Their colours – the ochres, cobalt blues, blacks, Chinese yellows, whites, pinks – all glistened attractively in the lamplight. Their stillness made them appear strangely menacing after the frenetic activity they had shown during the performance. It was as if they were awaiting a signal to leap into violent action, like a cat that appears not to be paying attention to a bird, until the bird hops within reach of its instant spring.
I stared at the flat, cut-out puppets, fascinated by the elaborate filigree work upon their decorative forms. Narrowed eyes stared back at me, steadily, unmoving. It was difficult not to think of these pieces of leather as animate in the smoky atmosphere from the lamp. Which one of them had moved in its socket? They were all at a slight angle, none of them poker straight in their holders.
I could smell the strong fragrance of the coconut oil burning, trapped inside the booth. There was also a residue stink of sweat and activity, and underlying smells of hardwood and buffalo hide. This heady mixture of scents made me feel a little giddy.
For some reason I felt impelled to enter the booth, and did so, my heart beating faster than usual. I gazed at the lamp which hung from the rafters. In the original palm-leaf manuscript of the myth Sigwagama, the lamp was played by Brahma himself, while Iswara was the dalang and Wisnu the musical instruments. That Brahma was light and could create shadows made him the most powerful of the three, even though the manipulator was Iswara and Wisnu played with the senses.
I happened to glance behind me as I was crawling into the central space and saw my own shadow on the cotton sheet. I suddenly thought, what am I doing here? I might be guilty of desecrating some holy place. If the dalang returned, or one of his assistants, I might be in serious trouble.
Yet I did not turn and go. I was transfixed by my own dark shape on the sheet, where so recently the myths had been reenacted. My silhouette now stood frozen where gods had played, where heroes had run, where ogres had danced. There was a strange sensation of looking into another world, of standing alone on the threshold of a mythical kingdom. I was like some shambling giant, lurking at the gates, waiting to be told that I might enter and take my place amongst the lower shadow forms.
At that moment, while I stared at my foreshortened silhouette on the screen, the door opened at the back of the hut. One of the puppets moved in the breeze from the outside, dropped forward, with a clack, so that its shadow fell across my shadow. Staring, I saw that it was the puppet of Kala, Lord of the Demons, which had slipped in its holder. His frightening outline had closed with mine on the white screen.
A chill went through me.
“Are you there, mister?” said Ketut, softly.
I scrambled out from behind the booth, feeling shocked. Ketut’s eyes opened wide when he saw me. I tried to explain that I thought perhaps one of the musicians might have picked up my watch and left it there, but I don’t think he believed me for one moment. He looked at my hands, probably expecting to see I had stolen a puppet, but when he saw this was not so, he murmured that we should be catching the bus.
What he did see, however, and this surprised me as much as it did him, was that my watch was still on my wrist.
We were mostly quiet with one another on the way back. The bus was being jolted this way and that, by an uneven road full of potholes. I couldn’t understand why I thought my watch had been missing, when it had been on my wrist all the time. Had I been hypnotized in some way, during the performance? It was the only explanation I could give for such a mistake.
With the constant jarring I began to develop a pain in my shoulders, which began to make me feel ill.
I did manage to ask Ketut, “What is the main function of Kala? What does he do?”
Ketut replied, “He eats men.”
By the time we reached Ubud I was in agony. Ketut kept looking at me: sidelong glances which told me that my appearance was not good. When the bus stopped, he hurried off, thanking me over his shoulder for buying his ticket. I made my way to the rice terraces, where my path lay.
I didn’t need my torch. It was a full moon. The peaked houses, their rooftops sweeping upwards to horned points in the Indonesian manner, were casting shadows on the ground. Clustered together as the houses were, the shadows tended to be complex criss-crossings of shade. There were latticework fences too, which overlaid these designs on the ground. I tried to avoid their dark networks, since they reminded me of the shapes of puppets cast on a cotton screen.
