
‘It’s not only how dangerous it is,’ Michael told him, ‘but I have another obligation to meet, one to Randolph Clare.’
‘Randolph Clare is not the kind of man you should be doing business with, not in Memphis,’ Waverley advised sternly. ‘Randolph Clare is - how shall I put it? - something of a pariah.’
Michael stood up unexpectedly. Reece banged the two front legs of his chair on the floor and stood up too, instantly threatening.
‘It’s still no go,’ Michael said.
‘This is very unfortunate,’ Waverley told him. ‘Unfortunate for me, of course, because I still wish to meet my Ilona again, but even more unfortunate for you because I shall have to keep you here, locked up, until you agree to take me.’
‘You can’t hold me here. That’s kidnapping,’ Michael challenged.
‘My dear boy, I can hold you here for as long as I like, and there isn’t a single damned thing you can do about it. Who’s going to come looking for you? Your precious Randolph Clare?’
‘I have plenty of friends in Bali,’ Michael retorted. ‘If they don’t hear from me soon, they’re going to start checking with the American Embassy. I have friends at the embassy too.’
Reece communicated something to Waverley in sign language and Waverley suddenly smiled.
‘I hope all your friends in Bali aren’t as reliable as your American girlfriend.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘The pretty one.’
‘Jennifer Dunning? What about her?’
‘According to Richard, Miss Dunning was the one who told him where to find you when you were in your death trance.’
Michael stared at him and then at Reece. ‘What kind of crap is that?’
Reece grinned and made a suggestive circle between finger and thumb. Then he uttered an extraordinary throaty laugh that sounded like a baby choking.
‘You’re all crap, do you know that?’ Michael snapped at him. ‘You and him, the both of you. A couple of crocks of crap.’
‘Richard assures me that he’s speaking the truth. It was Miss Dunning who gave you away.’
Michael hesitated for a split second; then his sneakers squealed on the tiled floor as he dodged, feinted and made a dive for the nearest doorway. Reece was after him instantly, vaulting over the white iron bench. Michael reached the door and was struggling with the handle when Reece caught up with him.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ Waverley called.
Reece hooked his arm around Michael’s neck and then gave him a devastating punch in the kidneys. Michael dropped to the floor, hitting his face against the tiles and chipping one of his front teeth. He lay there paralyzed for almost half a minute, staring in helpless agony at Waverley’s approaching shoes. Waverley stood over him for a moment - two handmade golfing shoes in pale beige kid, and immaculate trouser cuffs - and then he prodded Michael with his cane.
‘I want you to do what I ask, my friend, and take me into a death trance.’
Michael shook his head. Bloody saliva trailed from his mouth to the grouting on the floor. ‘No,’ he managed to say.
‘Very well,’ Waverley said. ‘Richard will conduct you upstairs, where you will be locked in without food until you change your mind. That is all I have to say on the matter.’
Reece jostled Michael to his feet. Michael was white-faced and gasping for breath.
He stared at Waverley with violent disbelief. ‘I can’t understand someone like you wanting to go into a death trance,’ he said harshly.
‘Oh?’ inquired Waverley.
‘People want to go into a death trance for one of two reasons. Either they’re after money or they want to express their love for someone they lost. Occasionally they’re out for revenge, but not often. Well, it seems to me that you already have plenty of money, and it also seems to me that you’re quite capable of getting whatever revenge you feel like here on earth, in the real world, without taking it beyond the grave. That leaves love. But you? Love? You don’t even love yourself.’
Reece began to twist Michael’s arm but Waverley held up his hand to restrain him.
He studied Michael and then said in a peculiarly dreamlike voice, ‘You may be right.
Maybe I don’t love anybody, not even myself. I lost the capacity to love when I lost Ilona. I loved Ilona and nobody else. You are right, yes. But I wish to enter the death trance so that I might find that love again, that love I lost.’
Michael said adamantly, ‘Believe me, it won’t be there. The love has to come from you, not from the spirit you’re trying to find. Spirits don’t experience emotions in the same way we do. The only love you’ll ever get from a spirit is your own love, reflected back at you.’
‘Will you take me?’ Waverley demanded, abruptly petulant.
‘No,’ Michael whispered.
Waverley nodded his head and Reece grasped Michael’s arm even more tightly, pushing him out of the conservatory, through the doorway and into the house. While Michael was being locked up, Waverley paced up and down, gently touching the leaves of his plants, admiring his brilliant tropical flowers, stopping now and then to look around.
Reece returned, continuously flexing his muscles like a National Guard gym instructor.
‘An obstinate boy,’ Waverley commented. Reece made a face and grimaced.
‘Well, never mind,’ Waverley went on. ‘He’s bound to cooperate sooner or later, if only to regain his freedom. Do you think he’s right about the death trance being dangerous or is he exaggerating?’
Reece made a cutting-his-throat gesture with his finger and reminded Waverley of what had happened to Bob Stroup and Jimmy Heacox.
‘Ah, yes,’ Waverley said, ‘but they were tampering, weren’t they? Hunter and Randolph Clare managed to get out relatively unscathed, no thanks to you, and it seems to me that with better organization, the death trance would probably be very much safer. Polaroid cameras, he said. We’d better arrange for Williams to go buy some, with plenty of film.’
Reece looked dubious. Waverley turned on his heel, smiled at him and then gave him a playful chuck under the chin with the tip of his cane. If anybody but Waverley had tried to do that to him, Reece would probably have broken his neck.
‘You find the idea of ghosts and spirits rather terrifying, don’t you?’ Waverley jibed.
‘You faced up to flame throwers, didn’t you? And mortar bombs, and sharpened bamboo spikes. You even managed to survive after your tongue was cut out. But ghosts and spirits, they really unnerve you. Demons and vampires and loogaroos!’
Waverley laughed and smacked his cane nois
ily on the floor. ‘Well, my friend, you’re just going to have to swallow your fear because we can do some good for ourselves in the spirit world. We can silence that Marmie Clare before Randolph can get to her and start digging up evidence to show that it was you who disposed of her, and that you have connections with me. And we can also talk to my beloved Ilona and prove what I have suspected for forty years. This time without any doubt, without any prevarication, and then we’ll have Randolph Clare right there, squeezed, ruined, and that will be even better than killing him.’
Reece listened to this and nodded, although he was used to Waverley’s thin-voiced braggadocio by now and he knew that Waverley could never tell the truth to anybody, especially not to himself. Waverley had just said ‘my beloved Ilona’ with deliberate sarcasm, but Reece had heard him on other occasions when he had argued and shouted to himself and then cried Ilona’s name out loud like a man begging a woman. The tragedy of Ilona’s death as far as Waverley was concerned was that she had left him no pride and, as with many men of short stature, pride to Waverley was everything, even above money. Even above God.
Reece made a laconic gesture that meant, ‘I could still kill Randolph Clare and then we wouldn’t have to risk going into a death trance.’
But Waverley said, ‘No, Richard. Not now. There are already too many people who have us under suspicion, and if Randolph Clare were to die now … well, I’m not sure that even Chief Moyne could protect us. If you had succeeded in disposing of him in Bali, that would have been a different matter, especially since he was involved in something illegal. But now it’s too late. And besides, this way is far more complete and far more discreet. And - how shall I put it? - far more artistic. Yes, it’s quite artistic.’
Death Trance Page 36
