Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“I know you saw something terrible under the ground,” he began. “I went down there. I saw the blood, and the bones. It was so dark. There were sounds. I was frightened, too. But there was no body. Did you see a body?”

The girl made a sound like a whimper. Not a whimper, he realized. She was humming. With a chill he recognized the song. “The East Is Red,” one of the standard hymns of political officers, a favorite anthem for the public address systems in Chinese schools. Shan sat in silence, looking back at Lokesh and Gendun, trying to understand why they would not approach Surya. “Dawa,” he pressed. “I need to know what you saw. I will help.”

The girl stopped her frantic washing, catching the bloody water that dripped from her dress in one hand, staring at it with a terrible fascination. Just as he was about to rise she looked up. “He had an eye in his hand,” she said in a tiny voice. “And a nail through his body.” She began her chilling song again.

As he rose and moved back toward the tower a figure rushed past, stopping so abruptly at the entrance to the tower that she almost stumbled inside. It was Liya, panting, steadying herself with a hand on the rocks. “Quickly!” she called to Surya, then stepped into the shadows. “He has to leave,” she gasped as Shan joined her. “We must carry him if there is no other way.” Her voice drifted away as she stared at the monk.

Surya was urgently working at the wall at the rear of the little chamber, rubbing it with a strip of cloth torn from his grey underrobe, muttering something under his breath. It was a painting. Surya was frantically cleaning a painting, a mural that could have been painted a century or more earlier. To the left of the old painting were the characters of the mani mantra, invoking compassion, each faded letter ten inches high. On the wall to the right was a recent work, a complex painting of deities that would have taken many days to complete. Shan studied the rich, vibrant style of the second painting then turned to see Lokesh beside him, his eyes reflecting Shan’s own surprise. The style of the painting was unmistakable, familiar to them. It was Surya’s work.

But Surya was ignoring his own painting.

“Which is it?” Liya asked in a whisper as she stared at the image on the back wall that Surya was cleaning. Shan, too, was not certain of the central deity. It was Tara, the protectress, in one of the fierce emanations meant to combat specific demons and fears, but each major deity had multiple forms and he did not recognize this one.

Shan turned, as had Liya, to Lokesh, but his old friend just stared at the painting, his mouth open. “A terrible thing,” Lokesh whispered and gazed back toward Zhoka with a worried expression. He did not mean the art, Shan knew, but the evil it was meant to protect against. Shan recognized the words Surya was now speaking in his low, desperate tone. It was a mantra: Om Ah Hum, a special empowering mantra, the last of a series of prayers used to animate deities.

“There is no time for this,” Liya said to Surya. “You must flee.” She stepped to his side and made a pulling motion with her arms, though her hands were empty, as though she were frightened of touching the monk, his arms still streaked with dried blood. “No time,” she repeated, despair in her voice now.

But Shan sensed that for Surya there was time only for this, that despite their own fears, the monk had seen much more to fear, seemed alone to understand the true depths of their desperation, had decided their only possible defense lay with the deity in the painting. For the first time Shan saw that something had been painted below the old painting: a mantra perhaps. The words were obliterated with dark red streaks. Something inscribed there had just been obscured by red pigment, one of the colors Surya carried in little wooden tubes that hung on a leather strap around his neck, inside his underrobe. He saw that the monk’s hands held fresh red stains over the drying blood. Surya had fled to the little shelter not only to clean the old painting but to also rub pigment over what had been written below it.

“Om hum tram huih ah,” Surya cried out in a strangely fierce voice. It was a mantra to bind guardians. Surya said no more but stared into the eyes of the deity. It was as if he had just concluded a pact with Tara.

Liya stopped her strange pantomime of struggle to stare at the monk, then pushed past Shan, her eyes full of tears. He watched as she searched the landscape beyond Zhoka, as though looking for someone in particular, then began urging the fleeing Tibetans toward the trail below the crest, down the steep switchback beyond the outcropping, toward their camps and houses in the hills above the valley. She ran back fifty yards along the crest and swept a stumbling child onto her back, forcing a lighthearted air as she carried the boy past the outcropping, handing him to his weary parents at the edge of the ledge, calling out a blessing as they disappeared over the crest. Shan stepped a few feet down the grassy slope, calling Jara, gesturing for the herder to bring his family.

Only half a dozen Tibetans remained in sight when Liya halted, looking back with a puzzled expression. Shan followed her gaze to see Surya, out on the ledge now, facing the steep valley beyond, his arms stretched outward at his side. Lokesh took a step toward the monk then halted, cocking one ear upward. Shan heard it, too, as he stepped closer, a deep thunder that came from the cloudless sky. Suddenly, running, stumbling figures appeared at the crest, crying out, racing back up the trail they had just descended, discarding the baskets and packs they carried.

Too late Shan recognized the metallic rumble. As he grabbed Lokesh’s arm the thunder roared to a crescendo and a huge whirling blade appeared beyond the ledge, slowly rising to reveal the sleek dark grey body of one of the helicopters used by the army. Everyone seemed to be screaming, scattering in every direction but that of the machine. Jara stumbled through the stream below and began racing toward his niece as his wife gathered the other children. Dawa herself leapt up and frantically ran, not toward her uncle, but along the slope in the opposite direction.

Shan pushed Lokesh back toward the ruins and ran to Gendun’s side as the machine paused, hovering a few feet above the ground. As he grabbed the lama and pulled him to his feet half a dozen troops in combat gear dropped out of the helicopter.

Shan and his friends ran, stumbling, tripping over rocks, Shan repeatedly stopping to help Gendun, pulling him forward, struggling because Gendun seemed unwilling to hurry, seemed not frightened but curious about the troops. Suddenly Lokesh, three steps in front of them, halted and stared back at the old stone tower.

Shan turned too, confused. The troops were not chasing anyone, not even Gendun, who wore a robe. Surya was standing on the open ledge, facing the helicopter, arms still raised, palms open, as if in greeting. The soldiers surrounded him, rifles at the ready, pausing as one soldier pressed his hand to his ear. Then, as Shan watched in horror, the soldiers closed about Surya, breaking off the leather neck strap that held his paints, pulling him from the rock and shoving him toward the helicopter, lifting him roughly into its bay. A moment later the soldiers had followed Surya inside the machine. It ascended, veering northward.

The panic did not depart with the soldiers. No one stopped running. The cries of fear did not cease. Some figures resumed their flight down the slope to the west, others retreated toward Zhoka. Dawa was alone, high on the opposite slope now, not bothering to stop to look for her family, running frantically toward the snowcapped mountains on the southern horizon, her uncle now sitting on the ground far behind her, holding his ankle as if he had injured it.