I reached the forest in front of the rice terraces and again the shadows locked and interlocked: this time they were moving, as the treetops of the canopy were blown by the wind. They formed and reformed figures on the forest floor, and this time I had to walk through them, since I could reach the rice terraces no other way. As I hurried through them, they seemed to gather to one single giant shape, which stalked my own shadow.
I began to run. It was as if I were being pursued through the trees, by some predator, and my heart was banging against my ribs, though I didn’t dare look behind in case I saw something unreal. I was absolutely convinced now that I had been hypnotized and I was not going to allow the art of the hypnotist to fill my eyes as well as my head with fictitious horrors.
I emerged onto the terrace paths, feeling safer out in the open fields, with no trees to cast shadows.
How was I going to shake this fantasy that gripped my conscious? Someone was having a very cruel joke at my expense. I was sure that once I was in my hut, with the artificial light on, I could break the mood and shed these terrible feelings.
As I hurried along I saw a man coming towards me, a duck herder, probably on his way home from a friend’s house.
Since the path was narrow, with room for only one person, I stopped so that we could step around one another carefully.
The man obviously did not notice me until the very last second, when he almost ran into me, and then his eyes went white around the edges. He stared at me for a second, as if peering into a dark hole, then muttered what sounded like a prayer or chant, before stepping into the paddy water and hurrying on. He looked back once, before he reached the drop to the next tier.
Watching him I had the terrible feeling that he had hardly been able to see me, yet it was extremely bright under that great moon. The deleterious pain in my shoulder began again.
I looked around me and saw that I was standing under a duck herder’s crook, left sticking in the mud. The rag on the top fluttered in the breeze, casting a changing shadow near my own dark shape. There, in the light of the full moon, I saw that the rag’s shadow had formed itself into the puppet shape of Kala, the devourer of men.
Kala’s form was eating my shadow.
Already much of my shadow had been consumed, in the streets, in the forest, and now under the staff’s rag. There were great chunks missing from around the shoulders and the back. My neck was now a gander’s neck, with a huge grotesque head perched on top, where the shadow had been eaten away.
I recoiled quickly in horror, only to see Kala’s black form dart forward and begin feasting again, as the wind increased in strength and bent the duck herder’s pole.
The pain was excruciating now.
I laughed out loud, hysterically, the sound echoing over the rice terraces. Surely, surely this was just some trick of the light? This was no Brahman lamp, this moon, and I was no wayang kulit, no shadow puppet.
Yet, on the other hand, it occurred to me that in any shadow world the shadows must be the main characters, and the objects that cast them subordinate to the shadows’ needs and desires.
I was in their world at the moment, the world in which they held sway. I had entered through the dimension of the wayang kulit, which had seduced my mind into passing through the gate, and the power was in the hands of the shadows.
My own weak shadow was now a ragged thing as the ravenous Kala moved over it, devouring it ferociously, like a starving wolf consumes its kill.
I turned and ran, heading for my hut, desperate to get out of the light of the mo
on before my shadow was totally destroyed, for the man who casts no shadow is not there. He no longer exists in this world.
When I reached the hut the voracious Kala, using the waving palms around the hut to cast his shape, began feasting once again. Weak now, I fell on the steps of the hut, unable to shake off the dark creature on my shadow’s back. By the time I was able to crawl through the doorway, little was left except a few wisps of me. I felt ravaged, tattered, my shadow a weathered black banner that had been through many battles, many seasons.
I lay in the safety of the darkness feeling shaken and terrified. Awake for several hours my mind ran away in a panic, knowing that the sun would rise the next morning, and most likely the moon at night. I was trapped inside this hut, unable to turn on the light. Kala must have been laughing, knowing I would have to come out some time. So long as he was patient, I would be delivered to him eventually.
The next morning it was a bright, sunny day and I cowered in the corner of my hut, afraid to be caught in any of the beams that cut through the gaps in the curtains. At three o’clock however, the sky clouded over and a tropical storm threatened. It was soon dark enough for me to leave the hut without casting a shadow.
I hurried out to find Ketut.
