Private Demons

by Robert Masello

  When they finally broke free of the forest, and stumbled into the sparser grounds that lay in front of the temple, the three villagers huddled in a circle, consulting among themselves.

  “I think they're trying to decide if it's honorable to abandon you here after all,” Brendan said.

  “I want them to,” Lucien said. “I don't want anyone else to be endangered.” Lucien walked over to the three men, thanked them, using his halting Thai, then had them stick the torches they were carrying into the ground. The men bowed, and offered up a Buddhist prayer for Lucien and his friends. One of them said, “Be careful of the snakes—they'll do whatever Kaliya tells them to. And Kaliya's very angry.”

  Lucien thought, “There's more truth in that than he knows.”

  The men headed back into the jungle, with several glances over their shoulders. And Lucien, Hun, and Brendan were left alone in the moonlight, in what had once been, many centuries before, the forecourt of the temple.

  Lucien gazed across the stone bridge and the sullen black moat, and understood for himself now what Brendan had been telling him: The temple was not a single building, or even an easily grasped aggregrate. It looked, from here, like a jumble of turrets and spires, walls and steps, built on the highest ground in the region, and stretching away toward the east. This had once been a huge and thriving complex, raised to honor one of the great Khmer kings, or one of the great Hindu gods, or even possibly both. But whatever its purpose had been, whoever it had been designed to celebrate, that ancient intent had long since been forgotten, and the temple had been abandoned to time and the elements.

  And, if the villagers were correct, to Kaliya, the king of the nāgas.

  The way in, at least, was clear. The long stone causeway, lined on both sides with replicas of grinning gods and demons, led to a massive open gate; it was there, Lucien had been told, that the villagers left their offerings each morning. And there that Lisette—Sister Celeste—came each day to collect them.

  “Have we got a plan?” Brendan asked, coming closer.

  “To find Lisette—and get her out of here before the dead men come.”

  “What if she doesn't want to go?”

  “When she sees me, she'll go.”

  “And if we run into the dead men?”

  “Kill them,” Lucien said, “again.”

  Brendan laughed, and shook his head. “I like it,” he said. “Simple and straightforward.”

  “Time we lighted the torches.” Lucien produced from a pocket of his fatigues a cheap plastic lighter, and then touched it to the end of each of the torches stuck in the ground. They burst into orange flame. “Let's go,” he said, pulling up one of them, and leaving the others for Hun and Brendan. “Stay about ten feet apart, just in case.”

  Yep, Brendan thought, it was just like being back in Nam. Which wasn't something he'd ever missed.

  Lucien, holding the lighted torch aloft, tromped across the half-buried flagstones, and up onto the bridge itself. The gods on his right, and the demons on his left, were all grappling with the sinuous body of a monstrous snake; it was a representation, he knew, of an ancient Hindu legend. Vasuki, the serpent, was used, in a sort of celestial tug-of-war, to chum the Sea of Milk, from which heavenly ambrosia was then made to flow. In metaphorical terms, this was the job of the ancient Khmer kings too—to produce, from the sea of mud that was their kingdom, amrita, or abundance, for their people. Failure to do so could—and often did—result in their bloody overthrow.

  The faces of the statues glowed, and almost seemed to smirk, in the flickering light of the passing torch. As he crossed over the black moat, choked with weeds and rotting vegetation, he could see slight, shivering ripples on the surface of the water, where snakes, and possibly crocodiles, were silently swimming. An odor of decay and stagnation came up off the water.

  The main gate was surmounted by three massive heads, all alike, with almond eyes and flat, impassive features. Lucien stopped under its shadowy overhang to observe the loose petals, and empty wooden bowls, resting in the dirt. Brendan, and then Hun, joined him. The crackling of their torches echoed around the ancient walls.

  “Looks like she was here just this morning,” Brendan said. Lucien crouched down, touching the rim of the bowls, rubbing the fallen petals between his fingers. Lisette, he thought, you were just here. You just touched these things. And I am touching them now. I am that close to you now. I am that close.

