Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“We already know there’s another level,” Dolan snapped.

“Over every door there is a segment,” Shan continued, “except one, the entrance to the abbot’s chamber next door. Because the abbot was the senior monk, the one to whom the rainbows led, who lived at the gate of heaven.” Everyone but Lokesh followed. The old Tibetan lingered by the body of Khan, now laid on the floor below the shelves. He was gently cleaning the man’s head, looking into his scalp, whispering the death rites. To the Tibetans one of the greatest things to be feared in death was a wound that might block the top of the head, where the soul exited.

“We go to the center of the universe,” Shan said to Lokesh.

Lokesh raised a hand as though to acknowledge Shan, but did not look away from the dead man.

Dolan took a step toward Lokesh and seemed about to bark an order, then hesitated as he stared at the dead man. For a moment his eyes filled with the wild confusion he had shown when coming out of the maze. “He’s gone, you fool. There’s nothing left,” Dolan said in an oddly plaintive tone.

“No,” Lokesh said. “In some, there is more to work with in death than in life,” he said in a pointed voice.

Dolan raised his pistol, but in a halfhearted, uncertain way, as if to argue with Lokesh.

Shan approached slowly, his eyes on the end of the pistol. When Shan touched the cold steel of the gun Dolan jerked, as if Shan had touched Dolan’s skin. “When a killer dies,” Shan said, “what’s left is in danger of never finding the beauty.”

For a moment Dolan searched Shan’s face, as if about to ask Shan to explain, but said nothing. He let Shan push the gun down and followed Shan out of the room.

Moments later Shan stood in the center of the next room, the abbot’s quarters, studying the chamber in silence. Khan and Lu had been at work. The walls had been stripped of their paintings. Four of the seven ritual bowls had been removed from the simple altar that was built into the wall, dropped onto the floor in front of it. Shan lifted one of the bowls, examining it before replacing it on the altar. “The bowls,” he said quietly, studying the wall. “Khan and Lu thought they might be valuable, I think, and set them down when they saw they were not made of precious metal. They are heavy, have the heft of solid gold, but they are not gold, they are lead. Those three,” he pointed to the bowls remaining on the altar, “still hold the remains of the traditional herbal offerings. The other four would have held water, which long ago evaporated.” He surveyed the confused faces of his companions. “I need your water bottles.”

Corbett and Yao looked at Dolan as they reached into their small packs and produced two bottles. The new Dolan who had come out of the labyrinth had become even more frightening than before. He sat on the bed, his eyes sometimes glazing over, holding his arms around his chest and swaying forward and backward. Shan saw the glance exchanged between Corbett and Yao and, alarmed that they might try to rush Dolan, touched Corbett and pointed to the empty bowls.

“Here you attain heaven by paying homage to the deity,” Shan explained.

“Fuck you,” Dolan said. He rose, leveling the pistol at Shan. “I pay homage to no one. You have no idea of my power.”

“Nothing like the power,” Shan said, “of an old Tibetan trying to help the soul of a Chinese killer.”

Dolan’s lip curled in a silent snarl.

“If you want to go up, to the center, you must place an offering on the altar,” Shan continued. “Each of you.”

Dolan’s countenance did not change but he did what Shan asked, filling a bowl with water.

As Ko set the fourth bowl on the altar a muffled thud could be heard, as if somewhere nearby blocks of wood had shifted, tapping each other.

“We tested many of the walls before,” Shan said, “But we had no time to check every surface, every section. When Dolan fired the shot that hit the shelves in the other room I thought it hit a book cover.” He held up the splinter he had retrieved. “But this is from the wall. The bullet hit the wall behind. The wall is made of wood, painted to look like stone.” He stepped to the wall by the abbot’s bed, in a place he judged opposite where the bullet had struck in the other chamber. The surface was painted with a protector demon reaching toward the sky. He studied it, then laid his hands over the outstretched hands of the demon and pressed. The wooden wall moved inward, revealing a small chamber like a closet. At its rear was a crude ladder stair, made out of rough hand-hewn timber. It was the kind of stair he had seen in impoverished temples, used to reach elevated shrines. The kind that might have been used hundreds of years before when Tibetan temples were first being built.

Dolan was suddenly reluctant to ascend. He said nothing when Shan began to climb, and stood silently as Corbett, Yao, and Ko followed to the top of the old ten-foot ladder, joining Shan in a short corridor lined with fragrant wood that led to a low doorway beside which was a shelf holding over a dozen bronze butter lamps. Before he realized what he was doing Shan extinguished the electric lamp in his hand, put it on the shelf, and lit a butter lamp. Without asking why the others did the same.

They hesitated, looking at each other, then Shan gestured for Ko to lead the way. As they walked down the corridor a noise like the rustle of wind grew louder, the air colder. The side walls fell away and Ko stopped and looked at his feet. The floor, too, had fallen away. He was standing on a single beam. The beam was gold, ornately worked with figures of deer, birds, and flowers. Tethered to the beam was a yak hair rope that extended in a graceful arc into the shadows beyond. Ko extended his lamp to the side. Black water rushed underneath the beam.

“The moat,” Shan said. “The symbolic ocean that surrounds Mount Meru at the center of the universe. After the oceans came golden mountains.”

As Ko ventured across the beam, Dolan appeared behind them, holding another of the butter lamps. It was the hollow, angry Dolan, still holding the gun. A hungry smile grew on his face as he saw the gold beam, the symbolic drawbridge.

Past the bridge, on pedestals carved from the living rock, were seven mythical mountains, gleaming, sculpted in gold, appearing to be modeled after the peaks of the Himalayas, the first over two feet high, the others descending until the seventh was less than ten inches. Dolan pushed at several of the mountains, tried to lift the smallest, as if assessing them for shipment.

Suddenly they were in a round chamber, no more than twenty feet in diameter, under a high central dome that seemed to have been painted black, like an endless sky. A band of silver encircled the dome just above their heads, worked with images of sacred emblems, with a section of a different material marking each of the cardinal directions: gold on the north, clear crystal in the east, sapphire in the south, rubies in the west, according to the Meru tradition. The chamber’s floor was surrounded by the rushing water, giving it the appearance of being suspended in a sea.

Four elegant curving altar tables were spread in a circle around the edge of the floor, with gaps like gates between them under the marks of the four directions, each altar nearly covered with renderings of deities in gold, silver, lapis, or precious jewels. As Shan walked along the richly laden altars the sound of rushing water grew stronger. When he reached the mark of the north he extended his lamp over the moat and discovered a treacherous churning of water, a violent whirlpool perhaps three feet in diameter, marking where the water drained. It was the head of the waterfall, he realized, the source of the water that swept into the chasm below Zhoka.