Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

He walked to the beast and stood in front of it. He’d already given it a thorough internal examination and found nothing. He closed the doors and scanned the front in the beam of his light. He looked to its right side and found nothing. He was walking around to the left when he stepped on something that sent him skidding forward; he almost fell. He heard whatever it was ping against the wall in front of him, then roll back in his direction. He slowly regained his composure and waited for his breathing to return to normal.

He shone his flashlight at the floor. There he saw the cause of his skid. The floor was dotted with ball bearings-the type used in truck or tractor wheels. Hundreds of them sat on the ground in no particular pattern. When he’d visited the room earlier, he hadn’t noticed them. Nobody would have, unless they’d bothered to go around the wardrobe. But, once he saw them, he knew immediately what their function was. It was a simple but brilliant idea. He knew it had been conceived by the same mind that had created the optical-illusion back door. He returned to the right side of the closet and pushed. It didn’t take a great deal of effort. The massive wooden cupboard glided majestically on the ball bearings beneath it as if it were on ice.

Siri stood back to admire his discovery. In the wall of the cave an aperture large enough for a man to climb through had appeared. His heart was beating fast. It was like discovering a Pharoah’s secret chamber in an ancient pyramid. He shone his light inside the opening. Here it was. This was the Cubans’ temple-a room no bigger than an air-raid shelter. Here was their sacrificial altar, their cauldron, their paraphernalia. A feeling of foreboding came over him. He had little doubt that this was the center of their black magic.

He removed the white talisman from inside his shirt and allowed it to hang openly around his neck. He breathed deeply and clambered inside the chamber to get a better look. There were two more beds in there, woven more carefully than the bed in the first room; one was covered in a stained cloth. There were various pots and jars of unidentifiable pastes and powders. In one corner there was a stack of dried fudge from tapped opium plants. In that state, the drug would maintain its potency for years. He recognized the unmistakable odor of dried blood and went over to the sacrificial altar. It was broad, easily wide enough for a body. Behind it was displayed what looked like photographs, but as he reached out to touch them, the talisman began to tremble against his chest.

He wondered what wickedness had been conjured up here, what evil spirits had been awakened inside these walls. He sensed something lurking, pressed high in the shadows against the cool stone. But it was nothing you could use a flashlight to see. His instincts told him to leave. He knew that he now hosted a dark Cuban spirit and that made him susceptible, open to attack. Panic took hold of him, but even so, he willed himself to reach out again for the photographs that were taped behind the altar. As he ripped them free, a high-pitched scream seemed to emanate from the rocks all around him.

He hurried for the aperture and flung himself through it. On the other side he lay on the ground, trying to catch his breath. His lungs were weak and useless now in times of crisis. Once more he’d ignored the advice of the shaman- “Do not subject the spirit of Yeh Ming to danger. Protect your ancestor and yourself at all costs.”

Siri wondered what there was about his character that impelled him toward dreadful danger. He was a terrible disappointment to himself. When his breathing was almost normal once more, he rolled the wardrobe into place to conceal the secret chamber, sat with his back against its doors, and shone his light onto the pictures. One was slightly larger than passport size. It showed a handsome black man in a humorless photo studio portrait pose. The other was larger, about six by eight inches. It was also a studio picture but the girl, whom Siri took to be the colonel’s daughter, Hong Lan, had been posed to look above and to the left of the photographer. She was a long-necked beauty with a shy, Mona Lisa smile. In her hair she wore a pink lotus.

Siri could certainly see how Isandro had fallen for her. Any red-blooded man would have. But this was wrong. The pictures as the centerpiece of a sacrificial altar pointed Siri to one unavoidable conclusion. The Cubans had used their magic to bewitch the girl. Her heart had been hijacked and she had been forced to love this man against her will. Odon must be dead. The living didn’t have the facility to haunt. Siri didn’t know why the man had chosen to use him as a vehicle but he could imagine a reason. Siri was afraid the Endoke priest needed his body to complete whatever process had been set in motion in this temple. He knew he had to find Hong Lan, but was afraid that this was exactly what Odon wanted him to do. By making contact with the girl, would he be bringing danger into her life once more? If Odon had been killed by the girl’s family to protect her, would it not be better to leave these skeletons in their cupboards in order to keep her safe?

In July 1977, the average yearly income in Laos was a little over eighty dollars. In Laos, some things people in the West considered necessities were unattainable luxuries one might read about in foreign magazines. Gasoline was one of these. Most people who owned a car and hadn’t been quick enough to flee to Thailand considered their vehicles to be permanently immobile; now they were small wheeled sheds or outside cupboards. On the roads, the majority of transport had some government connection or was owned by foreigners. Anyone who could afford to run a private car and claimed not to fit in one or the other of these categories had to be viewed with some suspicion.

Mr. Geung had made every effort to leave the road whenever he heard an engine approach. He was exhausted. His feet were blistered and the muscles in his legs were screaming for him to stop and rest. But he had to get to the morgue. Dtui had helped him fashion a hat from banana leaves that kept off the sun and made him look quite decorative. She was with him most of the time now, giving advice, urging him on. He couldn’t have made it this far without her, however far this far might be.

As his hearing slowly faded, he found he was catching the sounds of approaching trucks later and later. But for the last hour or so, nothing at all had passed him on the highway.

It was almost as if the road were running out of strength, along with Geung. The asphalt had gradually turned to gravel, which had now become sand. The sun was on his shoulder so he knew he was still heading in the right direction, but the road beneath him seemed to have lost faith that it could make it to Vientiane.

A car-a small blue Peugeot-suddenly darted out of a side track a hundred yards ahead of him. Mr. Geung was in the center of the road and there was nothing but open clearing on either side. There was nowhere to run, so he continued walking. There was nothing to worry about. Only army trucks had to be avoided. One thing he was sure of was that the army didn’t drive little blue cars. He expected the driver to ignore him and go past but the car stopped beside him. The driver obviously expected Geung to stop also and talk to him, but Geung continued on his journey. After a few seconds of silence, the car dropped into reverse and rolled backward till it was traveling parallel to him.

The driver was a middle-aged man with dyed black hair and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Good afternoon, comrade,” he shouted above the sound of the whiny engine.

“I… I’m walking,” Geung told him.

“That, brother, I can see. Are you walking because you like to or because you have no choice?”