  Hun had gone to the other side of the gate, and was gazing off into the complex. Which way, he wondered, would Lucien lead them now? And what would they encounter on the way? He wriggled, in the tight confines of his boot, the two toes that remained on the ruin of his left foot. Would he meet Ratsada and his men, the ones who had shot him? The ones who had, in their search for rubies, split open the bug-eyed Pran and thrown his carcass overboard? Lucien had promised Hun nothing, not even revenge. But that didn't keep him from hoping, all the same.

  “Hell of a place,” Brendan said, coming up next to him. “Amazing, to think of the people who built it.”

  Hun wasn't interested. The people who'd built it had probably been just like him. Hun was only interested in one thing—doing what they'd come here to do and then going home again. With Lucien's sister. Because that was what Lucien wanted. Once, Hun had saved Lucien's life, by blocking a rifle; once, Lucien had saved Hun's, by keeping him alive, in their open boat, on a storm-tossed sea. Now, as far as Hun was concerned, they were bound together, tighter than brothers, for life. And for whatever might lie beyond.

  “We have to go east,” Lucien said, taking in the same view of the huge, and vacant, cruciform court. “The focus of the temple grounds will be at its highest point. And that's where Lisette will be.”

  Once again, Lucien led the way. With his torch held close to the ground, to keep from tripping over the cracks and crevices in the broken stones, he set out across the vast open court. The stones were still warm from the heat of the day; they creaked, and rattled, under his boots. And gradually, as he continued on, they appeared to be coming to life.

  He was just about to step over an unusually thick and dark crack when the crack suddenly slithered away, and he stopped dead. He held the torch even lower, and now he could see the glistening scales on the back of the snake. A python, if he wasn't mistaken. Slithering slowly under the edge of an upturned stone.

  But there were others, of all shapes and sizes, coming out now to enjoy the cooler temperatures—and the better hunting—that the night customarily provided. Lucien held out the torch, and detected, in the pool of light, furtive movements and swift escapes. He was going to call a warning, but Brendan, behind him, spoke first.

  “I guess the villagers were right.”

  “Yes,” Lucien said, “they were.”

  “Shoot them?” Hun asked, from even farther back.

  “Not unless it's necessary,” Lucien said. “The torches ought to hold them off.”

  And shooting could have done only so much. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of snakes, basking in the moonlight, creeping out from under the rocks, undulating up and over the steps and columns. It had been years since Lucien had lived in this region, but the names of the snakes—and their various reputations—came back to him in bits and pieces. Like the python, one of the shorter variety, that had already crossed his path. Or the thread snakes, that looked like enlarged worms and confined themselves to eating insects. Or the burrowing pipe snakes, with fat round bodies and abbreviated tails. Or the sunbeam snakes, so called because their highly polished scales shone like mirrors in the sunlight. Alarmed by the light of the torches, most of them made way, leaving Lucien and his party a narrow corridor, lined on all sides by hungry, inquisitive, and sometimes agitated snakes; several times, Lucien heard a hiss in the darkness, and glimpsed the small, sleek head of a serpent rearing up in anger and defiance. Twice, their passage was blocked altogether by banded kraits, known both for their lethal poison and aggressive nature. Lucien had to use the tor
ch to prod them to one side, and then to hold them at bay as they passed by.

  How, he wondered, had Lisette survived among these creatures?

  Once they left the central court, Lucien noted that the snakes became slightly less numerous underfoot—had he just crossed some inconceivably huge burrow that they inhabited?—but the way remained dangerous and unclear. The temple complex might once, centuries before, have shown some orderly pattern in its buildings and colonnades, but now that order was impossible to discern. Walls had fallen, friezes had been obliterated, staircases had become overgrown with grass and weeds and led, more often than not, to tumbledown piles of red laterite and gray sandstone. Lucien had to pick his way among the blocks of stone and truncated columns, waving the torch to illuminate the path and ward off the serpents that now hung from above, or parachuted—by spreading their ribs to slow their fall—to the ground.