At first he tried to ignore me, but when he saw how distressed I had become, he motioned for me to step off the street into the house of his parents.
“You must help me,” I cried, watching the distant lightning on the horizon getting closer by the minute.
Ketut listened to my story and then told me we had to find the dalang quickly. He took me by the hand and led me to a temple at the end of Monkey Forest Road. By this time it was raining hard – a torrential monsoon downpour that could drown a cat if it didn’t find shelter – and I had no fear of shadows. The pressure of the rain caused palms to genuflect, turned dirt streets to muddy rivers, and lowered visibility to zero.
Once in the gloom of the temple’s recesses, with the rain thundering on the metal roof, Ketut went off to find the dalang. He reappeared a little later.
“Come,” he said, beckoning me towards a small room. “The dalang will help you.”
I entered the room in which the same dalang sat cross-legged in the centre of a large palm-leaf mat. A small, wiry man with dark eyes, the dalang motioned for me to sit down on the mat. I did as I was told, knowing I was in his hands completely.
Ketut said, “He wants you to turn sideways.”
A profile. Right. Once I was in the correct position, the dalang took out a wad of dirty cloth and unrolled it. In it were a row of small chisels and knives, which glinted in the dull light from the doorway. He began cutting and shaping a piece of stiff hide, scraping out hollows, chiselling holes, perforating the tough leather, working swiftly. I realised what was happening, of course. He was making a wayang kulit from my silhouette.
I was to be a shadow puppet.
While the dalang was working, Ketut left me alone with him for a while, returning after a few minutes.
Once the form was cut, it was painted and hung up to dry.
Ketut said, “Later the dalang will add the sticks. You must now go back to the darkness of your room. Tonight the dalang will use your puppet in the story of Bomantaka.”
“What will happen? How will that help me?” I asked.
Ketut said seriously, “Your shadow must kill the shadow of Kala, king of the demons, to free yourself of him.”
A chill went through me. I didn’t dare ask what would happen if my shadow failed. What if Kala killed me instead, then ate my puppet’s shadow? Would that mean the end of me too? The man without a shadow is not there. I knew it would probably mean my death too, as well as that of my shadow.
I went back to my hut on the rice terraces to find Nyoman had returned. The shutters to the hut were still closed and it was hot inside. She was lying on the bed in the darkness. She patted the bed beside her.
“Come,” she said, “you must lie with me. Ketut called me on the phone and told me what has happened.”
There were no more words needed. I lay down beside her and waited. She held my hand. I think I fell asleep just as the ducks were being called in for the night.
I am behind a rock near the trunk of the Tree of Life. Sooner or later all things must pass by the Tree. It is a huge growth, reaching halfway to the clouds, and spreads its canopy massively over a third of the world. Here and there a great branch dips to the earth, then rises again as a mighty river of bark. In its flourishing vast network of leafy branches, more numerous than the blades of grass in the true world, are all manner of creatures, real and unreal: birds and beasts, mythological beings and monsters. Their forms proliferate. Spots, stripes, dark and light, but no colour, for this is the land of shadows. They decorate its foliage. They are part of the tree, growing with it, from it, in it. They are its fruit, its nuts, its buds and blossoms.
As well as growing and nourishing every known creature, except man, the arboreal god is a provider of real fruits: figs, oranges, grapefruits, limes, lemons, walnuts, hazelnuts, coconuts, grapes, bananas and every fruit known to humankind as well as those fictitious delicacies which adorn the mosaic walls in forgotten temples deep inside the last jungles.
There are greys within greys, shade upon shade: there are as many delicate monochromatic tones as the colours of the real world in the Tree of Life, hiding some things, revealing others, constantly unfolding new wonders, endlessly concealing old ones. It is life, uncurling like a fern, twisting in agony like a wounded creature, cryptically opening a flower of stunning shadowed beauty here, secretly closing a faded bloom there.
