Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

He turned to see the others entranced by the contents of the altar tables. Yao stood in front of the most elegant statue of the Historical Buddha Shan had even seen, a two-foot-high image cast in gold, with eyes subtly set in lapis, a face so real, so detailed, it seemed to be a life mask.

“The mandala machine,” Yao whispered, “just as the amban described.” He pushed a lever on a domed device of silver and gold, watching the top lift like the petals of a lotus as four concentric rings rose up in a minature of the Zhoka palace. “They are all here, as described in the amban’s letter.” Beside the mandala device were two richly colored thangkas unfurled nearly horizontally on low wooden frames, then a carving of the protector deity Jambhala in jet black stone, kneeling as if about to leap, holding a huge ruby in the shape of a treasure vase, an intricate silver statue of the Future Buddha; and behind them a stately Buddha on a golden throne, the throne not the traditional one of lotus flowers but the dragon throne of the Ching empire.

Dolan was making a strange sound that one moment seemed like a prayer, the next a groan. Beyond him Corbett stood staring into the whirlpool.

Dolan picked up the black statue, which had been described in the amban’s letters, staring at it, and set it by the entry to the chamber. His face had become grey again, and confusion passed over his countenance as he looked from the statue back to the empty place on the altar where it had sat. He rearranged the figures that had flanked it as though to hide its disappearance.

Shan was convinced he could persuade this Dolan, the uncertain Dolan, to leave; persuade him to reconsider, to at least buy time, let them attend to the dead monks who haunted him before stealing from them. But it seemed impossible to predict when the angry, violent Dolan would emerge, the one who killed people one moment and forgot it the next. Something was stirring inside Dolan which Dolan himself seemed unable to recognize.

But as the doubting Dolan stared at the altars, Corbett suddenly towered over him. “I can’t let you do this anymore, Dolan,” the FBI agent declared.

The defiance revived the angry Dolan. His face went hard again, and the pistol rose in his hand.

“That little Italian shooter of yours has a clip of eight shots,” Corbett said. “You’ve got three left. There’s four of us.”

“If I kill one or two, that will stop the rest,” Dolan sneered.

Corbett shook his head. “Here’s how it happens. I charge you, maybe knock the gun away. Maybe you pump a round into me, maybe not. But I’m a big guy and you’re a lousy shot. It’ll take more than one to put me down, long enough for the others to get the gun away. Without a gun you’re just another two-bit looter.”

“But no matter what else, it leaves you dead.” Dolan seemed to welcome the new game Corbett was playing.

Corbett shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about that. These people here, the people to whom Zhoka really belongs, they’re more important than you’ll ever be. I have no one back home. If I die, then I know that people like Lokesh will sit with me and say the right words. You know what this place has taught me most of all? No matter how people like you screw up the world, the true things stay true. There’s always another chance.”

Dolan’s hand with the gun trembled. He pressed his free hand around it, steadying it, then suddenly aimed it at Shan. “I don’t have to kill you to stop you and Yao. I will shoot Shan if you come closer. He’s the one who caused all this. He’s the one who tricked me into coming here. I didn’t think it would be like … I should have stayed home and sent others. The rest of you can leave, but he has to die, no matter what else, he is going to die. He’s like one of those damned protector demons, who think they will frighten you away. They think Dolan kills. They think Dolan doesn’t love the beautiful things.”

Shan did not move. Dolan’s eyes flared, he took a step toward Shan and pulled the hammer back on the gun. “You think Dolan is a lousy shot? Watch this.”

A shape streaked across Shan’s vision, an arm shoving him aside as the gun fired. Shan watched, confused, his ears ringing with the explosion of the bullet, while Yao, as if in slow motion, twisted with a shudder, a hand on his belly, and fell to his knees. Dolan stepped backward, shock in his eyes, mouth open as if to protest something. Then, still as if in slow motion, Ko launched himself through the air. Ko hit Dolan hard, wrapping his arms around him, trapping the hand with the gun against his body, pushing him back, off balance, back one step then two, under the golden mark of the north. And then they vanished.

“No!” Shan cried. In an instant he was at the edge of the floor, over the water. Ko had taken the American directly into the whirlpool. They were gone.

He turned to see Corbett kneeling beside Yao, who was leaning against one of the altars, speaking to them. Yao’s hand was on his abdomen. Blood was seeping through his fingers.

“Go!” Yao shouted. He was on the floor, leaning against one of the altars. “Ko may be hanging on below! Both of you! Run!”

Shan hesitated, looking at Yao’s wound. His shirt was drenched in blood.

“It’s nothing!” Yao snapped. “Go!”

Three minutes later Shan and Corbett reached the side of the underground stream, below the waterfall, sweeping their lights from side to side, studying the banks as they jogged along its course toward the outfall. At the end, where the stream cascaded into the chasm, the last iron bar, the corroded one to which Corbett had clung to two weeks earlier, was broken, twisted outward as if a great weight had hung from it. As Shan stared at the broken bar a terrible emptiness welled within.

“He probably hit his head,” Corbett said in a mournful voice. “I doubt he felt anything.” Shan knew he wasn’t speaking of Dolan.

“Go help Yao,” Shan said. “Get him to the surface.” When he turned back after watching Corbett run up the tunnel a low moan rose from his throat and he dropped to his knees.

After a long time he stood, still numb, and began walking back toward the temple. There was no sign of Corbett and Yao. When he climbed through the narrow tunnel chipped in the rock he paused, then found himself walking away from the peg stairs to the next level, into the first corridor of chapels they had visited.

At first when he reached the north gate, the chamber they swam into, it seemed empty. But when he swept the room a second time with his light there was a pile of rags on the far side, hanging over the water. He approached slowly, as if in a dream, until suddenly something seized his consciousness and he was awake, running. “Ko!” he shouted.

His son was lying with an arm in the frigid water, breathing but apparently unconscious. Shan rolled him over, pulling his head onto his lap, stroking his son’s hair, rubbing warmth back into his hands.

“He was carried away by that stream,” a weak voice said. “I was caught under the falls. He struggled, pushed me into the falls, than he was swept away by it, and I was sinking. I kept falling, deeper. I am sorry. I still had two of those little gold statues. Then Lokesh was with me and he said those words again. You have to let it all go to start over. So I emptied my pockets, let the gold keep falling, and I began to rise.” Ko rushed the last words out, and began coughing.

* * *

A quarter hour later they were ascending through the temple, Ko wrapped in Shan’s jacket. Shan kept expecting to meet Corbett and Yao, kept listening for signs they were descending, but only silence came from above. “They’ve all gone outside,” Shan explained when he saw that Lokesh had left the Stone Dragon’s chamber, Khan’s body still on the floor.