  Gradually, he was able to lead Brendan and Hun, as if through a maze, toward the higher ground that lay to the east. At the base of the last, and highest, hill, he felt he had come to the place he'd been seeking all along. High above him, on the summit, he could see the pale walls and elaborate carvings of a colossal temple—and he knew that this was where Lisette had taken sanctuary. He waited for Father Brendan and Hun, now limping badly, to catch up.

  “You think she's in there?” Brendan said, looking up at the silent, stone temple.

  “Yes.”

  “Quite a climb.”

  The hill was steep, and the steps, or terraces, that had once provided access had long since disappeared; it was now a dark slope, matted with grass and weeds, strewn with jagged rocks and rubble.

  “Hun,” Lucien said, “I want you to stay here at the bottom.”

  “No,” Hun protested. “I can go to top. I can—”

  “No,” Lucien repeated, “I want you to stay here. I don't know what we'll find at the top, and I want you here in case anything happens. I want you to keep guard, and cover us if we have to make a sudden retreat.”

  “No, I can go—”

  “You will stay here. As I have told you to do.” Lucien turned away, to end the discussion. He thought leaving a sentry at the foot of the hill was a good precaution, but even more to the point, he doubted Hun could negotiate the difficult and dark incline. He and Brendan would have enough trouble as it was.

  He held the torch out to search for the best place to start—and didn't find one. There was no clear path toward the top; however Lisette made her way up and down, it was not apparent in the dead of night. With his free hand, he reached for a clump of tall, yellow grass, and used it to pull himself up onto the hill itself. A stone rolled away under his boot, and he heard Brendan, just behind him, say, “Thanks.”

  Climbing the hill under normal circumstances would have been hard enough. But in the dark, with a flaming torch in one hand, it was an almost impossible task. Lucien had to zig and zag, looking for something to grab onto, probing for spots where the soil was firm and his boot wouldn't slide. He was conscious of Brendan struggling up the hill below him, but didn't look back. He had to concentrate all his energies on searching for the best route to the top, on finding the next handhold, on weaving his way around rocky outcroppings—that might once have been stairs—and keeping his balance. Close to the summit, he set loose a cascade of small stones, and nearly fell when he put his hand forward into what turned out to be not a shadow but a hole. Brendan, fortunately, was off to one side, and wasn't hit by the debris. But Lucien's torch had slipped from his other hand, and he had to turn around and scrabble after it; he caught it by the end, just as it was about to roll out of reach. A swatch of grass had already caught fire; he beat it out with the heel of his boot, then paused to catch his breath. Far below, he could see the flickering of the torch that Hun had carried, and the outline of his body, squatting on the ground.

  “Are you all right?” Brendan said, keeping his voice low.

  “Yes . . . but there's a hole here. Watch out for it.”

  “There's holes everywhere. What's one more.”

  Lucien looked up at the moon and the stars, shining brightly and unobstructed. Only to the east were there wisps of cloud, drifting in on a cool, night wind. The world seemed strangely peaceful and at rest. If only, Lucien thought, this illusion were true. He turned, and regarded again the temple at the top of the hill, sitting dark and silent and expectant. Then he lifted his torch and continued on toward the top.

  The last few yards, he clambered up almost on all fours, pawing at the ground, stabbing the handle of the torch like a pike into the dirt that covered the ancient stones. When Brendan came within reach, he put out his hand and helped drag him up onto the summit of the hill; here, the flagstones formed a flat but narrow concourse around the edges of the temple itself. There was still no sign, or sound, of life within.

  “Which way?” Brendan said, after a quick survey of the base of the temple.

  “The entrance on this side looks as if it's blocked. There must be another on the other side.”

  “That, or we've come to the wrong place.”

  “No,” Lucien said, solemnly, “we have come to the right place.”