This is the wonder under which I wait, a long curved dagger in my right hand, my heart beating madly with fear. What if I fail? What if the great Kala swallows my shadow, my soul? Shall I then be nothing in the universe?
Lone warriors have passed me by, armed to the teeth with an extraordinary arsenal of weapons – spiked objects, deadly pointed missiles, strange ropes and leathers – some of which I can only guess at the use. Bands of brigands, monsters, ogres, fairies and giants, all have wandered past, some clearly looking for war, others avoiding it.
Armies too have marched by the enormous trunk, their feet and horses’ hooves thundering on the hard dark earth, their generals magnificently arrayed in dull armour.
Sometimes these armies meet on the plain to fight and the air sings with arrows, wails with spears, clatters with the blades of swords. Thousands fall, their blood mingling with the dust, and heroes rise out of the dead, silvery heroes shining with pure brilliance, their sword in one hand, the Ring of Truth in the other. Their followers rally, inspired by the magnificent spectacle of light-rising-from-darkness, to clash again with the foe, to send them fleeing north, west, east and south, over the fading edges of the world, into the void which surrounds the land of shadows.
Around me the lone and level plain falls away on all sides, disappears at the edges into misty regions of the unknown, where perhaps lurk even more grisly creatures – perhaps some that would stop a man’s heart dead just by their mere appearance?
I hear a sound behind me! Out of a cave-hole in the ground a giant, horned serpent has appeared. Sparks fly from its eyes. Its foul breath has the stink of brimstone and flames hiss from its nostrils. Its tail, when it appears, is a club of spikes, each tipped with some terrible toxin whose drips instantly wither the leaves on shrubs. Bat-wings unfold with leathery cracklings. As it moves towards me, scales drop from its skin, razor sharp, to slice and bury themselves into the earth like skimmed metal shields.
It opens its mouth to reveal not just two, but rows of fangs each as long as the curved knife I hold in my hand. It prepares to strike, rearing back, and I have only my dagger to protect me. As the beast’s head descends, jaws open wide, I fling the dagger down its throat with all my strength. The creature screams in agony, writhing away from me, thrashing its loathsome coils in the dust beneath the Tree of Life. It squirms and convulses, tying itself in knots, u
ntil finally it disappears back down the dark tunnel from whence it first emerged.
At that moment Kala appears on the horizon, taller than six ordinary men, his great feet pounding the earth. He roars, triumphantly and I now know it was he who sent the serpent, to wrest my weapon from me. Kala, the great evil one, king of the demons, devourer of men, comes thundering over the plain. His face is a cruel mask of savagery. There is no mercy in his lustful eyes, only DEATH and GREED, both of which are his rulers. His arms have the strength of mighty apes, his legs the power of stallions. From his chest armour and shoulder straps dangle a thousand shrunken skulls – eaten men – and from his hips and thighs dried gristle and rattling bones. A belt of human hair supports the scabbard of his terrible scimitar.
Kala, humpbacked, thick-chested and starey-eyed, a dwarf figure fleshed into a giant, has magic in those hands that can bend the strongest metal. There is sorcery in those feet that can crush rocks to powder. He believes he is invincible, but he has been destroyed, many times, by a great hero. He wants my flesh, my bones, my soul. He wants to devour me. He has tasted of my shadow and is now obsessed with the tang of me on his palate. He must have me to gratify his insatiable appetite for the bodies and souls of men.
I am helpless against his onslaught. My dagger has gone, tricked from me by the demon-king. There is nowhere to run to, for the world is too small to hide from Kala. I stand and wait in terror as his ferocious form pounds towards me.
In the suspended moment before I am snatched up into his brutal jaws a figure leaps from behind the trunk of the Tree of Life. It is Nyoman armed with two bright swords. Nyoman, sheathed from head to foot in black leather armour. Nyoman, light as a dancer on her feet, dextrous as a juggler with her weapons. She stands before Kala, challenging him with her stance, her bright blades swishing the air before his eyes, slicing away the darkness he has trailed with him across the plains.
The Best New Horror 6 Page 28