  Raising the torch, he observed the stone carvings that adorned the walls of the temple; they had been put here, by the ancient Khmers, to render this sanctuary worthy of the gods that were thought to dwell within. There were garlands of flowers, with broad leaves and trailing vines; celestial maidens, with rounded breasts and sensual smiles; gamboling animals, soaring birds, children at play. And as he passed along toward the eastern front, there were scenes from the great Hindu epics, the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana. Vishnu, preserver of the cosmos, was seen wielding in his four arms the conch, the disc, the club, and the lotus; Indra, the great magician, rode his white elephant, Airāvata. Gods and demons, monkeys and vultures strove to overturn mountains, stir up oceans, bring peace—or annihilation—to the universe. On tiers above them, there were ranks of bodhisattvas, Buddhist saints who had earned the right to enter Nirvana, and the Buddha himself, seated on the coils of the nāga, Mucilinda. The jumble was typical of the ancient Khmers, who had absorbed, and even appropriated, whatever they chose from the variety of beliefs that had vied for supremacy in the region. This temple, whoever it had been built to honor, Hindu god or Khmer king, represented the eternal struggle between good and evil, between creation and destruction, between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. And the multiplicity of symbols and stories, drawn from different faiths and peoples, only served to underscore the universality of the message. There could be no more appropriate place, Lucien reflected, for Lisette, with her own tortured past, to have taken refuge.

  At the eastern edge of the temple, he looked down to see the great black lake of which he'd been told. To Lucien, it looked as black and limitless as the sky. But on its waters, he saw no sign—not yet, at least—of the black junk with the bat-wing sail. Perhaps they had come in time after all.

  Father Brendan, in almost a whisper, said, “You were right—there's an entrance over here, and it looks okay.”

  Lucien had known that it would be. Topped by a crumbling lintel, from which creepers hung like a curtain, the doorway was nonetheless open and passable. He turned to it now, with a complicated mix of emotions brewing within him—excitement and fear, longing and sadness, hope and despair. He had come so far, waited so many years, and now the end of his quest might be only a few feet, a few seconds, away.

  And if Mandy's predictions were true, his own life even now hung in the balance.

  Lucien smoothed the olive-drab shirt, straightened his short ponytail, and as if he were an uncertain suitor, hesitantly parted the veil of dangling vines and stepped inside the temple.

  Brendan followed him in.

  At first, Lucien could see very little—only a cavernous chamber, with towering columns, and a small pool of light somewhere near its center.

  But in that pool, a figure knelt, motionless, with head bowed.
/>   “That is Sister Celeste,” Brendan said softly.

  But was it Lisette? Lucien still could see nothing of her face. Handing his torch to Brendan, who stayed back in the shadows, he moved slowly forward. There were candles, three of them, lighted around her. And what looked like a small, ornamental pond at her back. When he had approached as close as he dared, he too knelt down. Her hands were folded in front of her; he could dimly discern on them the marks that he had seen in his vision.

  The only sound was the rustling of the vines, disturbed now by a rising wind, and the low sputter of the candles. A wooden bowl, with a few grains of rice still in it, rested on the edge of her mat.

  In a low voice, Lucien said, “Is it you, Lisette?”

  She neither answered, nor raised her head. Her black hair was cropped short.

  “It's me,” he said, “Lucien. Please. Look at me.”

  The light from the candles cast an amber glow. Slowly, she lifted her head, and leaned back on her haunches. She looked at him with impassive eyes.

  “Lisette,” he said, exulting, “it's you! It's you! Don't you recognize me? I'm your brother, Lucien! Don't you know me? Don't you remember?” He felt an overwhelming urge to reach forward and embrace her, to wrap his arms around her and never let go, but the expression on her face—the mute stare, the set lips, the stern composure—warned him not to. The candlelight glinted off a thick silver cross that was partially concealed in the folds of her habit.

  The same silver cross he had seen in his vision.